Sermon - Lengths in the Chain

Hebrews 11:39-12:2

Lengths in the Chain

James Sledge                                                                                       November 4, 2012

I subscribe to a magazine called The Christian Century. It’s been around since the late 1800s, and long served as a prominent  voice for liberal, Mainline Protestantism.  But I mention the magazine today, simply because of its name, The Christian Century.

It took that name at the dawn of the Twentieth century as America and its churches entered a new era brimming with hope and optimism. The remarkable technological advances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led many to believe that humankind was on the verge of solving all sorts of problems, from wiping out diseases to increasing agricultural production so that hunger might soon be a thing of the past.

The dawn of the Twentieth Century was accompanied by a nearly unshakable faith in human progress, a view shared by American Christianity. The missionary movement had grown exponentially in the late 1800s, and many in the church, both conservative and liberal, envisioned a fast approaching day when the gospel truly had been carried to all the world.  Along with utopian visions of a world without poverty, hunger or childhood diseases, there would be a parallel progress in the advancement of faith.  The world would progress and become Christian, and so it would be the Christian Century. And from that optimism, the magazine took its name.

Obviously things didn’t work out quite like people expected. Barely a decade into the new century, World War I broke out, demonstrating clearly that “progress” also meant progress in our ability to maim, kill, and terrorize on a scale that had previously seemed unimaginable.

And that was followed shortly after by a worldwide Great Depression that makes our current economic difficulties look like a party.  Then came World War II, the Holocaust, and nuclear weapons.  No one was any longer talking about the inexorable march of progress toward an ideal human society. 

At the same time, anti-colonialism movements were accompanied by a resurgence of indigenous faiths such as Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, and talk of bringing the kingdom began to subside.  There was not going to be a Christian Century, and with the loss of such hope, faith took on a more personal focus.  Faith was about getting right with God personally. It was primarily about believing the right things, being moral, and getting a ticket to heaven, to a better place.

On Not Grieving the Spirit

On All Saints' Day, the gospel passage is not anything warm and fuzzy. Jesus' opponents seek to trap him, and he speaks of his followers not fearing death, of hell and judgment and unforgivable sin. It's the sort of passage that might prompt me to look at the other readings if this were one of the Sunday passages for use in preaching.

Many are familiar with Jesus' words saying, "even the hairs of your head are all counted." But I've most often heard them quoted to mean, "Don't worry, God won't let anything bad happen to you."  But Jesus uses them to reassure us about facing death, and not a natural death at that.  They're part of a warning to hold fast to faith when the going gets tough, even deadly, a reminder to trust God's care even when facing death, because, says Jesus, there are things worse than death.

It's a little unnerving to hear Jesus say that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable. I must admit, however, I'm not entirely sure what that means. We can say all sorts of nasty things about Jesus and get a pass, but not the Holy Spirit?  What's that all about?

I'm not at all certain, but considering that the author of Luke is the same person who tells us in Acts about Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, I wonder if this warning isn't only for people of faith.  Are only those who have received the Spirit able to blaspheme the Spirit?

Given the context, that seems to make sense. And so this would have nothing to do with typical discussions around "believe and be saved, don't and you're in trouble," but rather would be about how those who do feel the Spirit at work in their lives respond to that Spirit.

Understood this way, perhaps the tendency of Presbyterians to stay away from the Spirit is an unintentional act of self-preservation. If we're never aware of the Spirit's presence, perhaps we can't actually blaspheme her.

But all that aside, I have to think that part of what Jesus is saying is that once we really experience the Spirit's presence within us, granting us faith and strengthening us to follow Jesus into even the most difficult situation, it would require the most incredible act of willful and intentional disobedience to turn away that Jesus can't imagine us doing such a thing. That's why he concludes his warning about facing persecution, arrest, and even death this way. "Do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say."

Do not worry.  So why is it so hard for me, and many like me, to entrust myself to the Spirit?

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Halloween and Other Costumes

Before long the trick-or-treaters will arrive.  I have no idea how many. The first Halloween in a new neighborhood, you don't know how much candy to buy.  Hopefully we have too much rather than too little. I'll be happy to polish it off.

I always enjoyed Halloween as a child.  It was fun to dress up as something you weren't. Once when I was around 10, I made myself a robot costume.  A couple of boxes, some silver spray paint, and some antennae fashioned from household utensils, and I had a crude, but serviceable facsimile of a robot inspired by the Lost in Space TV series showing back in those days.

But whether the costumes were crude, home-made jobs or fancy, store-bought ones, everyone understood that the masquerade was fleeting. Other than the occasional very young sibling or family pet, no one was really fooled by these remodeled exteriors. Under the costumes, we were still the same. Nothing had really changed.

Yet despite knowing this, most of us still worry a lot about our costumes.  Not our Halloween ones, but the costumes we put on every day. Sometimes these are literal, the clothes we wear to project just the right image.  Sometimes that are a persona that we don, hoping it will make us look more impressive, attractive, sexy, knowledgeable, powerful, datable, and so on. But often they are not much more effective than Halloween costumes. Who we really are inside still shows.

Jesus goes after the Pharisees in today's gospel over their concern with the outside rather than the inside.  Seems that nothing has change in 2000 years.  And this isn't simply a personal thing. We church folks worry a lot about the outside of our buildings and our worship, sometimes to the neglect of deeper, more important things.

We all know that the Church is people, a communion of saints who together constitute the living body of Christ in the world. Yet very often we we mention "church," we are talking about our costumes.

What's beneath the costumes your church wears? And what sort of Jesus does that show to the world?

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The Crisis of Jesus' Presence

The storm blew through last night. There's a tree down in the church parking lot, but that's about it. And we didn't lose power as we did in this summer's derecho, so I feel fortunate. Not so for many in other places such as New Jersey and NYC, not to mention the Caribbean. And as I read today's lectionary passages, it reminded me of how the poor suffer disproportionately at such times.

I was none too happy this summer when we lost the contents of a recently filled refrigerator/freezer to days without power. No one likes to throw away expensive food, but it did not really impose any great financial hardship on me to replace all that food. Not the case for some. And that is just one small example. For those who struggle to get by, storms like Sandy can mean days with no income, damage to cars or homes with no money for repairs. I don't mean to make light of someone's vacation home being washed away at the beach, but there is a difference.

What got me thinking about such things was a line from today's psalm and a statement from Jesus in Luke's gospel.  From Psalm 12,  
       “Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan,
          I will now rise up,” says the LORD;
       “I will place them in the safety for which they long.”
And from Jesus, when someone blesses the womb that bore him, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!"

The gospel of Luke emphasizes themes of love and forgiveness as much or more than any other gospel. It is in Luke alone that Jesus says from the cross, "Father, forgive them." But today Jesus speaks of obeying God, and of his presence as judgment, a sign requiring repentance or change. Jesus says we need to hear and obey. But too often in the church, we stop at "believe."  Worse, we pervert Jesus' message, reducing it to nothing more than one of personal salvation. And we conveniently forget that Jesus says his coming is about good news for the poor, release for the captive, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of Jubilee. (This Jubilee was a time when debts are forgiven and those who had sold land to survive have it returned. Clearly it is something that benefits the poor at the expense of the rich.)

The fact is, we have heard God speak of caring for the poor, of doing justice and mercy. We have heard Jesus call us to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbor as much as self. We have heard Jesus call us to be servants, but still we build our churches to serve us.  Look at the budget of the typical church, and care of the poor and needy will be one of the smallest slivers on the budget pie chart. It's not that we have no compassion for those in need, it's just that it's way down at the bottom of our priority list.

It's pretty rare to hear judgment preached in Mainline churches, unless it is judgment on others. But the presence of Jesus is a sign that brings judgment, that demands change. When we encounter Jesus, we must either go with him, or turn away. I'm not talking about getting into heaven or not, but I am talking about the crisis that Jesus' presence provokes. Perhaps that's why we Presbyterians are so uncomfortable talking about presence or the Holy Spirit. It is much safer to discuss Jesus than to encounter him.

On that note, let me start to lobby for something I've seen suggested by others. It is time to abandon the label "Christian."  It has become so vague as to be meaningless. "Follower of Jesus" would be much better. At least that would remind us of the response that his presence demands.

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Hurricanes, Prayers, and Our Place in the Story

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
     from him comes my salvation. 
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
     my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
                                   (Psalm 62:1-2)



"I called to the Lord out of my distress,
     and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
     and you heard my voice.  
You cast me into the deep,
     into the heart of the seas,
     and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
     passed over me.  
Then I said, 'I am driven away
     from your sight;
how shall I look again
     upon your holy temple?'  
The waters closed in over me;
     the deep surrounded me; 
                           (from Jonah 2)

These readings seem fitting on a day when Hurricane Sandy (or if you prefer, Frankenstorm) threatens the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Here in the Washington, DC area, most everything is shut down in anticipation, though as yet the weather is fairly tame in Falls Church, VA.  In the meantime, my Twitter feed has an interesting mix of religiously-oriented, hurricane-related tweets.

A large number offer prayers for those affected or encourage others to offer similar prayers. But a handful regard such activity as silly. I follow God on Twitter (actually a mostly humorous account, @TheTweetOfGod), and God tweeted this earlier. "Afflicted by #Sandy? Please turn to Me for comfort from the pain I'm causing you"

Speaking of cause, there's a lot of Twitter activity responding to folks who say Sandy is divine retribution for gay marriage or some other supposed "immorality." All the religious types I follow are trashing such notions. God chimed in on this one, too."I send natural disasters to punish mankind for being stupid enough to believe in a God who would send natural disasters to punish it."

I struggle sometimes with the notion of a sovereign God who rules over all history, a Jesus who "even the winds and the sea obey," alongside a perfectly predictable, destructive storm such as Sandy which has precisely followed computer models based on the best available science, unmoved by the prayers of many faithful people. What does this say about our faith, about our God?

A couple of things strike me. For many, God's chief concerns has become the status of our "eternal souls." (Never mind that the eternal soul is a Greek philosophical idea and not a biblical one.) And we are unsure about how God operates in other arenas. Even conservative evangelicals can get unnerved by Pat Robertson type announcements of praying away a hurricane. Best to leave hurricanes to the meteorologists.

At the same time, modern people are very immediate. We make judgments based on the moment and have great difficulty with a long term view, even more so if long term means not just a few years, but beyond my lifetime. We not only vote in elections based on how we think we will be affected in the coming days, but how we feel about God is often a matter of how it's going with me today.

One item of truly good news in the gospels is that God is concerned with each of us as individuals, that the hairs on our heads are numbered. But that concern does not mean that God measures all things based on how they affect me. The biblical story is primarily a corporate one. Each of us is valued, but we are also part of a larger whole. To be Christian is to become part of a larger story, a story whose meaning, direction, and ultimate culmination is not necessarily tied to what happens to me today.

None of this provides terribly satisfactory answers to why God permits hurricanes to kill and destroy. But it does speak directly to the fact that Hurricane Sandy barely showed up on my Twitter feed when it was wreaking destruction and death in Cuba and Haiti.  It's okay for God to ignore hurricanes that don't impact me.

I think it safe to say that a great deal of arrogance is required to imagine that God is not beyond my understanding. Clearly there are and will be many things for which there are no good answers, although the Bible endorses fist shaking and yelling at God in many such instances, at least according to Job. Indeed not to do so may be indicative of a lack of faith, of notions God whose power is restricted to admitting me to heaven.

But one thing is almost certain, wrestling with questions of where God is in the storm will raise questions of my place in God's larger story. What does it say if I barely noticed Haiti, or if I'd prefer Sandy to hit New York City rather than hit me? 

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Sermon audio - Almost Ready

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Sermon - Almost Ready

Almost Ready
Mark 12:28-34

October 28, 2012                                                                              James Sledge

 When someone takes flying lessons, the first big milestone in the process is flying solo.  The first time the instructor gets out and says, “Take it around the pattern yourself,” is a huge moment in the life of a student pilot.  Many students who solo never actually get their pilot’s license, but still, they have flown by themselves.  They can truly call themselves pilots.

That first solo flight is a big deal among pilots.  It’s traditional to cut off the student’s shirt tail and tack it to the flight school wall with the student’s name and the date of the solo flight.  Not surprisingly, many students are anxious about when they will solo.  They bug the instructor.  “Do you think I’m ready yet?  Do you think I’m ready?” 

A few students never get it, but they are rare.  For most, eventually it clicks, and the instructor says, “You’re starting to get it.  You’re almost ready.  Let’s schedule your next lesson, and if everything goes well, you’ll solo at the end of it.”

It’s an exciting moment in the life of pilot, and even if you’ve never held the controls of an airplane, most of you can probably understand.  After all, life is full of such moments.  At some point, babies are almost ready to walk.  Children are almost ready to take the training wheels off.  Students are just about ready to graduate.  Couples are almost ready to get married or start a family. People are almost ready to retire.  We all experience such moments.  We reach those points in our lives when we are ready to move on to something new. 

In our gospel reading this morning, a scribe who has noticed Jesus’ keen religious insight asks him a question.  It was a question much debated among rabbis.  What commandment took precedence over others?  Or as the scribe says, “Which commandment is first of all?”

Jesus does not break any truly new ground with his answers. He quotes Scripture, first from Deuteronomy, then from Leviticus.  And interestingly, he can’t stop with one commandment but requires two, although both involve love.

The scribe is clearly impressed with Jesus’ answer.  And I don’t think it’s simply a matter of his agreeing with Jesus.  I get the impression that the scribe’s eyes are opened just a bit.  Things come into focus for him, and he gets. “You are right, Teacher. Now I see. To love God with every fiber of your being and to love your neighbor as yourself, that’s the point.   It’s so much more important than getting the liturgy or music or rituals just right.

And then it’s Jesus’ turn to be impressed. He says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  At least that’s what our Bible translation says.  But translating from one language to another is never an exact business. There’s usually more than one way. And this one could also be translated, “You are almost ready for the kingdom of God.”

Asking the Wrong Questions

Who is my neighbor?  That's the question Jesus is asked in today's gospel. In Luke's rather interesting take on this story, Jesus does not tell this fellow what the greatest commandment is. (See Matthew 22:34-40 or Mark 12:18-27) Rather the questioner provides Jesus with the commands to love God with all your being and to love neighbor as self.  Jesus simply affirms the man's response saying, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

"But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'" I shouldn't say this during "stewardship season," but this question from today's gospel has always recalled for me a question about tithing. "Are you supposed to tithe from pre-tax or after-tax income?" I suppose some people might simply be asking so as to be sure and tithe correctly, but it usually strikes me a diversionary question, and my answer is, "Either would be fine."

The lawyer in today's gospel knows the commandments.  ("Lawyer" here refers to Mosaic law from the Old Testament.) He knows he is supposed to love his neighbors as himself, but is that pre-tax or after-tax neighbors?  What's a reasonable neighborhood zone?  Inside the zone equals neighbor while outside is not.

Jesus' answer is one of his most famous parables, even though it appears only in Luke's gospel. And this "parable of the Good Samaritan" does not actually answer the man's question, at least not directly. Jesus answers a question about who might fall outside a reasonable neighborhood zone with a story about a man who was already presumed to be outside that zone.  A thoroughly despised Samaritan, the definition of an outsider to many Jews of Jesus' day, goes out of his way to care for someone in need.  And Jesus says, "Be like him."

Much like the lawyer in today's gospel, our questions are sometimes not the right questions. I think that Christians often sound ridiculous and sometimes cruel because we insist on asking Jesus or the Bible questions that are the wrong questions. The lawyer knows what he is supposed to do, but he asks a question in hopes of limiting the command to be neighborly.  And when you consider how un-neighborly Christians often are both to outsiders and to one another, it seems we are still are taking our cues from the lawyer in Luke's gospel.

I wonder what might happen if every time we found ourselves thinking that some "other" did not deserve our help, our hospitality, our welcome, our love, our concern, our friendship, etc. we let Jesus retell us this parable.

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Sermon video - Not So Among You

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What Makes God Mad

These words from today's reading in Micah are familiar to many.
  They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
       and their spears into pruning-hooks;
   nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
       neither shall they learn war any more. 

But I wonder how many know the context of these hopeful words.
   Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob
       and chiefs of the house of Israel,
   who abhor justice
       and pervert all equity,  
   who build Zion with blood
       and Jerusalem with wrong!     
  Its rulers give judgement for a bribe,
       its priests teach for a price,
       its prophets give oracles for money;
   yet they lean upon the Lord and say,
       "Surely the Lord is with us!
       No harm shall come upon us."    Therefore because of you
       Zion shall be ploughed as a field;
   Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
       and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

God's promise of a new day comes because leaders of the present day neglect justice, concern for the poor, and the ways of mercy and peace. Government and the religious apparatus is tilted toward the wealthy, in cahoots with the rich. God is not happy because of behavior as current as this morning's headlines.

People of faith sometimes worry about what makes God happy and what makes God upset, although they often don't agree about the answers.  There's a lot of focus on what people believe and on certain sorts of moral behaviors. Because we are a sex-obsessed culture, sexual sins often head the lists of things God is riled up about.

The biblical prophets sometimes mention these, but most of the prophets seem much more worked up about injustice, the plight of the poor, the corruption of both governance and religion for the sake of the wealthy.  Another prophet, Amos, sounds a bit like Micah in condemning those who go to church on Sunday but exploit the poor.
  I hate, I despise your festivals,
       and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies...
  Take away from me the noise of your songs.
       I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
  But let justice roll down like waters,
       and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

At the most basic and fundamental level, what sort of behaviors emerge in your life based on what you think makes God happy or upset?

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Faith and Hospitality

The topic of hospitality has become big in the church of late. It is a chapter heading and one of the big "practices" in Diana Butler Bass' book, Christianity for the Rest of Us. And it is the focus of a new book by Henry Brinton, pastor at Fairfax Presbyterian, entitled The Welcoming Congregation: Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality. 

Hospitality in these books and in many other church discussions is about much more than being friendly. It is about a ministry to which each of us is called. It is about going out of our way to welcome the stranger, to see ourselves as hosts. And as such, it does not always fit well into the habits of typical mainline congregations.

In another of her books, The Practicing Congregation, Diana Butler Bass follows up on her aforementioned book, and in it she speaks of "established congregations" and contrasts them with "intentional congregation." (She argues that this is going to become a much more important contrast than conservative versus liberal, but that's another discussion.)  She contrasts them in a number of areas. For example she says that established congregations think of congregants as members or family, while intentional congregations think in terms of companions, pilgrims, and friends. The controlling image of church for the established folks is chapel, while it is community for the intentionals. 

An area of contrast I find particularly interesting is that of piety. Here Butler Bass says that the established are introverted, private, and devotional compared to extroverted, expressive, and spirituality for the intentional. And I can't help but think that some very different takes on hospitality emerge from these different takes on piety and church.

If I go to chapel for my personal, devotional time, I may well be convinced that I should show hospitality to a visitor in worship, but that is not likely to be part of my devotional/spiritual activity. It isn't a spiritual practice for me, and it may simply be a strategy to recruit new members.

But if my piety needs to connect with the other in order to build community, if my spirituality is about sharing a pilgrim journey with others, then I may view hospitality as an essential part of my faith life. It isn't something I ought to do so that people think mine is a "friendly church." Instead it is central to my faith life.

Now I don't know if Butler Bass is correct in her assessment of an established/intentional continuum or of its characteristics.  But I thought of her writings when I read today's gospel. Jesus has sent out 70 of his disciples on mission tour, and this is a portion of their instructions. "Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'"

The only requirement for people to be cured and to have good news of the kingdom delivered to them is hospitality. Nothing about their faith, or whether they were convinced by what the disciples say. But if they are welcoming, if they show hospitality...

Considering how often the Bible speaks of hospitality, and how frequently it calls us to welcome the stranger, it seems odd that hospitality has lost its place as a core faith practice.  "... for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me..." 

How do you engage in the spiritual practice of hospitality in your congregation?

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Priorities

Today's gospel reading opens with this line about Jesus. "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem."  Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross. His life was organized around getting to Jerusalem and the cross. Because Jesus' life was totally centered on serving God by giving his life for us, nothing could deter him from journeying to the cross.

As Jesus prioritizes his life around this journey to Jerusalem, he becomes the living embodiment of the commandment he will speak just a scant chapter later in Luke's gospel.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

Priorities, we all have them. We're in stewardship season at my congregation, and so I'm talking about what our giving says about our priorities. If almost none of our money goes to loving God or neighbor, surely that says something significant about where God and neighbor fit among our priorities.

The ways we use our money and our other resources are faith statements and moral statements. They declare, often much more clearly than our professed beliefs, what is really important to us. The measly giving of many Christians often make a poor witness when it comes to our faith, but I think such stinginess is merely symptomatic of our real problem. When it comes to priorities, human beings have a universal tendency to make ourselves the center or the universe. And this tendency seems to have teamed up with American individualism to produce some disturbing results.

Individualism has religious roots, especially from the Protestant Reformation, and it has made real contributions to our society. But it has a dark side. Unchecked, individualism measures everything based on how it impacts me. Without a larger good to which the self owes allegiance, everything's worth is measured by whether or not it makes my life better.

Even God and faith fall under such measures. To the degree that faith makes my life better or improves it, it is worth my time.  But if there are not some clear, short-term benefits for me (we Americans struggle to think long term), it is not.  In such a climate, much church activity focuses on style, on whether or not this or that style of worship peps me up, feeds me, or makes me feel better.

This is not to say that worship should not feed us or at times make us feel better. But if we measure it purely on such terms, we rob it of any power to change us, to call us to a new life with different priorities such as loving God with all our being and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

What is the absolute core, the center around which your life is organized and prioritized? Regardless of how much importance we Americans put on the individual, I am certain that the answer to this question cannot be "Me."

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