How to Remember

I've not really done much to remember 9-11. I don't mean that I somehow missed that today was the 12th anniversary of those horrible terrorist attacks, but so much of the remembering seems to get politicized and caught up in different agendas. I still feel a great sadness connected to this day, and I can only imagine how hard it must be for people who lost loved ones at the twin towers, the Pentagon, or in a field in Pennsylvania.

I appreciate the honoring of first responders that happens each 9-11. Some of the formal, somber recollections seem quite fitting. But there is a lot of strident and angry remembering. There is a lot of us-versus-them remembering.

Here in Washington, DC, along with numerous official ceremonies, there were dueling, angry ones. Dueling is the wrong word. The so-called Million Muslim March - its official name was long ago changed to "Million American March Against Fear" - struggled to make any sort of showing, managing a few hundred people at best. And while I have some sympathies for their cause, their timing was simply abysmal.

The "Two Million Bikers to DC" rally, conceived in part as a response to those million Muslims, managed a bit better showing. While some conservative news outlets spoke of 800,000 bikers, realistic estimates were closer to 8000, enough to cause a few traffic snarls, but not the traffic paralysis that nearly a million motorcycles would have caused for the area's already gridlocked highways.

To be honest, I'm less certain of the exact cause championed by the biker rally, perhaps because there seemed to be a lot of different ones. Officially it was about remembering those who died and who served in the military after 9-11, but their Facebook page is filled with talk of taking back America, defending the Constitution, and a few anti-Obama rants. I should add that the group was well behaved, apologized in advance for any traffic tie-ups, and urged their riders to obey all laws and be respectful. Still, I think their timing was also abysmal.

Both groups obviously have every "right" to do as they did, but I think this sort of remembering dishonors those who died, people of different nationalities, politics, religions, and viewpoints. When remembering gets caught up in a particular agenda, when it becomes a means to further someone's cause, it co-opts other people's pain and sadness, a pain and sadness that belongs to all Americans and many beyond America. And for me, at least, it adds a sadness to this day that has nothing to do with the events of 12 years ago.

That's probably why I found today's reading from Philippians so striking. Paul borrows words from an early Christian hymn to reinforce his exhortations to Jesus' followers. The words are very familiar to me, but some of them caught me differently today.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
   who, though he was in the form of God,
          did not regard equality with God
          as something to be exploited,
   but emptied himself,
          taking the form of a slave,
          being born in human likeness. 

Regard others as better; look to the interests of others; be like Jesus who took the form of a slave. Surely remembering looks very little like some of the events commemorating this day when done from this point of view.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

What Are You Afraid Of?

What are you afraid of? I don't mean that as a challenge but a genuine question. What are the things that worry or frighten you? It seems to me that we live in a culture that is often driven by fear. Advertising on TV plays on our fears: fears about not enough to retire, homes being robbed, not getting into a good college, not getting a good  job, not being popular enough, not being in control, not being successful, getting old, getting sick, being alone, etc.

Sometimes it is difficult to know where the line is between reasonable caution and fear that keeps us from living the lives we should. I fasten my seatbelt in the car and wear a helmet when on my motorcycle. Both these seem reasonable to me, but I also get stuck in comfort zones that feel safe to me. I sometimes won't try something new and exciting because I fear it won't work, that I will look stupid, appear foolish, or seem not to know what I'm doing.

Fear figures prominently in today's gospel, Mark's story of the resurrection. Serious students of the Bible likely know that verses 9-20 in today's reading are not from the same hand that wrote the rest of Mark's gospel. Perhaps the original ending was lost or perhaps the writer intentionally left us with one that just hangs there. "So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." (The ending is even more awkward in the original Greek, ending with the word "for.") Regardless, we're left with a most unsatisfactory ending, one that later writers attempted to rectify. (These are often labeled "The Shorter Ending of Mark" and "The Longer Ending of Mark" in Bibles.)

"And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Entrusted with some of the most wonderful news ever spoken, these witnesses kept it to themselves because they were afraid. Presumably something eventually helped them overcome that fear, or the story of Jesus would have ended there.

In my experience, church congregations are often rather timid places. They tend not to do much that looks bold or risky. They want assurances that any new program or effort will be successful and not fail. Here again, it can be difficult to know exactly where the line is between reasonable caution and fear that keeps us from living out our call to follow Jesus, but I think it clear that we often go way beyond caution. Very often, we act as though we have no resources beyond ourselves, no Spirit or spiritual gifts. Perhaps herein lies one of our greatest fears, that we can't actually count on God to come through when we seek to be faithful.

So what are you afraid of?

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon video: Membership Class

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Membership Class

Luke 14:25-33

Membership Class

James Sledge                                                                                       September 8, 2013

Next Sunday we begin a new worship schedule and Christian Education activities resume. The beginning of a new program  year means the start of a new Confirmation Class, and we’ll have a New Member Class later in the fall as well.

Classes for confirmation or new members have some similarities. In a way, both are about what it means to be an active, participant in the Jesus movement as that is lived out at Falls Church Presbyterian. At their conclusion, many in both classes will decide whether or not to “join,” to make a profession of faith, perhaps be baptized, and promise to be a faithful disciple here.

Given this, now would seem a perfect time to share with potential confirmands and members some of Jesus’ thoughts on joining him. In our gospel reading, a crowd is following along with Jesus. They are clearly intrigued. They’ve signed the “Friendship Pad” and checked that they are interested in membership. Jesus says to them, “If you don’t hate your mother and father, your siblings, your spouse and children, and even your own life, you can’t come with me. If you don’t carry your own cross and go wherever I go, you can’t come with me. If you don’t give up all your  possessions, you can’t come with me.”

Come to think of it, maybe we don’t want to use this with a new member or confirmation class. I’m all for full disclosure, but come on, Jesus. One of my favorite preachers, Barbara Brown Taylor, in a sermon on today’s gospel said, “After careful consideration of Jesus’ harder sayings, I have to conclude that he would not have made a good parish minister.”[1]

Non-violence, Just War, and Impossible Questions

Yesterday a church member asked me if I was going to be preaching on the situation in Syria and the President's request that Congress authorize military action against the Assad regime. I told him that I was genuinely unsure of what to say, that I have some very conflicted feelings about what, if anything, can be done to help end the terrible suffering there.

Based on the Facebook and Twitter posts of my friends and colleagues, I seem to be in a minority, at least in the sense that I do not dismiss any possibility of military intervention out of hand. At the risk of getting my liberal credentials revoked, I have to admit that I have considered whether or not notions of "just war" might apply in this case. Not that I have concluded that is the case (as I said, I'm conflicted), but I do find myself wondering whether it is right to stand by as thousands of Syrian civilians die because I believe in peace.

I probably should back up and say that on this last point, the use of chemical weapons is less the "red line" for me. My issue is that some 100,000 have died without America, or anyone else, feeling much need to do anything significant about it. And while there are Christian relief agencies doing difficult and dangerous work with refugees from the Syrian violence, a fair amount of Christian concern only seems to have emerged over the possibility of US intervention.

US intervention might indeed be a fool's errand, one that makes things worse instead of better. But I confess to being a tad suspicious of peacemaking and non-violence that consist of nothing beyond saying "No" to military intervention. Jesus says I must not strike back at the one who strikes me. But that is a witness that I choose to take up. But as a follower of Jesus, what responsibility do I have to those being oppressed and killed by a brutal dictator? Can I appoint them the sufferers who pay the price for my non-violence?

In today's gospel passage, Jesus is led off to be crucified, an event we Christians speak of as being salvific in some way. Jesus, the innocent one, takes up that cross, but what of Syrian children or victims of the Holocaust perpetuated by the Nazis in World War II? And if I have the power to stop such atrocities (by no means a certainty or even likelihood in Syria), is the greater evil to take up military force or to let the deaths continue?

For me these are not rhetorical questions to change the mind of someone reading this. They are the questions I find myself wrestling with, questions for which I have no easy answers, and I am suspicious of those who do. I also have this nagging feeling that my discipleship should be more difficult and costly to me than it is to children in the suburbs of Damascus.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Stirred Up Crowds

"But the chief priests stirred up the crowd..." and thus ended Pilate's weak attempt to free Jesus. Mark's gospel says nothing about how the priests managed to stir up the crowd, but it's a plausible enough story. We're well aware of how crowds can get stirred up.

Most of us probably have memories of going along with something we never would have done on our own. Perhaps we joined in tormenting some unpopular kid in our class along with "everyone else." Perhaps we tolerated or even laughed at racist jokes in our workplace to go along with the crowd. We often have great disdain for politicians who seem to have no real principles but have to check the prevailing political wind before deciding where they stand on an issue. But crowds are easily stirred and, once stirred, they are difficult to resist.

Of course most of us seem to need a crowd, a group we can belong to. And so we have to find a group, a crowd that we feel comfortable around most of the time. If we can't resist a stirred up crowd, the least we can do is associate with one that shares our morals, convictions, biases, and preferences. Then we can laugh at the foolishness of those others crowds, often without much awareness of our own. Republicans, Democrats, liberal Christians, conservative Christians, atheists, agnostics, Millennials, Gen X-ers, and Baby Boomers, all have things that stir our group up, and we have prejudices about what stirs up those in other crowds.

Right now I'm thinking about the difference between crowds and true community. Community seems to me a much bigger thing than a crowd or group, and so presumably it needs something that binds it together which is larger than the sorts of things that tend to stir up crowds. We Christians speak of a unity "in Christ." In practice, however, we tend to have a different Christ for each crowd, and we  snicker at the other crowds' mistaken image of Jesus.

When Jesus says that those who would follow him must "deny themselves," I wonder if a big piece of that denial isn't letting go of those things that make me part of a crowd rather than member of the human race, a brother or sister to all the other children of God.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon video: Be a Blessing

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Be a Blessing

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Be A Blessing

James Sledge                                                                   September 1, 2013

In an article on today’s gospel, Emilie Townes, American Baptist pastor and professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, recalls something she heard many times as child from her grandmother. “I just want to be a blessing. That’s all I want for my life, is to be a blessing to others.”[1] Dr. Townes relates how her understanding of what “blessing” means developed as she grew up, evolving from a simplistic notion of rewards given to good little boys and girls to a complex, nuanced, difficult, and deeply theological understanding.

If you are familiar with Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, you may already have some appreciation for the complex and difficult nature of blessing. “Blessed are you who are poor… Blessed are you who are hungry now… Blessed are you who weep now… Blessed are you when people hate you…” And there is a corresponding list of woes or curses for those who are rich, full, laughing, and spoken well of by others. 

When I first read those words from Dr. Townes’ grandmother, I immediately thought of a moment from my time in seminary. I don’t know if this happens with other people, but sometimes when I experience a powerful moment of insight or discovery, it becomes a vivid memory that stays with me. And I have one of those connected to the topic of blessing.

It came in my introductory class on the Old Testament. Our assignment was to translate God’s call to Abram in Genesis 12. If you looked it up in your pew Bible you would find this.  Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

It was a passage I knew well, and so I was surprised to find that the Hebrew had something very different from the words I knew. Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so be a blessing. “Be a blessing.” It was an imperative command, just like the command, “Go,” a command that Dr. Townes grandmother had somehow taken up as her own.

Gettysburg, Justice, and Lost Causes

My wife and I just got back from a short vacation. It was just the sort of vacation I like, one without an itinerary. The day often got off to a very late start, which is not to say we didn't do anything. We went to Gettysburg, PA (less than a 2 hour drive from the DC area), and one can't possibly spend time there without taking in some of the history of that place.

I'm something of a history buff, and I knew the outlines of the three day battle at Gettysburg pretty well. But it is hard to visit the battlefields and museums without picking up new insights and information, or without being moved by the level of suffering and death that came to that little town some 150 years ago.

As I said, I'm a history buff, and I know the Civil War story fairly well. I'm also a native southerner, although I somehow failed to acquire that same level of veneration and worship of southern Civil War heroes as many of my neighbors. I've long thought that southern attempts to recast the war so that slavery played little part to be misguided. But in a way that I never had before, I found myself more and more troubled as I visited the various Gettysburg memorials. It worked on me to the point that I almost became angry. What bothered me so was the notion, one that found occasional support in the various interpretive exhibits, that both sides, north and south, were somehow fighting in service to a noble cause.

I have no trouble honoring the sacrifices of soldiers on both sides. It is highly likely that, had I been alive at the time, I would have ended up fighting for some regiment from NC. But the simple fact is, the cause of the south was not just. Apologists may insists that the south fought for the noble cause of "states' rights," but of course the right they were primarily concerned with was that of maintaining the institution of slavery. That was conveniently forgotten by southerners after the war, but it was made clear at its beginning. Speeches and documents from the formation of the Confederate States of America make quite clear that the primary reason for its existence was the preservation of slavery.

And southern churches joined right in. As denominations split north and south right along with the nation, southern denominations often made a point of saying that the heretical views of northerners required them to break away. That heretical view was denying that the Bible sanctioned slavery, even demanded it.

That southerners wished to see themselves as members of a noble, lost cause rather than defenders of the horrific institution of slavery is easily understood. None of us wants to think of ourselves as in league with evil. Our enemies perhaps, but not us. Still, it is a bit surprising the degree to which the official view (in service to reconciliation?), has tolerated and even embraced the noble, lost cause language of the south.

I've already noted that I was emotionally affected by all this during my Gettysburg visit, so that more than likely colored my reading of the lectionary today. But as I read the famous story of King Solomon deciding who was an infant's true mother via the threat to chop the child in two, I was seized by the story's assessment of Solomon as one who had the wisdom "to execute justice."

American Christianity's obsession with individual salvation very often covers over the Bible's insistence on justice, especially for those on the bottom. Couple that with the Bible's and Jesus' repeated talked of releasing the captive and lifting up the oppressed, and it is hard to think of a cause more contrary to God's than the southern one during the Civil War.

Now all this may seem nothing more than an academic, historical exercise, but I think not. Our remarkable skill as humans at recasting injustice into something excusable, even noble, is hardly restricted to southern apologists for the Civil War. Point to any systemic injustice or oppression in our own day, and there is no shortage of people who can explain why it is not injustice or oppression, and why it is even in the best interest of those who seem to be oppressed or denied justice. (I find that arguments for not raising the minimum wage are often examples of this.)

Not that I am immune from this tendency. If correcting injustice or oppression means any sort of difficulty or, worse, suffering for me, then I may well find myself trying to minimize the problem or, at the very least, minimizing my contribution to it.

But as a follower of Jesus, I am called to something different. Jesus says I am to deny myself, to be willing to lose myself, even my life, for the sake of a new day where the poor are lifted up and the oppressed are freed. I am to become something new, a new creation who loves God and neighbor and even my enemies. Surely this requires that I worry much less about my reputation or about casting my own or my own group's failings in the best possible light. Surely it demands that my ways become transformed by God's ways as Jesus has shown them to me. That's probably why both Jesus and John the Baptist begin their ministries with a call to repent, to turn and begin to learn a new way. But we love the old ones, don't we.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Church Budgets and the Greatest Commandment

Not yet in Virginia, but across the country, many students have already returned to school or college. Summer isn't officially over, but it's nearly done. At church, that means we're gearing up for fall. Classes and choir rehearsals will resume. At this church, and at many others, fall also means "Stewardship campaigns." Theologically, this is about how we utilize what God has given us to do God's work. Practically, it's often mostly about church budgets.

Not that church budgets are unimportant. It takes a fair amount of money to fund all the activities and ministries at the typical church, and I make no apologies for expecting church members to make sure that money is available. But as many have said before, budgets are more than spending plans. They are also "moral documents." They declare our priorities and reveal what we truly stand for.

“Which commandment is the first of all?” Even those who are not part of a church have likely heard some form of Jesus' answer to this question. In today's reading from Mark he says, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Curious that Jesus is unable to answer the man's question without offering two commandments, both lifted straight from what we Christians now call the Old Testament. Love God, and love neighbor, says Jesus. Now you've covered the essentials. Everything else is secondary.

That brings me back to budgets as moral documents. If love of God and love of neighbor are the essentials then surely church budgets would reflect this. Alas, this is often not the case.

Now I'm happy to acknowledge that defining exactly what it means to "love the Lord your God..." is complicated. Surely worship would fit into this, but worship also tends to be designed in order to please those doing the worship. And so worship usually reflects the musical tastes and styles preferred by the worshipers. Given that we have no explicit information on whether God prefers organs to pianos or rock 'n roll over classical, perhaps this is the best we can do. Still, I have my suspicions that a revelation that God actually loved Gregorian chant but hated Bach would not change the music selections in many congregations.

Regardless, for the moment I'll take it as given that the big chunk of the typical church budget going to worship is fitting. But what about the loving neighbor part?

Rare is the church that does not do something to live out this commandment. Many congregations take it to heart in significant ways. Yet I have rarely come across the church budget that elevated love of neighbor to the status Jesus does. Rarely does is look like an absolute essential. It's more often one of those minor expenses along with "Christian Education" or "Fellowship."

In his daily devotion for today, Richard Rohr talks about how prayer in the Western church became something functional as opposed to the transformational thing it should be (a transformational possibility some have recovered via contemplation and meditation). This problem of functional versus transformational extends well beyond prayer and includes church budgets.

As soon as you make prayer a way to get what you want, you’re not moving into any kind of new state of consciousness. It’s the same old consciousness, but now well disguised: “How can I get God to do what I want God to do?” It’s the egocentric self deciding what it needs, but now, instead of just manipulating everybody else, it tries to manipulate God.

This is one reason religion is so dangerous and often so delusional. If religion does not transform people at the level of both mind and heart, it ends up giving self-centered people a very pious and untouchable way to be on top and in control.

What sort of moral statements are embedded in your church's budget? In what sense do they exhibit priorities that have been transformed from those of the world to those of Jesus? In what sense are they primarily focused on "keeping our members happy" and providing them with what they like or want?

Love God; love your neighbor as yourself. Sounds pretty clear, but I wonder if anyone would deduce this as the central core of my life from observing how I live and how I spend my money?

Click to learn more about the lectionary.
 

Doing Justice

The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
    he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted,
    and binds up their wounds.   Psalm 147:2-3

Our congregation has a ministry called Welcome Table that offers a free meal along with gift cards for a local grocery store. Currently this happens on the third Wednesday of each month, but we will add a second Wednesday in September. We are going to cut back on the number of gift cards, however. The numbers have begun to overwhelm our resources.

My volunteer slot at today's Welcome Table proved to be a repeat of last month. I had to tell people the bad news that we were at the building's capacity. If they waited for an hour or so, we would give them some food, but we had used up all our gifts cards, 290 of them.

I began to get more and more depressed as I told person after person, many with young children, that they could not come in. I'm sure that some had been counting on a few of those $10 gift cards to get groceries for the coming week. Most of them were very understanding, but I'm sure that many were brokenhearted. According to the psalmist, that the sort of thing that stirs God, and so surely it should stir God's people, the body of Christ.

The existence of Welcome Table says that the people of Falls Church Presbyterian have been stirred to action by this situation. (This ministry actually began during the interim time between my predecessor's retirement and my arrival.) The huge numbers of hungry and homeless in the very well-to-do area has moved people to do something, and Welcome Table is a tremendous ministry. It is, however, only a band-aid. It does nothing to solve the underlying problems that lead to the huge numbers of people who need such assistance.

Diane (the other pastor here) and I were talking the other day about the ministry of the Church, speaking beyond just this congregation. She noted that the Church is called to ministries of compassion such as Welcome Table, but we are also called to ministries of justice that address systems that lead to poverty and suffering.

Unfortunately, it is much easier to do compassion. Ministries of compassion are immediate. There is an obvious good that is done, and doing it often feels good. Justice is much more complicated. It usually means taking on entrenched systems, speaking truth to power, and long efforts that do no bear immediate fruit. Almost everyone will compliment ministries of compassion, as they well should. But people will often criticize ministries of justice. I wonder if it isn't at such moments that we truly experience what Jesus meant we insisted we must take up our cross. Jesus says that following him will cause others to hate us and work against us. Never is that more true than when attempting to doing ministries of justice that challenge and change the world around us.

As someone who was raised in a comfortable, suburban setting and is totally at home in a consumer culture, there is something in me that chafes at the notion that following Jesus will lead to personal discomfort and suffering. That somehow feels backwards. Jesus is supposed to make my life better.

To the degree that I am in any way typical, it's no wonder that our country has lots of shelters and food pantries, but struggles to tackle the deeper problems of affordable housing, education, living wages, and more. I do, however, take some comfort in the statement by Martin Luther King, Jr. one that seems to reflect Jesus' teaching on God's in-breaking kingdom. "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."



Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Softening Jesus' Image

Maybe I'm just in a phase, or perhaps a rut, but I keep bumping into images of Jesus and God that run counter the benign, sweet and kind image that is more prevalent. These less benign pictures found their way into last Thursday's blog post and yesterday's sermon. Today I read the lectionary passage from Luke where Jesus "cleanses" the Temple. It's a little more of an angry picture of Jesus as well, but that's not what caught my eye. Instead it was where the chief priests and scribes begin to plot against Jesus, "for they were afraid of him."

They were afraid of him. How often does that get said about Jesus? I've known my share of "Christians" who were genuinely frightening, but I really don't think of Jesus as much of a threat.

There is gubernatorial race underway in Virginia right now, and that has prompted some articles about the different tactics and strategies employed to win primaries compared to general elections. The need to "play to the base" often requires more strident rhetoric, but when the general election comes around, a broader electorate comes into view. Then the political strategists advise softening the image from the primaries. Don't want to appear frightening to any of those undecided, middle-of-the-road voters.

As one who is often bothered by the extremes of both left and right, I'm happy to see candidates move toward the middle. But such moves sometimes make it hard to know where a candidate really stands. I don't think that was much of a problem with Jesus, at least not the one in the Bible. But the Church has done its share of softening Jesus' image over the years.

Jesus has some pretty uncomfortable things to say about wealth, about absolute loyalty to his cause, about loving your enemies, and about a willingness to suffer. But down through history, Jesus' image-makers in the Church have felt the need to make Jesus compatible with empire and war, slavery and oppression, colonialism and genocide, the American dream and suburbia, and on and on. In the end, about the only thing distinctive about Jesus is that you're suppose to believe he died for you in order to get a heavenly reward. Hardly something that sounds very frightening.

Considering the domesticated, nationalized, softened, etc. images of Jesus that the Church has peddled over the years, a lot of folks in a lot of church congregations might be downright terrified if the real Jesus ever showed up.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.