Functional Atheists

Modern day Christians have sometimes been a little embarrassed by the miracles found in the Bible, and modern commentators have sometimes offered rational explanations for those miracles.  For instance, today's feeding miracle is interpreted by some as a "miracle of sharing." Many people in that crowd had a little food tucked in their robes but kept it hidden lest others wanted some of it.  But when Jesus begins to share the meager provisions his followers had, that prompts others to share, and before long there was more than enough to go around as everyone brought out what he or she had.  If you're familiar with story of "stone soup," it's the same idea.

But if you are embarrassed by miracles, you have your work cut out for you in today's gospel. Not only does Jesus feed the crowd but he heals people and also gives his followers "power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases."

Can Jesus really give power and authority to his followers?  What about present day followers?

I have to admit that very often I act as though my answer to the second question is "No." Some have referred to this as "functional atheism." Functional atheists don't deny the existence of God. Christian ones don't deny the divinity of Jesus. It's just that such beliefs don't much impact how they live, how they function. They can't do anything they couldn't already do all on their own, and their churches can't do anything beyond what the combined abilities and efforts of the members could do on their own.

The term "leap of faith" is a familiar one to many. It usually refers to the need to accept something for which there is not empirical proof, such as religious belief. But while believing in God may indeed be a move made without much empirical evidence, I'm not sure it involves much leaping, and a leap of faith seems to imply an action taken in hope or trust that things will turn out differently than suggested by the empirical evidence.  An individual or congregation trying to do something beyond what seems possible for instance.

But can Jesus really confer power and authority on us?  Or are we really all on our own?

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Sermon audio - Because of Love

Audios of sermons and worship available at Falls Church Presbyterian website.

Sermon - Because of Love

Mark 10:17-31

Because of Love

James Sledge                                                                                       October 14, 2012

In 1889, James Bryan graduated from seminary and became pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, having served there part time while still in school.  He would remain there for the next 50 years, becoming a beloved figure in Birmingham known simply as Brother Bryan. He was well known as an evangelist and for his work on racial reconciliation.  But he was best known for his work with the poor and homeless. 

There’s still a Brother Bryan Mission in Birmingham, and a Brother Bryan Park, and a statue of Brother Bryan kneeling in prayer that is one of the city’s better known landmarks. 

Brother Bryan was pastor of Third Presbyterian, but he thought of himself as pastor to everyone he met, and one day he happened to strike up a conversation with a well to do businessman.  At some point Brother Bryan asked the man about tithing.  The man neither tithed nor knew exactly what it was, so Brother Bryan launched into a stirring biblical argument for tithing, for giving the first 10 percent of his income to God. 

The businessman said, “Oh you don’t understand.  I make a lot of money.  Ten percent would be a whole lot more than I could afford to give to a church.”

Brother Bryan responded, “Well sir, I think we ought to pray about this.”  He got down on his knees and cried out to heaven, “Cut him down Lord, cut him down!  Lord, please reduce this man’s income, so he can afford to tithe!”

In our gospel reading today, Jesus meets a well to do businessman who can’t afford to tithe.  Actually, Jesus asks a great deal more of him than a tithe, but the man’s problem is similar to that Birmingham businessman’s.  Other people could toss aside all that they had to follow Jesus, but not this fellow.  And our gospel reading is quite clear why; he had many possessions. It was too much to let go of, and so he went away grieving. 

Us, Them, and Christian Identity

I attended a presentation by Brian McLaren last night via Twitter.  By that I mean I read the Twitter feed of someone who was at the presentation. It's a little like reading the notes someone takes as she takes them. I had not known about this event in advance, but when I saw this from Debra, "Live tweeting @brianmclaren in PHX," I perked up.  I love Brian McLaren's books and think he is the best conference keynote speaker I've ever run across.

As the Tweets of McLaren's presentation appeared on my phone, I was especially drawn to a string about Christian identity.  Here they are (combined and slightly edited to remove the abbreviations and shortcuts necessitated by Twitter's 140 character limit).

Christians know how to do 2 things 1) have a strong identity and be hostile to others with different identity. The correct people have the right to be here but everyone else is taking up our space. 2. We know how to have a weak identity in the name of tolerance. Weak/tolerant identity is less harmful to the other, but is also hard to pass on to the next generation. We need a third option: strong Christian identity that is benevolent toward other religions.

I couldn't agree more. Obviously these are generalizations, and don't apply to every individual Christian or congregation.  But in general, more fundamentalist, evangelical churches have tended to have a very clear and strong identity, but it often emerges from an "us and them" view of the world. And any positive view of the "thems" is largely limited to their status as potential converts.

On the other hand, mainline churches, and especially the more progressive wing of the mainline, often is very tolerant and accepting of others, seeing less of an "us and them" world and more of a one big "we."  But this inclusivity is often achieved by minimizing the differences and particularities of  Christian faith.  There's an old joke about about the liberal, UCC denomination that plays on their initials but could probably be applied to other liberal Christians. It goes, "What does UCC stand for?  Unitarians Considering Christ."  In reality it's the United Church of Christ, but the joke works because liberal Christians sometimes sound more like Unitarians than followers of Jesus.

That's no knock on Unitarians.  But if we prefer being Unitarian to being Christian, we should come clean and say so.

Today's readings from Acts and Luke remind us that Christian faith is rooted in the specific and messy particularities of the man Jesus. They speak of "a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous," and of sinners who are in need of forgiveness that Jesus can and does give.  And this is just the tip of the messy, particular iceberg.  Basic Christian identity includes a  bloody cross, a resurrection, an insistence that God is actively at work in human history, and more.

A few years ago, Kenda Creasy Dean authored a book entitled Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church.  The book is largely rooted in a massive study of adolescent spirituality in the US done from 2003-2005.  This study concluded that the faith of the typical American teenager was not really Christian, but something they labeled "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." And Dean says that this "Christian-ish" faith is a parasite draining the faith of its vitality. And the tenants of this Christian-ish faith are remarkably vague and innocuous, not in the least offensive to anyone. The is a god. God want people to be good and nice and fair. The main purpose of life is to be happy. God is uninvolved in our lives except to solve the occasional problem. And good people go to heaven. 

And the most troubling aspect of this study and book is that the Christian-ish faith of our teenagers is not the result of their misunderstanding something or perverting what they learned at church. Rather it is an accurate reflection of their parents' faith and the faith of the churches where they grew up. It's also a faith that does not bind teenagers to the church in any significant way.

I take it that this is precisely the sort of thing Brian McLaren was talking about last night when he spoke of a weak identity that was very tolerant but did not transmit well to the next generation.  And in fact, the study behind Dean's book found that typical teenagers had not rejected the church nor were they hostile to it. Rather the faith they had learned there was so vague and short on specifics that they saw little reason to continue participating. They could be moralistic, therapeutic deists without attending some anachronistic worship service.

And that brings me back to the challenge McLaren issued, to come up with a Christian identity that is strong, particular, and vital without any need to denigrate others. It is easy to build an identity using hostility, by defining us in contrast to "them." (Partisan politics is a good example.) But that is not the only way.  And I do not think it was the Christian way in the beginning. Only after Christians gained political power a few hundred years after Jesus did anyone begin to suggest forcibly converting people or killing those who would comply. Only when Christians resided in places of power did societies begin requiring conformity to a strong Christian identity under threat of the sword.

Progressive Christianity correctly rejects such coercive faith. It correctly champions freedom of religion and the denial of the sword to those who would say, "Believe as we do or else."  But these stances do not require us to water down our faith. The particulars of our faith are not the problem.

There is a concept from the world of business referred to as "the culture of mediocrity." It refers to a process where ideas or proposals are tweaked and modified in response to objections or concerns, but in the process of removing anything that bothers or upsets anyone, the end product is gutted to its core, leaving something that doesn't bother anyone, but accomplishes little. 

This process has a parallel in many churches, where proposals to do something new get whittled down to mediocre or worse.  And a similar process seems to have happened with faith itself. We have whittled it down and sanded off its corners and reduced it to something that offends no one but speaks to no one either.

I think that the challenge Brian McLaren issues is the big challenge facing Progressive Christianity. Can we articulate and proclaim a bold, vibrant, Christian faith and identity - emphasis on Christ - that is distinct and requires alterations to one's life to be a part of it, while at the same time remaining open, hospitable, and benevolent to those of other faiths and practices?

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Dysfunctional Family Torn Asunder

If you have been reading the Daily Lectionary lately, you've been following the Apostle Paul as he journeys to Jerusalem where his presence provokes a riot, he is arrested, and, while under arrest, narrowly avoids a plot to kill him.  "The Jews" are the ones plotting against Paul, and on first glance, these Jews would seem to be those same Jews who opposed Jesus.  But it is more likely that these "Jews" are in fact Jewish Christians, Christians who were upset that Paul was baptizing Gentiles without requiring them to be circumcised or to adopt Jewish dietary restrictions and so on.

At the time of Paul's arrest, the Christian movement still existed within Judaism. But as Gentiles began to join the movement, a huge conflict broke out over how Jewish these converts had to be. The book of Acts reports this conflict, though in much more subdued tones than Paul's own words in his letters. But Paul hopes to mend the rift that had developed between his Gentile Christianity and the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, heading there with an offering to assist the Jerusalem Church. But Paul is clearly not confident of success. He seems to know that his trip will not end well. And indeed, there is no report of the Jerusalem leaders ever receiving Paul or his offering. In that sense, his trip is a failure, but while Paul's Christianity lost out in his lifetime, it became the norm not too long after his death.  (Paul Achtemeier wrote a wonderful little book on Paul and Acts that covers this: The Quest for Unity in the New Testament Church.)

It is somewhat sobering to think that only 30 years or so after Jesus' death, fights within the Christian community had already turned so bitter that people thought it necessary or justified to kill members of the "other side."  But Christians killing other Christians over faith differences has been commonplace in history, along with Christians killing non-Christians and non-Christians killing Christians. And it continues right up to this moment. It is much less common in America, especially nowadays, but that does not mean our divisions are any less bitter.

My current congregation hosted an Episcopal congregation for over five years after they were ejected from their property when the pastor led the church to break away from the denomination and join an African Anglican union that was more to their conservative tastes. A long and bitter legal battle ensued with the Episcopal diocese finally prevailing, allowing the congregation hosted here to return home. I can only guess at the amount of money and energy expended on the long battle.

My own denomination has fought over issues of gay and lesbian ordination for decades. The divide over the issue was often extremely bitter, so much so that those on the left distrusted anything proposed by those on the right and vice versa. It looked remarkably similar to the partisan political divide in our nation where if it comes from the other side, our side's against it.

Lost in all this is any real sense of a unity in Christ. We say that in our baptisms we are joined to Christ, made his brothers and sisters. And so we are brothers and sisters to all those other Christians who disagree with us.  But our loyalties to positions seem to have superseded our family loyalty.  Brothers and sisters are now our enemies, our opponents. And when we get really riled up, we sound like political partisans who insist their opponents want to "destroy America."

My congregation's experience of hosting that Episcopal congregation included many practical and logistical difficulties to overcome, but it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. And we now have a much closer relationship with the Episcopal congregation than was historically the case. A small victory for Christian unity.  But we are both progressive, liberal congregations with no great theological gulf separating us.

We are now entertaining a request from a local, Russian language congregation to hold worship and classes here. Because they are happy to worship in the afternoon, the practical and logistical challenges are considerably less than they were with the Episcopalians. However, they are not liberal or progressive, far from it. They aren't ordaining women, much less gays, and their theology might be described as something along conservative, evangelical, Southern Baptist lines.

Can they worship here, or does their theology make them unwelcome? They are our brothers and sisters, but we have some significant disagreements.  Are our disagreements and differences sufficient to undo the family bonds? A question that biological families sometimes wrestle with.

I have considered myself a liberal or progressive for all of my adult life. I have been a longtime member and supporter of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, a group that has worked toward the full inclusion and ordination of those in the LGBT community.  But I have always been somewhat uncomfortable identifying myself primarily by such things. And that discomfort has only grow in recent years.

I am not a liberal or progressive who happens to be a Christian.  I am a follower of Jesus who happens to be a liberal or progressive. And I fear that the Christian right and left do grave damage to the Church universal, that vast family of all the baptized, when our primary identity comes from our place left or right, our denomination, our style of worship, or anything else other than Christ.

There was an article in the local paper yesterday about Protestants no longer comprising a majority in the United States, something no one would have predicted 50 years ago. Meanwhile, we Presbyterians have created yet another denomination, splitting again, largely over the issue of gay ordination.

God sure has one dysfunctional family.

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Two Miracles and God's Compassion

Two miracles; and what a contrast. In the first, a centurion comes to Jesus, seeking healing for one of his slaves.  In this story the focus in on the man's faith.  He comes to Jesus and asks for his help.  Jesus is astounded at the man's great faith, and grants the centurion's request. Presumably the healing and the man's faith are related.

But then comes another miracle, this one more impressive than the last. Jesus raises a man from death.  But this time there is no request for help and no demonstration of great faith. Jesus sees a widow whose son has died. He is filled with compassion, and he acts, going so far as to violate purity laws by touching the funeral bier. (Luke tells the story in a way that points us to 1 Kings 17, where another widow's son is raised.)

In Jesus' time, in a day before social safety nets, widows and orphans were among the most vulnerable.  The frequent admonitions in the Bible to care for the widow and orphan are a call to care for society's most vulnerable.  And a widow without a son was in a most precarious position. In a time when women did not have legal status as persons, being widowed and without a son left her totally defenseless, and she might well be reduced to begging.

Jesus sees the situation and he springs into action. There are no questions about her faith or worthiness. There are no questions at all, but rather two commands. "Do not weep... Young man, I say to you, rise!" after which "Jesus gave him to his mother."

If Jesus is indeed a window onto God's heart (and that would seem to be a most fundamental Christian notion), then it seems that God is moved more by God's own compassion than by our faith. That is not to make light of faith, but I have heard too often that God didn't heal someone because people didn't pray enough or didn't have enough faith. Yet in this story, deep compassion leads Jesus to raise the dead. And of course Jesus goes to the cross, not because of anyone's great faith, but because of God's great compassion.

There are times when I cannot understand why God's compassion does not seem more evident. I have no good answer for why God does not intervene when children are being slaughtered or entire villages are wiped out in ethnic cleansing. Nor do I know why God permits horrible personal suffering that leads people to take their own lives.  But if Jesus is my guide, I can only trust that God's compassion is at work in some way I cannot discern. Children are not being slaughtered because someone prayed the wrong prayer or had faith that failed to soar like the centurion's.

And me, as a part of the body of Christ, what about my compassion? At this moment, I'm thinking less about large scale compassion for the poor, the prisoner, etc. Instead I'm thinking about how hard it sometimes is for me to feel compassion for those who irritate me or make life hard for me.  Very often, I don't see people's hurts or brokenness if they inconvenience me very much. And people who actually make my job difficult may get no compassion at all.

On one occasion Jesus says that he comes to serve, and whoever wants to be great must first be a servant to all. A servant tends to the needs of others. Not a job many aspire to, and being a servant to all sounds impossible. I suppose it is, unless one is moved by compassion and love.

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Love, Security, and Freedom

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you? "Every time I hear Jesus say this, it cuts me to the quick. I say, "Jesus is Lord" without much hesitation.  It is one of the most basic Christian affirmations, and it means many things at the same time.  Jesus is master, boss, due great honor, the ultimate authority, and more. And thanks to the peculiar Jewish use of the word "lord" as a substitute for the divine name, it also means Jesus is God.

So if I easily say "Jesus is Lord," why do I find it so difficult to act like it?  Clearly Jesus anticipates this problem, and in Matthew's gospel he addresses it even more bluntly. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." (I hope this statement is at least partly hyperbole on Jesus' part.) Jesus couldn't be more clear about the need to do as he says, and I embrace him as Lord.  So why is it so hard to actually live as he commands?

I like to think that Jesus is sometimes less than clear about what he wants me to do. And certainly there are times when it's difficult to know just what a disciple is to do in the face of complex situations. Clearly Jesus wants me to be for the poor, but exactly what policies and programs would be most helpful is not always clear.

However, I think my biggest problem with following Jesus is fear. If I did what Jesus says, even most of the time, lots of "bad" things might happen.  People might not like me. Worse, they might tell other people not to like me, that I was a troublemaker or stupid or misguided. And I want people to think well of me. Following Jesus also might cause me to invest myself and my possessions in things other than myself. But if I did that, I might not have enough. And I'm afraid of not having enough. I'm afraid of being insecure. And if I don't look out for myself, who's going to do so?

There's a famous line from 1 John that says "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."  I have known a few people who seemed to have no fear, and it gave them a remarkable freedom. (I'm not talking about the bravado that comes from the "immortality of youth" or from not realizing the risks involved.) These people could take a difficult stand without worrying about what it might cost them. They could be generous beyond what might seem prudent. They could take great risks that might not pan out and did not seemed crushed if things went poorly.

I once thought that such people were simply braver than me. They were better able to screw up their courage and do difficult things. They were more accomplished at fighting their fears. I no longer think that. Rather I think their remarkable freedom to do difficult things comes from being remarkably secure. They are not much worried about what others will think or say. They are not greatly concerned about not having enough.  And with most of them, this is a matter of feeling secure in God's love. God loves them even if no one else does. God cares for them and will provide for them. The resurrection assures them that finally, nothing is stronger than God's love, the love in which they rest.

One of the great pitfalls in my faith life is a desire to makes sense of and understand everything. That makes me good at theology but not always very good at knowing God. Too often, I know about rather than know.

I suppose that with enough scientific study and research and analysis, it might be possible to explain the things that happen to someone when they fall in love. It might even be possible to predict whether or not two people could fall in love and under what circumstances. But even if all this were possible, I don't think knowing it would be anything like actually falling in love.

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you?" Jesus, help me know you and your love.  Help me really know, so that I can be secure and free.

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non Preaching Sunday

Two Sundays in a row without preaching.  Feels odd.  I hope I remember how come next Sunday.  Of course I can't totally doze off today. We have a congregational meeting today to elect a nominating committee, the group charged with finding those whom God is calling to be the deacons and elders who lead this church.  Presumably this will be a rather perfunctory meeting, but one never knows.

I don't know that today's gospel speaks directly to calling and electing leaders in a congregation, but it is interesting to think about a kingdom belonging to little children beside the question of who leads the church. "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."

Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom.  We forget that in the church sometimes, focusing more on heaven than the Kingdom. But the Kingdom is not a synonym for heaven. So what does it mean to say the Kingdom, God's new day, God's new dominion or realm,belongs to children, and we must receive it as children to enter?

It's worth remembering that Jesus lived in a very different time and culture than we do.  In Jesus' day, children did not enjoy the status they do in our culture. Children had no rights, were property of their father, and, to a perhaps even greater degree than women, were not thought of as full persons. Until they came of age, they really did not matter. "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs." 

The Kingdom belongs to the nobodies, the invisible, the unimportant.  And Jesus seems to think that those of us who are somebodies, who are prominent and important, will have difficulty with this kingdom. Nobodies received the Kingdom easily, but others must become like nobodies in some way.

I'm not sure how to make a smooth segue from nobodies receiving the Kingdom to the question of who leads the church, but is seems to me that the two things should be related in some way.  If the church is to continue the work of Jesus, which must surely mean continuing to proclaim the kingdom, then it stands to reason that we must know something about receiving the Kingdom as nobodies.

 The manner of electing elders and deacons in the Presbyterian Church has changed since I was a child, but I still remember those elections when ballots were handed out and people circled the people they wanted to elect. (Today our nominating committee brings back a slate with the same number of people as offices to be filled.)  In a reasonably large church, this was something of a popularity contest, and the nobodies almost never got elected. In fact, the people I remember as elders and deacons from my childhood didn't seem at all like nobodies to me. They were prominent, important, impressive, and so on. 

Now obviously a church does want leaders with real strengths and abilities, people God has given gifts of discernment and leadership.  But I can't help wondering about how these impressive leaders should relate to a Kingdom that belongs to nobodies.

What Shapes and Forms Us

One of the trends in my faith tradition has the term spiritual or "Christian formation" supplanting the term "Christian Education."  Directors of Christian Education (DCEs), once common in larger Presbyterian churches, are becoming scarcer while Directors of Christian Formation are seen more regularly.

Religion, like other fields, is often captive to trends, and so churches reorganize and restructure and revision just like other organizations.  And we rename committees and positions without it really changing anything that happens. But I don't think the idea of spiritual formation is simply a passing fad. No doubt there are congregations who rename a DCE as a DCF with no accompanying change in practices. But the name change more often reflects real changes in how churches do what they used to call Christian Education.

In the 1950s, for better or worse, many people expected that participation in the larger culture would form people both as citizens and as people of faith. The idea that America was a Christian nation, however far that was from actual truth, implied that one could learn the habits and practices of being a Christian via active participation in our society.  Practices of sabbath keeping, regular patterns of worship, and shared moral standards were encouraged and enforced by cultural and governmental forces.

In such an environment, church congregations were one player among many in forming Christians, and they could focus on activities such as holding worship and teaching the finer points of the faith (and their version of it) to members. To that end, Sunday School (which itself had begun as social program to educate poor children who couldn't attend regular school) was seen as a classroom much like the ones students attended Monday-Friday.  There were "text books" and various things that needed to be taught. (An unfortunate and unintended side affect of this specialized religious instruction was that religious education came to be seen as the work of experts rather than a primary tasks of parents.)

But over the last half century or so, the cultural components where a "Christian nation" formed people in faith have pretty much disappeared. The culture no longer encourages and enforces sabbath keeping or regular worship. Instead it actively works against these, creating all manner of enticements designed to draw people away from worship or treat Sabbath like any other day. Faithful participation in a religious community has gone from expected to downright counter-cultural.

In this changed landscape, many of those old Sunday School models make very little sense.  Forty five minutes a week in a classroom on a less than regular basis is not likely to profoundly change how people live their lives without some other supporting structures.  If the Christian life is indeed counter-cultural, Sunday School alone doesn't stand much of a chance against all the forces aligned against it.

In short, faith communities are faced with the problem of how to shape and form people for lives that exist in some tension with the community around them.  And while those who want to put prayer or God back into the schools recognize this problem and likely have the best of intentions, the fact is there is no going back. We are not going to get the culture to do this work for us. The culture has too much invested in Sunday soccer, endless childhood enrichment, 24-7 efficiency and productivity, economics based on consumerism, and so on to ever fully buy into a way of life that insists on sabbath rest, on life more focused on others than self, on life lived toward God and not much worried about acquiring more.

In such a setting, the need to form people for faithful lives becomes more and more the issue. Teaching people the Bible and theology is still a big piece, but learning the basic rhythms and practice of a faithful life become critical. We still need to teach beliefs, but we also need to learn ways and habits. We need to help people be formed in ways that allow them to follow Jesus, not simply believe in him.

When I began writing this, I had no thoughts of discussing DCEs or Christian Education. I was reflecting on why Jesus had so much difficulty with the good, religious people of his day. I was thinking about formation from that standpoint, wondering about how Jesus' opponents had been religiously shaped in such a way that they saw him as a threat. This notion of formation made me think of Christian formation and led to the long tangent that has delivered me here. 

But at the end of that tangent, I find myself still reflecting on how those scribes and Pharisees got off track somewhere in their religious formation. And I'm wondering what that means as we in the church face the huge challenge of forming people for Christ in our time.  What does it mean to form and shape people to be like Jesus, someone who adhered to his faith tradition and taught as a rabbi in it, who learned the Scriptures and kept the Sabbath, and yet never let his faith tradition keep him from helping and caring for others.

The Apostle Paul seems to capture this pattern in his famous piece on love from 1 Corinthians 13. Too often relegated to weddings, Paul's soaring words remind us that faith and knowledge and power and abilities are all rendered meaningless without love. And of course Paul is not speaking of romantic love, but of a love that always sees the other as one deserving my care, help, etc. Jesus embodies what Paul describes. Jesus is formed through and through by and for love. Jesus taught and followed the rules, but he never succumbed to what so often happens to good people who have knowledge. Jesus never viewed those without knowledge or outside the rules as somehow undeserving. Rather he sought them out, feeling especially compelled to love and care for them.

How does one teach this? How does a class fill someone with such deep love and compassion that she would cross cultural boundaries and break religious convention to reach out to an outsider? How are we to form people by and for love?

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Is It Worship?

O sing to the LORD a new song;
   sing to the LORD, all the earth. 
Sing to the LORD, bless his name;
   tell of his salvation from day to day. 
Declare his glory among the nations,
   his marvelous works among all the peoples. 
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;
   he is to be revered above all gods.  (from Ps. 96)

Both this morning's psalms call us to praise and worship God. These psalms don't ask anything of God. They sing about God, brag on God, and tell about the wonderful things God has done. They seem to have no ulterior motive, expecting nothing in return for their worship and praise. They are - to borrow the title from Marva Dawn's book on worship - A Royal "Waste" of Time.

A colleague of mine, James Kim, had a blog post yesterday with this title: "Connecting with God Is Not the Same Thing as Worshiping God." He's correct; it's not. Pastor Kim is contrasting Sunday worship with things that we do outside church to connect with God. But I worry that this connecting with God vs. worshiping God dynamic exists within Sunday worship itself.

In its most basic form, worship is the sort of activity found in today's psalms. But we ask that thing we call a "worship service" to do a great deal, perhaps way too much. The name "worship service" implies that we serve God with our worship  But we expect to be served as well, sometimes so much so that our serving God gets lost.

I'm not suggesting that worship should be nothing more than songs of praise and adoration. We do need to hear God's word speak to us in worship. We do need to be nourished at the Lord's Table. But if we understand worship primarily as something directed at us for our benefit, if we don't have a significant sense of offering ourselves to God in worship, then I fear that we've turned worship into one more consumer item that's supposed to make our lives better. And at that point, we may well have turned God into a consumer item. This consumer-item God does not inspire wonder and awe trembling, but exists solely to make our lives better, happier, more spiritual, more meaningful, etc.

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
   let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it.
   Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy.

The God of the psalmist is so wonderful and awe inspiring that even creation itself cannot stop from joining in the worship and praise. Is that the God we "worship?"

What I Really Need

"Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" - he said to the one who was paralyzed - "I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home." (Luke 5:23-24)

I've always been bothered by this passage. Companions bring a paralyzed man to Jesus, and his response is to say, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." My problem is not that Jesus says this, but that this is apparently all he plans to say.  Perhaps I'm reading the passage too literally, but Jesus does say that he heals the man so that people will know he can forgive sin. This seems to say that the man needed forgiveness more than he needed to be healed of his paralysis.

It's interesting to contemplate the idea that I need forgiveness more than any of the other things I think I need.  My experience as a pastor is that lots of Presbyterians would just as soon not have a prayer of confession in the worship service.  We know we're not perfect, but we're not that bad.  It's not something we need to be overly concerned with.

I wonder if mechanical understandings of forgiveness sometimes accentuate this. We're sinners; Jesus died; we believe; it's all okay now. We get it. No need to go over it and over it.

True, we know the formula, but have we really experienced God's forgiveness? Have we truly felt what it is like to restored, to have a broken relationship healed, to have God make amends for the hurt we have caused, to experience a whole new quality of life?

One of the most basic Christian affirmations is that Jesus is Lord and Savior.  But I really don't want a Lord.  I want to be in charge of my own life. And I'm not all that sure I need saving. I'm a bit like a raging alcoholic who manages to fool family, friends, and himself into believing that he has it all under control.  There is no deep and serious problem. I don't really need any help.

We humans seem to have remarkable abilities to delude ourselves. So I wonder, what is it that I really need?

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For God Alone

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
  from God comes my salvation.  Ps. 62:1

A question I've gotten from a few folks in my new call goes like this. "So James, what is your vision for our church?"  I confess to being a bit uncomfortable with the question, but I don't think that's a matter of shirking my leadership responsibilities. I'm not at all averse to pointing out things we need to do or pushing for certain things, but I don't think a congregation's vision is supposed to come from me.

One of the things I enjoy about the lectio divina practice of reading Scripture is the way it can open you to hearing a word that you would never get from traditional Bible study. It is important to study the Bible and to explore the meaning of a passage after considering its context, to whom it is addressed, the type of literature, and so on. But hearing God speak is not simply a matter of understanding the Bible, and lectio divina lets us listen in a different way.  This spiritual practice, where a passage is read simply listening for a word or phrase that seems to stand out, is a wonderful way to become more open to God in a manner that is not academic or about what I know.

For God alone...  That grabbed me this morning. And as I reflected on why that might be, I don't think it had much to do with the psalm's looking to God for rescue or security. I heard this as a word for that question of vision. For God alone we wait, hoping to hear clearly.  For God alone we become still and silent, anticipating that God does have plans for us, that God has a calling for us.

I'm not suggesting that our knowledge and understanding don't matter.  If we know our Bibles at all we surely have some idea of the kind of things God expects from us. But what is there that is peculiar to us, to our current moment and particular context? What calling is God placing on us right now?

For God alone my soul waits in silence, longing to hear.

"So James, what is your vision for our church?" True vision is from God, but in the meantime, I have what might be a provisional vision.  May all of us in this congregation become more attentive, waiting for God alone, so that together we may hear God's call.

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