Sermon: Belonging to the Truth

John 18:33-37

Belonging to the Truth

James Sledge                                                                                       November 25, 2018

“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." That is how Jesus responds to Pilate’s question about whether or not he is a king. But Pilate is not much interested in truth. In the verse that follows our reading, Pilate responds, “What is truth?”

I think perhaps Pilate would fit right into our world of “alternative facts,” of “truth isn’t truth,” as Rudy Giuliani famously claimed. Pilate is a politician, and truth is often a problem for politicians. It has a nasty habit of getting in the way of plans and agendas, and so it often becomes casualty in election campaigns or political debates.

The gospel of John, more so than any other, portrays Pilate as a tragic figure, invited by Jesus into the truth but unable to enter. Pilate must scurry back and forth between the Jewish leaders outside and Jesus inside. He thinks he has power and control, but it is an illusion.

In our reading, Pilate comes inside after speaking with those leaders. He attempts to question Jesus, asking if he is King of the Jews. But rather than answer, Jesus questions him. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate does not answer, but the question seems to have stung him. “I am not a Jew, am I?” he objects.

Now I need to pause here to clarify something about this word, “Jew.” The writer of John’s gospel is a Jew who follows Jesus. He writes to a congregation of Jews who follow Jesus and worship at the synagogue. Most of the time in John’s gospel, the term Jew refers, not to people who are Jewish, but to the Jewish leadership that opposed Jesus and is threatening to kick this congregation of Jewish, Jesus followers out of the synagogue. One of the great tragedies of history was the failure of later Christians to recognize this, and then to use the gospel of John as a weapon against their Jewish neighbors.

And so when Pilate insists that he is not a Jew – in the Greek, his question is not really a question – he is insisting that he is not like those Jewish leaders who stand in the way of what God is doing, or as Jesus describes it, those who do not belong to the truth.

It’s not that Pilate doesn’t know the truth. He knows that Jesus is innocent, but there are other things that matter more to Pilate than the truth. Jerusalem was hardly a prime posting for a Roman official, and no doubt Pilate wanted things to go smoothly there. No riots during the Passover festival on his watch. If an innocent man needed to die in order for things to stay calm, so be it. Never mind the truth.

Sermon video: Faithful Lament

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Faithful Lament

1 Samuel 1:4-20; 2:1-10

Faithful Lament

James Sledge                                                                                       November 18, 2018

In the wake of the horrific murders at a Pittsburgh synagogue, there have been many articles written about the rise in anti-Semitism and racism. Not so many years ago, people talked about moving into a post racial society. That seems naïve foolishness now. Recently I read an article in the Post that talked about how young Jews find themselves confronted with a reality they thought belonged to a distant past.

For many young Jews across the nation, last month’s mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was a jarring lesson. Many millennials who grew up hearing about anti-Semitism from their parents and grandparents think of the Holocaust, Eastern European pogroms and the Spanish Inquisition when they think about violence against Jews — stories they read in history books about events that happened well over half a century ago, and all in the old country, not the United States.

The Pittsburgh rampage, committed by a gunman who reportedly shouted “All Jews must die” as he fired, shattered what remained of that illusion.[1]

I rather doubt that black, millennial Americans ever shared such an illusion. Hate and violence against African Americans never was an old country problem relegated to history books. Still, the mainstreaming of racism in recent years, including its blatant use as political strategy, feels like a huge step backwards. And those who had hoped in some sort of inexorable progress toward a day when racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and so on were confined to history may now find such hope in short supply.

I confess that the last few years have at times left me struggling. When I talk with other clergy types about how they and their folks and managing, I hear of two very different responses. One sounds like the joke Stephen Colbert tells regarding Donald Trump’s claim to have done more for religion than any other president. “It’s true,” says Colbert. I’ve prayed more in the last two years than I ever have.” But others have respond differently, struggling to pray at all because of anger or despair. Me, I’ve gone back and forth between these two.

Sermon video: Big Rocks First

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Big Rocks First

Mark 12:28-34

Big Rocks First

James Sledge                                                                                       November 4, 2018

As seminary student, I did my summer internship at a small town church in eastern North Carolina. They provided housing for me in a mother-in-law suite attached to the home of a widowed, Jewish grandmother named Reba. As far as I know, Reba, her son, and his family constituted the entire Jewish population of that town.

Reba’s house and my suite shared an enclosed porch, and she and I would sometimes sit out there and chat. On one occasion she offered that differences between faiths didn’t really matter. As long as people believed in God and tried to be good, that was enough.

Now I don’t know that Reba actually thought there were no significant differences between Jews, Christians, Muslims, and so on. Her statement may have been a mixture of her being very hospitable to me combined with a tactic she had long used to blend in as a religious minority. I don’t really know. But there are many people who see the “All faiths are basically the same” idea as a good way to bridge religious differences.

Given the problems some religious folks cause, it’s tempting to think that blurring the distinctions between groups might help. But a vague, blurry, Christian identity turns out to be difficult to pass on new generations of believers. It doesn’t require liturgies, worship services, or institutions. And I wonder if the widely held notion of Christianity as intolerant, anti-gay, pro-Republican, and so on, isn’t partly the result of more liberal Christians having blurred our identity to the point that the Christian part isn’t really visible to others.

If someone who had not grown up in a church walked up to you and asked, “What does it mean to be a Christian? What’s non-negotiable?” how would you respond? What would you tell them beyond, “Believe in God and try to be good”?

When Jesus is asked about what is non-negotiable, he answers by quoting from Scripture, our Old Testament. He starts with the Shema from Deuteronomy. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and will all your soul (or life), and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He was asked for the commandment that is “first of all,” but he adds as second, from Leviticus, “You shall love our neighbor as yourself.”

Sermon video: What Do We Want from Jesus?

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: What Do We Want from Jesus?

Mark 10:46-52

What Do We Want from Jesus?

James Sledge                                                                                       October 28, 2018

Along with The Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Westminster Confession of Faith, and others, our denomination’s Book of Confessions includes something called A Brief Statement of Faith. Written in the 1980s, it has three, distinct sections, one for each person of the Trinity. The section on the Holy Spirit contains these words. “In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”

The Spirit gives us courage to live as disciples. If we are the Church, if we are followers of Jesus, the Spirit will help us to do these things. And today’s gospel has me thinking specifically about courage “to hear the voices of peoples long silenced.”

In recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Me Too movement have tried to lift up voices long ignored, silenced, and disregarded. Some folks have listened, have become more aware of the systemic ways that black voices, female voices, and other voices from the margins have been ignored and discounted.

Others, however, resent this demand for marginalized voices to be heard. For a variety of reasons, ranging from benign to malicious, some do not want the disruption these new voices cause. They’re happy with how things are, privileged by how things are, or just accepting of how things are, and would just as soon leave it alone.

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In our gospel reading, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus demands to be heard, but “many” among the crowd and disciples insist that he be quiet. His voice is an intrusion that they do not want to hear, although the gospel story isn’t clear on why. Jesus has made a name for himself by healing people. It’s a big part of the show that crowds come to see, so why shut down Bartimaeus?

Sermon video: Beloved and Invited to New Life

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Beloved and Invited to New Life

Mark 10:35-45

Beloved and Invited to New Life

James Sledge                                                                                       October 21, 2018

I read an column in The Washington Post the other day entitled, “As Jesus said, nice guys finish last.” It quoted a tweet from Jerry Falwell, Jr., president at Liberty University. “Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys’. They might make great Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”[1]

The column went on to note that it is hardly a new thing for religious folks to want powerful politicians to support their agenda. For much of European and American history, faith and power have had something of a symbiotic relationship. Rulers made sure that the population participated in the faith, and the faith gave spiritual blessing to the ruler.

This sort of deal almost always ends up compromising and cheapening the faith. In our American experience, Christianity ended up being used to buttress slavery, sanction the genocide of Native Americans, and support imperialism in Africa and Asia. More recently, evangelical leaders were singing the president’s praises on the very day that thousands of migrant children were moved, under the cover of darkness, to a detention facility in Texas.

This last event prompted The Washington Post columnist to write, “This is disturbing and discrediting. How can anyone supposedly steeped in the teachings of Jesus be so unaffected by them? The question immediately turns against the questioner. In a hundred less visible ways, how can I be so unaffected by them?”[2]

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Sermon video: Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

Audios of sermons and worship available on FCPC website.

Sermon: Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

Mark 10:2-16

Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

James Sledge                                                                                       October 7, 2018

I don’t think we’ve done it here during my time as pastor, but both of my previous congregations did a stewardship program called the “Grow One Challenge.” This challenge was based on the fact that very few church members tithe. Never mind how often a pastor calls for the offering with “Let us bring our tithes and offerings…” statistics show that tithers are as rare as liberal Republicans.

And so the “Grow One Challenge” is a plan both to help church members move toward the biblical notion of the tithe, giving the first ten percent, the first fruits, to God. Recognizing that the typical Presbyterian gives something closer to two percent, this challenge knew that asking people to jump from one or two percent to ten was an impossible task. And so people were encouraged to grow one, one percentage point that is, toward the tithe. The pledge cards accompanying the program even had little charts on the back that would help you do the math.

The program seemed to work pretty well. We had some pretty big jumps in giving when we first used it. But I also had a rather experience. It happened in both churches and it happened repeatedly.  People asked me, “Am I supposed give ten percent of my income before or after taxes?” They almost always grinned as they asked.

I don’t think there was ever I time where this was a real question. They weren’t filling out their pledge card and wanting to know if it was this amount or that. More often it was just a joke, but sometimes it was a way of muddying the waters, of charting loopholes.

The Pharisees in our scripture aren’t making a joke, but they may well be grinning. Their question is not a real one. They already know what the law says. They’re merely hoping Jesus’ answer will make some folks angry. There were disagreements in Jesus’ day, not about whether divorce was legal, but about valid reasons for it. The Pharisees hope Jesus will come down on one side and upset those on the other.

Sermon video: Getting Our Mojo Back

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Getting Our Mojo Back

Mark 9:30-37

Getting Our Mojo Back

September 23, 2018                                                                                        James Sledge

I spent much of my childhood and youth in Charlotte, NC, back in the days when TV had a total of six or seven channels. Of these, the CBS affiliate dominated the local market and also owned the largest radio station. It had a number of high profile, charity events each year, but the one I recall the most vividly was an annual on air blood drive.

They advertised it heavily. Corporate sponsors provided food, refreshments, and gifts. Radio and TV personalities worked the event. CBS sent in stars from various shows, and all during the day they would have live broadcasts interviewing donors, talking about how easy is was, how almost painless it was.

The event was always a huge success with more than a thousand people donating blood. The Red Cross blood bank would be as full as it ever got, but this blood drive never seemed to convert many into regular donors. Year after year, most of those interviewed were first time donors, and year after year, it wasn’t long before the Red Cross was making pleas to the public about critically short blood supplies. The gifts, glitz, celebrities, and chance to be on TV drew in lots of people, but when it was all over, they went back to old patterns, ones that didn’t include giving blood.

A similar pattern showed up in the early Jesus movement. The gospels report huge crowds coming out to see this miracle working, charismatic, teacher-prophet-messiah. But by and large, the crowds saw the show, perhaps got a healing, and then went home to their old lives.

The early reflected this. It was a small movement, and you see that in the New Testament. In his letters, the Apostle Paul deals with questions about what parts of normal, civic participation are out of bounds for followers of Jesus, questions that arise because the Christians are a tiny minority. So too some of the gospels address communities struggling to remain faithful when doing so may get them ostracized from polite society.

We tend to think of the Bible as a public book, but the individual components of the New Testament – which didn’t really exist as we know it for a few hundred years after Jesus – were not understood that way. They were not used to spread the Christian message but to help existing Christian communities deal with issues that they faced. The books that would become the New Testament weren’t for the masses, but for the dedicated few.

It’s easy to see why the early Jesus movement tended to be small. While Jesus might have made a big splash and attracted a lot of gawkers, people hoping for a healing, or a political messiah to take on the Romans, many of Jesus’ teachings were not real crowd pleasers. The teachings we heard this morning are no exception.

Sermon video: Tribalism Meets God's Love and Grace

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

Mark 8:27-38

Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

James Sledge                                                                           September 16, 2018

The other day I stopped into the grocery store to grab a couple of items. As I looked for them, I happened down an aisle that was filled with Halloween candy and paraphernalia. I shouldn’t have  been surprised – it’s September after all, but I was. It was one of those sultry, ninety degree days, and it didn’t feel anything like fall.

But fall is almost here, which means the election is just around the corner. I’ve been something of a political junkie for much of my life, but I confess that I’ve grown tired of it. I don’t want to see all the political ads. I don’t want to see candidates who wrap themselves in a Christian mantle while spouting hatred and intolerance and outright racist ideas. I especially don’t want to watch another round of church leaders doing irreparable damage to the image of the faith by insisting that candidates who show not the tiniest inclination to follow the teachings of Jesus are somehow God’s candidate. Wake me when it’s over.

Of course then the Christmas shopping season will be almost upon us, complete with culture war skirmishes. Some of the same folks who touted God’s candidates will insist that we “put Christ back in Christmas,” and they’ll get angry if someone says “Happy Holidays.” Sigh… Wake me when it’s over.

It’s amazing all the ways that Jesus or Christ or God or Christian faith gets invoked to support all manner of things. There are churches that celebrate the Second Amendment in worship and encourage members to bring their guns. There are churches that loudly proclaim, “God Hates Fags.” There are churches that say Donald Trump is God’s man in the White House, and there are churches that stage protests against Donald Trump. There are churches that see same sex relationships as an abomination and sin, and there are churches that marry same sex couples. And all these churches, at least all that call themselves Christian, claim Christ in some way.

When people insist that we put Christ back in Christmas, which one do they mean? Is it the one who blesses same sex marriages? Is it the one who says to love your enemy and not to resist the one who strikes you? Or is it a different Christ? How many of them are there? Sometimes it seems that we Christians have been given the answer to the question, but we’re not at all sure what that answer means.

Sermon: Tribalism Meets God's Love and Grace

Mark 7:24-37

Tribalism Meets God’s Love and Grace

James Sledge                                                                                       September 9, 2018

A great deal has been written and discussed of late on how tribal we’ve become in America. I read something the other day following the death of John McCain that said although Senator McCain was widely admired, he had become something of a political pariah in his home state of Arizona. All three Republican candidates in the recent Arizona senate primary either distanced themselves from McCain or outright disparaged him.

McCain’s hostility to President Trump is certainly one reason for this, but tribalism is involved as well. Tribalism draws very clear us and them boundaries and tends to view “them” as the enemy. Someone like McCain, who would work with members of the other party and even work against his own party when his principles required it, looks very suspicious to those who view the world from a tribal perspective.

We humans seem to have an innate tendency towards tribalism. We may not be born racists or homophobes or sexists or elitists or any other sort of ists, but we seek comfort and security and purpose by coalescing into groups with others who are like us in some way. It starts at a very young age. School children often form cliques that can be hostile and cruel to those who don’t fit into their group.

This is not a recent phenomenon. In Jesus’ day there were numerous divisions and groups. The Pharisees were a reform movement centered on synagogue and following scripture, opposed to what they saw as the corrupt, priestly Judaism of the Jerusalem Temple. The Essenes withdraw entirely into their own, separatist community in reaction to perceived Temple corruption and a world too accommodating to Greco-Roman culture. Then there was the Jewish – Gentile divide, the biggest tribal division of Jesus’ day.

These divisions are different than those of our day, and some may strike us as odd. But they functioned much the same as the divisions we hardly notice. We gather here for worship each week and frequently hear Paul’s words that say, There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus. But we hardly represent the diversity and inclusiveness these words suggest. We’re not a representative sampling of America or even our immediate community. We’re whiter, wealthier, more liberal, more likely to be cultural elitists, and so on.

Sermon video: Stained by the World

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Stained by the World

James 1:17-27

Stained by the World

James Sledge                                                                                                   September 2, 2018

There was an article in The Washington Post recently entitled, “Are rich people more likely to lie, cheat, steal? Science explains the world of Manafort and Gates.”[1] If you followed Paul Manafort’s recent trial, you know about the $15,000 ostrich and python jackets, the exorbitant lifestyle and the lengths he was willing to go to maintain that lifestyle.

And of course Manafort is but one example in a litany of cases involving insider trading, misuse of campaign contributions, and so on. According to the Post article, a growing body of scientific evidence finds that wealth, power, and privilege “makes you feel like you’re above the law… allows you to treat others like they don’t exist.”

Among the scientific studies was one where researchers watched four-way stop intersections. Expensive cars were significantly less likely to wait their turn than older and cheaper cars. The same researchers sent pedestrians into crosswalks and observed which cars obeyed the law and stopped when someone was in the crosswalk. Every single one of the older, cheaper cars stopped, but only half of the expensive cars did.

Drawing on many different research studies the Post article said, “That research has shown the rich cheat more on their taxes. They cheat more on their romantic partners. The wealthy and better-educated are more likely to shoplift. They are more likely to cheat at games of chance. They are often less empathetic. In studies of charitable giving, it is often the lower-income households that donate higher proportions of their income than middle-class and many upper-income folk.”

This sort of research is relatively new, and so there is a lot it cannot say about why or how this all works. But the evidence is pretty compelling that being wealthy and/or powerful has a tendency to make you an awful person. And perhaps that’s exactly the sort of thing our scripture is worried about when it to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Sermon video: More Than What We Know

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Fauxpologies and Acknowledging the Truth

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: More Than What We Know

John 6:35, 41-51

More Than What We Know

August 12, 2018                                                                                                         James Sledge

The bread of life; the bread that came down from heaven; the living bread that came down from heaven. If you’ve been around the church for much of your life, these sayings may not register as particularly problematic. But think about what odd statements they are. Jesus says he is bread, living bread at that, and bread that came down from heaven. It’s hardly surprising that “the Jews” complain about this.

(Jews, by the way, is a term used in John’s gospel to designate Jesus’ opponents and not all those who follow the traditions of Moses. Jesus and his disciples are Jews after all.)

I would think that many Jews who heard Jesus talk about bread that came down from heaven – and I include Jesus’ own followers here – would immediately have thought about the manna that the Israelites ate in the wilderness when Moses led them out of Egypt. That was truly bread that came down from heaven. And Jesus clearly wasn’t manna.

Then there is the whole “came down from heaven” thing. Unlike manna, Jesus wasn’t found out of the ground early in the morning. He showed up just like any of us did, born as a helpless little baby. Some listening to Jesus knew his family. They knew without a doubt that he had not come down from heaven.

Many of Jesus’ opponents were religious leaders, and they “knew” lots of things about scripture and God and how to be a good member of God’s chosen people. And along with obvious things such as knowing Jesus’ mom and dad, there were religious problems with what Jesus said. For Jews, and for early Christians, heaven was God’s home. People, living or dead, didn’t go there. To be from heaven was to be divine, and scripture clearly said that God was one. Jesus couldn’t be from heaven.

Sermon: Fauxpologies and Acknowledging the Truth

2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a

Fauxpologies and Acknowledging the Truth

James Sledge                                                                                       August 5, 2018

They have become so ubiquitous that they have their own article on Wikipedia. I’m talking about the non-apology apology, sometimes called the nonpology or fauxpology. Most of us have probably employed them at times. But what makes them infamous is their use by politicians and celebrities in attempts to quell some sort of PR nightmare.

The #MeToo movement has led to some terrible examples. Take this one from Charlie Rose. "It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken."

Why do such horrible non-apologies occur so often, especially from, media savvy politicians and celebrities who have PR people? Why do people try so hard, in such ridiculous and laughable fashion, to avoid responsibility? What is it about us humans that so hates to admit that we failed, that we hurt someone, that we were self-centered, thoughtless, and cruel? Why do we try so hard to avoid blame, even when it makes matters worse?

Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, said that when you find yourself before the judgment seat of God, plead your faults not your merits. Jesus once told a parable that made much the same point.  Two men go to the Temple to pray. One says he isn’t as bad as other folk, tries hard to follow the commandments, and gives lots of money to the church. But the other man is a tax collector, literally a criminal enterprise in Jesus’ day. He stood off in a corner, beating his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” And Jesus says it is the tax collector who goes home right in God’s eyes. (Luke 18:9-14)