Sermon: Transfroming, Holy Space

Isaiah 1:12-17; Romans 12:1-2

Transforming, Holy Space

James Sledge                                                                                       May 12, 2019

The other day I attended the annual spring luncheon of the Falls Church Community Service Council at Knox Presbyterian. Some of you bring food for their food pantry, and our congregation has long supported this and other programs at FCS.

This year’s lunch celebrated their 50^th anniversary. A representative from Church World Services spoke briefly and reminded us of all that was happening in 1969, the first moon landing, Woodstock, all the tumult and turmoil. “It was a time when we thought we could change the world,” he said. But then he added, “Not many of the people I work with feel that way these days. Many of them are depressed.” He went on to make a more hopeful point, but I was still thinking about that journey from expecting to change the world to despair.

Perhaps it was simply a matter of hopes meeting reality. That speaker mentioned that the number of refugees in the world is now larger than at any time since the end of World War II, a rather sobering statistic. But along with being sobered up by cold, hard facts, I wonder about the source of that confidence back in 1969.

I was only twelve years old at the time, but I suspect that expectations of changing the world were partly rooted in a belief in progress and the idea that we humans could do anything we put our minds to. America had helped win World War II, become the dominant super power, and put a man on the moon. On top of that, the 60s saw huge gains by the Civil Rights movement, and a burgeoning anti-war movement, Between unparalleled scientific advances and great social change, it was easy to see endless possibilities.

I wonder if Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King shared the same sort of optimism. They had a different sense of the difficulties and costs involved. My impression is that Dr. King’s optimism was not rooted in a belief in progress or endless human capabilities. It was rooted in faith, in a certainty that God’s will would ultimately prevail.

Perhaps that is why Civil Rights rallies often looked a little like African American worship. Such worship wasn’t so much about personal piety or salvation but about salvation history, about the power of God at work to free the oppressed and set right injustice.

The worship I sat through growing up in the 60s and 70s was very different. Our white, middle class worship fit easily into American civil religion that often saw the Civil Rights movement and, to a greater degree, the anti-war movement as threats. Even in churches that were sympathetic to these movements, faith and worship often served as a respite from the tumult, largely disconnected from any hope or desire to change the world.

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Sermon: Won't You Be a Neighbor

Luke 10:25-37

Won’t You Be a Neighbor

James Sledge                                                                                                   May 5, 2019

Perhaps you are familiar with the old, proverbial saying, “Charity begins at home.” Many assume it is from the Bible, but it’s not. Its first written appearance is in 1600s England, when the word “charity” was used somewhat differently than today.

In the old King James Bible, the Apostle Paul’s famous words on love instead speak of charity. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity. And so the old proverb’s understanding of charity would  include “Christ-like love.”

Originally, the proverb spoke of how people learned to be loving and caring by witnessing such behavior at home. You could say much the same of other behaviors. A strong work ethic begins at home. Good citizenship begins at home. Love of learning begins at home, etc.

However, I typically hear the proverb used quite differently. “Why should our government send financial aid overseas when there are needy people here? Charity begins at home.” Here the proverb is taken to set limits on charity. Only after those close by are cared for should it be extended to others.

I take it that the lawyer who questions Jesus in our gospel reading would have used the proverb in this latter fashion. He’s concerned with rules and limits. “What must I do…?”  He’s is an expert in the Law of Moses, so he knows the answer, easily providing appropriate scriptures. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus is happy to confirm that this is indeed the correct answer, adding, “Do this, and you will live.” But the lawyer is a “charity begins and ends at home” sort, and so he wants Jesus to clarify the boundaries, the limits. “And who is my neighbor?”

If I have to love my neighbor, I want to know where the neighborhood ends. Is it people who live on my street? Is it my religious group or church? Is it people of my race? Is it citizens of my country? Where can I stop, Jesus?

Jesus doesn’t really answer the question, but he does tell a famous story. It’s a somewhat troubling parable about what happens to a man who’s been robbed and left for dead, although some of its more troubling aspects get lost in translation and its familiarity.

Easter sermon video: An Idle Tale

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Easter sermon: An Idle Tale

Luke 24:1-12

An Idle Tale

James Sledge                    Resurrection of the Lord                         April 21, 2019

In recent weeks I’ve seen several versions of an Easter Facebook joke that goes something like this. “In an effort to be more biblical, only women will be attending the Easter sunrise service.”

Over the years, many have remarked that the story of women being the first witnesses to the empty tomb must be historical. No one would invent this sort of Easter story. People still dismiss what women have to say in our day. Imagine what it was like in a day when women were not even citizens, when they couldn’t be witnesses at a trial, when they were considered property that belonged to a man, either their father or husband.

And sure enough, in Luke’s version of that first Easter morning, no one believes the women. You’ve heard the story before. Some of Jesus’ female disciples, and apparently none of the men, had followed when Jesus’s body was taken to the tomb. Then they had gone back, prepared spices, and rested on the Sabbath as the commandment required.

Early Sunday morning, they took the spices to the tomb, hoping to give Jesus the tender care they had not had time for on Friday evening. But when they arrive, they find the tomb open and the body missing. As they are wondering what to do, two men in dazzling clothes, later described as angels, say to them. “He is not here, but has risen,” and remind the women how Jesus had told them that he would be crucified and rise on the third day.

And so Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women hurry back to tell the eleven and the others what they had found. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

I probably wouldn’t have believed them either, even if this had happened in 2019 where women aren’t routinely dismissed… unless they are contradicting a man. I know what’s possible and what isn’t. I know that dead people stay dead. Even if I believe that a soul moves on somehow, I know that the body stays in the grave. “He is not here, but has risen.” What a cockamamie idea. Who would believe such a thing?

But Peter got up and ran to the tomb. He was among those who didn’t believe the women’s report, and yet he rushes to the tomb. Why rush to investigate an idle tale? 

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Sermon video: Accidental Parade Goers

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Accidental Parade Goers

Luke 19:28-40; 22:14-23

Accidental Parade Goers

James Sledge                           Palm/Passion                           April 14, 2019

My memory sometimes misleads me, but I recall the Palm Sundays of my childhood being bigger deals they are nowadays. In my childhood church, the palms didn’t have to share billing with the passion. Every year it was a parade from beginning to end. A lot more fun that way, but with a significant downside. The church of my childhood memory rushed from Palm Sunday parade to Easter parade, from celebration to celebration, and it was easy to miss the betrayal, trial, and execution that lay in between.

In one of his letters, the Apostle Paul writes, But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power and the wisdom of God. For Paul, and for the gospel writers, the cross is absolutely central, but it is more fun to go from one parade to the next.

Each of the gospel writers tell the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem slightly differently. Perhaps you noticed that there were no palms at all in Luke’s version. This isn’t because the writers have heard different versions of events but because they are more like preachers than reporters or historians. The gospel writers have slightly different points and emphases for their congregations to hear and so they tell the story differently.

Luke, like all the gospel writers, connects Jesus’ entry to Psalm 118 and to the prophet Zechariah. The prophet speaks of a coming, victorious king who rides in on a colt, and the psalm is a coronation psalm, one that would have been used in Israel’s past when a king ascended to the throne.

In Luke’s telling, an interesting distinction gets made between the parade watchers and Jesus’ actual followers. Luke doesn’t report a crowd, but he does say that people kept spreading their cloaks on the road, which certainly befits a royal procession. But it is the disciples, and not the crowd or people, who begin to shout joyfully from Psalm 118. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Some of the Pharisees object to this explicit naming of Jesus as Israel’s messianic king, but Jesus insists that his disciples are correct. Apparently these Pharisees weren’t overly bothered by cloaks spread on the road. They don’t mind celebrating Jesus as a great teacher or healer, but to declare him God’s Messiah, the long awaited king, is too much.

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Sermon: Being More Like God

Micah 6:6-8

Being More Like God

James Sledge                                                                                       April 7, 2019

In a day when many church congregations are struggling, strategic planning and church revisioning have become quite common. Seemingly endless books, conferences, consultants, and other resources are available for such work, but sometimes this work is made difficult by a lack of fundamental clarity about why church exists in the first place.

Typically the problem is one of assumption. Members and leaders assume that they know why church exists, but if you ask them to spell it out, you sometimes get answers such as, “You know, to be church.” If you press for specifics, most people can come up with some sort of answers, usually a list of prominent things happening in their church such as worship, Sunday School, and a few other items. But it is hard to do much in the way of strategic planning if you define why church exists by the things it currently does.

Fortunately, we Presbyterians have denominational statements that spell out the fundamental reasons for congregations to exist. One is something called “The Great Ends of the Church.” This century old statement lays out six primary ends or purposes. They are:

the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;

the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;

the maintenance of divine worship;

the preservation of the truth;

the promotion of social righteousness; and

the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.[1]

Our scripture for this morning, as well as our Renew focus for today, has me thinking especially about those last two: promoting a rightly ordered society and showing the world what God’s kingdom looks like.

Sermon video: Idyllic Community

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Idyllic Community

Acts 2:37-47

Idyllic Community

James Sledge                                                                                       March 31, 2019

The congregation in our scripture reading is the very first one. It’s brand new, and there is no church building, no Sunday School, no youth group. There is no paid staff or formal governing structure. There is no budget, committees, task forces, or ministry teams. But despite having almost none of the things we associate with church, this congregation has something absolutely remarkable and astounding, the goodwill of all the people.

Think about that. What group or institution in our world has the goodwill of all the people, the entire population? Traditionally things such as education and medicine were held in high esteem, but not as much these days. When I was a kid, I got the impression that everyone trusted Walter Cronkite delivering the CBS News each evening, but I’m pretty sure the news media doesn’t have the goodwill of all the people these days.

What about religion? If you took a clipboard and walked the sidewalks of DC, asking people their opinion of religion in general, and the church in particular, what sort of response might you get? What if you went door to door here in Falls Church and asked about FCPC? How likely would you be to discover the goodwill of all the people?

Sermon video: Taking Our Place in the Story

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

For much of this spring, sermons at FCPC will not be from the lectionary passages. Rather the passages will be chosen to help interpret the various facets of our new missional mandate: "Gathering those who fear they are not enough, so that we can experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God's beloved." This sermon is the first of these and accompanies a presentation on "How We Got Here."

Sermon: Taking Our Place in the Story

Hebrews 11:39-12:2

Taking Our Place in the Story

James Sledge                                                                                       March 17, 2019

Last April, Michael Gerson, Washington Post columnist and former aide and speech writer for George W. Bush, wrote an article in The Atlantic magazine entitled, “The Last Temptation: How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory.”[1]  The article is tinged with sadness at the moral demise of evangelicalism, something Gerson deeply values as one raised in an evangelical home and educated at the evangelical Wheaton College. Here are some excerpts.

Trump supporters tend to dismiss moral scruples about his behavior as squeamishness over the president’s “style.” But the problem is the distinctly non-Christian substance of his values. Trump’s unapologetic materialism—his equation of financial and social success with human achievement and worth—is a negation of Christian teaching. His tribalism and hatred for “the other” stand in direct opposition to Jesus’s radical ethic of neighbor love…

…The moral convictions of many evangelical leaders have become a function of their partisan identification. This is not mere gullibility; it is utter corruption. Blinded by political tribalism and hatred for their political opponents, these leaders can’t see how they are undermining the causes to which they once dedicated their lives. Little remains of a distinctly Christian public witness.

Fear and anxiety drive the “utter corruption” and loss of Christian witness Gerson writes about. But fear and anxiety are hardly restricted to evangelicals. There’s a lot of fear, anxiety, and pessimism in the progressive church these days. Conservatives and progressives have different fears and anxieties, but we can be equally reactive to our particular favorites. Fear, anxiety, and pessimism tend to corrupt our witness. If we could only lower the level. Perhaps something like the pep talk in the letter to the Hebrews could help.

Hebrews isn’t a letter like those Paul wrote to his congregations. It’s more of a sermon. Its preacher is worried about his congregation’s fear and pessimism. They had hoped for a quick arrival of God’s new day, a setting right of a world where small numbers of powerful and wealthy controlled things and enjoyed the good life while most people struggled to get by. But that hadn’t happened. Throw in the popular suspicion of Christians in the Roman world, add an occasional persecution, and you have a prescription for fatigue, anxiety, and pessimism.

And so the preacher tries to rouse them. Like the coach of a struggling team, he reminds them of all the greats that went before them and how they had triumphed under the most difficult and trying circumstances. But then the pep talk takes a rather bizarre turn. None of those past greats, says the preacher, received what had been promised them.

Here the preacher moves from pep talk to divine mystery. Greats of the past, the heroes of the faith, cannot make it, cannot be perfected or made complete, without us.

Sermon video: Are You Listening?

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.