"God Bless America" and Other July 4th Conundrums

Today's gospel covers the portion of Jesus' trial where he is transferred from Pilate, to Herod, and back again to Pilate. It concludes with this postscript. "That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies." Likely Luke is simply making an allusion to Psalm 2, but I immediately thought of the phrase, "Politics makes strange bedfellows."

That is perhaps even more so when politics gets mixed with religion, which is has as long as both have existed. A perpetual human project is the attempt to manage God for our own purposes. "God bless America" is a fairly innocuous version of this (made less innocuous when in includes the expectation that blessing America means cursing our enemies). Enlisting God in the national cause often seems a good thing for the nation, not always so good a thing for God.

Speaking of alliances between God and country, I'm glad the Old Testament passage I'm preaching on next Sunday didn't arrive on the July 4th weekend. As a preacher, I tend to stay a week or so ahead on sermon preparation, and as I worked on the sermon from Amos 7, I said a little thank you that the text gave me a bit of distance from "God Bless America" sung to accompanying fireworks.

In the passage, Amos, who comes from the southern kingdom of Judah, travels to the northern kingdom of Israel to condemn their king. You can imagine how well that goes over. And so the priest of the sanctuary at Bethel, a sort of northern equivalent of the Jerusalem Temple, tells Amos to get out of town. But as he does so, the strange bedfellows things pops up. He refers to the temple as "the king's sanctuary." Not God's sanctuary but the king's. It's not quite the same as saying the king has commanded God to bless Israel, but the effect is pretty much the same.

When people sing "God Bless America," or when they invoke the phrase in speeches, I don't know what is in their hearts. But sometimes it doesn't sound much like a request or petition. It sound like a demand or an expectation.

I certainly would prefer that God bless America. I also love fireworks and John Philip Sousa marches. But I think it beyond arrogant to imagine that God has to be a loyal member of our team, a notion that worked out rather poorly for the king of Israel and his head priest at Bethel. 

A number of years ago my wife stuck a quote from U2 band member Bono on our refrigerator. Bono said a wise man once told him something that changed his life. "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing, because it's already blessed."

I'm pretty sure that applies to countries, too.

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Competing Images of God

The Lord is gracious and merciful,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all,
    and his compassion is over all that he has made.

Psalm 145:8-9

If I were going to start a religion from scratch, I think I would devise a sacred text considerably shorter than the Christian Bible. The Hebrew texts alone are far too long, and the New Testament has a great deal of duplication. Why not hone it down to one gospel?

Another issue I would address in my sacred text is a consistent portrait of my divinity, a problem not unrelated to the Bible's lack of brevity. That some people use terms such as "the God of the Old Testament" or "the God of the New" point to this problem. In fact, the uneven pictures of God that lead to such phrases can be found in both Testaments. Many might hear the above verses from one of the morning psalms as sounding more like a New Testament God. Then again, there is something about destroying the wicked near the psalm's end.

Perhaps a short pamphlet or booklet that laid out the attributes of God, the rules God expects people to live by, and how God reacts to those who don't, would suffice. People in the church are always complaining about the problem of biblical literacy. If we cut the sacred text down to 20 or 30 pages, surely that would help with this problem.

We Protestants are heavily invested in the Bible. We say things like sola scripture or "scripture alone." We insist that the Bible is the witness par excellence, trumping all else whether it be church doctrine or human logic. But all too often, we have read it as a source of information, sometimes even as dispassionate history or reporting of events. And read this way, we are often can't handle conflicting pictures of God and so are reduced to cherry picking scripture, lifting up those passages that support our own notions of God. At times this can lead to different groups of Christians whose images of God cannot be reconciled.

I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, but that is a far cry from saying it simply contains accurate and true information. Rather it contains the work of deeply faithful and Spirit filled people who are trying to make sense of God who is beyond full human comprehension. Not surprisingly, their assumptions and biases of what God is like and  how a god should act make there way into these reflections, though inspiration often breaks through such assumptions and biases. And story or narrative is often the only way to convey what is too big a task for theology, logic, or doctrine.

As a preacher, I can go back and look at the Bible passages I use for the sermon on any given Sunday.  On top of that, I tend to preach from the lectionary, a collection of readings for each Sunday. And both the lectionary and I have a tendency to gravitate toward some texts and shy away from others. This of course means that anyone who depends in part on my sermons to help them picture God gets a certain slant. (If they attended some other church they might get a quite different slant.)

This suggests to me that most of us would do well to engage those texts we tend to avoid. If we won't go near a passage that speaks of divine judgment, or if we avoid those that demand self sacrificial giving to those in need, we probably need to wrestle with the picture those texts paint. This God of ours is far too big and too incomprehensible to be contained in any sacred text I would devise, or in any distilled image that fits my preferences. And so the very passage that most frightens, unnerves, or repels me is likely the very passage I most need to expand the constricted view of God I devise for myself from my own personal preferences.

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Sermon video: Succession Issues

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

Sermon: Succession Issues

2 Kings 2:1-14

Succession Issues

James Sledge                                                                                       June 30, 2013

Even if you are not a techie and care little about computers or the latest smartphone, you probably still have heard of Apple. From iPods to iTunes to iPads to iPhones, plus computers and other products, Apple is everywhere. They have a well-deserved reputation for innovation and for developing the latest and greatest cutting edge technology, and much of that reputation is connected to one individual, Steve Jobs, the inventor and entrepreneur who founded Apple, left it, then later returned to rescue it from near bankruptcy.

Jobs died in 2011 from complications connected to cancer, but there had been a great deal of speculation about his health for many years prior. I suspect that Apple’s employees and investors did a lot of worrying about what would happen after Steve Jobs. And now, in the post-Jobs era, many worry that his absence is being keenly felt, that the company is losing its edge in innovation and technology.

When companies, organizations, movements, sports teams, and so on lose a powerful, charismatic, visionary leader, it is not at all unusual for things to founder. Indeed some never fully recover. And so succession issues can make people very nervous.

You can see that in our scripture reading this morning. We’re not told how it is everyone seems to know that Elijah is about to be  taken away, but they do. Elisha silences the prophets who speak of the impending departure. Why is not clear. Is he in denial? Does he think his repeated refusals to let Elijah go on alone will somehow forestall a future that frightens him. After all, Elijah is his mentor and like father to him. Surely the thought of what it will be like without Elijah was frightening to Elisha and many who were followers of Yahweh.

At times, Elijah had single-handedly seemed to keep the faith alive. He has stood against corrupt rulers who not only exploited the people but gravely damaged the faith. He had been willing to stand for Yahweh when almost no one else would, and he had revived faith in Israel when he bested the 450 prophets of Baal in a huge contest on Mt. Carmel. What would happen when he was gone? No wonder Elisha sticks with Elijah, following him as he seems to wander aimlessly around the countryside, repeatedly trying to ditch his younger protégé.

When the big event finally arrives and Elijah is scooped off the earth by God, not dying but transported away by fiery chariot, Elisha watches in amazement, not averting his eyes until there was no longer the faintest glimpse of the great prophet. And then, realizing that Elijah is gone, he tears his clothes in mourning and sadness. What will he do now?

Someone to Fight Our Battles

In today's Old Testament reading, the people of Israel demand that Samuel give them a king. Samuel is getting old and his sons have not proven fit to succeed him as priests and judges over Israel, and so the people ask to be like all the nations around them and have a king.

Samuel warns them of the ways of kings and how it will lead eventually to their enslavement, a prophecy fulfilled in the time of Solomon. But the people are insistent. “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

For some reason I have always zeroed in on their desire to be like other nations, but today I was struck by the last of the people's three reasons for wanting a king, that he would "go out before us and fight our battles."

I am part of the baby boomer generation, but I came late enough in it that I was too young for Vietnam, and I never was eligible to be drafted. I am part of an America that is increasingly the norm, people who had others to go out before us and fight our battles. Fewer and fewer leaders in our communities and our nation have ever served in the military. It is now the exception for members of Congress to have done so. It was once not unusual at all.

Never having served in the military myself, I am not pointing any fingers at anyone. I'm simply reflecting on the implications of having others who will go out before us and fight our battles. I think some of these implications were particularly troubling during the Iraq war. Not only did we have others to fight, but we were not even asked to sacrifice at all with them, to give up something to support them, not even to pay extra taxes to pay for the war. It was as though the war had no connection to us unless we knew someone involved.

I don't know if it's connected at all, but many have noted and written about the loss of community and a sense of  unity in our culture. Much mitigates against such unity from a highly mobile culture to strident individualism to sharp partisan divides. But surely the lack of a shared calling to something bigger than ourselves, something that asks us to give and even to sacrifice for it, makes unity even more difficult. And it isn't just national unity that's difficult. Unity among Christian denominations and even in congregations is often difficult.

Again this is a complex sociological phenomenon, but I suspect it has some connections to our Old Testament readings. The people of Israel insisted on a king to do their fighting for them because, as God says, "They have rejected me from being king over them." They want what they want, not what God wants.

The world is full of idols, not little statues, but things good and bad that we give stature, influence, and import that should only be given to God. And my own wishes and desires, my own certainties about what is right, or my own group or cause, all make splendid little idols. And they never ask me to give of myself for sake of the whole community or for those others who have different idols.

The question today's Old Testament reading asks, and indeed much of the Bible asks, is, "Who or what will we serve?" There is a pervasive human tendency to choose something smaller than we should, to put our own interests over the good of the community, and even over the call of God. Fortunately, God seems infinitely patient with us, and keeps calling us back, keeps inviting us to find our true purpose. As Jesus says to those who would follow him, "Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

Now that's giving and sacrificing for something bigger than self.

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DOMA, Love, and Getting Right with God

O LORD, who may abide in your tent?
     Who may dwell on your holy hill?      Psalm 15:1

In poetic form the psalmist asks, and then answers, who is welcome in the Temple. Such a question is not primarily concerned with the Temple. Its chief concern is what God expects of us, how we are to live, what puts us right with God. The psalmist's answer is surely not meant to be exhaustive, and it includes things hard for modern folk to comprehend; not lending money at interest for instance.

As a Presbyterian, a Protestant out of the Reformed tradition, I tend to think of this question in what might seem reverse order. My motivation for living as God desires is not so God will admit me, but my gratitude that God has admitted me. In this understanding, seeking to please God is more a matter of loving God back than it is fear of what God might do to me if I'm bad.

But regardless of one's approach to the psalmist's question, answering the question poses some problems. It seems that people of faith can't agree on what's included in the list. No one argues much about "Love God and love neighbor," but we can get pretty bogged down in the details.

If you've not yet heard, the US Supreme Court today struck down DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act that denied federal benefits to married, same-sex couples. It was a much anticipated decision, one that brought joy and delight to some but deep sadness to others.

My Facebook timeline is filled with celebratory comments from pastors I know and from groups I am a part of. For them, and for me, this is a joyous day, another step in relegating the scant biblical condemnation of same-sex relationships to the same category as the much more widely attested biblical ban on lending money at interest. (John Calvin made the definitive argument for ignoring the interest ban. He concluded that the ban no longer served its original purpose of keeping the poor from being subjugated. With the right guidelines in place, lending money could allow businesses to be built that would employ the poor, not something the Old Testament writers ever contemplated.)

But as I and some of my colleagues celebrate today's decision, I know many others who do not. Reading today's decision on the NY Times website, I saw a picture of a priest walking away dejectedly from the Supreme Court building. I don't know that it was really needed, but the caption noted that he was an opponent of same-sex marriage.

I think the reason my joy today feels a bit muted is that today's decision reminds me how much the church is defined in our time by struggles over issues of sexuality and reproduction. I suppose it's no surprise that we get caught up in the same issues our culture does, but it is a sad commentary on the church that we cannot handle our disagreements over such issues any better than we do.

I'm not claiming any moral high ground here. I'm simply lamenting how often the witness we offer the world falls so short of the love Jesus says is to define us.

I do not think Jesus' command to love in any way cancels out the psalmist's question about how God expects us to live. We should seek to know God's standards and God's expectations. We need to answer the psalmist's question, and it can't simply be that everyone gets his or her own answer. (Too often such attempts become the religious analogue of families where parents won't discipline their children in any way.) Yet we are called to seek such answers without ever abandoning Christ's standard that we love one another.

I celebrate the court's decision today. I see it as a victory for civil rights, in keeping with the witness of scripture, and I look forward to a day when this is no longer a topic of debate. Still, I worry about how to stay in loving relationship with those brothers and sisters in Christ who do not agree with me.After all, Jesus calls me to love, not just my brothers and sisters, but even my enemies.

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Church, Incarnation, and Politics

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
     whose hope is in the LORD their God,
who made heaven and earth,
     the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
     who executes justice for the oppressed;
     who gives food to the hungry.    Psalm 146:5-7

I've been thinking a lot lately about call, not so much in terms of individuals' calls, but rather the corporate calling God gives the church. One of the concepts I've been mulling over as a part of this is incarnation. The incarnation is mostly used to speak of Jesus enfleshing God, the Word that became flesh. But I've been prodded by Fr. Richard Rohr to see another side of the incarnation, that of the church incarnating God.

Most church people are familiar with the biblical idea of the church as the body of Christ. It's a very popular idea with a number of songs and hymns that celebrate it. But I've never really understood this as anything more than metaphor, and I've not heard others suggest something beyond metaphor, at least not until I read Rohr's words. And if Jesus could make God fleshy, and the church is given the gift of the Holy Spirit, can we not then incarnate God as well?

I take the answer to be yes, which is not to say that we always do enflesh God to and for the world. In fact, it is not something we can do on our own, it can only happen as the Spirit works in and through us. Still, we can probably devise some measures that help us recognize when God present in us, moving and empowering us. Surely we would start to look more God-like that we otherwise would.

Which raises the question of what it means to look God-like. All of us are quite capable of imagining a god who generally agrees with us on most issues and who disagrees with those we disagree with. So one measure of becoming more God-like would be that such a move would challenge our own conceits and assumptions, of whatever their stripe. But beyond that, there must be particular characteristics of God that we could point to and say, "We would become more like that."

That brings me to the phrase that jumped out at me when I was reading Psalm 146 as lectio divina or spiritual reading, listening for a word or phrase that might touch my heart. I heard "executes justice," a phrase connected to God's deep concern for the hungry, the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed.

It strikes me that the church is often reasonably good at doing some things to help the poor and hungry. Congregations often run or support food pantries, clothing drives, homeless shelters and such. We are adept and comfortable doing good for those in need. But the phrase "execute justice" speaks of something more, something that is more challenging for many of us.

Executing or bringing about justice for the oppressed is bigger than assistance. It is about creating a more just society. In our country, that is the arena of politics, and entering that arena makes a lot of Christians and a lot of churches very nervous.

Faith has been very much personalized in America, often focused primarily on one's personal standing with God, not the stuff of politics. Interestingly, when Jesus begins his earthly ministry, he announces it with the political term, kingdom. Perhaps he would have used a different term had he first come in our day, the government of God or the dominion of God. Regardless, Jesus shows up proclaiming an alternate ordering of things on earth, one that has very different ramifications for the poor and oppressed and for the rich and powerful.

And if God in the flesh unnerves the rich and the powerful, then it would seem that any current incarnation embodied in the church, would have similar effects. Which brings me back around to the question of the church's calling, any congregation's calling. If we are to embody and enflesh a God who "executes justice for the oppressed," what does that look like?

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Tension with the World

The other day I received a gag gift from a colleague. It's a print of a rather cheesy painting entitled "The Rapture." (You can still order prints of it online.) The painting was commissioned by a group called the Bible Believers' Evangelistic Association. This group offers tracts and eight foot long "Bible Maps" depicting the the various "dispensations" or periods of history that have happened and will happened. The rapture, the return of Christ, and the earth's destruction happen in three of those yet to come dispensations, the rapture being next on the calendar.

I've not heard much conversation on the rapture in this or any other congregation I've served. The notion of dispensationalism and the rapture were invented in the late 1800s, and after a brief period of respectability, have been a fringe theology for many decades. Not something we Mainline types mess with.

I share my painting and my very limited understanding of dispensationalism (premillennial or otherwise) because the minute you start talking about the end times or anything "apocalyptic," you enter into a territory that Mainline Christians have generally seeded to rapture types. Just mention the book of Revelation, and many Mainline folks get nervous.

In truth, Revelation is not a book of strange predictions but a word of promise to early Christians who were in great distress. And our fear of talking about end times and Jesus' return has too often spiritualized Jesus' gospel, removing the promise of a new day with a new social order.

In today's gospel, Jesus is talking about the coming of that day, and he warns us, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap." Jesus clearly thinks that the patterns of this world do not fit into the new society he anticipates, and he calls his followers to conform now to the new ways.

One place the rapture sorts are more faithful to Jesus than Mainline folks regards Jesus' unease with the ways of the world. They get off track when they start thinking God hates creation or is going to destroy things, but they are right that Jesus sees a fundamental problem with how the world operates. That's why he talks about the poor being lifted up and the rich and powerful being pulled down. But many of us Mainliners are quite happy with the world. Ours works well enough for us, so we'd like to keep Jesus focused on recharging spiritual batteries and filling the void that seems to remain no matter how many wonderful consumer goods we acquire.

But Jesus keeps talking about the Kingdom, that new day when things get remade. And he calls us to start living by Kingdom ways now. That doesn't mean believing in a rapture, but it does require a bit of tension with the ways of the world.

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Sermon video: Depressed Prophets and God's Call

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Sermon: Depressed Prophets and God's Call

1 Kings 19:1-16

Depressed Prophets and God’s Call

James Sledge                                                                                       June 23, 2013

It isn’t that unusual for people who feel a strong sense of call in the work they do to become cynical, burned out, jaded, or depressed over time. Teachers, social workers, community organizers, and others who begin careers filled with a passion and zeal to make the world a better place, sometimes get worn down by the difficulties of the work. If you feel called to your work but start to think your work isn’t making the difference you hoped it would, it is easy to become disenchanted and depressed.

Clearly the same sort of thing happens with prophets. The Elijah we meet in today’s scripture is thoroughly depressed, and not without reason. After all that he  has done for Yahweh, after many impressive, even miraculous, accomplishments, the same corrupt regime is in power, and is seeking to kill him. It’s more than Elijah can take. “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.”

If you’ve ever talked with someone who has become disillusioned and depressed about the work she is doing, you likely know that it can be hard to break through that depression. The teacher who has made a difference in the lives of countless students may still think he is doing little good, and the person who reminds him of all his successes often makes little headway. When people who are passionate about their call get burned out and depressed, the failures seem monumental, that the successes minimal.

Elijah is no different. Firmly in the grip of depression, he’s sees nothing good. All Israel has abandoned God. No one lives in the ways Yahweh commanded. No one is faithful. Everyone has embraced the corrupt rule of Ahab and Jezebel. All the true prophets besides Elijah are dead. What’s the point. It’s all useless.

Of course none of this is totally true. All the prophets are not dead. Everyone has not abandoned Yahweh. There are faithful people who long for an end to the rule of Ahab and Jezebel. But in his depressed, burned out state, Elijah cannot see this.

Remarkably, even God cannot break through Elijah’s depression. Divine messengers speak to him. Food is miraculously provided for him. God is vividly present to him. But none of that matters. Elijah can see no sign of hope, nothing but gloom.

Seeing as Jesus Sees

Walk around any college campus, big hospital, or even many church campuses, and you are likely to see signs and plaques with people's names on them. These sometimes belong to greatly admired people who served there in the past, but more often they belong to people who made big monetary contributions allowing new buildings to be built, teaching positions to be endowed, or new programs to be started. But though there are many reasons for someone's name to make it onto a plaque, it seems quite certain that no one like the poor widow in today's gospel has her name so inscribed.

That's hardly surprising. How would a college or hospital or church even know that someone's very small gift was almost all she had? And I have no real issues with wealthy donors being recognized when their generosity helps things that could not have happened otherwise take place. (Even Jesus doesn't disparage the wealthy givers in this story.) But as I read this story, I found myself wondering how Jesus sees, and how that is different from how I and the world sees.

I wonder about this precisely because of how unnoticeable the giving Jesus points out is to me. And while Jesus doesn't disparage the sort of giving that makes me take notice, neither does he praise it, saving that for the widow's gift. Jesus seems to see things through a very different lens that many of us tend to do. Yet I assume that to be "in Christ" is to begin seeing the world more as he does.

There's an old adage about perception being reality which suggests that when my perception changes my reality will begin to change as well. But can I see as Jesus sees? The classic theological answer is that I cannot. At least I cannot on my own. But a new me, born in the power of the Spirit, where "in Christ there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" that is something altogether different.

God who makes all things new in Christ, help me to see as Jesus sees.

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Restlessness and Longing

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
    so my soul longs for you, O God.  Psalm 42:1

Some years ago, a spiritual director recommended a book she thought would resonate with me. It was The Holy Longing, by Ronald Rolheiser. Its first chapter begins, "It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction... We are driven persons, forever obsessed, continually dis-eased, living lives, as Thoreau once suggested, of quiet desperation, only occasionally experiencing peace."

Rolheiser goes on to say that the much misunderstood term "spirituality" is about what we do with this burning desire. In that sense, everyone has a spirituality, which is not to say that everyone pursues their desires in ways that are helpful. Indeed many spiritualities may be destructive and pathological, but they are the way in which people's souls attempt to quench their desire.

My own restlessness is often quite close to the surface. At times this longing has been, to use Rolheiser's language, holy. It has drawn me toward God and toward God's will for me, a longing like that named by today's psalmist. But at other times, my longing and restlessness seeks an outlet in other places and is far from holy. This can be particularly problematic for a pastor because my longings for success or affirmation or accomplishment can easily be dressed in religious garb.

I suspect that the spectacular moral failings and scandals that too often plague religious leaders have to do with this easy confusing of a personal desire with a holy one. I suspect a number of such folks fooled themselves long before they ever fooled others. That surely happens in the non-religious arena as well, any time people decide their desires and longings are valid and legitimate, if not actually holy.

In the aforementioned opening chapter, Rolheiser also uses a famous quote from Augustine. "You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Success and accomplishments are fine, up to a point, but they never completely fill our emptiness, although our frenzied, anxious, rat-race of a world indicates we're still hoping they may. At the same time, the current fascination with the topic of spirituality suggests that many have their doubts.

What is the object of your deepest longings? And as Sarah Palin might say, "How's that working out for you?" I know that for me, it's easy to get off track, and every so often, I need to make sure my deepest longings are actually about God.

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