Spiritual Hiccups - The Bible Tells Me So

We had a funeral at our church yesterday with a visitation and reception afterward.  The funeral was for a much beloved member and so there was a large crowd with many church members and many  friends from outside the church.  As I was talking to people at the reception, I struck up a conversation with a fellow who said he was Roman Catholic and asked for a my thoughts on the differences between Presbyterians and Catholics.

I mentioned that we handled Mary a bit differently and then said that we elevated Scripture over Tradition.  The Bible trumps our way of doing things, and if we come to see a practice as being at odds with Scripture, we change the practice.  For example, over time we came to see the prohibition on ordaining women as un-biblical.  We thought that the overall witness of the Bible was that God can and does call women and men to all roles in the Church, and so we changed our ordination practices.

My conversation came back to me this morning as I read today's lectionary passages.  Psalm 15 spoke of God welcoming those "who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors."  I thought of the recent talk about civility in American politics and wondered about all of us Protestants who take the Bible so seriously but who nonetheless slander with our tongues those with whom we disagree.

Then I read the passage from Ephesians and found myself even more troubled.  "But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not  even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. Entirely  out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk; but instead, let  there be thanksgiving.  Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any  inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."  What troubled me is they way we Christians selectively emphasize what these verses condemn. 

Some Christians seem focused almost entirely on issues of personal purity, while others worry much more about problems of greed.  As a more "progressive" Christian, I find myself in the camp that often pushes issues of social justice and loving one's neighbor.  And people on both sides often point our fingers at each other and accuse them of perverting or distorting the faith.  It seems that Christians of all stripes are quite practices at selectively doing what the Bible says.


Now I do not for a second minimize the difficulty of interpreting Scripture and determining just what it looks like to live as the Bible tells me to live.  On many issues there are contradictory Scripture passages that require us to make judgments about the witness of the Bible as a whole.  But this process, as well as becoming mature in our faith, requires us becoming aware of the filters we use to weed out parts of Scripture we do not like.  Without doing this, we elevate our likes and preferences to a position of ultimate authority.  This not only is a classic definition of idolatry, but it makes it easy to demonize those whose likes and preferences are at odds with ours.

Perhaps this is why humility has traditionally been considered a Christian virtue, even if it seems to have fallen out of favor in our culture.

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Sunday Sermon video - Remembering Who We Are

Spiritual Hiccups - Earthy Faith

As the eyes of servants
   look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
   to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
   until he has mercy upon us.
Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
   for we have had more than enough of contempt.

There is something about these lines from Psalm 123 that resonate with me.  There is something plaintive about them.  There seems a longing here that both expects God to act and expresses anguish that God has not yet done so; "for we have had more than enough of contempt."

I sometimes think that the Christian faith lost something very valuable when the Church came of age amidst the Western philosophical mindset of the Greco-Roman world.  Greek philosophy conceived of divinity as steady-state perfection, and as Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the Church conformed itself to such notions.  In the process, the more earthy and dynamic faith of biblical Judaism got displaced.  In Western thought, God could not change, could not know passion, could not, as God does frequently in the Old Testament, change God's own mind. 

I would never recommend my personal spirituality as a model for others, but one place where I have experienced some spiritual growth in recent years is in developing a more dynamic relationship with God, one where God is not quite so bound by philosophical notions of impassive perfection, one where I can be disappointed with God and God can respond to that disappointment. 

Over the years I have met very many people who are extremely loyal church folks, who never miss a Sunday and live exemplary lives, and who yet will not even entertain the notion of questioning God, much less being upset or angry with God.  Certainly this is not the way of the Hebrews nor the way of that Hebrew named Jesus.  He embraced a Jewish faith that could question God's plans, that on the cross could borrow from the psalmists and cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

We have been so acculturated to think of God in Greek philosophical terms that many of us feel it is an act of unfaithfulness to question God, to rail against God, to demand something of God.  Many recoil at the very notion of such things.  But I have found my spiritual life energized in discovering a more earthy, dynamic faith, one willing to join with Jacob in wrestling with God, and perhaps even limping away with a blessing.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Called

Today's reading from Ephesians begins, "I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called."  And the day when we remember the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is perhaps an ideal time to think about what it means to be "called."  King, of course, understood his work on civil rights, justice, and peace to be a part of his Christian calling.

The Reformed/Presbyterian tradition in which I work and was raised has long emphasized the idea of vocation, which is another term for call, for something we are meant to do.  Yet even in my tradition it is common to think of faith as primarily about belief.  And I think such notions have contributed mightily to a loss of vitality in the Mainline Church.

A faith that doesn't make any difference in how I live seems terrible disconnected from life.  Such a faith implies that God isn't concerned with our life on earth.  This despite the fact that Jesus came healing and caring for people, that he taught us to pray for the day when God's will is done here on earth, that he proclaimed God rule had drawn near.  Jesus seemed remarkable interested in the shape and quality of our earthly lives. 

I don't think it an overstatement to say that any Christian faith that does not call me to live in certain ways is a distortion of faith.  Any Christian faith that does not manifest itself in the day to day is a distortion of faith.

I was just a young boy when Dr. King was assassinated, and so I don't have many vivid memories of his life.  But I do recall hearing adults I knew criticize his actions.  These adults were all church folk, and some of them were sympathetic to his goals.  But they couldn't get past the fact that he seemed to be "a troublemaker." This, of course, is one of the nicer things they said about Jesus.

The idea that faith should be no threat to the status quo might be valid if we live in the Kingdom, in God's rule fully come.  But short of God's rule, any faith that hears Jesus' call to take up the cross and follow him will often find itself ill at ease with the ways of the world.  And any such faith will find itself having to make choices between the ways of the culture and the ways of Jesus.  Martin Luther King could have been a very successful preacher and church pastor, could have kept to church matters and avoided causing trouble.  But he lived out the call God placed on him.  And many people caught a glimpse of God's coming Kingdom in the the hope Dr. King proclaimed and worked for.

"Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called."  We each have our part to play in moving the world and history toward God's end.  As Dr. King well knew, the arc of history eventually arrives at the destination God intends.  So why wouldn't we want to become a part of that arc, whether or not the world around us sees its trajectory?

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Sunday Sermon audio - Remembering Who We Are

Remembering Who We Are - Jan. 16.mp3

Text of Sunday Sermon - Remembering Who We Are

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Remembering Who We Are

James Sledge                                        January 16, 2011

Many of you are probably familiar with the movie, We Are Marshall, and even if you’re not, you may know some of the story behind it.  It begins when a flight carrying to football team home from a game crashes, killing players and coaches and university officials.  It is an incredibly devastating event for the campus and the surrounding community.

But the tragedy of the crash is only the backdrop for the movie.  Its story is about trying to resurrect the football program from the ashes.  It is no easy task.  There are many at the university and in the community of Huntington, WV, including the school president, who don’t think the time is right, for whom the pain is too fresh and raw to even think about going to a football game again.

And of course there is the problem of starting from scratch.  The entire program is gone, save one assistant coach and a few players who had not made the ill-fated flight to that game.  But in the face of all these obstacles, with the urging of the students and others in the community, a coach was hired, and the slow process of starting over again began. 

It would be years before the football program returned to true respectability, but those who were there at the start turned in a remarkable performance.  With those few remaining players, walk-ons from other sports, and incoming freshmen, they fielded a team and even won their opening home game.

For the players and students at Marshall in 1971 when they won that first game, the cheer “We are Marshall” spoke of an identity forged from the horrible tragedy and the remarkable triumphs they had experienced together.  “We are Marshall” did not mean quite the same thing as when some other school shouted a similar cheer.  Other students might be proud of their school and thrilled with their team’s successes, but not many people can fully know what it meant for those students to say, “We are Marshall!”

To some degree, that’s probably the case even for current day Marshall students.  1971 was a long time ago.  There are memorials and other reminders.  The movie likely revived those memories, but it is not difficult to imagine a time when shouting, “We are Marshall” would not be much different from shouting, “We are Dayton.”   It would still mean that they are students at Marshall, but not much more.

It is perilously easy to lose an identity gained at great cost.  Our daughter, Kendrick, who works with Teach for America in New Mexico, told me an experience she has had of this.  While home for Christmas, she talked about her elementary students, all of them Navajo and many residents on the reservation adjacent to the small town where she teaches.  She said that these children are fiercely proud of their heritage, of being Native Americans and Navajos.  And yet, they seem to have little sense of what that heritage means or entails. 

Kendrick said she was surprised that she knows a lot more about Native American history than her students do.  Despite their deserved pride in their heritage, their “We are Navajo” cheer speaks of little more than an accident of birth.

It is perilously easy to lose an identity, and something similar to the experience of those Navajo children sometimes goes on in the church.  We have our own identity, our own cheer, “We are Christians.”  It is a claim to be a particular people shaped by a particular life lived “in Christ,” a life lived out in a particular community, the Church.  It is an identity that was forged by faithful disciples who walked in the footsteps of Jesus, who were willing to take up the cross, were willing to die to spread the good news of God’s coming rule.  But over time, the cheer “We are Christian” can come to mean less and less.  It can speak of little more than an accident of birth, little more than being raised in a society that, until a few generations ago, expected people to belong to a church.

When I first came to Boulevard some 10 years ago, we did some work in both the Session and Deacons to name who we were, to claim our particular identity as Presbyterians here on this corner of Grandview Heights.  One of the exercises involved trying to describe our core values.  In other words, what is genuinely expected of a member?  Not what would we like members to do, but what things are so integral to being a member here that not doing them would cause people to feel they had violated some key standard or norm.  After much discussion and debate, we were able to agree that the only things we truly expected members to do were attend occasionally, and be nice.

Imagine for a moment that you had decided to start a non-profit organization so you could change the world.  You want to invite people to join this group, and when you do they quite naturally ask what your group does.  If you answered, “Oh, we meet, and we try to be nice,” how many people do you think would be dying to become part of your organization?

We live in a time when a lot of people are hungry for meaning and purpose in their lives.  They would love to discover some sort of spirituality that made a difference in their lives, that helped them become something more than they are right now.  And for such people, I’m pretty sure that “We meet, and we try to be nice,” simply doesn’t cut it.

Of course, that is not who we are called to be as the Church, and Paul speaks directly to that in his letter to the Christians in Corinth.  The situation in Corinth is quite different from our situation, but before Paul gets to any particular problems, he introduces his letter with a general description of what it means to say, “We are Christians.”

It is a common calling.  Paul does not speak to the pastor or staff or leaders of the congregation.  He writes to the church of God that is in Corinth.  The church is a group effort, a fellowship together in Christ where all the necessary spiritual gifts are given to the community so that it can be Christ to the world until God’s rule arrives.

Paul says nothing about individual salvation.  Rather he speaks of a covenant people, sanctified, set apart and called to be saints.  The word saint means holy, and it is not a designation for certain, special Christians, rather it is at the very heart of what it means to say, “We are Christians.”  It says we are called to be a holy people, that is, a people consecrated to God, a people who by our lives show Christ to the world.

This call is common to all who are baptized.  At the font, whether as infants or adults, we are joined to Christ.  The old self is crucified with him and a new self is born.  In baptism we are joined to each other, becoming one.  In baptism the Holy Spirit is present and grants each and every one of us spiritual gifts so that working together, we can be the living body of Christ to a hurting world.  This is who we are.  This is our identity.

But when we forget that every person in the pews is our brother or sister and care for only those who are our friends, we lose that identity.  When congregations called to be one in Christ remain divided by race, we lose our identity.  When we “go to church” rather than “be the Church,” we lose our identity.  When we want the 10 Commandments displayed on public buildings but don’t live lives shaped by those commandments, we lose our identity.  When we think that saying “We are Christian” primarily means believing in Jesus, being good, and getting into heaven, we lose our identity.

But when we remember… When we remember that our baptisms have marked us and set us apart for distinctive lives; when we remember that God has both called us and gifted us to be saints, a holy people living as Christ’s living body at work in our community and the world; when we remember that we are one, a holy fellowship in Christ; when we remember and begin to live into our calling, the presence of the living Christ becomes palpable in us.  New life and vitality are breathed into us by the Spirit, a life and vitality that draw others into this holy fellowship.  When we remember who we are and live into that identity, the love of God again takes on flesh and reaches out as hope to the world.  The hope and promise of God’s new day begins to become visible in us… when we remember who we are.

Spiritual Hiccups - Sin, Modesty, and Civility

After writing yesterday's blog post, "A Born Sinner," I read a wonderful column by NY Times columnist David Brooks entitled "Tree of Failure."  Brooks connected the loss of civility in our public discourse with a loss of modesty in our culture.  He notes "that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves. The nation’s founders had a modest but realistic opinion of themselves and of the voters. They erected all sorts of institutional and social restraints to protect Americans from themselves. They admired George Washington because of the way he kept himself in check."

Notions of our own limitations and the need to keep ourselves in check flow quite naturally from a theology that is willing to claim sin as a part of our identity in the same manner an alcoholic embraces that identity.  It is an acknowledgment that opens us to new possibilities, that admits we cannot do it alone, that is open to being redirected toward something better.  But somehow we have become less and less inclined to think of ourselves as having fundamental flaws that require checks or restraints. 

I suspect that the move toward where we now find ourselves was begun with the best of intentions.  Perhaps is was a reaction against the unfortunate tendency of religion using "sin" as a label for anything that religion doesn't like.  Music, dance, alcohol, sexual orientation, political affiliation, voting for "Obamacare," and a nearly endless list of other things have all been declared sins at one time or another.  And Jesus finds himself in conflict with the religious folk of his day over his "sin" of violating the Sabbath.  No wonder that some folks want to reject the entire concept.

A reaction against religious misuse and abuse of sin is understandable.  But this rejection does not change anything about our true nature.  If we are to be most fully alive and fully human, surely we must understand who we truly are.

John Calvin once wrote that all true knowledge resides in knowledge of God and knowledge of self.  And a false view of ourselves, whether this be a view that obscures our tremendous gifts, capacities, and the image of God in all of us, or whether this be a view that ignores our limits, frailties, and self destructive tendencies, will necessarily lead us to live as people other than who we truly are. 

Balance is always a difficult thing to maintain.  This is as true in spiritual matters as it is in political ones.  Balance often demands that we hold seemingly contradictory things - such as being in the image of God and captive sin - in tension, that we live with paradox and even contradiction.  But often rather than deal with this difficulty, we choose to ride a pendulum, swinging back and forth, seeking a faith, a spirituality, an ideology, a political philosophy that is easier and simpler than the complex creatures that we truly are. 

As David Brooks points out, civility requires a modesty that rejects such false simplicity, that knows I do not have all answers.  Even my best efforts need the refining and correcting help of those who disagree with me and may notice what I have missed or distorted because of my own biases and blinders and limits and, yes, sin. 

You would think that people of faith might be of great help in restoring some sense of appropriate modesty and resulting civility. But I have seen some of the most uncivil behaviors at church.  The tone of debate I have occasionally seen in my own denomination is little better than that displayed in American politics.  I wonder if it would make any difference if, when we were about to engage in some heated debate, we quit worrying so much about other folk's sin and claimed out own.  What if we borrowed from AA and prefaced our remarks with, "Hello, my name is Joe and I'm a sinner. Now here's what I think."

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Spiritual Hiccups - A Born Sinner

Over the years I have found the topic of sin to be the source of much tension in my work as a pastor.  On the one hand, my theological tradition invented the notion of "total depravity," a badly misunderstood doctrine that nonetheless insists sin is a fundamental problem affecting every facet of our humanity.  On the other hand I have routinely heard from church members who dislike having a "prayer of confession" in worship.  "It's such a downer," is a common complaint.

Psalm 51 in today's readings seems to come down on the total depravity side.  "Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me."  If prayers of confession sound like a downer, how about this?  But I wonder if our problem with sin and confession doesn't arise from the tendency to think of sin in terms of moral failing.

Psalm 51 and total depravity aren't speaking of moral failings.  They are speaking of something more fundamental.  Think of an AA meeting when people stand up and say, "Hi, I'm Joe, and I'm an alcoholic."  Claiming this identity is not an admission of moral failing.  Rather, it is owning the identity of one with an underlying condition that works against a full and abundant life.  Such a claim is not a "downer" for an alcoholic.  It is one step in being freed from the grip of alcoholism. 

It is interesting how recovering alcoholics embrace that identity while so many Christians want to escape the label of sinner.  In fact, very often the label sinner is applied to others, to folks we consider morally inferior. 

And so I struggle as a pastor to find a good way for us to embrace our identity as sinners in the way alcoholics can embrace their identity, as a hopeful step on the path to a new and better life. 

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Spiritual Hiccups - God at Work

When the poor and needy seek water,
  and there is none,
  and their tongue is parched with thirst,
I the LORD will answer them,
  I the God of Israel will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights,
  and fountains in the midst of the valleys;
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
  and the dry land springs of water.
I will put in the wilderness the cedar,
  the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive;
I will set in the desert the cypress,
  the plane and the pine together,
  so that all may see and know,
  all may consider and understand,
that the hand of the LORD has done this,
  the Holy One of Israel has created it.

I just finished leading a Bible studay with one of the Presbyterian Women "circles" at our church.  This group is made up almost entirely of folks past retirement age, and so I was a bit surprised by a topic that one of them raised.  We had been looking at one of the very hopefule sections of Revelation, chapter 7 to be exact.  And after hear about the Lamb that becomes shepherd and guides the faithful to the water of life, about God wiping every tear from their eyes, this woman raised the quesion of how we are to continue hoping for this sort of thing without seeing some clear evidence of it, without being able to speak of some experience of it.

The question itself does not suprise me at all, but I was a bit surprised by it coming from an older, life-long church member.  I do think the difficulty we have with such questions is a primary reason that traditional churches struggle to connect with younger people.  Yet very often I find that older members find such question threatening.  Some of them seem to think that raising such questions is a sign of weak faith, a sign they dare not exhibit. 

And so I am actually quite thrilled she raised the issue.  It gives me hope because I think the Church's vitality for the future requires wrestling with this.  Too often Christian faith in America has been reduced to believing certain things and so getting "pie in the sky by and by."  But biblical faith speaks more as today's reading from Isaiah does, promising that God will answer the poor and needy when they cry out.  Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming that God's kingdom, God's rule on earth has come near.  And he gives evidence of this by curing the sick and healing the lame.

Theologically speaking, we Presbyterians insist that Jesus is Lord of all, not just Lord of the spiritual but Lord over everything from our individual lives to our finances to history itself.  But in practice we often proclaim Jesus as Lord of a tiny corner of our lives we label "spiritual." 

I wonder what the Church might look like if most of its members lived in ways that truly evidenced Jesus as Lord of all.  I wonder what the Church might look like if we took seriously this question of where we can see God at work in the world, responding to the poor, the needy, the oppressed, and the hopeless as Jesus and the Bible insist God does.

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Spiritual Hiccups - On the Move

I had a chance conversation with a member of a different church the other day, and somehow the subject of a troubled relationship with a former pastor came up.  From what little I know of that situation, both pastor and congregation contributed to things going poorly.  Still, I was a bit struck when the person made a comment about people being upset because the pastor had befriended so many homeless people and let them come into the church.

Not knowing the particulars, I'm not going to over read her comment, but it did make me think about a common tendency in congregations to put ourselves first.  Despite Jesus' instructions to be willing to lose ourselves for the sake of the gospel, we can often be very inwardly focused.  During the recent economic downturn and the tight church budgets that has produced, I've heard members here say that we should cut mission giving over any reduction in staff and programs for ourselves.

In today's gospel reading, I was struck by the way that Jesus is "on the move."  People are lined up for healings, but after one day, Jesus is ready to go elsewhere.  Even when the disciples find him and tell him people are looking for him, Jesus is ready to move on.

Unlike the biblical example, the church I grew up in was extremely settled.  This is not necessarily because of any unfaithfulness.  Rather this church grew up in the era of Christendom, in a time when it was somewhat safe to presume that those around you had heard all about Jesus.  In 1950s America the church's job was to nurture and care for Christians and support mission overseas.  My how times have changed.

Some have written that we now live in a "post-Christian" age.  True or not, we certainly live in a time when it is no longer save to assume that all our neighbors are Jesus' disciples, or even that they know just what that means.  And I wonder if the church that is appropriate for this time might not need to be a lot less settled.

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Renewal of Baptism

During Sunday's worship, following the sermon by Vice-Moderator Landon Whitsitt, we renewed our baptisms.  Thought some might want to see it.

The choir sang as people came to the font with the congregation joining in a refrain which goes:
   Oh, sisters (brothers), let's go down.  Let's go down, come on down.
   Oh, sisters (brothers), lets go down, down to the river to pray.
   Oh, down to the river to pray.

Spiritual Hiccups - Longing for God's Touch

I've been around sickness and death today, something that happens more often than I like, my being a pastor.  Today I met with a family to plan a funeral and did hospital visitations.  Sometimes when I am with people in such settings, I can see on their faces a longing that seems straight out of today's psalm. 

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
   so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
   for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
   the face of God?
My tears have been my food
   day and night,
while people say to me continually,
   "Where is your God?"

I encounter people on a regular basis who are longing for God's touch, for some experience of God; they get me instead.  There are times when it makes me feel terribly small, inadequate, and helpless.

Strangely enough, most people seem satisfied with my presence.  I don't mean satisfied with my performance or any great words I might offer, but simply with my being there.  As the Apostle Paul has written, our weakness and frailty is apparently no obstacle to God using us.

In today's gospel reading, Jesus calls a few fishermen as his first disciples.  This seems a most inauspicious start.  Surely there are much better candidates to be found.  But apparently these rough, uncouth fishermen will do just fine. 

I wonder how often my own feelings of smallness and inadequacy get in the way of my being the presence of God to someone who needs it?  How about you?  If Jesus can use a few fisherman to begin the Church, surely most any of us will do.

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