More Than Enough

Jesus looks out at a crowd numbering in the thousands and tells his disciples that they can't send them away without first feeding them. It's easy to make the disciples the bad guys in this story, but the fact is they don't have the resources. The story tells us there are 4000 men, besides women and children. The crowd might have numbered 8 or 10,0000 in all. Clearly the sparse supplies the disciples had on them were nowhere near sufficient for such a huge undertaking. And yet, Jesus takes those meager supplies - 7 loaves and a few fish - and feeds them all. "And all of them ate and were filled."

Sometimes in my work as a pastor I find myself facing situations I feel ill equipped to handle. I see a spiritual problem in the church or a need in the community that begs to be addressed, but I think, "I don't have the gifts to do this. We don't have the resources to pull this off."

I suspect that the disciples in today's gospel had compassion for the crowd just as Jesus did. They saw those hungry people who had been with Jesus for days in an area where there was no food to be had. They felt bad for them, but what could they do? They had so little. The did not have anywhere near enough resources even to make a small dent in the problem.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann once wrote an article entitled "The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity."  Our faith is rooted in the promises of a loving God who provides in abundance, but in practice we more often live out of the myth of scarcity. There is not enough to go around, and we need to protect our share. We do not have enough to respond the the needs we see around us, and so we say, "I don't have the gifts to do that. We don't have the resources to help."

One of my own recurring faith struggles is trusting that God can do more with me than my own gifts and talents might indicate. Doing a faithful job as pastor of a congregation is not a simple matter of doing the best I can with the abilities and gifts that I have. Christian faith insists that God can take my gifts and abilities and do far more than would seem possible based on those alone.

I think congregations need to struggle with this same faith issue. Just as I am tempted to think I can do no more than my gifts allow, congregations are often tempted to say, "We don't have enough talents, volunteers, money, space, etc. to do that." But Christian faith insists that God can do far more with our talents, volunteers, money, space, etc. than a simple accounting of those resources would indicate.

So where in my life or yours or our congregations is Jesus saying, "I have compassion. Let's do something about it." And where is he saying to our protests that we can't possibly do that with our meager resources, "What do you have?.. With my help, that is more than enough."

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No Time for Silence

I just got an email that asked for 20 minutes of time in an upcoming session meeting (sessions are Presbyterian's governing board). The request itself is no problem. It's an issue we need to discuss and consider.  But still I gave a little involuntary flinch when I saw the email because I worry about time pressures in session meetings.  More specifically, I worry about what we don't do when we get pressed for time.

Being the new pastor here, I've only been to two session meetings. But in my experience elsewhere, when the meeting agenda gets full, the natural place to save time is that portion of the meeting set aside for meditation, Scripture, reflection, and prayer.  I like to include a good 20-30 minutes of such time in Session meetings, but there can be immense pressure to "get down to business."

Of course I can't simply blame the elders on the session for this. In my own work as pastor, I'm prone to follow the exact same pattern.  The busier I am, the less time for prayer, for quiet, for meditating on Scripture, and so on.  Martin Luther may have said that he was so busy he needed 3 hours of prayer to get it all done, but I too often do the reverse.

Today's psalm begins, "For God alone my soul waits in silence." But in our culture, silence and stillness aren't productive, and so they are wastes of time. I and members of the sessions on which I've served have been well trained by our culture, and when there's a lot to do, and we want to get people home at a decent hour, we certainly don't want to waste anyone's time.

Every now and then it hits me just how badly I've lost my way on this. A pastor who acts as though it's a waste of time to wait in silence for God? A church session, the body charged to watch over the spiritual health of a congregation, that would jettison time for prayer and discernment so there is plenty of time to debate whether or not to pave the church parking lot? (Not an agenda item here.) It seems that we sometimes get so caught up in running the church that we forget what it means to be the church. We become so focused on functioning and logistics that we have no idea what God is asking us to do.

Surely, above all else, we have to make time for silence.

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Sermon video - Like Falling in Love

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Sermon - Like Falling in Love

Mark 3:20-35

Like Falling in Love

James Sledge                                                                                       June 10, 2012

So, Jesus’ family thought he had taken leave of his senses, that he was out of his mind.  Probably not the most unusual occurrence in families.  Families frequently think a child is acting in ways that aren’t rational.  And on occasion I’ve had parents come to me as a pastor, seeking assistance in some sort of intervention they were planning for a child they thought had taken leave of his or her senses.  But that’s pretty rare.

 However, I’ve had a lot of dealings with another situation where people can seem to have lost touch with reality.  It’s a common condition, one that afflicts most all of us at some point in our lives. It’s usually called “falling in love.”

Falling in love leads people to do any number of less than completely rational things.  There’s a good reason that people who are in love say, “I’m just crazy about Jane,” or John or whomever.  People who are in love will drive for hours and hours just to spend a brief bit of time with their beloved.  Natural tightwads will inexplicably experience bouts of extravagant gift giving.  Meticulously laid out career plans may be put on hold or abandoned altogether.  And sometimes such behavior becomes too much for friends and family to sit idly by, and they feel the need to stage some sort of rescue or intervention.  Someone needs to reconnect the person with reality.

Jesus’ family seems to be engaged in just such an activity in today’s gospel reading.  The story is pretty short on details so we can’t say for sure why the family thinks an intervention is in order.  The NRSV translators seem to think the family is only trying to protect Jesus’ reputation.  They go to “restrain him” because other folks were saying Jesus was crazy.  I understand the translators preferring that Jesus’ family not come off too bad in this story, but suspect that may have colored their translation. 

Rethinking Church

Yesterday I reflected on a God who sees a hungry raven and is moved to help. Today the gospel lection shows Jesus trying to get away by himself. But the crowds find him, and when he sees them, he is moved with compassion.  He heals their sick and later feeds the entire bunch, once again revealing a God who is moved by need. Yet the Church often seems focused more on other issues. The recent crack-down on nuns by the Vatican seems to me to place doctrine well above compassion, and that does not seem to be the God revealed in Jesus.

Not that there is any need to single out Roman Catholics. We Presbyterians have been engaged in theological and doctrinal wrangling over ordination standards for decades now. It has most certainly diverted time, energy, and money from missions of compassion and from acting as Jesus did.

Of course Jesus wasn't just saccharine sweet and nice. He scared people because he looked like a threat to those in power. But we Presbyterians are mostly a threat to ourselves.

It seems to me that the Church is very often focused mostly on itself. I don't want to diminish the considerable good done by Christians and the Church, but if you look at the typical church budget, you will see that it is mostly directed inward. It goes to fund worship that we like, music that we prefer, programs for our kids, fellowship events for us, and so on. Some of this is essential activity in cultivating a faith community, but a lot of it is a consumerist driven desire for the church to "meet my needs."

My own congregation is fairly typical on this. We have many wonderful things that we do, but when push comes to shove, we are driven more by what we want than the example of Jesus or what God wants. And I'm embarrassed to say the percentage of our budget that actually goes to mission.

We Christians say that we are the body of Christ, but I sometimes wonder what sort of glimpse of Jesus people get when they encounter us.  And that makes me wonder if we don't need to do some serious rethinking on what it means for us to be the Church.

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Pictures of God

W. C. Fields is quoted as saying, "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand." It's easy to be for something in principle but struggle to demonstrate it in individual, concrete encounters. Lots of people want to help the poor, but they wouldn't dare invite them into their homes. It can be difficult to reconcile the big picture with on the ground realities.

It strikes me that big picture notions of God don't always cohere with on the ground expectations of how God acts. It is common for people to speak of a loving God and then direct God's ire at those they don't approve of. And those who pride themselves on not denying God's love to anyone often don't expect that love actually to do anything. God's love is a nice concept, but we often seem to think it quite impotent.

What a contrast to the words of today's psalm. Young ravens cry, and God acts. I think that is a rather startling picture of God to a lot of people. Our images of God are often of a very removed and distant figure, not so different from the Deists' "watchmaker" god who designs and builds the universe, winds it up, and walks off. Such a god never says, "Oh look, a baby raven is hungry. Let me help."

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Offended by Jesus

Jesus' experience at Nazareth is not so unusual. Many of us have found ourselves trapped in old identities. I grew up in "the country" and there I was Rose and Ken's boy. Even as an adult, this is some way remained my identity. Likewise a bad reputation gained as a youth can follow someone around for years, sometimes preventing people from seeing the very different person that youth as grown up to be. And this same phenomenon affects groups, organizations, and institutions. Once people "know" who or what a group is, they respond based on that "knowledge," even if it no longer is accurate.

Years ago, the now defunct GM car brand, Oldsmobile, ran a series of ads that trumpeted the theme, "Not Your Father's Oldsmobile." Clearly this was an attempt to redefine their brand, to break free from what people already "knew" about them. (Given that Oldsmobile no longer exists, I'm guessing they were unsuccessful.)

When Jesus acts in ways that do not fit into what his neighbors already "know" about him, even though they are impressed, they take offense. Literally translated, they are scandalized by it. It's an experience that I imagine must be tiring for Jesus. After all, it still goes on all the time.

Lots of people, even ones who've had little experience with Christianity or the church, think they "know" Jesus. And we who are church folks certainly think we "know" Jesus, although depending on which church you go to, this Jesus can look remarkably different.

In the same way, people inside and outside the church "know" it is. We "know" what it's about and what it does. And if it acts in ways contrary to what we "know," we'll take offense, just as we'll take offense if someone speaks of a Jesus who acts contrary to what we "know."

Where do we get what we "know" about Jesus? About the Church? About what it means to be a Christian, a disciple of Jesus? And when we encounter something that offends our sensibilities about these things, how do we figure out whether or not we've just taken offense, just been scandalized, by Jesus himself?

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The Kingdom is Like...

"The kingdom of heaven is like... The kingdom of heaven is like... The kingdom of heaven is like..." so says Jesus.  I wonder if we modern folks wouldn't have gotten frustrated very quickly with Jesus.  "Don't tell us what the kingdom is like!  What is it?"

A conceit of the modern era is that everything can be explained. We haven't figured it all out yet, but we will. Modern people do not do so well with mystery. (Some argue that post modern folks do better, but that's another discussion.) It's no coincidence that Unitarianism was a modern, Enlightenment undertaking. And while that movement was in part a reaction against wars and violence in Europe that seemed to be driven by competing religious doctrines, it was also a move away from mystery. Its god was high concept: rational, logical, and not engaged in human affairs or natural events. 

But I do not mean to pick on Unitarians. Most Trinitarian Christians have God safely secured behind walls of doctrine, logic, and a thoroughly modern, scientific worldview. Even fundamentalists, who may view science as an enemy, see the world and God through this scientific, modern worldview, where truth is about demonstrable facts. (Belief in supernatural "facts" has little to do with embracing mystery.)

Jesus begins his ministry with the proclamation, one shared with John the Baptist, that the Kingdom has come near. Clearly this Kingdom has to figure prominently in the work of the Church, but the Kingdom is like... Its arrival, its actual shape, our place in it, etc. are shrouded in mystery. But we don't care for mystery so we have decided we will turn this thing we cannot fully embrace or understand into something plain, clear, and straightforward: going to heaven when we die. No mystery required at all. Unitarians, Trinitarians, and even those who aren't religious at all are happy to embrace such a notion.

Who in their right mind would start a religious movement around something only partially grasped and hidden in mystery? "The kingdom of heaven is like..." No church consultant would ever let that become a centerpiece of a congregation's life and ministry.  So where does mystery live in the Church?

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching (Trinity) Sunday

I have a lot of colleagues who would be perfectly happy if there were no Trinity Sunday on the Christian calendar.  Certainly doing a Trinity sermon can pose challenges.  Because the the term Trinity never occurs in Scripture, Bible readings for this Sunday sometimes have fairly strained relationship to this central, Christian doctrine.  And then there is the basic logical problem of 1+1+1=1 that leads many, even many preachers, to relegate this doctrine to "only of interest to academic theologians" status.

I am not dealing with such problems myself this year. Our congregation is doing a lessons and carols styled journey through the Christian year, and so there is no sermon today. But I am in some ways sorry not to be preaching on Trinity Sunday. Despite the obvious challenges , I think the doctrine provides some very practical help when it comes to envisioning God.

A seemingly universal, religious tendency is to render God manageable. As a good Calvinist, I know that we humans love our idols, substitutes for God that are much more willing to do our bidding and much less inclined to challenge us or frighten us or demand that we change. But a Trinitarian God resists such attempts if, for no other reasons, the difficulty we have explaining and picturing this God.

Of course most of us are not really Trinitarians. We are functional Unitarians. You can promote any member of the Trinity to top status and make the other two junior partners, but my Presbyterian experience has been almost entirely a Unitarianism of the Father sort.  God is Father and Father is God.  Consider how people began their prayers.  Rarely do they pray to Jesus or the Spirit.  "Father God" is even a popular opening. Jesus and the Spirit are not discounted, but they don't have the full godhead credentials for some reason.

Now there are plenty of people who are Unitarians on purpose, but that is not the issue on my mind. I'm talking about Presbyterians who today sing "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty" with great gusto.  They don't flinch singing "God in three persons, blessed Trinity," but when it comes to relating with God, this goes out the window.

I think it was C.S. Lewis who called God the great iconoclast who keeps shattering our images of God so we can replace them with better, but still incomplete ones. And the Trinity keeps chipping away at our too small images of God, forever reminding us that God is always beyond, fuller, more than we can ever imagine.

Sermon video - Pregnant with God's Nevertheless

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Dealing with Weeds

There is an unfortunate tendency among us liberal Christians to act as though sin and evil are not real problems. There are only environmental factors, lack of education, poverty and desperation, etc. This tendency is not as strong as it was a century ago when many liberal Christians expected "progress" to bring the kingdom, but it is still one of our biases.  And so we sometimes think it quite easy to follow the lesson of today's parable.  We have no difficulty leaving the field a mix of wheat and weeds.  After all, weeds are just disadvantaged and misunderstood.

Now I don't mean to make light of the very real impact that social forces have in shaping our world and in shaping individual's lives. There are countless human problems that can and have been addressed via education, increased opportunities, social reforms, and so on. But these cannot address a more fundamental problem with the human condition. There is something inherently tragic and self-destructive about us. We are quite proficient at doing the wrong thing even when we know full well what the right thing is and know it is in our self interest to do that right thing. We have a tendency toward greed and covetousness that only seems to get worse the more that we have.

I don't understand acknowledging the basic problem to lead to a pessimistic outlook. Instead is like an alcoholic or addict admitting his fundamental problem as the first step inrecovery. It is acknowledging that I need help, that I need "saving." I cannot be who I am meant to be without help from God and others.

Jesus' parable presumes that when we are transformed and made new in him, we will no longer feel quite at home in the the world as it currently operates. We will be fundamentally out of sync with many of the forces that drive society, politics, economics, and so on.  And I think that it is only when we experience this strong dissonance with the world that Jesus' parable begins to resonate. Only when we recognize that the way of Jesus is in deep conflict with the ways of the world do we face the dilemma of the slaves in the parable who want to do something about the weeds. Only then do we recognize that parable is not about tolerance or those who are simply different, it is about a tolerance of those who are our enemies.

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Church as "Family"

The term "Church Family" is very familiar to many of us who grew up in church.  This was likely the most common way the congregations where I learned church self-identified. Ask church members to describe the congregation and the word family was sure to be used.

I assume that this metaphor of family drew on positive aspects of family life, people who loved you and cared for you, etc. But of course there were negative pieces to the metaphor as well. And these probably are more problematic for churches than they are for real families. Families are rather closed systems. One does not join a family. You are either born into it or marry into it. And while things are changing today with more blended families and interracial families, on the whole, families tend to all look the same.

Churches often amplify some problematic aspects of family. In some congregations, you can be a member for years and still get treated like an outsider, not fully a member of the family. Church congregations are often made up of folks who all look very much the same. And not only is racial diversity a real problem for many congregations, but class diversity, income diversity, cultural diversity, and so on are problems as well.

I have recently become pastor at a vibrant congregation that, thankfully, has more diversity than I've typically experienced in Presbyterian congregations. But if you don't like classical music and you aren't at a certain income level and you don't lean a little toward the "progressive" side of politics, you may not feel that you really fit here.

Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”  But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”   Matthew 12:47-50

I suppose the Jesus sanctions the use of the family metaphor for the church, but it is a significantly redefined picture of family. The likeness of this family is not about race, ethnicity, culture, income, etc. It is about discipleship, about doing God's will. Now I imagine that just about any church would embrace the idea that doing God's will is integral to being a Christian. But I suspect that more often than not, doing God's will is not what binds congregations together as families.

If we're going to sing songs in worship, I suppose there is no avoiding that worship at one place may appeal to someone more than worship somewhere else. But I still wonder. What is it that really defines us as a congregation? What notion of family, or some other metaphor, creates and shapes us? And where does God's will fit in all that?

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