Sermon: Palms, Parades... and Lament?

Matthew 26:14-21, 36-46, 27:11-23, 35-46

Palms, Parades… and Lament?

James Sledge                                                                                       April 5, 2020

I’m sure that I’ve spoken before about my experiences of Easter as a child. I say Easter because for me as a young boy, Palm Sunday was simply the pregame show for Easter, a big celebration that prefigured the bigger celebration to come. My brothers and I I already had our new Easter sport coats, my sister her new Easter dress, and we had already dug out our Easter baskets. 

On Palm Sunday, we got to march around the sanctuary waving palms. On Palm Sunday, we had a celebratory parade, a grand, rah-rah moment. On Palm Sunday we left the church with shouts of “Hosanna!” echoing in our ears; just a week to the even grander celebration.

As a child, I never heard the term Passion Sunday. This was Palm Sunday. Period. No thoughts of betrayal and a cross, of suffering and death. No thoughts of despair and darkness.

I’m not sure when I first encountered Palm/Passion Sunday. It’s possible it wasn’t until I attended seminary. Oh I knew about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the cross. But they didn’t intrude much into Sunday worship. I could go from one parade to another, not bothering with the cross and the darkness of Good Friday.

Passion Sunday intruded into the rhythms of Holy Week and Easter I learned as a child. It was something of a downer. Who wants to mourn when you could just celebrate? But can we really go straight from “Hosanna!” to “He is risen!” without the cross? 

Sermon video: Resurrection Life

During this time of COVID-19, we are not posting audios of worship, but you can find sermon videos and the church website and videos of the worship services on the church Facebook page.

Sermon: Resurrection Life

Resurrection Life

John 11:1-45

James Sledge                                                                                       March 29,2020

Often at funerals, I open with a quote from our reading today. “I am the resurrection and the life, (says the Lord). Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” The Presbyterian Book of Common Worship calls a funeral “A Service of Witness to the Resurrection,” so that seems fitting.

I also have vivid memories of using part of our gospel reading at the funeral service of my father-in-law, Roy. I had just started seminary, taking an intensive summer course in Greek before my first semester began. I had no experience or training to do a funeral, but the pastor at his church was new, and my mother-in-law wanted someone who knew Roy to speak.

I talked about the tenderness and love of Jesus who was moved when he saw Mary weeping, who despite knowing that he would shortly raise Lazarus from the dead, nonetheless wept for him. But while I was well into my summer Greek course, I still had a lot to learn about Greek and about using it to study scripture. And so I didn’t realize that I misunderstood Jesus’ emotions.

Of course there’s such a long history of reading these verses as examples of Jesus’ compassion and humanity, that even Bible translators are wary of rendering them in a straightforward manner. Our NRSV Bible says, When Jesus saw (Mary) weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. But a more direct reading of the Greek would be something like, he was deeply angry and agitated.

Sermon video: Here Is an Astonishing Thing

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Here Is an Astonishing Thing

John 9:1-41

Here Is an Astonishing Thing

James Sledge                                                                                                   March 22.2020

I want to tell you a story. It isn’t really a “true” story, at least not in the sense modern people tend to use the word. The story doesn’t report actual events, but what the story talks about has happened and does happen. In our own denomination, it happened only a decade ago. In other denominations, the “truth” of this story is still on display.

As graduation neared, a young seminary student searched for a position as solo pastor of a small church. But being female and single, many churches seemed hesitant to consider her. She preached well, but didn’t fit the image that many seemed to have for a pastor.

Finally, she accepted the call of a tiny, struggling – most would say dying – congregation in a small Alabama town. Thirty people on Sunday was a big crowd, and finances were always a problem. In three years without a pastor, they had saved up some money, but even paying her the minimum salary the denomination allowed, they worried about being able to afford her for more than a few years.

It wasn’t exactly what she had dreamed of when she entered seminary, but it was where God had led her, and she threw herself, heart and soul, into the work. She embraced and loved her congregation, people very different in culture and background from herself.  Despite their small numbers and paltry finances, she acted like they and their church mattered. She not only loved and comforted them, she boldly proclaimed God’s word and challenged them about where and how they would minister to their community.

Sermon video: Getting Reborn

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Discovering Who We Are

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Getting Reborn

John 3:1-17

Getting Reborn

James Sledge                                                                                                   March 8, 2020

I have a love-hate relationship with today’s gospel reading. It is a beautiful passage, filled with all manner of imagery and symbolism and nuance. But it also has been much abused and so has a fair amount of baggage. For too many these words are read as a litmus test. “Have you had a born again conversion experience?” If not, you’re on the outside looking in.

This passage is the rainbow wigged guy who used to go to sporting events and hold up his John 3:16 sign. But that verse also gets reduced to formula. “Believe in Jesus and you are saved.” Yet Nicodemus clearly believes in Jesus, believes he is from God, but he leaves the scene more befuddled than when he first arrived.

Nick is an interesting fellow. He comes in for his share of bad press, this guy who can’t understand what Jesus is talking about. But Nick may be a lot like many of us. He is a respected, educated member of his community, a leader in his church. He’s a bright, rational fellow who is impressed by Jesus. Clearly Jesus is someone special, and the wonderful things he does couldn’t happen if God was not with him, could they?

Churches, especially Mainline churches, are filled with people like Nick, people who are drawn to Jesus but who also struggle to embrace him completely. We’ll listen to him up to a point, but we’re often not quite sure what he’s saying, and so not quite ready to go all in.

Nick comes to see Jesus at night. That’s more than the time of day. Light and dark are symbolic categories in John’s gospel, and Nick is not ready to step into the light. Like some of us, he is drawn to Jesus but prefers to remain on the periphery, in the shadows.

I’m not entirely sure why Nick comes to see Jesus. If he has some question to ask he never gets the chance. He barely gets the chance to make his introduction. “Hi, Jesus. Great to meet you. Really impressed with what you’re doing. No doubt, God is with you.” But before he can say more, Jesus speaks. He says that no one can see the kingdom of God, can see God’s new day, without being born anothen. (a[nwqen)

Sermon: Discovering Who We Are

Matthew 4:1-11

Discovering Who We Are

James Sledge                                                                                       March 1, 2020

Jesus began his ministry in a world that was anxiously awaiting a Messiah. For a variety of reasons, expectations of a savior were high. One group, the Essenes, had withdrawn from society and set up an alternative community in the wilderness so they would be ready. From some of their writings, popularly called The Dead Sea Scrolls, we know that they expected a Messiah, or perhaps a pair of Messiahs, who looked nothing like Jesus.

In fact, ever since Israel had returned from exile in Babylon some 500 years earlier, and the hoped for glorious revival of the kingdom of David had failed to materialize, people had been looking for the One who would change all that.

People carefully examined Scripture, finding those passages that seemed to offer clues about where the Messiah would come from, how he would act, and what he would do. But there was no single image that everyone agreed on. Even today, Christian have many different images of Jesus. We agree that Jesus was Messiah, and yet we still have a warrior Jesus, a hippy Jesus, a blonde-haired blue-eyed Jesus, a meek and mild Jesus, a wise sage Jesus, a personal Savior Jesus, and so on and so on.

So if we can’t agree on the exact nature of Jesus, imagine how difficult it was for people who only had verses from the Old Testament. How did they know which verses were about the hoped for Messiah? How were they supposed to reconcile verses that seemed to suggest different sorts of Messiahs? 

Messiah simply means “anointed one.” That title, along with “Son of God,” had long be used to speak of Israel’s kings. So it’s hardly surprising that many expected the Messiah would revive the days of King David. He would throw out the hated Romans and their puppet, Herod. He would restore Israel to greatness.

Jesus knew well the varied images and expectations of a Messiah. And if Jesus is genuinely human, as Christians insist he is, then he must have wrestled with just what it meant to be the Messiah. He must have prayed and struggled to discern just what sort of Anointed One God wanted him to be.

Sermon video: Listen to Him!

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website

Sermon video: Catching the Dream

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Semon: Listen to Him!

Matthew 17:1-9

Listen to Him!

James Sledge                                                                                       February 23, 2020

Lately I’ve been thinking about quitting Facebook. Too much nastiness there, too many conspiracy theories, too much political manipulation. And maybe Mark Zuckerberg might address some of the damage Facebook does to our society if enough people quit using it.

But then some colleague or notable person that I follow posts something wonderful that I would never have seen otherwise. That happened the other day when Frederick Buechner posted something on his page. I may yet ditch Facebook, but I’m glad I saw Buechner’s post.

For those who don’t know of him, Buechner is a Presbyterian pastor who’s probably better known for his novels, essays, and short stories. The other day he posted something from an old book of his. It’s a bit longer than the typical sermon quote, but I hope you’ll indulge me.

PREPOSITIONS CAN BE VERY ELEGANT. A man is "in" architecture or a woman is "in" teaching, we say, meaning that is what they do weekdays and how they make enough money to enjoy themselves the rest of the time. But if we say they are "into" these things, that is another story. "Into" means something more like total immersion. They live and breathe what they do. They take it home with them nights. They can't get enough of it. To be "into" books means that just the sight of a signed first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland sets your heart pounding. To be "in" books means selling them at B. Dalton's.

Along similar lines, New Testament Greek speaks of believing "into" rather than believing "in." In English we can perhaps convey the distinction best by using either "in" or no preposition at all.

Believing in God is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on your life than believing in Freud's method of interpreting dreams or the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Romeo and Juliet.

Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. It doesn't leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.

We believe in God when for one reason or another we choose to do so. We believe God when somehow we run into God in a way that by and large leaves us no choice to do otherwise.

When Jesus says that whoever believes "into" him shall never die, he does not mean that to be willing to sign your name to the Nicene Creed guarantees eternal life. Eternal life is not the result of believing in. It is the experience of believing.[1]