Uncomfortable Jesus

Today's gospel passage is one of those uncomfortable ones. Jesus first ignores a Canaanite woman's request for his help. When she is insistent, he calls her a "dog." This isn't the Jesus of Sunday School class artwork, smiling and friendly. This Jesus is unsettling.

The gospel writers have reasons for telling this story that typically get missed when it is read without its context, but that's not what I'm interested in today. Today I'm simply wondering about its uncomfortable and unsettling quality, along with our usual desire quickly to dispense with such discomfort.

There are more and less sophisticated ways of dealing with the discomfort. Some suggest that "dog" is somehow a term of endearment, which it is not. I'm more inclined to find some fancy exegetical move that's not so easily dismissed. But I wonder why we are not willing to sit with an uncomfortable and disturbing image of Jesus for a bit.

This passage is uncomfortable because it is contrary in some way to our existing pictures of Jesus. Perhaps that is simply because we've misunderstood the story. But if we move too quickly to provide and understanding that relieves our discomfort, we may simply be protecting our existing image. And that may get in the way of knowing Jesus more deeply.

All growth requires some measure of discomfort. If one is trying to grow stronger or increase her stamina, that discomfort will be physical. If one is hoping to grow emotionally or spiritually, the discomfort will be of another sort. Many of us seem easily to recognize the need for physical discomfort in pursuit of physical growth, even though it still dissuades many an exercise program. But when it comes to emotional or spiritual discomfort, we don't always make the connection.

This happens to me sometimes when I'm reading a book on faith or spirituality. I may be enjoying the book, nodding in agreement here and there, but then the writer steps on a deeply held article of my theology. Suddenly the author is diminished in my sight. Clearly he doesn't know what he's talking about. If, however, all my deeply held beliefs are unassailable, then I can never really move far from where I am, never really grow in any profound way.

That's precisely the problem that some religious authorities had with Jesus. When Jesus said something that made them uncomfortable, they immediately assumed he was wrong. It's a pose many Christians in our time assume whenever they encounter a notion about faith, a way of doing church, or an understanding of Jesus that doesn't fit neatly with what they already "know." (Today's gospel passage about Jesus and the Canaanite woman is actually part of a larger section dealing with the certainties of tradition.)

Very often when we try to get rid of discomfort - whether by explaining why Jesus didn't really insult the Canaanite woman or deciding a spiritual author is no count - it is a fearful act of self protection. Most of us have an almost innate need to defend ourselves, to preserve the identities we have constructed for ourselves, to be right. I know that I certainly do.

Interestingly, Jesus doesn't act this way with the Canaanite woman. He first says that he was sent "only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," that, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But when the woman challenges his analogy, saying that "even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table," Jesus does not defend his earlier statements. He applauds the woman's faith and does as she requested. An enacted lesson for us perhaps?

I wonder if Jesus' command to love our enemies isn't a way of challenging us to do some really difficult and uncomfortable self-examination. After all, our enemies are most often those we disagree with, who we fear and are most likely to react to in defensive ways. But loving them requires seeing them differently. And it likely requires painful growth of becoming different ourselves.

Jesus told is such growth would be painful. He spoke of it as dying to self. No wonder faith, even Christian faith that is supposed to be about loving God and neighbor, so often degenerates into hating those who disagree with us.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon video from May 29: Limping between Gods

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

Sermon: Getting To Know God

1 Kings 17:8-24

Getting to Know God

James Sledge                                                                                                   June 5, 2016

What does it mean to be the Church? Ask a hundred people and you might get a hundred different answers. No doubt there would be a lot of overlap, but there would probably be a good deal of variety and disagreement.

What if I instead asked, What does it mean to be the body of Christ? It’s just a different version of the original question, but I suspect that it shifts the answers somewhat.

Thinking of the Church as the living body of Christ reminds us that we’re called to respond to situations and events and people in the same way that Jesus would. I always thought those old, “What Would Jesus Do?” wristbands were hokey, but they did capture a truth about Church, that we are called to see things as Jesus did and respond as he did. And because Jesus is the human face of God, that means to see and respond as God does.

Of course, a deep knowledge and understanding of Jesus, of God, especially since there’re no gospel stories about whether to raise the minimum wage, provide universal health care, or about how many Syrian refugees to take in. Yet a lot of us Christians – and this is true for liberals, conservatives, and everywhere in between – tend to picture Jesus lining up neatly with what we think are our best and noblest and most deeply held convictions. We may even have a few supporting Bible verses, but our images of Jesus are very often constructed on an incredibly small about of data.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Sermon: Limping between Gods

1 Kings 18:20-39

Limping between Gods

James Sledge                                                                                       May 29, 2016

If you were among the participants in the weekday Bible study on the book of Revelation, you may recall that it is a badly misunderstood work. It does not predict the end of the world. It is not meant to be frightening but to encourage people who were already frightened, who lived in a time when it was difficult, even dangerous, to be Christians.

Revelation is addressed to seven churches in what is today Turkey. Each church’s strengths or weaknesses are mentioned, their need to hold fast to their faith or to deal with some problem. But the seventh is addressed differently. “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

The writer of Revelation seems to have a special disdain for the church at Laodicea. Embrace the faith or don’t. None of this half in, half out business. And in their lukewarm ways, the Laodiceans seem to mirror the Israelites in this morning’s Old Testament reading.

Like Revelation, Old Testament books such as 1 Kings are also misunderstood, if for different reasons. They tend to be viewed as historical works, reports of “what happened,” but 1 Kings is primarily theological reflection. It seeks to understand how God’s chosen people, rescued from slavery in Egypt and brought into the land of promise, could have ended up with Jerusalem and its Temple destroyed, the Ark of the Covenant gone, people carried off into exile in Babylon. And even when they finally returned home, there was no return to the glory days of King David. They were an unimportant, insignificant speck in some other nations’s empire. How could that be?

The writers and editors of 1 Kings look back over Israel’s history  in an effort to give an answer. And so while they do tell a history, questions of “what happened?” are always secondary to questions of “Why?”

Sermon: Waiting and Praying

Acts 2:1-21

Waiting and Praying

James Sledge                                                                           May 15, 2016 – Pentecost

Imagine for a moment that some significant challenge faces your department at work, a group you’re a part of, maybe even your church congregation. Maybe your company’s sales have been hurt by online shopping. Maybe an organization you belong to wants to find a new way of fundraising, but doesn’t know where to start. Maybe your congregation is worried about Millennials not going to church and wonders how to respond.

Regardless of what sort of challenge it is you imagine or actually face, what are some of ways you might go about meeting the challenge? Perhaps form a task force or ad hoc committee? Maybe hire a consultant? Perhaps give the congregation an online survey to provide data for strategic planning.

In the weeks following the very first Easter, the little congregation of Jesus followers faced huge challenges. Many of the 120 or so of them still weren’t entirely sure what the resurrection meant. They had asked Jesus if he was going to restore Israel to power, but he said such things were not for them to know. They were, however, responsible for being his witnesses throughout all the world. Quite the challenge for a little congregation of 120.

Almost none of them had any leadership experience. Many of them had lived in the same place their entire lives. What did they know about going into all the world? Time to form a task force or hire a church growth expert. But they don’t do any of those things. In fact, by my typical way of thinking, they don’t do much of anything. They wait, and they pray.

Over the years, first as an elder on a church session and later as a pastor, I’ve had numerous opportunities to be a part of church or presbytery committees and councils dealing with problems large and small. And though it pains me to say it, I’ve often found myself frustrated by others in these groups who wanted to stop, to wait, to pray.

By nature I tend to be impatient. On top of that, I’m the product of a culture that values production, efficiency, and accomplishment. And it is hard to be productive or efficient or accomplish anything when you are waiting, when you are praying. Yet the explosion of the Christian faith all over the Mediterranean world, surely one of the great accomplishments of history, happened only after waiting and praying. The work was not something that little congregation could do by itself. It could only happen with the power of God, the Holy Spirit working through them, a story that begins at Pentecost.

Sermon video: A Way of Deliverance and Liberation

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: A Way of Deliverance and Liberation

Acts 16:16-34

A Way of Deliverance and Liberation

James Sledge                                                                                       May 8, 2016

If you were in worship last week, you heard Diane preach about when Lydia met the Apostle Paul at Philippi. Paul had gone out from the city on the Sabbath, looking for a place of prayer. There he met Lydia, and she and all her household were baptized. She then opened her home to Paul, and presumably he and his companions stayed with her during their time in Philippi.

If you were in worship last week, or on any number of other occasions when Diane preached, you heard her close our worship by speaking of Christians as a people sent into the world. She charged us to go out into the world saying, “Consider that wherever you go this week, God is sending you there.”

I wonder if Paul discovered something about this sort of sending in the events of our scripture for today. The story is really a part of that reading from last week were Lydia met Paul and on beyond today’s passage. The story begins when a vision convinced Paul he was sent to Macedonia and its leading city, Philippi. Initially, the story played out along the lines Paul likely expected. He probably set up shop in the city to ply his trade, traditionally thought to be tentmaker, where he would talk to those he met in the marketplace.

On the Sabbath, Paul had gone out to find that place of prayer. There along the river just outside the city, Paul spoke to the worshipers he found there. Lydia was moved by the Spirit, the Church gained a new convert, and Lydia opened her home to Paul.

 But then, on another day, Paul headed to the same place of prayer where he had met Lydia and met someone else. More to the point, an unnamed slave girls seems to have met him. The story says that she had a spirit of divination, and because of this possession, she recognizes Paul’s connection to God. She senses the Holy Spirit in him, and begins to follow Paul and his companions around, announcing, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation,” or “deliverance” or even “liberation.”

Perhaps Paul enjoyed the attention at first, especially when he learned about her how people paid her owners (literally “her lords”) for oracles she would speak. Surely her words would confer a bit of prestige on Paul with the locals. But after days of this, Paul was getting more and more annoyed. Curiously, Paul never seems to consider that he might be sent to this slave girl, to proclaim to her a way of deliverance or liberation. Yet when Paul can stand her no more, he heals her in a fit of pique. “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And immediately it was so.

By Their Fruits

Growing up Presbyterian, I got a good introduction to the Bible, and so I knew about the Ascension at a fairly young age. However I was totally oblivious to any celebration of a Day of Ascension, which happens to be today (in case you haven't yet learned of it as I eventually did). But in keeping with my upbringing, I'm reflecting on the gospel reading from Matthew in the daily lectionary rather than the Luke passage that is the gospel lection for Ascension of the Lord.

Interestingly, both readings conclude their respective gospels. But if Luke ends with Jesus telling the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit, followed by his ascension, Matthew concludes with Jesus sending the disciples out via what is often called "The Great Commission." These words are often cited as a call to evangelism, but such evangelism frequently strikes me as paying scant attention to the content of Jesus' commission.

A great deal of evangelism in America has focused on "accepting Jesus," and on "believing in him." There are certainly New Testament passages that seem to emphasize faith or belief, but this Great Commission in Matthew is not one of them. There is nothing here about believing and being saved. Instead Jesus says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." The emphasis is on making disciples, something done by baptizing and by teaching people "to obey everything that I have commanded you."

This call to obedience is how Jesus urges his followers to build his Church. That won't happen from signing up believers or adherents, but by making disciples or followers. And those commandments Jesus says these new disciple must obey include all that fun stuff about loving enemies, not retaliating against those who injure you, not swearing oaths on Bibles or anything else, the impossibility of serving wealth and God, not judging others, denying oneself, forgiving others over and over and over. And the list goes on and one.

Within all those commands, Jesus speaks more than once about a trees and their fruit. Trees, and people it seems, are known by the quality of their fruits. Consider the things the church in America is known for. The list is a mixed bag. It includes feeding the hungry, volunteering at homeless shelters, doing beautiful and uplifting worship, operating health clinics, settling refugee families, and more. But it also includes very public fights over everything from sanctuary carpet colors and worship songs to questions about whether to ordain women or gays. It includes preachers calling for violence against Muslims and carrying concealed weapons for self-defense. (See Jesus' command about "all who take the sword...") It includes "bathroom bills," disingenuously labeled "religious freedom bills," and every manner of discrimination and hate based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

If you were able to take a poll of all non-Christians in America, asking them what "fruits" they associated with Christianity and the Church, I wonder which sort of fruits would top the list. My fear is that they would not be sort Jesus taught. That suggests to me that we need to re-embrace the Great Commission. I'm not talking about trying to "evangelize" people. Our fruits are already publicly proclaiming our faith, for better or worse. I'm talking about seriously embracing  Jesus' call to teach each other to "obey everything" he has commanded. If we did that, we'd never have to convince anyone about Jesus.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Anxiety, Gap Year, and Sabbath

I assume that by now you have heard about Malia Obama's college choice, and also that she plans to take a "gap year" before attending. Both have been widely reported, including articles on the topic of gap years prompted by Ms. Obama's decision.

(Total aside: Why do reputable publications such as The Washington Post have a "Comments" section accompanying their articles on this or any topic? They seem to serve no real purpose other than empowering trolls. And the fact that we currently have a presidential candidate who sounds like a comment section come to life only adds to my concern about a fourth estate that has lost its vocational bearings. But enough venting for now.)

Gap year, or at least the term, was unknown to me until recently. I suppose there have long been students who chose to hike across Europe or work for a year prior to college, but my admittedly scant knowledge on gap years suggests this is a bit different. The sort of gap year engaged in by well-off suburbanites is likely not available to those of more modest means. Then again, the very idea seems a response to the over-scheduled, overly competitive, enrichment filled lives of many well-off, suburbanite youth.

The church I serve sits in a community that epitomizes well-off suburbia. My own children were grown prior to my arrival here, but here seems an only slightly amplified version of where they went to high school. That means that it feels slightly more tense and anxious . The pressures to measure up, excel, get into a good school, etc. are more intensified in this tense region surrounding our nation's capital.

Enter the gap year. In some versions, such years are no doubt as over-scheduled and competitive and enrichment-filled as was middle and high school. But at a more fundamental level, surely the gap year is an attempt to take a break from all that, from all the activity and competition and anxiety.

Understood thus, a gap year strikes me as a version of Sabbath. Because Sabbath became so connected to worship, a great many people, whether or not they are church-goers, seem unaware that Sabbath was originally about rest rather than worship. It was a command to stop, to cease. And it applied to everyone, even one's farm animals. If ever there was a piece of anti-anxiety legislation, surely the Fourth Commandment is one. (or Third Commandment, depending on your tradition).

I've told the following story so many times I've likely shared it here, but I'm an over-sharer when it comes to good stories. I heard this one from a colleague who related her experience attending some sort of ecumenical, clergy gathering. As with other other lines of work, pastors will "talk shop" when you put them together. On this occasion they began discussing what day each took off, a peculiar concern for pastors who typically "work" on Sunday.

As those gathered debated the relative merits of Friday versus Monday, one pastor objected to the very topic itself. "I never take a day off," he said. "The devil never takes a day off!"

To which my colleague replied, "But God does." (If you don't get her retort, read the first Creation story from the Bible's opening, Genesis 1:1-2:4.)

I've never fully understood it, but religious people can be remarkably anxious. Especially for Christians, who claim that nothing, not even death, can separate us from God and God's love, such anxiousness seems totally at odds with our faith. If God is indeed sovereign, as we Calvinists love to claim, then how could the world possibly spin out of control just because I took the day off? Never mind what the devil does or doesn't do.

The notion of Sabbath insists that life, in all its intended abundance, cannot occur in a state of constant anxiety. God commands a "gap day" for each week to break our tendency to pursue endless cycles of anxiety. Our culture has become particularly practiced at this. We have learned to quantify almost everything, and then we are able to worry about whether or not we have enough. Inevitably, we need more. We need more money, more power, better grades, more efficiency, more experiences, more accomplishments, more fitness, more sleep, more, more, more.

My old running watch recently broke and needed to be replaced. The old one told me basic info runners like to know: how far I've gone, my pace, and my heart rate. But the new watch does so much more. It has functions popularized by Fitbits and can track my steps and my sleep. If I wear it all night, it tells me not only how many hours of sleep I got but also how many of those hours were "deep sleep." And it color codes both to let me know when I'm deficient, where I need more. Now I can add anxiety about sleep to my others.

There is much in the world over which to be anxious. Neither I nor the Bible advocate a "What me worry?" attitude toward life. But our worries and anxieties are definitely something we need less of and not more. So where do we find our break, our gap, our Sabbath?

Most of us cannot manage a gap year, but we can cultivate practices of cessation, of stopping, of not measuring or marking anything. We can cultivate the spiritual practice of rest, of simply being, of Sabbath. Call it whatever you like, but what many of us need in our lives is to take a break from our culture's dominant focus on consumerism and acquisition. We desperately need a gap in such activities. God has said so from the beginning.

Sermon: Transformed by Love

John 13:31-35

Transformed by Love

James Sledge                                                                                       April 24, 2016

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” But exactly how new is this commandment? Love your neighbor as yourself is in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. And haven’t parents been trying to get siblings to love one another since the beginning of time? Isn’t a mom yelling, “Why can’t you two just get along?” an exasperated version of “Love one another!”?

At first glance, this command to love one another also seems a lot less noble, a lot less impressive than some of Jesus’ other commands such as, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Now that’s an extraordinary accomplishment, surely something much more difficult than loving those around you, than loving one another.

Then again, “one another” presumably refers to those we spend a lot of time with, those who have ample opportunities to annoy us, hurt us, disagree with us, get under out skin, and disappoint us. And if our enemy is nameless and faceless, some group way over there, they may not stir our emotions nearly so much as that family member we can’t abide, or that member of the congregation who seems to go out of his or her way to be difficult and cause trouble

There’s an old Peanuts cartoon that I think captures this well. (I’ve updated the language a bit.) Lucy has told Linus that he can’t be a doctor because he doesn’t love humankind. Linus yells back, “I love humankind… It’s people I can’t stand!!”

Humanity… nameless, faceless others in general, even some who are enemies, perhaps we can love them on principle. But those people that we encounter on a regular basis, who irritate and annoy and cause us all manner of problems… that’s another matter entirely. “Love one another,” may not sound all that noble or impressive, but doing it isn’t very easy.

That doesn’t really make it a new commandment though. What is new about love one another?

Strange Blessings

As a pastor, it is not unusual for me to hear people speak of their blessings. They may comment to me that they have been "blessed," usually referring to tangible things they appreciate such as possessions, wealth, position, children, etc. In prayers people sometimes refer to their "many blessing," often with similar meaning. What I've never heard is someone including the items on Jesus' list in today's gospel passage, one usually labeled "The Beatitudes."

These Beatitudes (from the Latin for "blessing") have suffered from a fair amount of trivializing over the years. They frequently get referred to as the "Be Happy Attitudes," as though Jesus was here offering some tips for self-improvement or success. But any self help guru who suggested mourning, anguished longing for the world to be set right, or persecution as a prescription for happiness would not last long in that role.

Jesus/God clearly has different priorities than most of us do. Jesus has little interest in possessions, and he regularly invites people to leave what they have behind and follow him. Many of the things we call blessings involve acquisition and getting, but Jesus says that the path to life goes through giving, self-denial, and concern for "the other."

My own Calvinist tradition is largely responsible for the so-called "Protestant work ethic." In its origins it equated hard work and success with signs that you were a member of God's "elect." Yet Jesus' beatitudes speak of God's favor being on people most of us would not list as paragons of success. And in Luke's gospel, a similar set of beatitudes says, "Blessed are you who are poor..." And it later adds, "But woe to you who are rich..." The same pattern follows for those who are "hungry" and those who are "full." Not sure how that fits into a hard work + success = God's blessing.

Our culture often blames those who are poor for their fate. They are presumed to be lazy or without initiative. Yet God seems to be quite taken with the poor. It's a theme that recurs regularly in Old and New Testaments. Whether that poverty is spiritual or literal, God looks with favor on those who are too often despised for their "failings." And I'm pretty sure that Jesus' teachings are encouraging us see things more from God's point of view.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Left to Our Own Devices

Today's lectionary gospel reading features John the Baptist calling people to prepare for the coming Messiah. According to John, getting ready involves a change of direction or mind, repentance. That got me wondering about what sort of repentance is required for me or a congregation to embrace Jesus fully. This wondering was intensified because I had been thinking about an upcoming sermon that deals with miracles.

The context for my wondering is a secular mindset in a secular age. The stories of the Bible, of Jesus, of healings and miracles do not sit easily in our world. I'm not Thomas Jefferson, taking a razor and carefully removing all the miracle stories associated with Jesus in order to produce a pure collection of Jesus' teachings without foolish superstitions about demons and evil spirits and healings and exorcisms. But I do struggle with miracles. When I hear of a televangelist or other religious figure offering healings or other miracles, I assume he or she is a con and a fraud.

But do such secular assumptions create problems for following Jesus? Is there a change of mind, a repentance required of me and those like me if I am to be properly oriented for following Jesus?

I'm unsure of the exact connection, but the rise of a secular worldview seems to parallel the development of individualism. In its best forms this has encouraged everyone to recognize his or her own intrinsic value and worth. In its worst forms it has transformed us into free agents, each of us responsible for self alone, no overriding loyalties, allegiances, debts, or commitments. If one is wealthy, it is because she had done well for herself. If one is poor, it is because he has done poorly.

The message of Jesus certainly seems compatible with notions of intrinsic value and worth for every individual. But it seems totally at odds with being free agents. In the alternative community Jesus proclaims, there are profound commitments and obligations to the neighbor, to the other. And Jesus expands the neighborhood to include outsiders and enemies. It is a worldview that allows Jesus to die for the sake of others, even for enemies.

But central to Jesus' proclamation is the certainty that the power of God to transform, the bring life out of death, to make all things new, is active and at work in the world. God is shaping things, bending the arc of history toward particular outcomes. And if the power of God is at work in the world, then surely miracles must at least be a possibility.

Possibility and control are two very different things, and I suspect that much modern skepticism around religious miracles has roots in issues of control. Think of televangelists who offer healing for a donation or, more commonly, the notion of being healed if you pray hard enough or have sufficient faith. This is less about the power of God moving in surprising and life giving ways and more about formulas to harness such power. And one thing the Bible makes clear over and over is that the God of Jacob, the God we meet in Jesus, will not be harnessed. The God of Sinai and of the cross is radically wild and free.

But if God will not be harnessed, what does it mean to follow this Jesus who could trust his very life to the power of God to make new and give life? Surly it requires, at the very least, being open to the power of God at work in the world. And I'm not always open to such things.

Very often the Christian faith practiced by Presbyterians and other Mainline/Oldline denominations can be a mix of "believing in Jesus" and trying to follow some of his teachings (at least those we like). But this often includes no expectation that anything other than our own devices are involved. We're not inclined to claim any ability to control the power of God. We seem to think that only power involved is the power we possess. At least I often seem to operate from such a point of view.

And that is why I'm wondering about repentance, about a change of mind.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.