Where Is God? Better Sight Lines

Hear my prayer, O LORD;
    give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness;
    answer me in your righteousness.
Do not enter into judgment with your servant,
    for no one living is righteous before you.
For the enemy has pursued me,
    crushing my life to the ground,
    making me sit in darkness like those long dead. 
Therefore my spirit faints within me;
    my heart within me is appalled.         Psalm 143:1-4

You likely know this, but pastors go to lots of church meetings. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the groups I meet with have great people in them, and we often have very enjoyable meetings. Yet even in enjoyable church meetings, it is often difficult to get much sense of God being a part of them.

Graham Standish, in his book Becoming a Blessed Church, describes how church meetings often begin by asking God to bless what is about to happen but then take place as though God has left to get a cup of coffee while the business is actually transacted. Later, God will be invited back in to bless whatever was decided during that time. There's nothing sinister going on here. We simply get focused on the tasks at hand. That and we aren't quite sure how to let God's presence impact the proceedings.

This only gets worse in times of conflict. I've been to my share of presbytery meetings over the years (That is the representative, regional governing body in our denomination.) where we were considering difficult issues that divide us theologically. In the last couple of decades this was most often around issues of ordination, sexual orientation, and biblical interpretation. And in our heated debates over whether or not to ordain people in same sex relationships, a casual observer might have been hard pressed to think God was present at all. To be certain, talk about God along with verses from the Bible were heard frequently. But Bible verses were wielded as weapons, and God was referred to but never inquired of. People on both sides already "knew" what God wanted.

If you asked pastors and elders at a presbytery meeting, or leaders in most Presbyterian churches, they would surely insist that God is present at their meetings and, indeed, everywhere. Our tradition insists that God is not only omnipresent but also directly available to all people without need of mediation via priests or other sorts of intermediaries. So why does God so often seem to be on break when we are in a meeting?

I wonder if the psalmist quoted above isn't also struggling to find God's presence in a difficult time. Perhaps the words simply plead for God to be understanding and merciful, but I hear a bit of desperation, someone calling on a God who seems absent at the moment. It's easy to see why the psalmist might feel this way. Caught up in some sort of great, perhaps mortal difficulty, all the psalmist can see is danger all around. Those troubles obscure any glimpse or sense of God.

If God is indeed wherever we are, what is it that gets in our sight lines and obscures God's presence from us? In moments of crisis or great danger, our focus on these may hide God from us. But what is the problem in a more run-of-the-mill meeting? Might not it be much the same thing, our focus on the business at hand?

Many of us have learned how to be attentive to God in certain circumstances. In the midst of worship, in a time of quiet retreat, or in a moment of private devotion, we may clearly sense something of the divine. But if God's presence evaporates the moment we are doing anything else, how are we to carry Christ into the world in some way?

Surely some of the disdain the Church encounters in our world, the charges of hypocrisy and such, are related to this. If we can't actually invite God into our discussions, debates, and meetings, then we will have a hard time showing God to others except in our worship and private devotion.

Think about that the next time you are in a church meeting, or any sort of meeting for that matter. How might things go differently if everyone there was aware of God present in that meeting? Would we make different decisions, listen to one another differently, even question our own certainties, if we could see and hear Jesus sitting at the table with us? And if we cannot see or sense him, what does that say?

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Baby Birds and Power

What does it mean to be powerful? Thinking of it a different way, who would you put on a list of powerful people in the world today, and what is it that qualifies them for that list?

One of today's morning psalms, Psalm 147, describes God as "abundant in power." There is mention of God controlling weather, and that's certainly sounds powerful to me. But most of the attributes in today's verses don't fit so neatly into the qualities I associate with power. God gathers outcasts, binds up wounds, lifts up the downtrodden, feeds animals, and hears baby birds when they cry. Sounds a little like St. Francis, and that's not a name that comes immediately to mind when I consider the topic of power.

I'm reasonably well versed in the Bible, and so I know that the Apostle Paul writes how the Lord said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." But that doesn't quite fit into the understanding of power I learn from living in our world. Which I suppose is largely the point.

For some reason, I've never heard this morning's psalm in quite the manner I did today. Clearly God's strange notions about power are not some New Testament innovation that shows up with a cross. God's apparently had some rather odd notions about power for a long time.

Seems a strange way for a god to act. Of course that sentence might make a rather catchy title for the story of Jesus.

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God's Love and Performance Anxieties

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
      for in you my soul takes refuge;
 in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
      until the destroying storms pass by.          (Psalm 57:1)

I was somewhat startled to read this quote in a column from the Washington Post's faith section, something said a few years ago by Dr. Richard Leahy, an anxiety specialist. “The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s.” The column went on to lament how the church too often creates the same sort of performance anxiety that is so pervasive in today's culture.

As a pastor, I've sometimes felt this way about all the "help" that is available to those in my field. I recently attended a very good conference from The Alban Institute, designed to help pastors become better at supervising and directing those on church staffs. I learned a great deal and hope to implement some of it. I do want to be a better leader in the church. Yet at the same time, I worry that all the books and conferences and resources devoted to helping me improve start to create an ethos that says, "Everything would be fine in our churches if we were just a little (perhaps a lot) better at what we do." Talk about performance anxiety, especially in a day when many church congregations are struggling.

As I reflect on this, I have little doubt that my own attempts to "help" folks with preaching, teaching, and so on produce a similar impact. As that Washington Post piece notes, I can make Christianity more about what we do, about our performance, than about what God does in Jesus. And if people think the church's primary message is, "Perform better," no wonder a generation already weighed down by performance anxieties is less than enthralled with our message.

I also wonder if this isn't especially problematic in progressive, Mainline congregations. Pastors and members in such churches are often highly educated, valuing creative scholarship, complexity, and nuance. That may make it easy to minimize the part of our faith's message that seems embarrassingly simple and un-complex. God love us. God is for us. God embraces us without regard to our level of performance. Period.

I hope to continue learning how to be a better pastor, and I also appreciate learning things that help me follow Jesus more faithfully. But in the midst of that, I dare not forget that how God views me and others has virtually nothing to do with the quality of our performance. It's pretty much all about the quality of God's love.

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Sermon: Committed to God's New Day

Luke 18:1-8

Committed to God’s New Day

James Sledge                                                                                       October 20, 2013

Last Saturday I was watching the football game between Ole Miss and Texas A&M. It was a pretty exciting contest, and Ole Miss was looking like they might pull off a big upset. But Texas A&M had come back to tie the game. Then with time running out, they moved the ball down the field to set up a potential game winning field goal on the last play.

Time out was called, and the field goal unit prepared to come out on the field. As the TV cameras panned around, trying to capture the intensity of the moment, one camera spotted the Texas A&M quarterback gathered with a small group of teammates. They were in a sort of semi-circle with their helmets off. Each was down on one knee, holding the hand of the player next to him. Then the quarterback said something and bowed his head. He seemed to be leading the group in some sort of prayer.

I couldn’t hear them, of course, so I don’t actually know what they were praying about. There had been an Ole Miss player carried off the field on a stretcher earlier. I suppose they could have been praying for him, but I doubt it. I feel pretty confident they were praying for their teammate to kick the ball squarely through the uprights. And when he did just that a few minutes later, they ran onto the field rejoicing, their prayers answered.

One of my least favorite moments in sports is the post-game interview where a winning player thanks God for the victory. I recall one boxer some years ago who went so far as saying he could feel Jesus in his fists helping him knock the other guy out. With such eloquent spokespersons, no wonder Christian faith is struggling.

Actually, I don’t think Christianity has much of a problem because of  people who thank God for the home run they hit to win the game. It would be easy enough to dismiss such utterances, that is if they didn’t fit into a larger pattern of seeing God as a cosmic sugar daddy, or seeing religion and faith as consumer items intended to make our lives a little bit better.

Glossolalia and Partisan Politics

I had just finished writing yesterday's post when I heard that the Republicans had "blinked." A default was avoided, and the government shutdown would be ending. All that pain, all that rancor, all the damage to people's lives and to the economy, and nothing really had changed.

I had just finished writing about the Apostle Paul's insistence that the good of the whole had to be considered above personal edification. Speaking in tongues was all well and good with Paul, but not if that little moment of personal, spiritual ecstasy did nothing to help others. And he continues such thinking in today's passage, "Let all things be done for building up."

Yesterday I was thinking about how church fights over worship style too often neglect Paul's advice, with "What I like" becoming the final arbiter of what should be done. But as soon as I heard about the default being averted, it struck me how this was even more so for many in Congress.

Perhaps this is simply the ugly side of American individualism, but we seem to have more and more difficulty as a culture putting the good of the whole first. "Let all things be done for building up" is not a mantra that will win many elections.

But what I find even more troubling about all this is how some, who seem the least willing to consider the good of the whole, trumpet their faith. Some incredibly immature, hateful, and destructive things were said and done in the name of righteousness. Surely Jesus weeps.

I offer no easy solution. But perhaps it wouldn't hurt if all our political leaders read Paul's letter to the Corinthians, listening as though it had been written specifically to them.

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Glossolalia and Worship Squabbles

People who've worked in church congregations over the last few decades are likely familiar with the term "worship wars." It describes the squabbles and fights over style, over whether to add a contemporary service, bring guitars or a praise band into the sanctuary, or add new and different types of songs to the congregation's repertoire. And as with all disagreements over things related to worship, these fights can get quite nasty. As the old adage goes, "Some of the worst fights in congregations are over the color of the carpet in the sanctuary."

Paul faces a worship war of sorts with his congregation at Corinth. This was apparently a quite active and exuberant bunch, prone to get carried away from time to time. In today's portion of Paul's letter to the church, the topic is glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. It seems that this was a particularly valued "spiritual gift" among the Corinthians, a surefire sign that they were had a deep faith. But Paul is not so sure.

Paul does not object to the practice per se, even claiming to have had the experience more than any of them. But he questions the value of it, at least in public gatherings of the faithful. Speaking of the fact that others may have  no way of understanding this speech, Paul writes, "For you may give thanks well enough, but the other person is not built up." In other words, Paul says that as much as the Corinthians may enjoy speaking in tongues, if it doesn't help build up others, it is more a problem than a good.

When I have witnessed squabbles over worship, they very often seem to take on some of the same dimensions Paul saw in Corinth. Church members often judge questions about musical style purely from a personal preference standpoint, without much thought as to whether of not it builds up others. In extreme cases, congregations are more concerned with "what we like" than they are with their calling to share God's love and build up the body of Christ.

I don't mean to make an endorsement or indictment of any particular style or form of worship. I simply raise the question of what criteria we use in making decisions about style. Which is more important: what I like, or building up the body?

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Sermon: A Strange Pep Talk

Luke 17:5-10

A Strange Pep Talk

James Sledge                                                                                       October 6, 2013

Think for a moment about a time in your life when you were asked to do something that you weren’t sure you could accomplish. Or think of a time when you were considering a big change in your life, but you just didn’t know if you had what was needed to pull it off.

There are all sort of such events in my life, some big and some small. I remember how I would thumb through my new math book each year at the start of school, horrified at the problems I could not understand, wondering how I would make it through the year. I vividly recall the first time I took the controls of a jet aircraft and found it much more difficult than the planes I was familiar with. And I wondered if I would be able to progress any further. And I remember many times when I felt totally inadequate as a parent.

There are probably many of you who know that last one well. A lot of people put off having children because they’re not sure if they’re “ready.” Of course, no matter how many books you read or classes you take or financially secure you become, you’re never quite ready.

To a much greater degree than in Jesus’ day, we live in a culture of experts. Name any field or activity, and there are experts who will teach you how to do it better, more efficiently, and with improved results. And in this culture of experts, a fear of failure often prevails. We’re never sure if we have enough training, enough advice, enough carefully laid plans that take into account every possible contingency. I have a hard time imagining many of us responding the way those first disciples did when Jesus said, “Follow me.” Not until we did a lot of checking, a lot of planning, a lot of calculations, and maybe some career counseling.

But Peter and James and John and the others had simply gone with Jesus. But if they were not nearly so risk averse as us, they still had their limits, and today, the magnitude of what they’d gotten themselves into seems to hit home. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is Jesus telling them that they must not cause any of those in their care to stumble, and they must forgive over and over and over. It’s all too much, and they cry out. “We can’t do all that. We don’t have enough faith. You’ve got to help us, Jesus!” At least that’s how I hear their cry, “Increase our faith!”

Sermon video: Healing the Blind

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Go Ahead; Cut the Baby in Half

In this space, I normally post sermons and reflect on the daily lectionary passages. But today a scripture passage not from the lectionary readings keeps popping up in my head. It's the story of King Solomon judging the case of two mothers who each claimed an infant as her own. There were no witnesses, nothing but each woman's word, and so Solomon famously ordered the child cut in half with each mother would receiving a share. Of course the true mother could not bear to see this happen, and offered to give the child up, thus revealing to Solomon who she was.

What calls this story to mind is the current situation in Washington, DC. The difference is that the two quarreling parties both seem willing to let the child be cut in two. In the current situation of an impending government shutdown, I have no problem labeling Republican behavior the more egregious. But while the Democrats and the president have the moral high ground on this one, I don't have much more confidence in them when it comes to the life of the child. Both sides are so intent on winning, so concerned about how everything might play in the next election, that no one seems much concerned with what is best for all.

Many like to say that this is a "Christian nation." Republicans seem especially fond of the designation. But at the very core of being a Christ follower is the notion of self-denial and concern for the other. Being a disciple has always been about us becoming servants in God's work, and such work is always marked by love. Speaking of such love, the apostle Paul writes, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth."

These words are not about romantic love and weren't intended for weddings. (Such love is most beneficial in a marriage however.) These words are about the costly self-giving that Christians are called to live out. They are about a concern for the other and the community that is willing to subvert my own desires for the good of the other. And at this moment, it is hard to imagine such a pose describing many involved in our national governance.

This is not an indictment of politics per se. Politics can be a high calling, but few in our current political climate seem to regard it as such. It has devolved into polarized sides of remarkable arrogance and certainty, each willing to resort to almost any sort of distortion and outright lying to achieve victory. No one seems the least bit interested in truth, much less love.

Unfortunately, those of us in the church aren't necessarily in a position to show our nation, as Paul says, "a more excellent way." We have our own examples of sides, of arrogance and certainty, of distortion and lying in order to win. As with much of the political bickering in our country, we often seem to be better at demonizing and hating than we are at loving.

So what to do? This may seem simplistic and trite, but most of us need to become less certain of our stances, while getting to know Jesus much better. Yes, there are times when we need to make judgments, to say something is wrong or even evil. But we also need to know Jesus on a deep enough level to realize that our positions are not simply the same as his. Many of us who claim to be Christian are far to quick to enlist Jesus in our causes, yet inclined to ignore him when he says things we don't like.

A bit more prayer wouldn't hurt either.  May I suggest, "Not my will, but yours."

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Sermon: Healing the Blind

Luke 16:19-31

Healing the Blind

James Sledge                                                                                       September 29, 2013

We’ve been hearing a lot of parables from Jesus lately. Many of Jesus’ parables are beloved stories, but I rather doubt today’s is anyone’s favorite. The basic story is not original to Jesus. Most all cultures have folk tales celebrating reversals of fortune, and this one resembles an Egyptian tale. Its outline was probably familiar to Jesus’ original audience. The images of Hades and such were stock ones, and so they would not have thought that Jesus was teaching anything new about life after death.

Surely, however, they were surprised to learn the poor man’s name.  No other character in Jesus’ parables is named, and this fellow seems a most unlikely candidate for such an honor. Wealthy people get their names on things, not some homeless, poor person who sleeps under a bridge.

That first audience may also have puzzled over the lack of details about the rich man. Along with us, they probably would have liked to know more, to hear about his sweatshop that took advantage of poor people like Lazarus, to know that he was some heartless corporate bigwig who put profits over everything else. But Jesus says nothing of the sort. For all we know, he tithed at his church, ran a foundation that funded worthy causes, and donated money for the new wing at Jerusalem Memorial Hospital.

All Jesus says is there was a very rich man, and poor one in terrible distress. It’s just how things are. No blame is assigned; no fault. It just is.

If You Love Jesus...

There are an awful lot of "Christians" on Facebook who seem not to have read Jesus' words in today's gospel passage. He warns his followers, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them." Of course a certain amount of judgment is required here. After all, Jesus also talks about not hiding your light under a basket. But when it comes to such judgments, it seems to me that we often get them exactly backwards. Trivial displays like those on Facebook are commonplace, but sharing the light of Jesus by living as he did is more of a rarity.

In reading the gospels, one thing I never observe Jesus doing is manipulating people. He is much more straightforward than that. He speaks hard truths that many do not want to hear, but these truths are not about the things religious folks tend to find important. Jesus is much more concerned about healing the sick and proclaiming good news to the poor than he is with religious observance. I have to think that Jesus would get very tired of folks who post on Facebook about how much they love him, right next to their posts about cutting food stamps or how they have a gun and aren't afraid to use it. Along with today's verses on public practices of piety, they might want to also recall Jesus words about loving enemies. Even more, recall these words. "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."

And lest this seem to be a rant against more conservative Christians, I should add that Christians right and left tend to find something about Jesus that is easy for them to do. For some this might be more overt language about loving a personal savior, but for others it might be about loving everybody. Many liberal Christians reduce Jesus to a message of tolerance and charity because those are things they already like doing.  Our public piety -- or light on a lamp stand if you prefer -- is almost always something that is easy and comfortable for us and our group. Christians on the right and the left often find it impossible to leave their camp even if following Jesus seems to require it. All too often we are virtually indistinguishable from the political company we keep, and loving Jesus rarely calls us to risk anything, to step out and deny ourselves for the sake of God's new day, what Jesus labeled the kingdom.

If you love Jesus... What does loving Jesus really require of us? And before we answer with the stock phrases of our particular group, we would all do well to take a long hard look at what Jesus says, paying special attention to those words we like to ignore or explain away.

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On Being Different

What is it that makes Christians distinctive? Some may think this an odd question. Obviously Christians believe in Jesus. But while this is true, is it what primarily sets us apart? Jesus does not seem to think so.

Jesus raises this very issue in the teachings found in today's gospel. Some of these teachings are well known -- turn the other cheek, love your enemies, etc. -- but they have precious few practitioners. We find it much easier to "believe in Jesus," be reasonably good and moral, and do a little charity, than we do to take up the radical commands of Jesus.

There is something downright strange about the term "Christian" coming to signify little more than beliefs. The term originally implied becoming Christ-like. It expected that people would get a glimpse of Jesus by looking at us. But the image of Jesus reflected from us often looks little like the biblical Jesus.

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Lately Pope Francis, the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has made quite a splash in the news. He's become something of a sensation, even a media darling. He has done so by calling the church to be more Christ-like, and by practicing some of what he preaches. He drives around in an 80s model Renault and lives a quite simple life. This sincerity and integrity have impressed people, both Catholics and others, which says something about how unusual it is.

I have to imagine, however, that there are many in the church hierarchy who are not happy with him. I mean no slap at the Catholic Church by that. The institutional structures and functionaries in most denominations and many if not most congregations would be less that thrilled with a leader who emulated the radical ways of Jesus too closely. "Bad for business," they might say.

Curious how most of us feel the need to domesticate Jesus, removing his more radical tendencies, presumably to make him more palatable. And yet there is more excitement and interest in the Catholic Church right now than in quite some time, all because of a pope who decided not to play that game.

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