Sermon: Belonging to the Truth

John 18:33-37

Belonging to the Truth

James Sledge                                                                                       November 25, 2018

“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." That is how Jesus responds to Pilate’s question about whether or not he is a king. But Pilate is not much interested in truth. In the verse that follows our reading, Pilate responds, “What is truth?”

I think perhaps Pilate would fit right into our world of “alternative facts,” of “truth isn’t truth,” as Rudy Giuliani famously claimed. Pilate is a politician, and truth is often a problem for politicians. It has a nasty habit of getting in the way of plans and agendas, and so it often becomes casualty in election campaigns or political debates.

The gospel of John, more so than any other, portrays Pilate as a tragic figure, invited by Jesus into the truth but unable to enter. Pilate must scurry back and forth between the Jewish leaders outside and Jesus inside. He thinks he has power and control, but it is an illusion.

In our reading, Pilate comes inside after speaking with those leaders. He attempts to question Jesus, asking if he is King of the Jews. But rather than answer, Jesus questions him. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate does not answer, but the question seems to have stung him. “I am not a Jew, am I?” he objects.

Now I need to pause here to clarify something about this word, “Jew.” The writer of John’s gospel is a Jew who follows Jesus. He writes to a congregation of Jews who follow Jesus and worship at the synagogue. Most of the time in John’s gospel, the term Jew refers, not to people who are Jewish, but to the Jewish leadership that opposed Jesus and is threatening to kick this congregation of Jewish, Jesus followers out of the synagogue. One of the great tragedies of history was the failure of later Christians to recognize this, and then to use the gospel of John as a weapon against their Jewish neighbors.

And so when Pilate insists that he is not a Jew – in the Greek, his question is not really a question – he is insisting that he is not like those Jewish leaders who stand in the way of what God is doing, or as Jesus describes it, those who do not belong to the truth.

It’s not that Pilate doesn’t know the truth. He knows that Jesus is innocent, but there are other things that matter more to Pilate than the truth. Jerusalem was hardly a prime posting for a Roman official, and no doubt Pilate wanted things to go smoothly there. No riots during the Passover festival on his watch. If an innocent man needed to die in order for things to stay calm, so be it. Never mind the truth.

Sermon video: Faithful Lament

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Faithful Lament

1 Samuel 1:4-20; 2:1-10

Faithful Lament

James Sledge                                                                                       November 18, 2018

In the wake of the horrific murders at a Pittsburgh synagogue, there have been many articles written about the rise in anti-Semitism and racism. Not so many years ago, people talked about moving into a post racial society. That seems naïve foolishness now. Recently I read an article in the Post that talked about how young Jews find themselves confronted with a reality they thought belonged to a distant past.

For many young Jews across the nation, last month’s mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was a jarring lesson. Many millennials who grew up hearing about anti-Semitism from their parents and grandparents think of the Holocaust, Eastern European pogroms and the Spanish Inquisition when they think about violence against Jews — stories they read in history books about events that happened well over half a century ago, and all in the old country, not the United States.

The Pittsburgh rampage, committed by a gunman who reportedly shouted “All Jews must die” as he fired, shattered what remained of that illusion.[1]

I rather doubt that black, millennial Americans ever shared such an illusion. Hate and violence against African Americans never was an old country problem relegated to history books. Still, the mainstreaming of racism in recent years, including its blatant use as political strategy, feels like a huge step backwards. And those who had hoped in some sort of inexorable progress toward a day when racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and so on were confined to history may now find such hope in short supply.

I confess that the last few years have at times left me struggling. When I talk with other clergy types about how they and their folks and managing, I hear of two very different responses. One sounds like the joke Stephen Colbert tells regarding Donald Trump’s claim to have done more for religion than any other president. “It’s true,” says Colbert. I’ve prayed more in the last two years than I ever have.” But others have respond differently, struggling to pray at all because of anger or despair. Me, I’ve gone back and forth between these two.

Sermon video: Big Rocks First

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Big Rocks First

Mark 12:28-34

Big Rocks First

James Sledge                                                                                       November 4, 2018

As seminary student, I did my summer internship at a small town church in eastern North Carolina. They provided housing for me in a mother-in-law suite attached to the home of a widowed, Jewish grandmother named Reba. As far as I know, Reba, her son, and his family constituted the entire Jewish population of that town.

Reba’s house and my suite shared an enclosed porch, and she and I would sometimes sit out there and chat. On one occasion she offered that differences between faiths didn’t really matter. As long as people believed in God and tried to be good, that was enough.

Now I don’t know that Reba actually thought there were no significant differences between Jews, Christians, Muslims, and so on. Her statement may have been a mixture of her being very hospitable to me combined with a tactic she had long used to blend in as a religious minority. I don’t really know. But there are many people who see the “All faiths are basically the same” idea as a good way to bridge religious differences.

Given the problems some religious folks cause, it’s tempting to think that blurring the distinctions between groups might help. But a vague, blurry, Christian identity turns out to be difficult to pass on new generations of believers. It doesn’t require liturgies, worship services, or institutions. And I wonder if the widely held notion of Christianity as intolerant, anti-gay, pro-Republican, and so on, isn’t partly the result of more liberal Christians having blurred our identity to the point that the Christian part isn’t really visible to others.

If someone who had not grown up in a church walked up to you and asked, “What does it mean to be a Christian? What’s non-negotiable?” how would you respond? What would you tell them beyond, “Believe in God and try to be good”?

When Jesus is asked about what is non-negotiable, he answers by quoting from Scripture, our Old Testament. He starts with the Shema from Deuteronomy. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and will all your soul (or life), and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He was asked for the commandment that is “first of all,” but he adds as second, from Leviticus, “You shall love our neighbor as yourself.”

Sermon video: What Do We Want from Jesus?

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: What Do We Want from Jesus?

Mark 10:46-52

What Do We Want from Jesus?

James Sledge                                                                                       October 28, 2018

Along with The Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Westminster Confession of Faith, and others, our denomination’s Book of Confessions includes something called A Brief Statement of Faith. Written in the 1980s, it has three, distinct sections, one for each person of the Trinity. The section on the Holy Spirit contains these words. “In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”

The Spirit gives us courage to live as disciples. If we are the Church, if we are followers of Jesus, the Spirit will help us to do these things. And today’s gospel has me thinking specifically about courage “to hear the voices of peoples long silenced.”

In recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Me Too movement have tried to lift up voices long ignored, silenced, and disregarded. Some folks have listened, have become more aware of the systemic ways that black voices, female voices, and other voices from the margins have been ignored and discounted.

Others, however, resent this demand for marginalized voices to be heard. For a variety of reasons, ranging from benign to malicious, some do not want the disruption these new voices cause. They’re happy with how things are, privileged by how things are, or just accepting of how things are, and would just as soon leave it alone.

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In our gospel reading, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus demands to be heard, but “many” among the crowd and disciples insist that he be quiet. His voice is an intrusion that they do not want to hear, although the gospel story isn’t clear on why. Jesus has made a name for himself by healing people. It’s a big part of the show that crowds come to see, so why shut down Bartimaeus?

Sermon video: Beloved and Invited to New Life

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Beloved and Invited to New Life

Mark 10:35-45

Beloved and Invited to New Life

James Sledge                                                                                       October 21, 2018

I read an column in The Washington Post the other day entitled, “As Jesus said, nice guys finish last.” It quoted a tweet from Jerry Falwell, Jr., president at Liberty University. “Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys’. They might make great Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”[1]

The column went on to note that it is hardly a new thing for religious folks to want powerful politicians to support their agenda. For much of European and American history, faith and power have had something of a symbiotic relationship. Rulers made sure that the population participated in the faith, and the faith gave spiritual blessing to the ruler.

This sort of deal almost always ends up compromising and cheapening the faith. In our American experience, Christianity ended up being used to buttress slavery, sanction the genocide of Native Americans, and support imperialism in Africa and Asia. More recently, evangelical leaders were singing the president’s praises on the very day that thousands of migrant children were moved, under the cover of darkness, to a detention facility in Texas.

This last event prompted The Washington Post columnist to write, “This is disturbing and discrediting. How can anyone supposedly steeped in the teachings of Jesus be so unaffected by them? The question immediately turns against the questioner. In a hundred less visible ways, how can I be so unaffected by them?”[2]

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Sermon video: Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

Audios of sermons and worship available on FCPC website.

Sermon: Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

Mark 10:2-16

Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

James Sledge                                                                                       October 7, 2018

I don’t think we’ve done it here during my time as pastor, but both of my previous congregations did a stewardship program called the “Grow One Challenge.” This challenge was based on the fact that very few church members tithe. Never mind how often a pastor calls for the offering with “Let us bring our tithes and offerings…” statistics show that tithers are as rare as liberal Republicans.

And so the “Grow One Challenge” is a plan both to help church members move toward the biblical notion of the tithe, giving the first ten percent, the first fruits, to God. Recognizing that the typical Presbyterian gives something closer to two percent, this challenge knew that asking people to jump from one or two percent to ten was an impossible task. And so people were encouraged to grow one, one percentage point that is, toward the tithe. The pledge cards accompanying the program even had little charts on the back that would help you do the math.

The program seemed to work pretty well. We had some pretty big jumps in giving when we first used it. But I also had a rather experience. It happened in both churches and it happened repeatedly.  People asked me, “Am I supposed give ten percent of my income before or after taxes?” They almost always grinned as they asked.

I don’t think there was ever I time where this was a real question. They weren’t filling out their pledge card and wanting to know if it was this amount or that. More often it was just a joke, but sometimes it was a way of muddying the waters, of charting loopholes.

The Pharisees in our scripture aren’t making a joke, but they may well be grinning. Their question is not a real one. They already know what the law says. They’re merely hoping Jesus’ answer will make some folks angry. There were disagreements in Jesus’ day, not about whether divorce was legal, but about valid reasons for it. The Pharisees hope Jesus will come down on one side and upset those on the other.

Sermon video: Getting Our Mojo Back

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.