Spiritual Hiccups - Losing My Religion

There have a been a couple of newspaper articles and a number of letters to the editor or late about billboards put up in Columbus by an atheist group.  The billboards are part of an "Out of the Closet, Nonbelievers" campaign meant to present local atheists as good, moral, contributing members of the community.  They feature pictures of an individual with a quote such as, "I can be good without God."

The ads have gotten extra attention thanks to one being placed on a billboard that was on a local church's property.  The outdoor advertising company moved it to another location after the church objected, and then had to move it yet again after the property owner at the new location objected as well.  Of course both moves brought more free advertising to the campaign with stories appearing each time in the news.

The news coverage sparked a just-what-you-might-expect run of dueling letters to the editor.  A couple were reasonable and well thought out, but most either noted all the bad things done in the name of religion or accused atheist of being relativists who by definition had no set standard (God) to fall back on.

Certainly Christians should know full well that religion does frequently have its dark side.  Our faith story features the execution of Jesus, brought about in part by religious leaders who wanted to squelch his message.  And today's reading from the book of Acts begins with a note about believers being "scattered because of the persecution that took place over Stephen..."  This persecution was a religious one, undertaken by religious people convinced that they were protecting the "true" worship of God.

Religious people can sometimes be the best possible advertisements for atheists.  Granted, atheist often ignore the huge amount of good that religious people do in the world because of their beliefs, but religious people just as often ignore the how problematic religion can be when it is used to justify hate, intolerance, a particular political agenda, and so on.

I wonder if this would be the case for Christians if we truly embraced Jesus' command to love one another, even to love our enemies.  I know plenty of Christians whose faith moves them to love others in ways that are truly remarkable.  But I also know quite a few whose faith seems to drive them to hate those who disagree with them.

I think this is why I have found myself drawn to the "emergent church movement."  Many of those in the movement have tried to move Christianity away from a "gospel of evacuation," faith that gets us into a heaven somewhere else, and move us toward preparing for the Kingdom Jesus proclaims is near.  And I am absolutely convinced that a focus on the Kingdom, on the transformation of this world, would do much to improve our image, not to mention make us more faithful.  Focusing on escape to heaven encourages us to see everyone in terms of in-or-out, to obsess about who is going to get promoted and who is not.  But while Jesus does speak of judgment, his most vicious critiques are for religious people.  And Jesus' last public teaching in the gospel of Matthew seems to depict a favorable judgment for non-religious folks who did the work of the Kingdom unawares (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, etc.).

One of the basic calling of all Christians is to be "witnesses."  Our lives, actions, words, efforts, and such are supposed to give evidence of Jesus and his coming transformed community.  In other words, we are supposed to be walking billboards for the faith and the Kingdom.  And in that sense, billboards put up by atheists are not our real advertising problem.  We need better ad campaigns broadcast by our lives.

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Sunday Sermon text - Hope for the Harvest

I Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Hope for the Harvest

James Sledge                                                         July 10, 2011

“A sower went out to sow.”  He scattered seed all about, rather indiscriminately.  It went everywhere, onto the pathway, into the brambles and weeds, onto rocky ground where nothing ever seems to grow.  When I put down some grass seed in my yard, sometimes a little bit gets on the sidewalk.  Some seed gets in the flower beds and other places it doesn’t belong.  But by and large, most of it stays in the yard where it does belong.  I’m not going to waste good seed.  But the sower in Jesus’ parable seems unconcerned with such waste.

As parables go, this one is fairly well known.  It’s one of the few that shows up in all four gospels, and to my ear, it’s not all that hard to understand.  I’m not sure we really need the explanation that goes with it.  This parable is true to life.  The message of Jesus is out there, but it doesn’t take hold everywhere.  And even when it does, sometimes it doesn’t last. 

We’ve seen it many times.  We all know people who grew up in the Church but want nothing to do with it as adults.  We’ve seen people join the Church and get involved for a while, but then gradually withdraw and finally disappear altogether.  We’ve seen other priorities take precedence, from work to hobbies to youth soccer.

Even though most of us know next to nothing about First Century, Middle Eastern agricultural practices, we can nod our heads in agreement with what Jesus says.  “Yes, yes, that is certainly true.”  But once we’re done nodding, what more is there to say?  Does this parable have anything to teach us?

The first hearers of this parable had a very different background from many of us, but I’m not talking about their familiarity with farming.  I’m talking about their experience of the Jesus movement as a small, marginalized affair.

The very early Church was an all Jewish operation that never managed to attract more than a small minority of fellow Jews.  And by the time that Matthew writes his gospel, while Gentiles were beginning to be welcomed into the Church, Jewish Christians were having to make a very difficult choice.  They were being forced out of many synagogues.  They still considered themselves Jewish and wanted to continue going to the synagogue and being a part of their own worshipping tradition, but the synagogue leaders insisted that to do so they would to have to stop saying, “Jesus is Lord.”

This parable is first heard by people who wonder why things are going as they are.  Why haven’t more people joined them?  And what is going to happen  if more and more believers decide to deny Jesus so they will be welcome at the synagogue?”

By contrast, we American Christians have long been a huge majority.  But the decline faced by many churches in 21^st Century America has begun to give us a small taste of what Matthew’s congregation must have experienced.  And as we move deeper into what some have called a post-Christian world, we may do well to listen to Jesus’ parable with ears more like those who first heard it. 

One thing the parable does not tell us is why the gospel bears fruit in some and not others.  The parable does not explain the mystery of why some soil is good and some is not.  But the parable does paint picture of faithful discipleship.  When we compare what happens in the different types of soil, an image of discipleship emerges marked by understanding, perseverance, and a single-minded focus on the work of the Kingdom.  This is not an “I’m a Christian because my parents were” sort of faith, but a faith that knows and understands the message of the faith.  It is a discipleship that perseveres and stays focused and committed in the face of both persecution and temptation. 

Now persecution is not something American Christians know much about.  But the temptations that draw us away from following Jesus are everywhere, and they most surely have grown more plentiful over the last 50 years or so.

I once read the book Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, both then professors at Duke Divinity School.  In the first chapter they write of this new world of increased temptations where Church now lives, saying half-jokingly that this world began one Sunday evening in 1963.  On that day, one of the authors was among seven members of the Methodist Youth Fellowship at Buncombe Street Church in Greenville, SC, who agreed to go in the front door of the church but then slip out the back to go see John Wayne at the Fox Theater.  “On that night,” they write, “Greenville, South Carolina –the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western world – served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the church.  There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides.  The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who would provide the world view for the young.  That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.”[1]

Whatever the exact date, our culture has decided that it will no longer till, weed, and water for the church.  No longer will the culture funnel people our way so that we need only to open our doors on Sunday to fill the pews.  And when the culture decided it would no longer prop us up, discipleship stopped being the easy thing we had tried to make it, and it began to be what Jesus understood it to be, something requiring deep understanding, and real perseverance and commitment in the face of all sorts of temptations and inducements to live and act some other way.

Jesus understands discipleship as living and working for peace in a world that prefers violence and war.  Discipleship is seeing the face of Jesus in the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed in a world that says, “Look out for number one.”  It is seeking the good of others in a world that worries about my rights and preserving advantages for my group.  It is a willingness to sacrifice my good for the good of the other in a world where millionaires want and get tax breaks.  It is hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for things to be as God would have them in a world that simply accepts business as usual.

It is easy to look around at this world and despair for both the Church and the world.  Who will want to follow Jesus in a culture that assaults us non-stop with the message that what we really need is to be beautiful, rich, young, powerful, independent, tanned, cool, secure, with instant access to endless diversions and entertainment?  And how will we ever deal with the world’s problems when neither politicians nor voters can look beyond their short-term, selfish interests to do what is best for everyone?

It indeed is easy for those who hear Jesus’ call to despair and think it not worth all the effort.  Reasons for despair were even greater in the days of Matthew’s gospel, when both the religious establishment and the might of imperial Rome envisioned a very different world than the one Jesus called his followers to build.

But Jesus speaks his parable of the sower directly to these difficulties that threaten to draw his followers into despair.  This parable is, above all else, a parable of hope.  It describes a foolishly extravagant sower, who goes about in a world filled with rocky soil, hardened paths and hearts, choking weeds and thorns, and scatters seed everywhere.  This extravagant sower is not at all deterred by the knowledge that so little seed will make it to maturity, because the seed that does find good soil produces thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. 

Jesus tells the crowds, and tells us, that we should not be surprised that many choose not to follow him.  There is much in the world that draws people away from the commitment, single-mindedness, and perseverance that Jesus asks.  But from those who do steadfastly follow, the results are spectacular, thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. 

From those few who work tirelessly for the Kingdom, the promise of justice and peace, dignity and hope for the poor and oppressed, the triumph of love over hate, and a world where all have enough, can begin to be seen.  And if such a promise seems foolish in the face of how things are and the way the world works, remember; the world, the way things are, and the powers that be were all absolutely certain that Jesus was dead and gone on Good Friday, and that he would never trouble them again.

---

[1] Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abindgon Press, 1989) pp. 15-16.

Sunday Sermon audio - Hope for the Harvest

Spiritual Hiccups - Answer Me, God!

"I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my supplications."   So says the opening of Psalm 116.  So how do you love the LORD when God doesn't hear your voice or answer your cries?  This psalm is one of many that speak of loving God because of God's mercy, faithfulness, and steadfast love, because God helped or saved or rescued.  So what happens when God seems to have abandoned you, when the patterns and practices of faith that have sustained you stop working?

I suspect that most people for whom faith is a big part of their lives have times when God's absence is terrifyingly real.  Even Jesus cries out that God has forsaken him while on the cross.  At such times a happy, cheery faith is impossible, though several other options are available.  We could conclude that God is angry with us and has abandoned us because we deserve it.  We could conclude that our original faith was a mistake, that God doesn't do the things we thought God did or that God doesn't even exist.  We could conclude that we were wrong about the character of God, that God is not abounding in steadfast love and mercy.  We could conclude that God is simply forgetful or capricious.

Surely Christians experience God's absence as much as the people of the Old Testament did, yet we seem strangely unwilling to engage God as our ancient forebears did.  We seem curiously unwilling to call God to task, to beseech God to remember and act faithfully.  Even we Protestants, who speak so much of God's grace, seem happy to presume than any problem that we have in our relationship with God must be of our making, must be our fault.  Many people of faith seem so intent on protecting God's reputation that they will not hold God responsible for anything.  Or perhaps they are protecting their own fragile faith rather than God's reputation.

I have said many times that there is more honest faith in angrily shaking a fist at God than in a laundry list of pious platitudes.  And I am as mystified by church folk who claim never to doubt or question God as I am by married couples who claim to have never argued or uttered a harsh word to one another.

Now certainly the mystery of God, life, and creation is such that we will never fully comprehend it.  And so we will undoubtedly misread, misunderstand, and misconstrue God's actions.  But simply to keep smiling sweetly and say, "All is well," is dishonest.  And no relationship can be built on such dishonesty. 

God, I love you because.  Jesus, I follow you because.  I have entered into the faith relationship because.  And when I can't find or feel that because, things get a little shaky.  At such times, we need to be able to say to God, "Show us the because.  God, please, show us the because.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Trying To Get Home

Many Christians know the story of Jesus appearing to a pair of his followers as they walked the road to Emmaus on the evening of the Resurrection.  The term Emmaus has become synonymous with spiritual awaking or discovery.  But we know nothing about Emmaus.  We do not know where it is, nor do we know why these two were headed there.  Perhaps it was a stop on the way somewhere else.  Perhaps it was home.  Regardless, I'm inclined to think they were headed home, home to Emmaus or someplace beyond it.  They had heard the report from the women of the empty tomb and a vision of angels saying Jesus was alive.  But despite this report, they have left Jerusalem.  They are headed back somewhere, presumably home, going back to their old lives.

It is not unusual to yearn for home, especially when life has unraveled, when things are not as we would like them.  We would like to go back to a place where we are secure, where we understand how things work, where life makes sense.  Longing for "the good 'ole days" is a form of wanting to go home.

Yesterday I wrote about "Cemetery Churches," congregations where one is unlikely to find the living Christ.  But later in the day I was rereading the Walter Brueggemann book, Cadences of Home, which uses the metaphor of "exile" to speak of the church's loss of special status and influence in American culture.  He says that similar to Israel's exile to Babylon, this exile is only partially our doing.  Our exile is not entirely our fault.  We share some blame.  We have not always been a faithful church, but there are also cultural forces at work beyond our failings. 

Seen from this perspective, perhaps my cemetery churches might more charitably be understood as communities that have not come to terms with exile.  They have been cut loose from their moorings and find themselves in a land they do not really know.  And like the two disciples headed to Emmaus, they seek to return, to go back home.

But we cannot go back to how things once were any more that those two disciples could return to a pre-Easter world.  Like them, we are called forward to something new, but I suspect that moving forward requires mourning our loss, naming our exile. 

In my own denomination, accepting this exile is difficult for many.  Some conservatives, like Old Testament Deuteronomists, insist that our decline is entirely our own fault, a failing that can be corrected if only we will be more orthodox and less accommodating to the secular world.  But more moderate and liberal Presbyterians like myself often reject such a view, but we too suspect that if we only did things better, we could get back home.  We are unwilling to mourn and lament our exile.  We keep looking back, and so we miss the power of resurrection in our midst.

When the disciples on the Emmaus road meet the risen Jesus, all thoughts of getting home are forgotten.  They immediately return to Jerusalem and head toward an uncertain future.  It is something new that God will bring out of death and exile.  It is the new home of God's coming reign, the Kingdom.  This no pie in the sky when we die, but God's will enacted here on earth.  It is a dream, even an impossibility.  But it is the only home that lies ahead of us rather than behind.

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Sunday Sermon video - Who Are You Meant To Be?

Sermons with better video quality can be found on YouTube.

Sunday Sermon Video - Who Are You Meant To Be?

Sermons of better video quality can be found on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - Cemetery Churches

It's funny the way you can read a very familiar piece of Scripture and it grab you in a way it had not before.  This morning's gospel reading could not have been more familiar. It is Luke's report of the first Easter morning.  Two parts of the reading impacted me for one reason of another.  The first is the opening line of the reading, "On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment." 

Truth is I'm not entirely sure what to make of this line.  On the one hand they have continued with their faith practices in spite of the horrible events of the previous few days.  All their hopes have been shattered, yet they can still pause for the Sabbath.  On the other hand, their falling back into old faith patterns could be an indication of how unaware they are of the fundamental shift that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection (at this point still unknown the them) have brought about.

The second piece of the reading I noticed seems to connect with the disciples being unaware.  When the women encounter two "men in dazzling clothes" at the tomb, the men ask, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"  It is a rather strange thing to ask.  The women are not, after all, looking for anyone alive.  They are coming to visit a grave.  No one expects to find the living there, aside from other cemetery visitors.  Now I am probably getting pretty far afield of the passage at this point, but for some reason I immediately thought about the malaise afflicting the mainline church. 

A group of pastors in my denomination (with whom I strongly disagree) have formed something call the PC(USA) Fellowship, and they have stated that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is "deathly ill."  Their diagnosis is based in what they see as the denomination's abandonment of traditional orthodoxy, with recent changes allowing the ordination of those in same-sex relationships, being a final straw. 

I totally reject their notion that straying from traditional orthodoxy has horribly sickened us.  But I will give them that quite a few Presbyterian congregations have the feel of a gathering at a cemetery.  By that I mean that the people there are coming to pay respects and give honor (in this case to God), but they have very little expectation of actually encountering any sort of living presence in the process.  To the question, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" they might answer, "We're not looking for the living. We're going to church."

If the denomination is suffering from any sort of deathly illness, I would think "going to church" a much more likely diagnosis than lapsed orthodoxy.  And while this is conjecture on my part, I suspect that church looks like a cemetery to lots of people not connected to church.  They don't necessarily see church as a bad thing, they just don't know why they would want to visit the cemetery every week, especially when they don't know anyone involved in the funeral very well.

And congregations who imagine that they could fill their sanctuaries again if they just had a more dynamic preacher, a snazzier music program, or perhaps even a "contemporary service" with a band and multimedia, are likely to be disappointed to discover that most people aren't all that interested in visiting the cemetery every week.  I doesn't matter how slick or entertaining, funerals and cemeteries tend not to draw people over the long haul.

Now don't get me wrong.  I am not worried about the death of the Church, or even of my denomination.  Certainly there are congregations that will die.  That has been happening for nearly two millennia.  And if there are more sick congregations right now, I'm inclined to think that mostly a matter those congregations' desire to look back rather than forward.  In a time of rapid cultural change, they prefer remembering a lost past to living in the present.  They like cemeteries.

Those who are looking for a living Jesus, for God's presence at work in the world, are not likely to be attracted to cemetery churches, no matter who is in the pulpit or who plays in the band.  Most people just don't want to spend that much time at the cemetery.

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Sunday Sermon text - Who Are You Meant To Be?

Matthew 11:16-30

Who Are You Meant to Be?

James Sledge                                                                   July 3, 2011

I have seen a number of newspaper articles lately about how our struggling economy is not creating many good jobs, the sort of jobs that sustain the middle class, that earned America the nickname, Land of Opportunity.  That got me wondering, what is it that makes a job a good job?  What attributes must it have?

Invite responses.

Naturally a good job requires a decent salary.  There is some minimum necessary to live, to make ends meet and support a family.  And so money matters, matters a lot for many of us.  But then again I’ve had a couple of jobs that I do not think any amount of money could have made me keep doing for very long.  And so money can’t be the entire answer.

The status of a job matters to some.  I saw a “Dear Abby” letter the other day from parents asking how to handle people who said disparaging things about their daughter who was finishing up her Masters of Social Work.  Apparently among their circle of friends, one does not aspire to become a social worker.

That reminds me that when I was in high school, I got really into horses.  At one point I became convinced that I wanted a career as a farrier.  For those who don’t know, that’s someone who shoes horses.  I’m pretty sure my parents were happy when I dropped the idea.  They expected me to go to college, not trade school, and my change of heart also spared them having to deal with the question, “So what’s your son doing these days?” 

From the very beginning of Presbyterianism, our theology has had something to say about what makes a good job.  It says we all have a vocation.  The term vocation is not synonymous with occupation.  Rather it means a calling.  I know that some people think of certain people, pastors and teachers and nurses and such, as having a calling, but our theology says that everyone has a calling.  Callings may or may not come with salaries.  Parent is a calling.  And certainly people end up in jobs that are not really their calling, but we say that God has a calling or callings for each of us.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Now Jesus is not talking about work, or not just about work.  The yokes and burdens he addresses are the rules, the expectations, the faith, the religiousness that shapes all of life, work included.  And so we might expand my original question from what makes a job a good job to what makes a life a good life?

Of course Jesus’ words about yokes and burdens are not uttered in isolation.  They are prompted by a visit from some of John the Baptist’s disciples.  John is in prison, but having heard the things Jesus is doing, he sends followers to Jesus to ask if he is indeed the Messiah they have been awaiting. 

After John’s disciples depart, Jesus turns to the crowd and extols John to them.  But then, Jesus seems to become frustrated.  “But to what will I compare this generation?  It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’”

Jesus is referring to children playing games.  At first they play a wedding game, a happy celebration, but their playmates refuse to join the festivities.  Then they play a funeral game, mimicking the professional mourners employed in ancient funeral processions, but their playmates will not join the dirge either.

Jesus blasts his contemporaries who heard John the Baptist’s call for repentance and strict adherence to God’s commands but rejected them as too severe and difficult.  Yet they saw Jesus dining with tax collectors and sinners, inviting these “low life” into the kingdom, and they were appalled that he would have anything to do with such folk.  Jesus is speaking to his “generation,” the religious folk of his day, but the descendants of that generation are still very much alive.  We still find both John and Jesus offensive in their own ways.

Any pastor or church leader who dares sound or act too much like John will soon find herself looking for a new congregation.  And any pastor who starts filling the pews with prostitutes, ex-cons, and addicts will likely suffer the same fate.  We expect religion to make us feel better without asking too much of us.  But we also expect it to uphold conventional notions of propriety and morality.  No funeral dirges, but not too much dancing either.

The people of Jesus’ day were much more religious than most of us are.  Unlike us, they did not separate out parts of life, work, government, etc. from the religious sphere.  But for all their religiousness, both John and Jesus proved problematic for them, as they still do.

The words “religion” and “religious” are words with a lot of meaning, connotation, and baggage.  On the one hand they can speak of the innate human drive and desire most of us have to draw near, to connect with the divine.  But “religion” and “religious” also speak of the systems we devise to put God’s seal of approval on the things we like.  This religion features athletes praying for their team to win.  It is the easy alliance of faith with the flag as congregations wax patriotic in the middle of worshipping God.  It is being good and respectable and imagining that God likes us more because of it.

Our innate religious desire to know God can help open us to God’s presence in Jesus, but the religious systems we devise and manage are often offended by the genuine presence of God, whether thundered by John or mediated through the amazing grace of Jesus.

And somehow that brings me back around to my questions about what makes for a good job or a good life, both profoundly religious questions.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I think Jesus helps answer my questions about a good job and good life, but it is easy to misunderstand him.  Our culture’s understanding of “easy” is too much about ease, doing nothing, expending no effort.  We’ve forgotten other meanings of “easy;” pleasant, relaxing, not overly hurried.  Easy on the eye, easy to wear, and easy read, none of which imply no effort.

And the Bible translators might have helped us more as well.  The word they translate as “easy” more often means suitable, useful, worthy, or good.  And to my ear, suitable, worthy work sounds like a calling, a vocation.  Jesus isn’t calling us to a Lazy Boy faith practiced with feet up and remote control in hand.  He is inviting us to follow him and discover the work, and the life, that truly suits us, that we are called to, that is our vocation.

But very often, conventional religion fails to drawn us into the life Jesus desires for us.  Churches too often have traded discipleship for belief and membership.  We have made faith more about doctrines, creeds, and heaven than about following Jesus.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke suits you, is just right for you,  and my burden is light.”

Take on Jesus’ yoke and learn from him.  Think about the work Jesus did, the way he lived.  His life certainly wasn’t “easy” in the sense that we usually use that word.  But his life was precisely who he was supposed to be, the life he was meant for, that fit him to a tee.

What is the work and the life that you are meant for, that fits you to a tee?  Jesus says that you learn it from him, from his teachings and from the example of his life.

Most of us know someone who has a miserable job, maybe even a miserable life.  They put in the minimum at work, arriving as late as possible, doing as little as possible, and leaving as early as possible.  But I have seen such people go on a mission trip and throw themselves into their work.  They work all day long in rough conditions and oppressive weather and don’t seem to be least bit exhausted by all their effort.  Perhaps they have discovered what Jesus means by “easy.”

Who are you supposed to be?  What are you supposed to do?  What sort of work and life really suits you, fits you to a tee?  If you’re wondering at all, Jesus has some interesting thoughts on the subject.

Sunday Sermon audio - Who Are You Meant To Be?

Spiritual Hiccups - What Prevents Us?

I learned the story from today's reading in Acts as a young boy.  I suppose the elements of Philip running alongside the chariot and such made for a good Bible Story.  The baptism of the Ethiopians eunuch was also one the first reports of people from outside Judaism becoming followers of Jesus.  My impression is that this story is reasonably well known among church folk.  But for much of my life I never appreciated the significance of that eunuch's question, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?"

I grew up in North and South Carolina at a time when Christian faith was almost a given.  Given such a setting, it was hard for me to appreciate the barriers that might have prevented that Ethiopian eunuch from being baptized.  To begin with, he wasn't Jewish, and during the First Century, the fledgling Church had a huge internal fight about how to receive such folks.  For a while the view was they had to become Jewish first, being circumcised if they were male, adopting the Jewish dietary restrictions, and so on.  It took quite some time, probably not until after Paul's death, that the Church in Jerusalem came around to the idea of people being baptized without first converting to Judaism.

But that wasn't the only problem for this eunuch.  The Old Testament forbade eunuchs from being a part of "the assembly of the LORD."  There are also Old Testament verses excluding foreigners.  And so the eunuchs question, "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" might well have been answered, "Quite a few things, I'm afraid."

This passage in Acts clearly depicts a new day when old exclusions no longer apply.  The baptism of this eunuch enacts the prophecy of Isaiah 56 that envisions a new day when foreigners and eunuchs are welcome, a day when God's house becomes "a house of prayer for all peoples."

It is very difficult for us, so far removed from the situation of the early Church, to appreciate what a huge step it was to get beyond all that might well have prevented that eunuch from being baptized.  It is hard for us to realize the dissension and infighting that occurred when a few Christian missionaries began ignoring the official barriers and baptized foreigners, Gentiles, even eunuchs.

I am inclined to think that issues around gay ordination and the Church's relationship to LGBT people are our own struggling with the eunuch's question, "What is to prevent?.."  But beyond these struggles, I wonder if the Church doesn't have many other issues that prevent us from reaching out to the world around us.  Much like early Jewish Christians who assumed that being Jewish was a fundamental part of the faith, a lot of us assume that being Christian is fundamentally rooted in "going to church" on Sunday where there is a choir, hymns are sung, and a preacher delivers a sermon.

I wonder how often we in the traditional church might have the opportunity to help someone who, in some way, is wondering, "What is to prevent me from becoming a part of this Jesus thing?"  And I wonder how often our own assumptions get in the way and prevent us from being much help.  I sure hope I would not have answered that eunuch by rattling off the prohibitions that prevented me from baptizing him.

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Spiritual Hiccups - What Pleases God

Both of this morning's psalms are songs of praise, and the second has verses that speak of God taking no delight in the strength of the horse or the speed of the runner (perhaps in our day it should say the power of our tanks and aircraft or the prowess of our soldiers), "but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,in those who hope in his steadfast love."

If you've ever spend much time with a Bible, you've surely seen it recommend "the fear of the Lord." Sometimes people try to say that this doesn't speak of being frightened of God but rather of awe. That is true to a point, But the Bible does think that God's presence is genuinely terrifying. All those places where God or God's emissary says, "Fear not," to someone who has just hit the deck are not telling the person she shouldn't have bowed down in fear. Instead it's more of a "Don't worry, I come in peace," sort of statement.

Of course Jesus does seem to soften God's image a bit.  But Jesus didn't get executed because he was so sweet and nice.  He terrified people enough that they had to get rid of him.

I wonder sometimes if we haven't so domesticated God that awe, much less fear, is nearly impossible for us.  Some Christians seem to have made God such a BFF (an online term meaning best friends forever) that the relationship sounds like something between a couple of 12 year old girls.  Some of these folks are so downright perky about God that it leaves me feeling a bit ill, but that's my personal problem.  And while there are plenty of Christians who envision a God who is more than happy to send millions of folks off to hell for eternity, this God is only dangerous to other people, never to them.

I'm not wishing for any sort of fire and brimstone God here, but surely any God who can create galaxies and black holes, whose vastness is beyond our understanding, yet wins victory via a cross, has to be a little intimidating.

Perhaps it's just me and my Presbyterian upbringing, but I worry sometimes about having rationalized and theologized God into a concept or an idea.  And such things exist only in the abstract.  Ideas and concepts can certainly be powerful.  They can lead to great good or great evil.  But ultimately, they are under the control of those who come up with them.  I doubt that can be said of a real God.

Sometimes I wish that God would be a bit more obvious with me, maybe even scare me a bit.  Sometimes I think it might help my faith immeasurably to tremble in the presence of a the Eternal Almighty.  And according to the psalm, God might enjoy it, too.

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