Sermon video: Getting Straightened Out

Audios of sermons and worship service are on FCPC website.

Sermon: Getting Straightened Out

Amos 7:7-17 (8:4-8b)

Getting Straightened Out

James Sledge                                                                                                   July 14, 2013

When I was a kid, my family often took camping trips in the North Carolina Mountains. We mostly did the Blue Ridge Parkway and National Parks sort of thing. We went to Tweetsie Railroad on occasions, but my parents weren’t so big on the touristy spots, much to the chagrin of my brother and me.

We lived in Spartanburg, SC at the time, which is quite close to the mountains. One of our “local” TV station was in Asheville, NC, and so we often saw commercials for mountain attractions. And beside TV ads, the drive into the mountains was peppered with billboards advertising all sorts of tourist traps. One that fascinated me as a small child was a place called Mystery Hill. The billboards spoke of defying gravity and showed people standing normally but at odd angles to the walls. It looked magic to me, but we never convinced our parents to go there.

I did once go to a place called Gravity Hill. There are actually a lot of places by that name around the country, places where things seem to roll uphill. When I went, we rode in the car down to the “bottom” of a hill, put the car in neutral, released the brake, and lo and behold, the car began to back up the hill on its own.

Places called Gravity Hill are optical illusions created by some confluence of terrain features that tricks your mind as to what is truly vertical and horizontal. Mystery Hill was apparently as even more elaborate optical illusion created by disorienting you as you were taken into a room where walls and furniture and everything else actually leaned to one side.

Under the right conditions, optical illusions can be so convincing that you can’t help but see them, even when you know they are not true. Our eyes cannot always be trusted, and so there are times when it is very helpful to have some outside reference by which to test what you think you see. And so when carpenters are building a wall, “Does that look straight to you?” isn’t going to cut it. Something more reliable than eyesight is needed.

And so all decent carpenters and builders have a level, probably several of them, to show for certain if that wall is really running straight up and down. An older and simpler device, one that is still very useful in situations where a level won’t work very well, is a plumb line. All it takes is a string with a weight tied on the end of it. Hold the string, wait for the weight to stop swinging, and you have straight up and down clearly shown. If I had had one with me when I went to Gravity Hill, it would have clearly exposed the optical illusion. And in those rooms at Mystery Hill, it would confirm that the walls that are off, not gravity.

In our Old Testament reading today, the prophet Amos seems to say that God holds up a plumb line to Israel, and finds them horribly askew, not at all what they are meant to be. Amos spoke in the time after Israel has split in two. The smaller kingdom of Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem was to the south, and the much larger, wealthier, and more successful kingdom of Israel was in the north, with its capital in Samaria.

This was a time of relative peace and prosperity for Israel. Things were going very well, at least for wealthy. These seem to have been heady times for the rich who were building fine homes and expanding their estates. The poor were not doing so well, however, when Amos arrives to confront both the religious and political leaders of Israel.

Inner Change - Outer Change

Here is the opening paragraph of Richard Rohr's meditation for today. "Bernard McGinn says that mysticism is 'a consciousness of the presence of God that by definition exceeds description and . . . deeply transforms the subject who has experienced it.' If it does not deeply change the lifestyle of the person—their worldview, their economics, their politics, their ability to form community—you have no reason to believe it is genuine mystical experience. It is often just people with an addiction to religion itself, which is not that uncommon."

Not only have I learned much from Rohr over the years, but I love the name of his organization, the Center for Action and Contemplation. That name, along with today's devotion, speaks to a false dichotomy between the inner and outer life, between contemplative spirituality and lives of active service. And I think today's gospel lesson chimes in on this as well.

As the gospel of Luke nears its end, the risen Jesus appears to his disciples, and he speaks of the mission they will soon undertake, proclaiming the message of Jesus "to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." But this mission, all those things they will do that are recorded in the book of Acts, must await "power from on high." And so this great mission to all the world begins with,"So stay here in the city." It begins with waiting, a waiting that Acts tells us is spent in time devoted to prayer.

In Presbyterian circles, there are many who seem a bit suspicion of "spiritual types" with their candles and silences and focus contemplation. The reasons for this are many, but some of it is rooted in examples spirituality that look nothing like the mysticism Rohr recommends. It is more of an addiction to religious experience itself, with little evidence that this experience makes a great deal of difference in how a person lives.

But their is a counterpart in some Presbyterian churches where social activism is highly valued but without much sense of a spiritual basis to it. Outside of Sunday worship, such activism may be so indistinguishable from similar, secular activism that volunteers may be unaware of any Christian underpinnings.

The false dichotomy I mentioned earlier may well arise from these two distorted examples of spirituality and activism, and both of them help to project a false picture of what following Jesus really is. Religious or spiritual experience that does not transform people's outer lives, "their worldview, their economics, their politics, their ability to form community," as Rohr puts it, is not the sort of new life Jesus calls us to. But social activism that is rooted merely in our own innate political or social tendencies, without being profoundly shaped by the Spirit's presence, is little better. Even when it does some of the very things Jesus asks us to do, it has no power beyond that of those involved. As such it struggles to maintain energy. The disparaging term, "a tired '60s radical," speaks directly to this energy problem that arises when we are dependent solely on the energy of the cause itself or our own personal stores, and we receive no "power from on high."

The Christian life must have significant inner and outer components. However, I suspect that most all of  us have a tendency to get overly focused on one or the other. When we do, our faith gets distorted. To make matters worse, we tend to notice the distortion of those whose focus is opposite ours while tending to miss our own.

Are you more inclined toward the inner or outer aspects of faith? Which sort of distortion are you more prone to experience? Where do you need to grow in order to experience a fuller and more balanced life of faith?

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Idle Tales

While reading today's gospel using the practice of lectio divina - divine reading or praying the scriptures - I found that the phrase "idle tale" seemed to smack me upside the head. The phrase occurs in Luke's story of Easter morning as the women return to tell the eleven about the empty tomb. But the story is too outlandish for the disciples. They can't bring themselves to believe such an "idle tale."

Interesting that the very people who had been with Jesus during his ministry, who had heard him speak of being crucified and then rising on the third day, seemed so unreceptive the this tale from the women. If they didn't believe it, who would?

Fast forward to our day, and there are many who still think the story an "idle tale." Devout Christians have not always been very charitable to such folks, which is odd when you think about it. If Jesus' own disciples could not believe such a story, even when told them by eyewitnesses, why would modern Christians think poorly of people who, without the aid of any eyewitnesses, judge a story from the book known as the Bible an "idle tale."

As for me, I grew up with this tale. I have heard it so many times, that the outlandish nature of such a tale has perhaps been obscured. All those folks around me seemed to believe it and repeat it. It must not be an "idle tale," even if those first disciples thought so.

So why did the phrase "idle tale" grab me so this morning? As I reflected on that, it occurred to me that my faith is often constrained by what seems reasonable, logical, or possible. The Easter story may have had its audacity wiped away by its familiarity, but its not like I really expect to see Jesus walking around. And I often leave the Holy Spirit to more pentecostal types. And so very often, my faith seems to be more in a memory of Jesus, in his teachings and sayings and wisdom rather than in any living being who may call me or send me somewhere I don't want to go. Come to think of it, sometimes I worship a very dead Jesus, so maybe the women's tale is more idle than I've realized.

Sometimes I think that the biggest obstacle in my life of faith is a difficulty being open to what I cannot understand, explain, or control. It is not trusting that God can do things through me and through a church congregation that I or we cannot logically do on our own. Because that means trusting that a living Jesus is truly present in the transforming power of the Spirit, and not simply as a memorial of long ago events.

God really present, and the Spirit really whirling around in the church, pushing and moving things. Now that really is an idle tale.

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How to Love God

Many church people would likely nod in assent if someone spoke of faith as "loving God and loving neighbor." Loving one's neighbor may be difficult at times, but it's fairly easy to come up with a long list of things that fit into that category. I'm not sure the same can be said for loving God.

What exactly does it look like to love God? What things count for and against it? Those who speak of Christians as hypocrites suggest we think attending worship and believing in Jesus suffice. Churches certainly have their share of hypocrisy, but many people diligently seek to live their faith. Even so, they may struggle with what it looks like to love God.

Thoughts on what loving God looks like arose for me after reading Fr. Richard Rohr's daily devotion. He tells of a sidewalk frequented by the homeless of Albuquerque, NM, where he once observed something written in chalk. “I watch how foolishly man guards his nothing—thereby keeping us out. Truly God is hated here.”I thought of all the church congregations in this country, many of them segregated by income level as well as race, and pondered that phrase, "thereby keeping us out."

But Rohr's quote wasn't nearly so troubling as the lectionary verses from 1 Samuel. There the newly anointed King Saul is rejected by God. Here loving God is equated with obedience, and Saul's failure is not bringing total destruction on the Amalekites. He was supposed to commit genocide as well as kill every animal, but Saul spares their king and keeps the good animals and other booty. (He later claims he is bringing them as a offering for God.) Issues of compassion are not raised here. Saul kills all the women and children. The only issue is his absolute devotion to God, or the lack of it.

This is not the only time genocide is commanded by God in the Old Testament. Historically speaking, this was a violent time and it was not uncommon for conquorers to wipe out entire towns, but I don't know that context makes God come off much better. 

Strangely enough this story may be, in part, Israel wrestling with questions about what it looks like to love God. When Jerusalem was destroyed and its leaders and intelligentsia taken into exile, much soul searching took place about how Israel had failed to be the covenant community God had called them to be. They had loved God when it was easy and convenient and ignored God when it suited them. One way they had been "unfaithful" was in hedging their bets by dabbling in the religious practices of their non-Israelite neighbors. The local Canaanite gods and goddesses were of the fertility variety, and fertility is a big issue in agriculture. So a sacrifice here and there to Baal was a bit of crop insurance. 

But in light of defeat and exile, Israel contemplated her failure to love God with total devotion. One obvious problem: they had not been pure enough. They had not totally wiped out those Canaanites whose religious practices had tempted them. The Old Testament is hardly of one mind on this. There are regular commands to care for the sojourner and alien, and the book of Ruth celebrates the devotion of a non-Israelite. But clearly there was a school of thought in Israel that equated loving God with a purity requiring genocide.

This school of thought still has its adherents. They don't generally favor genocide these days, but their love of God does come with a fair amount of hatred for the impure, the heretic, the pagan, etc. Such folks usually refuse to acknowledge the varied witness of scripture on this and other issues. The Bible is in full agreement that total devotion to God is required, but just what that looks like is debated within scripture itself. Some of the prophets point to Israel's failure to do justice and care for the poor as the real failure of love. And those who demand covenant purity sometimes seem to forget that the original covenant with Abraham and Sarah promised that through them, "all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

This bedrock covenant of Israel is cosmic in scope, but Israel, just like religious folks today, were prone to narrow its focus and constrict it to their purposes. And the resulting biases find their way into sacred scripture. It is all too easy to spot, both in Old and New Testaments.

Fortunately for Christians, we have a remarkable example of what loving God looks like, namely Jesus. And while this example sets a very high bar, it is amazingly devoid of any zealotry aimed against outsiders (though later followers of Jesus would add that). Jesus' take on devotion and love for God demands much of us, but in service to others and not at their expense. Jesus seems totally to reject the school of thought that would connect devotion and purity to genocide, not that this has always restrained his adherents. 

And so I find myself back at that indictment in the quote from Rohr. "Truly God is hated here." I know people who are very angry with God. I know people who don't believe in God, some whose disbelief is so intense they despise people who do believe in God. But I've rarely met anyone who claimed to hate God other than in a fit of pique. So how should we describe ourselves when we deliberately live in ways we know are at odds with what God wants and expects?

This post is a lot longer, and probably more rambling, than  most. That's a sure sign of my own internal wrestling on this for my own life of faith, including its many failures and refusals to trust that God/Jesus' way is the right one. Do I love God? Do I hate God? Or am I so lukewarm that neither really applies? 

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Sermon video: Learning to See God

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

Sermon: Learning to See God

2 Kings 5:1-14

Learning To See God

James Sledge                                                                                       July 7, 2013

My family used to have a dog, a Cardigan Welsh Corgi named Fred. Cardigans are the ones that have a tail. They’re a bit larger and heavier than the better known Pembroke variety, but still, Fred wasn’t even a foot high at the shoulder.

Fred had the best disposition of any dog I’ve ever known. He was always happy, loved everyone, and he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Nonetheless, at some point he decided that one of his jobs was to make like a fierce guard dog when the mail arrived at the front door. He sounded like a much bigger dog, and if you didn’t know him or couldn’t see him, you might have concluded that he was a real threat. But to us, and to the postal carrier who did know him, it was quite comical. And if the front door was open, leaving only the glass storm door between Fred and the letter carrier, she might say, “Hi Fred,” and he would wag his tail.

As ridiculous as the whole thing was, there was no stopping it. It’s not like you can reason with a dog and explain to him how silly he looks. It was instinct, after all. He was trying to protect his home, going into full aggression mode, hair standing up on his back, making him 11 inches tall rather than 10½. He was simply wired to act that way.

We humans are not nearly so instinctive as Fred. We can look at our behavior and change it when it seems to be unhelpful. But that is not to say that we don’t have some deeply ingrained ways of responding to things around us, and these are more instinctive when we feel threatened or angry.

At such moments we are prone to fight or flight responses, and if we do not flee, the fight response means employing some sort of power or force. It may be physical, verbal, military. It may involve threats and intimidation, like Fred with the mail carrier. But whatever the form, most of us have deeply ingrained assumptions about how power and force work.

You can see such assumptions at work in our reading about Naaman, the Syrian commander with leprosy. When he hears that there is someone in Israel who can heal him, he assumes it must be connected to people with power. It must belong to those with influence and might, and so he goes to his king who provides him with a letter of introduction as well as fine gifts that he can take to Israel’s king in order to get this powerful ability to heal.

Of course the king of Israel knows nothing about healing leprosy, but he does understand power and threat and intimidation. He’s beside himself. He tears his clothes and screams at his advisors that Naaman is seeking to provoke an international incident. Clearly he is going to use this as a pretense for Aram attacking Israel, and only Elisha’s intervention prevents the king from going into full fight or flight mode.

"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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