Spiritual Hiccups - Passing Down the Faith

A verse in Psalm 145 says to God, "One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts."  The psalmist seems to assume that those who have experienced God's grace and favor, who praise and worship God, will not be able to help sharing their enthusiasm for God with the next generation.  The psalmist clearly never met the modern, American Christian.

Anyone who has paid close attention to life in the Church has likely noticed large numbers of parents who are active in Church but whose children are absent.  I have heard some of these parents say that they think faith is a personal choice and they don't want to force it on their children.  And so I know of many children still in elementary school who decide for themselves whether or not to "go to church."

Now if this is starting to sound like the self-serving whining of a pastor who wants more children involved in church programing, that's not where I'm going with this.  I'm more interested in what this situation says about the faith of their parents.  Many of these same parents require their children to participate in sports and other "enrichment" activities.  They certainly require their children to attend school.  This would seem to suggest that these parents view education and enrichment activities as essential components to leading a productive, fulfilling life.  But Christian faith seems not to be so essential.

In her book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, Kenda Dean notes that the vague, banal notions of Christianity uncovered in the "National Study of Youth and Religion" - something the study labeled "moralistic, therapeutic, deism" - were not invented by these young people.  They learned to be "almost Christian" in the Church.  They got their vague notions of faith from a Church that had watered down the faith over the years to the point that many parents understand it to be less important than youth soccer or piano lessons.

And I must confess that I both grew up in and - even as a pastor - too often still proclaim the message of this vague faith that has little to do with actual life, that matters less to real life than music lessons or Little League.  I have to admit that I've been quite comfortable with a faith that is not incarnated into daily living, that is no more than a set of beliefs and notions.  I have my own tendency to be "almost Christian," to believe but still be indistinguishable from the culture, with no discernible faith practices that embody the way of living Jesus taught.

A lot of Mainline Protestant congregations worry a lot about Christian Eduction programs for children.  We are forever trying out new curriculum and models for the Sunday School hour, as though 45 minutes a week on 2 or 3 Sundays a month for 9 months of the year is going to shape and form people into something other than almost Christians.  If anything, it seems that we adults are the ones who need to relearn what it means to be Christian.  Maybe then we would be able to sing with the psalmist about one generation lauding God's works to another.

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Sunday Sermon text - Body Parts

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Body Parts

James Sledge                                               June 12, 2011 – Pentecost

Today is one of the big celebrations on the Church calendar.  It is Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, the day the Holy Spirit is given so that Jesus’ followers can begin to be his witnesses in all the world.  Of course you would never mistake Pentecost for some of the other celebrations on the Christian calendar.  Church attendance swells at Christmas and Easter, but Pentecost, especially on years when it falls in the summer, barely elicits a yawn.  This year Pentecost comes at the same time as graduations and the end of the school year.  If anything, attendance will likely be down in many congregations.

But despite fewer worshipers, Pentecost does share something in common with Christmas and Easter.  Like those high holy days, it tends to be a recollection of something that happened long ago; Jesus’ birth, his resurrection, and today, the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church.  Isn’t it wonderful what happened nearly 2000 years ago?  The disciples able to speak in other languages… Amazing.  But what does any of that have to do with me or you?

Growing up Presbyterian, I didn’t hear a lot about the Holy Spirit,

except for the Pentecost story.  Oh, it was there in the Apostles’ Creed that we said every Sunday. After God the Father who created heaven and earth, and then a lot about Jesus, his birth, trial, death, and resurrection, we finally said, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” or the Holy Ghost as we said when I was a kid, only making things even more mysterious.  So I believed in the Spirit, which the Creed said had something to do with the virgin Mary having a child, but none of that seemed much related to my life, in or out of church.

Growing up, I never realized that “the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,” and so on, were all connected to the Spirit.  I was perfectly happy to leave the Holy Spirit to the Pentecostals and other enthusiastic sorts who practiced a less subdued, orderly, and controlled version of faith.

When I went to seminary, my particular school had a number of things they did to keep the school connected with the local congregation.  One was to send out teams of students to churches within a reasonable driving distance where we would gather at the church for supper and fellowship on Saturday evening, stay that night with church members, and then lead worship and Christian Education on Sunday.  I think we did this three or four times over the course of the school year.

When the team that I was part of began to think about what we would do when we visited these churches, we decided to work with the theme of the Holy Spirit.  All of us, it seems, realized that our understanding of the Holy Spirit was a bit fuzzy, and we suspected the people in the congregations we would visit were a lot like us.  And so with more than a little trepidation, we started working on a worship service, sermon, class, children’s message, and so on that would address this. 

This was over 15 years ago, and so my memory’s a bit hazy.  But I do remember that we used the same Scripture I just read from 1 Corinthians.  And I recall that when I preached, I decided to test Paul on his contention that no one can say, “ ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”  I told the congregation that we would try it, and then I yelled out “Jesus is Lord!” and waited to see if anything happened.  Nothing did, but a number of people in the pews looked a little uncomfortable.

The Holy Spirit makes a lot of Presbyterians uncomfortable.  We’re perfectly happy remembering that day almost 2000 years ago when the Holy Spirit stirred things up and empowered frightened disciples to begin proclaiming the good news to complete strangers.  But the last thing we want is for a divine wind to rush through here some Sunday morning, spin us around in our seats, and launch us into some new enterprise that we have no idea where it might lead. 

But Paul insists that if we have even the most rudimentary faith, the Spirit is at work in us.  The Spirit is forming and shaping us into integral parts of the body of Christ.  The Spirit is bestowing gifts to each of us.  I’m not talking about talents that we are born with; I’m talking about spiritual gifts that allow all of us to do our part.  As Paul makes clear, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit.  Not “To some,” but “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

Imagine for a moment that you are getting ready to attend a dinner party.  Some of the folks there will be good friends and others will barely be acquaintances.  There’s likely to be a bit of drinking before dinner, and clusters of folks will gather in conversation.  Now nothing ruins a dinner party like people getting into a heated argument, so what topics do most people know to avoid in such settings?..  That’s right; religion and politics.

No doubt there are times when adhering to the old adage against discussing religion and politics is probably the way to go.  Certainly, trying to win a religious argument at a party is bad form.  But from this practice of polite etiquette has arisen the unfortunate notion that religion and faith are private things.

Faith most certainly is a personal thing.  But it is not private.  Faith, by its very nature, binds us together into one body.  The Spirit connects and knits us together, making each of us an essential part of the body.  Each of us has a role to play.  Each of us had gifts to add, and when we suppress the Spirit’s work in us, we diminish the body.

Anyone in a congregation who has ever tried to recruit Sunday School teachers, elders or deacons, someone to lead a project or program, or someone to sing in the choir has heard people say,  “Oh, I could never do that.”  At times these objections may be well founded.  The choir is probably not the best place for a person who genuinely cannot carry a tune to serve.  But many times such objections come with reasons such as, “My faith isn’t strong enough.  I don’t know the Bible well enough.  I don’t understand the Presbyterian system enough.”  Such statements may be real or false modesty, but regardless they seem to proclaim, “The Holy Spirit cannot use me.”

This disdain for the Holy Spirit is aggravated by the notion of faith as a private thing.  When people think that faith is about private beliefs, that even though serving at church or in the community may be a nice thing to do but it is not an integral part of faith, it is no wonder they are perfectly content to believe and “go to church.”  No wonder they think of teaching, singing in the choir, being part of a mission project, of serving as an elder or deacon as something for other people, for the extra effort sort.

But Paul tells his congregation that if in any small way they have begun to experience Jesus as Lord of their life, if in any small way the seed of faith has begun to grow in them, then the Holy Spirit is at work within them, empowering them, gifting them, equipping them so that together they can do all that is necessary to be the body of Christ.  Together, when each of us adds our gifts and does our part, Christ’s presence is made know to the world through us.  But when faith turns private and the work of the Spirit is resisted, the body is wounded, injured and dismembered.  The Church ceases to be the body of Christ and becomes little more than a gathering of people who share similar beliefs.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that virtually everyone here today has experienced some sort of faith.  We’ve all felt ourselves drawn toward Jesus in ways great or small.  And so I can say to all of you that God’s Spirit is at work in you.  The presence of the risen Christ is touching you right now, seeking to stir you and activate you for the common good.  The creative power of the Spirit is at work in you this very moment, equipping you to be an absolutely essential part of the body.  And the body is not whole without you.

Sunday Sermon audio - Body Parts

Spiritual Hiccups - God's Heart

Even though I grew up in the Church, the product of a religious family, God often seemed something of an abstraction to me.  Perhaps this has less to do with my upbringing and is simply due to my own proclivities, but God always felt like a philosophical concept.  I was drawn to this concept, but still...

Many of my own spiritual challenges involve moving past this.  Drawing close to God, becoming aware of God's presence, resting in God, all require a God who is more than concept.  Relating to God in some way would seem to require a certain dynamism on the part of God, and expansiveness that drives God to engage, and even to risk, for the sake of relationship.  There has to be something going on in the heart of God.

I have sometimes been jealous of my more evangelical and fundamentalist brothers and sisters, especially of the way the seem to perceive of God so personally.  But at the same time I am repelled by the way some of them seem to know a God who seems so preoccupied with damnation and punishment of those who don't get the rules of the relationship figured out just so.

Maybe that is why I was so struck by a line in today's reading from Ezekiel.  While it is a section that talks about punishment and the death of the wicked, it also speaks of God's desire for the wicked (and to my mind wicked is a much worse condition than getting your theology wrong) to turn and be spared.  "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD?"

It's obviously a rhetorical question that must be answered, "No," but the implications are huge.  I assume that if God takes no pleasure in punishing, if God much more desires reconciliation, then it must cost God something to punish.  Far from the image some Christians project of a God who cavalierly sends off countless souls to eternal punishment, such a possibility must be gut wrenching for God.

I've long been suspicious that one of my biggest spiritual liabilities is how deeply Greek, philosophical notions of God are embedded in my faith.  For those not up on your Greek philosophy, such a God cannot experience anything gut wrenching.  Such a God is by nature perfect and thus static and impassive. 

But if Jesus is really in some way the image of God, then I'm going to have to go with a God whose gut is churning.

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Spiritual Hiccups - The Secret of Life

Last week an editorial by David Brooks entitled "It's Not about You" ran in The New York Times.  In it Brooks lamented how current graduates are sent out into the world with commencement speakers encouraging them to "find their passion" and "pursue their dreams." He notes, "Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center."  He ends the piece with, "The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself."  Sounds familiar.

Brooks connects our current, cultural climate to "baby-boomer theology," and such baby-boomer self absorption often times works its way into to my generation's attempts to be "spiritual."  There is much fascination with going inward, deeper into the self.  And while I think this a vital component of the spiritual life, it is no end in itself.

One of today's morning psalms, Psalm 147, sings God's praises.  It does so by rattling off a long list of the things God does, and almost all of these are directed toward the care and nurture of others.  God heals the brokenhearted, lifts up the downtrodden, sends rain to the earth, and feeds the wild animals.  Even the negative activity of casting down the wicked is a way of caring for those who are oppressed and exploited.  In both Psalm 99 and 147, God's greatness is displayed in God's graciousness and God's love of justice.  Throughout the Old Testament, God is revered as one slow to anger, abounding in mercy and steadfast love. 

I had a seminary professor who used to speak of the difference between us and God being that we tend to be grasping and constricting.  (He would take his open arms and clutch them to his chest.)  But God, on the other hand, is always going out from Godself in expansive, self giving love.  (He would then spread his arms out as wide as they would go.) 

It seems to me that we become most fully human, that the image of God in us becomes most visible, when we discover this "secret" that my professor talked about and David Brooks writes about.  Only when life responds to the needs of others, only when it reaches out from self, only when we lose ourselves in our callings, do we find our deepest, truest humanity.

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Laborers Needed

"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few."  So says Jesus as he sends out followers to proclaim the nearness of God's coming reign.  When "The Seventy" are sent out, Jesus instructs them to tell both those who welcome them and those who don't that "The kingdom of God has come near."  And I wonder if the Church, in its preoccupation with salvation, hasn't badly neglected Jesus' command to proclaim the kingdom with the result being that laborers for this kingdom remain in woefully short supply.

When I speak of a preoccupation with salvation, I don't mean that Jesus doesn't offer such.  But too often salvation has been understood to mean nothing more that a status with regard to life after death.  And I have no doubt that this is a gross distortion of the biblical notion of salvation.  Salvation is more than a promise of something in the future.  It is a present quality of life.  As the Apostle Paul writes, we become "a new creation" in Christ.  Salvation is something lived out now.

I have become increasingly convinced in recent years that much of the Church's malaise is related to its neglecting Jesus' core message of the kingdom.  Faith became divorced from much of life, concerned with little but status.  In the worst forms of this, life on earth and creation itself become of no importance at all.  All that matters is "the life to come."

Fortunately, this is changing.  Increasingly churches are recovering the good news that the kingdom has come near, and that we are called to show this approaching new day to the world.  But many more need to hear Jesus anew on this.  As in Jesus' day, laborers for the kingdom are still hard to come by.

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Sunday Sermon video - On Being Martyrs

Spiritual Hiccups - Urgency and Focus

Like very many people in our culture, my life sometimes seems overly hectic.  I'm not talking about any special pressures that come from being a pastor, but rather about a lifestyle of busyness that seems to afflict many of us.  This busyness can sometimes be draining, but at other times it is a source of pride.  Look how hard working and diligent I am, how consume I am by my busyness.  But just what is my particular busyness about?

Jesus' words to those who would follow him got me thinking about this.  He tells one would-be disciple not to go back and bury his dead father, and he tells another not to go back and say goodbye to his family.  The urgency Jesus demands contains an echo of an Old Testament story.  When the prophet Elijah calls Elisha to become his disciple, he permits Elisha to return and say farewells to his mother and father.  But Jesus seems to say that proclaiming the Kingdom that is drawing near demands a greater commitment and urgency than that required of the great prophet Elisha.

The Kingdom is the focus of Jesus' sense of urgency.  As for me, I'm not sure that my busyness has much connection to the Kingdom.  Very often, my busyness, indeed much church busyness, is about institutional maintenance that has little bearing on the Kingdom.  In fact, the Church sometimes seems to have forgotten about the Kingdom altogether.

What is it that produces the urgency and focus in my life?  Is it God's presence, Jesus' call?  Or do other things get in the way so that I hurry along, blissfully unaware of God's presence, unaware of what Jesus asks of me?  Where is the work of the Kingdom that calls me forward?  What is it that is more important than anything else?

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Sunday Sermon text - On Being Martyrs

Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

On Being Martyrs

James Sledge                                                               June 5, 2011

How many of you have heard of Harold Camping?  Raise your hands if you have.  Some of you.  For those of you who don’t know, Camping is a conservative Christian radio broadcaster and president of something called “Family Radio,” a California based network with more than a hundred stations.  Now to be honest, I’ve never heard Mr. Camping on the radio and don’t even know if he is available around here.  But I heard all about his prediction that the Rapture would occur on May 21^st, with the end of the world to follow six months later.  It’s worth noting that Camping also predicted the Rapture’s arrival in 1994, but then, a now, the Rapture was a no-show.

I asked for a show of hands of those who knew of Camping, and a good many of you did, but let me try someone else.  How many of you have heard of Jesus?  Raise your hands.   Well, we did a lot better this time.  I think all of you raised your hands.  I guess that means that I don’t have to explain to you who Jesus is, how he came proclaiming that the reign of God had drawn near, how he was executed but rose again, and how he commissioned his followers to continue his work after his resurrection.

So we’ve established without much doubt that more of you know who Jesus is than Harold Camping, but let me ask another question regarding them.  How many of you would trust Harold Camping over Jesus?  Raise your hands.  Okay, how many of you would trust Jesus over Harold Camping?  Raise your hands.  And we have a winner… Jesus!

I have another question to ask, but I don’t want you to raise your hands on this one. 

How many of you paid any attention to the possibility of Judgment Day arriving a couple of weeks ago?  How many of you have worried about this or about some folks’ saying that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and the world will too?  I ask because quite a few Christians do seem to worry about such things. 

Even though the Bible makes no mention of a Rapture, and the very idea of a Rapture was only dreamed up in the 1800s, lots of Christians ears prick up when someone says they know when it is.  Even though Jesus says on more than one occasion that he doesn’t know when the new age will arrive, and that when it does it will not take any special knowledge or figuring to detect it – it will be as obvious as the arrival of Spring or Summer – still Christians persist in speculating about such things.  Over and over Christians act like they trust the teachings of the latest end-of-the-world-crackpot over the clear teachings of Jesus.

Now certainly natural human curiosity contributes to this, as well as the hope of the faithful that God will one day redeem and restore all creation.  After all, Jesus teaches us to pray for that day when God’s will is done here on earth just as it is now in heaven.  And so it makes sense that Christians would keep an eye on the horizon of the future.

I actually have some sympathy for those who had placed their hope in a Rapture on May 21.  They were wanting God to do something dramatic, to take decisive action.  In a world filled with hurt, suffering, and brokenness, what person of faith hasn’t occasionally hoped for God to do something grand, in one fell swoop to change everything.

The disciples in our reading from Acts have been witnesses to such a thing, to the resurrection.  They have been spending time with the risen Jesus, and they are wondering what the next big thing will be.  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Not quite the Rapture, but still the hope that God will decisively change the shape of life on earth.

But the decisive change Jesus tells them to get ready for is something that will transform and empower the community of believers.  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  When asked about what comes next, Jesus doesn’t give any formula or timetable.  His focus is here, on what we do on this earth, serving as his witnesses.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating.  Far too many Christians have embraced a gospel of evacuation.  This gospel promises to rescue believers from earth, to whisk us off to heaven, either when we die or come the Rapture.  This gospel calls us to endure life’s struggles and difficulties in exchange for this promise to take us to some better place where there is no pain or suffering.

But the gospel Jesus proclaims is not one of evacuation.  Jesus proclaims the Kingdom that has come near, a coming day when God’s will is done here on earth, as it is now in heaven. Our reading today from 1 Peter today calls us to be willing to suffer, to be reviled by others, not in the hope of some future evacuation, but in the certainty that God will restore.  And the Bible itself ends with a picture of that restoration, with a new heaven and new earth.  The very images that so many people associate with heaven, pearly gates and streets paved with gold, are not images of heaven, but of the new Jerusalem here on earth.  And in the meantime, Jesus calls us to be his witnesses, to let the world know about the new day that is surely coming.

The word translated “witnesses” is the basis of our English word, “martyr.”  This association of martyr and witness came about as the result of early Christians holding fast to their faith even in the face of death.  They were so sure of God’s power to renew, restore, and bring life out of death, that they would not waver in their faith.  They willingly embraced the same sort of suffering Jesus had faced, trusting that the power of resurrection had been set loose in the world, not a power to evacuate them, but to restore all things.

We too are called to be witnesses, to live in ways that demonstrate our trust in God’s power to restore and make new, to live in ways that show the world our hope that God’s will shall yet be done on earth, that all creation shall be redeemed.  Jesus calls us to live now by the ways of that coming day just as he did, to love and forgive, to be willing to lose ourselves for the sake of others, to do God’s will over our own, knowing that nothing, not even death, can stop God’s plans.

Of course it is likely that very few of us will ever be faced with life and death decisions about being witnesses.  Most of our calls to be martyrs will be much more mundane in nature, but still we are called to witness regularly, daily.  Every time some of our friends are making fun of someone or some group because they are different, we are called to be witnesses of God’s love for all.  Every time we discuss politics, we are called to witness to God’s special concern for the most vulnerable, to witness to Jesus’ call to love neighbor and enemy, to be willing to lose ourselves – our privileges and advantages – for the sake of the kingdom. 

When we cast our vote we are called to witness by putting our desires second to God’s will and to the needs of the weak and vulnerable.  When we decide how much of our money we will dedicate to our own needs and pleasures, and how much to the needs of others, we witness.  When we decide not to lash out at someone who has hurt us, we witness.  When we work for peace and justice, we witness.  When we care for God’s creation, we witness.  When we refuse to use distortions or half-truths or to stretch the truth in order to win the argument, we witness.  And especially when we swim against the currents of popular opinion, challenging the consumerist, me-first attitudes that dominate our culture, we are Christ’s witnesses, declaring by our daily acts that we have glimpsed a new day, a day of peace and forgiveness and healing and hope and possibility for all.

Harold Camping has already revised his predictions of the Rapture.  It is now rescheduled for October 21.  Is that right Jesus?  Is it the one?  But Jesus says, “It is not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.  That’s you, and you, and me, and you, and you, and every one of us here.  Jesus promises to come to us, to empower us by the Spirit, in order that our lives, our daily living, might show the world the hope of something better.

Thanks be to God.

Sunday Sermon audio - On Being Martyrs

Sunday Sermon audio - On Being Martyrs

Spiritual Hiccups - But They Doubted

The first big paper I had to write as a seminary student was on today's gospel reading.  All of us in the imaginatively titled "New Testament I" had to write an exegetical paper on The Great Commission in Matthew.  I recall that my translation of the text was slightly different from the NRSV.  Mine read, "When they saw him the worshiped him; but they doubted," rather than the "some doubted" in my Bible.  My knowledge of Greek was certainly no match for the NRSV translators, but my professor, Jack Kingsbury, apparently had no issues with my version.

I confess that while I think my translation a more natural reading of the Greek, I also like it for other reasons.  It seems truer to my own faith.  I worship and I doubt. 

As a pastor, I can't begin to recall how often I've heard people turn down a nomination to be an officer, say "No" to a request to teach a class, or explain why they've never shared their faith with a neighbor, because their faith wasn't strong enough.  Very often, it seems, people believe their faith hasn't reach a sufficient threshold for them to be called into Christ's service.  Yet the very last thing we hear about the disciples before Jesus sends them out is, "But they doubted." 

Jesus doesn't wait until we are fully qualified before calling and commissioning us.  In fact, if he did there would be no Church.  Jesus calls struggling, doubting, imperfect sinners to represent him in the world.  And he promises to be with us and equip us so that we can do all he asks of us... even when we doubt that.

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