Spiritual Hiccups - Beware of... Pastors?

I follow someone on Twitter who tweets under the name nojunkjustjesus.  This person doesn't seem to have much use for traditional church congregations and denominations.  The tone is a little shrill and over the top.  There is also a lot of over-generalizing about the Church.  But I keep following this person because there is a grain of truth in the tirades against people like me and the denominations and congregations we serve. 

In today's gospel reading, Jesus warns his followers, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets."  In Jesus' day, "scribes" were teachers and experts in the Law.  They were esteemed religious and community leaders.  And in that sense, they occupied a role not so different from  the traditional one many pastors have filled in their communities. 


Things are rapidly changing in our culture, but many congregations still expect their pastor to have connections to the Chamber of Commerce, participate in one of the local service clubs, and give invocations at civic events.  Given this civic standing of pastors, they were often expected to drive a certain sort of car and to dress in the same attire as other important local business folks.  

Change a few words in the above quote from Jesus, and he might be heard talking about pastors.  That's a bit unnerving, for a pastor.  "Beware of the pastors, who like to walk around in long robes and love to be greeted with respect..."


I suspect that most pastors enter their vocation out of a true sense of calling, seeking to live out their faith.  But the call to follow Jesus and work for the kingdom he proclaims is often in tension with other calls, calls to make a living, to provide for a family, to support a congregation and denomination the pastor loves, and so on.  Add to these a little natural human ambition and ego, and it can be very difficult to separate God's call from other motives. 


Jesus said, "Beware of..."  I wonder what he warn us about if he walked our streets today.


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Spiritual Hiccups - Risky Faith

I've been pondering a sermon for June 26, one based primarily on the Genesis story of God "testing" Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice his only son Isaac.  It is a story rich with possibilities, but to be honest, it is a frightening story as well.   Does God really test in such a manner?  Would God ask such a thing?

It seems to me that many Americans, both those in the Church and those who are "spiritual but not religious," envision a God who is extremely safe.  God is sweet and kindly, a source of warmth, blessing and contentment.  No wonder so many of us recoil at the line in Psalm 147 a notion found repeatedly in the Bible, "The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him."

When the disciples receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, this wonderful gift emboldens them, grants them amazing powers, and compels them to proclaim the message of Jesus.  But the Spirit was not the nice gift of a doting grandfather.  This gift would turn their lives upside down and would place them in dire situations where they would have to decide between fulfilling their call or saving their lives.

Many of us think of Jesus as cancelling out all those Old Testament images of a God who tests Abraham by asking him to kill his own son.  But Jesus demands that those who follow him give up their own lives.  Paul insists that to be in Christ is for the old self to die.  And in The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks against the "cheap grace" of a sweet, benign God.  Grace is costly, he insists.  Its cost is seen in the cross demanded of Jesus.  And its cost is seen in Christ's call.  "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

None of this is to deny or diminish God's grace and providential care.  But the biblical God is not to be taken lightly.  God's love calls us into a relationship of risky trusting.  Our testing may be nothing like Abraham's, but we are tested every day as we must decide whether to follow the path of faithful, trusting discipleship that takes up the cross, or whether we will trust in the safe God of our own devising.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Reversal

In today's Old Testament reading, Hannah takes her young son, Samuel, to leave him with Eli to be raised in God's service.  The formerly barren Hannah had promised to dedicate her son as a Nazirite if the LORD would grant her prayer for a child.

After she presents Samuel to the priest, she offers a prayer or song, one that seems to be a model for Mary's song/prayer known to many as the Magnificat.  The same themes of reversal that Mary sings are found here.  The power of the mighty is broken while the feeble are strengthened.  Those who were full now struggle to find food while the hungry grow fat. 

Jesus also speaks of reversal in his ministry, of the first being last, of sinners and prostitutes going into the kingdom ahead of the devout. 

Oddly, despite the Bible regularly trumpeting this theme of reversal, religion seems most often to be focused on the status quo.  In virtually every culture history has known, religion ends up a partner in maintaining the status quo.  Despite the Bible's words on bringing down the powerful and lifting up the poor and oppressed, religion, including the Christian Church, very often becomes an ally with the rich and powerful, as well as an enemy of the poor and oppressed.  Christian theologians once provided religious defenses of slavery.  One esteemed theologian from my own Presbyterian seminary was still arguing that the Bible supported slavery years after the Civil War.  More recently, the South African practice of apartheid was formally sanctioned by church theology.

It seems that there is a strong conserving tendency in the human creature's innate religiosity.  But God's reign does not arrive via conserving, but via radical change, by everything being made new.

Just about every Sunday I pray, "Thy kingdom come..."  But often it seems there is an unspoken caveat.  "Just keep things pretty much as they are." 

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Sunday Sermon video - Body Parts

Spiritual Hiccups - Passing Down the Faith

A verse in Psalm 145 says to God, "One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts."  The psalmist seems to assume that those who have experienced God's grace and favor, who praise and worship God, will not be able to help sharing their enthusiasm for God with the next generation.  The psalmist clearly never met the modern, American Christian.

Anyone who has paid close attention to life in the Church has likely noticed large numbers of parents who are active in Church but whose children are absent.  I have heard some of these parents say that they think faith is a personal choice and they don't want to force it on their children.  And so I know of many children still in elementary school who decide for themselves whether or not to "go to church."

Now if this is starting to sound like the self-serving whining of a pastor who wants more children involved in church programing, that's not where I'm going with this.  I'm more interested in what this situation says about the faith of their parents.  Many of these same parents require their children to participate in sports and other "enrichment" activities.  They certainly require their children to attend school.  This would seem to suggest that these parents view education and enrichment activities as essential components to leading a productive, fulfilling life.  But Christian faith seems not to be so essential.

In her book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, Kenda Dean notes that the vague, banal notions of Christianity uncovered in the "National Study of Youth and Religion" - something the study labeled "moralistic, therapeutic, deism" - were not invented by these young people.  They learned to be "almost Christian" in the Church.  They got their vague notions of faith from a Church that had watered down the faith over the years to the point that many parents understand it to be less important than youth soccer or piano lessons.

And I must confess that I both grew up in and - even as a pastor - too often still proclaim the message of this vague faith that has little to do with actual life, that matters less to real life than music lessons or Little League.  I have to admit that I've been quite comfortable with a faith that is not incarnated into daily living, that is no more than a set of beliefs and notions.  I have my own tendency to be "almost Christian," to believe but still be indistinguishable from the culture, with no discernible faith practices that embody the way of living Jesus taught.

A lot of Mainline Protestant congregations worry a lot about Christian Eduction programs for children.  We are forever trying out new curriculum and models for the Sunday School hour, as though 45 minutes a week on 2 or 3 Sundays a month for 9 months of the year is going to shape and form people into something other than almost Christians.  If anything, it seems that we adults are the ones who need to relearn what it means to be Christian.  Maybe then we would be able to sing with the psalmist about one generation lauding God's works to another.

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Sunday Sermon text - Body Parts

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

Body Parts

James Sledge                                               June 12, 2011 – Pentecost

Today is one of the big celebrations on the Church calendar.  It is Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, the day the Holy Spirit is given so that Jesus’ followers can begin to be his witnesses in all the world.  Of course you would never mistake Pentecost for some of the other celebrations on the Christian calendar.  Church attendance swells at Christmas and Easter, but Pentecost, especially on years when it falls in the summer, barely elicits a yawn.  This year Pentecost comes at the same time as graduations and the end of the school year.  If anything, attendance will likely be down in many congregations.

But despite fewer worshipers, Pentecost does share something in common with Christmas and Easter.  Like those high holy days, it tends to be a recollection of something that happened long ago; Jesus’ birth, his resurrection, and today, the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church.  Isn’t it wonderful what happened nearly 2000 years ago?  The disciples able to speak in other languages… Amazing.  But what does any of that have to do with me or you?

Growing up Presbyterian, I didn’t hear a lot about the Holy Spirit,

except for the Pentecost story.  Oh, it was there in the Apostles’ Creed that we said every Sunday. After God the Father who created heaven and earth, and then a lot about Jesus, his birth, trial, death, and resurrection, we finally said, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” or the Holy Ghost as we said when I was a kid, only making things even more mysterious.  So I believed in the Spirit, which the Creed said had something to do with the virgin Mary having a child, but none of that seemed much related to my life, in or out of church.

Growing up, I never realized that “the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,” and so on, were all connected to the Spirit.  I was perfectly happy to leave the Holy Spirit to the Pentecostals and other enthusiastic sorts who practiced a less subdued, orderly, and controlled version of faith.

When I went to seminary, my particular school had a number of things they did to keep the school connected with the local congregation.  One was to send out teams of students to churches within a reasonable driving distance where we would gather at the church for supper and fellowship on Saturday evening, stay that night with church members, and then lead worship and Christian Education on Sunday.  I think we did this three or four times over the course of the school year.

When the team that I was part of began to think about what we would do when we visited these churches, we decided to work with the theme of the Holy Spirit.  All of us, it seems, realized that our understanding of the Holy Spirit was a bit fuzzy, and we suspected the people in the congregations we would visit were a lot like us.  And so with more than a little trepidation, we started working on a worship service, sermon, class, children’s message, and so on that would address this. 

This was over 15 years ago, and so my memory’s a bit hazy.  But I do remember that we used the same Scripture I just read from 1 Corinthians.  And I recall that when I preached, I decided to test Paul on his contention that no one can say, “ ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”  I told the congregation that we would try it, and then I yelled out “Jesus is Lord!” and waited to see if anything happened.  Nothing did, but a number of people in the pews looked a little uncomfortable.

The Holy Spirit makes a lot of Presbyterians uncomfortable.  We’re perfectly happy remembering that day almost 2000 years ago when the Holy Spirit stirred things up and empowered frightened disciples to begin proclaiming the good news to complete strangers.  But the last thing we want is for a divine wind to rush through here some Sunday morning, spin us around in our seats, and launch us into some new enterprise that we have no idea where it might lead. 

But Paul insists that if we have even the most rudimentary faith, the Spirit is at work in us.  The Spirit is forming and shaping us into integral parts of the body of Christ.  The Spirit is bestowing gifts to each of us.  I’m not talking about talents that we are born with; I’m talking about spiritual gifts that allow all of us to do our part.  As Paul makes clear, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit.  Not “To some,” but “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

Imagine for a moment that you are getting ready to attend a dinner party.  Some of the folks there will be good friends and others will barely be acquaintances.  There’s likely to be a bit of drinking before dinner, and clusters of folks will gather in conversation.  Now nothing ruins a dinner party like people getting into a heated argument, so what topics do most people know to avoid in such settings?..  That’s right; religion and politics.

No doubt there are times when adhering to the old adage against discussing religion and politics is probably the way to go.  Certainly, trying to win a religious argument at a party is bad form.  But from this practice of polite etiquette has arisen the unfortunate notion that religion and faith are private things.

Faith most certainly is a personal thing.  But it is not private.  Faith, by its very nature, binds us together into one body.  The Spirit connects and knits us together, making each of us an essential part of the body.  Each of us has a role to play.  Each of us had gifts to add, and when we suppress the Spirit’s work in us, we diminish the body.

Anyone in a congregation who has ever tried to recruit Sunday School teachers, elders or deacons, someone to lead a project or program, or someone to sing in the choir has heard people say,  “Oh, I could never do that.”  At times these objections may be well founded.  The choir is probably not the best place for a person who genuinely cannot carry a tune to serve.  But many times such objections come with reasons such as, “My faith isn’t strong enough.  I don’t know the Bible well enough.  I don’t understand the Presbyterian system enough.”  Such statements may be real or false modesty, but regardless they seem to proclaim, “The Holy Spirit cannot use me.”

This disdain for the Holy Spirit is aggravated by the notion of faith as a private thing.  When people think that faith is about private beliefs, that even though serving at church or in the community may be a nice thing to do but it is not an integral part of faith, it is no wonder they are perfectly content to believe and “go to church.”  No wonder they think of teaching, singing in the choir, being part of a mission project, of serving as an elder or deacon as something for other people, for the extra effort sort.

But Paul tells his congregation that if in any small way they have begun to experience Jesus as Lord of their life, if in any small way the seed of faith has begun to grow in them, then the Holy Spirit is at work within them, empowering them, gifting them, equipping them so that together they can do all that is necessary to be the body of Christ.  Together, when each of us adds our gifts and does our part, Christ’s presence is made know to the world through us.  But when faith turns private and the work of the Spirit is resisted, the body is wounded, injured and dismembered.  The Church ceases to be the body of Christ and becomes little more than a gathering of people who share similar beliefs.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that virtually everyone here today has experienced some sort of faith.  We’ve all felt ourselves drawn toward Jesus in ways great or small.  And so I can say to all of you that God’s Spirit is at work in you.  The presence of the risen Christ is touching you right now, seeking to stir you and activate you for the common good.  The creative power of the Spirit is at work in you this very moment, equipping you to be an absolutely essential part of the body.  And the body is not whole without you.

Sunday Sermon audio - Body Parts

Spiritual Hiccups - God's Heart

Even though I grew up in the Church, the product of a religious family, God often seemed something of an abstraction to me.  Perhaps this has less to do with my upbringing and is simply due to my own proclivities, but God always felt like a philosophical concept.  I was drawn to this concept, but still...

Many of my own spiritual challenges involve moving past this.  Drawing close to God, becoming aware of God's presence, resting in God, all require a God who is more than concept.  Relating to God in some way would seem to require a certain dynamism on the part of God, and expansiveness that drives God to engage, and even to risk, for the sake of relationship.  There has to be something going on in the heart of God.

I have sometimes been jealous of my more evangelical and fundamentalist brothers and sisters, especially of the way the seem to perceive of God so personally.  But at the same time I am repelled by the way some of them seem to know a God who seems so preoccupied with damnation and punishment of those who don't get the rules of the relationship figured out just so.

Maybe that is why I was so struck by a line in today's reading from Ezekiel.  While it is a section that talks about punishment and the death of the wicked, it also speaks of God's desire for the wicked (and to my mind wicked is a much worse condition than getting your theology wrong) to turn and be spared.  "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD?"

It's obviously a rhetorical question that must be answered, "No," but the implications are huge.  I assume that if God takes no pleasure in punishing, if God much more desires reconciliation, then it must cost God something to punish.  Far from the image some Christians project of a God who cavalierly sends off countless souls to eternal punishment, such a possibility must be gut wrenching for God.

I've long been suspicious that one of my biggest spiritual liabilities is how deeply Greek, philosophical notions of God are embedded in my faith.  For those not up on your Greek philosophy, such a God cannot experience anything gut wrenching.  Such a God is by nature perfect and thus static and impassive. 

But if Jesus is really in some way the image of God, then I'm going to have to go with a God whose gut is churning.

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Spiritual Hiccups - The Secret of Life

Last week an editorial by David Brooks entitled "It's Not about You" ran in The New York Times.  In it Brooks lamented how current graduates are sent out into the world with commencement speakers encouraging them to "find their passion" and "pursue their dreams." He notes, "Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center."  He ends the piece with, "The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself."  Sounds familiar.

Brooks connects our current, cultural climate to "baby-boomer theology," and such baby-boomer self absorption often times works its way into to my generation's attempts to be "spiritual."  There is much fascination with going inward, deeper into the self.  And while I think this a vital component of the spiritual life, it is no end in itself.

One of today's morning psalms, Psalm 147, sings God's praises.  It does so by rattling off a long list of the things God does, and almost all of these are directed toward the care and nurture of others.  God heals the brokenhearted, lifts up the downtrodden, sends rain to the earth, and feeds the wild animals.  Even the negative activity of casting down the wicked is a way of caring for those who are oppressed and exploited.  In both Psalm 99 and 147, God's greatness is displayed in God's graciousness and God's love of justice.  Throughout the Old Testament, God is revered as one slow to anger, abounding in mercy and steadfast love. 

I had a seminary professor who used to speak of the difference between us and God being that we tend to be grasping and constricting.  (He would take his open arms and clutch them to his chest.)  But God, on the other hand, is always going out from Godself in expansive, self giving love.  (He would then spread his arms out as wide as they would go.) 

It seems to me that we become most fully human, that the image of God in us becomes most visible, when we discover this "secret" that my professor talked about and David Brooks writes about.  Only when life responds to the needs of others, only when it reaches out from self, only when we lose ourselves in our callings, do we find our deepest, truest humanity.

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Laborers Needed

"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few."  So says Jesus as he sends out followers to proclaim the nearness of God's coming reign.  When "The Seventy" are sent out, Jesus instructs them to tell both those who welcome them and those who don't that "The kingdom of God has come near."  And I wonder if the Church, in its preoccupation with salvation, hasn't badly neglected Jesus' command to proclaim the kingdom with the result being that laborers for this kingdom remain in woefully short supply.

When I speak of a preoccupation with salvation, I don't mean that Jesus doesn't offer such.  But too often salvation has been understood to mean nothing more that a status with regard to life after death.  And I have no doubt that this is a gross distortion of the biblical notion of salvation.  Salvation is more than a promise of something in the future.  It is a present quality of life.  As the Apostle Paul writes, we become "a new creation" in Christ.  Salvation is something lived out now.

I have become increasingly convinced in recent years that much of the Church's malaise is related to its neglecting Jesus' core message of the kingdom.  Faith became divorced from much of life, concerned with little but status.  In the worst forms of this, life on earth and creation itself become of no importance at all.  All that matters is "the life to come."

Fortunately, this is changing.  Increasingly churches are recovering the good news that the kingdom has come near, and that we are called to show this approaching new day to the world.  But many more need to hear Jesus anew on this.  As in Jesus' day, laborers for the kingdom are still hard to come by.

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Sunday Sermon video - On Being Martyrs

Spiritual Hiccups - Urgency and Focus

Like very many people in our culture, my life sometimes seems overly hectic.  I'm not talking about any special pressures that come from being a pastor, but rather about a lifestyle of busyness that seems to afflict many of us.  This busyness can sometimes be draining, but at other times it is a source of pride.  Look how hard working and diligent I am, how consume I am by my busyness.  But just what is my particular busyness about?

Jesus' words to those who would follow him got me thinking about this.  He tells one would-be disciple not to go back and bury his dead father, and he tells another not to go back and say goodbye to his family.  The urgency Jesus demands contains an echo of an Old Testament story.  When the prophet Elijah calls Elisha to become his disciple, he permits Elisha to return and say farewells to his mother and father.  But Jesus seems to say that proclaiming the Kingdom that is drawing near demands a greater commitment and urgency than that required of the great prophet Elisha.

The Kingdom is the focus of Jesus' sense of urgency.  As for me, I'm not sure that my busyness has much connection to the Kingdom.  Very often, my busyness, indeed much church busyness, is about institutional maintenance that has little bearing on the Kingdom.  In fact, the Church sometimes seems to have forgotten about the Kingdom altogether.

What is it that produces the urgency and focus in my life?  Is it God's presence, Jesus' call?  Or do other things get in the way so that I hurry along, blissfully unaware of God's presence, unaware of what Jesus asks of me?  Where is the work of the Kingdom that calls me forward?  What is it that is more important than anything else?

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