Spiritual Hiccups - God Can't Be Very Happy

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
     whose hope is in the LORD their God, 
who made heaven and earth,
     the sea, and all that is in them;
        who keeps faith forever;
     who executes justice for the oppressed;
        who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets the prisoners free; 
     the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. 
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
     the LORD loves the righteous. 
The LORD watches over the strangers;
     he upholds the orphan and the widow,
     but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.    (from Psalm 146)

Like most parents, I love my children.  I want the best for them.  If they were in a difficult situation, I would be "on their side."  But being on their side is not the same thing as supporting whatever they do.  Thankfully my experiences with this have been of the minor variety, but loving a child sometimes means saying "No."  It sometimes means correcting or even punishing.

Most parents, and even lots of children, can appreciate what I'm saying.  Yet very often we Christians seem quite unable to receive correction from God.  Christians of all stripes tend to latch on to a portion of the biblical message and then claim God's blessing and sanction for their side.  The stereotype, to which there is some truth, is of liberal Christians focusing on loving and helping others while ignoring issues of purity and morality, while conservative Christians do the reverse.  And at times, both sides can be rather arrogant in their claim to be the ones right with God.

But at the risk of making that same mistake myself, I feel the need to comment on the political right's frequent claim to be in God's camp.  I have no problem with them speaking openly about their faith and how it impacts their politics.  If their faith had no bearing on their politics it would strike me as a pretty meaningless faith.  But for politicians to publicly wrap themselves in Christian faith and then actively pursue policies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor cannot be pleasing to the God of the Bible.  One has to read the Bible in an incredibly selective manner to miss how much God is on the side of the poor and oppressed.  I cannot recall any passages where God promises to help the rich get more, but I can recall quite a few that promise to topple the rich and powerful and have them exchange places with the poor and weak.

Besides all this, those who would speak for God should expect to be held to higher standard.  Pastors aren't any "better" or less sinful than other folks, but because we so often proclaim God publicly, it becomes very important for our lives not to undermine our proclamation.  The same sort of thing applies to politicians who wrap themselves in their faith.  And those who invoke the Christian mantle as a key element of their political service imply that their policy positions are somehow sanctioned by God.  But just as I would be very upset if a child of mine did something wrong and said, "My father said I could," I think God is probably pretty worked up about  the behavior of some folks who say, "God supports what I'm doing."

No doubt all of us upset God on this account from time to time, but Jesus and the biblical prophets  reserves their harshest criticism for those who wear their faith conspicuously while failing to care for those they deem "beneath them."

But finally, I wonder if God is not most upset with the Church.  For it is the Church which has fostered a faith that easily claims the label Christian without opening a Bible or learning what Jesus commands us to do.  Jesus' last words to the Church in Matthew's gospel are about making disciples of all people, "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."  But the Church has substituted, "Believe in Jesus, come to worship now and then, and drop a little money in the plate."  God can't be very happy with us.

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Sermon video - Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

Sermon also available on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - Generation to Generation

Today's psalm speaks of one generation lauding God's works to another. That makes perfect sense. Generations generally try to pass down what they deem important to the next. Children more often than not learn the things that really matter to their parents. In my suburban neighborhood, it is almost unheard of for a child not to attend college. A college education is simply expected and a child has to really go against the grain to go into the workforce straight out of high school.

The parents I know wouldn't dream of allowing their children to drop out of school at age 16. Many require their children to participate in sports or other extra curricular activities. But when it comes to faith, many parents I know, even ones who are very active in church life, leave say that issues related to faith are a personal choice that they leave to the children. The age when they allow children to decide for themselves about faith participation varies, but I often see it as young as 10 or 11.

Now obviously the time comes in every child's life when religious participation becomes his or her choice. But I wonder what it says about the faith of previous generations that so many do so little to pass that faith down. In fact, I'm not so much arguing for more forced attendance at Sunday School as I'm wondering about how insignificant faith must be in many of our lives based on how little we attempt to pass it on.

When I look at some of my own failings at handing down the faith, it doesn't so much cause me to question my parenting as it calls me to carefully consider how central faith is to my own life. What about yours?

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Sermon audio - Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

Sermon text - Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Jesus Is Lord and Other Subversive Statements

James Sledge                                         August 21, 2011

“Praise the Lord!  Jesus is Lord!”  These phrases roll easily off the tongues of Christians.  But for many of us, Lord is a peculiarly religious word.  We know that England has a House of Lords.  We’ve watched movies where people say to the king, “Yes, my Lord,”  or seen Sith lords in Star Wars.  We’ve heard of people “lording” it over someone.  But “lord” is not a part of our everyday language.  And so it often never occurs to us what a politically charged and even subversive statement it once was to say, “Jesus is Lord.”

In the days when Christian faith was born, there were others who claimed the title Lord, Caesar in particular.  It was common for people in the Roman empire to greet one another with the words, “Caesar is Lord.”  And so for the very first Christians, to say, “Jesus is Lord,” not only employed a term Jews had used for centuries as a deferential substitute for God’s personal name, it also stood as a direct challenge to the authority of the emperor.

The question of who is actually lord, to whom we owe total allegiance and obedience, is often a critical one for people of faith.  The faith statements that make up our denomination’s Book of Confessions include “The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” a rather cumbersomely named document in which German Christians took issue with their Nazi government’s claim to be lord over certain aspects of life.  The Declaration was written by Lutheran, Reformed, (that’s us) and other Christians who were troubled by the arrangement the state Lutheran Church had made with the Nazis, an arrangement that said Jesus was Lord over spiritual matters but the state was Lord over the realm of blood and iron.  The Declaration flatly rejected the idea that “there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords.” 

This insistence that Jesus alone was Lord, over and against Nazi claims to be lords over the political and military realms, was a dangerous statement, one likely to be seen as subversive by Nazi officials. 

And in that sense it was not unlike those first Christians saying, “Jesus is Lord” when others said it was Caesar.

Living as though Jesus or God is Lord can easily put people in conflict with others who would claim that title.  Like Caesar, Pharaoh claimed to be Lord, and he demanded absolute obedience.  And Lord Pharaoh said to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, that they must kill all the Hebrew baby boys when they are born.  But the midwives feared God.  That’s the Bible’s way of saying they thought God’s claim to be Lord trumped Pharaoh’s.  Despite the awesome power Pharaoh wielded, Shiphrah and Puah were sure that God was Lord.  But that was a dangerous stance to take.

The midwives’ defiance undermines Pharaoh briefly, but he still insists, “I am Lord!”  And he commands that every Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile and drowned.  But our story tells us of one mother who will not acknowledge Pharaoh’s claim to be Lord.  She hides her young son, and then devises a plan to preserve his life, a plan to circumvent Pharaoh’s claim that he is Lord.  But it is a dangerous business to challenge Pharaoh’s claim.

In one of the Bible’s more famous stories, this mother waterproofs a papyrus basket, places her son in it, puts it where she knows that the baby will be found, and strategically places her daughter to observe what happens. 

One of Pharaoh’s own daughters spots the child.  She recognizes right away that this is one of the Hebrew children, one of the boys under a death sentence from Lord Pharaoh, her father.  But for some reason, Pharaoh’s own daughter now denies that he is Lord.  She takes pity on the little boy and even joins in the very transparent little conspiracy with the baby’s sister and mother to defy Pharaoh. 

We have sometimes turned this into the cute story of baby Moses in the bulrushes, but this is dangerous, subversive business these women are engaged in.  Ancient kings and Pharaoh’s often thought little of killing one of their own children if that child challenged the authority of her father and Lord.

As the story of Moses unfolds, we will learn that God has big plans for him.  He will be a critical component in God’s plans to free Israel from slavery and establish them in the land of promise.  But the story of Moses is possible only because of the subversive behavior of certain women who refuse to recognize Pharaoh’s claim to be Lord.  Some may do so out of their strong Jewish faith while the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter seems to recognize God’s lordship unwittingly.  But regardless, only because these women engage in the dangerous business of challenging Pharaoh does Moses have a story at all.

For some reason, the story of this God of ours is bound up in our stories.  When God calls Abraham and Sarah, there is the explicit promise, In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.  When the grown up Moses meets God at the burning bush, God says, “The cry of the Israelites has come to me.  I have seen how the Egyptians oppress them.  So come, I will send you to Pharaoh.”  Jesus says that when we encounter the sick and the poor and the hungry, we encounter him.  And the Bible says that we are the body of Christ, that God’s love and touch comes through us.  The divine story is all tangled up with ours, and very often it can move forward only in those moments when people challenge and defy others who claim to be Lord.

One of the curious things about current day America is how one of our most popular lords has become the individual.  American notions of freedom and individualism have gradually been perverted into the notion of “the autonomous self.”  I alone am lord and master of my life.  And so it becomes increasingly difficult for politicians to act for the good of the whole or for voters to elect representatives who will do so because as autonomous selves, we are answerable to no one but ourselves.  And so we simply seek our own good.  We want low taxes but all of the benefits we enjoy.  Cuts must fall to someone else.  And there is no lord greater than ourselves to say to us, “You must sacrifice for the good of the neighbor!” at least none that we will listen to.

Christians say that Jesus is Lord, but we have become quite practiced at ignoring what Jesus actually says.  We have faith that Jesus will bless us or get us to heaven, but our lord is our own wants, desires, or preferences.  And we dare anyone, even Jesus, to tell us otherwise. 

But perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether we’re really cut out for this lord business.  To borrow a popular phrase, “How’s that working out for you?”

Seems to me that in a world where everyone is his or her own lord, we are becoming more and more fractured, more and more divided, less and less able to build community or a society that is good for all.  We cluster in groups of like-minded folks, and we often do not play well with others.  We get caught up in the animosities of your group versus my group. As lord, my views are and those of my group are right, and yours are wrong.  Making things better requires my winning and your losing, and so working together with those who differ from me becomes almost impossible.

But into this hopeless situation the faint memory echoes.  “God is sovereign.  Jesus is Lord.”  In Christ, God is moving history and creation toward God’s purposes.  But in the strange ways of God, this usually requires people to challenge and subvert those others who claim to be Lord.  This is often risky business, but in every age there are people of faith who rise to the task.  There are politicians who will say “No!” to self-serving ideologies and agendas of their own party.  There are people who will stand up to power and say, “God will judge us by how we treat the poor and the needy.”  In every age there are those who will say, “No nation or ideology or political party or religious tradition or economic system is Lord.  Jesus is Lord!  And I will defy any and all other lords to serve him.”

And each time that happens, the hope of something better draws a bit nearer; the dawn of God’s future shines just a little brighter. 

Spiritual Hiccups - Not Far from the Kingdom

Surely these are some of the better known words of Jesus.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength... You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  Jesus is quoting from Scripture, what Christians now call the Old Testament, in response to the question,  “Which commandment is the first of all?”  But Jesus seems unable to give just one commandment.  Two are required to give an adequate synopsis of life as God intends.

Jesus has forever linked these two loves: love of God and love of neighbor.  And when the scribe who has asked Jesus the question agrees with Jesus, adding that these two loves are much more important than all the typical sort of rituals and activities associated with religion, Jesus says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

Not far from the Kingdom.  That's a remarkable statement.  There is nothing here about faith statements or believing in Jesus.  Rather loving God and loving neighbor are the critical components of drawing near to the Kingdom.

In Mark's gospel, Jesus' very first words are, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news."  The good news of the kingdom requires a repentance, a reorienting of life that is expressed in a life shaped by these love of God and neighbor.  And Jesus insists that this unnamed scribe has understood the good news of the kingdom because he realizes what kingdom life looks like: love of God and love of neighbor.

Somewhere along the way, Christian faith began to emphasize belief to such a degree that love became secondary.  Though rarely articulated, many Christians find it perfectly acceptable to profess their faith while not showing the least bit of love to their neighbors.  In fact, many Christians find it acceptable to hate their neighbor if that neighbor is different from them or disagrees with them, or if caring for that neighbor might entail any personal sacrifice.

For those of us who want to claim the label "Christian," what is it that allows us to make that claim?  Can "believing" in Jesus make us Christian if we will not live as Jesus calls us to do?  If Jesus cannot speak of loving God without including loving neighbor, can we be God's people without embodying both these loves?

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Spiritual Hiccups - Naming Rights

“Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Some of us are more familiar with this line as, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars..."  It is a familiar phrase that often gets inserted into discussions about people's relationships and loyalty to church and state.  But I don't think Jesus is talking about how the faithful relate to the government. 

Jesus never really answers his opponents' question about paying taxes.  He simply asks them to produce a coin, which they do.  He asks whose head and name are on it, and they tell him.  But I think the translators mislead us here in that Jesus actually asks "Whose image is this?"  It's the same word used in the Greek version of the Genesis story where God creates humankind in God's "image."  The question about image carries with it implications of ownership.  (By the way, the Pharisees are violating their own teachings by having this Roman coin with a graven image of the emperor on it.  Jesus has already one-upped them as soon as they pull out the coin.)

We are quite familiar with people putting their names on things.  Designer clothes sometimes have initials or a crest of the maker, allowing everyone to know that you are wearing something by that designer.  Corporations pay big dollars for "naming rights" to stadiums and sporting events.  But some venues and sporting events resist this trend.  The Masters gold tournament won't sell its naming rights.  For whatever reasons, it does not want its identity muddied by another name.

According to the Bible, we humans bear, in some way, the image of God.  And as Christians, we are marked by our baptisms.  We acquire a new identity as we are joined to Christ.  You might say that God has double naming rights on Christians.  It is part of our nature and it is stamped on us a second time in baptism.  Although perhaps none of that is necessary in that Scripture also tells us,  The earth is Yahweh's and all that is in it." 

So when Jesus says we are to give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and to God what belongs to God, it's not clear to me how much the emperor is going to get out of that deal.

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Spiritual Hiccups - I've Had Enough

Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
    for we have had more than enough of contempt. 
Our soul has had more than its fill
    of the scorn of those who are at ease,
    of the contempt of the proud.      Psalm 123:3-4

When someone says, "I've had enough.  I can't do this anymore," it can mean a lot of different things depending on the situation of the one who says it.  I imagine that most all of us occasionally feel we are at wits end, that we cannot continue as things currently are.  Perhaps we have been trying very hard to do something we think is worthwhile, but we have made no real progress.  We feel our efforts are in vain, that we have not drawn any supporters to our cause, and we are ready to fold.

Perhaps we have tried to make a difference in our community, to make it a better place, but those who have power or control purse strings have thwarted us, and we are ready to give up.

But when I read the words of this morning's psalm, speaking of "the scorn of those who are at ease," this complaint seems to come from the poor.  Certainly the psalmist cannot be counted among the well off.  And that got me to wondering about how a poor person in our day might speak as the psalmist does.  "Have mercy on us, God.  The wealthy blame us for our own poverty.  Now they blame us for the nation's debt and say we should not get help with food or healthcare.  We have had more than enough of their contempt.  We can no longer bear the scorn of those who live in fine homes, drive expensive cars, and live lives of ease."

Me, sometimes I've had more than enough of a society that wants to label itself "Christian" without feeling compelled to offer healing, good news to the poor, and release to the captives, the very things that mark Jesus' ministry.

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Sermon video - Tradition, Boundaries, and Grace

Sermons also available on YouTube.

Sermons also available on YouTube.

Spiritual Hiccups - Jesus, the Troublemaker

Today's gospel reading of Jesus "cleansing the temple" is a famous event in his life.  In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), this event seems to galvanize plans to kill Jesus, although in John it happens at the beginning of his ministry.  (I never understood how biblical literalists accounted for this difference.)  But as well known as it is, I think there are some misconceptions.  Jesus' cleansing activity is not in the temple building jtself but within the larger temple complex, part of its courtyards and grounds.  And I'm not sure the people he drives out are very different from the volunteer that runs a little bookstore off the church lounge or the Presbyterian Women selling tickets to win a quilt.  In fact, the people Jesus goes after are more "necessary" than these modern folks.  They were helping out of town pilgrims acquire animals for sacrifice or exchange Roman coins for acceptable coins without idolatrous images of Caesar on them.

This story sometimes makes me wonder about the "business of the church."  Many congregations are significant little enterprises with endowments, investments, and fundraisers.  I get advertising all the time promising to help us increase giving from our members.  And a lot of this material is pure marketing.  I don't know that this is bad, per se, but it still gives me pause when I think of Jesus overturning the tables of folks who were engaged in activities that I probably would have voted for if I had been on the governing board at the temple.

Jesus was quite the troublemaker.  Makes me wonder what he might do if he showed up at our little church enterprise.

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Sunday Sermon text - Tradition, Boundaries, and Grace

Matthew 15:10-28

Tradition, Boundaries, and Grace

James Sledge                                               August 14, 2011

Over the last few decades, many congregations have gone through intense struggles over worship styles, and especially over music in worship.  There is even a name for it: “The Worship Wars.”  I went to amazon.com and typed in the term “worship wars” and it immediately showed me seven books with “worship war” in the title, along with others that had something to say about these wars.

Our experience with the worship wars has been pretty low grade here at Boulevard.  For whatever reason, this congregation seems more open to a little experimentation in worship than some others.  But that’s not to say we’ve never had any skirmishes.  When I first arrived in Columbus, I occasionally heard disparaging remarks about “those people who worship in the basement.”  That they said “basement” rather than “Fellowship Hall” says a lot.

And on those summers when we’ve combined our two services, we have sometimes upset folks who want the organ and not the keyboard.  Others thought that using a screen to project words obscured the beauty of the sanctuary.  And some who were used to worshiping in the Fellowship Hall, now chapel, found sanctuary worship too rigid and stifling.

Regardless of worship style, no matter what sort of building or architecture, whatever the elements of a worship service, these quite necessarily become bearers of holiness for those who use them.  If in any way people draw near to God in worship, then of course the elements and appointments of that worship take on a sense of the sacred.

Congregations don’t have fights over carpet colors in the sanctuary or where to put the flowers or what songs to sing because they obsess over the trivial but because worship is important to them.  Every denomination’s, every congregation’s worship traditions, and other traditions as well, are connected to their faith.  And so it is hardly surprising that anything which messes with these traditions is highly suspect.

Tradition issues set the context for our gospel reading this morning. 

Before Jesus heads out to the district of Tyre and Sidon, some of the Pharisees and scribes come to him, bothered by his disciples’ cavalier attitude toward religious tradition, particularly ritual hand washing.  Now ritual washing is about as foreign to us as electric guitars or pipe organs to First Century Jews, but these rituals were an important part of how many Jews tried to maintain a spiritual purity before God.  For a variety of reasons, they had become a significant focus, and ignoring these traditions probably offended the Pharisees in much the same way some of us would be bothered if someone came to worship in ragged cut-offs and a tank top.  And so these religious leaders asked Jesus, “Why?”

Jesus’ response is to blast the Pharisees and scribes for thinking that honoring their particular traditions is the same as honoring God.  He calls them hypocrites and quotes Isaiah to them.  “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

Jesus then turns to the crowds and tells them that neglecting purity rituals doesn’t make one impure.  Religious impurity comes from their words and their actions.

Then Jesus heads out to Tyre and Sidon where he encounters a Canaanite woman, and here the story gets a little strange.  Jesus has just spoken about how traditions can make us hypocrites, yet he proceeds to treat this Gentile woman according to the standard traditions and stereotypes of his day.  And what comes from his mouth seems beyond cruel.

Women were not supposed to approach men publicly, and Jews did not associate with Gentiles to begin with, and so a traditional Jew would not have been at all surprised by how Jesus reacts.  He does not even acknowledge the woman.  But the woman only increases her untraditional, anti-social behavior, following after Jesus and yelling.  The disciples are offended by her behavior and ask Jesus to shoo her away.

At which point, ignoring the woman becomes the nicest thing Jesus does.  Now he not only says that he is sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, but he calls the woman a dog, a typical Jewish slur for Canaanites.  Jesus seems as caught up in his culture’s traditions about women and outsiders as the Pharisees are caught up in theirs about ritual purity.

But then the woman responds to Jesus’ slight about being a dog, turning it on its ear to claim that even dogs should get a little something from the master’s table.  It is a stunning exchange.  No one ever matches wits with Jesus and comes out on top.  Priests and Pharisees and scribes and all sorts of learned religious figures try and always lose.  But now a Gentile, Canaanite woman with an unclean, demon possessed daughter goes toe to toe with Jesus, and Jesus can only say, “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.” 

To be honest, I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with this piece of Scripture.  How can it be that Jesus, the Son of God, needs to be instructed on God’s grace, needs to have his boundaries expanded?  How can he speak to her as he does after just teaching about impurity that comes out of the mouth?  Indeed some commentators suggest that this an enacted parable by Jesus.  If so, I guess that lets Jesus seem nicer, but it all still seems strange to me. 

And it’s even more curious that Matthew places this story in the context of Jesus blasting the Pharisees over how their traditions created boundaries to God’s grace, how impurity came from one’s words.  But then again these were issues for Matthew’s own congregation.  His Jewish church was increasingly adding Gentile members, and not without some real clashes over traditions and purity.

But I keep coming back to this unnamed, unclean, Canaanite woman whom Jesus calls a dog.  She has broken propriety and tradition to get to Jesus.  She has acted in ways that simply were not done, and when Jesus insults her and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that he has other priorities and is not going to help her, she dares to argue with him, to challenge him.  And Jesus’ assessment of her behavior?  “Woman, great is your faith!” 

And I can’t help but wonder what that says to those of us for whom faith is conventional, tried and true, connected to the habits and practices we grew up with.  Many of us who grew up in the church have picked up lots of assumptions of what worship looks like, what faith looks like, and even assumptions about how God should and would act.  But what happens when God’s grace is bigger than we ever imagined?

If you have a lot invested in a particular faith tradition, in a particular way of doing things, then I suppose it might seem a little threatening to hear that God’s love and grace are bigger than you had imagined, that the boundaries are not where you thought they were.  But if you have ever wondered whether or not you are important enough to matter to God, if you have ever wondered whether God is concerned about you or longs to connect with you, then the idea that God’s tender love and grace has so little respect for boundaries that even Jesus seems surprised, sounds like absolutely wonderful news to me.