Sermon: On Listening for God

 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
On Listening for God
James Sledge                                                                                                 June 13, 2021

Samuel Anoints David to the Kingdom,

Alexander Ivanov, 1806-1858

 We Presbyterians have a way of doing things that is a kind of middle ground between the hierarchical church governance used by Roman Catholics or Episcopalians and the congregational form of governance found in most Baptist churches. In the former, a bishop appoints a priest for a congregation. In the latter, there is no bishop. The congregation can whomever it wants.

Presbyterians, however, don’t look like either of these. When it comes to pastors, the congregation can neither hire nor fire a pastor on their own. They must work with the presbytery, the regional governing body, in both the coming and going of pastors. When a pastor nominating committee looks for a pastor, it must follow procedures set forth by the denomination, and candidates for the position must be vetted and approved by the presbytery.

When a pastor nominating committee, or PNC, begins the work of finding a new pastor, certain prescribed forms must be used, and it must promise to abide by a search process that follows patterns set by the presbytery. As part of this, the PNC must sign a form that attests to their having had the presbytery’s Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action policy explained to them and their agreeing to follow that policy.

One of this policy’s stated purposes is “To inhibit discrimination in employment because of race, color, national origin, sex, age, marital status or disability and to ensure fairness to all candidates.”[1] To carry this out, the policy expects the PNC to interview a diverse group of candidates, regardless of the congregation’s racial makeup, and it requires written reports to confirm that this is happening. There is even a requirement that the PNC interview at least one woman and hear her preach.

Yet despite these requirements, white churches almost always end up with a white pastor. And even in 2021, such churches are more likely to call married, white men to be senior pastors.

You might think that the requirement to look at diverse candidates would cause PNCs occasionally to be wowed by a candidate who didn’t look much like their last pastor, but apparently not. I can’t imagine that many PNCs actually say out loud that they are looking for a married, white male, but somehow everyone on the committee knows that.

I should also mention that the PNC’s job is to discern God’s call. They aren’t looking for the one they like or the one that looks like them but rather the one that God has in mind for their congregation. Apparently, God has a preference for married, white men.

Sermon video: Insiders on the Outside

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Insiders on the Outside

 Mark 3:19b-35
Insiders on the Outside
James Sledge                                                                                      June 6, 2021

Jesus and His Apostles,
from the Russian Siysky Gospel, 1340

 As a general rule, I don’t think most people appreciate the sophistication of the biblical writers. Take the gospels for instance. Many Christians, both the conservative and more liberal, think of the four gospels as simple, straightforward accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They simply tell what happened, or what the writer believes happened.

But none of the gospels were written to tell people the story of Jesus. They were written for congregations who already knew that story well. The gospel writers were trying to help their congregations understand the story and how it impacted their lives and their situation, and so they retold the story of Jesus in particular ways they thought addressed concerns and issues in those congregations.

Mark’s gospel is the first one written, and it seems to address a non-Jewish audience outside of Palestine. Mark’s gospel employs an interesting technique to help his readers understand Jesus and the nature of Christian discipleship. The writer frequently places one story into the middle of another so that the two stories “talk to one another,” hopefully providing the readers a fuller understanding of both stories.

Our reading this morning has one of these bracketed or sandwiched stories. Both stories take place in the same setting, at home or, more literally, in a house. This word for house is used to speak of God’s house along with God’s household. And so it can refer to the Church.

Jesus and his disciples have come into the house for a break because his fame has started to spread, and crowds gather around him wherever he goes. But the house provides little respite. The crowds gather once more, creating such a ruckus that Jesus and his friends cannot even eat in peace.

Somehow Jesus’ family gets wind of the situation and decide that he needs to be restrained. Apparently they think Jesus has taken leave of his senses. Our scripture reading says “people were saying,” that Jesus was crazy, but that seems an unfortunate translation. There is no word “people” in the original Greek. It simply says, When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for they were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” “They” could speak of “people,” but it seems more likely to mean “the family.”

Sermon: What Is Truth?

 John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15
What Is Truth?
James Sledge                                                                                     May 23, 2021

Adam Kossowski,  

Veni Sancti Spiritus, mosaic ca. 1965

from Art in the Christian Tradition, 

a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library

 When I was a small child, I used to watch a black and white television show entitled the Adventures of Superman. As you might imagine, the special effects were pretty awful, but in the early 1960s we didn’t know any better. The show opened with the image of a pistol firing and an announcer’s overly dramatic voice saying, “Faster that a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…” The announcer continued, giving a thumbnail sketch of Superman and his alter ego, mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent. Then the intro concluded with Superman standing before a waving American flag as we heard that he “fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.”

The Adventures of Superman was created at the height of the Cold War when anti-communist fervor was high. Truth, justice, and the American way contrasted with the Soviet Union where the media were state controlled and a mouthpiece for government propaganda. Many Americans were proud of the fact that our news outlets were independent from the government, and the national media were largely viewed as impartial and reliable.

Things have really changed. Justice has always been an elusive if noble goal, but truth was once seen as clear and obvious. Now we have anti-vaxxers who insist that shots are dangerous with horrific side effects despite no scientific data to support such views. We have climate deniers who scoff at the nearly universal scientific consensus on human caused climate change. And we have the so-called “Big Lie” which claims, again without any evidence, that the recent presidential election was stolen.

 Not that playing fast and loose with the truth is actually new. The phrase, “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts,” dates back at least to the 1950s. And the Presbyterian Church’s “Brief Statement of Faith,” written in the 1980s, says this of the human creature. “But we rebel against God; we hide from our Creator. Ignoring God’s commandments, we violate the image of God in others and ourselves, accept lies as truth, exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care.”

Accept lies as truth… If this statement is correct, then all of us at times prefer lies to the truth. Maybe we don’t deny certain scientific facts. Perhaps we would never insist that two plus two equals five. But none of us has a pure and objective view of things, and sometimes we simply see things as we want them to be.

The gospel of John seems to be especially concerned with truth. The word occurs twenty-five times in John compared to a single occurrence in Matthew’s gospel. In John, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” When Jesus is on trial before Pilate he says, “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.” And the final appearance of the word in John’s gospel is Pilate’s response to Jesus, the unanswered question, “What is truth?”

What is truth? That seems a fairly important question for understanding John’s gospel, for understanding our scripture reading this morning where Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” And I’m reasonably certain that Jesus isn’t talking about the two plus two equals four sort of truth.

I think Jesus is talking about the true shape of reality, what it is that makes for a good, full, meaningful, abundant life, what it means to be fully human. For instance, I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” Is that true? A lot of us live like we think it might be. We want more and more and more. We hope that more will satisfy us, make us happy, content. But then there is always another more to need or want.

Sermon video: Whose Are You?

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Whose Are You?

 Whose Are You?
John 17:6-19
James Sledge                                                                                                 May 16, 2021

The Heidelberg Catechism Banner

 I grew up outside of Charlotte, NC, on land once owned by my great-great grandmother and grandfather. It was still out in the country, though the suburbs were getting closer and closer. In high school, I had a summer job with a landscaping company. We had several tractors, and one day I took a tractor tire that needed repairing over to Bonsal’s Tire.

I pulled up in the parking lot of this ancient garage, dragged the tire from the bed of a beat up El Camino, and rolled it toward one of the two open garage doors where a couple of elderly gentlemen were sitting in chairs. I did not recognize either of them, but one looked at me and said, “You must be Hartwell’s grandkid.”

Now it so happens that my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all named Hartwell, but only my great-grandfather went by that name. And so I answered the gentleman saying, “I believe I’m his great-grandson,” and the ensuing conversation confirmed that this was indeed the case.

Growing up in the vestiges of the rural south, who your daddy or granddaddy was, was important. More often than not, an introduction was likely to include something of your lineage.  “This is James, Ken Sledge’s son, Dick’s grandson. Such identifications were, for me, usually beneficial. My family had been in the area for generations and was reasonably well respected That meant I was assumed to be respectable myself unless I did something to prove otherwise. Had I been from a different family, I might have been assumed no-good unless I worked hard to convince people differently.

It’s a notion that is fading away in our culture, the notion that the family you belong to says something about who you are. People don’t stay in one place as much as they once did, and we live in an increasingly individualist culture. We don’t want to be identified by who we belong to. We want to be our own person, to make our own mark.

May 9 sermon video: As I Have Loved You

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

May 2 sermon video: On Being the Beloved Community

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: As I Have Loved You

 John 15:9-17
As I Have Loved You
James Sledge                                                                                      May 9, 2021

 In the Holocaust Museum not too far from here, there is a heart wrenching letter written by Vilma Grunwald to her husband, Kurt. They were Czechoslovakian Jews who, along with their two sons, we held in the infamous Auschwitz death camp. Kurt was a doctor, and the Nazis used him to care for the prisoners forced to do factory work which meant that he was held in a separate part of the camp from his family.

Like so many others, Vilma and her two boys, John and Misa, were paraded in front of the notorious SS doctor Josef Mengele as he decided who would be gassed. John, the older son, had a congenital condition that left him with a pronounced limp, and so he was put in the group marked for death.

Vilma could not bear to see her son taken to the gas chambers alone, and so added herself to his group. The evening before they were taken to the gas chambers, she managed to write a short note. She gave it to a sympathetic guard and asked him to deliver it to her husband. Amazingly, he did so. This is the note.

You, my only one, dearest, in isolation we are waiting for darkness. We considered the possibility of hiding but decided not to do it since we felt it would be hopeless. The famous trucks are already here and we are waiting for it to begin. I am completely calm. You — my only and dearest one, do not blame yourself for what happened, it was our destiny. We did what we could. Stay healthy and remember my words that time will heal — if not completely — then — at least partially. Take care of the little golden boy and don’t spoil him too much with your love. Both of you — stay healthy, my dear ones. I will be thinking of you and Misa. Have a fabulous life, we must board the trucks.

 Into eternity, Vilma.[1]

This short letter displays both the human capacity for the vilest of evils along with the most remarkable, self-giving love. The horrors of Auschwitz are almost beyond comprehension and a warning of what can happen whenever the other is demonized. But I think I can comprehend the love of a mother that could not let her child die alone.

Sermon: On Being the Beloved Community

 Acts 8:26-40
On Being the Beloved Community
James Sledge                                                                                                 May 2, 2021

Herbert Boeckl, Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

 In December of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. appeared at Western Michigan University
in Kalamazoo. He spoke and held a question-and-answer session with faculty and students where someone asked this question. “Don’t you feel that integration can only be started and realized in the Christian church, not in schools or by other means?”

Dr. King’s answer began with words that may be familiar to you. “We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing that Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this.”[1]

That was nearly 60 years ago. In the meantime, America has become a much more integrated place. Much of corporate America has embraced diversity as an ideal to strive for. Some of you work in places that are a salad bowl of race, gender, sexuality, religion, and more. But Sunday morning stubbornly remains one of the most segregated places in our culture. Even among churches that are openly progressive or liberal, segregation stubbornly persists.

Tribalism in the human creature has deep, evolutionary roots. Early humans were able to survive only by living in groups that cooperated for protection and finding food. Such groups were likely based on kinship, and somewhere along the line, humans become genetically predisposed to seek comfort and safety with those who are like them.

Like fight or flight reflexes, tribalism was helpful, even necessary, for survival at one point in history. But such evolutionary adaptations work much less well in larger societies composed of different sorts of people. For our society to function well, these primitive tendencies need to be overcome. Yet even a church that holds a Silent Witness Against Racial Injustice every other Saturday stubbornly remains largely white.

Sermon video: Trusting the Shepherd

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Trusting the Shepherd

 John 10:11-18
Trusting the Shepherd
James Sledge                                                                                                 April 29, 2012

 When I was in seminary, I had the opportunity to take a three-week long trip to the Middle East and Greece. There were students from number of seminaries, and we spent a good deal of time on charter buses.

One day we were traveling through some rather hilly country in the West Bank of Israel, and I was sitting by the window seeing what there was to see. I looked down into a small valley below the bus, and I noticed a young, Palestinian boy who was maybe ten or twelve years old. He was walking along a little path and right behind him, in a single file line, were a handful of sheep. I watched him for as long as I could still see him as he descended into the valley, that line of sheep right behind. It looked a little like a teacher leading a single-file line of kindergarteners to the cafeteria.

I later learned that this was typical in the area. Often a family’s flock would number less than a dozen, and it was not unusual for a child to have charge of the flock. When they would head out from the house in the morning to find pasture, that child would call to the sheep, and they would follow along behind, knowing that their young shepherd would lead them to food.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”

Many years ago, at the church I served in Ohio, we were holding the weekly staff meeting. As was our custom, we spent some time talking about the scripture reading for the coming Sunday, the same reading we heard today. When I finished reading the passage, our parish associate pastor said, “Sheep like to go their own way.”

Bob was a retired pastor who worked for us several hours a week, mostly helping with pastoral care. It turned out that when he had first started in ministry, he served a church in Montana, a congregation with a number of sheep farmers. They were the ones who had told him, “Sheep like to go their own way. They have to be watched carefully.”

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”