Sunday, February 17, 2019
Sermon: Upside Down Blessings
Luke 6:17-26
Upside Down Blessings
James Sledge February
17, 2019
Many
years ago, prior to becoming a pastor, I was teaching an adult Sunday School
class. We were studying Luke, and lesson was on the “Sermon on the Plain,” a
portion of which we just heard. I read the four blessings or beatitudes and the
corresponding woes. I then asked the class what they thought about these words
that spoke of God’s favor on the poor but woe on the wealthy.
One
lady quickly spoke up to correct me. Jesus had said no such thing, she insisted.
He was talking about the poor in spirit, not actual poverty. When I suggested
that she might be thinking of Matthew’s gospel, that Luke spoke of rich and
poor, of well-off and those without enough to eat, she only became more
adamant. Jesus couldn’t possibly have meant that.
I
suspect that when most people think of the Beatitudes, they think of those
found in Matthew. Matthew’s list is a good bit longer than Luke’s, and it has
no corresponding woes. And it also does say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”
Matthew’s
beatitudes are more popular, and the long list of blessings sometimes prompts
people to read them as instructions on how to get blessed. I think that misreads
Matthew’s gospel, but you certainly can manage that with many of his beatitudes.
But Luke is an entirely different matter, and unless we’re going to tell people
to become poor, hungry, and mournful in order to gain God’s favor, we’ll have
to find some other way to understand them.
When
Luke tells of these beatitudes and woes, he uses Old Testament language of
blessing and curse. The contrast is between God’s favor and God’s active
disfavor. “Blessed” means God wants things to go well for you. “Woe” means God
wishes bad things upon “you who are rich… who are full now…who are
laughing now… when all speak well of you…”
It’s
more than a little unnerving. If you are poor, hungry, mourning or hated, then
God is for you. But if you’re well off, have a full pantry, are happy and
laughing, and everyone thinks you are wonderful, God is against you. That can’t
be right, can it? No wonder that woman in my Bible study class said what she
did.
These
blessings and woes are completely upside down and backwards from what the world
expects. The world says, “God helps those who help themselves.” We thank God
for our many blessings, often referring to possessions and good fortune that
would seem to put us squarely in the “But woe to you…” camp. And I
think that may be exactly the point Jesus is making. He says that God’s ways
are completely upside down and backwards to ours.
Throughout
history, almost every culture has used religion to buttress the status quo, its
economic system, and so on. It was not so long ago in this country that most
Christian denominations issued statements saying racially based slavery was
ordained by God. Many of these denominations later split in two when Christians
in the north began to question such statements and seek to overturn them.
Monday, February 11, 2019
Sermon: Call Stories
Luke 5:1-11 (Isaiah 6:1-8)
Call Stories
James Sledge February
10, 2019
On
my Facebook feed I’ve seen some of my colleagues commenting on their churches’
annual meetings. It’s that time of year in the Presbyterian Church. Some
churches make a big deal out of it and some simply vote on the pastor’s terms
of call. In many congregations, including this one, the annual meeting includes
electing a new class of elders and, if the church has deacons, deacons as well.
Electing
people as elders and deacons has changed a lot over the years. At one time, becoming
an elder on the Session was a little like getting put on the Supreme Court. You
were likely to stay there until you retired from it or died. This had some good
points. It made elder a very esteemed ministry, and it meant that churches were
very selective in seeking out people who were called to such ministry.
There
was a down side, of course. Sessions sometimes got pretty old and crusty. Some
became heavily invested in making sure nothing ever changed. At some point the
negatives outweighed the positives, and the denomination instituted the term
limits that we have now where no one can serve more than six years without
taking at least a year off.
And
so we’re much less likely to have old and crusty Sessions. In many
congregations, it is unheard of for anyone to serve more than a single, three
year term, and incoming classes of elders and deacons are routinely filled with
people who’ve never been one before. This sometimes makes it difficult to find
enough people year after year to fill all the slots. Talk to anyone who’s ever
served on a nominating committee, and you’ll likely hear about all the times
people said “No” when asked if they would serve.
I
served on a nominating committee at the church where I was a member before
going to seminary, and the pastor is always a member of the nominating
committee, so I’ve had a lot of experience with the process. In my previous
church we even went to a system where the nominating committee came up names
but the associate pastor and I made the actual calls to ask people if they
would serve. It was an idea meant to take away what many saw as the most
difficult part of being on a nominating committee and make it easier to recruit
people for that.
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Sermon: People of Love
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
People of Love
James Sledge February
3, 2019
Way
back in the spring of 1981, not long after Shawn and I had gotten engaged, we
were visiting at her parents for the weekend. They lived in Gaffney, SC, only
an hour from Charlotte, so we went down there often. And as we typically did on
such visits, we attended worship at First Baptist Church in Gaffney, the church
where Shawn had grown up.
We
had begun thinking about wedding particulars, where the reception would be, who
the bridesmaids and groomsmen were, and the elements of the service itself.
Like a lot of people, we had agreed we wanted the words from today’s scripture
reading used in the wedding, and as we sat in the pews, waiting for worship to
begin on that Sunday morning, I opened up a pew Bible and began to search for
the passage.
I
knew the Bible somewhat, and I was reasonably sure that the passage was in one
of Paul’s letters. I thought it was in 1 Corinthians, but after flipping
repeatedly through its pages, I couldn’t locate it. I may have expanded my search
to other books of the Bible – I don’t really remember – but obviously I didn’t find it there either.
Only
later did I discover why I couldn’t find the passage, even though I had been
looking in the right place. In 1981, First Baptist Church of Gaffney still had
King James Bibles in their pews, and in the King James translation, 1
Corinthians 13 reads differently. Though I speak with the tongues of men and
angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling
cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove
mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing… And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these
three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Not
exactly the sort of thing to sound all romantic at a wedding ceremony. We still
used the Corinthians passage at our wedding, but not from the King James. In my
twenty some years as a pastor, I’ve probably used this 1 Corinthians passage
more than any other at weddings I’ve done. Always, of course, with a translation
that says “love,” although I typically point out that this isn’t about romantic
love.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Sermon: Discerning the Body
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Discerning the Body
James Sledge January
27, 2019
I
recently read about a study on why young
people leave church. The study surveyed a couple thousand people, ages 23 to 30,
who had attended Protestant churches regularly while in high school. Two thirds
of these had dropped out, and they were asked to say why, checking as many
items from a list of 55 that applied to them. Almost all checked one or more
boxes in a category labeled “life changes.” This included things such as going
away to college or work responsibilities that made attendance difficult.
Most
of those surveyed said their departure from church was more accidental than
planned. Only a tiny fraction cited a loss of belief. Most were not averse to a
possible return.
This
study got me wondering about the nature of these twenty-somethings connection
to the church. When they had attended, what was the connection? No doubt many
originally went because of parents, but some likely developed an attachment of
their own. Perhaps there were church programs they enjoyed, music, youth
mission trips, a service opportunity that became meaningful. But their
situation changed, and they moved on. They might come back some day. They might
not.
What about you? What is the nature of
your connection to the church? What binds you to the body of Christ? What sort
of thing could break that bond?
_____________________________________________________________________
The
Christians in Corinth are different from us. They didn’t grow up with Christian
faith, or Jewish faith for that matter. They were recent converts with a lot of
excitement about their new-found faith. It wasn’t routine to them. They didn’t
come out of habit or expectation. Still, Paul is concerned about their
connection to the body of Christ, about what binds them to the church.
Corinth
was nowhere near the individualistic, consumer culture that we live in, but it
was more so than the one Jesus had lived in or that the church had emerged in.
Perhaps that is why the Corinthians failed to grasp the extremely communal
sense of Christian faith.
Paul
has already addressed a couple of problems related to this, getting particularly
riled up about the Lord’s Supper. The Corinthians worship in the evening in
someone’s home, likely a wealthy member’s. The Lord’s Supper was part of a
full, fellowship meal, but the wealthier members, who were able to get there
earlier, began the meal before the poorer members could finish work and arrive.
At times they had eaten all the food and drunk all the wine before the poorer
members ever got there. Paul chastises them and says that those who
eat and drink without discerning the body eat and drink judgment against
themselves.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Sermon: Spiritual Vitality Exam
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Spiritual Vitality Exam
James Sledge January
20, 2019
Unless
you’re really new around here, you’ve probably heard something about the Renew process that we’ve been doing. There
have been a lot of steps along the way, but what really got the ball rolling
was the results of the Congregational Assessment Tool or CAT.
Two
years ago, representatives from our presbytery walked the Session through the
CAT report drawn from the survey that many of you took. The report was thirty
pages long, filled with all sorts of information and a slew of charts and
graphs. One page was a “Performance Dashboard.” It showed eight gauges that
each went from zero to one hundred. They had labels such as “Governance,
Conflict Management, Engagement in Education,” and so on.
Not
surprisingly, we scored higher in some areas than others, and much our
conversation that day focused on the lower scores. One low score was
“Hospitality,” and we talked about things we might do to address our weaknesses
in this area.
But
our lowest score sparked a different reaction. The needle on the “Spiritual
Vitality” gauge read two, but rather than discussing ways we might deal with this
area of weakness, we instead struggled to understand how this could be. Surely the
score was somehow wrong.
I should point out that these scores are
not absolute. They are percentile rankings that compare us to other
congregations who have taken the CAT survey. In addition, the CAT defines
spiritual vitality in a particular way, and when I looked at the raw data, it
didn’t seem all that bad. Significant majorities tended to agree, agreed, or
strongly agreed that their spiritual experiences impacted how they viewed life,
that they experienced the presence of God in their lives, and they tried to
connect their faith to other aspect of their lives. A minority thought that
while their faith was important other matters were more pressing. Clearly many
individuals here are spiritually vital and vibrant, yet as a community, such
folks make up a smaller percentage than is the case in most other
congregations.
______________________________________________________________
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Sermon: One of Them
Luke 3:15-22
One of Them
James Sledge January
13, 2019 – Baptism of the Lord
In one of her sermons, Barbara
Brown Taylor relates an episode from the novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. Much of the book takes place at Saint
Elizabeth’s Home for Unwed Mothers, located in Habit, Kentucky. The cook who
lives on site has a young daughter named Cecilia. Cecilia has always been doted
on and mothered by the young women who come there to give up a children for
adoption.
One day when
Cecilia is fifteen, she meets Lorraine, a new girl who has come to stay there.
Lorraine is terribly nervous and anxious as she waits to be interviewed by
Mother Corrine, the nun who runs the place. Cecilia tries to help Lorraine by
giving her some advice.
“The guy who got
you pregnant,” she tells Lorraine. “Don’t say he’s dead. Everybody does that.
It makes Mother Corinne crazy.”
Lorraine sits on
her hands and is quiet a moment. “I was going to say that,” she says.
“See?”
“So what do I
tell her?”
“I don’t know,”
Cecilia says. “Tell her the truth. Or tell her you don’t remember.”
“What did you tell her? Lorraine asks. Cecilia
is speechless. “I sat there, absolutely frozen,” she later wrote. “I felt like
I had just been mistaken for some escaped mass murderer. I felt like I was
going to be sick, but that would have only proved her assumption. No one had
ever, ever mistaken me for one of them, not even as a joke. The lobby felt
small and airless. I thought I was going to pass out.”[1]
Cecilia had always been around
these young women. She liked them and she tried to help them, but she was
horrified to be mistaken for one of them,
one of these people who had made such a mess of their lives that families sent
them away until that mess could be adopted and they could return home.
Jesus seems not to share Cecilia’s
worries. From what little Luke tells us about Jesus’ baptism, I get the
impression that Jesus must have simply gotten in line with all the other folks.
I take it that Luke says so little about Jesus’ baptism because he, along with
the other gospel writers, is a bit embarrassed by it. John’s baptism is, after
all, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and why would Jesus
need such a thing? The gospel writers all seem to have a little Cecilia in
them, and they would prefer that Jesus not be mistaken for one of them, for one of those sinners. But
Jesus obviously doesn’t mind being identified with them, with sinners, with us.
Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism
features a kind of ordination, perhaps more a coronation. The Holy Spirit comes
over Jesus, and God speaks. “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am
well pleased.” The language is
reminiscent of a psalm used when Israel’s kings were crowned and declared God’s
son. But this coronation happens in the context of baptism and prayer. Jesus
first aligns himself with sinful, broken humans, declaring himself one of them.
And then, as he draws near to God in prayer, his identity and vocation are
announced.
I once saw a quote about church
that said, “For a place that claims to be a hospital for sinners, the people
there sure go to a lot of trouble not to be mistaken for one.” Seems we all
have a little Cecilia in us. We don’t mind helping sinners, but we don’t like
to think of ourselves as one of them.
And yet, in our own baptisms, we
have aligned ourselves with the brokenness, the sinfulness of all humanity. Our
baptisms insist that we, like everyone else, need saving. We are all one of them, people who live with the residue
of the bad choices we have made, the hurt we have caused, and the pain of
others we have ignored.
I know that all too often I expend
a great deal of energy trying to maintain a façade that says, I’m not one of them. I want to be seen and to see
myself as highly competent, not needing other’s help. The difficulties I have
with others are more their fault than mine, and my failures are mostly because
of things beyond my control. Of course there’s always the nagging worry that I
will be found out, that the façade will crumble, and people will realize that I
am a fraud.
Still I cling to this façade, even
though life is actually much easier when I can let it go. It is so much easier
to be a partner with others, to let go of grudges and hurts, to truly be
myself, when I can let go of the fiction that I’m not one of them.
__________________________________________________________________________________
When we do an infant baptism here,
I always ask the parents the name of their child. I tell them ahead of time that
they aren’t supposed to say their last name, just the given names. That’s
because in baptism we all share a common last name, Christian, brothers and
sisters of Jesus, members of the household of God.
We don’t become part of that
household by separating ourselves from them
or by imagining ourselves better. We become part of Christ’s body because we’re
joined to the Jesus who stands with us, whoever we are, no matter how broken,
no matter how badly we fail to measure up to the façades we create for
ourselves, or the façades others create for us.
On those occasions when I can
claim my place as one of them, when I
can let go of the pretensions and the façades, I find that I am much closer to
God. I suppose this should be obvious. Jesus has already shown me the way. It
is precisely when he stands with humanity that he hears God speak his identity,
that he hears his call to the work God has for him, and he is able to begin his
ministry.
So too at the font, we are joined
in solidarity with all of broken humanity, and God speak to us. “You are my
daughter; you are my son. You are all one in Christ, one body, one community
called to continue his ministry in the world.”
In a moment, we will all have the
opportunity to remember that, to come to the waters once more and remember we
are one of them, those whom Jesus joined, those whom Jesus called to be his
body in the world.
[1]
Quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor, “The River of Life,” Home by Another Way (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999) pp. 32-33.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Sermon: Christmas Loyalties
Luke 2:41-52
Christmas Loyalties
James Sledge December
30, 2018
Some
of you may have heard this story before, but with today’s gospel reading, I
couldn’t resist telling it again. I once lost one of my daughters in a drug
store. She was four or five years old and standing right there next to me as I
looked for some item. But when I looked away from the store shelf to where she
had been seconds before, she was gone. I called her name and quickly looked on
the adjoining aisles. My panic growing, I traversed the store multiple times,
looking down every aisle over and over without finding her. As the minutes wore
on, I experienced a feeling of sheer terror.
In
desperation, I finally left the store and ran down the grocery store where we
had planned to go next. Hoping against hope I ran to the bakery section of the Harris
Teeter, where they handed out free cookies to children. And sure enough, there
she was, getting her free cookie. She had simply decided that she would go there
on her own. Never mind that it was not next to the drug store but at the other
end of a strip mall.
If
any of you have a had a similar experience, you know how frightening it feels.
My terror last but a few minutes, though it seemed much longer. I can scarcely
imaging how Mary and Joseph must have felt. According to Luke, they searched
for Jesus for three days, retracing their steps to Jerusalem and hunting all
over the city before finally finding him.
It
sometimes surprises people to learn that this is the only story in the Bible
about Jesus as a child. Jesus does come from a humble background, and so makes
some sense that little would be know about his early days. Still, stories about
great heroes typically include some from childhood, episodes that point to
their greatness to come.
I
don’t know that it’s taught in school any longer – we live in a more cynical
time – but when I was in elementary school I learned the story of George
Washington chopping down the cherry tree. Asked if he was the culprit he
proclaimed, “I cannot tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” In all
likelihood the event never happened, but that is beside the point. The story’s
main purpose is to illuminate something about the character of the man, to
demonstrate that his greatness was rooted in a deep, personal virtuousness.
Abraham
Lincoln has his own childhood stories that give clues as to the man he will
become. For that matter, there are stories about the young emperor Augustus,
who ruled when Jesus was born, that point to the great leader he would become.
Augustus achieved great learning at a very young age, and, in a story that was
likely known by the first readers of Luke’s gospel, Augustus gave the funeral
oration for his grandmother Julia Caesaris, sister of Julius Caesar, at the age
of twelve.[1]
Luke,
writing his gospel for Gentile Christians, seems eager to present Jesus as
greater than Augustus, filled with remarkable learning despite not having any
of the instruction and education that the emperor-to-be had received. Jesus
wasn’t simply groomed to be a great ruler. He was born for the role, part of
God’s unfolding saga of salvation.
But that is only part of our gospel this
morning. Luke could easily have told the story of a miraculously precocious
Jesus without the part about Jesus disappearing on his parents. Jesus could
have wowed them at the Temple while the family was there for Passover. This
part of the story is about something else altogether.
Monday, December 24, 2018
Christmas Eve Candlelight Reflection
Christmas
Eve Candle Lighting Reflection
I
read a Christmas editorial in the Washington Post that talked about churches
that are struggling with declining attendance and resources and yet still
typically find their sanctuaries filled to overflowing on Christmas Eve. The
column discussed the many reasons that people aren’t going to church like they
once did. It mentioned that the fastest growing religion in America isn’t
really a religion at all. It’s something called the “Nones,” those who are
religiously disaffiliated and check “none of the above” on surveys about religion.
Yet
despite this growing religious disaffiliation, despite the lack of cultural
encouragement to be part of some faith community, despite the rapidly growing
numbers in our society who view church as unnecessary, people show up in droves
on Christmas Eve.
Many
attribute this to nostalgia or the desire to maintain some family traditions
around Christmas, but the columnist suggested that it could be something else. While
the lure of church may be nonexistent for many, there still remains a longing,
a hunger for the transcendent, for something more than “a society defined
solely by self-interest and calculation, by the visible, the measurable and the
tangible.”[1]
I
can certainly see why Christmas would be especially alluring for those longing
for the transcendent. Christmas insists that the God whose speech called forth
the wonders of Creation is a God of life and light. Christmas speaks of a
light, a goodness that cannot be overcome by the darkness, the pain, the
selfishness, the hatred, the greed, the evil of the world. The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Christmas
also insists that the transcendent, the light, the creative force of God, is
not simply something far away out there. It moves toward us, seeking us. A
child is born. The Word became flesh and lived among us. Emmanuel, God with
us.
But
God’s move toward us demands a response. God’s move is an invitation for us to
move toward God. God has taken the first step in a divine dance we are invited
to join, a dance of goodness, love, and self-giving; a dance of generosity, caring,
and hope.
The
God who comes toward us, who comes as a child born for us, invites us to become
bearers of light and hope in a world too often filled with darkness and
hopelessness. And the empty cross of the risen Christ reminds us that the
deepest and most malevolent darkness cannot triumph over God’s love.
(Lower
candles and shield the light.)
And
so, in the midst of the world’s darkness, stand and hold your light high. Let it
shine. Carry the light with you as you go. Bear the light of Christ into the
world. Let it shine against all that is dark and frightening and hate-filled.
Go to be light bearers in a world that is longing for light.
[1]
E.J. Dionne, Jr. “Churchgoers, cut the
‘Chreasters’ some slack” The Washington
Post, December 23, 2018
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