Sermon: In the Presence of God

 In the Presence of God
Luke 9:28-43a
James Sledge                                                  February 27, 2022 – Transfiguration Sunday

Cara B. Hochhalter, Transfiguration,
from Art in the Christian Tradition,
aproject of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library

 I hope I haven’t told you this story before, but when I was in seminary, I was part of a group that spent three weeks in the Holy Land and Greece. During the trip, we visited the site traditionally held to be Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the 10 Commandments. There’s no real proof that it is actually the same place, but pilgrims have been coming to the site since the time of Emperor Constantine in the fourth century.

Standard procedure for tourists and pilgrims is to arise very early in the morning, around 4:30 or so, in order to reach the summit while it is still dark. The idea is to witness sunrise from atop Mt. Sinai. Our group gathered at the base of mountain where we climbed on camels, accompanied by the requisite jokes about the Camel-lot. Following a dark ride where you could only barely make out the steep drop-off just beyond the narrow path, we dismounted and walked the remaining 30 minutes or so to the top.

We all found spots where we had an unobstructed view towards the east. As the predawn glow began to light up the horizon, you got a sense of what a stark, severe landscape it was.  Other mountains jutted up all around, rocky peaks with little or no vegetation.

Everyone got their cameras ready as the pink horizon grew brighter. Little was said as the sun slowly emerged from behind one of those other peaks. In the desert haze, it was an orange-pink ball that was well up into the sky before becoming bright enough that it bothered your eyes to look directly at it.

Before I took this trip, I had talked with classmates who’d gone in previous years. I’d seen photographs of the sun rising over those same peaks and had heard people talk about what a moving experience it was, and I was ready for an experience of my own. I did get some pretty decent pictures, but I must confess that I was a little disappointed in the moving experience department.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a gorgeous and fantastic vista. I’m very glad I went and would recommend it to anyone, but I was disappointed that I didn’t feel something. I was truly hoping for some sort of religious experience, as, no doubt, were many others who were there with me. Instead I got some nice pictures, a story to tell, and beautiful view of that part of the Sinai Peninsula. 

Some of those in my group did experience what I had hoped to. I don’t know why they did and I didn’t. After all they saw the same scene that I saw. Still, they experienced something. There was no explaining it. It’s not as if they could have told me where or how to look at the sunrise in order to sense what they did. It was something beyond explanations, something that must be experienced to really appreciate.

Sermon video: Embracing Resurrection

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Embracing Resurrection

 1 Corinthians 15:35-57
Embracing Resurrection
James Sledge                                                                                     February 20, 2022

Portion of the frescos
in the Visoki Dečani Monastery,
Kosovo, ca. 1335

 When I began thinking about a sermon for today, I discovered that I have never preached on this passage from 1 Corinthians during my twenty-six plus years as a pastor. I’m sure there are other passages that share this distinction, but this passage does discuss something rather critical to Christian faith: resurrection.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever preached a sermon on resurrection at all. Oh, I’ve preached Easter sermons that proclaim, “He is risen!” I’ve preached sermons where resurrection is assumed or is lurking around in the background, but I don’t think I’ve ever preached a sermon where resurrection itself was the focus.

For that matter, I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard a sermon that was about resurrection, that talked about what it is and what it means. It seems that we in the church often operate as though everyone already knows what resurrection means and what it is, yet in my experience that is far from the truth.

The Bible itself may contribute to this problem. All four gospels are quite emphatic about the fact of resurrection, but none of them describe it or tell us how it happened. They don’t explain how the risen Jesus is different from the pre-Easter Jesus, although they do indicate that he is different.

So how do you understand resurrection? What do you mean when you say the words of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in… the resurrection of the body”? If someone who knew nothing about Christianity asked you to explain resurrection to them, what would you say?

Sermon video: Joining the Parade

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Joining the Parade

 Luke 5:1-11
Joining the Parade
James Sledge                                                                                     February 6, 2022

Draft of Fishes, Peter Koenig, born 1947,
from Art in the Christian Tradition,

a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN

I suspect that many of you have a picture in your mind of Jesus calling his first disciples. I know that I do. In my picture Jesus begins to teach, to proclaim God’s coming kingdom right after he is baptized and then tempted in the wilderness. As he travels along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, he encounters a few fishermen. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus says. And they drop everything and go after him.

In this picture there is simply something about Jesus and his invitation that draws these fishermen from their old life to a new one. It is incredibly dramatic. One minute they are making a living by fishing. The next minute, a stranger speaks to them and they are forever changed. And I think this picture has had a significant impact on the idea of evangelism as a dramatic event where one meets Jesus for the first time and is changed forever.

My picture of Jesus calling his first disciples comes straight out of Matthew and Mark’s gospels. But today we heard a very different story from Luke. Over the years Christians have often tried to harmonize these stories, but I think that misses the point. The gospel writers were often less concerned with telling precise history than they were with making a point. Luke writes for a different audience and paints a very different picture than Matthew and Mark, one that may actually have more contact with some of our lives.

To see Luke’s picture, we need to step back a bit and glimpse the entire canvas. As with Mark and Matthew, Jesus has been baptized and tempted in the wilderness. But then he has begun his ministry, taught in his home synagogue at Nazareth, come to the region of Galilee and healed a man with an unclean spirit. Then Jesus has visited Simon Peter’s house, cured his mother-in-law of a high fever, and then cured throngs of sick who were brought to him there.

In Luke’s picture, Simon already knows Jesus, has already met him prior to finishing a long night’s work with nothing to show for it. But then Jesus asks to borrow his boat. Surely Simon is tired and wanted to say, “No.” But after all, Jesus had cured his mother-in-law. 

Luke seems uninterested in what Jesus taught the crowds who gather on the shore. He skips over that, moving quickly to where Jesus tells Simon to put out into deep water. Once again, Simon would rather not, but he obeys this remarkable rabbi. In an instant there are more fish than anyone has ever seen before. Suddenly, Simon is frightened of Jesus and wants to be far away from him. Simon has met Jesus before and knows about his ministry, but all of a sudden Simon senses that he is in the terrifying presence of God. Simon, a rough, uneducated, hard living, hard swearing, dirty and sweaty fisherman, finds himself where ritually purified priests fear to tread, and all he wants to do is escape. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

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Sermon video: Scandalous Grace

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Scandalous Grace

 Luke 4:13-30
Scandalous Grace
James Sledge                                                                                     January 30, 2022

Jesus Preaching in the Synagogue at Nazareth
14th century fresco,
Visoki Decani Monastery, Kosovo

In the fall of my last year at seminary, I preached during Sunday worship at my home church. It was a strange experience. It is odd to stand up and preach to people with whom you used to share the pews. It’s a little unsettling to have your pastor serving as a worship leader, reading a scripture lesson, praying the prayers, and so on.

I still have vivid memories of that day. I sort of fumbled through the children’s message. I remember catching glimpses of familiar faces, trying to gauge from their expressions whether they thought I was making sense or not. I also remember the kind comments after it was all over, people telling me how much they enjoyed my sermon, and especially a compliment from my pastor. 

Of course they had to say such things. After all the session of that church had voted to recommend me as a candidate for ministry, one requirement for becoming a Presbyterian pastor. People had told me how wonderful it was that I was going to seminary. The church had even contributed several thousand dollars to help pay for tuition. They certainly weren’t going to let on that it had all been for nothing.

Besides that, many churches take pride in being able to claim pastors from out of their membership. Congregations that have produced a number of pastors sometimes display their names and pictures like merit badges. They’re a kind of validation, a symbol that a church must be doing something right. Pastors at such churches enjoy the validation as well.

  It’s not just churches that like to take come credit for the success of their own. Families and towns like to brag about those who’ve made it big, whether making it big means the first one to graduate college or becoming a movie star. Families and hometowns usually expect a little windfall, a little secondhand prominence, when their own are big successes. No one appreciates a hometown boy who goes off, makes it big, then forgets where he came from.

My mother was from a small town in the Florida panhandle, the part that is in central time zone beneath Alabama. She told me that they had one famous product, a pop singer of the 60s and 70s named Bobby Goldsboro, whose family ran the local florist shop. But when Goldsboro became famous, he told people that he was from Alabama. That really burned my mom, as I imagine it did lots of other folk from Marianna, Florida.

In our scripture for today, Jesus makes a visit back to his hometown. A version of this visit is told in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but Luke’s telling is quite different. Matthew and Mark place the visit well into Jesus’ career as teacher, preacher, and miracle worker, but Luke puts it at the very beginning. In Luke, Jesus looks a little like a politician who has just burst onto the national scene, and who returns to her hometown to announce she is going to run for president.

Sermon video: On Hierarchies and Bodies

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: On Hierarchies and Bodies

 1 Corinthians 12: 12-31a
On Hierarchies and Bodies
James Sledge                                                                                     January 23, 2022

The Apostle Paul, Rembrandt van Rijn,
ca. 1657, National Gallery of Art

I recently read an article on the growing pay gap between CEOs and the typical worker. It said that CEO compensation has grown 1,322% since 1978, while typical worker compensation has risen just 18%. The CEOs at the top 350 companies in America make, on average, 351 times more than the typical worker.[1] Put another way, the average wage earner would need to work for 351 years to make what those CEOs make in a single year.

Such numbers sound absurd, but they are simply extreme examples of how things work in our world. In companies, in non-profits, in government, in churches, some are valued more than others and their compensation reflects that. To varying degrees, all these organizations have something of a hierarchical structure where those at the top matter more than those at the bottom. Those at the bottom may do much of the actual work, but they are often thought of as replaceable and not terribly valuable. Recently, shortages in workers have challenged such ideas, but I dare say that the CEO-worker pay gap is not likely to change a great deal anytime soon.

Hierarchies, with those at the top valued much more than those at the bottom, are hardly new, and they certainly weren’t invented by American business. In New Testament times, society was envisioned as a hierarchy. At the top was the emperor and from him a structure flowed whose base grew wider as the importance grew less. At the very bottom were poor peasants without whom the system wouldn’t work but who received little benefit from this essential role in their society.

When the apostle Paul applies the metaphor of the body to the church, he is borrowing an image that was typically used to justify the hierarchical structure of Greco-Roman society. The reasoning went that those at the bottom should be grateful for the leadership and protection given to them by those at the top, their natural superiors. They should be happy and content to serve those at the top, the head of the body.

But Paul takes this body metaphor and turns it upside down while giving it a radically egalitarian spin. No part of the body can claim superiority over another. Each is essential in its own way. What is more, those who would seem to be of less value are treated with greater respect. Says Paul, But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.

Sermon video: Beloved Children

 

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

Sermon: Beloved Children

Luke 3:15-22
Beloved Children
James Sledge                                                                                     January 9, 2022

Baptism of Jesus, Lorenzo Scott, 1987

from Art in the Christian Tradition,
a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library

It’s John the Baptist again. We heard from him before Christmas, yelling for people to repent, to bear fruit worthy of repentance, to stop thinking that their religious affiliation or heritage would somehow suffice. And his voice echoes again post-Christmas. He’s still yelling about how something big is upon us, and we’d better get ready. 

As we catch the last echoes of John’s voice, we hear warnings of impending judgment. One is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Or perhaps John says the one coming would baptize with a holy wind and with fire. It’s not possible to say with absolute certainty because the word Luke writes can mean either wind or spirit. But for Luke, wind and fire both go with the Holy Spirit as he makes clear when he tells the story of the disciples receiving the Spirit at Pentecost.

Wind and fire, the Holy Spirit, the wheat separated from the chaff; the images are more than a little disturbing. The Messiah is coming, a new age is dawning, and new day when the Spirit will be poured out, when a divine wind will turn things upside down. “Get ready!” says John.

Then the echoes die away, and John is gone. His warning still reverberates, but he is no longer there. That’s quite literally the case in Luke’s gospel. Luke pushes John off the stage so that Jesus can stand there. John has prepared the way for the one who is more powerful. Now that one is here and John steps aside. Luke goes so far as to report John’s arrest before he mentions Jesus’ baptism. 

And so as the echoes of John’s voice fade away, we move to the baptism of Jesus. Well, not really. Luke tells us nothing of the baptism itself. With John safely offstage, Luke places Jesus there, but it is after he has been baptized. There is no river Jordan; there is no water; there is no John. There is simply Jesus praying. Whether other people are still there, Luke does not say. And then the heaven is opened, a sign of what John had been saying. A new day is indeed dawning. The last days are arriving.  Judgment is drawing near. The Holy Spirit physically and tangibly, in a form that looks like a dove, comes down onto Jesus. And God says to Jesus. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Sermon video: Becoming Children

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.