Sermon - Mystical Presence

John 6:24-35

Mystical Presence

James Sledge                                                                                                   August 5, 2012

As a group, we Presbyterians have never been terribly good at evangelism, a trait we share with Episcopalians, Lutherans, and a few others.  There are a lot of reasons for this. We tend to be big on knowledge and understanding, and so people are often worried about not knowing enough to share faith with anyone.  Many of us have also been turned off by the overly aggressive, sometimes manipulative evangelism methods of other Christian groups, and so we defer, not wanting to look like them.

In recent decades however, interest in evangelism has seen an uptick in our denomination.  We have regular evangelism initiatives at the national level, and many Presbyterian churches have offered classes on evangelism. I’ve taught them  myself, although I think Presbyterian interest in evangelism is more often about institutional survival than anything else.

That probably helps explain the content of the typical Presbyterian evangelism pitch. It goes something like this.  “We have a great pre-school and children’s program.  I bet your kids would love it here.”  Or if it’s a different target audience it might go, “We have this amazing young adult group.  We do all kinds of fun things together, and it’s a great place to meet new people.”  Not that we completely avoid religion.  People may pitch the quality of the worship.  They may talk about social causes or community ministry the church does. They may even mention some fashionable, spiritual options like a contemplative prayer group, meditation, or spiritual retreats.  But what rarely gets mentioned is faith, or connecting to Jesus.

Perhaps that’s presumed, but I wonder if our evangelism pitches don’t in some way parallel the sort of things the crowds in our gospel reading were saying.  “You gotta come check this guy out. He gave us all we could eat.  We were out in the middle of nowhere, with no supplies, and we ate like I’ve never eaten before.  Let’s go see what he might give out today.”  The crowds were fascinated by the tricks Jesus did, and they flock to him, but Jesus is unimpressed.  “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves,” because I’ve got something you want, a little moral training for your kids, a little something to go with your hectic, consumer lifestyle.

When you think about it, it’s a little surprising that so many people still come to churches looking for Jesus. We live in an age when most of life is disconnected from God.

Reasonable Doubt

If you read a Bible commentary on today's gospel reading, you will likely find some mention of an accusation that early Christians had to answer.  People were saying that Jesus had not risen from the dead. Rather his disciples had swiped his body and then perpetuated a hoax about his resurrection.  Many scholars will note that Matthew's gospel, written many decades after the actual events, seems tailor made to address such charges.  Similarly, some scholars argue that claims of a "virgin birth" for Jesus (found only in Matthew and Luke) are an attempt to refute charges that Jesus' birth was actually "illegitimate."

(Presbyterians have an interesting history with the whole virgin birth thing. At one point it was an article of faith required for ordination.  It was later dropped as an absolute requirement, but I was asked in 1995 by a pastor nominating committee what my beliefs on the virgin birth were.)

But whatever Matthew's reasons for supplying that little detail about stealing Jesus' body, I found my thoughts drifting to questions of faith and doubt.  Am I more likely to believe because Matthew refutes claims that disciples pilfered Jesus' body?  Is faith the product of getting the story straight?  And if I'm suspicious that Matthew is creating details to deal with charges against the faith, might that not actually make me more inclined to doubt the biblical storyline? Throw in the fact that the different gospels give slightly different versions of the story, and such issues are amplified.

It seems to me that there are plenty of places where reasonable doubt can emerge. (I once had a Muslim acquaintance tell me that he thought we Christians had a huge problem because our Bible had so many authors with so many different takes, unlike Islam, based solely on the the writings of the Prophet.)  If Christian faith must exist on the basis of the empirical evidence alone, we run into problems right away. It is no wonder that many people assume science to be the enemy of faith (a view I do not share). Science is all about empirical data, but the empirical data build a pretty shaky case for faith.

Like love, one must experience faith.  Like love, it can wax and wane, and even disappear entirely.  For people of faith, the prospect of its waning or, worse, disappearing can be terrifying.  But fear rarely leads to the best human responses, and fear related to faith is no exception.  I've know my share of Christians who practiced denial with regards to faith, who insisted they had never felt a the slightest twinge of doubt. I suppose that's possible, but I think it much more likely they're terrified at what happens if they admit such doubts.  And so they work very hard to fool themselves and God.

I think that fanatical fundamentalism is an extreme form of such denial.  It refuses to allow doubt or any variation from truth on anyone's part, and woe to those who don't stay in step.

By contrast, my tradition is rather open to doubt.  I'm quite happy about that as I don't think I would fit in otherwise, but our friendliness with doubt sometimes raises other problems.  It makes us very suspicious of religious certitude, and we become so unsure of anything that cannot be confirmed by empirical evidence or logic that we struggle actually to act on our faith.  We may do good things because we are convinced they are reasonable and the right thing to do, but that does not really require much in the way of faith or discerning what God calls us to do.

It seems to me that faith is quite often about doing things that seem unreasonable even in the face of doubt.  Being non-violent in the face of violence often seems a foolish tactic. Seeking the good of your enemy even more so.  Being abused, chastised, or attacked for doing such things only seems to confirm the foolishness of those tactics.  I suppose that is why so few of us ever experience the truly transforming power of faith.  That is why there are so few Gandhis or Martin Luther Kings who can act on faith and transform the world.

O Lord, I'm no fanatic, and I know well how to doubt.  Help me to have faith, faith that actually hears and does what Jesus calls me to do.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

A Time to Wait

I've been doing a lot of spiritual wrestling of late. A few months into a new position, I feel like I should be "doing" more, helping the church take bold, new steps, that sort of thing.  But I don't have much clarity about what steps to take or in what direction.

The one thing I've felt convinced of from the beginning has to do with helping us become a more spiritual place.  I don't say this because of some serious spiritual deficiency I witnessed on my arrival.  Rather, this was a strong component of my original sensing a call to ordained ministry.  Twenty years ago, I felt that the work and ministry of the church needed to be more deeply grounded in God, needed to flow from God.

In my own struggles to keep my ministry grounded in and flowing from God, I have discovered a number of spiritual practices that were not part of my upbringing and do not come naturally to me.  I have gained a deep appreciation for centering and contemplative prayer, lectio divina, spiritual direction, and other practices. And I have tried to let my experience with these seep into my "work" as a pastor.

However, I sometimes worry that I have done so badly. In trying to encourage committees and governing boards and congregations to think more about what God wants us to do, I fear that I have inadvertently stereotyped spirituality as a style.  I may have given the impression that spirituality is about candles and meditation, about a "smells and bells" approach rather than an integral part of our Christian life.

And so it seemed providential to me to find the opening of Acts as a lectionary reading this morning.  The disciples in the passage must have been struggling with some of my questions about what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.  The risen Jesus had told them that they were going to be his witnesses throughout the world. He had promised they would be empowered by the Spirit, but none of them knew quite what that meant.  And so they waited, and they prayed.

I don't know if they used incense or centering prayer, chant or lectio divina. I do not know if they sat cross-legged, stood, had eyes open, or had them closed.  Perhaps some did one thing and another something completely different. We don't know because the Bible seems unconcerned with the spiritual style they employed. It is clear, however, that they waited and prayed. They prayed together, and surely the prayed alone. And they continued to wait until God showed them the way.

I am not terribly good at waiting.  I tend to be impatient by nature, and I am the product of a culture that values getting things done.  But before I convince the leadership here to embrace some bold new thing that I want to do, how do we wait and listen to be sure (at least as sure as we can be) that it is what God wants?  And before I or anyone else tosses aside some new or strange sounding idea that seems to make no sense, how do we stop and wait to determine if it is from God?

It seems to me that to hear God's call, we need to know how to wait.  We cannot be too quick to say "Yes" nor too quick to say "No," because our quick "Yes" and "No" are probably more apt to come from our own biases, preferences, habits, and expectations than they are from God. So perhaps right now is not a time for Yes or No, but a time to wait.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

You Just Wait!

The cross and the Crucified Christ are central elements of Christianity. But despite this, the faith has never come to a complete consensus on exactly what the cross means or how it "works." Scholars and writers are still offering their takes on the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion.

But at the moment, I'm not thinking about whether I prefer ransom, satisfaction, penal substitution, or some other atonement theory.  As I read today's gospel - Matthew's account of the crucifixion - I found myself fixated on the taunts hurled Jesus' way.  "Save yourself... He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him." Even the two criminals beside him get in on the act. (You have to go to Luke to find the one criminal who is sympathetic to Jesus.)

Much as happened during his trial, Jesus remains silent.  He suffer the abuses and taunts without a reply. There is no comeback, no "Just wait; you'll see."  Not that we don't sometimes provide that for Jesus after the fact.

It strikes me that we sometimes minimize the cross into a difficulty on the way to something great.  Jesus still turns the tables on those who taunt him, only later.  They still get theirs and Jesus gets his vindication.  In the gaudier versions of this, King Jesus comes back with a sword and settles old scores, and the cross was simply a cosmic version of "no pain, no gain."

The cross still perplexes and confounds us.  And so we try to fit it into models of victory that we do understand, where the bad guys still get their due, and Jesus wasn't a wimp after all.  He just knew that holding his tongue would make the victory sweeter when the time came.

Yet presumably Jesus dies for the very folks who taunt him.  And the biblical picture of Jesus doesn't speak much of an avenging warrior who returns saying, "You had your chance, but now you're really gonna be sorry."  Instead Paul speaks of God's power being made perfect in weakness.  And, in what I think one of the more remarkable images in the Bible, we meet King Jesus in John's Revelation. 

The typical expectations of a great king are there in Revelation 5.  He is "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David," and he has "conquered."  But then John sees him, a "Lamb standing as if he had been slaughtered." We may want the Lamb on the cross to transform into a Lion, like a 98 pound weakling who bulks up and turns the tables on the bullies, but the Lion remains a Lamb that has been slaughtered.  And "conquer" takes on a whole new meaning.

I wonder what Christianity would look like if we really took the cross seriously, and if we took seriously Jesus' call to take up our own crosses, to embrace our own willingness to suffer for the sake of the other, even if that other hates us.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Settling for Scarcity

The Lord upholds all who are falling,
    and raises up all who are bowed down. 
The eyes of all look to you,
    and you give them their food in due season.  
You open your hand,
    satisfying the desire of every living thing. (from Ps. 145)

Today's meditation from Richard Rohr begins, "It is good to remember that a part of you has always loved God. There is a part of you that has always said yes. There is a part of you that is Love itself, and that is what we must fall into. It is already there. Once you move your identity to that level of deep inner contentment, you will realize you are drawing upon a Life that is much larger than your own and from a deeper abundance. Once you learn this, why would you ever again settle for scarcity in your life?"

Strange that Rohr would describe the lifestyle of out consumerist culture that acquires things at an astounding rate as "scarcity."  But I think him correct when he says that our culture trains us well in a kind of "learned helplessness."  Most of us have known people who were overly dependent on someone.  They needed their wife or husband or parent so deeply that they could do nothing on their own, and they lived out of a subservience that was crippling. 

Our culture works hard to put us in exactly such a position with regards to needing more.  We are rendered helpless by accepting the cultural lesson that "I'm not enough!  This is not enough! I do not have enough!" to quote Rohr once more.

Fear is a powerful, if evolutionarily primitive, emotion. There are perhaps still times when a fight or flight response may aid us, but such instincts do not lend themselves well to the sort of life Jesus says we are meant for; a life freed from fear, a life motivated instead by love.  

Jesus says, "You are a beloved child of God. You do not need to be more impressive or have more accomplishments. Open yourself to the powerfully transforming presence of God's love in your life.  Discover an abundance that truly satisfies and empowers you for a bold, new life."

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary. 

Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

Today's worship looks a bit different at Falls Church Presbyterian.  It is organized around our just completed Vacation Bible School and is led by the VBS participants.  This is apparently a traditions here, one that I have not yet experienced.  Not having seen this or knowing quite what happens, I asked for some assurances that it would still "worship" and not simply a VBS slide show.

As a pastor, I tend to obsess about worship.  It's been drilled into me.  I took classes on worship in seminary, and our denomination not only puts out Book of Common Worship, but our constitution includes a lengthy section entitled the "Directory for Worship."  It speaks at length about what worship is, how worship is to be ordered, and what elements might be in it, should be in it, or must be in it.  All this attention to worship is not really surprising.  When you are a religious institution whose most visible product is a worship service, it is going to receive a lot of energy, thought, scrutiny, etc.

I also tend to worry about worship out of the criticism of it from the 19th Century philosopher, theologian, and existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard.  He spoke of worship as drama, but he said it too often got misconstrued as an event where preacher, choir, and liturgists were actors for the audience/congregation.  Rather, Kierkegaard said, God should be the audience with the congregants being actors.

I'm writing this prior to today's worship, but I won't be surprised if today's drama comes closer to what Kierkegaard suggests than many other Sundays.  Oh, there will be some parents or grandparents who are there for the performance rather than worship, but, as Kierkegaard complained, there are people there every Sunday in that mode.  But there will also be dozens of children leading worship, singing, praying, moving, dancing.  By that alone, today's worship will have more of what Kierkegaard wanted. 

No doubt there will also be a number of adult and teen VBS volunteers helping to keep all this going, and so even more people who otherwise might be sitting and watching worship will instead be "onstage," to use Kierkegaard's language.  And presumably God will find the whole thing every bit as pleasing and enjoyable as what happens on other Sundays, perhaps a lot more so.

The whole thing will no doubt be less polished than some other Sundays.  There will likely be times when it looks a little chaotic.  But there may well be times when it has more heart, life, and vitality than some meticulously planned and executed worship services.

At this point I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this.  But as one who sometimes obsesses about getting worship well planned and executed, it's likely worth recalling that today's worship may feel more like worship to God than some of those I'm responsible for.

P.S. My expectations were not far off.  The service was louder, more animated, and at times more chaotic that the typical Sunday.  But it was also more energetic, lively, and full of heart.  The children and leaders did a great job, and I'm pretty sure that God was pleased.

Holding on to Bitter Memories

Rare is the person who does not carry with him or her the memory of some great failing.  Most of us have at some point betrayed our principles, our convictions, our notions of who we truly are.  The motivations for such acts are many. To save face, to be successful, to get something we really want, to preserve our safety or security, we act contrary to who we say we are. Out of anger, fear, or zealotry, we go against what we say we hold dear.

Following 9-11, the swiftness with which we did away with freedoms and rights we had long celebrated illustrates how easily we change direction under certain motivations.  It is probably too early to say if we will someday look back in anguished regret, but history gives us other examples where the judgment is clear. The internment of Japanese Americans accompanied by their loss of property, homes, and businesses, is one of those failings many would just as soon forget. And there are many others, slavery, segregation, the treatment of Native Americans.  These cast a dark shadow on American claims of greatness, godliness, and goodness, so much so that some people would rather they be glossed over in teaching US history.

I've always thought it a bit odd that this did not happen with Peter's denial reported in today's gospel. Peter became a leader in the early Church.  He must have had his ardent supporters, those who viewed him like George Washington was viewed by many 18th century Americans.  Strange then that the gospels show so little hesitation in telling of Peter's moment of awful failure, a moment so personally devastating that the gospel says he left the scene and "wept bitterly."

I wonder what Peter thought about this episode as he grew older. Did it always haunt him in someway?  Did he try to put it out of his mind?  Or was it something he wanted to touch from time to time, a reminder of how easily we betray what we say we love?

I don't know if this is in any way peculiar to our age, but we do not seem to have much interest in lingering over things that remind us of our failings.  I've lost count of the times people have suggested eliminating prayers of confession in worship.  "Such a downer," they sometimes say.  The refusal of the IOC to do anything during Olympic opening ceremonies to recall the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 games is supposedly because that might put a damper on the celebratory nature of the event.  No bitter memories please.

But the Church clung to the bitter memory of Peter's great failing, making his denial of Jesus one of the better known stories from the Bible. The same Peter who is celebrated as a founder of churches and remembered (in tradition at least) as the first pope, is perhaps best know for his colossal failure of nerve following Jesus' arrest.

I like to think that Peter himself cherished this memory in some way. It reminded him that, despite all his boldness and bravado, he could not be who he wanted to be, could not be who God wanted him to be, on his own. Only the presence of God within, the Holy Spirit working through him, permitted that.  I like to think that this bitter memory constantly reminded Peter of where his true strength lay, that it kept him humble and dependent on God so that he could say, like Paul does in his letter to the Philippians, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Freed from Ourselves

In America, with all our focus on freedom and personal liberties, discussions often center on where reasonable limits to such liberties should be placed.  The old example speaks of us having freedom of speech yet not permitted to yell, "Fire!" in a crowded theater.  And since 9-11, there have been frequent discussions about whether to give up freedoms in order to gain security.  But regardless of where people come down in such discussions, there is a basic agreement that we should be as free as possible.

The Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus freeing us from the Law, and so he might seem to be our kindred spirit with regards to personal liberty. But Paul never worships freedom for freedom's sake.  In fact he speaks of becoming a slave to righteousness, and he insists that we cannot exercise our freedom if it causes the slightest difficulty for someone else in regards to her faith.

The same Paul who trashes Peter for bowing to Jewish pressure regarding dietary laws, says in today's passage from Romans that freedom from dietary restrictions cannot be exercised if they cause a fellow believer to stumble. For Paul, freedom takes a back seat to community, for living in ways that " pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding."  And when Paul writes to his congregation at Corinth, a group that seems particularly enamored by their new freedom in Christ, he chastises them for not considering their brothers and sisters.

A key issue is the eating of meat because meat had generally been offered as a sacrifice before ending up at the butcher shop.  Paul is very clear that Jesus has freed him from the Law and that because idols are really only human-made objects, eating such meat is no problem.  And yet he tells the Corinthians, "If food is a cause of a brother or sisters falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall."

In our culture, the other is often seen as a potential barrier to our freedoms and liberties and something we must guard against. Paul sees the other as a barrier to personal freedom and liberty as well, but in a completely different sense. They are opportunities for us to exercise what we have truly been freed to do in Christ: to love.

Most all of us are bound to some degree by fears: fear that we won't have enough, fear that we aren't safe, fear that others won't like us, fear that we will fail, fear that we won't find love, etc.  But "in Christ," we are freed from such fears and therefore freed to live more fully in the image of God, in the manner of Jesus, giving ourselves to others in love.  And for Jesus, loving freed him even from the need to save his own life.

At the beginning of the American experiment, our freedoms were always understood to exist within a "social contract." Our freedoms and liberties were for the good of society, not simply for our own use.  That's not quite Paul, but it is a bit closer to him than the increasingly individualistic notions of personal liberty in our day.

It strikes me that conversations on "gun control," which have flared up again in light of the Colorado theater shooting, are often argued almost entirely along individualist notions of freedom.  I'm not suggesting any particular stance with regards to gun ownership.  But I do not think I have ever heard anyone speak along the lines of Paul and say, "I believe in the right bear arms, but if it would make for a safer world, I would happily refuse to exercise that right." 

The same critique could surely be leveled at stances of all political persuasions. And that raises the question.  What rights, freedoms, or liberties that I cherish have become something from which I need to be freed in order to fully love my neighbor?

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Letting Go of Self

I've been thinking a lot about self and identity the last few days, spurred by Daily Devotions from Richard Rohr, comments on my blogs, and re-reading Graham Standish's Humble Leadership. I supposes this all started when a church member commented that my predecessor here once said there were only two Republicans who belonged to this church.  I must confess, I was stunned by that.

"All of you are one in Christ Jesus" is a fundamental Christian affirmation. The divisions of the world are obliterated when we our identity is reformed in the image of Jesus.  As Paul says in today's reading, "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

In the teachings of Jesus and the writings of Paul, new life emerges as the self is denied or dies.  But our culture worships the individual self.  It says that happiness comes from satisfying all the desires of the self rather than subjugating the self to some larger good.  Western individualism has always had tendencies in this direction, but they seem to have grown more pronounced in recent decades. There have always been conservative and liberal congregations, wealthy and working class congregations, but I think there was some recognition that this was a regrettable result of human frailty. It was certainly nothing to be proud about.

As one who is fairly liberal, I confess that there is a certain comfort in moving to a congregation that is closer to my liberal leanings than my previous one.  But at the same time, the idea that our liberalism could form a sufficiently large part of our identity that a Republican would not want to join is disconcerting.  We are all one in Christ Jesus, as long as you are a Democrat?

(Let me quickly add that I'm responding to a statement and not necessarily to reality. I hope my predecessor's observation some years ago was an exaggeration, a misread, or is no longer true.  And I've not experienced any in-your-face, strident politicizing that one might expect if we were managing to run off all non-liberals.)

If required to label myself, I will say I am a liberal or progressive Christian. But I hope it is the Christian part of that label that is primary, not the liberal or progressive. In Paul's letter to the Romans, he mentions some issues that divided Christians in his time: refusing to eat meat because almost all the items at the butcher shop had started out as sacrifices at some temple or worshiping on the Sabbath (Saturday) versus worshiping on the Lord's Day (Sunday). In different letters he mentions other dividing lines: Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free.  In our day perhaps he would have added liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, black or white, etc.  But he certainly would have said that none of these divisions matter because all are made one in Christ Jesus.  But such a notion seems difficult, even impossible, unless the self recedes and "in Christ" comes to the fore. 

Who am I?  That is a basic human question.  Many of us spend a great deal of energy trying to hone and stake a claim to a particular identity.  And the idea that our true identity requires letting go of self goes against the cultural grain.  Not me, but Christ; not my will but God's will; not what I want but what God wants; saying such things are difficult for many of us.  But Jesus, Paul, and the lives of countless Christians over the centuries all insist that we discover who we truly are, find a joyful new life and sense of being reborn, when we let go of self and become a new self in Christ.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Sermon audio - Quiet Desperation

Audios of sermons and worship can be found on FCPC website.

Becoming Better Lovers

In seminary, my favorite subjects were theology and Bible exegesis (the careful study of Scripture in order to understand, explain, and interpret a passage).  I really enjoy the rational thought processes involved in such study.  I love trying to figure things out, trying to understand what something means, and there were times when I thought about further academic pursuit, about trying to become a theology professor perhaps.

I still love theology and exegesis. After all, it is not possible to be a Christian without doing both. All people of faith have some way of deciding what God is like, how to use the Bible, etc.  But sometimes I have tendency, as does my denomination, to make such things an end in themselves. That's likely one of the reasons Presbyterians tend to be a bit on the stuffy side.  A great deal of the time, faith operates only in our brains.

I am overstating things a bit, but there is some truth to Presbyterian stereotypes.  And as one somewhat comfortable in those stereotypes, I find Paul's words today a tad unsettling.  "The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.... Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." 

Paul is referring to law in the sense of Torah, so we're not necessarily talking about speed limits here.  But neither did Paul divide things into religious and secular spheres.  The religious permeated all things for Paul and most ancient people, and so he might well has seen speed limits as religious.  Speeding or running a red light does increase the chance of me injuring a neighbor.

But the bigger issue for me is this idea that loving the other fulfills all the law, rules, and regulations.  Can it really be so simple?  If we just all loved one another, would everything else take care of itself?

In my denomination, pastors, along with elders and deacons (who might be called "lay leaders" in other traditions), are ordained.  One of my favorite questions asked to those being ordained is also probably the most difficult promise to keep. "Do you promise the further the peace, unity, and purity of the church?" The problem is that some folks tend to emphasize one component while other folks have a different favorite. Some will happily sacrifice peace for the sake of purity while others will happily toss out any notion of purity to maintain peace. 

(One of the reasons there are liberal Presbyterian Churches and conservative Presbyterian Churches is because we can't figure out how to do all three.  And so we divide up, allowing individual congregations to live more or less peacefully in unity as they practice the particular purity of their position.  This moves the purity fights that reveal our lack of peace and unity, [and love?] mostly to a regional and national level.)

But if we take Paul seriously, and if we draw some parallels between purity and the law, then loving one another would seem to take care of purity.  And certainly loving one another would seem to build peace and unity.  Of course it must be said that Paul had opponents, and he wasn't always shy about saying nasty things about them.  Was this a matter of Paul having trouble practicing what he preached, or was he simply dealing with people who were hurting others because they weren't loving their neighbors?  I'm not sure there are easy answers to such questions, but I do think that embodying the idea that love fulfills the law in doing no wrong to the neighbor would makes things better.

There's an old line that says, "I'm a lover, not a fighter." In my experience, we Presbyterians (and plenty of other groups) are sometimes better fighters than lovers.  We are very good at rational exercises of theology and exegesis that allow us to marshal compelling  arguments to help our side win.  But how might it look if we focused more on loving?

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.

Sermon - Quiet Desperation

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Quiet Desperation

James Sledge                                                                                       July 22, 2012

Jesus and the disciples needed a little R and R.  They had scarcely had a moment’s rest for weeks.  It had been a nonstop preaching, teaching, and healing tour. The crowds were everywhere, pressing in on them, demanding access to Jesus.  Perhaps that is why Jesus had sent the disciples out in pairs on a tour of their own.  He needed surrogates to help in the face of so much demand.

When the disciples returned from their mission trips with tales of their own crowds and of teaching and healing many, everyone was exhausted.  But still people swarmed around.  And so Jesus said, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.” And like celebrities escaping the paparazzi, they got into a boat and slipped away.

But the crowds were as persistent as paparazzi.  Jesus and his entourage had not made their getaway completely undetected.  They had been spotted, the direction they were headed observed. Word quickly spread, and by the time Jesus and his crew came ashore at their deserted hideaway, a huge, clamoring crowd was waiting for them.

Time to make another break for it. Time to give the crowds the slip.  Send a couple disciples one way, a few more the other, then slip out the back.  Except that Jesus looks into the faces of the crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

How pathetic those folks must have been. They were so desperate that they chased after Jesus like pre-teen girls chasing Justin Bieber.  They were so desperate for help that they begged just to touch his clothes. The disciples could have made a fortune if they had known about mass marketing.  “Get you own piece of Jesus’ cloak for only $19.95, plus shipping and handling.”

I’m sure glad I’m not like those pitiful Galileans.  Sure, I’ve got my problems, but I’m not going to come unglued over them.  I don’t need to push and shove and beg.  I have things under control. I have resources as my disposal.  I’m not going to let myself get in a situation where I need to act like those folks who chased after Jesus, begging for him to help.

Feelings this way may be why the images out of New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina were so disturbing.