Spiritual Hiccups - Something to Eat

So we need something more than bread.  Even manna won't do, at least according to Jesus in the gospel of John.  One thing I've learned about reading John's gospel is that taking him literally usually leads you astray.  That's what happens with Nicodemus in the famous "born again" passage.  Nick hears "born again," the literal meaning of Jesus' words, which is why he asks about getting back in the womb.  But Jesus is talking about a spiritual rebirth, a birth "from above."  (Bible translators have to decide whether to put "born again" or "born from above" in this passage, but either call makes the conversation somewhat difficult to understand.)

And so when Jesus speaks of "eating his flesh and drinking his blood," it's a good bet that hearing him literally will lead us astray.  That his opponents do understand him literally is also a clear sign that we should not.  Allusions to the Lord's Supper are surely intended here, even though John's gospel does not include Jesus establishing this sacrament.  The fact that Jesus is "the Word made flesh" may also play into this.  God's wisdom, God's creative Word, is available to us in Jesus, who will "abide" in us.  And abiding is the same language Jesus uses to speak of the gift of the Spirit.

His flesh may also refer to the life he gives up on the cross, his saving death.  Here John Calvin makes the interesting observation that flesh, which is normally destined to die and decay, becomes, in Jesus, the source of eternal life. Jesus' fleshy human body, the very body that eventually fails each of us, becomes the way in which God becomes present to and in us.

I don't think I've begun to exhaust the many ways to hear Jesus' words on eating his flesh, words that are rather jarring at first glance.  And perhaps there is a good lesson here on sitting with Jesus' words a while rather than rushing to decide what they mean or what they report.  Literalist readings of Scripture fail us here just as Jesus Seminar type attempts to recover what the historical Jesus actually said.  New life in Jesus will not come from believing the Bible word for word or from distilling an accurate historical picture.  It will come from an encounter with the Word, the vital, living, creative, logos of God.  And this Word will never quite fit in the boxes we create for it.

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Spiritual Hiccups - No Heaven When We Die?

It is interesting how Christian thought on life after death gradually diverged from the thinking of biblical writers.  Many, if not most, Christians think in terms of going to heaven when they die.  In fact, this has become the normative understanding of resurrection for many.  But that is not the thinking of the Apostle Paul, nor does it fit well with what Jesus speaks in today's gospel when he says that "the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out — those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation."

Jesus here follows typical Jewish thinking on the resurrection.  It was something that happened at the end of the age when all the dead would be raised.  Paul speaks in the same manner when he talks about what happens at "the coming of the Lord."  When that day arrives Christ will come from heaven "and the dead in Christ will rise first."  Presumably they have simply been dead until this point.

Jesus' own resurrection was understood as a sign that the new age was arriving.  What had happened to him was a foreshadowing of what would happen to those who had died.  His was the pattern: dead and in the grave, then resurrection.  Jesus' soul did not float off to heaven when he died.  (A wonderful discussion on resurrection and heaven can be found in N. T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope.)

But as I think about the gospel lesson this morning, I'm less concerned at the moment with getting a doctrine of resurrection correctly formulated and more interested in how beliefs with scant biblical evidence can become so central, so beloved, and so impervious to any challenge.  Indeed suggesting that people don't go to heaven when they die will get you labeled a heretic by many.

Where do our most cherished articles of faith come from?  How did we acquire them and what is it that confirms them for us?  If we somehow experience Jesus in our life, does that mean everything we think about Jesus and faith is true?  In 1 John it says, "We know that (Jesus) abides in us by the spirit that he has given us."  But the letter immediately adds, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see which are from God."  It seems that experiencing a spiritual presence is no guarantee.

One need only look at the incredible number of Christian denominations, most of them the product of disagreements over belief and practice, to recognize that people of deep faith can't seem to agree on lots of important issues.  How to use the Bible, how salvation works, the role of women, when and how to baptize, who gets "saved," works versus faith, and what happens during the Lord's Supper; these are but a fraction of the issues that divide us.  And either one of the many denominations has gotten it figured out just right (meaning the rest of us are all wrong), or all of us are wrong about some things.

I want to suggest two seemingly contradictory things.  What we believe is important, and we should work very hard to understand and refine our beliefs and theology.  This is our guard against beliefs and practices that are little more than habits that suit us and feel comfortable.  I'm not sure there is any such thing as a generic Christian, at least not one of much substance.  But at the same time, we must recognize that our very best efforts at theology and practice fall short.  Any arrogance that too quickly dismisses others because they don't agree with us has forgotten how we see "dimly" and "know only in part," to borrow from Paul.

Are you planning on heaven when you die?  Is that a primary concern of Christian faith, or a secondary one?  Where did you get your answers to such questions?  And would you consider rethinking such answers if doing so drew you deeper into life with Christ? 

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Spiritual Hiccups - Don't Worry, Be 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.

Psalm 146:5-7

If I'm not as happy as I'd wish, I may have just found the problem.  I like to think that I'm in good with God, that I'm attuned to Jesus' call, but the fact is that my help and my hope are often elsewhere.  I may not put my "trust in princes" as Psalm 146 warns against, but I have a laundry list of things that get in line ahead of God.

I have to admit that I've bought into the consumerist gospel and think I'll be happy if I have a few more nice things.  But "enough" is always just a bit beyond my reach which leads to typical "If only..." statements about winning the lottery or experiencing some other sort of financial windfall.

And like a lot of Americans, I long for political leadership that will fix things and make them better. Maybe this is our version of "trust in princes."  We imagine there is someone who will do the trick.  But things rarely work out as well as we hope, and so the political pendulum can swing quickly.  We're often ready to fire our princes in the manner of football coaches who don't turn a losing team around fast enough.

Speaking of football coaches, Urban Meyer, the new coach here in Columbus, has sparked a few letters to the editor around his plans to offer optional Bible studies and chapel services for his players.  I'm not really interested in the actual debate over this.  I'm more interested in an understanding of Christian faith that I saw in one of those letters to the editor.  The writer defended Myer's classes by saying, in part, "What's wrong with teaching young men not to steal, covet or lie, and to treat others as you would want to be treated?... Again, I ask, what is the progressives' problem with a dynamic role model, a coach, teaching moral principles based on the Bible?"

I know nothing about this fellow's religious beliefs, but I feel comfortable saying that many "Christians"understand faith along the lines of his letter.  Faith means believing in God/Jesus and being more or less moral.  And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with totally trusting your life to God/Jesus.  Believing and being good is not at all what the psalm says leads to happiness or what Jesus says it means to follow him (self denial and taking up the cross for instance).

But while I go in for a little more serious version of faith than "believe and be good," we're talking a matter of degrees here.  And when I find myself worrying about happiness, or success, or why a new initiative at the church hasn't turned out like we hoped, Jesus often isn't really involved in the conversation.  It's all a matter of plans, strategy, abilities, technique, leadership, etc.  Things work when such things are good, but fail when they are poor.  And God doesn't seem to have a big role one way or another.

Jesus calls us to the difficult work of discipleship.  He commands us to teach people to do all that he has commanded, so obviously it matters what we do.  But he also promises to be with us, and to send the Spirit to strengthen and guide us.  So why are a great many of us working and trying so hard yet feeling so anxious?

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Sermon video - Leaving Where We Are

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Spiritual Hiccups - Not Convinced

Sometimes when I'm reading the passages from the Daily Lectionary, I find my mind wandering and I feel a bit zoned out.  This can be especially the case when a passage is very familiar to me, such as the passage from John this morning.  With passages such as this one, I can finish the reading and feel a bit like I sometimes do when I make the coffee in the morning.  I'll be sitting at the table reading the paper and have to get up to see if I turned the coffee pot on.  I usually have, but I don't remember doing it.

I'm suspicious that reading the Bible and not remembering what I just read is rooted partly in how I read it.  Thanks to my training as a pastor, it's difficult to read Scripture without at least thinking about how to preach it.  Is there an unusual twist or some theme that speaks to the congregation I serve?  Does something jump out at me I can use to motivate, call, or inspire the congregation?

Preaching is often used in an attempt to convince, and herein lies one of its great limitations.  Not that preaching shouldn't try to teach or convince, but I'm not sure anyone was ever convinced into faith.  Most of us would find it foolish for someone to marshal a good, convincing argument about why another person should fall in love with him. Love isn't necessarily irrational, but it is surely something other than rational... perhaps transrational?

Stories that lovers remember and tell, are not usually about convincing, though they may be helpful at times in evoking feelings that seem to have gone dormant.  Such stories often seem foolish or boring to others, and they may groan "Not again!" if one of these lovers starts to tell the story once more.  But that same story may be the two lovers' most prized possession.

Scripture is many things, but I think it works much better as lovers' cherished possession than it does as evidence for an argument.  Now how to get that in a sermon.

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Sermon - Leaving Where We Are

Mark 1:14-20 (Jonah 3:1-5, 10)

Leaving Where We Are

James Sledge                                                               January 22, 2012

How many of you here have ever gone fishing?  How many of you enjoy fishing, at least on occasion?  Fishing is like a lot of other things.  Some people like it, and some others don’t, but as a general rule, most people don’t think of fishing as something inherently evil.  I’m not aware of any Christian denomination that forbids its members from fishing.  I know that I’ve never written a prayer of confession for a worship service that said, “Lord forgive us for catching fish.” 

I raise this because, if I understand today’s gospel reading correctly, Simon, Andrew, James, and John all repent of fishing.  Now granted they were fishing for a living rather than as a hobby, but I’m not sure that makes much difference.  I don’t think that makes them any more sinful than a recreational fisherman.

And yet our gospel this morning depicts Jesus telling people, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”  And the very first action associated with this call to repent and believe is his calling some fisherman to follow him.  And immediately they repented and followed him.  It doesn’t actually say they repented, but that’s what happened.  They turned away from what they had been doing – fishing – left their nets, their boat, their father, and went with Jesus.  There might not be anything evil or sinful about fishing, but they walked away from it, something that may well have been the only way of life they had ever known.

Sermon audio - Leaving Where We Are

Leaving Where We Are - 1-22-12.mp3

Spiritual Hiccups - Banned in the Bible

Today's psalm asks who may come into God's presence, and the answer contains things we might expect, people who do what is right, who fear the LORD, who keep their word, who hate evil, and so on.  But the final attributes may surprise some.  They are those "who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent."

In Hebrew poetry, ideas are rhymed rather than words, and so in the Psalms you see verses that describe pairs, parallelisms.  And so the 23rd Psalm ends, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long." 

In this morning's psalm, the final pair links lending money at interest with taking bribes against the innocent.  Bankers have certainly taken a big public relations hit in recent years, but I don't think many of us associate making loans with bribery.  We may distrust big banks, but many of us know local bankers we consider pillars of the community.  But our psalm says those who lend money at interest may not enter God's presence, and it pairs them with those who take bribes to pervert justice.

If I were to employ Scripture the way people so often do, I would need to start a campaign to stamp out lending as we know it.  Perhaps I and any followers I could garner would make signs and protest outside of banks the way people protest against same-sex marriage.  After all, my group would be able to quote the Bible in the same fashion.

The fact is that Christians were generally forbidden to engage in banking for the first 1500 years of the faith.  (Jewish stereotypes related to finance and banking grew, in part, out of their doing this "despised" work that Christians could not.)  But 500 years ago, John Calvin argue persuasively for lending money at interest despite a biblical prohibition.  In a creative, innovative move that many may have trouble associating with their image of Calvin, he argued that borrowed money used to build factories that employed people and improved their lives was in keeping with the intent of the prohibition on lending.  That prohibition, he said, was there to protect the poor from being trapped by debt.  But if lending actually ended up helping the poor, then it produced the good that the ban on lending intended.

Just as an aside, it should be clear that lending which did trap people in poverty, or which did not seem to produce the sort of "good" the ban on lending intended, would not fit within Calvin's exception to the biblical ban.  But of course, once Calvin opened the door to lending, people soon forgot that it was an exception that had conditions.  And then they, and we, forgot that the Bible banned the practice in the first place.

All this is a long way of getting at how often we use the Bible to get the results we wish.  We find those verses that give ammunition to our causes, often employing them in a context totally different from the one is Scripture.  Much more rarely, if at all, do we read the Bible as a whole, listening to its overall witness.  That was what Calvin was trying to do when who came up with his exception to the ban on lending, but he was also influenced by the growing business need for capital in Geneva at that time.

I think that every Christian occasionally needs to assess his or her relationship with the Bible.  Is it a witness that points us to Jesus, revealing to us things we could never know otherwise?  Or do we simply believe what we believe - wherever that may have come from - and then cling to those Bible passages that fit with what we already hold dear? 

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Sermon video - When God Speaks

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Spiritual Hiccups - Unequal Partners

To you I lift up my eyes,
   O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants
   look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
   to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
   until he has mercy upon us.

Psalm 123:1-2

I was in an interesting discussion the other day about how Presbyterians are related to Scripture and to our tradition's faith statements.  I said something about entering into a conversation with both the Bible and our Book of Confessions, and spoke of being enriched by the give and take of this conversation.  But someone wondered about this image of a conversation with Scripture and tradition.  If I am a conversation partner, do my opinions carry the same weight as Scripture and tradition?  Do they speak to me with any "authority?"

That thought had not occurred to me.  In fact, I presumed that this "conversation" was not one among equals.  It is more like a student in conversation with a learned professor or novice speaking with a master craftsman.  It is akin to the relationship in today's psalm of servant to master.

But the person who wondered about my "conversation" imagery had good reason for concern.  It is quite typical for us to come to denominational teachings, and even to the Bible, as equals in the ensuing conversation.  We will listen, but we will also measure what we hear with what we think, and then we will dismiss what we don't agree with or do not like.  We all do this to some extent, cherry picking from the Bible - putting those passages we like in one basket and those passages we don't in another.  And then we store that second basked somewhere we seldom go.

But if God agrees with all my political stances and all my plans, that seems to me an almost certain indication that this is not God at all.  The God I meet in Jesus loves me where he finds me and embraces me even when others will not.  But he always calls me from that place to somewhere new.  And he calls me to become something new and different and more like him.  And while Jesus is happy to engage me in conversation over this, I do not think that conversation ever ends with Jesus saying, "You know, you're right.  Worry about yourself and let everyone else worry about themselves.  I did come so that you would be successful and happy, and if you accomplish that, I don't really care about any of that other stuff."

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Sermon audio - When God Speaks

Download mp3 of When God Speaks - 1-15-12

Sunday sermon - When God Speaks

1 Samuel 3:1-10

When God Speaks

James Sledge                                                              January 15, 2012

I’ve read this passage from First Samuel many times, and I think that every time I do, I’m struck by the line that says, The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.  The biblical writer could easily have left this line out.  It doesn’t really advance the story at all.  If it wasn’t there we would still have heard a story about the young Samuel hearing God calling but not realizing that it was God.  It’s almost a throw-away line, and yet there it is, and it never fails to grab my attention. 

As a child I thought it would have been great to live in biblical times when God was showing up all the time, talking to people, giving them visions.  It must have been exciting to live when God actually appeared in burning bushes and carved commandments onto stone tablets.  Not like today when God can seem awfully quiet.

But our Scripture reading for this morning sounds a lot like today.  The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.  There it is, straight from the Bible.  God could be awfully quiet back then, too.

God was quiet, and visions were rare.  I sometimes wonder if I would get the message if God sent me a vision.  I’m one of those people who almost never remember their dreams.  I’ve read that whether I remember them or not, I do dream.  But most of the time, you couldn’t prove it by anything I recall.  Which makes me wonder; if visions are like dreams and God appeared to me in a vision, would I remember it?

Of course it isn’t as though God hasn’t spoken or given visions in my lifetime.  Many of us recall a prophet who heard God’s voice and shared the word of the Lord with us.  I was only six years old when he spoke some of his most famous words.  I think I may have heard them on the news, but I’ve seen the speech so many times since that I can’t really trust my memory.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet if there ever was one, and God had called him and given him a vision to share.  Maybe it was because he was a prophet that he used the phrase, “I have a dream” over and over in that speech.  That part of the speech is pretty far in, near the end.  And if you lived in the South when Dr. King shared this vision, you know well that it was only a vision, a dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I know that there are some who may not have thought of Dr. King as a prophet.  Strangely enough, it doesn’t occur even to some who admire him.  You’re probably aware that a memorial to Dr. King opened last August in Washington, DC, located on the Tidal Basin between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials.  Before the dedication ceremony was cancelled because of the approach of Hurricane Irene, it was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, August 28^th.  I understand the desire to hold the dedication on the 48^th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, but the 11:00 a.m. times makes me wonder how many of the planners remembered that King heard God’s call as a church pastor.  Perhaps they’d forgotten the last line of the dream, which is a quote from another prophet, Isaiah.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

But just how was it that the prophet Martin heard the word of the Lord that called him into a struggle that would eventually get him killed?  How did he glimpse the vision that he shared in his I Have a Dream speech?  Perhaps he was better at remembering his dreams than I am, but how did he know which dream was from God?  How did he recognize God’s voice, especially considering how that voice called him to a task that would put his life in danger?

Samuel doesn’t recognize God’s voice in our reading today.  Our story depicts God repeatedly speaking to Samuel, but Sam didn’t know what God sounded like.  And so he assumed it was someone else, Eli.  Eli apparently did know what God sounded like, but even Eli took a while to figure out what was going on.  Who knows how the story might have turned out if Eli hadn’t been familiar with God.  What if Eli had just gotten upset and screamed, “Go to sleep and quit bothering me!”?

Have you ever heard God speaking to you?  Has God given you a vision, a dream that you are supposed to share with the world?  Most people I’ve asked such questions tell me, “No.”  Many of them think, like I did as a child, that the God who was forever speaking to biblical folks doesn’t really operate that way any longer.  We simply assume that God isn’t speaking now.  We think of biblical times as being different, like fairy tale times.  We imagine Bible stories opening with “Once upon a time when God was a lot more active.”  And we assume that the word of the Lord is rare, even nonexistent, to us.

But then here comes Samuel, who lived in those “Once upon a time” days, and yet the word of the Lord was rare then, too.  And he would not have recognized it at all had someone not told him how to do that.  And then there is Martin Luther King, Jr.  In a day when many assume God no longer speaks, he heard the Lord and saw a vision. 

I’m thinking that Samuel and Dr. King shared something in common.  Both of them had mentors who instructed them in how to hear the voice of God, how to be attuned to divine dreams.  Samuel had Eli.  Dr. King had many mentors, some whom we’ll never know.  There were Sunday School teachers, his parents, and wise elders in the church where he grew up.  These folks had tutored him in deep practices of prayer, time spent with God, time listening for God.  And of course there was Scripture itself.  Dr. King grew up listening to God in Scripture and was so deeply immersed in the Bible that the voice of God must have sounded almost familiar when it called him to be a prophet.

Who taught you to listen for God’s voice?  Did you recognize God’s voice when you first heard it?  Who taught you how a vision from God would look and feel?  And if you’ve not heard God, do you think that voice will sound familiar when God calls you?  God is still speaking, you know. 

There is a quote I share so often that many are likely sick of hearing it.  I can never recall who said it. It may have been Ed White or Roy Oswald from the Alban Institute.  One of them was talking about the difficulties facing Mainline congregations such as us Presbyterians, and he said, “People come to us seeking an experience of God, and we give them information about God.”  Perhaps I may paraphrase, “People come to us longing to hear God’s voice, and we give them information about God.” 

Even in a culture that seems more and more secular, people do long to hear God’s voice.  And who should be better at helping them than us.  After all, we say that we have been joined to Christ in baptism, that whenever two or three of us are gathered, Christ is here with us, and that each of us is given gifts from the Holy Spirit so that together, we become the living body of Christ.  Surely we should be able to help those who long to hear God.  And if not, then perhaps we need to be helping each other hone our own listening skills.

“Jeremy, Pat, Stephanie, Becky, Mary Ann, Bob, Adam, Carol, James…”  Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.