Sermon: Being Helpers

 Matthew 25:1-13
Being Helpers
James Sledge                                                                            November 12, 2023 

You don’t have to look very hard at the world to get discouraged. The situation in the Middle East is terrifying. The atrocities committed by Hamas are beyond the pale, even for terrorists, and Israel’s complete lack of regard for the lives of civilians is nearly as bad. The number of women and children killed and maimed is appalling, and I don’t see how Israel’s actions can avoid helping create a new generation of hatred and even more terrorists.

Then right after I had begun to write this sermon, we had yet another mass shooting using an assault style weapon. Will it never end?

On a larger scale, I worry that we have reached a point of no return on climate change. Recently in The Washington Post, I’ve seen articles on how this year has shattered heat records, and how the West Antarctic ice sheet faces unavoidable melting.

Speaking of which, the current state of political affairs makes me fear for the future of democracy. The level of political dysfunction and total demonization of opposing views is staggering. Worldwide there has been a shift toward autocracy in many democratic nations, and some would seem to prefer that for the US.

And why leave religion out of this sordid mess? A precipitous decline in American church participation has only been accelerated by Covid. Oldline denominations such as Presbyterians are shrinking at a rate that we can’t possibly support all our affiliated seminaries, and I wonder if our denominational structures themselves may be in jeopardy.

Add to that the damage done to the Christian brand by fundamentalists who use faith as the driving force behind all manner of hatreds. To make matters worse, a significant part of conservative Christianity views Donald Trump as some sort of messianic figure, a man who couldn’t get much further from the way of Jesus if he tried.

For these reasons and more, it would be easy to become cynical and decide the situation is hopeless. No doubt there are many who have given in to some sort of despair, who’ve become numb to it all and just focus on what they can control in their own lives and the lives of those closest to them.

Over 1900 years ago, the people of a small church congregation were more than a little worried about the future. They were mostly Jewish, and they followed Jesus as their Jewish Messiah. When the church first started some years earlier there had been incredible hope for the future. Most of them had believed that the risen Jesus would soon return and inaugurate the messianic age where all would be set right. But it had now been over fifty years since the first Easter. Most everyone who’d been around back then had died, and still no Jesus.

To make matters worse, they were being pushed out of the synagogue. They still considered it their spiritual home, but the rabbis made it clear that Jesus followers were not welcome there.

Trouble with the rabbis had started after Jerusalem and its magnificent Temple were destroyed fifteen of so years earlier. The loss of the holy city and especially of the Temple was a terrible blow to Jews, including Christian ones. Many of the Christians had thought Jerusalem would be the epicenter of the new age the returning Jesus would usher in. But that hope was now gone.

The destruction of Temple had pretty much ended priestly Judaism, and rabbinical Judaism or the Pharisees had become the dominant voice. As they consolidated their power, they begin to push Christian Jews out. There was even some persecution of Christian Jews.

Lately there had been infighting within the church itself. Some advocated abandoning Torah completely, but others argued that Jesus has taught from the Torah. Lately the arguments had gotten more intense, and some had been labeled false prophets and been kicked out of the church.

The historic home of Judaism along with the Temple destroyed and in ruins, being pushed out of the synagogue and belittled for following Jesus, bickering and fighting in the church itself, and growing doubts about Jesus’ return; the future looked uncertain, even grim for this little church and the faith. No doubt many had begun to despair.

The author of our gospel was a member of this church, and he has all these issues in mind when he sits down to write. And as the gospel story moves closer and closer to the cross, Matthew has Jesus speak to some of these concerns in his final teachings, sometimes labeled the second Sermon on the Mount,

After Jesus points out how his return date is unknown and will happen in a manner that is unanticipated, he tells four last parables, the last parables of Jesus before his arrest. Each one addresses, in some way, how believers are to handle the wait for his return.

This morning’s parable is the second of these, and it addresses how people are to wait. The teaching ends with a charge to “Keep awake,” but curiously both the wise and foolish bridesmaids in the parable fall asleep. I take it that the command to keep awake is a general admonition to live expectantly, but the parable speaks to what that looks like.

In the parable, the only difference between the wise and the foolish is that the wise bring extra oil. All go to meet the bridegroom. All carry lamps. All are ready to attend the banquet. All fall asleep. Yet when the foolish say “Lord, Lord,” to the groom, an allegorical stand-in for Jesus, his response is, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”

Interestingly, the first Sermon on the Mount contains very similar language. Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. And he says he will respond to such folks with, “I never knew you, go away from me…”

So what is the significance of the wise bridesmaids having oil with them? I think it is about more than being prepared for a long wait. The oil is symbolic. New Testament scholar Eugene Boring notes that in Jewish tradition, oil is used to symbolize both good deeds and Torah. He writes, “The oil, or rather having oil, represents what will count in the parousia: deeds of love and mercy in obedience to the Great Commandment… Here, Matthew pictures preparation for the parousia as responsible deeds of discipleship, not constant ‘watching’ for the end.”^[1]

In times when the future is uncertain and even a little scary, I think Christian faith offers some good advice. It says that no matter how things appear, the future belongs to God. When Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, he wasn’t expressing his hope in a human capacity to make things better. He was saying that the moral arc is safely in God’s hands.

But we are not called simply to wait for God to do something. We have work to do. In this parable and the ones that follow, Jesus makes clear that we are to engage in acts of love and mercy and to care for “the least of these.” We are to show the world what God’s love looks like in action, and in so doing, demonstrate a hopeful vision for the future.

Many of you are familiar with the famous quote from Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers fame. He says, "My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world."

Jesus says that our job in uncertain times is not to sit around waiting for his return or worrying about when it might happen. Our job is to be helpers, to be agents of love and care whose lives give others comfort and hope, whose lives give the world a glimpse of what God’s future will be.

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[1] M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 8, ed. L. E. Keck et al. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 450.

Sermon: The Secret of Life

 Matthew 22:34-40
The Secret of Life
James Sledge                                                                            October 29, 2023 

Imagine for a moment that you knew absolutely nothing about tennis, had never once seen a match played on television or at a local court. But for some reason you decide that you want to take up this sport. You mention this to a friend who does play tennis and so she gives you and old racket and a can of tennis balls, points you toward a court, and says, “Go play.”

You walk over to the completely empty court and stair at the net and the lines painted on the ground and wonder to yourself, “Now what am I supposed to do?” You go back to your friend and complain, “You need to give me a bit more help. How do you play this game and what are all those lines on the court for?”

It turns out that you can’t learn to play tennis, or play tennis at all, if you don’t know something about the rules. I suppose you and a friend could go to the court and hit the ball around, but you couldn’t play a game if you didn’t know how to score points, how many you needed to win, and so on. In other words, without the rules there is no game.

Many of us tend to view rules in a negative light, constraints that make life more difficult. That’s why politicians sometimes run for office with a promise to reduce regulations and red tape as one element of their campaign.

We live in a litigious society, and both individuals and corporations are forever creating new ways to pull a fast one so most of us view rules as a necessary evil. But when Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest, I don’t think he has that sort of view at all.

Psalm 19 says, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. Hardly sounds like a necessary evil.

I think Jesus views the commandments more is this light than many of us view the rules. That might explain why, when a rich man once came to Jesus asking what he must do for eternal life, Jesus answered, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” That’s the big secret to life, says Jesus.

Many of us here have likely had the opportunity to attend a graduation and hear a commencement speaker. As a part of this ritual the speaker is expected to offer some profound pearls of wisdom for those about to go out to make their way in the world. Graduates will be told to follow their dreams, to listen to their hearts, create a better world, and so on.

But suppose the speaker instead something along the lines of, “If you want to live fully, follow the rules,” then sat down. I’m pretty sure that would never make the commencement speaker highlight reels that are sometimes shown on the TV news, and if it went viral it would be for its oddity rather for how impressive it was.

But that is essentially what Jesus says to the rich man who comes to him for the secret of life. Follow the rules. Of course the rules Jesus has in mind are the law of Moses. That starts with the Ten Commandments telling you to have no other God than Yahweh, to keep sabbath, to honor mother and father, don’t murder, steal, or lie, and such.

The Jewish law is a lot more than the Ten Commandments, however. Read the book of Leviticus, along with parts of Exodus and Deuteronomy. There are a lot of rules. When Jesus says, “Follow the rules,” that’s a pretty tall order.

That naturally leads to questions about whether some commandments are more important than others. Does “Follow the rules” mean every one, or are there some that take precedence? That’s the sort of question Jesus gets asked in our reading for this morning, although the questioners have ill intent. They seem to hope that Jesus might paint himself into some sort of corner by choosing this one and not that one. If he says “Don’t murder” is the top commandment, then they will ask he didn’t say to have no other gods besides Yahweh? Isn’t that one important?

Jesus manages to avoid this trap however, although he doesn’t employ any sort of trickery or verbal sleight of hand as he so often does. He answers their question directly, or at least he does if you’re willing to let him take liberties with grammar and say there are two greatest commandments.

But Jesus doesn’t go to the Ten Commandments at all. He grabs one commandment from Deuteronomy 6:5. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And he grabs a second commandment from Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Then Jesus ties it all up in a bow by adding, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Keep these two and you will cover all the rest, says Jesus. If you want to know what it means to follow the rules, here you go.

If you want to live a life that is true, that has meaning, that is about something more than having the latest iPhone or car or some other grownup toy, love God and love neighbor. And by that Jesus doesn’t mean have warm feelings for God and neighbor, although that would be fine. Jesus is talking about living our lives in ways that serve God and neighbor, and that sort of living makes a visceral claim on our schedules and our bank accounts.

Jesus’ two greatest commandments depict a life that goes out from self, that is focused on God and others. Jesus says that the secret of life is to live toward God and toward neighbor, to go from an inwardly focused mindset that clutches onto all it can to an expansive pose that flows out from oneself, and that means I can’t hoard my time or my money just for me and mine.

That is why throughout my career as a pastor, I have tried to decouple stewardship from fundraising that seeks to keep the doors open and the place running and instead make it about faith. There is no clearer marker of a person’s spiritual health than how they utilize their time and their money, and stewardship is about precisely that.

Jesus, what is the secret to life? “Follow the rules,” he says. And what does that look like Jesus? “Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Do that, he says, and pretty much everything else will fall into place.

Love God. Love neighbor. What does that look like for you?

Sermon: Whose Image Is This?

 Matthew 22:15-22
Whose Image Is This?
James Sledge                                                                            October 22, 2023 

I saw an online post the other day that said the gospels report people asking Jesus 183 questions but that he only answered three of them directly. I haven’t done any research to see if this is in fact the case, but it certainly is true that Jesus often answers questions with a parable or a question of his own or, as in our case today, with a little verbal sleight of hand.

It’s easy for us to miss some of this because we aren’t familiar with the nuances of the tax in question. This particular tax paid to Rome was generally detested by people in Israel. To make matters worse the tax had to be paid in Roman coin which typically had an image of the emperor and included an inscription that said, “Emperor Tiberius Augustus, son of divine Augustus.” The coin was regarded as blasphemous by many devout Jews because it could be considered to be breaking the first two commandments, one against having other gods and the other against idols.

Because of this, the coins and the tax could be political hot potatoes. Some, who advocated resisting Roman rule urged people not to pay the tax. Such a stance was considered treasonous by the Romans of course, and those who question Jesus are using this to get him in a no-win situation. By asking if it’s lawful to pay the tax – lawful referring to the Jewish law – they hope Jesus will either make a treasonous declaration by saying it’s not lawful, or to take a stand that would be unpopular with his audience.

But Jesus puts his questioners in a bad light right at the start. He asks them to produce this blasphemous coin, and they have one on them. They’ve already revealed their hypocrisy before Jesus ever gives an answer.

Jesus then gives his answer that really isn’t an answer. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” I’ve seen this taken to mean that Jesus is saying it’s okay to pay the tax, but I’m not at all sure that’s what he does.

Way back when I was middle school age, in a time when we didn’t think much about crime, our home was broken into twice in quick succession. My father suddenly took home security seriously, and he upgraded the locks, created a homemade alarm system, and he borrowed an engraving tool and engraved our name into anything valuable that had a place to do so. These inscriptions were obvious claims of ownership. Should a television set turn up at the pawn shop, we could prove it was ours.

In similar fashion, parents write names inside children’s jackets and libraries stamp their name onto books. Jesus refers to this sort of thing when he asks his questioners, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” Both things would seem to attest to their being the emperor’s, and so Jesus’ answer could seem to support the tax.

But this is one of far too many places where Bible translators don’t do us any favors. When Jesus says, “Whose head is this,” the word translated head has a more literal meaning of image. And in the Greek Old Testament that was the Bible for the first Christians and the gospel writer, it is the same word found in the creation story in Genesis where God says “Let us create humankind in our image.

So if having an image on something is a claim of ownership, what indeed are the things that belong to God? In addition, Jesus’ opponents and his audience know well the psalm that says, The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it… If the earth and all that is in it belong to God, what actually belongs to the emperor?

We Presbyterians have what is called the Book of Confessions. Confessions here refers to professions of faith, and the book contains ten such professions beginning with the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds and ending with “A Brief Statemen of Faith,” which was written to celebrate the 1983 reunion of two Presbyterian denominations who had split in 1859 as the Civil War loomed.

Amond the faith statements in this book is something called the “Heidelburg Catechism.” It dates back to the 1560s and is laid out in question-and-answer format. The very first question reads, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The accompanying answer begins, “That I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

This sentiment is echoed in the opening of “A Brief Statement of Faith,” formally approved by our denomination in 1991. “In life and in death we belong to God.”

We belong to God. So say our theological documents as well as scripture and Jesus, but I’m not sure many of us believe it. Modern people are more likely to think of themselves as autonomous individuals. We are independent actors who in large part create our own destinies, something that has become a big part of the American mythology about the self-made man or woman.

Notions of being self-made are of course patently absurd. No one creates their own talents, their own country of birth, their own family, their own access to resources. Life and much that goes with it is a gift, and Christian faith says that life is a gift from God to be used well for the ends of God. We are not our own to do whatever we will. We belong to God, and we have callings, purposes that we must live into if we are to make faithful use of the gifts God has given us.

What are you doing with your life that gives glory to God and advances Jesus’ agenda here on earth? We Presbyterians have long spoken of all people having vocations, callings that we are suited to and that in some way benefit the common good. You still hear such language occasionally with respect to things such as being a teacher or nurse or firefighter, but I’m not sure the average person thinks much about what they are called to do.

Vocation is one facet of stewardship, of life that is lived toward God and neighbor. So is how we use our money. Is money simply something to get me the things I want, or is it a way to express love of God and neighbor? And so I can ask the same question that I asked you about your life. What are you doing with your money that gives glory to God and advances Jesus’ agenda here on earth?

Jesus looked at the denarius and asked, “Whose image is this?” So too Jesus looks at us and asks whose image is on us. You have been wonderfully made by a loving God and fitted to be a blessing to those around you. What are you going to do with your life and your money to love God back and to continue Jesus’ work in the world?

Sermon: Like Falling in Love

 Philippians 3:4b-14
Like Falling in Love
James Sledge                                                                            October 8, 2023 

It isn’t the case with all denominations, but Presbyterian seminaries require classes in Greek and Hebrew, along with Old and New Testament courses where translating texts from their original language is part of the class. For reasons that will soon become obvious, I vividly remember translating our Philippians reading at seminary.

When Paul writes, For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish… the Greek word translated rubbish is skubala. (I love the sound of that.) But when we went to our Greek dictionaries to look up skubala, we also saw definitions like dung, filth, and excrement. And so naturally when students were asked to read their translations in class, more than one had rendered the term with a word I won’t repeat today, to requisite snickers and laughs. The professor smiled as well and said something about our translations being more accurate than our Bible’s.

But sophomoric translation jokes aside, what on earth would cause Paul to view his former life in such a thoroughly negative light? One possible answer was that his faith had helped Paul escape some horrible past, and indeed that is how Protestant interpreters read Paul for nearly 500 years, following the template laid out be Martin Luther.

When Luther was a Catholic priest, he was tormented by guilt. He used to drive his confessor crazy with endless confessions, often returning repeatedly when he’d thought of something he’d forgotten. Luther was also terrified that he hadn’t remembered all his sins and feared that they wouldn’t be forgiven. Luther lived with an overwhelming sense of dread.

Then the Apostle Paul came to Luther’s rescue. Reading Paul’s letters with their emphasis on being saved not by works but by grace through faith, Luther felt as though thousands of pounds had been lifted off him. He no longer worried about whether he had confessed every sin because he had been set right with God by grace.

That would be nothing but Luther’s interesting, personal story except that he assumed that Paul had had a similar experience. Paul must have despaired of not being able to keep every tiny bit of Torah perfectly and so lived in terror of God’s inevitable judgment. Thankfully, he had discovered grace in Jesus.

Protestant interpreters largely repeated Luther’s views until late in the 20^th century. Then scholarship on 1^st century Judaism began to question such thinking. A growing scholarly consensus now suggests that Jews in Paul’s day did not despair at all about being able to keep Torah. Rather they thought of themselves as being right with God if they tried to obey the Law and renewed their efforts when they realized they had failed.

Such a view seems to fit much better with Paul’s own words in our scripture. When Paul describes his life as a Hebrew from the tribe of Benjamin and so on, he says that he was as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Blameless. That doesn’t sound at all like Paul despaired of keeping Torah. He seemed to think he had been doing just fine.

So if Paul didn’t view his former life as something that had brought him to despair, as something that was a failure, why did he now speak of that former life as rubbish, dung, excrement? I think the answer is obvious. He had found something so wonderful that it made his old life pale by comparison. Throw in the typical Middle Easter penchant for hyperbole, and we have Paul saying that life with Jesus is so incredible that nothing else even compares.

Most of us come from very different circumstances than Paul did. If we grew up Christian, it’s hard for us to compare a pre-Jesus life to a new one in Christ. But that does not mean that we can’t experience something of what Paul felt. In fact, I suspect that many of us have had an experience that feels quite similar.

I think there’s a very good chance that many of you here have had the experience of falling in love. For some of you that may be a recent event, and some of you may have to think back a bit, but try to recall how life changed when you first fell in love.

When people fall in love it typically reorients their lives. Priorities shift dramatically. Time once reserved for other things is now consumed by time with the beloved. Often people who fall in love become extravagant in spending money on the object of their affection, willingly going without things that were once important.

Paul has had a similar experience. In Jesus he has encountered a love so wonderful that he is caught up in it, longing to love back in return. This experience of divine love had shifted his priorities. Time once reserved for other things is now consumed with Jesus. Paul has completely altered his life because of this love, and this is not a burden or an obligation. It is now his greatest joy.

While many of us have had the experience of falling in love, I wonder how many have had the experience Paul did, the experience of a divine love so wonderful that it reorients one’s life. Presbyterians and others like us have been especially suspicious of faith that is passionate and enthusiastic, preferring to keep things in the head rather than the heart. Yet John Calvin, the founder of our tradition who is often depicted as dour and scholarly, said, “The Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart…”[1]

When we are rooted in God’s love, it wells up in us and overflows in love toward God and neighbor. It takes shape as a grateful generosity driven by love. People who are rooted in God’s love are generous with their time, talents, and money in much the same way people who’ve fallen in love are. And as we enter into the stewardship season, a time that is too often more about fundraising and deciding how much we’ll contribute to keep the place running, I’d like you to think about God’s love for you and your love for God and neighbor.

In fact, stewardship season can be a time to take stock of your spiritual health. At its core Christian faith is about love, and if you’ve experienced God’s love so that you long to love God with heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself, it will get lived out and become concrete. It will show up in a generosity to God and neighbor, and the biblical measure of this is the tithe, or the first ten percent.

If you’re like most Presbyterians, you are nowhere near this, and I would never want to claim that if you upped your pledge or giving to organizations that do God’s work you would suddenly be spiritually mature and fulfilled. But I will suggest that moving toward a tithe would not be unlike what happens when a marriage counselor urges a couple to spend more time together, take vacations together, and do date nights, spending money on each other.

If you do move toward a tithe, I doubt that you will regard your prior life as skubala, but you may well see it in a different light. You may even discover that your priorities have shifted, becoming a little more like those of Jesus.

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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John T. McNeill, editor, translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960) III, II, 36, page 583.

Daring to Follow Jesus

 Matthew 21:23-32
Daring to Follow Jesus
James Sledge                                                                                     October 1, 2023 

By now almost anyone associated with the church world has heard the troubling trends in church attendance and affiliation. According to one poll, the number of religiously unaffiliated has increased with every recent generation. In the Silent Generation, 9% are unaffiliated. With Baby Boomers, it’s 18%; with Generation X it’s 25%; with Millennials it’s 29%; and with Generation Z, those born between mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s, it’s 34%.[1] You don’t need to be a statistician to recognize that this trend spells real trouble.

The reasons for this ever-growing group of religiously unaffiliated are many, and some are outside the church’s control. But the church shares a significant responsibility. Too often we have embodied the quote, sometimes erroneously attributed to Gandhi, that says, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." 

Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne has offered his thoughts on the demographic decline facing the church, saying, “If we lose a generation in the church, that loss won’t be because we failed to entertain them, but because we failed to dare them — to take the words of Jesus seriously and to do something about the things that are wrong in the world.”[2]

If you know Claiborne at all, you likely know that he is quite disenchanted with the sort of Christianity trafficked by the typical church. Very often this Christianity is focused mostly on what people believe, and what few demands it puts on members are largely internal, focused on keeping the institution going. Only rarely does it reflect the radical teachings Jesus.

People like Claiborne can be a thorn in the side of the traditional church, questioning whether this Christianity actually follows Jesus. But if Claiborne is a pain in the you know what, he’s in good company. Jesus has similar questions about the church of his day.

When modern people look at Jesus’ ministry, his conflicts with religious authorities are often seen as a fight with cartoon bad guys. They were so corrupt that Jesus needed to start a whole new religion to take their place.

Except cartoon bad guys are a rarity. Much more common are people of faith who have gotten off track. Indeed the image of Jesus cleansing the Temple the day before our reading takes place is often depicted as Jesus attacking a gross commercialization of the Temple with money changers and animal sellers setting up shop there.

In reality, the money changers and animal sellers were an honest attempt to assist the pilgrims who had made the long journey to Jerusalem. Money changers allowed people to exchange coins with blasphemous images on them for imageless Jewish coins appropriate for an offering at the Temple. Similarly, animal sellers allowed pilgrims who couldn’t bring animals with them on the trip to Jerusalem to make a sacrifice. On top of that, neither money changers nor animal sellers were actually in the Temple. They were in the courtyard outside.

To be honest, I’ve never been exactly sure what got Jesus so worked up that he turned over tables and chased vendors away, but it seems likely that it was judgment on a theology that imagined Temple worship somehow guaranteed God’s presence in Israel’s midst. In that sense Jesus may well be as upset by the worshippers as by the vendors.

Regardless, Jesus’ actions are more than a little upsetting to worshippers and authorities alike. Jesus had also brought the blind in the lame into the Temple, people who were ritually unclean and not supposed to be there. So it’s no surprise that when Jesus reenters the Temple the next day, the leaders demand to know what gives him the authority to do such things.

Jesus evades their question by asking whether they recognized divine authority in John the Baptizer. John was a difficult subject for them because he had been a thorn in the side of religion that was mostly about belief and rituals. He had called people to repent, which is less about feeling bad for what one has done and more about changing one’s behavior. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” cried John, and he said this was about bearing fruit.

Interestingly, when Jesus began his ministry, he picked up John’s cry, repeating it word for word. And throughout his ministry Jesus laid out what sort of changes this entailed, the fruits he expected people to bear, things like mercy, longing for a rightly ordered society, loving all, even enemies, caring for the least of these, and having a life not focused on wealth.

After deflecting the religious leaders’ question about where his authority came from, Jesus engages them with an easily understood parable. Two sons are asked to work in the vineyard, the first says “No” but then goes while the second says “Yes” but then does not go.

The parable has a clear allusion to an earlier teaching of Jesus that gets lost in English translations. When the second son says, “I go, sir,” and then doesn’t go, the word translated sir is the same word translated lord in other places, notable when Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” It seems that Jesus expects people to bear fruit just like John did.

I think people like Shane Claiborne are modern day prophets calling us to repent, to change what we are doing, to bear fruit. “If we lose a generation in the church, that loss won’t be because we failed to entertain them, but because we failed to dare them — to take the words of Jesus seriously and to do something about the things that are wrong in the world.”

But before we can dare others to take the words of Jesus seriously, perhaps we need to dare ourselves. Dare we trust that the way of Jesus is the way to life in all its fullness? Dare we long for and work for a world set right, a world where there is good news to the poor and release to the captive? Dare we let Jesus’ dream for a new sort of world become our own?

I think God is longing for that sort of Christian and that sort of church, and I think the world is longing for that sort of Christian and that sort of church. Dare we be the Christians and the church that God and the world are longing for?

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[1] https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/generation-z-future-of-faith/

[2] Foreword to nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation by Russell E. D. Rathbun (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2009), vi.

A Subversive Vision

Matthew 20:1-16
A Subversive Vision
James Sledge                                                                            September 24, 2023 

Many years ago, I saw a news report about a local fellow who had filed a lawsuit against some of his coworkers over a lottery ticket that had won 99 million dollars. It seems that there was a group of workers who went in together to buy tickets on a regular basis, agreeing to split the winnings should they ever win.

The fellow who filed the lawsuit was a member of this group, and he claimed that there was an unwritten agreement that they covered for each other when someone was out sick as he had been when the winning ticket was purchased. The person from the group they interviewed for the news contradicted that, insisting that it was purely a put up your money and you’re in, don’t and you’re not.

The lawsuit was a hot topic for local conversation, and the TV reporter interviewed a number of people about their thoughts on the case. Nearly all of them thought the suit had no merit. He didn’t put any money in, so he doesn’t deserve any of the winnings. “Fair is fair,” one of them said.

Most of us have a pretty strong sense about what is and isn’t fair. It starts when we are very young. Small children will object when a friend or sibling gets a bigger slice of cake than them, complaining that it’s not fair.

The people interviewed by that news reporter seemed to assume that the man who filed suit was trying to get something he didn’t deserve, but if it could have been proven that there was indeed an agreement to cover for coworkers out sick, then opinions likely would have changed. Then the coworkers would be the unfair ones, greedily trying to hold onto the money that had been promised to another.

I never did hear the outcome of the lawsuit, but I assume that any jurors would have done what they thought was fair.

Jesus’ parable today seems to raise issues of fairness. Is it fair that people who barely broke a sweat get paid as much as people who worked hard all day? Surely not, but then again, Jesus is not suggesting how to handle payroll at the workplace. Jesus is telling a parable that he knows offends our sensibilities in order to get us to think differently about the world and God’s kingdom.

It may help to realize what prompts Jesus to tell this parable. In the verses prior to our reading, a wealthy young man has gone away grieving after Jesus tells him to sell all he has, give the money to the poor, and come with Jesus. As he goes away, Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

This astounds the disciples who, like many of us, think of wealth as a blessing. But Jesus speaks of it as a curse.

Peter then reminds Jesus that the disciples have left everything to follow him, asking what sort of reward they will receive. Jesus assures him that they will be well rewarded, but then he adds, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And then Jesus tells the parable we heard today.

No doubt Matthew has Jesus address this parable to his mostly Jewish audience. Matthew’s community is made up of good, law-abiding Jews who have embraced Jesus as their Jewish Messiah, but Gentiles are beginning to be drawn to the Jesus movement, people who’ve never followed the Jewish law like most of the members have all their lives. The parable is in part a call for Jewish Christian to welcome Gentiles as equals.

But I think there is more to the parable, although hearing that may require us to expand our understanding of parables. There’s a tendency to think of Jesus’ parables as a kind of Christian fables, catchy stories with clear morals or lessons, but they are much more. Unlike fables, Jesus’ parables often turn the world on its head.

 Walter Brueggemann writes that Jesus’ parables are “revolutionary activities.” They are “subversive reimaginings of reality.”^[1] In the “realities” created by human societies, there is not enough for everyone. Scarcity is the norm, and so we must strive and be diligent, lest we find ourselves without. This reality is so dominant, so unquestioned, that toddlers have already picked it up and incorporated it into their worldview. And so young children in homes overflowing with food of every sort, at no risk of ever going hungry, are troubled when their slice of cake doesn’t measure up to their sibling’s or friend’s.

Have you ever noticed that questions of fairness often deal with winners and losers? We are upset if an athletic competition isn’t fair because all the contestants deserve an equal opportunity to win. When someone gets the job because they know the right person or because of nepotism, it seems unfair because other people lost out as a result. When men are paid more than women for the same work, it is patently unfair because the women lose income they should have had. And Jesus’ parable about the workers in the field seems unfair because those who worked all day didn’t come out ahead of the latecomers. Their extra effort should have put them ahead, should have made them the winners.

All of this assumes that life is a competition with winners and losers, and in our culture, money and possessions are the trophies that go to the winners. Our consumerist society teaches that fulfillment comes from having more, and this requires relentless striving and competition. There’s not enough for everyone, and so there will be winners and losers. And if something games the outcome of this competition, well that’s just not fair.

But Jesus imagines a world completely at odds with ours. His term for this new world is the kingdom of God, a phrase that probably doesn’t work as well in our day as it did in his. Numerous updates have been suggested, the commonwealth of God, the dream of God, the God movement, the revolution of God. But whatever you call it, Jesus says it has come near, and he calls his followers to begin living by its ways now.

In this new world, the competition is called off. The poor are lifted up and the rich are pulled down. Love rather than violence is what brings this new day, a day when all neighbors matter as much as I do, when people trust in God to provide and so do not need to hoard resources for themselves, when there is enough for all, and no one needs to get ahead.

Jesus’ reimagining of reality is beyond radical. There are no winners and losers, and fulfilment doesn’t come from having more and more. It comes from a life motivated by love, a life that is not full and complete if a neighbor, even an enemy, is hurting or in need.

Jesus’ vision of a new reality is so counter-cultural, so radical, that even the church has largely ignored it and made faith about personal salvation or private spirituality. We have seen Jesus’ vision as too impractical, too radical, and have made faith about other things. We have made faith fit easily into cultures of greed, domination, exploitation and violence.

But the vision is still there. Jesus’ “subversive reimaginings of reality” are still there, jarring in us in parables like the one we heard this morning, and Jesus invites us to let that vision reshape our lives. He invites us to be a community that lets his vision bubble up in our lives, both our individual lives and our life together as community.

Perhaps that feels like tilting at windmills and naïve foolishness. What impact can we possibly have in the face a world that looks nothing like Jesus’ vision and has little use for those who too aggressively challenge the status quo?

Then again, Jesus’ first disciples must have asked that same question in a world that was even crueler and more violent and less tolerant of dissent than ours. Yet their witness, their living out the way of Jesus’ drew in more and more people and began to transform the world.

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity,” an essay in The Christian Century, March 24-31, 1999. 

Absurd Community

 Matthew 18:21-35
Absurd Community
James Sledge                                                                            September 17, 2023

 

When I served a church in Columbus, OH, I was the chair of our presbytery’s Committee on Ministry or COM. The COM oversees the relationship between pastors and churches. This includes everything from searching for a new pastor to approving the call of a new pastor to dealing with conflict that sometimes arises between churches and their pastor.

As a part of my duties as chair, I was one of several people notified when the presbytery received an allegation about an inappropriate relationship between a pastor and a church member. Making matters worse, this adult member was someone with a significant developmental disability with limited capacity to enter into a consensual relationship. The mother still provided a significant level of care to this individual, and she was the one who had brought the allegation.

As things began to go forward, good communication with this individual proved difficult. Meanwhile the pastor was adamant that nothing inappropriate had occurred, but there was enough to warrant appointing an investigative committee. Per presbytery protocols, a lawyer was provided for the pastor in question at the denomination’s expense. At this point there was no involvement from police or the courts, and the investigation was strictly to see if there was grounds to remove this pastor, revoke his ordination, and so on.

The investigation went on for some time with the pastor regularly insisting on his innocence and expressing anger toward the presbytery for the way his good name was being damaged. In the meantime, COM had greatly overrun its budget for legal help.

Then, at the last possible moment, the pastor suddenly changed his tune and confessed. At this point I was not directly involved in process, so I don’t know details, but suffice to say there was a great deal of anger toward this pastor over how he had wasted so much energy, time, and money, not to mention the behavior that spurred the investigation. I shared in this anger and frustration, and I was glad this individual would no longer be allowed to pastor any church in our denomination.

This case popped into my mind as I read today’s passage from Matthew. When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive a church member, suggesting seven times, Jesus responds, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” I should add that it’s also possible to translate Jesus’ response as seventy times seven. Either way it’s a whole lot.

So how does this apply to that pastor in Columbus? His sins were particularly bad ones and they were many. In addition to the abuse itself, he had lied over and over and cost the presbytery lots of money. But I don’t know that if you added them all up you’d get to seventy-seven and certainly not to seventy times seven. So we’re simply to forgive him. That seems almost absurd.

Of course Jesus tells a pretty absurd parable to illustrate his big numbers, although the absurdity of it may be lost on us because of a monetary amount that is totally foreign to us. According to some scholars, a talent was worth fifteen year’s wages for the typical worker in Jesus’ day, so let’s update that to our day.

The minimum wage in Virginia is $11.00 an hour which works out to $22,880 per year for someone who is full time. So we could say that a talent was worth $343,200, and the parable Jesus tells says the slave has somehow run up a debt of 10,000 talents or around 3.4 billion dollars. I can’t imagine how anyone could incur that level of debt, but I think the parable is supposed to contain an absurd, impossible level of debt. That makes the slave’s plea, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything,” beyond absurd. He would need to live 150,000 years to make that much. Yet the master forgives the debt.

But the parable is not done with absurdities. The one who has been forgiven a 3.4-billion-dollar debt then encounters a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, or around $6000. But even thought he has been forgiven an impossibly large debt, he won’t show the least bit of leniency to his fellow slave who would likely be able to repay him in time.

The parable seems to put the hearer in the position of the first slave. It reminds us that we have received love and grace and forgiveness in absurd, extravagant amounts, and so we are expected be extravagant in our own forgiveness of others. The Lord’s Prayer says as much. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Or perhaps better translated, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

But at this point I need to say that there is something missing from this sermon. It is missing from our scripture reading as well, and that is context. When Peter asks his question about how many times to forgive, he is responding to Jesus’ teachings on correcting members of the church.

Jesus has just explained that when a member sins against you, you are to go to that person privately and point out what they’ve done. If that doesn’t work, you are to take two or three other members with you to talk to the person. If that fails, you should bring the matter before the entire church, and if that doesn’t work, the church is to shun the person, presumably in the hope that the person will eventually repent and ask for forgiveness. Peter is responding to this teaching when he asks about how often to forgive.

Jesus’ words on absurd levels of forgiveness are connected to an expectation of accountability and repentance. When someone has been admonished and then asked for forgiveness, they are to receive it repeatedly. This is not blanket forgiveness that is simply offered no matter what. Instead Jesus is describing a community of believers where there is real accountability and correction, but endless grace as well.

I’m not sure we in the church do a very good job of this. Faith has become so privatized in the modern US that any notion of correction and accountability is largely absent. Even so, one of the responsibilities of the Session outlined in the Presbyterian Book of Order is “reviewing the roll of active members at least annually and counseling with those who have neglected the responsibilities of membership.”[1] (I imagine some elders are getting a little nervous.)

It was once common for churches to speak of themselves as a family. That metaphor has its liabilities, but to some degree, what Jesus describes looks like family when it functions as it should. Love and grace are always there. A child is never beyond the love of family. But there are expectations that a child behave in certain ways and consequences when they don’t. What if church looked more like that?

I wonder what it might take, and what it might look like, to become the sort of community Jesus envisions the church to be. What would it mean to be a congregation where all were welcome, where being a part of the community had nothing to do with being good enough or accomplished enough, but at the very same time there were clear expectations that everyone would engage in work and study and ministry that deepened their faith, that helped them become more committed disciples, and helped give the world a glimpse of the new day Jesus envisioned when he spoke of the Kingdom? And there was correction, even loving discipline, when people failed to do so.

Perhaps that seems an absurd fantasy, even more difficult than forgiving from the heart over and over and over, seventy times seven. But then again, the scriptures insist that the Holy Spirit can empower the church to do miraculous, even absurd, impossible things.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

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[1] Book of Order, G-3.201c

Putting on Jesus

 Romans 13:8-14
Putting on Jesus
James Sledge                                                                            September 10, 2023

 

If you watch television at all, you likely have encountered advertisements for the supplement Prevagen. The ads typically feature someone talking about how they noticed they weren’t as sharp as they once were, but after they began taking Prevagen, they saw a marked improvement in their memory and mental acuity.

The ads also tout that such results are clinically proven. What they don’t tell you is that this clinical study was just 10 individuals, that the study was done by the company that owns Prevagen. They’ve also been sued by the FTC over the claims and agreed to put in a small disclaimer.

Numerous scientific and medical authorities have stated categorically that there is no way for Prevagen to work as it’s advertised. Apparently the active ingredient has to make it into the brain intact to have any effect, but this ingredient is easily digested and broken down by the body and so never reaches the brain.

I’ve noticed in some of the more recent commercials that they’ve added the phrase, “available without a prescription.” This clearly implies some sort of significant medical value to the product, despite the fact that this disclaimer is on the package. “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

The advertising for Prevagen borders on deceptive, and no doubt the company has an army of lawyers who research just how far the company can go without actually breaking the law.

I have little doubt that some of these lawyers, and certainly some of the people who work for the company, are church goers who think of themselves as good and faithful people. If anyone were to challenge them on that they would surely say they weren’t doing anything illegal, and besides, faith is a private thing between them and God.

Donald Trump used this last defense when Pope Francis publicly stated that some of Trump’s inklings were not Christian. Said Trump, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian. No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man’s religion or faith,”^[1]

I have a feeling that both the Apostle Paul, as well as Jesus, would disagree with that statement. In our gospel reading today Jesus speaks of the church correcting members who sin, and Paul is clear that his understanding of the faith calls for people to love one another. He even says that love is the fulfillment of the law because Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

For Paul, to be in Christ transforms one from conforming to the ways of the world, what Paul typically labels “the flesh,” to the way of Jesus. This is above all the way of love. The person who has put on the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul exhorts his readers to do, will no longer measure their actions by whether or not they can say they are legal. Instead they will only do what does no wrong to a neighbor.

It is most unfortunate that Paul’s words on being saved by grace through faith have been distorted to mean that it only matters what you believe, not what you do. Despite his insistence that we are saved by God’s grace and not our works, Paul nonetheless, in all of his letters, exhorts people to very specific sorts of behavior, just as he does in our reading today.

To be in Christ is to become a new creation who acts out the grace and love received from God. I think Paul would agree with Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that says, “Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

There has been a quote bouncing around on Facebook of late which I also shared on my page. It’s from Kurt Struckmeyer’s book A Conspiracy of Love, and it says this.

At the heart of Christianity is a powerful ethic. It is what the first followers of Jesus call The Way – a way of living based on love and compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness, inclusion and acceptance, generosity and justice. This ethic is what makes Christianity good. Without it, Christians can become rigid and intolerant, self-righteous and condemning, hate filled and violent, selfish and unjust. In other words, without the ethic of Jesus, Christians can represent the worst humanity has to offer.[2]

That’s a rather stunning statement. Christians can represent the worst humanity has to offer if they are not guided by the way of Jesus. Believing in Jesus does not necessitate following the way of Jesus. Even having a relationship with Jesus does not necessarily mean walking in the way of Jesus, and I think Paul is speaking of the way of Jesus when he calls his readers to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

To be honest, I do not understand why so many people who are adamant in their declarations of Christian faith seem to have missed the part about putting on Christ. To put on Jesus, to wear Jesus like clothing, is to manifest Jesus with one’s life. Wearing Jesus means that other people will see Jesus when they look at you, and that means they will see love. They will see a pattern of behavior that does no wrong to a neighbor.

I wonder what would happen if those working at the advertising agency creating commercials for Prevagen put on Christ and so asked themselves whether or not what they were doing did any wrong to a neighbor. I wonder the same about all sorts of companies that make their money off a tricking people into signing up for paid membership that they thought was free. I wonder about legal advice that helps a company skirt the law. What would happen if all these people cared and asked, does this injure my neighbor?

It seems to me that there are occupations that would be off limits for those who are in Christ, who put on Christ. But the question of whether something harms my neighbor is bigger than just jobs. Does how I spend or invest my money harm my neighbor? Does how I vote harm my neighbor? Does how I live my life harm my neighbor. Paul says that for the Christian, the answer needs to be, ‘No,” for Love does no wrong to a neighbor.

Of course it’s a pipe dream to think that people who run deceptive businesses, who worry about profits above all else, who care only for themselves, will suddenly start to worry about whether their actions harm their neighbor. And when the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome, he has no expectation that the world will suddenly be motivated and guided primarily by love, but he does fully expect that to be the way things are in the church.

In the Presbyterian Book of Order there is a hundred-year-old statement labeled “The Great Ends of the Church.” Ends here refers to the church’s primary reasons for existing. The last in the list of six reads, “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”[3] In other words, it is our job as the church to show the world what things look like when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, when we wear Jesus and so are guided by love of God and neighbor.

But Paul doesn’t expect this to happen just because we are trying hard to please God. Rather Paul expects this to flow naturally from encountering the incredible love, the amazing grace, the unexpected embrace of God in Jesus that would go so far as a cross to reach out to us.

A famous theologian, when asked to sum up his life’s work in a single sentence, supposedly replied with the words of a song he learned as a child. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”[4] To know that fully, to realize that God’s love in Christ is there for us with no ifs, ands, or buts, is to be held securely in something that frees us to live differently, to live out the way of Jesus. And oh, how the world needs more people, and especially needs more Christians, whose lives show Christ to the world.

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[1] “Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump’s Christianity,” BBC.com, February 16, 2016

[2] Kurt Struckmeyer, A Conspiracy of Love: Following Jesus in a Postmodern World (p. 202). (Eugene OR: Resource Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2016), Kindle Edition, p. 202

[3] Book of Order, F-1.0304

[4] Attributed to Karl Barth, see www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/did-karl-barth-really-say-jesus-loves-me-this-i-know/

Baptism as Beginning (Matthew 3:13-17)

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

Baptism and Beginning

Matthew 3:13-17
Baptism as Beginning
James Sledge                                                                                     January 8, 2023

Liz Valente, Baptism of Jesus, 2021

 Beyond Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, there are not too many events in Jesus’ life that make it into all four gospels. Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist is one of those events, even if the reference to it is rather elliptical in John’s gospel. Jesus’ baptism by John posed something of a difficulty for the early church and for the gospel writers. John’s baptism was one of repentance for sin, so why would Jesus need this? And each gospel has its own way of making sure the reader knows that Jesus is greater than John.

In the reading we heard this morning, John objects to Jesus’ request for baptism. “I need to be baptized by you,” says the Baptist. “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness,” replies Jesus. To be honest, I’ve never been entirely certain what this means, but it implies that this is God’s will. God’s plans have Jesus connected to the problem of human sinfulness.

It is interesting that John is the one who tries to get in the way of God’s will. He is the one who is sent to prepare the way of the Lord, but when Jesus comes to him, he tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized. It does seem a little strange, the Messiah being baptized with the same baptism as all those people who came out because they heard John’s cry, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

John, even though he is God’s prophet, thinks he knows how the Messiah should act. Like most everyone, he is a little surprised by the sort of Messiah Jesus turns out to be. Thankfully, he’s willing to listen to Jesus. A lot of people aren’t. When Jesus surprises or disappoints them, they turn away.