Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
In today's verses from Hebrews, the writer recounts great acts of faith from heroes of Old Testament days, but then adds, "Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..."
My congregation repeats the Apostles' Creed most Sundays, saying that we believe in "the communion of saints." Saints here speaks of all those in Christ, not some sort of super Christians, and the creed is saying that we are all joined together. Together we form a great arc through history. The faith of saints long dead impacts us, and our faith affects them.
Yet we modern American Christians have turned our faith into something that is largely individualistic. Despite what we may say in a creed, we tend to view faith as something personal between us and God. And I think it is such thinking that allows people to participate in a congregation, do a little mission work down at the homeless shelter, then make business and political decisions with no thought as to how those decisions square with the teachings of Jesus.
Our associate pastor preached a sermon recently that honed in on the line in 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul speaks of believers as one body saying, "If one member suffers all suffer together." Yet in our individualist view of faith, others are so disconnected from us that their suffering is usually easy for us to ignore, and it has little impact on how we live out our faith.
I first heard of this when my father read me "Bible Stories" as a small child, and we studied it as children in Sunday School. But I've never really understood why anyone would tell this story to a child, the story of Abraham preparing to kill his son, Isaac.
I've never been sure what to do with this story. Is Abraham to be blessed by God only because he passed this "test?" The angel says, "Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore." But this promise had been made by God to Abram long before this event. Was there some fine print in the covenant that said Abram would have to prove himself for the promise to be good?
I'm not sure it is possible to read this story as a straightforward account of actual events and not be left with some truly disturbing images of God. God comes off as nearly sadistic. After all, if God truly "knows the heart," why the need for any test at all? And God is the one who recruited Abraham for this role, who had uprooted his life and took him away from family.
I find this text disturbing, but I know that many Christians find my questioning of the text equalling disturbing. If, like me, you grew up in a Protestant church culture that revered the Bible, it can be difficult to challenge the obvious, plain meaning of a biblical account. But I am convinced that we, like Jacob, must wrestle with the God we meet in the pages of Scripture if we are to be blessed and changed (although we may find ourselves with limp; see Genesis 32:22-32).
Is this story a "legend" about Abraham told to demonstrate his remarkable faith? Is it a story of a pious man who thought he heard God tell him an impossible thing and in his religious zeal set off without even considering that he might be wrong? Surely he might well have followed the advice given in 1 John 4, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God."
Whatever is actually going on in this story, God's promise to Abraham and Sarah, the promise present in the boy Isaac, seems to be in serious peril. But in the end, God intervenes, and the promise is preserved. Does that happen only because Abraham performs well enough in his test? That seems out of character with the God who had made the covenant with Abraham, and surely with the God we meet in Jesus.
I wonder, what picture or image of God and God's character do you have? Where does it come from, and how do you handle those places in Scripture that seem contrary to your image? Where do you find yourself wrestling with God?
Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind. They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
So begins Psalm 12. In every age there are times when the world seems to be going to pot, when people are abandoning the ways of God. The psalmist sees that happening in his time. Which is not to say that they people of his day weren't being religious. If other biblical passages are any guide, people continued to go to the Temple, to make their offerings, and to participate in the festivals and celebrations of the faith. The prophets regularly complained about those who confessed God with their lips but failed to live as God commanded.
The same sort of thing can be said in our day. More attention is given to religious symbols and observances than to how people live. There is a facebook group insisting that this is a Christian nation, and people rally around nativity displays and displays of the 10 Commandments. Yet our culture seems to value consumerism, greed, individualism over any biblical designs for society.
Regardless of the age or situation, there are times when it is easy to sing along with the psalmist. "Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly." But the psalmist does not make the move that some of us want to make. The psalmist never says, "It's hopeless." The psalmist never writes, "The whole world's going to pot." Instead the psalmist proclaims a word from God, "Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up."
I think that one of the great challenges of faith is to trust that God is still sovereign, that God still controls human destiny, even when things look bad. It is so easy to make faith about nothing more than one's personal spiritual state, and in the process deny that God is the God of history. O God, help me trust that you bend all things to your will.
"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." So says Jesus in today's verses from the gospel of John. No doubt the familiarity with these words has numbed many Christians to the oddness of this metaphor. What does this mean? What in our personal lives of faith and spirituality is described by never being hungry and never being thirsty?
Certainly my own spiritual life can get pretty dry at times, and I can feel empty. How do such experiences fit into what Jesus says?
I don't have any neat answers to such questions. And sometimes I think that the trite formulas spouted by some Christians are more of an impediment to deep faith than they are a help. Faith needs to wrestle with doubt, with feelings of God's absence, with questions of "Why?" if it is going to grow and mature.
So I won't offer a one size fits all interpretation of today's words on hunger and thirst, but I will speak of my own experience. Often times my own spiritual dryness is connected to barriers I set up between me and Jesus. Sometimes these barriers have nice, religious clothing such as my work as a pastor. Serving a religious institution is not always the same thing as following Jesus, and sometimes I need to make a concerted effort to draw close to Jesus once more.
What are the things in your life that get in the way? In my case, they are rarely things which seem patently evil or opposed to God. The best barriers, like the best idols, usually appeal to our religious and spiritual hungers.
1 Corinthians 13 is most often heard at weddings, but it is not an ode to love, certainly not romantic love. Paul is lecturing wayward children, admonishing them for engaging in petty divisions. The behavior of the Corinthians is not unlike that of siblings engaged in all out rivalry. And the Corinthians could surely see themselves in all those things "love is not."
A member of this congregation was browsing through the church library today, looking for something good to read. I happened by and she asked for suggestions. I had to admit that I don't know the contents of our library very well, but like a lot of church libraries, you have to wade through a good bit of junk to find the good stuff.
I helped her find something but agreed that it might be helpful to post a list of "suggested readings." I'm going to do just that, but first I'd like your thoughts. What are some good books that every person of faith should read?
In today's reading from John, Jesus continues to speak to the religious authorities. Jesus notes that they "search the scriptures." The problem is not that they don't know their Bible. They know it exceedingly well, and in their minds, Jesus can't be doing the work of God because he violates Sabbath, because he claims authority no human can claim. Jesus says that he will not condemn them when they stand before God, rather, "your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope." (Jesus uses "Moses" is a metaphor for the Law as he was thought to have been the author of the first 5 books of the Bible.)
What a curious thing. Jesus says that those who know their scripture forward and backward, who seek diligently to live according to what it says, will be condemned by the very Law they revere.
I've not met many serious Christians who don't in some way seek to follow the Bible. We Presbyterians say it is "the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ..." and "the rule of faith and life." Yet even among Presbyterians, we come to wildly different conclusions about what Scripture says. Is it possible of us to be ones who "search the scriptures" and yet then find ourselves condemned by those same scriptures?
Surely Jesus give us a huge warning about any arrogance or certainty regarding our particular interpretations. But still we must read and interpret Scripture if we are to be people of faith. And in this task I think we would be well served by doing the best we can to let Jesus be the lens by which we read the Bible. After all, to be Christian is to claim Jesus as the truest revelation of God and God's will for us. Christians do not worship and serve the Bible. We worship and serve God whom we have encountered in Jesus. Our desire is not to follow the Bible, but to follow Jesus. For me, the Bible is the unique, authoritative, and inspired guide to doing just that, but it is still only a guide. And if I use it to justify something that Jesus would not condone, then surely the Scripture condemns me in the very same way Jesus says it condemns those religious authorities in our reading today.
In today's gospel reading Jesus addresses his critics who are upset at his healing on the Sabbath, and who are even more incensed that Jesus has called God "My Father." This marks the opening conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities, laying out themes that will repeat throughout John's gospel.
Jesus response seems odd to me in a way. He says he's only doing what God shows him to do, that he can do nothing on his own. It's not really developed here, by I hear echos of similar statements in John where the amazing works of Jesus are seen as self evident. How could he be doing some of what he does if he's not empowered by God in some way.
To me, this raises an interesting question about who is and isn't doing God's work. Very often, we use doctrinal litmus tests to weigh whether or not someone is sufficiently Christian. In my own denomination, we continue to struggle and fight over the issue of whether or not to ordain gays and lesbians. Within these arguments, I've heard it said that it doesn't matter how much evidence there is that God is doing great things through a particular person. If that person is in a gay relationship, the church cannot tolerate that.
I realize that issues of biblical interpretation can be complex and difficult, and that people of deep faith can come to very different conclusions, but at times it seems that we are more interested in our positions and the labels that go with them than we are in the work of God.
And so in my denomination there are many conservative churches who won't support the mission budget of the denomination because that denomination is "too liberal." And many liberals won't support the aid work of agencies they deem "too conservative." And very often, these decisions are not based in any way on the mission work or aid in question. They are only about philosophical or theological labels and divides.
I don't have any easy answers to this situation, but it gives me some pause about the way I sometimes label and judge others.
In today's gospel reading, Jesus heals a man who has been an invalid for 38 years. Surely this is something to celebrate, but Jesus has healed him on the Sabbath, and some of the religious authorities are fit to be tied. Run ins over the Sabbath are featured in all the gospels, so clearly Jesus has something of a reputation for being a religious rule-breaker.
But while it is easy to smugly laugh at the wooden, rigid adherence to rules by Jesus' opponents, rules are essential for any sort of society. And Jesus never speaks against keeping the Sabbath, on having a day focused on God and rest. Jesus' conflict is not with keeping Sabbath, it is with a faith that worries more about Sabbath than about honoring God, that makes an idol out of Sabbath keeping.
Sabbath keeping was a central part of Jewish identity in Jesus' day. It allowed them to maintain an identity distinct from the Roman, pagan world around them. For the devout, it was central to what it meant to be God's people.
Being over zealous about Sabbath keeping is not much of a problem for American Christians, but we have others things that help us stake out our identity as people of faith. For some, going to church on Sunday is the end all and be all of faith. For others, having a "personal relationship with Jesus" is essential, the thing without which their identity is impossible. For still others, if someone has not been "born again," he is deemed not to be a genuine Christian. The more serious people are about their faith the more likely they are to have some essential element of Christian identity that is non-negotiable. But such elements can easily turn into our own idols.
I think that most American Christians would do well to embrace a few more rules and religious disciplines. Our unwillingness to do so often lets us fashion our own personal religion constructed to fit our preferences and tastes, with little there to shape us into the sort of people God wants us to be. Yet religious disciplines and rules must always serve God. No rule, no spiritual practice, no religious experience can become the things we love and serve, for when it does, it then stands between us and God.
I've always been struck by how many of the Psalms cry out in pain. These "lament" psalms make up the largest single type. And Jesus' cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" quotes the opening verse of Psalm 22. Today's Psalm 57 also cries out to God, seeking refuge. "I lie down among lions that greedily devour human prey; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords."
Besides being a source of great comfort to faithful people who struggle and suffer, the existence of so many lament psalms also says something about the nature of faithful life. For one thing, being a person of faith does not insulate you from the pain and suffering of this world. The notion that people who suffer somehow deserve it is common, but given how common suffering by good people is in the Psalms, a biblical faith would seem to say otherwise.
Additionally, these psalms point to God's special concern for the suffering. Almost all the lament psalms cling to the hope that God will save those who suffer. And when Jesus quotes Psalm 22 on the cross, he clearly knows that the psalm ends with the promise of deliverance, and the hope that all the faithful will praise God's saving acts.
There is much suffering in the world that is hard to understand. Often there is no good answer to the question, "Why?" But faith clings to the promise that suffering does not mean God has abandoned those in pain. Faith clings to hope that only faith can see, trusting that God will indeed bring forth life from the worst tragedy, even from death.
In today's verses from Hebrews, the writer recounts great acts of faith from heroes of Old Testament days, but then adds, "Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..."
