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.
I had just finished reading Richard Rohr's daily devotion that discussed men and our resistance to change when I came to the lectionary readings for today. I suspect that is why I heard the opening of Psalm 62 and Paul's words in Galatians the way I did, as about the need for God to change us. That may not sound like a particularly remarkable observation, but it strikes me that religion is more often about add-ons than it is about real change.
Very often we want God to make things better for us without changing who we are in any fundamental way. We would like to be happier, healthier, wealthier, more fulfilled, or more of something else. But we do not want our lives turned upside down. We do not want to become someone different from who we are now.
Perhaps Rohr is correct and this is more of a problem for men than women. I don't really know. I know that I like to be in control of things, and I know quite a few women who like control as well. But if we take seriously biblical language about being made new in Christ, about the power of the Holy Spirit to empower, gift, and propel people into ministry and mission they would never have even considered on their own, then it would seem Christian faith requires letting go of control and a willingness to be changed at the most basic level of our being.
Speaking of "salvation" and of "being saved" is common among Christians, but all too often these words are understood to speak of nothing more than one's status. Paul certainly included status before God in his understanding, but that was only the beginning for him. He understood himself to be a totally new person, operating from totally new motivations, finding his greatest joy from giving himself, at great personal cost, to the work of sharing God's love in Jesus.
I think that one of the great gifts our society has given us by no longer propping up religion, by no longer enforcing an ethos of "you're supposed to go to church," is a chance to rediscover the change and newness Paul experienced. A new vitality in the faith is beginning to emerge as more and more congregations discover spiritual practices that shape them to be more Christ-like. This new vitality is not restricted to any particular worship styles. It is not a matter of traditional or contemporary. It is about a desire to encounter and be transformed by the risen Christ.
When Jesus began his earthly ministry, he spoke of God's kingdom drawing near. And he spoke frequently of that kingdom during his ministry. While there has been an unfortunate tendency to turn kingdom into a synonym for heaven, Jesus was clearly speaking of God's rule on earth, a day when God's will is done here as it is in heaven. And this means that where we are now cannot be where God plans for us to be. As individuals, and as faith communities, we are working for and living by the ways of a day that is still to be.
When congregations long for God's new day, that precludes longing for the good old days. Longing for the old days is a depressing and life killing exercise that wishes for what is gone. But longing for God's kingdom is a life giving pursuit that moves toward what God is still doing... which of course requires that you and I, our congregations and the world, must change.
When we set the preaching schedule, I'm not sure I realized what "juicy" lectionary passages I was passing up by not preaching today. Not only do we get the Beatitudes, but there is also the famous passage from Micah that asks, "And what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
I think that both passages undermine some popular notions of faith. The Micah passage speaks quite plainly against religious ritual that isn't accompanied by a changed heart. The Beatitudes locate God's special favor in some pretty unpopular places. And both passages challenge Christians to examine what it means to follow Jesus.
Over the years I have often heard people thank God for their "many blessings." But rarely, if ever, are they speaking about the sort of things Jesus names on his list. Very often, the culture determines what we think of as blessings. In our country that means things such as a good job, a nice house, a new car, and so on. Most Christians don't go so far as a Joel Osteen and his "God wants you to be rich" message, but we have difficulty conceiving of being "reviled and persecuted" as a blessing.
I think Jesus sees this as a blessing because he, like most prophets, has a clear sense of God's hope for the world. Because Jesus lives in full communion with God, he longs for the world to be as God wants it, as God means it to be. And so he is acutely aware of the tension between how things are and how they will be. And he expects those who draw close to God through him will experience this same tension. He expects that they will find it impossible to simply accept how things are and ask God to make it a bit easier for them. He expects that, like him, his followers will live in ways at odds with how things are, in tune with how they will be. And he is quite sure the world will not appreciate this.
Someone asked me the other day about how my spirituality and faith had changed over the past few years. As I tried to answer her question, it occurred to me that the most profound change has been a partial bridging of the gap between spirituality and living the faith. Though I don't think I ever would have articulated it this way in the past, I often thought of spirituality as an esoteric pursuit meant primarily to enhance my private faith life. But I have begun to realize that those who do the most good in the world are more often than not those whose hearts have been bent toward God's vision for the world. And at its core, that is what spirituality is about, about our hearts becoming one with God. And with such hearts, it is hard to live lives that are out of sync with God.
I have to admit that as a pastor, I often spend far too much of my time trying to figure things out. What programs will work? What should I say in next week's sermon? What does the Bible say about this issue of that one? And while understanding is important, it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is more of a heart thing, and I need to spend more time allowing God to work there, so that I can perceive more as Jesus does, and so act more as Jesus would have me act.
The new governor in my state has drawn some political fire for his cabinet. With two positions left to fill, every member is white, and opponents are warning that we could have the first all white cabinet since the early 1960s. In his defense, the governor says that he does not pay attention to race but looks only for the best qualified individuals, and that he asked two African Americans to fill cabinets seats but was turned down.
Now regardless of how one reacts to this situation, it does point to racial divisions that persist in our country despite some hopeful pronouncements that we were entering a post-racial age. For some reasons, we human beings are quick to notice differences and divide ourselves into groups. Sometimes these divisions are relatively harmless, but often they form the basis of preferential treatment for some over others. Certainly we have made tremendous strides in combating discrimination of many sorts in our country, but the tendency to highlight our divisions remains.
Someone who had read the New Testament but had never spent any time in a congregation might be surprised to learn that such divisions are often more prominent at church than in many other places in our society. While there are many exceptions, congregations remain one of the more segregated places in America. This despite the Apostle Paul's words, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
In Paul's day, the big division was Jew and Greek, Jew and Gentile. For Jews like Paul, this was how the world was organized. It was simply how things were. But when Paul encounters God's life changing love in Jesus, his world is turned upside down. His old ways of understanding things disappear. None of his human ways of seeing and dividing up the world work any longer, for all are one in Christ.
One of the problems of all religious institutions is a tendency for them to be domesticated by the culture they live in. The religion is asked to bless the status quo of the culture. This seems to be at the heart of Paul's conflict with Jewish Christianity. Many of those first Christians presumed that the new life Jesus' resurrection ushered in still left old divisions in place. Those others, the Gentiles, had to become Jewish first if they wanted to be Christians. But Paul insisted that Jesus had fundamentally ended such divisions.
This may seem an odd transition, but I think that our continuing struggles with divisions of all sorts calls for a spiritual renewal. It calls for a deepening spirituality where we go deeper into Christ, where we open ourselves more to the presence of the Spirit. Often times people think of spirituality as a very private, personal thing with little connection to mission or social justice. But Paul says that clothing ourselves in Christ, breathing Christ deeply into the core of our being, finding ourselves lost in God's love, is what changes us so that we see the world, and everyone in it, differently. Only an experience of Jesus so profound that we can say our old self has died and a new one is born will allow us to live out what Paul experiences, a world where "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
But I, O LORD, cry out to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you. O LORD, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me? Wretched and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am desperate. Your wrath has swept over me; your dread assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long; from all sides they close in on me. You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness.
I'm not sure that these words from Psalm 88 fit with some stereotyped notions of faith. I know many people of deep faith who would never admit to doubts, much less allow themselves to complain to or blame God. Doubts about God's presence and anger at God seem to many the antithesis of faith, and so many are loath to admit such "weaknesses" publicly.
I've never really known if those who tell me they never doubt are being dishonest with me or with themselves, or if they really don't know doubt as a part of their faith. But I do think that this public face of faith as something that never doubts can be an obstacle to new people joining the faith. When churches give the impression that faith is about being certain, that it doesn't experience doubts, questions, and times when God seems to have vanished, then they make church an uncomfortable place for those who are struggling to find God, for whom God and faith often seem a fleeting experience.
I have long been thankful for the many psalms that embrace complaint, doubt, and even anger toward God. That Jesus voiced one of these psalms from the cross says to me that he also knew something of doubt and feeling abandoned by God. And I think congregations that are open about their own faith struggles become much more welcoming places for others who are hoping to discover God's love in the midst of a broken world.
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."
