Spiritual Hiccups - Prophets and Spiritual Ruts

For a number of days now I've been reading from the book of Jeremiah.  And while there are some very uplifting passages in the book, so far its mostly been gloom and doom from the prophet.  "You folks have gone your own way and abandoned God's ways; now you're gonna get it."

I wonder if anyone was ever glad to see a prophet like Jeremiah.  Such folks become revered only after the fact, once it become obvious that people should have listened.  No one listened to the few folks who suggested that the world economy was headed toward disaster because of all the fancy investment vehicles that banks and Wall Street had devised, not until it was too late.  But bankers and investors aren't really all that different from anyone else.  None of us like to be told, "The way you are doing things is wrong.  Change or pay the consequences."

And therein lies a real spiritual/religious quandary.  The vast majority of humans seem to have some sort of spiritual impulse, a deep seated sense that there is much more to life that what comes to us via culture, economics, politics, technology, etc.  We want more meaningful lives and better answers to our questions, but, and this is a very big but, we would like all this without challenging the way we already think and act.  We want our lives to have meaning, to really matter, but we're not sure we want to change very much.

I wonder what assumptions that I hold dear get in the way of me hearing what God wants me to do, what will bring my life meaning and balance and wholeness.  How often am I like the person Paul describes in today's reading from Romans, doing the very things that lead to the opposite of what I desire? 

But the solution to this problem is not to try harder, to strain against my own resistance to change, or to expend more effort separating myself from treasured assumptions.  What very small steps toward spiritual maturity that I have taken convince me that first I must go deeper into God.  What I need most of all is heart change, a transformation deep inside that happens as I fall deeper and deeper into God's love.  For it is this inward journey of transformation that can free me from the fears and anxieties and  certainties that so often bind me in ways of thinking and living that do not lead where I really want to go.

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Sunday Sermon video - Christian Identity: God's Touch

Sermon of higher video quality can be found on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - All We Need

The gospel of John does not mention "the Last Supper" where Jesus breaks bread and gives it to his disciples just prior to his arrest.  John seems to have Passover on Saturday rather than the Friday reported in the other gospels, and so there is no Passover meal on Maundy Thursday in John.  But there are certainly echoes of the Lord's Supper in John's account of the feeding of the 5000.  "Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated."

On a number of different occasions, I have heard the biblical accounts of Jesus miraculously feeding the crowds referred to as "miracles of sharing."  All those people in the crowd had a little food tucked away under their clothing, but they were keeping it hidden because there really wasn't enough extra to go very far.  But when Jesus takes the meager lunch of one boy and begins to share it, others join in the sharing, and lo and behold, there is more than enough for everyone.


Now this interpretation certainly makes a certain amount of sense.  It provides a rational explanation for what seemed to be a miracle.  It may even make Jesus a bit more palatable for those who aren't sure what to do with miracles.  Unfortunately, I think it also misses the main point of the story.  The story insists that Jesus is more than able to provide all that is needed for those who follow him.  Just as God once fed the Israelites with manna in the wilderness, Jesus will provide and care for his own.  

Insomuch as John means for us to see a connection to the Lord's Supper, we are also assured that Jesus continues to feed his flock.  The community John originally writes to is under tremendous pressure.  It is a Jewish Christian group that grew up in the synagogue and considers that its spiritual home.  But the synagogue leaders are threatening to expel them if they keep insisting that Jesus is the Messiah, that Jesus is Lord.  John is encouraging these folks to hold fast and trust that Jesus can provide for them, even if they find themselves cast out into, what seems to them, a spiritual wilderness.


And here there I think is a helpful message for us in today's church.  Mainline Christians have seen their numbers dwindle remarkably over the last few decades.  There are a variety of forces behind this, but at least one way that we contribute to this decline is by making Church primarily about belief and neglecting the issue of spiritual sustenance.  Often we are much better at talking about Jesus than we are at helping people be nurtured by Jesus for a life of deep faith.  Somewhere along the way we've forgotten the promise that Jesus can indeed feed us, strengthen us, and nurture us.  God's Spirit can come to us and give us all that we need to be and to share the living presence of God in the world.


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Sunday Sermon audio - Christian Identity: God's Touch

 

Sunday Sermon text - Christian Identity: God's Touch

John 9:1-7; 1:1-5,14; 1 Corinthians 12:27

Christian Identity: God’s Touch

James Sledge                                                   April 3, 2011

Surely there cannot be anyone here this morning who has not seen the horrific images from Japan of the earthquake and tsunami.  The videos of water inundating towns and wiping them from the face of the earth are truly awful.  Thirty years ago we would have heard about the tsunami and later seen some news photos and footage, but in a day when everyone’s cell phone has a video camera, the terror of such an event is there for all to see.

The terrifying images from Japan are difficult to make sense of; entire villages destroyed, children washed away from school classrooms.  It’s frightening to think this could just happen, with no reason, and perhaps that accounts for the need of some people to explain the events, to place blame.  Fox commentator Glenn Beck seemed to suggest that God’s anger with radical Islam was somehow to blame.  A number of internet posts suggested that the earthquake was karma, payback for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.  Who knew that karma held grudges for so long.  And others suggested that global warming had set off the quake.

It is tempting to come up with some sort of explanation for disasters.  We want our world to be predictable.  We want life to be “fair.”  And without an explanation it isn’t, and that is frightening. 

Wanting to know why is nothing new.  Large sections of the Bible try to make sense of pain and suffering, though different texts come to very different answers. 

The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy lays out a straightforward theology of blessing and curse.  Obey the Law, and things will go well.  Don’t, and face the consequences.  Such theology is attractive in its simplicity.  But of course we all know of cases where life just doesn’t work this way.

The Bible knows them, too.  The book of Job raises a voice of protest against the simplistic theology of Deuteronomy.  Job suffers through no fault of his own, and contrary to his popular image, Job’s patience quickly runs out.  The bulk of the book features Job arguing with “friends” who try to convince him to take the view of Deuteronomy.  They say he must have done something to deserve the horrors that have befallen him. But Job insists he has not, and in the end, God blasts Job’s friends for their bad theology.

The question of why there is suffering also shows up in our gospel for today.  Jesus’ disciples see a man born blind and ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Apparently the disciples prefer Deuteronomy to Job. 

But Jesus rejects their assumption of blame.  What blame Jesus assigns belongs to God, although I don’t know that Jesus is really trying to explain how it was the man was born blind.  His focus seems to be that “God’s works might be revealed in him.” 

Now I’m hoping that Jesus didn’t say what he did in earshot of that blind fellow.  I can’t think of anything less pastoral than saying to someone, “God caused your suffering…” or, “God allowed your suffering so that it would provide an opportunity for great things to be done.”  Imagine saying to some survivor in Japan, “God let this happen so there would be a chance for people to show God’s love to survivors like you.”

The fact is that the Bible leaves us with no clear-cut, definitive answers about the cause of terrible suffering.  I’ll admit that I sometimes get quite perturbed with God about this.  I don’t fully comprehend why there are not better answers, but absent these answers, the question shifts to how we are to respond in the face of such suffering.  And here Jesus is abundantly clear.  Such moments are opportunities for God’s touch and God’s healing.  In the face of unexplainable suffering, those who are “in Christ” are called not to assign blame, but to extend God’s care and God’s love.

One of the most basic Christian affirmations, one that most of us have heard and likely agreed with, is nonetheless a difficult one to embrace: the notion that the fullness of God was able to dwell in the person of Jesus.  The Word became flesh and lived among us.

One of the first big theological debates in the Church, way back in the 300s, was over the nature of Jesus.  Was he really human?  Was he really God?  And how could he possibly be both?  God and humanity seem totally incompatible.  God is infinite, limitless, everywhere in every time and place.  Humans are finite, limited to where our bodies can take us and what we can perceive with our limited senses.  How could an infinite, limitless God become a finite, limited human being?

And despite the fact that the early Church settled this debate, declaring that Jesus was indeed fully human, fully divine, we still can’t quite believe it, can’t quite accept it.  Can the fullest picture we have of the eternal, almighty God really be this broken, crucified one? Can a crucified Jesus, the epitome of weakness, really be the fullest expression of God’s power?  And even more difficult to accept than God incarnate in Jesus is God incarnate in us.  Can broken people like us really be the living body of Christ in the world, God’s healing touch?

I want to ask you to do something a bit odd for Sunday worship here.  I want you to touch someone seated near you.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to hold hands or embrace, but I do want you to touch.  According to our faith, human touch is capable of bearing the divine.  Your touch could be the presence of God to someone who desperately needs it, and your neighbor’s touch could be the touch of God that you desperately need.

And yet routinely, individual Christians and congregations say, “This may be so, but not through me, not through my congregation.”   Humanity may be capable of bearing the divine touch, but not this human, not this congregation.  Often I hear church members and pastors who wish it were so for them or their congregation.  Pastors sometimes pine for “better” congregations where God’s presence will be more evident.  Church members also sometimes judge their congregations as lacking and wish they could be more like some other congregation.  Maybe this incarnation business works with other folks, people of deeper, more learned, more impressive faith, but surely not in everyday folks like us.

You probably noticed the prayers shawls and lap robes draped in the sanctuary today, there so that we may add our prayers to those of the people who knitted and crocheted them.  I once spoke with someone who had received a prayer shawl following surgery.  This person became emotional speaking of getting that shawl, saying how she truly felt people’s prayers and God’s presence, really experienced God’s touch in the work and prayers of some of you.

As a pastor, I rarely have adequate answers for tragic suffering and loss, whether it be a terrible accident or illness in our own community or the mind-boggling events in Japan.  And even if I had the perfect answer, I can’t imagine it would be of much comfort to those whose lives have been shattered by such events.  As badly as they might want answers, the only real comfort would be an embrace, an act of love and kindness, God’s healing touch.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

Spiritual Hiccups - Truly Free

Jesus has just spoken the famous line about the truth setting you free when today's gospel reading begins.  His statement provokes his opponents to say, "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, 'You will be made free'?"

We Americans are justifiably proud of our freedoms.  Many of us chafe at the notion of being told what to do, sometimes to our own detriment.  But just how free are we and how captive to forces we scarcely recognize?  Are we like Jesus' opponents in the gospel reading, clinging to an illusion of freedom when we are, to use Jesus' language, slaves?

Think of the things that drive and motivate us.  Where do they come from?  Did we freely choose these motivations, or were they acquired in some other manner?  And do our motivations conform to what Jesus says is truly important, loving God and neighbor, and serving others?

Over the years I have met a few people who seemed to have a spiritual depth and maturity far beyond most folks, certainly far beyond me.  And one of the constants about these folks is how free from anxiety they seem.  They are often driven to work hard and serve God in amazing ways, but they seem totally unconcerned with whether or not they have what other people have, whether they are admired, whether they are "successful."  They are, in a way that I sometimes envy, remarkably free.

Jesus says such freedom is available to us, that his truth can free us in ways much more profound than what we usually mean by freedom.  Imagine being freed from the fears and anxieties that sometimes shape our lives.  Imagine being truly free.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Life for All

"Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all."  

Paul is referring to the first human (adam is a Hebrew word for a "man" or "human" and not a name), and then to the man Jesus.  He says that if the first human's actions caused problems, Jesus' actions have set things right.  And it is striking how universal Paul's words are.  All humanity is caught in the problem of sin, but now Jesus' actions bring "life for all."  

Now I would not want to say that Paul's entire theology is expressed in this one statement.  In other places he does speak of the new life we experience "in Christ," of being joined to Christ in our baptisms.  But here, and in other places, Paul does seem to speak of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as having fundamentally altered the relationship of God with humanity.  It is also worth noting that those places where Paul speaks of "faith in Jesus" might just as easily be translated "the faithfulness of Jesus."  

Regardless, Paul does call all who will listen to faith.  He says that by faith we experience the gift, the grace of God.  But I don't hear Paul encouraging us to do what Christians often do: writing off those who don't have faith, or who don't have the right faith.

Some years ago, I and other neighborhood pastors were meeting to plan a community Easter sunrise service.  A Baptist colleague arrived from a funeral, and he shared how he struggled when he had to do funeral for someone he knew was not saved and was not going to heaven.  I was a bit taken aback by his comments and mumbled something about how I didn't worry too much about that.  I simply proclaimed the good news of Jesus and left the sorting out of saved or not saved to God.


I wonder why we sometimes feel the need to declare "those folks" to be lost or condemned.  Again, I'm not necessarily arguing for universalism, but I do wonder if Christians wouldn't be a whole lot better off if we quite worrying about where the in-or-out boundaries were, and focused more on living faithfully in ways that demonstrating the new quality of life Paul says we have when we are "in Christ."  


If Jesus' life, death, and resurrection do indeed lead to "life for all;" if Jesus does say from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing," then shouldn't the Church avoid trying to figure out who gets left out of "all," who doesn't get forgiven, and simply live out the sort of love and forgiveness that Jesus showed.  


Sometimes I think that all the energy expended worrying about who's in or out is mostly about assuring ourselves that we're in.  We're trying to validate the hope that we've checked off the right boxes and signed on the correct dotted line.  And this seems to me more about our anxieties than about a desire to help those we deem to be on the outside.  But as for our anxieties, Paul says elsewhere, "If God is for us, who is against us?"  


If I am sure of nothing else, because of Jesus I know that God is for us.  And what could be more wonderful than that?


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Spiritual Hiccups - God's Broken Heart

For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
     I mourn, 
  and dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
     Is there no physician there? 
Why then has the health of my poor people
     not been restored? 
O that my head were a spring of water,
     and my eyes a fountain of tears,
  so that I might weep day and night
     for the slain of my poor people! 
O that I had in the desert
     a traveler’s lodging place,
  that I might leave my people
     and go away from them! 
For they are all adulterers,
     a band of traitors. 

I've always thought these some of the more pathos filled lines in the Old Testament, if not the Bible.  And while there are Christians who seem to think God a severe judge who punishes without compunction, even relishes punishing, the God described here is a God whose love for humanity is costly.  God's own interior life is in turmoil because of God's commitment to humanity.

The idea that it costs God to be for us runs counter to classic Western notions of divinity.  By definition, the Divine is static perfection, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  But the God of the Hebrew Scriptures does not fit neatly into such an understanding.  And neither does God's suffering on the cross in Jesus. 

Many of us have had the experience of growing up, maturing, and recognizing the pain we caused our parents when we were younger.  But for most of us, the trauma we caused our parents did not irreparably damage our relationship with them.  The same is often true in other loving relationships.  Most relationships contain hurts and pains inflicted on the other.  Most relationships carry with them scars and regrets.  But where love prevails, those relationships can grow stronger.

One of the real problems I have with faith as believing the right things, even with "accepting Jesus as personal Lord and Savior," is that such formulaic notions of faith often leave little room for the dynamic, pathos filled, scarred, surprising, grace-filled life of a relationship rooted in God's unwavering love for us.  We break God's heart, and we bring God great joy.  We recoil at the hurts we have inflicted, and we experience the love of God that is never beyond reconciliation.  Such dynamics can never be fully expressed in formula or doctrine.  They can never be completely prescribed in rules and law.  They can only be lived into.

The hunger for spirituality in our day, coupled with a corresponding distaste for the institutional church, may well speak to a desire for less formula and more relationship.  As such, this may be providential call to the Church to remember the relational, pathos-filled, overflowing-with-grace nature of our life with God.

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Spiritual Hiccups - I'm Thirsty! Now What Would Help?

Imagine for a moment, if you can, that you are terribly parched and thirsty, but for some reason you don't know exactly what that means.  You know something is wrong.  You know your body is craving something, but you simply don't know what it is.  I'm not sure how this situation could actually happen.  Perhaps someone with dementia might forget that drinking fluids cured this craving.  Perhaps someone with some sort of amnesia or who has suffered a stroke might experience a terrifying need that they did not know how to meet. 

"Let anyone who is thirsty come to me," Jesus says, and he speaks of "living water," which in Jesus' days literally meant fresh, running water, as from a stream.  But the narrator of John's gospel goes on to say that Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit.

It is not unusual for people to speak of "spiritual dryness."  But even those who have such a vocabulary often seem to struggle finding what they need to take away their thirst.  And I suspect that even more people know there is something wrong, but have no idea how to fix it.  And so they experiment and try all sorts of options.  Some options are better than others, even if they don't fully quench the thirst.  Other options can be terribly destructive.  Alcohol and drug dependence, abusive relationships, pursuing money and power at all costs; all these strike me as attempts to fill a need that, in the end, only make matters worse.

When I feel something is missing in my life, I often have inclinations about what would help.  In retrospect, a lot of these inclinations turn out to be less than helpful.  What I've heard, learned, picked up from the culture, and so on, doesn't always end up being the best guide.  And if the Pharisees in today's gospel reading are any guide, religious experts and leaders are not always good guides either.  

I hear a lot of people who say they are "spiritual but not religious."  Technically speaking I'm not sure this is truly possible, but I think I understand what they mean.  They somehow figured out that the craving they feel is a spiritual one, but when they've tried church, it didn't seem to help.  And perhaps this is because we churchy types sometimes get so preoccupied with doing church that we forget where our living water comes from, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me!

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Spiritual Hiccups - Prophetic Restlessness

There seems to be a restlessness, a stirring in the Church these days.  This restlessness does not come via official channels or from those charged with revitalizing denominations.  Rather this restlessness comes from people frustrated and disenchanted with the Church.  And I am inclined to view this as a prophetic voice to the Church.

The issue of integrity is a large part of this restlessness.  Many are frustrated with a Church that expends a great deal of energy trying to get its theology just right, but doesn't seem to be very good at equipping people in the pews to live new and transformed lives, lives that model God's reign, the kingdom that draws near in Jesus.  You can see this frustration both in the growth of the emergent church movement, and in the decline affecting many mainline congregations.  People are seeking something more than what seems to them religious veneer.

The problem of religious veneer, of civil religion, is nothing new.  Jeremiah rails against it in today's Old Testament reading.  The prophet condemns those who neglect widows and orphans and aliens, who pervert justice, and place their ultimate trust in things other than God, all while carefully maintaining their religious/worship rituals.   Through the prophet, God wonders how on earth Israel can act as they do, "and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, 'We are safe!' -- only to go on doing all these abominations?"

Now I certainly don't mean to say that the Presbyterian Church or any congregation has failed to be God's people in the same manner as those addressed by Jeremiah.  Still, the prophetic restlessness stirring the Church seems to call us (much as Jeremiah once did) to remember what it means to be the Church.  It invites us to examine ourselves, considering how well our church activities serve Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims, and where they may have devolved into something that has the look and feel of religious veneer.


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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

In today's gospel story of the Samaritan woman at the well, the issue of in-or-out boundaries is hard to miss.  The woman is a Samaritan, an ethnic group generally despised by Jews.  Adding to this problem Jews thought Samaritans' religious views "heretical".  And if that weren't enough, she is, of course, a woman.  Rabbis didn't teach women, only men.  In fact, women weren't considered quite fully human.

Both the woman and Jesus' disciples find it surprising that Jesus speaks with her.  And yet Jesus makes more theological progress with this female outsider than he did with the Pharisee Nicodemus.  She seems to "get it" in a way that rarely happens in John's gospel.

Despite the fact that Jesus was an expert boundary ignorer and crosser, we Christians are rather good at constructing boundaries.  In a world filled with us and them distinctions, we often use our religious beliefs to create more.  We create us and them boundaries between Christians and non-Christians.  And we create us and them boundaries within the faith, using our doctrines and practices to label and divide.

Now I'm not sure this problem can be solved by constructing a generic faith.  It is increasingly popular to say, "I don't worry about doctrines and denominational dictates.  I just try to follow Jesus."  But of course the moment people try to follow Jesus, they must make decisions about what that looks like, what things are required and what are optional, what the core practices are, etc.  And presto, you now have a particular way of being Christian that is different from someone else's way, which can potentially provide the material for yet another boundary.

I actually think we should celebrate our particular ways of being Christian (even as we look critically at those ways so that we insure we are actually following Jesus).  But we should not understand our particularities as dividing lines.  Perhaps an analogy can be drawn with regards to race and ethnicity.  The way to solve racial problems is probably not to obliterate all racial distinctions.  (The nation of Brazil once had an official policy that encouraged dark skinned citizen to become lighter.  Followed to its natural conclusion, racial problem would become a thing of the past when everyone merged into a single skin tone.)  I certainly hope we don't ever reach a point where all people and food and music are of one sort, where we solve the "problem" of diversity by trying to eliminate it.

The problem is not our differences, even our differences of faith and doctrine.  The problem is we judge our group or tradition to be superior, dividing the world up into us and them, in and out.  And then we can say lovely things such as "We don't want people like them joining our church, or moving into our neighborhood, or..."

I find especially appealing the notion that in Christ we become one regardless of whether we are male or female, Jew or Greek, black or white, etc.  It isn't that those distinctions no longer exist.  It is that they are all included together in God's love.  We are all held in God's embrace, and God longs to join us together into something new and wonderful.  Of course it is natural for people to be afraid of those who are different, not like us.  But then again, as it says in 1 John, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

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Spiritual Hiccups - Lusty Stallions???

When I read today's verses from Jeremiah, I came across a line that I had not noticed before.  Speaking to the wayward people of Jerusalem the prophet condemns how Israel turned from God despite the abundance given them.  "They were well-fed lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor's wife."  Ole Jeremiah doesn't mince words does he?

Well-fed lusty stallions; that is quite the image.  The abundance received from God has not left Israel grateful and beholding to God, but lusting for more.  That's something we know about in our society.  How is it that people who are quite wealthy, folks such as Martha Stewart or Bernie Madoff, still break the law, hurt others, and risk imprisonment so as to get more?  Why do people with a nice home and cars spend themselves into crushing debt in order to have a bigger and fancier home and finer cars?

I feel a bit lusty myself from time to time.  Not for my neighbor's wife, but I walk into a store and see a TV with a bigger screen than the one I have, and I want it.  I see a snazzier smart phone or a new iPad, and I want one.

For reasons that I've always struggled to understand, many religious people tend to be overly fixated on lust of the sexual sort.  But of course Jeremiah is speaking of Israel's unfaithfulness with God, not talking about  sexual deviance.  And the fact that Jesus speaks so often about our relationship to money, possessions, and wealth, and hardly at all about sex, seems to confirm where our real lust problems are.

I'm no expert on this, but lust, of all sorts, seems to bespeak something missing in a person's life.  There is a real or imagined hole that the a person is desperate to fill.  Unfortunately our lusts often lead us to fill the emptiness in our lives with that which does not satisfy.  And we quickly need another fix.

The only way out of the need for such fixes is something that does satisfy deeply.  And Jesus says that the answer is loving God with all our being and loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Lusts aren't about relationships.  They are about things or people we've objectified into things.  But love is something else altogether. 

Too often, Christian faith is understood to be about believing the correct things.  But Jesus says it is about relationship.  Jesus says it is about love.

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