Sermon - Christian Identity: Cross Shaped Lives

 Luke 19:28-40; Philippians 2:5-11
Christian Identity: Cross Shaped Lives
James Sledge                                               April 10, 2022, Passion/Palm Sunday

      Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…

What might it mean to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus when we are talking about Palm Sunday? What do you think was on Jesus’ mind as he paraded into Jerusalem with his disciples shouting, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"

Jesus had to be thinking very different thoughts than those of his disciples. Jesus had been clear for a long time about the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem. But he also knew that his disciples had never really understood what he had told them, and at that moment they were still hoping for a conquering Messiah, a new king to ride in and take over the throne of David. But Jesus knew that his throne was a cross.

The Pharisees don’t understand any better than the disciples, but they do want the disciples to be quiet. These Pharisees seem to think that Jesus would agree with them, would object to what the disciples were shouting. Perhaps they think it sacrilegious to speak of Jesus this way or perhaps that are simply worried about how dangerous this would sound if the Romans heard of it.

But Jesus insists that the shouts of “Blessed is the king,” must be made. Jesus is the king arriving for his coronation. That must be announced, even if the disciples don’t understand the odd sort of king that Jesus is.

It is easy to join in the disciples’ confusion. When I was a child, Palm Sunday was a day of unbridled celebration. We would wave palms and shout Hosannas with nary of thought about a cross. Oh, we knew about the cross, but it was little more than an unfortunate detour on the way to the glory of Easter. We rushed from Palm Sunday parade to Easter parade with only a quick glimpse of the cross.

Sermon video - Christian Identity: New Priorities

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Sermon - Christian Identity: New Priorities

 Philippians 3:4b-14
Christian Identity: New Priorities
James Sledge                                                                                                 April 3, 2022

Ruins at Philippi

 A little over 20 years ago, Nicholas Cage was in a somewhat corny, somewhat trite movie called The Family Man. For those who never saw it, Cage stars as a young man who has become a highly successful businessman and financier. He is an incredible deal maker who has a salary to prove it. He lives in a luxury high rise apartment, drives a Ferrari, wears the finest of clothes, and has beautiful women at his beck and call. As far as he is concerned, he is living the ideal life. But then everything changes.

He wakes up one morning to find himself a New Jersey suburban husband and father, living in a little three-bedroom house, and working as the assistant manager in a tire store. At first, he thinks it’s some sort of terrible dream, a nightmare. But as time wears on and the reality of his new existence sinks in, he begins to feel as if he’s died and gone to hell. He finds a bottle of scotch in his desk at the tire store and says to whomever’s life it is that he now finds himself living, “You must have really needed this.” He is sure that no one would choose such a life for himself, and he sets out to work his way back to being a player in the financial life of New York City.

The movie is nothing but predictable so you can probably guess what happens as the movie unfolds. He gradually begins to fall in love with his wife, a woman whom he had once given up in order to be a Wall Street player. And he comes to love his children, to love playing with them and caring for them. He even comes to love his middle-class existence, including hanging out with neighborhood buddies and bowling in the local bowling league. It’s a far cry from the life he had lived.

But just as he has begun truly to appreciate this new life, he wakes up back in his luxury apartment in the city, a gorgeous woman knocking on the door. He has all his fine clothes and his fancy Italian sports car again. All those things that he valued so much, all those things he had worked so hard to achieve were his again, but all he could think about was that mundane, middle-class life he had briefly experienced.

He makes a desperate attempt to get back his suburban New Jersey life. He locates that woman he had not married. He jeopardizes a huge deal his company is working on when he rushes to the airport to intercept her before she leaves for an extended overseas stay. He makes a fool of himself trying to get her to delay her departure, and the movie ends with him talking to her in the airport bar, trying to find something he’d once been sure he didn’t want.

This old movie came to mind as I thought about Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. Paul speaks of having lived two different lives himself, and like the Nicholas Cage character, he was certain that the first life was the one he wanted. He had all the things that he thought mattered. He was from the right ethnic group, from the right family, and had been to the right schools. He belonged to the right political party and had attended the right church. He had been certain that all of this was the right way to go, and so he was zealous about how he lived his life. He pursued it with a single-minded devotion born of the certainty that his life was just as it should be. He could not imagine any other sort of life.

Sermon - Christian Identity: Realizing We're Lost

 Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Christian Identity: Realizing We’re Lost
James Sledge                                                                                                 March 27, 2022

Forgiving Father,
Frank Wesley, 1923-2002

Recently I spotted an article from the Religion News Service on The Washington Post website with a headline drawn from the piece that read, “If there is anything remotely ‘helpful’ about the Ukraine conversation, it is simply this: It has resurrected the concept of evil.”[1]

I only skimmed what turned out to be a blog post, but I had a pretty good idea where the author was going. The notion of evil, along with its close cousin, sin, fell out of fashion some time ago. For many, things once labeled as evil can be explained in terms of inadequate education and opportunity or perhaps mental illness. And much termed evil could be eliminated if all its causes were dealt with.

I’m all for addressing inequities in education and opportunity, and everyone should have access to mental health services, but I’m not so sure that evil is simply a problem to be solved if enough resources are brought to bear. Russia’s vile war against Ukraine cannot be blamed on one man’s mental illness or lack of adequate education and understanding. The actions of Putin and a whole host of Russian political and military leaders speak to a more fundamental, existential problem with the human creature, the problem of human sinfulness.

I had a pastoral care professor in seminary who like to define sin as distortion. All of us have a tendency to misperceive ourselves, others, and the world around us and so to act in ways that are not in our own best interests, those of others, or of the world we live in. This tendency is remarkably resilient and resistant to the cures we devise for it, and so we are prone to mess up in ways minor and ways spectacular. We are prone, in ways large and small, to live in a manner that is counter the image of God that lies buried within each of us.

Sermon video - Christian Identity: Trusting the Gift

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon - Christian Identity: Trusting the Gift

 Isaiah 55:1-9
Christian Identity: Trusting the Gift
James Sledge                                                                            March 20, 2022

Still Life with Bottle, Carafe, Bread, and Wine,
Claude Monet, c. 1862/1863, National Gallery of Art

When I was twelve years old, my family moved out to “the country.” It was old family land that had once been a farm. It had not been farmed in decades, but when we moved out there we were able to put up a fence so we could have horses. And we didn’t just have horses. We also had a pair of donkeys named Angelo and Annabelle.

How it was that we acquired those donkeys probably qualifies as one of those “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” moments. Somehow my father had found out about an elderly woman who had seven or eight of them. I think she was moving into a retirement home, and so she was trying to find good homes for her pets. We took two.

We tried to ride them a few times, with very limited success. They either just sat there, or they threw you off. And so they were little more than novelties or conversation pieces. They weren’t really good for anything. However, they could bray so loudly that you could hear them for miles. And they were quite good at escaping.

Our horses would occasionally get out, but they would normally just eat the grass on the other side of the fence. The donkeys, on the other hand, would go on excursions. I bet I’m one of the few kids who got pulled out of school to go home to help catch donkeys who were trotting down the road and startling drivers.

Sermon - Christian Identity: Urgent Questions

 Philippians 3:17-4:1
Christian Identity: Urgent Questions
James Sledge                                                                                                 March 13, 2022

The Apostle Paul
Rembrandt, 1633

   There is a famous quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that says, “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?’” The quote pops up regularly on social media, and it always draws lots of likes and shares. But is that really our most persistent and urgent question?

I ask because I don’t know that I see very much evidence that people’s lives are driven by questions of what they are doing for others. Think about it. What are the most persistent and urgent questions in your life? For a young person they might be, “Where am I going to college,” or “What am I going to do with my life?” For others they might be about money. “Can I cover expenses until the next paycheck?” “Do I have enough in my 401k?” “What did the stock market do today?”

For some the most persistent question might be about raising children. For others about getting that new position at work. Some people might be focused on finding a life partner. I have questions about what I’ll do when I retire, whether we saved enough, and what sort of world my grandchildren will grow up in. I sometimes think about what I should be doing for others, but I’m pretty sure that’s not my very top, my most persistent and urgent question.

I started thinking about such questions when I was ruminating over today’s scripture passage and thinking about the theme of Christian identity that I’m exploring in my sermons as we work our way toward Holy Week and Easter. What sort of questions need to be near the top of your list if you’re going to have a legitimate, authentic Christian identity?

In the part of his letter to the congregation in Philippi that we heard, Paul contrasts two very different identities. One lives as an enemy of the cross of Christ, and the other has its citizenship in heaven. One’s god is their belly, a reference to a life driven by every want and desire, and the other lives in way that imitate the Apostle Paul.

Perhaps it would be helpful to say a little something about this first identity that has upset Paul to the point of tears. These people are Christians, but they seem to have misunderstood or misconstrued Paul’s basic proclamation.

Sermon video - Christian Identity: Being Truly Human

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon - Christian Identity: Being Truly Human

 Luke 4:1-13
Christian Identity: Being Truly Human
James Sledge                                                                                                 March 6, 2022

Briton Rivière, 1840-1920. Temptation in the Wilderness,
from Art in the Christian Tradition,
a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library

I think I was in ninth grade when the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, burst onto the scene. It was a huge cultural phenomenon, with some of its songs becoming pop hits. I had the two-album soundtrack and played it frequently. At the time, there was a certain subversive quality to the musical that appealed to a young teenager.

One song that especially appealed to me was a catchy, comic number sung by King Herod when Jesus, freshly arrested, is brought to him for trial. The sarcastic lyrics Herod sings to an unresponsive Jesus include a verse that goes,     

So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ
            Prove to me that you're divine - change my water into wine
            That's all you need do, and I'll know it's all true
            C'mon, king of the Jews! 

Another verse issues a different challenge to Jesus.   

So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ
Prove to me that you're no fool - walk across my swimming pool
If you do that for me, then I'll let you go free
C'mon, king of the Jews!

I share these lyrics because there was a time when I saw today’s gospel reading as a similar situation. A smug, sarcastic devil, complete with horns and pitchfork, issues challenges to Jesus. “Come on, Jesus. Do a trick for me, and then I’ll believe you really are the Son of God.”

I suppose that my image of the devil became a bit more sophisticated as I grew older, but it was not until I entered seminary that I realized the devil never asks Jesus to prove who he is. His challenges are nothing like those of Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar. The devil in this story knows full well exactly who Jesus is. His challenges don’t ask Jesus to prove anything. Rather they force Jesus to wrestle with just what it means for him to be Son of God.

Sermon video: In the Presence of God

 

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

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.