Monday, August 3, 2020
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Sermon: Assaulted by God
Genesis 32:22-31
Assaulted by God
James Sledge August
2, 2020
When
I was a child, my father would read Bible stories to us before bed. I can still
see the big Bible Story book he used. It had stories about Jesus, but as a
child, the Old Testament stories stood out more. There were a lot of “hero” type
stories: David fighting the giant Goliath with only a sling, Samson, the Hebrew
version of Hercules. And then there were all those stories about Abraham and
Sarah and their offspring: Isaac, Esau and Jacob, and then all of Jacob’s sons,
including Joseph.
The
characters in those Bible stories didn’t seem much like real people to me. Perhaps
that was just how far removed they were historically and culturally. Or perhaps
it was because the Bible stories themselves had a kind of comic book quality to
them.
Whatever
the reasons, I was well into adulthood before it dawned on me what a messed up,
dysfunctional family Abraham and Sarah’s clan was. It starts with the
half-brothers Ishmael and Isaac and only gets worse from there.
Rebekah
and Isaac have twin boys, Esau and Jacob. Esau is the first born by a few
seconds, and the sibling rivalry is off and running. Not that the parents help
matters much. Dad likes Esau, and Mom likes Jacob. Esau is an outdoorsy,
hunting and fishing sort of guy, and Dad
plans to pass on the family business to him. Jacob is a Momma’s boy who likes
hanging out in the tent. He’s also sneaky and manipulative, a scoundrel who
takes advantage of Esau’s tendency to act first and think later. And his mother
is happy to assist.
Jacob
and Esau are born when Isaac is quite old, and he is feeble and blind by the
time the boys are fully grown. Sensing that his time is short, Isaac calls Esau
and asks him to go out hunting and bring back some savory game they can enjoy
together. After the meal, Isaac will formally sign over the family business. In
the language of the Bible, he will bless Esau.
Monday, July 27, 2020
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Sermon: Red Socks: Dare We Be Christians?
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Red Socks - Dare We Be Christians?
James Sledge July
26, 2020
Have
you ever done a load of white laundry, and something dark got mixed in? A
single, red item somehow went unnoticed, and you open the washer to discover
that everything has turned pink. It’s amazing the way one, unseen thing can
give you a new wardrobe.
Jesus
says that the kingdom of heaven, the coming rule of God, is a little like that.
Jesus speaks of yeast and mustard seeds rather than red socks, but the meaning
is much the same. Mustard plants weren’t typically grown as crops in Palestine,
but the tiny seeds did find their way into the grain farmers sowed. The minuscule,
dust-like seeds were easy to miss amidst the grain. Only later would the farmer
realize that a fast growing mustard plant was transforming his field into
something quite other than he had intended.
And
the yeast in Jesus’ parable is not the packaged product we buy in stores for
baking. This leaven is dough that has soured, begun to go bad. Bread makers
know it as starter. It is added to a
new mix of dough to make it rise in baking.
In
the Bible, leaven is almost always a symbol of corruption. Leavened bread could
never be used as an offering to God. At Passover, not only was leavened bread
forbidden, but no trace of leaven was allowed in people’s homes. And Jesus
himself speaks of the teachings of the Pharisees as leaven, something that
corrupts and distorts the good gift of God’s Law.
But
in the parables we heard this morning, Jesus speaks of God’s hoped-for new day
as like a mustard seed that unexpectedly sprang up in the field, like leaven
that has transformed the bread into something that is no longer fit to be
offered to God, like a red sock that has turned white dress shirts pink.
Monday, July 20, 2020
Sunday, July 19, 2020
Sermon: New Life as Exiles
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
New Life as Exiles
James Sledge July
19, 2020
Back
in March when the stay-at-home order was first announced, I don’t think any of
us could have imagined that we would be holding worship today in an empty
sanctuary, live streaming it into people’s homes. And even now, in mid-July, we
still don’t know when we might have anything resembling worship as it used to
be.
COVID-19
has turned the church world upside down. No one knows exactly what church is
going to look like in the coming years. No doubt, livestreaming is here to
stay, even when we can have some sort of in person worship. But it also seems
highly likely that many congregations will never recover. Unlike FCPC, many
churches have no real financial reserves and operate on extremely tight budgets.
Some who study religious institutions are predicting large scale church
closings in the coming years.
But
what about church in general? Will worshiping from home open church up to new
people, or will it accelerate an already established trend of church decline?
Will people start to treat church like Netflix, watching a little worship when
they have time or the mood strikes them? Will church move further and further
from the center of people’s lives and from the center of the culture, further
diminishing the prominent place church once held?
Over
twenty years ago, long before COVID-19, Old Testament scholar Walter
Brueggemann suggested the metaphor of exile
as a good way to describe where the Church finds itself in America.[1]
He said that we had been deported from our comfortable homeland of the mid-20th
Century into a world that no longer works in ways we fully understand. The
stores stay open and youth sports teams play games during our sacred worship
times. Neither public schools nor the culture at large encourages church
participation as they once did. The landscape of America has changed dramatically
since the 1950s, and institutions like the Presbyterian Church, which had their
heyday then, find themselves aliens in a strange land.
If
exile was an appropriate metaphor at the close of the 20th century,
surely it is even more so today. The forces that led Dr. Brueggemann to speak
of the Church in exile are still with us, perhaps even stronger. And now
COVID-19 could push church even further to the edges of society and daily life,
increasing the sense of exile.
In
the Bible, when Israel is carried off into literal exile in Babylon, it created
a crisis. As exiles in a strange land, nothing supported their religious life.
The Temple was gone, the Ark of the Covenant lost, and no altar existed where
offerings could be made. The Babylonian culture around them had different ways,
different gods, different religious practices. It would be easy, even tempting,
simply to adopt the ways of the prevailing culture.
Exiles are always in danger of
disappearing, of being absorbed into the culture where they find themselves.
Countless cultures have simply disappeared over the centuries as a result. To prevent
this, exiles must cultivate a distinctiveness, a peculiarity. They must live in
ways that set them apart, allowing them to maintain a distinct identity different
from the surrounding culture. For the Hebrews in Babylon, Sabbath keeping and
synagogue emerged in exile as crucial elements that marked them as different
and distinct. But what about us?
Monday, July 13, 2020
Sunday, July 12, 2020
Sermon: The Hard Work of Unity
Philippians 2:1-8
The Hard Work of Unity
James Sledge July
12, 2020
Recently
I was discussing our sermon series on the Confession of Belhar with Diane. I
was wondering whether we should have a fourth installment or stop at three. Two
of the primary themes from Belhar, reconciliation and justice, would get
covered fairly thoroughly in the first three sermons. That left only the theme
of unity.
I
suspect I grimaced a little at the thought of preaching about unity. I think I
said something to Diane along the lines of, “I don’t know. I hate to do
something trite.” The phrase, “Can’t we all just get along?” popped into my
head. Unity often gets spoken of as something that should be simple if only we
all just worked together, if we all just realized that we’re basically the
same, if we all just loved one another. Unity isn’t all that hard, such words
seem to say. We just have to do this.
We just have to do that.
Diane
first suggested of a sermon series on Belhar in the wake of George Floyd’s
murder. Because Belhar addressed apartheid in South Africa, it seemed
particularly well suited to the most profound and persistent source of division
in our country, that of race.
Despite
the intransience of racism in America, we still want to believe we could be rid
of it if only we just did this or just did that. Despite decade after
decade where corporate boardrooms remain largely white, where “better”
neighborhoods and “better” schools are largely white, where everything from
wealth to education to job opportunities to pay to home ownership to medical
care and more are skewed in favor of whites, we want to believe that there is
just one more little thing we need to do, and it will go away.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Sermon: Justice at the Center?
Amos 5:18-27
Justice at the Center?
James Sledge June
28, 2020
I
recently read an article by a Black, Baptist minister entitled, “Why I’m Skeptical of New Christian Allies.”[1]
His target seems to be more evangelical churches, but I don’t think progressive,
mainline churches are completely spared. Pastor Lavarin is encouraged that so
many Christians, including large numbers who’ve not previously been active in
issues of race, are speaking out against police brutality in the wake of George
Floyd’s murder. But these feelings are tempered by worries that the change
doesn’t go deep enough.
He writes, “Although numerous Christians have
finally chosen to name racism, I am woefully skeptical of new allies who have
rushed to protest without examining the ways in which their own theologies
continue to nurture it. The failure to address theological racism will
cause new allies to come to this moment believing that the fight for justice is
merely theologically adjacent to their brand of evangelism as “the real work of
ministry”. For some, this is still just a societal issue, and not a
theological one.”
As I said earlier, this doesn’t seem to target us
Presbyterians. We tend not to have evangelism high up on our list of “the real
work of ministry,” but I’m not sure justice is much higher for us than
evangelism. For many Presbyterians, the real work of ministry is holding good
worship, educating and nurturing children, and perhaps engaging in some
charitable acts in the community. And so some of Pastor Lavarin’s critiques may
apply equally to us.
He continues, “Prior to this moment, new allies have
preached a gospel of Jesus devoid of justice. They failed to make the
theological connection that Jesus and justice are, in fact, mutually inclusive.
To invoke Jesus and then to invoke justice is redundant. Every time we invoke
the name of Jesus, we commit ourselves to the ministry of justice. Every time
we invoke the name of Jesus, we declare the Psalmist’s decree that justice and
righteousness are the foundations of God’s throne. Every time we invoke the
name of Jesus, we summon the Messianic prophecy that the Spirit of the LORD was
upon Jesus, to preach the good news to the poor, to set the prisoners free from
the Roman industrial complex, and to proclaim liberty to those who were
oppressed. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we remember that Jesus was
convicted of a crime he did not commit, received an unfair trial, and was
sentenced to a state-sanctioned lynching on a tree. We cannot divorce our
theology from the ministry of justice, for to do so, is to divorce ourselves
from Jesus, himself. The ministry of justice is the ministry of Jesus.”
But this pastor saves his most pointed barb for the
end of his article. “Before your church decides to go out and protest, consider
protesting your own theology that continues to intentionally and
unintentionally do harm to Black and Brown bodies. Before taking a knee and
holding a prayer vigil, consider this: there is no real substantive difference
between a racist bigot holding a Bible in front of a church, and a Christian
holding up a #BlackLivesMatter sign with no plans to parse out the
practical implementation of the holy truth of justice.”
Ouch. Even if
we are not the intended target of this arrow, it still has a sting for we have
often viewed justice as a good thing, but not necessarily something central to
our faith. It’s one of those extras like joining a prayer group or volunteering
at Welcome Table. It’s optional, an elective in the walk of faith curriculum.
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Sermon: Breaking Down Dividing Walls
Ephesians 2:11-20
Breaking Down Dividing Walls
James Sledge June
21, 2020
Shortly
after the murder of George Floyd touched off waves of protests around the
country, I began to see people on Facebook and Instagram posting lines lifted
from the Confession of Belhar. For those who have no idea what that is, it is
the newest confessional statement in our denomination’s (the PCUSA) Book of Confessions.
We
Presbyterians love well-crafted and carefully articulated statements on what we
believe and what that leads us to do and be in the world. Our Book of Confessions begins with ancient
Creeds, the Apostles’ and Nicene, moves to a number of confessional statements
and catechisms from the time around the Reformation, then jumps to the 20th
century.
Even
though Belhar is new to our Book of
Confessions, it isn’t all that new. It took shape in South Africa in the
early 1980s when apartheid was still the law of the land there. It was written
by members of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, originally the denomination
for those labeled “coloured” in the system of apartheid. This denomination was distinct
from the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, the white church.
The
Dutch Reformed family is one of our theological cousins whose roots go back to John
Calvin just as ours do. But I don’t think Calvin’s theology had anything to do
with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa developing sophisticated
theological justifications for apartheid that cited biblical evidence for a
divinely ordained separation of the races.
Of
course we Presbyterians did exactly the same thing during the times of slavery
and segregation. When I attended Union Theological Seminary in Richmond (now
Union Presbyterian Seminary), Dabney Hall was a residence for some students.
Robert Dabney was a professor at Union who served as a chaplain in the
Confederacy, and who wrote stirring theological defenses of slavery and the
noble cause of the South well after the Civil War.
His
views held sway long beyond his time. My brother and I once found some of the
my father’s school work in a box in my grandmother’s attic. Amongst the papers
was some sort of quiz or worksheet where the correct answer labeled Blacks as
the accursed descendants of Ham from the biblical Noah story, part of the
rationale Dabney used to justify slavery and the marginalization of people of
color.
The
Belhar Confession correctly calls such foolishness sin and insists that the
Church is called to precisely the opposite sort of activity, to ministries of
reconciliation and justice. Even so, it took us Presbyterians until 2016 to add
Belhar to the Book of Confessions.
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Sermon: Unmanageable God
Genesis 1:1-2:3; Matthew 28:16-20
Unmanageable God
James Sledge June
7, 2020, Trinity Sunday
In the beginning when God created the heavens and
the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the
face of the deep, while a wind(or perhaps Spirit) from God swept over the face
of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was
light. So
opens Genesis and the Bible. So opens a lot of religious silliness as well.
For
some people, the literal account found here becomes a critical item of faith,
one that prohibits them for believing in things such as evolution. Other
Christians, some in reaction to the first group, insist the story is merely
symbolic, describing a well ordered cosmos. Or they dismiss it entirely, a
primitive tale with no real bearing on the modern world.
I
think all these views miss the mark, in part because religion, both
conservative and progressive, has a tendency to become utilitarian. Religion
becomes about getting something that I want. Perhaps its a certainty that I’ll
go to heaven when I die. Perhaps it’s a sense of spiritual well-being that has
eluded me despite buying into the competitive, success oriented, consumerist
version of life that our culture peddles.
When
religion is utilitarian, it’s a resource to be used, a way to get those things
I want. That’s true if I’m a conservative who needs a list of things I must
believe in and affirm so I get to heaven. And it’s true if I’m a progressive
looking for spiritual purpose and meaning. In either case I decide what I need
from religion, from the Bible, from God. In essence, I determine what God’s
purpose is.
We
all witnessed one of the most crass examples of utilitarian religion this past
week when President Trump stood in front of St. John’s Church and waved a
borrowed bible. It was brazen and shameless in enlisting religion, enlisting
God to the president’s cause. But most all of us engage in more subtle, nuanced
forms of enlisting God to our causes.
But
back to our story from Genesis. When this story was written, it was, in part,
meant to undermine utilitarian notions of God. The ancient Middle East was filled
with gods; every kingdom had at least one of their own. These deities ensured
that the crops produced and the herds grew. And when conflicts between kingdom
erupted, they were viewed as power contests between gods, holy war in the
truest sense of the term.
And
Israel’s God had lost. The Babylonians had conquered them and carried all the
important citizens into exile. Never mind prophecies promising an endless
throne of David. Never mind assurances that Jerusalem would stand forever. Now
there was nothing; the great city, the palace, Solomon’s magnificent Temple,
all lay in ruins. Their God had failed them.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Sermon: Every One of Us Afire
1 Corinthians 12:1-13
Every One of Us Afire
James Sledge May
31, 2020 – Pentecost
As
often happens with seaports, Corinth was a cosmopolitan city with people from all
over, many of them hoping to make it big there. It had reputation as a place
where upward mobility was easier than in much of the Roman Empire. In that
sense, Corinth was not totally unlike America. It was a land of opportunity, a
place where even former slaves might become respected figures in the community.
There was a sense of freedom and possibility.
No
doubt the cosmopolitan, Gentile populace of Corinth posed challenges for the
Apostle Paul when he first arrived and began a Christian congregation there.
His converts often weren’t familiar with Hebrew ideas of a covenant community
that cared for the least of these, notions which permeated the teachings of
Jesus. Jesus doesn’t fit easily into a worldview of advancement and upward
mobility, a world view that often sees those left behind as failures.
Most
all we know about the congregation in Corinth comes from the letters Paul wrote.
When Paul founded a church, he didn’t stay on as pastor. He was a missionary,
always looking to spread the gospel, but he still tried to care for his congregations,
visiting them occasionally, getting reports from travelers whenever he could,
and communicating by letter.
Based
on Paul’s letters, the Corinthian church was an exuberant, energetic place.
People were excited about their new faith and the experience of the Spirit.
But, as often happens with religion, they tended to view their faith through
the lens of culture. American Christianity has become so individualized that
might well be unrecognizable to Jesus, and the Corinthians saw their faith as
another aspect of competitive, upward mobility.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Sermon: Faithful Witnesses
Acts 1:6-14
Faithful Witnesses
James Sledge May
26,2020
“Lord, is this the time when you
will restore the kingdom to Israel?” It seems like it would be a good
time. Jesus had been raised from the dead a little over a month earlier. He’d
been hanging out with the disciples, talking more with them about the kingdom
of God, and telling them to stay in Jerusalem awaiting the promise of the Father… waiting
to be
baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Something big was about to happen.
Maybe now God was going to straighten things out, set the world right. And by
the time the two volume set of Luke-Acts gets written, likely over fifty years later,
the world looked like it needed even more straightening out. The Romans had
completely destroyed the city of Jerusalem, its magnificent temple totally
obliterated. Jews and Christians alike had fled to various parts of the
Mediterranean world.
By that time, the break between
Judaism and Christianity was pretty much complete. Christians were no longer a
sect within Judaism, and so they no longer enjoyed the special religious
exemption that Rome gave to the Jews for being an ancient religion. And then
there was the problem with that basic faith statement, “Jesus is Lord.” Rome
said Caesar was Lord, that the emperor was a god. Christians were clearly
trouble makers, a threat to the social fabric that held the empire together.
Lord, this would be a really good
time to restore the kingdom, to straighten things out, to make life easier for
the faithful. It’s a mess, God. Do something! But Jesus answers, “It
is not for you to know the times and periods that the Father has set… But you
will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my
witnesses…”
Fast forward nearly two thousand
years, and it’s not hard to sympathize with those early disciples. Lord, this
would be a really good time to do something. Many scientists are worried that
we are perilously close to a tipping point on climate change, if it isn’t
already too late. COVID-19 is decimating communities, sending countless people
into poverty, and exposing our broken healthcare system. The partisan divide in
our country has become so extreme that even the pandemic cannot overcome it,
and wearing a mask in public, a simple act of loving one’s neighbor, has
somehow been politicized.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Sermon: Learning to Love Back
John 14:15-21
Learning to Love Back
James Sledge May
17, 2020
For
those who’ve never read her, Lamott is a novelist who may be better known for
her bestselling writings on faith. These contain a mixture of her often strange
personal story, wry wit and humor, and sometimes irreverent thoughts on how faith
has helped her navigate it all.
With
a little effort I found the quote I had recalled in one of her books. She was
discussing her then fourteen year-old son, Sam, and the struggles of raising a
teenager as a single mom who is a recovering addict. She spoke of Sam’s
religious sensibilities, how he believes that Jesus is true, how he prays, even
prays with his mom at bedtime on occasions. But he hates church, even the
quirky little Presbyterian congregation Lamott belongs to. She writes:
Then why do I
make him go? Because I want him to. We live in bewildering, drastic times, and
a little spiritual guidance never killed anyone. I think it’s a fair compromise
that every other week he has to come to the place that has been the tap for me:
I want him to see the people who loved me when I felt most unlovable, who have
loved him since I first told them that I was pregnant, even though he might not
want to be with them. I want him to see their faces. He gets the most valuable
things I know through osmosis.
Also, he has no
job, no car, no income. He needs to stay in my good graces.
While he lives in my house, he
has to do things my way. And there are worse things for kids than to have to
spend time with people who love God. Teenagers who do not go to church are
adored by God, but they don’t get to meet people who love God back. Learning to
love back is the hardest part of being alive.[1]
I
think she’s right. We’re all born needing to be loved. The desire for it is
innate. Infants and young children who do not receive love struggle to thrive.
But we are not born knowing how to love in return, to love back, and many of us
never learn to do it all that well. The world is full of people who always take
a lot more love than they give. Countless marriages and relationships fall
apart because the balance of giving and receiving love gets so badly out of
whack, because so many of us have not learned well that hardest part of being
alive.
Sunday, May 3, 2020
Sermon: Easter Life
Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10
Easter Life
James Sledge May
3, 2020
Most
of you have likely seen news reports about churches that insist on having
in-person worship during this time of stay at home. I saw a newscast where a
reporter interviewed members as they drove away from one such worship service. A
woman said that she wasn’t worried about catching the virus because, “I’m
covered in the blood of Jesus.”
The
reporter asked her several more questions, and she seemed happy to talk with
him. But her answer to nearly every question ended, “I’m covered in the blood
of Jesus.”
If
you’re like me and didn’t grow up singing hymns such as “Nothing but the Blood
of Jesus” or “Precious, Precious Blood of Jesus,” you may not be familiar with
this graphic, formulaic notion of how Jesus’ death saves and protects people. But our own hymnal can also be formulaic, if
not so graphic. On Easter Sunday we sang, “But the pains which he endured… our
salvation have procured.”
I’m
not sure why religious formulas are so popular. A friend remarked about the
“tendency for faith to degrade into magic” when he shared a Washington Post article about a Virginia
pastor who died from COVID-19 despite his certainty that God would protect him.
I suppose that magic has a certain appeal over the difficulties, nuances, and
messiness of biblical faith. Believe this and you are saved. Say this and all
will be well. Abracadabra.
But
if Christian faith were formulas and magic, the Bible would be a pamphlet, not over
a thousand pages of stories, poems, letters, teachings, sayings, etc. Jesus
wouldn’t have spoken in parables and vivid metaphors. He would have just given
us the magic words. Abracadabra.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
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