Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
For some reason I have found myself talking with church members a lot lately about why people do or don't participate in the life of a congregation. Some of these conversations have simply been about how the cultural landscape has changed, how the world I grew up in, where everything shut down on Sunday morning and people were "supposed" to go to church, no longer exists. But often the conversation has made a natural progression to talking about how congregations are to connect with people around them given this changed landscape.
If people no longer come to churches out of habit or because they are expected to, then it stands to reason that they must discover something compelling about Christian faith or church participation to draw them in. And congregations often have mission and service activities that help the community see how being in Christ makes a community and its members different and compelling.
But in my reading the last few days I have been reminded of how some traditional Christian claims can be extremely off-putting to people not reared in the faith. I'm thinking especially about some expressions of "Christ died for you." Often such statements are connected to the threat of eternal damnation to hell. God must punish and condemn unless Jesus comes between us and God.
The problem with such formulations is they envision an angry, vengeful, easily offended God. This God is out for blood, and only the substitution of Jesus' blood can placate this raging deity.
Yet the Old Testament speaks over and over again about Yahweh's steadfast love and mercy. In fact, the deepest character of God is sometimes stated as "merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." And today's reading from Isaiah draws deeply from such a picture of God. To exiles in Babylon who fear God has abandoned them, Yahweh says through the prophet, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show nocompassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet Iwill not forget you."
I find the contrast between the prophet's description of God in terms of a mother's love and some Christians' picture of a God out for blood to be quite striking. And I wonder if we church folks don't sometimes inadvertently give our non-church neighbors a frightening glimpse of a God they want nothing to do with. But if God's love is so like the love of a mother, how could God be this scary?
Yesterday a colleague posted something on my facebook page that spoke to this. It was a story about Fred Craddock, great preacher and Professor of Preaching and New Testament, Emeritus at Candler in Atlanta. While on sabbatical he visited a little Appalachian church one Sunday and happened upon a fire and brimstone sermon from Deuteronomy 23:2 about how no one from "an illicit union" could be admitted to God's congregation. The preacher explained how this required sexual restraint for any child born out of wedlock would be condemned for all eternity.
At this point in the service several men in the congregation came down the aisle, picked up the pastor and his things and unceremoniously dumped him outside, telling him to leave and never come back. As people milled around afterward, Fred Craddock asked what had happened. When they explained that this is what they did to preachers that didn't preach the truth, Craddock reminded them that the preacher was quoting straight from the Bible. To which they replied that even if it was in the Bible it couldn't be true. "There's not a one of us here that would do that to a tiny little baby, and we figure God's at least as Christian as we are."
I recently heard about a book I want to read. It's entitled What's the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian? I think the title a bit misleading. It's not about a minimalist understanding of faith but rather an attempt to separate the core of Christian faith and life from the image of Christianity that is sometimes out there in popular imagination.
Does God care about the planet, its animals and trees, or just about saving souls? Can Christians embrace evolution? Are Jews and others excluded from heaven? Many who reject the faith have heard answers to such questions only through stereotyped visions of fundamentalist Christianity. Many agnostics and even some atheists don't really have a problem with God, but with what they've heard about God from some Christians.
Questions about what God is like and what it means to be a Christian are clearly nothing new. The controversy Paul addresses in today's verses from Galatians has to do with what is necessary to be a Christian, and Paul relates a conflict he had with Cephas, Cephas being the Aramaic version of the Greek name Peter. Peter, one of the earliest leaders of the Church, seems to have bowed to pressure from James, brother of Jesus and head of the Church in Jerusalem. He has withdrawn from table fellowship with those Gentile Christians who have not been circumcised, that is have not become Jewish as part of their becoming Christian.
That's hardly a pressing issue for me. Issues over circumcision and Jewishness eventually faded away as the Church became majority. So what issues are pressing? What marks do I assume are necessary in order to be a Christian, and are they really necessary? What beliefs are essential? What ways of living are essential? And which ones are artificial boundaries that I have drawn or simply become accustomed to that seek to confine God's grace to folks like me?
To live out a Christian faith that has any meaning, I need to know what is essential. I need some guiding image of what it looks like to be a Christian. But while such images are necessary, they inevitably get mixed with images from my culture, family background, political leanings, and so on. And so there is always an "us and them" boundary comparable to the circumcision boundary that caused Peter to shun non-Jewish Christians, that prompts people of deep faith to say, "Surely God's love and grace wouldn't go there."
And so I come back to that fundamental issue of what it means to be Christian and what sort of God I know in Jesus. Lord, guide me into a faith, and help me lead a congregation, that knows love and grace as big as wide as that shown by Christ.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God.
Congregations sometimes lament, "If only our pastor was better at this or had more of that." Likewise, pastors often lament, "If only there were more dedicated volunteers or leaders who would do this or that." Sometimes these laments give birth to new hopes as a new pastor or staff member comes, a new governing board takes office, or a new person becomes chair of an important committee.
As a neophyte pastor 15 years ago, I complained to the pastor of the biggest, richest, and most impressive church in our presbytery (the regional governing body) about how hard it was to get things done, how programs rose or fell on the strength of an elder or committee chair. He responded that it was not different for him. He said he was "completely dependent" on the strengths and weaknesses of those in leadership positions at that time.
I don't want to make too much of his remark. He was probably just trying to help me see that there was nothing wrong with my congregation. He was trying to tamp down some of my unrealistic expectations. But still, I wonder where God fits into such conversations about pastors and congregational leaders. Where does God fit into those "If only" laments?
In today's gospel, Jesus comes to his hometown, and after a brief moment of amazement, the locals "took offense" at Jesus. Presumably these locals are good religious folks, but they already knew Jesus and so they knew what he couldn't be the one they had been waiting for. He couldn't be the answer to their "If only" prayers. "And he could do no deed of power there."
It's interesting how much more "successful" Jesus is when he is outside outside of the religious establishment, beyond where he is known. Curious that those he commissions as his disciples and emissaries are not from the pillars of the religious community. And it makes me wonder about how I may miss the power of God at work in my very midst, simply because I am bound and blinded by my "If only" laments.
I've probably mentioned before that miracle stories often pose a challenge to me when writing sermons. What does one say about a miracle? Jesus healed a woman. Jesus raised a little girl from the dead. Of course there are interesting nuances in today's gospel story. A woman whose illness has made her unclean and an outcast is healed by Jesus on the way to heal a religious leader's daughter. Jesus calls this formerly unclean woman "Daughter." She is restored to life in the community just as Jairus' daughter is restored to him.
Still, it all gets back to those miracles. And to be honest, miracles are somewhat rare in my life. In fact, miracles in modern American Christianity seem to be restricted to televangelists and other unsavory sorts who use their "power" to enrich themselves. More mainline Christians like myself want little to do with the Earnest Angleys and Benny Hinns of the world. We know what they are doing is a trick. It's not really possible.
And I think that may be where my problem with Jesus' miracles lies. As a child of the Enlightenment and Scientific Age, I have a pretty good idea of what is and isn't possible. And when it comes to my life, whether or not Jesus heals sick people or raises dead little girls isn't really my problem. The bigger issue is whether or not Jesus can touch me in a way that changes me, that makes the things I think are impossible possible.
Oh, I have some minor aches and pains that I wouldn't mind Jesus healing, but the bigger problem for me, and I think for a lot of congregations like the one I serve, is whether or not Jesus can turn us into something more than our assembled talents and abilities. Can Jesus really call, empower, and gift us to be his living body to the world? Are congregations any different from any other non-profits when it comes in terms of the power at work in us? Or is that possible?
Growing up Presbyterian in the South, I sometimes snickered at the Southern Baptists I knew who insisted on some sort of "born again" experience for faith to be genuine. I still have problems with what seems to me an overly simplistic faith formula. But I have come to think that all of us need to have some sort of conversion experience. If I do not experience the power of Christ at work in me, creating a person that would not have been there otherwise, I'm not sure I know anything of the faith Paul describes in today's reading from Galatians. And my "knowledge" of what is and isn't possible may just be the thing about me that needs healing.
I once saw a not too original comic strip in the newspaper. A teenager was angry at his parents for not letting him do something he wanted to do and so he yelled out, “I’ll be glad when I’m 18 and no one can tell me what to do!” The final panel of the comic showed his parents doubled over in laughter.
As much as we celebrate freedom and individualism in this country, almost none of us ever reach the point where we can do whatever we want, where no one can tell us what to do. It may be parents; it may be a teacher or professor; it may be our boss; it may be the speed limit sign backed up by an officer with a radar gun, but at various places in our lives, we either do as others say or suffer the consequences.
But that doesn’t stop us from trying. It starts early. Toddlers love the word “No!” Children and adults enjoy saying, “You can’t make me.” Part of American mythology is that anyone can grow up to be president, or anything else he or she wants to be. We know such things are not quite true, even if they are truer here than in most countries. We know it isn’t true but we really like the idea that no one can tell us what to do, that we can simply decide, and if we try hard enough, we will make it.
Our love of personal freedom and choice means that our culture is particularly sensitive to anything that limits them. In some countries, all children are given aptitude tests at a young age and then slotted into certain academic or vocational tracks before finishing elementary school. But that would never fly here.
Yet despite all this, young people often ask themselves the question, “What should I do with my life?” They may also consider what they want to do, but I think these are very different questions. What I want to do may be purely a matter of personal choice, but what I should do speaks of something outside myself having some say in the matter.
Sometimes people go to career counseling services to help figure out what sort of thing they should do. Some colleges offer these services to their students. People who are thinking about changing careers sometimes use them. And our denomination requires people who want to become pastors to be evaluated by a reputable career center.
Such career counseling usually includes lots of tests that chart personality and interests and aptitudes. That’s based on the premise that certain traits will make some careers much more likely than others. When I was 12, I would have loved to become a rock and roll star, but it didn’t take very many guitar lessons to convince me that would never happen.
So I’m wondering, what information would you consider in order to make a decision about what you should do with your life? Whose voice would you listen to; what authority would you recognize as having a say in your decision?
And we don’t need to limit this to decisions about career. There are many questions about what we should do with our lives. Where should I go to college? Should I go to grad school? Should we get married? Should we have children? How should we raise our children? How should I spend my leisure time? What sort of volunteer and community service should I do? How should we spend our retirement? What should we do with our estate? The list goes on and on.
How do you answer such questions? What resources do your bring to making such decisions? Who gets a say in answering the question, “What should I do?”
I wonder how Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John answered that question. How did they decide what they should do when Jesus showed up and said, “Come on, drop everything that you’re doing; leave everything behind and come with me?” Did they even know what Jesus meant when he said they would be fishing for people? What on earth would make them simply get up and go like that?
When Jesus begins his ministry, the very first words Matthew reports him saying, the words immediately before he calls Simon Peter and Andrew are, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” I think that a lot of people hear the word “repent” and hear a call to confess, to admit that you’re bad and need to turn from your evil ways. But I don’t think that is what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is saying that God’s rule, God’s new day is drawing close, and to get ready for it we will need to start living differently. Peter and Andrew and James and John repent, not because they stop doing something that is bad or wrong, but because they go in a new direction when Jesus calls. They hear Jesus telling them what they should do, what they must do if they are to get ready for the kingdom.
Years ago, before I went to seminary, I recall taking part in a discussion with a group of youth at the church where I was a member. At one point they were asked whether or not they would go overseas to some dangerous, poverty stricken country if they were absolutely certain that Jesus was calling them to do so. I’m not sure a lot of us would have been as honest as they were. Every single one of them said, “No.”
I don’t recall much of the conversation that followed, but clearly these high school students understood their lives to grow out of the choices that they would make, and this choice would not fit. It violated whatever standards, guidelines, or expectations influenced them, whatever authoritative voices they listened to.
Now in fairness to them, they had only said “No” to a hypothetical situation. Peter, Andrew, James, and John might have said the same thing to a hypothetical question about leaving the life they knew behind and following Jesus. But then they met him…
Our culture makes it quite easy to believe in Jesus. Even though our society is becoming more and more secular, believing in Jesus is still something of a norm. But I do not think our culture encourages following Jesus. In fact, it tells us over and over that it’s a bad idea. It might well deny us the prestige or wealth or possessions or any number of other things our culture tells us we need for a good life.
Jesus calls people to counter-cultural lives, lives that love enemies, that take up the cross, that give themselves for the sake of others, even others who don’t deserve such a gift. Following Jesus looks like a foolish choice, and it looked just as foolish back when Jesus called those fishermen, until they met him.
I think that a lot of us live with a significant, unresolved conflict in our lives. On the one hand we know deep down inside that we were created for something, for a life of meaning and purpose. There is a should for each of us, a calling. But we have been well conditioned over and over again to think that happiness comes from being free to do whatever we want, from following our own wants and desires. Some of us are virtually slaves to freedom, finding it impossible to trust anything other than our own wants and desires. After all, how could anyone else direct our lives better than we can?
When Peter and Andrew and James and John meet Jesus, they drop everything. They abandon all the plans they previously had and go with him, not knowing where it will lead. I don’t think it was anything that they wanted, at least not until the met Jesus. I’m not sure that following Jesus ever seems like something people would want to do at first, which is probably why so many stop at believing in Jesus. But if we ever actually meet Jesus and hear him calling us…
Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me; all day long foes oppress me; my enemies trample on me all day long, for many fight against me. O Most High, when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
People routinely claim that God is on their side. Any claim to be doing God's will is a claim on God's blessing or favor. Any religious cause presumes God's favor. Even politicians regularly claim to be guided by God, which of course claims God's favor on what they are doing.
One problem with this is that many of us are prone to think that God is for whatever we are for. If we are conservative God is conservative and and if we are liberal God is liberal. Perhaps God is one or the other, or perhaps this is simply a demonstration of the human tendency toward idolatry, to create God in our own image.
Today's psalm seems to take for granted something frequently attested in both Old and New Testament. God's favor is especially on those in trouble, on those who are persecuted and oppressed, on those who are poor and exploited. Of course rarely are politicians or those who run churches and denominations persecuted, oppressed, poor, exploited, etc. More often they are people with power, and often they will invoke God's blessing on attempts to maintain their power and influence.
I do not intend to speak for or against anything in particular here. Rather, I am simply wondering about the way that I and others go about claiming God's favor and blessing on our actions. And that reminds me of something Bono said at a presidential prayer breakfast a number of years ago. He was quoting someone - I don't know who - when he offered, "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing; because it is already blessed."
It's one of those Bible Stories I learned as a child. Jesus and his disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee one evening when a gale arises and begins to swamp the boat. But Jesus is asleep. When the panicked disciples awake him, Jesus speaks to the storm and quiets it, then chastises the disciples' lack of faith. The stunned disciples say to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
Who is this Jesus? That's still a fundamental faith question isn't it? And it's a question with lots of different answers. The fact that the Bible contains four different gospels seems to suggest that no one answer is sufficient. And I wonder if it is really necessary to decide on a single, correct answer.
There are certainly answers that I think are wrong, that cannot be reconciled with any biblical portrait of Jesus. One popular image I find disturbing is that of the resurrected Jesus returning as an avenging warrior. Those who embrace this image sometimes claim it is drawn from Revelation. But a close reading of that book will find its main picture of Jesus as a lamb that is slain.
But as troubling as such distorted pictures of Jesus are, I think a more pressing problem for many of us is settling for an incomplete picture of Jesus. For example, we can claim Jesus as Savior and simply stop there. But of course the earliest Christian profession of faith said, "Jesus is Lord." He is the one whose voice we are to obey, the one whose voice is to replace our own desire and will, the one who we are to give control of every facet of our lives, not just the "religious" part.
I wonder if many of us wouldn't do well to be more open to hearing additional answers to the question, Who is this Jesus? Rather than trying to distill a single, neat answer, we might become more open to varied images and facets of Jesus revealed to us in Scripture. Granted this will require us to become a bit more comfortable with ambiguity, but as Richard Rohr says in his devotion today, "Adult spirituality begins when you start learning to live with ambiguity, rather than insisting on absolute certitude every step of the way. Why do you think we call it 'faith'?"
In today's readings, Psalm 147 calls us to praise the LORD. And the Isaiah reading opens with, "I am the LORD, and there is no other." I'll have to admit that I am often so preoccupied with figuring out the faith that I can find it difficult to pause in awe and wonder, to offer praise simply for its own sake. And I worry sometimes that this is a sign of real spiritual immaturity on my part. Or perhaps it's just a form of spiritual narcissism.
Small children tend to think that the world revolves around them. This is largely a logical conclusion based on their parents' doting on them and responding to their every cry. Of course as they grow older, as they mature, they gradually discover that this was an illusion. The world is not all that focused on them. The world keep spinning and one day moves to the next with little regard for them.
But we never fully mature, do we. We still measure things by how they impact us. As we get older and wiser, it is not our only measure. In most of us, it is tempered by concern for how things impact others, but concerns about number one often still dominate. Most of us don't take naturally to be self-sacrificial.
For me, this focus on self often leads to anxiety and sometimes frustration. Am I doing a good enough job? Do people like and respect me? If there is difficulty at the church, is it my fault? What should I do differently?
Pastors have long been accused of having Messiah complexes, and to the degree this is true, I suspect it comes from thinking that a congregation revolves around us. We're indispensable. The sun rises and sets on us. The congregation succeeds or fails because of us.
"I am the LORD, and there is no other." That is true whether or not I figure out and understand the most difficult theological doctrines. God is always God, and I am, always and finally, one of God's creatures, a vessel fashioned by the potter. No amount of wishing or hoping will make me a different vessel than the one I am, and there is actually something rather freeing in that acknowledgment.
I frequently repeat a favorite quote from the opening of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves." And I suppose that wisdom and maturity are not all that different. True wisdom, true maturity, both frees me from my anxieties as well as freeing me to praise God. I just wish I could mature a little faster.
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.
