Sermon: The Christmas I Choose

 Isaiah 58:6-9a
The Christmas I Choose
James Sledge                                                                            December 17, 2023 

I don’t suppose I need to tell anyone that it’s Advent and that Christmas is just around the corner. You would be forgiven for not noticing some movements of the liturgical calendar. No one sends out Reign of Christ or Trinity Sunday cards, and those days can come and go with scarcely anyone being aware.

That’s certainly not the case with Advent and Christmas. We didn’t have Advent candles in the South Carolina Presbyterian church of my elementary school days, but I can’t imagine there is a Presbyterian church anywhere that doesn’t have them now.

As you might imagine, I follow lots of minister colleagues as well as some of the congregations they serve on Facebook and Instagram, and those feeds are replete with all the varied way people are welcoming in the season. There are a plethora of different themes for Advent. Some churches have a tree in the chancel area. Some utilize purple candles and banners while others go with blue, and some have one pink candle while others, us included, go with all the same color.

Like us, most churches pull out special music for the season. Some of the churches I’ve served always did an Advent/Christmas cantata, often taking over the sermon slot on the third Sunday of Advent. Here we had a wonderful performance of the Messiah last Sunday afternoon, and there will be brass on Christmas Eve to help us celebrate the birth of a Savior.

The coming of the Word made flesh certainly deserves our worship and celebration. Something world changing has happened. An old epoch closed and a new one began. The promise of God’s new day, of a world set right, became visibly present.

No doubt many of you have your own way of marking the season at home. Perhaps you read an Advent devotional or light your own Advent candle on the dining room table. And most all of us decorate our homes.

How many of you add fasting to your Advent activities? Raise your hand. Nobody? Me either. That probably doesn’t surprise anyone. I don’t know many people who use fasting as a significant part of their spiritual life. Perhaps it shows up here and there in some folk’s Lenten preparations, but not in Advent or Christmas.

That, and a little lack of context, may let us miss what the prophet is talking about in our scripture today when he says, Is not this the fast that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thong of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? I think I know what is meant by loosing the bonds of injustice and letting the oppressed go free, but what does any of this have to do with fasting?

Unlike in our time, fasting played a significant role in religious practice in Israel. It apparently was still the same in Jesus’ day because he warns people not to look haggard and dismal when fasting so that others will notice. And just prior to the passage we heard from Isaiah, the prophet speaks of how religious Israel is but suggests that it does no good.

Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, says the prophet. He speaks of how they delight to draw near to God. Yet nonetheless, the prophet describes the people crying out God, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

The prophet describes a situation where the people point out their religiousness and then wonder why God does not seem to be there for them. Look they say, “We do all the religious things we’re supposed to do. We throw ourselves into religious activity with abandon. Our worship is top notch. Why does God not seem to take note?”

In this context, the fast spoken of in our reading today is a call to stop imagining that getting worship or religious rituals correct will impress God. Is not this the fast that I choose… or perhaps, is not this the worship that I choose, the spiritual discipline that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thong of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

The prophet warns Israel about a religiousness that fails to transform those who practice it. Getting all the details just so, trafficking in all the right symbols and rituals, practicing the best prayer techniques, none of these matter if their behaviors don’t align with God’s will, if they don’t construct the sort of world that God desires.

There is a quote that floats around on the internet which is purportedly from Father Richard Rohr, the popular Franciscan priest who runs the Center for Action and Contemplation. I’ve never been able to find the original source of the quote, but it certainly does sound very much like Father Rohr.

Christianity is a lifestyle - a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established "religion" (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one's "personal Lord and Savior…" The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.

It is incredibly easy to go through all our Advent and Christmas activity, to get caught up in the wonderful music and worship as we, rightfully, celebrate the birth of a Savior, and then return to life as usual in January, not renewed and energized to live Christ centered lives, but simply worn out. It is easy to do a stellar job of getting it all just right but to live as though nothing has changed.

Especially in times like these, with unimaginable cruelty and terror by Hamas, civilians being slaughtered in Gaza, and Christmas celebrations canceled in Bethlehem over the horror of it all, it can be tempting for Christmas to be an escape from reality, a retreat into the warmth of familiar rituals and beloved carols. We can have a sanctuary of cheer and goodwill that insulates us from the world, if only for a brief moment.

But then the prophet speaks. Is not this the fast that I choose, is not this the Christmas that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thong of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

In one of those beloved Christmas carols we sing every year, in the verse we use in place of the Kyrie during Advent and Christmas, it says, “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray; cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.” What does that mean, for the holy child to be born in us? What does that look like?

The medieval mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart once reflected on Mary’s role in the Christmas story, how she was “the mother of God,” the one who bears God into the world. He writes,

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and culture? This then is the fulfillment of time: when the Son of God is begotten in us.[1]

I have a pretty good idea what that looks like. Mary sang about it on the first Sunday in Advent when she spoke of the powerful being brought down from their thrones, the lowly lifted up, the hungry filled with good things, and the rich sent away empty. We heard Zechariah prophesy about it last Sunday when he spoke of a Savior who would “guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And today Isaiah speaks for God saying, Is not this the fast that I choose, the Christmas celebration that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thong of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

We are called to join our voices with those of Mary, Zechariah, and Isaiah. We are to do more than just celebrate another Christmas, we are to embody it, to proclaim it, to do whatever we can to undo injustice, lift up the oppressed, and break the yoke. Then, as Meister Eckart says, “the Son of God is begotten in us.”

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[1] Quoted in Barbara Brown Taylor, “Mothers of God” in Gospel Medicine, (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995) p. 153

Sermon: Embracing the Dream

 Luke 1:57-80
Embracing the Dream
James Sledge                                                                            December 10, 2023 

By now I assume that many of you have started to receive Christmas cards. I know we have at our house. Inevitably, at least one of those cards will feature the phrase, “Peace on earth.” It’s a Christmas standard lifted straight from the nativity story in Luke’s gospel, but particularly in this year, it strikes a strange note with me.

The war in Ukraine has been dragging on for nearly two years. The bloody Hamas attack on Israel in October has been met with the wholesale slaughter of civilians on the part of Israel. The war in Sudan is replete with atrocities and massacres. China continues to hint at an invasion of Taiwan. Iranian backed militias are attacking American forces in Syria, and I could go on and on. Peace on earth feels a long way away.

I’m reminded of the Christmas carol, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. The carol borrowed some of the verses from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem “Christmas Bells” which was written during the Civil War. It opens,

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and mild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

However, the carol left out some of the verses, those dealing explicitly with the Civil War.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

The news of our day also mocks the song of peace on earth, and I wonder what response we in the church have. Do we have anything more than a cute baby in a manger, some warmth and nostalgia, or the promise of heaven when we die? The gospels insist that we do, that something more has happened than just the birth of a baby.

You can see that in our scripture for this morning. The story of John’s birth insists that God is up to something. God has remembered the covenant with Israel, the promises made all those years ago to Abraham and Sarah. God has looked with favor on Israel and redeemed them.

Curiously, when the story of John the Baptist begins with a visit to Zechariah by the angel Gabriel, the opening words of that story are, In the days of King Herod of Judea… In much the same way, the story of Jesus’ birth will open with, In those days a decree went out from the Emperor Augustus…

The story of God acting in history is set in the context of the cruel reign of Herod, and the power of the Roman empire, and empire that was always at war somewhere, and that subjugated Israel and would employ the worst sort of cruelty to maintain their rule. Jesus himself would feel the wrath of that cruelty.

The stories of John’s and Jesus’ births are not just a bit of warm nostalgia. They are set in the context of the often-ugly geopolitics of the day. I’m sure there were Israelites who looked out on the news and situation of their day and saw little reason to celebrate, little reason for hope, but it is in this very context that Luke has Zechariah offer his prophecy.

Speaking of hope, I once read something by Brian McLaren where he contrasted hopes and dreams with wishes.[1] It’s a bit of a semantics argument, but I think he has a point. When someone says, “I wish I could win the lottery,” they usually don’t have any real hope of doing so. It’s just a wish.

Sometimes I think we’ve turned Christmas into little more than a wish. We wish people a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, but it doesn’t have much more meaning that saying, “Have a good day.” There is no expectation that such a wish accomplishes something or that we plan on doing anything to make it happen. It’s little more than a pleasantry, a greeting.

That’s certainly not the sort of thing found in the biblical accounts associated with Jesus’ birth. When Zechariah is filled with the Spirit and begins to prophesy, there are no “I wish” statements or “Wouldn’t it be nice.” Instead it is “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David… Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant.”

Perhaps you noticed that prophets often get their tenses wrong. They speak of what is to come as though it has happened. That is because they’re not simply wishing. They have a vision of what is to be, a vivid hope and dream of what is to come.

I’ve seen something of that sort happen within my lifetime. When Martin Luther King, Jr. made his “I have a dream” speech, he was not simply wishing for things to be better. He had a vision, a vivid hope and dream of what would eventually be. And so he worked tirelessly for that vision, for that dream. The dreams of prophets work that way.

Unfortunately, Christendom domesticated Jesus and made him compatible with empire and the wealthy exploiting the poor. The radical dream of Jesus, of a world where God’s will is done, where love triumphs over hate, got pushed aside, and the dreams of prophets like Zechariah became so much pie in the sky by and by.

I wonder if what the world really needs right now isn’t for people of faith actually to take up the vision of Zechariah, to embrace the radical dream of Jesus. To recover the Christmas hope of God breaking into history in Jesus and setting something new and wonderful loose in the world, something that has the power to transform and make new.

I wonder if what the world really needs right now isn’t for people of faith boldly to proclaim something more than a cute baby in a manger, to proclaim the vision, the dream of a new day that the births of John and Jesus herald.

I wonder if what the world needs most of all isn’t for people of faith to embrace that vision, that dream of a new day, and to work tirelessly to create it, knowing that the world resists it, just as it resisted Jesus.

God has looked favorably upon us and has raised up a savior for us. So join in the dream the prophet Zechariah proclaims. “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Thanks be to God!

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[1] McLaren, Brian D., We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (New York: Jericho Books, 2014), p. 63.

 

Sermon: Surprising Standards

 Matthew 25:31-46 
 Surprising Standards
James Sledge                                               November 26, 2023, Reign of Christ 

There is an old Jewish folk tale where a young rabbi wanted more than anything else to meet Elijah the prophet. (Elijah, unlike other people in the Old Testament, had not died but had been taken up to heaven in a whirlwind.) The father of this young rabbi told him that if he diligently studied the Torah with his whole heart, he would indeed meet Elijah.

The young rabbi studied diligently for a month but did not meet Elijah. He complained to his father, but the father only scolded his impatience and told him to keep studying. One evening as the rabbi was hard at his studies, a tramp came to his door. The fellow was disgusting to look at; the young rabbi had never seen an uglier man in all his life. Annoyed at having been interrupted by such an unsavory character, the rabbi shooed the man away and returned to his studying.

The next day his father came and asked if he had seen Elijah yet. “No,” replied the son. 

“Did no one come here last night,” asked the father. 

“Yes,” replied the rabbi. “An old tramp.” 

“Did you wish him ‘shalom aleikhem’?” asked the father, referring to the traditional greeting meaning “Peace be upon you.”

“No,” said the rabbi.

“You fool,” cried his father. “Didn’t you know that that was Elijah the Prophet? But now it’s too late.” The tale goes on to say that for the rest of his life, the rabbi always greeted strangers with “Shalom aleikhem,” and treated them with great kindness.^[1]

Tales such as this are not all that uncommon, and the parable Jesus tells today is similar in many ways. People encounter, or fail to encounter, either Elijah or the Son of Man based on how they treat people who are unimportant, even unpleasant or distasteful. Jesus’ parable, however, is much more nuanced than the folk tale I shared, especially if we can hear it more like the people for whom the gospel of Matthew is written.

Matthew’s community is made up largely of Jews who follow Jesus as their Jewish Messiah. For some years this church had operated out of the synagogue as simply one more sort of Judaism, but in recent years their relationship with the synagogue has soured, to the point that the rabbis no longer welcomed them there.

Perhaps because the majority of their Jewish colleagues had rejected Jesus as Messiah, the church had begun to reach out to Gentiles, non-Jews. And as this church reads Matthew’s gospel, they hear a parable, Jesus’ final parable, that talks about these folks they are trying to evangelize.

It’s easy to miss this when we read Matthew. When we hear that all the nations will be gathered before (the Son of Man), that likely sounds like a way of saying all people will be gathered, but Matthew’s church would not have heard it that way. For them the term translated “nations” more regularly referred to Gentiles. And besides, from a Jewish perspective, “the nations” was a way of speaking about non-Jews, outsiders, them.

Jesus’ parable seems to address the judgment of those Matthew’s church is trying to evangelize, and the church members likely presumed that such a judgment would be based on how Gentiles had responded to the good news about Jesus. But the criterion for judgment turns out to be something quite different. “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

On one level, the parable says that Gentiles, outsiders, are judged on how they treated Christian missionaries. Did they love them as neighbors without ever having heard Jesus’ commands to do so? Such a notion turns some typical understandings of evangelism on their head. Here treating the missionaries well counts as much as embracing Jesus as their Savior.

That is surprising indeed, but it may not be the most surprising element of the parable, another thing we may miss because we’ve been so conditioned to thinking of a triumphant Jesus. This parable sits right up against the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and execution. There is an audacious claim here. The one who the world judges as deserving death is the very one who will judge the world. The contrast could not be more vivid.

In this parable, the rejected and despised one is the same one we celebrate today as the one who reigns over all the cosmos, but it turns out that the ways of Jesus’ commonwealth are very little like the ways of the world.

Unlike in our time, the followers of Jesus’ in Matthew’s day were a small minority, often ostracized and marginalized, and Jesus says that how Gentiles treat the “least of these,” the most unimportant of these ostracized and marginalized people, is what counts for something in the new day Jesus will bring. Do you realize how contrary this is to the ways of our world?

In our world, we do nice things for those we love, for those who are our friends, and for those who may be able to do something for us in return. We’ve seen the latter on vivid display lately with regard to the Supreme Court and the extravagant gifts given to some of the justices. Presumably such gifts were given because the justices are important, have power and influence. Certainly these generous donors would not do something similar for a stranger, a prisoner, a homeless person, or someone struggling with food insecurity. But Jesus says that treatment of those the world deems unimportant and insignificant is what counts for something in God’s new day.

And if Jesus so values the kindness of those who are outsiders, then surely Jesus assumes that his own followers will do the same for those who are strangers, hungry, poorly clothed, incarcerated, homeless, insignificant, or unimportant.

If Jesus judges outsiders on how they treat the most unimportant and insignificant, then surely he expects his followers to create a different sort of world.

I just used a Mr. Rogers illustration in a sermon two weeks ago, but this story seems to go well here, so here’s another. After all, he was an ordained Presbyterian pastor so he’s one of our own.

 A limo once took Fred Rogers to a fancy dinner party at a PBS executive’s home. When they arrived, Rogers discovered that the driver was supposed to wait outside until the party was over. But Rogers insisted the driver come in and join the party, much to the dismay of his wealthy host.

On the way home, Rogers sat up front with the driver. Learning that they were passing near the driver’s home, he asked if they might stop so he could meet his family. The driver said it was one of the best nights of his life. Mr. Rogers played jazz piano and visited with the family late into the night. And for the rest of his life Rogers sent notes and kept in touch with a driver he met one night.^[2]

In some small way, I think this story embodies the sort of thing Jesus is talking about in today’s parable, about the ways of Jesus’ new commonwealth. In that new day, how people treat the unimportant and insignificant, how they respond to the needs of those who can do nothing in return, are the things that truly matter.

At our recent church retreat at Massanetta Springs, the retreat leader quoted from the Book of Order where the last of the great ends or purposes of the church is, “the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”[3] That is what we do when we love and care for the least of these. We put God’s new day on display for the world. We model a different sort of world to those around us.

When Jesus came to Palestine all those years ago, he began to create an alternative community where all were welcome, especially those on the margins. Jesus invites us into that community, whoever we are, wherever we’re from, and whatever we imagine makes us unwelcome. And he calls us to expand that community as we model Jesus’ love to an angry and hurting world.

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[1] From “The Tramp” in Ellen Frankel, The Classic Tales: 4000 Years of Jewish Lore (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc. 1993) pp. 604-605.

[2] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/07/28/mf.mrrogers.neighbor/

[3] Book of Order, F-1.0304

Sermon: Taking Risks

 Matthew 25:14-30
Taking Risks
James Sledge                                                                            November 19, 2023 

When I was in seminary, I took an elective class on evangelism. It was a three week long course with a week of it being travel to visit various churches that were doing a good job of drawing in lots of people. We spent a good deal of time at the largest church in our denomination as well as at churches of different traditions.

There was one church we visited that I’m not sure how it became part of the itinerary. Perhaps it was meant to be a negative example. This was a little country church in North Carolina, but the suburbs had gradually changed their neighborhood.

When we visited, the church sat on a little corner of land that was bordered by a new four lane highway on one side, a crossroad on the other side, and a shopping center and its entrance on the other two sides. It looked a little strange and out of place, this old brick church wedged in between roads and a shopping center.

In the course of meeting with church members, we discovered that they had been offered a ridiculous sum of money for their property. There was probably enough acreage to put in a restaurant and a couple of businesses, and developers were eager to acquire the land.

The little church was struggling with declining attendance and membership. The building was falling into disrepair, and the future looked grim. But money from a sale could allow a fresh start. They would be flush with cash and easily able to rent space somewhere to meet while they decided about what came next. They could even hire new staff and embark on an evangelism campaign that could create a thriving new congregation, and people from the presbytery had encouraged them to take the money and open a, hopefully, exciting new chapter in the church’s life.

But the church had decided against taking the offer. Many of them were getting older and wanted their funerals to be held there. They also worried about what might happen if they had a fresh start. What if they didn’t like what happened? What if the old members got outnumbered by new folks? Those fears were too strong, and no one was able to convince the little church to take a chance on an exciting new future.

This is a rather unusual scenario, but it some ways it is simply an extreme version of something that goes on at churches regularly. Comfort with the status quo and, even more, fears about what might happen often shut down anything bold and new.

More than once I’ve been part of a church conversation where someone had proposed an exciting new ministry, but fears about not being able to find volunteers, worries about tight budgets, and concerns about what impact it might have on the status quo carried the day. And the new ministry never got the green light.

Churches tend to be very risk averse places, and very often worries and fears about what might or might not happen are more than enough to overcome any excitement about trying something new and unproven. Even the most liberal or progressive congregations can be incredibly conservative when it comes to trying new things.

In the Presbyterians Church’s Book of Order, in the opening chapter, it says this under the heading The Calling of the Church. “The Church is the body of Christ. Christ gives to the Church all the gifts necessary to be his body. The Church strives to demonstrate these gifts in its life as a community in the world (1 Cor. 12:27-28): The Church is to be a community of faith, entrusting itself to God alone, even at the risk of losing its life.”[1]

At the risk of losing its life. That’s what it says, but I’m not sure how many congregations actually embody this statement. Many congregations won’t risk a little money or the possibility that the church might change significantly. Never mind their own life.

Now some of you may be wondering what any of this has to do with a scripture passage that has often been interpreted to mean, “Use your talents wisely.” But it turns out that this parable is not about that at all, not unless you define “wisely” in a fairly peculiar way.

The fact that the monetary unit in the parable happens to be a talent lends itself to the rather trite, proverbial understanding, but in Jesus’ day, a talent was a weight and a large sum of money, by some estimates, around fifteen year’s wages for the average worker. Perhaps if the parable said that the slaves were given five million, two million, and one million dollars we might hear it differently.

This is also a parable where we need to pay attention to details. We are told that the slave who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. The slave with two talents does the same thing. But what did they have to do to turn such a huge profit? I’m sure we have some finance people in the congregation today who would tell us that any investment that quickly doubles your money is a risky one, and you could easily have lost a fortune.

Another facet of this parable that may escape us has to do with the last slave’s burying his talent in the ground. To my mind that sounds like the crotchety old guy who keeps his money under his mattress because he doesn’t trust banks, but there were no banks as we know them in Jesus’ day. There were no regulations or safeguards about money invested with what were then called bankers, and so many who first heard Jesus’ parable may well have thought that the last slave did the prudent thing, the very thing they would have done.

Finally, we are told this last slave’s reason for doing what he did. He was afraid. I think I can sympathize. If someone had given me a large sum of money to take care of until their return, I would be worried about not losing any of it, and I might well have put it somewhere FDIC insured, which is exactly the sort of thing this slave does.

When we examine this parable carefully, the third of four parables that Jesus tells to address what his followers should be doing in the time before his return, those who are praised and rewarded are the ones who took big risks. The parable doesn’t even seem to consider the possibility that they could have lost it all, so either Jesus means that risks taken for the sake of the gospel always produce rewards, or that the slaves would still have been praised even if they had lost huge amounts.

So what would we say if Jesus came back today and asked what we’ve done with the treasure he’d given us? On one level, that treasure is the good news of the gospel. How are we doing bold and even risky things with the gospel?

But we’ve also been entrusted with the legacy of those who went before us, a rich history along with wonderful and historic facilities. What are we doing with those that is bold and even risky? Or are we just trying to make sure they stay intact?

And what motivates us? The desire to use our treasure to do amazing things, or fears over what might happen if we’re not careful?

I believe that all congregations have a calling, work the Jesus gives them to do. A lot of congregations never live into this because they are too cautious, too fearful. But those that do, churches both large and small, do wondrous and amazing things.

Where is Jesus calling the Meeting House?

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[1] Book of Order, F-1.0301

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.