Sermon: Red Socks: Dare We Be Christians?

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Red Socks - Dare We Be Christians?

James Sledge                                                                                       July 26, 2020

Have you ever done a load of white laundry, and something dark got mixed in? A single, red item somehow went unnoticed, and you open the washer to discover that everything has turned pink. It’s amazing the way one, unseen thing can give you a new wardrobe.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven, the coming rule of God, is a little like that. Jesus speaks of yeast and mustard seeds rather than red socks, but the meaning is much the same. Mustard plants weren’t typically grown as crops in Palestine, but the tiny seeds did find their way into the grain farmers sowed. The minuscule, dust-like seeds were easy to miss amidst the grain. Only later would the farmer realize that a fast growing mustard plant was transforming his field into something quite other than he had intended.

And the yeast in Jesus’ parable is not the packaged product we buy in stores for baking. This leaven is dough that has soured, begun to go bad. Bread makers know it as starter. It is added to a new mix of dough to make it rise in baking.

In the Bible, leaven is almost always a symbol of corruption. Leavened bread could never be used as an offering to God. At Passover, not only was leavened bread forbidden, but no trace of leaven was allowed in people’s homes. And Jesus himself speaks of the teachings of the Pharisees as leaven, something that corrupts and distorts the good gift of God’s Law.

But in the parables we heard this morning, Jesus speaks of God’s hoped-for new day as like a mustard seed that unexpectedly sprang up in the field, like leaven that has transformed the bread into something that is no longer fit to be offered to God, like a red sock that has turned white dress shirts pink.

Sermon video: New Life as Exiles

Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: New Life as Exiles

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

New Life as Exiles

James Sledge                                                                                                   July 19, 2020

Back in March when the stay-at-home order was first announced, I don’t think any of us could have imagined that we would be holding worship today in an empty sanctuary, live streaming it into people’s homes. And even now, in mid-July, we still don’t know when we might have anything resembling worship as it used to be.

COVID-19 has turned the church world upside down. No one knows exactly what church is going to look like in the coming years. No doubt, livestreaming is here to stay, even when we can have some sort of in person worship. But it also seems highly likely that many congregations will never recover. Unlike FCPC, many churches have no real financial reserves and operate on extremely tight budgets. Some who study religious institutions are predicting large scale church closings in the coming years.

But what about church in general? Will worshiping from home open church up to new people, or will it accelerate an already established trend of church decline? Will people start to treat church like Netflix, watching a little worship when they have time or the mood strikes them? Will church move further and further from the center of people’s lives and from the center of the culture, further diminishing the prominent place church once held?

Over twenty years ago, long before COVID-19, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann suggested the metaphor of exile as a good way to describe where the Church finds itself in America.^[1] He said that we had been deported from our comfortable homeland of the mid-20^th Century into a world that no longer works in ways we fully understand. The stores stay open and youth sports teams play games during our sacred worship times. Neither public schools nor the culture at large encourages church participation as they once did. The landscape of America has changed dramatically since the 1950s, and institutions like the Presbyterian Church, which had their heyday then, find themselves aliens in a strange land.

If exile was an appropriate metaphor at the close of the 20^th century, surely it is even more so today. The forces that led Dr. Brueggemann to speak of the Church in exile are still with us, perhaps even stronger. And now COVID-19 could push church even further to the edges of society and daily life, increasing the sense of exile.

In the Bible, when Israel is carried off into literal exile in Babylon, it created a crisis. As exiles in a strange land, nothing supported their religious life. The Temple was gone, the Ark of the Covenant lost, and no altar existed where offerings could be made. The Babylonian culture around them had different ways, different gods, different religious practices. It would be easy, even tempting, simply to adopt the ways of the prevailing culture.

Exiles are always in danger of disappearing, of being absorbed into the culture where they find themselves. Countless cultures have simply disappeared over the centuries as a result. To prevent this, exiles must cultivate a distinctiveness, a peculiarity. They must live in ways that set them apart, allowing them to maintain a distinct identity different from the surrounding culture. For the Hebrews in Babylon, Sabbath keeping and synagogue emerged in exile as crucial elements that marked them as different and distinct. But what about us?

Sermon video: The Hard Work of Unity

Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC webpage.

Sermon: The Hard Work of Unity

Philippians 2:1-8

The Hard Work of Unity

James Sledge                                                                                                   July 12, 2020

Recently I was discussing our sermon series on the Confession of Belhar with Diane. I was wondering whether we should have a fourth installment or stop at three. Two of the primary themes from Belhar, reconciliation and justice, would get covered fairly thoroughly in the first three sermons. That left only the theme of unity.

I suspect I grimaced a little at the thought of preaching about unity. I think I said something to Diane along the lines of, “I don’t know. I hate to do something trite.” The phrase, “Can’t we all just get along?” popped into my head. Unity often gets spoken of as something that should be simple if only we all just worked together, if we all just realized that we’re basically the same, if we all just loved one another. Unity isn’t all that hard, such words seem to say. We just have to do this. We just have to do that.

Diane first suggested of a sermon series on Belhar in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Because Belhar addressed apartheid in South Africa, it seemed particularly well suited to the most profound and persistent source of division in our country, that of race.

Despite the intransience of racism in America, we still want to believe we could be rid of it if only we just did this or just did that. Despite decade after decade where corporate boardrooms remain largely white, where “better” neighborhoods and “better” schools are largely white, where everything from wealth to education to job opportunities to pay to home ownership to medical care and more are skewed in favor of whites, we want to believe that there is just one more little thing we need to do, and it will go away.

Sermon video: Justice at the Center?

Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Justice at the Center?

Amos 5:18-27

Justice at the Center?

James Sledge                                                                                                   June 28, 2020

I recently read an article by a Black, Baptist minister entitled, “Why I’m Skeptical of New Christian Allies.”[1] His target seems to be more evangelical churches, but I don’t think progressive, mainline churches are completely spared. Pastor Lavarin is encouraged that so many Christians, including large numbers who’ve not previously been active in issues of race, are speaking out against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. But these feelings are tempered by worries that the change doesn’t go deep enough.

He writes, “Although numerous Christians have finally chosen to name racism, I am woefully skeptical of new allies who have rushed to protest without examining the ways in which their own theologies continue to nurture it. The failure to address theological racism will cause new allies to come to this moment believing that the fight for justice is merely theologically adjacent to their brand of evangelism as “the real work of ministry”. For some, this is still just a societal issue, and not a theological one.”

As I said earlier, this doesn’t seem to target us Presbyterians. We tend not to have evangelism high up on our list of “the real work of ministry,” but I’m not sure justice is much higher for us than evangelism. For many Presbyterians, the real work of ministry is holding good worship, educating and nurturing children, and perhaps engaging in some charitable acts in the community. And so some of Pastor Lavarin’s critiques may apply equally to us.

He continues, “Prior to this moment, new allies have preached a gospel of Jesus devoid of justice. They failed to make the theological connection that Jesus and justice are, in fact, mutually inclusive. To invoke Jesus and then to invoke justice is redundant. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we commit ourselves to the ministry of justice. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we declare the Psalmist’s decree that justice and righteousness are the foundations of God’s throne. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we summon the Messianic prophecy that the Spirit of the LORD was upon Jesus, to preach the good news to the poor, to set the prisoners free from the Roman industrial complex, and to proclaim liberty to those who were oppressed. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we remember that Jesus was convicted of a crime he did not commit, received an unfair trial, and was sentenced to a state-sanctioned lynching on a tree. We cannot divorce our theology from the ministry of justice, for to do so, is to divorce ourselves from Jesus, himself. The ministry of justice is the ministry of Jesus.”

But this pastor saves his most pointed barb for the end of his article. “Before your church decides to go out and protest, consider protesting your own theology that continues to intentionally and unintentionally do harm to Black and Brown bodies. Before taking a knee and holding a prayer vigil, consider this: there is no real substantive difference between a racist bigot holding a Bible in front of a church, and a Christian holding up a #BlackLivesMatter sign with no plans to parse out the practical implementation of the holy truth of justice.”

Ouch. Even if we are not the intended target of this arrow, it still has a sting for we have often viewed justice as a good thing, but not necessarily something central to our faith. It’s one of those extras like joining a prayer group or volunteering at Welcome Table. It’s optional, an elective in the walk of faith curriculum.

Sermon video: Breaking Down Dividing Walls

Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Every One of Us Afire

Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Breaking Down Dividing Walls

Ephesians 2:11-20

Breaking Down Dividing Walls

James Sledge                                                                                                   June 21, 2020

Shortly after the murder of George Floyd touched off waves of protests around the country, I began to see people on Facebook and Instagram posting lines lifted from the Confession of Belhar. For those who have no idea what that is, it is the newest confessional statement in our denomination’s (the PCUSA) Book of Confessions.

We Presbyterians love well-crafted and carefully articulated statements on what we believe and what that leads us to do and be in the world. Our Book of Confessions begins with ancient Creeds, the Apostles’ and Nicene, moves to a number of confessional statements and catechisms from the time around the Reformation, then jumps to the 20^th century.

Even though Belhar is new to our Book of Confessions, it isn’t all that new. It took shape in South Africa in the early 1980s when apartheid was still the law of the land there. It was written by members of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, originally the denomination for those labeled “coloured” in the system of apartheid. This denomination was distinct from the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, the white church.

The Dutch Reformed family is one of our theological cousins whose roots go back to John Calvin just as ours do. But I don’t think Calvin’s theology had anything to do with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa developing sophisticated theological justifications for apartheid that cited biblical evidence for a divinely ordained separation of the races.

Of course we Presbyterians did exactly the same thing during the times of slavery and segregation. When I attended Union Theological Seminary in Richmond (now Union Presbyterian Seminary), Dabney Hall was a residence for some students. Robert Dabney was a professor at Union who served as a chaplain in the Confederacy, and who wrote stirring theological defenses of slavery and the noble cause of the South well after the Civil War.

His views held sway long beyond his time. My brother and I once found some of the my father’s school work in a box in my grandmother’s attic. Amongst the papers was some sort of quiz or worksheet where the correct answer labeled Blacks as the accursed descendants of Ham from the biblical Noah story, part of the rationale Dabney used to justify slavery and the marginalization of people of color.

The Belhar Confession correctly calls such foolishness sin and insists that the Church is called to precisely the opposite sort of activity, to ministries of reconciliation and justice. Even so, it took us Presbyterians until 2016 to add Belhar to the Book of Confessions.

Sermon video: Unmanageable God

Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Unmanageable God

Genesis 1:1-2:3; Matthew 28:16-20

Unmanageable God

James Sledge                                                               June 7, 2020, Trinity Sunday

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind(or perhaps Spirit) from God swept over the face of the waters. ³Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. So opens Genesis and the Bible. So opens a lot of religious silliness as well.

For some people, the literal account found here becomes a critical item of faith, one that prohibits them for believing in things such as evolution. Other Christians, some in reaction to the first group, insist the story is merely symbolic, describing a well ordered cosmos. Or they dismiss it entirely, a primitive tale with no real bearing on the modern world.

I think all these views miss the mark, in part because religion, both conservative and progressive, has a tendency to become utilitarian. Religion becomes about getting something that I want. Perhaps its a certainty that I’ll go to heaven when I die. Perhaps it’s a sense of spiritual well-being that has eluded me despite buying into the competitive, success oriented, consumerist version of life that our culture peddles.

When religion is utilitarian, it’s a resource to be used, a way to get those things I want. That’s true if I’m a conservative who needs a list of things I must believe in and affirm so I get to heaven. And it’s true if I’m a progressive looking for spiritual purpose and meaning. In either case I decide what I need from religion, from the Bible, from God. In essence, I determine what God’s purpose is.

We all witnessed one of the most crass examples of utilitarian religion this past week when President Trump stood in front of St. John’s Church and waved a borrowed bible. It was brazen and shameless in enlisting religion, enlisting God to the president’s cause. But most all of us engage in more subtle, nuanced forms of enlisting God to our causes.

But back to our story from Genesis. When this story was written, it was, in part, meant to undermine utilitarian notions of God. The ancient Middle East was filled with gods; every kingdom had at least one of their own. These deities ensured that the crops produced and the herds grew. And when conflicts between kingdom erupted, they were viewed as power contests between gods, holy war in the truest sense of the term.

And Israel’s God had lost. The Babylonians had conquered them and carried all the important citizens into exile. Never mind prophecies promising an endless throne of David. Never mind assurances that Jerusalem would stand forever. Now there was nothing; the great city, the palace, Solomon’s magnificent Temple, all lay in ruins. Their God had failed them.