Better quality videos can be found on YouTube.
Monday, April 11, 2011
John Rutter's Requiem - Pt. 1
Better quality videos can be found on YouTube.
John Rutter's Requiem - Pt. 2
During worship on April 10, 2011, the Chancel Choir at Boulevard Presbyterian presented Rutter's Requiem under the direction of Jeremy Roberts, accompanied by Mary Ann Stephens and instrumentalists from the OSU School of Music.
Better quality videos can be found on YouTube.
Spiritual Hiccups - Proper Credentials
How do you know when someone is "from God," that what she is doing represents or embodies God in some way? What are the hallmarks one would expect to see, and what would reveal that the person is actually a fraud?
Those questions arise when Jesus heals a man blind from birth. Jesus complicates matters for himself by not simply healing the man. He also "spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes," and he did all this on the Sabbath. Now healing someone's blindness is a pretty impressive feat which leads some to conclude that God is clearly at work in Jesus. And yet, Jesus works on the Sabbath, in violation of God's law, which leads others to conclude that Jesus cannot be from God.
It's pretty hard for most modern day folk to get worked up about whether or not making mud on the Sabbath disqualifies Jesus as a viable candidate for Messiah. We decided centuries ago that Jesus' opponents misunderstood or misapplied the Law. They ignored the clear evidence of God at work in Jesus because there seemed to some problem with his paperwork.
My denomination has been fighting over religious credentials for quite some time now. I've been a Presbyterian pastor for just over 15 years now, and I have never known a time when we weren't debating, arguing, or fighting about whether or not we can ordain people who are in gay/lesbian relationships. As with Jesus healing on the Sabbath, the issue is often framed in terms of what disqualifies someone from representing God. Some Presbyterians see the biblical injunctions that speak against homosexual behaviors as clearly disqualifying those who don't abide be such injunctions (though it should be pointed out that such injunctions are scarcely detectible compared to biblical commands to keep the Sabbath).
I wonder how our denomination would react if some gay candidate for ordination starting healing people. Would we still say that regardless of such miracles, violating God's standards clearly disqualified anyone from being ordained? I realize that is a rather remarkable, and perhaps unlikely, scenario. But what about simply seeing clear gifts of the Spirit that empowered someone to proclaim the gospel in ways that drew people to the faith and revitalized a dying congregation?
How do we know when someone is or isn't from God?
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Sunday Sermon video - Christian Identity: Serving Others
On a Sunday when the choir performed Rutter's Requiem during the 11:15 service, our early, informal service featured a more off-the-cuff sermon. Based on the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, it is a call to follow Jesus' example of finding deep spiritual meaning in being a servant to others.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - One Wish
One thing I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the LORD,
and to inquire in his temple.
One thing, a single thing. Me, I have a laundry list of things for God. When Jesus teaches his disciples to prayer, that prayer has a number of petitions: for God's kingdom to arrive on earth, daily bread, and forgiveness. And so I don't suppose I am restricted to one request. But if I were, what would it be?
In Jesus' own prayer life, he asks for a number of things himself, but in the end, I think that all of them fit within a single one, that God's will be done. That prayer encompasses all his others. I like to think that the same could be said of my prayers, but I know better. I'm not always willing to trust myself so fully to God. I'd much rather bend God to my way of thinking. I'd like to convince God to want what I want.
Some of the most difficult times in my faith life come when I think I have done what I should do, what God calls me to do, and things don't turn out the way I had envisioned. I see the same thing happen in congregations. They implement some new program or activity because they genuinely feel led to do so. They, quite naturally, assume that their faithfulness will result in a growth, a more vital congregation, a more vigorous ministry to the community. But that does not always happen. Then what?
We live in a world that is success and outcome oriented, and certainly there are times when a lack of congregational vitality or individual achievement is because of our failures to do as we should do. But faithfulness does not always lead to what our culture tells us is success, which may be why Paul says to us today that "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us." Jesus faithfulness led to the cross, not a success by any earthly measure.
I have no plans to stop praying to God for particular things or outcomes. My laundry list remains long and includes myself, my family, my congregation, the Church, the needy, the world, and so on. But I am trying to discover how to be taught and shaped and even blessed by those frequent occasions when my prayers and my attempts at faithfulness do not lead where I had expected. Who knows, I may learn far more about that "one thing" that I truly need, that is God's deepest desire for me, from "failures" and unexpected outcomes that I ever do when life goes as I want and expect.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Christ Within
Paul seems to use "flesh" as a kind of shorthand for life that is animated by sin. Certain sorts of bodily cravings may be a part of this, but the body itself is not the problem. That is why those who are "in Christ Jesus" can still live a normal, bodily existence but be not be captive to sin. As Paul writes to very fleshy humans, "But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you."
The change Paul is talking about isn't something apart from our bodily lives. Rather it is an inward transformation that reorients our lives, including our day-to-day, fleshy ones, so that they in tune with God.
I think that the true goal of spirituality - and religion when properly understood - is to become aware of and attentive to this inward presence of Jesus, the Spirit dwelling in us. That is why spirituality must first go inward. Yet true spirituality cannot simply stay there. A life animated by the Spirit, that is "in Christ," issues forth in a life pleasing to God, a life that is modeled after Jesus. Surely Jesus is the most deeply spiritual person ever to walk this earth, yet his life was one of vital action on God's and humanity's behalf. Surely Jesus is the ideal embodiment of what Paul is talking about: bodily life that is "in the Spirit."
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Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Prophets and Spiritual Ruts
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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Monday, April 4, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - All We Need
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, April 3, 2011
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.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Truly 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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