A Little Pruning

I cannot read today's gospel passage without thinking of my grandfather.  That's because some years ago a preached a sermon from this text that related a story about my grandfather and grapevines.  Until I left for seminary at age 35, I lived quite close to my grandfather.  After he suffered a stroke that left him mostly blind, I began growing my own garden in the huge plot he had on his 6 or 7 acre property.  And I would often take my older daughter with me when I went to work in the garden.

On one visit, we somehow began talking about all the grapevines that used to be on the property, and how I remembered my grandmother making muscadine and scuppernog jelly.  Most of the vines had been taken by a road widening, but there was one small grapevine near the house.  However it had not had grapes on it in years.  When I mentioned this my grandfather said that was because no one had been pruning it.

And thus began a project to produce grapes and make jelly again.  As Spring arrived my grandfather directed me in pruning the old grapevines.  He could not see well, but he could see well enough to encourage me to prune more and more.  I thought I was being pretty drastic in my whacking off huge sections, but he insisted more had to go.  By the time we were done, I had butchered the poor thing thoroughly.  I might even have wondered if I had damaged it.

Turns out my grandfather knew something about grapevines.  It wasn't long before new vines were traveling down the wires he had long ago strung between what looked like clothesline poles.  Then tiny bunches of grapes began to appear which eventually loaded the vines down with a bumper crop.  Later my grandmother helped me and four-year-old Kendrick make jelly with some of them.

It seems somewhat strange to me that those grapevines had stopped producing fruit because no one had pruned them.  They appeared healthy and were covered in new leaves and growth each year.  But no grapes. 

Jesus speaks of us as branches on the vine that need pruning.  Obviously Jesus knew something about grapevines because he speaks of pruning the branches that bear fruit so they will bear more.  And it makes me wonder about what needs pruning with me.  What needs to be pared back so that new and productive growth can emerge? 

And what about our congregations?  Congregations often can't bear to let go of anything no matter how long it's been since it was productive.  But if we let Jesus direct the pruning efforts, I wonder where would he say to us, "No, you need to cut off a good bit more." 

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Exclusive Claims

In today's gospel, Jesus utters one of those line-in-the-sand phrases.  "No one comes to the Father except through me."  It is a line sometimes drawn as a weapon in religious debates.  And those who wield it as such often assume that Jesus is making universal, absolute claims about can be saved, know God, etc.

It sure would be nice if we could ask the author of John's gospel his thoughts on what Jesus means, but of course we cannot.  But that doesn't mean we have no interpretive window where we might look for insights.  For example, it is typical for people in our day to think of Scripture as a way of communicating Christian faith to non-believers, and there are any number of organizations committed to getting Bibles to people as an evangelical strategy. But the first readers of John's gospel would not of have thought this way at all.

None of the New Testament was written for the general public.  These were in-house documents, used by insiders only.  By itself, this raises the question of whether Jesus' statement about "No one" refers to no one in all creation or to no one of you, the community of faith. 

I also wonder if it makes any difference that Jesus says "the Father" rather than God.  Clearly the  people of John's community had encountered God's love through Jesus in way that transformed their understanding of God.  This new thing was totally dependent on Jesus, but that is not the same thing as saying, "All other religious experience is invalid."

Another question is the status of John's community as tiny, endangered minority compared to the powerful and often privileged situation of the Church in the Western World.  How well do the bold, even defiant claims of one small community translate into universal truths?  And what about the fact that John's Jewish community is locked in a struggle with fellow Jews who have not embraced Jesus?  Do these intrafaith debates translate into larger interfaith dialogues?

I am not meaning to suggest a religious relativism that says all experiences of God are equally valid.  Like John's community, I too know God through Jesus, and I experience God in my life as Jesus "abides" in me via the Spirit.  I have no other way to know the God that I do, and I feel quite free to reject any religious claim that presents a god who is contrary to this loving God I know in Christ.  But does that mean that having the correct Christological labels is the key?

There's an oft quoted statement from Gandhi that goes, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  I can't help but think this comment might encourage Christians to read Jesus' words from today's gospel more as a tool for internal critique than for external judgments.  If we Christians don't look like Christ, it seems that we are the ones who don't know the way to the Father.



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First Sermon at Falls Church - Sent

John 20:19-31

Sent

April 15, 2012                                                                                     James Sledge

I’ve long been a Doonesbury fan, and I recall a Sunday comic from many years ago marking college graduation.  It took place at Walden College and featured Zonker, that perpetual slacker.  In this strip Zonker stumbles across an unnamed student leaning against a wall with a forlorn look on his face.  Zonker asks what the problem is, and the student offers how he can’t understand what happened.  “It must have been some sort of scheduling mix up, some confusion about my hours,” he says.  “You don’t mean…” Zonker begins, only to be interrupted as the student says, “Yes, I’m afraid it’s true.  I graduated.”

Most of us have known a few professional students.  Some of us may even have been one.  For such folks there is always another major, another degree, more grad school.  With true professional students, they are never quite ready to go out into the world.  There is always a bit more preparation to do.

On my first Sunday as pastor here at Falls Church, we are celebrating what sometimes has the feel of a graduation.  Members of the confirmation class will publicly profess their faith, responding to God’s love that claimed them in baptism.  I suppose it is okay to think of this as a kind of graduation, at least in the sense that they now move on to something new, to a deeper calling, to a fuller life of discipleship.  But in practice, confirmation has often served as a kind of graduation from church.

What to Tell the Children

"You shall tell your child..."  This is a line from today's Old Testament reading as Moses tells the people to commemorate their rescue from slavery in Egypt.  It is critical that the next generation know what God has done for them.  This is not the only place this concern for passing on the faith is found.  In Deuteronomy the passage known as the Shema (a portion of which becomes a part of Jesus' Great Commandment) is also directed toward the next generation.  "Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise." 

Parents often agonize about what to tell the children.  When do we tell them (or do we) the truth about Santa?  What do we say to them about a loved one's grave illness?  What things must they learn to be happy, successful, good citizens, etc?

I once heard a father say that he and his wife had decided not to tell their children any sort of faith stories.  They wanted their children to be truly free to choose or reject a faith as adults without any baggage.  I can certainly appreciate their motivations, but I also know that they did not follow this same tack with regard other issues.  They had no hesitation about insisting on the value of a good education or signing them up for piano lessons or sports teams.

What we tell our children, what we teach our children, says a great deal about what we think important.  (It's worth remembering that we teach a great deal by our actions and by the things we don't do or say.)  And for some reason, faith often feels like an option for many of us.  It's an add-on item rather than an essential.  In our consumer culture, faith has become one more consumer item that we can acquire in the hopes that it will enhance our lives in some way.

When I think of the things I taught our daughters, I'm not sure I transmitted the idea of faith as an essential.  The Shema I mentioned above says, "You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."  But it's hard to love an add-on with your entire being.  And I suspect my children picked up on that.

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Unreliable Witnesses

Given that the gospel writers were nowhere as concerned with accurate, historical reporting as we moderns tend to be, it is rather remarkable that women play such prominent roles as witnesses to the resurrection.  In Matthew's account, the women are the only witnesses, and the eleven disciples travel to Galilee to meet Jesus based on what the women tell them. 

Yet women were not quite full-fledged persons in ancient society.  They did not have legal standing as witnesses, a status that seems to be supported in Old Testament Law.  And yet God chooses to tell the remarkable news of resurrection to women.  Jesus doesn't remain hidden until some men show up.  He meets the women and charges them to share the good news.  He entrusts the greatest news in history to these "unreliable witnesses."

The Church hasn't always followed Jesus' lead.  We've often been more than happy to shove women back off to the side, to say they aren't qualified.  My own "progressive" denomination has only been ordaining women for a handful of decades, and I never encountered a female pastor as a child.

What makes someone a reliable or unreliable witness?  The Church still struggles with such questions.  But one thing seems certain.  Jesus was something of a subversive on the subject.

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Theology and Other Humor

I know lots of people, including many pastors, who openly disdain theology.  I had seminary classmates who made no secret of how much they disliked it and how they took theology classes only because they were  required.  And I frequently hear people say that we need to quit worrying so much about theology and just "do what Jesus says" or "what the Bible says."

Yet I have rarely met anyone who is the least bit religious who does not have a theology.  They may not call it that, but they have clear ideas on what God is like and what it means to relate in some way to God.  And these theologies are often as varied as the varied individuals who have them.

When I hear some of these theologies, I often chuckle and wonder where in the world they came from.  But the Church has its own odd theologies and deeply held beliefs that, upon close examination, don't seem to have much biblical basis.  But often these are so treasured that no one chuckles at the absurdities.

This is perhaps nowhere more evident than with Christian ideas about death and resurrection.  Death has become a gateway to heaven, and so it is common to hear people speak of a departed loved one being "in a better place."  The Apostle Paul clearly has a different theology.  As he tells the Corinthian Christians, "The last enemy to be destroyed is death."  For Paul, resurrection didn't take you to heaven.  Resurrection was a future even that would happen when Jesus returned.  Only then would the dead be raised.  Jesus was the "first fruits" of this future resurrection.  He has been raised, and we will be, someday.

Now perhaps Paul got his theology wrong.  But just suggesting that will upset those whose theology requires the Bible to be literally true.  I sometimes suspect that God must get a lot of laughs (and more than a few tears) from all our theologies.

Don't get me wrong.  I love the study of theology, and since it is virtually impossible not to have one, it makes sense to work hard to get ours as well ordered as we can.  But as I grow older I am increasingly convinced that a fair amount of uncertainty and openness is a good thing.  I am totally convinced of God's love evidenced in Jesus and of God's desire to redeem creation, to bring about something better. But I'm increasingly unwilling to draw theological lines in the sand, especially when I suspect that some of those line are a source of either great amusement (or great sorrow) for God.

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Unfinished Business

I'm now in Falls Church, VA, but with the church office closed for Easter Monday, I'll actually begin work tomorrow.  Most adults know about beginning a new job, about the process of learning the ropes and figuring out what the work really entails.  This process now begins for me, but there is another piece to figuring out my work.  And this involves knowing what the overall work of the Church is.  What is it we are called to do as Christians?

Today's gospel is Mark's Easter morning account.  Mark's version has provoked much debate over the years.  Most Bibles note that the best manuscripts of the gospel end at 16:8.  Then follow shorter and longer endings which seem to have been affixed later.  There is little debate regarding these additions.  The questions are about the original ending.

From a grammatical standpoint, the Greek text of 16:8 ends very awkwardly, leading many to insist that the original ending has been lost.  Others insist Mark does this intentionally to leave the gospel with an unfinished feel that calls the reader forward to continue the command first given to the women.  There is no way to totally resolve this debate, but regardless, we are left with this strange conclusion to Easter, where three witnesses to the empty tomb say nothing because they are afraid.

Very few of us don't have some experience in this area.  We have heard all sorts of commands from Jesus, commands to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to love God over wealth, but we don't do as we are told.  Like the women on that Easter morning, we aren't convinced it is in our best interest to act as we've been commanded.  And so we don't.

Of course we know that the women did not remain silent.  The command to tell must have overwhelmed their fear eventually.  But we present day Christians have had nearly 2000 years to develop a long list of excuses for not doing as Jesus says.  At times we've perverted Jesus' call to follow him into a trite formula where believing a few things is all that matters.

And so the Church needs to remember what Jesus said to us, hear him call us once more and then overcome the fears that keep us from following.  And I think the Spirit is spurring the Church to do just that.  As anxious as it makes many of us, some of the change and the turmoil in the Church of late is calling us back to our work, to our unfinished business of showing the world God's new day, the Kingdom Jesus insists has drawn near.

And so as I begin learning the ropes of a new job, I pray that I never lose sight of my true job: helping the people of this congregation hear what Jesus is calling us to do.

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Mine

Technically, this is my last day as pastor of Boulevard Presbyterian.  I've not been working there for a couple of weeks, but with vacation and such, I'm still on the payroll through today.  This afternoon, I will load up the items from my office and pack them in a U-haul trailer.  And then I will depart my old church one last time as I head out for my new church.

My church.  It's a phrase most of us connected to church have used.  Pastors speak of their church and members do, too.  Often it is simply a way of identifying the particular congregation where we work or worship, but it can mean more.  The grammatical possessive often becomes literal.  The church is mine and it should conform to me, cater to me, provide for me, etc.  In ways subtle, and not so subtle, most of us at times claim some ownership of our churches.

Jesus' parable today seems to address just this.  The tenants of the vineyard decide that it is theirs, and they insist on keeping it for themselves, even if they must resort to extreme measures.

As we move deeper into Holy Week, it may be worth contemplating what the actual owner of the Church expects of us, the tenants.  Where have we substituted our desires for the commands of Jesus?  Jesus says that we are to lose ourselves for the sake of the gospel, but when it comes to our churches, we seem to focus much of our energies on preserving. 

The owner expects the tenants to produce good fruit from the vineyard, a vineyard that does not belong to us.  Something to think about as I head out to my new church.

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Caught Up in the Mundane

I've been off the grid lately in this time between leaving one congregation and starting at another.  My life has been preoccupied with getting ready to move from Columbus to Falls Church, VA, and I have discovered that the normal rhythms of my life have been thrown out of kilter.  Those rhythms revolved around my identity as pastor.  But for these last couple of weeks, I've not been one.

Without my old pastor rhythms, my life has begun to revolve around rhythms of home and car repair, planning and packing for a move, doing taxes, and tying up loose ends.  In a sense, my life feels like it has become captive to the mundane.

I don't mean to disparage the mundane.  The fact of God's Incarnation in Christ, that Jesus experiences hunger, hallows the mundane.  God is at work and is encountered within the mundane.  The spiritual is not outside the mundane.  But that does not mean the the mundane is inherently spiritual.  A discerning eye and awareness are required to encounter God in the mundane.

Though God is in the mundane, the mundane makes a very poor god.  And when the mundane totally dictates the patterns and rhythms of life, life gets out of kilter.

Monday's gospel reading is one of those places in Mark where one story exists within another, and the two need to talk with one another to understand fully what the author is trying to say.  Jesus cursing a fig tree (an odd event considering that "it was not the season for figs") and its withering bracket the cleansing of the Temple.  Mark seems to say that the Temple is not bearing the fruit is should, and, given the events of the cleansing, it might be correct to say that the Temple apparatus had gotten caught up in the mundane of religious enterprise. 

Church work and religion offer their own form of the mundane, rhythms and activities that can come to dominate the life of those who are a part of them.  And while God indeed inhabits and is at work in the the details of church administration, planning worship services, and setting budgets, those things make very poor gods.

A deep spiritual question that many ask is "Where is God in my life?"  In a sense, this asks where God is within the mundane.  The Church has often assumed that the mundane rhythms of its life were of God, but many no longer share such assumptions.  And so the burning spiritual question for both the individual and the Church becomes, where is God at work in the rhythms of my life?

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Sermon video - Beyond the Now

A bit late, but here is the video of my final sermon at Boulevard Presbyterian on March 18, 2012.

Videos also available on YouTube.

Gifted Congregations

I mentioned in my previous blog how congregations often have an inflated sense of the pastor's importance (as do pastors themselves).  This situation is very much on my mind as I conclude my time at one congregation and transition to another.  In this congregation I have ego driven worries about "what they'll do without me," and I imagine that some members have similar worries. 

Looking forward to a new congregation, I have worries about whether I have all the gifts needed for that particular place and community.  And no doubt there are worries about, or at least expectations about, what I will do to lead that congregation when I arrive. 

There is a reason people refer to the first year or so in a congregation as a "honeymoon period."  It takes a while for people to observe your flaws and less desirable traits, things that didn't get noticed during a whirlwind courtship.  And these "disappointments" are often the discovery that the pastor is not perfectly gifted to make the congregation great and wonderful.

When it comes to gifts and talents, you don't need to look very hard to realize that we value some gifts over others.  Look at the relative salaries of CEOs compared to workers at most any company.  For that matter, look at the salaries of senior pastors compared to other staff in most congregations.  But in his letter to the Corinthian Christians, the Apostle Paul works very hard to challenge such notions.  The Corinthians seem to have valued certain spiritual gifts over others, to the point of denigrating certain members.  They saw gifts as a way of rating and valuing (or devaluing) fellow believers, but Paul insists that these gifts are not a matter of better and worse.  They are the work of the Spirit for the good of the whole. 

This in no way denigrates the position of the pastor or minimizes her importance to a congregation, but it does undermine the hierarchies of gifts that too often exist in churches, not to mention society.  As Paul makes so clear in other parts of his letter, all the people and all their gifts are essential, and without all of them, the body is broken. 

If you go with Paul on this, there is no such thing as congregation that isn't sufficiently gifted, and if some seem that way, it is only because they resist the work of the Spirit in their midst.

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No Longer Your Pastor

The title of this post is not quite true.  I am in the office today, will conduct a funeral tomorrow, and do some visits on Wednesday.  But then I will no longer be pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian Church.  Yesterday was my final Sunday, and the congregation held a fabulous goodbye dinner following worship.  And so for most of this church's members, I finished yesterday.

It is strange to think about such things as I read Paul's letter to the church at Corinth.  Paul was in Corinth for a time, but of course he is elsewhere when he writes.  But he still acts like their pastor.  He still gives them advice, still tells them what they should do.  My denomination expressly forbids me from doing the same because when I leave, I am no longer their pastor, and they need to let go of me and get ready for someone new.

Not that I want to be like Paul, writing letters and offering advice and criticism.  My position as pastor here is not much like Paul's apostleship, where he helped begin the Corinthian congregation and, in a day before seminaries and paid church pastors, continued to pastor and encourage them from afar.  Paul's letter try to keep the congregation focused on Jesus, on the new life they are called to in Christ.  Interestingly, my not writing letters and giving advice serves much the same purpose.

One of the hazards of professional pastors is that congregations often become extensions of their pastor's personalities.  Pastors can become the center of things, sometimes to such a degree that even Jesus can get pushed aside.  (I'm familiar with a church in Columbus where the name of the pastor was painted on the side of their bus in considerably larger letters than the name of the church.)  And even when pastors work hard to avoid such issues, the pastor's prominence in weekly worship, at governing board meetings, and so on, makes it easy for people to think of this as James' church rather than Christ's.

Whether intentional or otherwise, there exists an inflated sense of the pastor's importance in many congregations, and I think this demands we stopping playing the role when we retire or move on to another congregation.  It is a good thing for congregations to discover that they are the body of Christ regardless of who is in the pulpit.  It is good to separate their sense of call and mission in the community from the individual who served as their pastor.

I love the congregation I am leaving, and so I want things to go well for it.  I will keep them in my prayers.  I want to encourage the people here and, if I hear of some problem, my instinct will be to "help."  But helping might well hurt the process of the congregation discovering who it is "in Christ" and without me.  There could well be a moment when I may need to bite my own tongue when someone asks my thoughts. If so, please understand that is because I care deeply for Boulevard that I may have to say,  "I'm sorry, but I'm no longer your pastor."

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