Sermon: Walking in the Light

Isaiah 2:1-5

Walking in the Light

James Sledge                                                                           November 27, 2016

Well, we have arrived. On the secular calendar, at least, we are officially in the Christmas season. The Thanksgiving parades have passed by with Santa at the tail end, and no one can complain that it’s too early for Christmas or decorations at the mall.

When I was growing up, this was the time when genuine excitement about Christmas would kick in, when my brother and I would start to dream about what gifts would make for a perfect Christmas morning. We were raised in the church and attended Sunday School most every week, so we knew all about the “real” Christmas story with Mary and Joseph and a manger. It was a warm and beautiful story, very much a part of our family’s Christmas traditions, but that story had almost nothing to do with the excitement I felt as Christmas neared. If Christmas was going to change my life, make it better or happier in some way, it wasn’t going to be because of Jesus. It was going to be because of Santa, or at least some of his “helpers.”

I’m reasonably sure that my experience was not that unusual. Jesus may be “the reason for the season,” but most of our hopes at Christmas are not really about Jesus or Christian faith. We’re not much expecting all that much from Jesus or faith in this season. If Christmas is going to provide any magic, it will likely be through some moments of goodwill, the warmth of nostalgia, families gathered together, and the joy of children.

These last two help explain why not many will be here if you come to worship on Christmas, one of those dreaded years when it falls on a Sunday. Many, and I don’t exclude myself, would just as soon spend the morning at home with loved ones, enjoying the delight of children opening their gifts, or simply remembering such delight as we open our own.

Now if you’re worried that I’m about to get on a rant about how we’ve lost the real meaning of Christmas or how we need to de-commercialize it, you needn’t. I’m all for simplifying and toning down the conspicuous consumerism. But I think that we invest so much into the Christmas season because it speaks to some deep longings that we have, longings for goodwill among people, for families and communities to be united, for us to know once more the joy and hopefulness and even naiveté of children.

Such longings are hardly exclusive to Christians which is one of the reasons that Christmas appeals to many outside the Church. For a moment, the world can feel a little kinder, a little more joyful, a little more hopeful. For a few weeks, we can get caught up in something and at least imagine a slightly better world.

Perhaps that’s the best we can hope for. Swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks sounds wonderful, but what are the chances? The prophet spoke these words close to 3000 years ago, and since then we’ve just gotten better and better at war and killing. Maybe we should be happy for a little Christmas cheer and goodwill and leave it at that.

Surely Jesus Didn't Mean That

Surely Jesus didn't really mean that.  Or surely he didn't mean it to have any sort of general application. You've likely heard such responses to Jesus words from today's gospel reading where he says, "Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." There must have been some particular problem with money and possessions for this one fellow whom Jesus addresses. Except Jesus also adds, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"

Most of us think of wealth as a blessing. At Thanksgiving we will offer thanks for our nice homes and overflowing dinner tables. But Jesus speaks of wealth as a curse. Surely he didn't mean that.

Over the centuries, we Christians have become skilled at figuring out reasons why Jesus didn't really mean what he said. We feel little compulsion to love our enemies; we don't even want to love our neighbors, certainly not as much as we love ourselves. We're reasonably sure that we can serve God and the acquisition of wealth. Never mind what Jesus says. And we have absolutely no use for the crosses Jesus insists we pick up and carry.

Especially for Protestants, we got so focused on faith, often understood as little more than "believing in Jesus," that we nearly forgot about being disciples. We domesticated Jesus to the point that we can believe in him while ignoring most of what he says. This despite his Great Commission that speaks of making disciples by teaching people "to obey everything I that have commanded you."

One of the ways we domesticate Jesus is by insisting that faith should not be "political." But the basic claims of Christian faith are blatantly political. They do not belong to any particular political party or ideology, but they demand a loyalty to the ways of Jesus over and against the ways of earthly powers. If Jesus is king then Caesar is not. If Jesus is my Lord, then all earthly powers and allegiances lose any ultimate claims to my loyalty and service.

If Jesus has special concern for the poor and marginalized combined with deep misgivings about the wealthy and powerful, then I must share his point of view. And this will demand that I speak out against the wealthy and powerful who do not work for the good of the "least of these," who do not seek justice and mercy for all people. If Jesus is my Lord, I must join him, and the tradition of the prophets in which he stands, to speak truth to power.

Or I could just believe in Jesus and ignore pretty much everyone he says. It turns out that is a lot easier.

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Sermon video: Agents of the Gospel

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Trump Is President/Jesus Is King?

I've seen a number of Internet memes that are variations on this theme, "No Matter Who Is President, Jesus Is King." I won't argue with the sentiment. This coming Sunday many Christians will celebrate Christ the King, and the phrase "Jesus is Lord" is one of the most ancient and basic Christian faith statements. But what exactly does it mean so say that Jesus is King/Lord?

I could add that we Presbyterians, as part of the Reformed/Calvinist family, are really big on the sovereignty of God. No matter how things may seem, God is ultimately in charge, in control. But again the question of exactly what this means and how it works remains.

But back to the Internet memes, it isn't always clear what comfort is to be taken from those posts about Jesus as Lord or King. Some seem to imply that we shouldn't worry because whatever happens in this life/world doesn't matter very much. Others seem to say "Don't worry. Jesus has got this." Perhaps other reassurance is intended. I don't know, but I know I don't much care for either of these two options.

The very fact that Jesus entered into human history, healed those who were sick and hurting, and had compassion for their earthly difficulties shows that God is concerned with history, with plain old, run of the mill, human existence. Jesus teaches us to pray that God's will be done here on earth. To say that Jesus is Lord can't possibly mean that earthly events have no real importance.

But if we go to the other end and speak of Jesus' lordship meaning, "Everything will be okay," we have to deal with countless times in history when Jesus' lordship and God's sovereignty provide no deterrent to unspeakable evil being committed. The Holocaust, millions killed by Stalin, the evils of slavery, and the genocide of Native Americans barely scratch the surface of the horrors humans have committed. That Jesus is Lord/King clearly doesn't mean that things turn out well for everyone. But does this lead us back to option one? Hopefully we can say something more than, "Life is crappy, and then you die. But then it gets better."

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If you look up the gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday, it features Jesus on the cross. Not exactly most people's image of a king. Surely this idea of a crucified King has to influence our notions of his kingdom, yet I'm not sure that has often been the case. More often we've imagined Jesus as a king who looks little different from earthly ones other than the addition of divine powers. In other words, we've turned him right back into the sort of king some who rejected him 2000 years ago wanted him to be.

Following similar logic, the Church has often been an imitator of human empire and power. Roman Catholics, who've been around since the days of Roman emperors, have buildings and vestments and ecclesiastical structure that would fit right in with an empire. We Protestants, because we've only been around for 500 years or so, have more modern and sometimes democratic trappings of power. We Presbyterians have a somewhat federalist looking denominational system which springs in part from our theology, but is also about power and control.

In the recent election, evangelicals largely supported Trump, not because he was one of them, but because he was seen as a way back into power. Many liberal Christians are in depression over Trump's election, at least in part because it means a loss of power. Both evangelical and liberal Christians say we follow Jesus, but neither of us is much enamored with his way of exercising power. Neither or us in much inclined to suffer for following Jesus.

I say this in full awareness of my own middle-class, white privilege where it generally possible to avoid suffering if I choose. I know that is not true for others, and I do not say to people who are oppressed or persecuted to embrace it as the way of Christ. I am speaking to those on the left and the right who relish the power we have and who dread the thought of losing it.

There is a line in the opening constitutional statements of my denomination speaking on the Church as the body of Christ that reads, "The Church is to be a community of faith, entrusting itself to God alone, even at the risk of losing its life." I think that articulates very well the way of Jesus and what it would mean to have Christ as King and Lord. I love the theology it expresses. But on some level, my paycheck is dependent on not living this out. And therein lies the problem.

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Sermon: Agents of the Gospel

Luke 21:5-19

Agents of the Gospel

James Sledge                                                                                       November 13, 2016

I attended what was then known as Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, now called Union Presbyterian Seminary. Like me, most of my classmates were Presbyterian, but a sizeable minority came from other traditions. One of these was a young pastor already serving on the staff of a large church in a denomination that didn’t require its pastors to have a seminary education, but encouraged it.

One day in class he shared something that was creating a faith crisis for many in his congregation.  A young child had a serious, life threatening disease. The congregation had rallied to support the family, providing meals, caring for the other children so the parents could spend time at the hospital, and so on. They had also organized a prayer campaign. People signed up to ensure that someone was praying for this child at all hours of the day.

The members of this church put a lot of stock in prayer. They used phrases like “prayer warriors,” a term you rarely hear in congregations such as ours. Many of them were convinced that if they prayed faithfully and diligently, truly believing and trusting in God, the child would be healed. But the child was getting worse.

When my classmate shared this, the church staff had begun to discuss how they were going to handle the child’s imminent death. What were they going to say to those who had responded to the call for prayer warriors, who had trusted that God would intervene? How were they as the pastoral staff going to help people hold onto faith when an article of that faith had let them down?

I suspect that most of us have had, or will have, moments where the things we count on fail us. Even for those who are not particularly religious, there are objects of trust that are presumed to provide happiness, meaning, fulfillment, hope, etc. People may or may not equate such things with God, but when they fail to produce what was promised or hoped for, it can create a kind of faith crisis.

I’m sure there are people here today who had hoped, even trusted, that America was on a path to becoming more tolerant and welcoming of diversity. We had elected our first black president, twice, and would soon have our first female president. Many were sure that America had made too much progress to elect someone who engaged in openly misogynist behavior and whose rhetoric inspired racists. But for those with such faith, Tuesday’s election was devastating, threatening deeply held articles of hope and faith.

Sermon video: Trick Questions

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

What the Day Reveals

I did not see that coming, "that" referring to last night's election results. Like many, I assumed that Donald Trump had too many negatives to overcome. I assumed that Trump's relatively open embrace of racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry would turn off too many voters. I have relatives in small-town South Carolina, so I'm well aware that racism is alive and well, but I did not think its appeal so broad.

I don't think that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist, misogynist, or bigot. There are many factors that influenced voters, but still, Mr. Trump's campaign seems to have awakened a more public form of bigotry. People are saying publicly things they've kept to themselves before. It turns out that we - speaking of America - are not who I thought we were.

This turn of events has exposed a myth too often trusted by liberals and liberal Christians, a belief in progress. We've hoped that racism, sexism, and other bigotries would gradually fade in the face of progress. Simply discourage overt acts of racism, sexism, etc. and they will eventually die off on their own. We need merely wait them out. But progress, like all idols, fails to keep its promises. Progress can never end racism, can never bring the kingdom.

In the end, only God can set the world fully right, but in the interim, followers of Jesus are called to live in ways that bear witness to God's new day. Our waiting for God is an active waiting that shows others the hope and the shape of that day. From the time of Jesus this has meant living in ways that reflect God's rule and so are in conflict with the rule of Caesar, empire, and every power that oppresses or exploits or fails to seek the good of the least and most vulnerable. Our waiting requires a willingness to take up crosses, to give ourselves, and even to suffer, in order to embody the ways of Christ in a world that lives by different rules.

Today, on this day I did not expect, I find myself wondering what it means to embrace the way of Jesus at such a moment. I'm just beginning this process, but I offer these provisional thoughts in hopes that they will be helpful to some.

Reach out to those who are filled with fear, dread, terror, uncertainty, and more in the wake of this election. Jesus was most often to be found among those who were on the receiving end of power, and we should be, too.

If your image of America has been shattered, grief, lament, and even anger are appropriate. The Psalms are filled with anguished and angry lament, and many of us need to name and own the loss that we are feeling. At the same time, anger cannot turn to hate. I will not imagine that Donald Trump or any political party is somehow the embodiment of evil, anymore than I will imagine that my politics are the embodiment of good. I will pray those who are hurting, and I will pray as well for President-elect Trump and for all those who govern.

For people like myself and churches like the one I serve, do some deep soul searching. How often have we preferred being comfortable to living the gospel? How often have we been content to enjoy positions of racial and economic privilege? How often have our stances against hate, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. been little more than opinions shared with the like minded, stances that cost us nothing, stances that trusted in progress or the passage of time and refused to go near a cross?

Finally, what does following Jesus look like at this moment? What steps does Jesus call us to take, what concrete actions does he require of us if we are to be his disciples in the world? How will we embody the hope of God's new day, a day ruled by love, in a moment when so many seem to be driven by fear?

I certainly have my own fears at the moment, but as a Christian, I also have hope that newness and life can arise out of loss and death. And so I will keep looking and listening for where and how Jesus is calling me and calling the church to live in ways that declares to the world the possibility and hope that God is indeed making all things new.

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A prayer for today from Father Richard Rohr:

All vulnerable and merciful God,
We do not know what is ours to do.
We feel scared and alone today.
We are tired of taking sides.
We cannot hold any more fear or anger or rejection.
And yet we know so many of our friends feel unheard and unwanted.
Help us trust that no feeling is final,
And that YOU will have the full and final word.
If You are indeed a Suffering God, may we hold this suffering with You for those who voted for Hillary Clinton, for those who voted for President-elect Donald Trump, and for the many who have felt excluded by our politics in the many ways that we do indeed exclude.
We offer ourselves as best we can to hold this Love outward and open toward all, just as You never cease to do toward us.
We believe You are praying this prayer through us.
Amen

The Kingdom and the Course of Human Events

Today and tomorrow will be anxiety filled for many people. As we await a final conclusion to the election campaign, will any new bombshells shake things up? Will our candidate, our party, prevail? Will we be rejoicing or cringing in horror when final outcomes are announced Tuesday night?

This particular campaign has occupied us in ways I don't recall previous ones doing, both captivating and horrifying us. Clearly there are important issues at stake. Still, I wonder if we don't sometimes overstate potential impacts. I wonder if we don't imagine the events that captivate and horrify us to have more earth shattering import than they truly do.

I have written previously of how I find it impossible to reconcile Christian faith with the stances taken by Donald Trump. I do think that those Christians who've made supporting Trump an article of their faith have done tremendous damage to the Christian "brand." But this does not mean that any sort of ultimate outcomes are riding on Tuesday's results. I think it unlikely that the apocalyptic scenarios imagined by some on the right or the left will materialize.

This is not to underestimate the human capacity to create genuinely terrible scenarios. Even a cursory study of history will reveal all manner of terrors that humans have wrought, but that doesn't mean that everything that scares us has such potential.

I will vote tomorrow and have my own worries about the consequences of the election results, as well as of the campaign itself. Yet as a Christian, I worry that we are overly fascinated with human capacity while nearly oblivious to that of the Divine. Surely there is some measure of myopia here.

In today's gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable that can be a little unnerving. Someone, clearly an important and powerful individual, sent out invitations to a fancy banquet, but when all was made ready, many of those invited has more pressing matters. Some of their excuses are pretty lame, but some sound legitimate. (I think my honeymoon would win out over anyone's party.) But the host makes no distinctions. People are herded in from the streets to fill the party, and the host vows that none of those originally invited will be allowed in.

This parable becomes especially problematic when we turn it into an allegory with the host playing the role of God, a God who is easily offended and remarkably unforgiving. But parables rarely work well as allegories, and this one isn't telling us anything about the character of God. Rather it is making a point about the all surpassing importance of the kingdom, of God's new day.

We humans tend to be caught up in our own events, some of them trivial and some of them  important. But followers of Jesus must always have an eye on something bigger. Just how this "something bigger" intersects with our daily living can be an interesting and difficult negotiation, but if we do not have some sense of what God is up to, we will end up attaching ultimate importance to what we are.

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Sermon: Trick Questions

Luke 20:27-38

Trick Questions

James Sledge                                                                                       November 6, 2016

When I was 13, my brother and I discovered the comedian, George Carlin. We laughed at his seven words you couldn't say on television, when our parents weren’t around to hear. But I was also intrigued by his take on growing up Catholic. I knew nothing about Catholics or Catholic schools, but Carlin's stories about questioning and challenging the teachings of the church resonated with my own, early teenage questions and doubts.

Carlin told of creating elaborate scenarios to trip up the priests and make them look foolish. One story involved the requirement that Catholics receive communion at least once between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost.  Not doing your “Easter duty” was a mortal sin.

“Father, suppose that you didn’t make your Easter duty, and it’s Pentecost Sunday, the last day. And you’re on a ship at sea, and the chaplain goes into a coma. But you wanted to receive. And then it’s Monday, too late. But then you cross the International Date Line.” No doubt the priests loved it when little George Carlin raised his hand in class.

The Sadducees in today’s gospel engage in something similar, though the stakes are a lot higher. They devise an elaborate scenario to trip up Jesus and make him look foolish, but this isn't a game. They see Jesus as a threat, and they desperately want to discredit him.

The Sadducees were a small, wealthy, conservative faction of Judaism. To them only Torah the Books of Moses – the first five books of our Bible – were scripture, and they found no evidence for resurrection there. By contrast, the Pharisees and Jesus considered most of what we call the Old Testament scripture, and they found support for resurrection in the prophets and other writings. However, this resurrection wasn’t about going to heaven. It was a hope for a new age when all would be made new, and the dead raised.

These Sadducees have watched as Jesus evades the traps set for him by other opponents, but now they take their turn. No doubt they are a little surprised that this country rabbi, an uneducated rube from the backwoods of Nazareth, has successfully matched wits with religious experts. But they have Moses on their side. They have Torah. I imagine that they are snickering a bit as they lay out a George Carlin like scenario.

Sermon video: Falling into God's Love

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Falling into God's Love

Luke 18:9-14

Falling into God’s Love

James Sledge                                                                                       October 23, 2016

Many years ago, I preached a sermon from today’s gospel reading where a couple of members helped me do a dramatic reading of the parable with just a little updating. The Pharisee became an upstanding church member and the tax collector was a drug dealer. The first change is obvious. Pharisees were the upstanding Protestants of their day. The second change perhaps needs more explanation.

Tax collectors in Jesus’ time were not civil service employees. They were part of a bizarre, corrupt system that permitted tax collectors to pry as much money as they could from those in their community. The Romans did not care how much they collected as long as Rome got the prescribed amount. Tax collectors could keep everything else for themselves. Tax collectors often used intimidation and threats to get as much as they could, often preying on the most vulnerable in society. And they became wealthy while helping out an occupying, foreign power. They made modern slum lords look charitable by comparison, and they were rightly despised.

And so in church that Sunday years ago, an upstanding church member thanked God that he was not like robbers and thieves and other sorts of low life. He certainly wasn’t anything like a drug dealer. He tithed and then some to his church. He served on committees and session and never missed a worship service if he was in town.

The drug dealer didn’t dare come up to the front of the church. He stayed off to the side and never looked up. He pulled at his clothes and hair as he said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And you’ve already heard the parable so you know what Jesus said next.

A few days later, I got a letter (email was still fairly new) from a church members not at all happy with my sermon. Who would keep the church running, or pay my salary, he asked, if not upstanding church members like the one I had substituted for the Pharisee? It certainly wasn’t going to be drug dealers or others of that ilk.

But I Don't Wanna Descend

We modern people use the Bible very differently than did early Christians. For starters, they didn't have a Bible other than what we call the Old Testament. And what would later become the New Testament was not meant to tell the story of Jesus. The letters and the gospels were written for Christians who already knew Jesus' story. They were written to help people understand those stories better, and often they were written to address concerns in a particular congregation.

That means that when people first read the section from Luke that is today's gospel, they knew very well what it meant that Jesus "set his face to go to Jerusalem." They knew exactly what awaited Jesus there. The author of the gospel is reminding them that all the events reported in the coming pages happen against the backdrop of Jesus purposely moving toward Jerusalem and the cross.

I take it from Luke's gospel, the letters of Paul, and much else in the New Testament, that those early Christians struggled as much with the cross as I do. That's especially true in light of Jesus calling us to embrace the way of the cross, even to take up our own.

In today's verses, we learn than a Samaritan village doesn't receive Jesus "because his face was set toward Jerusalem." I'm not 100 percent sure what this means, but I assume that Jesus' focus on Jerusalem and the cross makes them think Jesus won't be doing any neat tricks for them.

I know how they feel. I want Jesus to do stuff for me, and when he's all fixated on the cross, I don't really want to be around him. I don't much care for talk of needing to deny myself, lose myself, take up my cross, and so on.

In his meditation for today, Richard Rohr speaks of "the path of descent," of how we are transformed only through the act of dying and rising. He writes, "As a culture, we have to be taught the language of descent because we are by training capitalists and accumulators. Mature religion shows us how to enter willingly and trustingly into the dark periods of life. These dark periods are good teachers."

But I keep asking Jesus to make things better for me. And I think that Jesus has abandoned me when things are bad for very long. I guess when it comes to "the language of descent," I'm a pretty slow learner.

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Sermon video: Imagining Faith

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Imagining Faith

Luke 18:1-8

Imagining Faith

James Sledge                                                                                                   October 9, 2016

What is Christian faith? How do you know if you have it? These would seem to be central and crucial questions for Christianity, church, or whatever label you use to describe those who say they follow Jesus. Yet I’m not sure we how much agreement there is on the answers.

For some, faith is mostly about belief, belief about who Jesus is and what he accomplished, belief in the truth of his teachings, belief in the veracity of the Bible, and so on. For others faith seems to be about knowledge or information. People say, “I can’t share my faith with others because I don’t know it well enough.”

Some people think  of faith as hope or trust that God is somehow guiding things toward a good outcome. This hope may be vague or specific. It may be focused mostly on personal benefits such as wealth or health or getting into heaven. Or it may be focused on the flow of history, on the “arc of the moral universe.”

For some people faith includes specific forms of piety and practice. For others, it’s simply the notion that there is a God, some higher power. And there are other possibilities.

In the reading from Luke that we heard last Sunday, Jesus makes a connection between faith and gratitude to God. And in our reading this morning, Jesus again connects faith to concrete behaviors on the part of his followers.

Jesus tells a brief parable with two characters, a widow and an unjust judge. If Jesus were telling the parable in our day, the characters might be different. But in Jesus’ day of male dominated patriarchy, widows were among the most vulnerable. As females, they did not have full legal status, and without a husband or adult son, it was difficult for them to hold onto property or possessions. They could easily end up on the streets, reduced to begging. Presumably this widow’s opponent has taken advantage of this situation.

We may be unfamiliar with the precarious position of widows in Jesus’ day, but we know all about unjust judges or other office holders who utilize their position for personal gain, with no regard for basic morality or God’s concern for the weak and vulnerable. We know all about a world where innocents suffer, where raw power preempts justice.

Oct. 9 sermon video: Gratitude, Salvation, and Generosity

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Gratituded, Salvation, and Generosity

Luke 17:11-19

Gratitude, Salvation, and Generosity

James Sledge                                                                                       October 9, 2016

When we lived in Raleigh, NC, around twenty years ago, we often took our girls to the State Fair in the fall. One year, we parked, got out of the car, and joined the flow of humanity making its way toward the entrance. As we got close, the flow diverted like a creek parting around big rock. It wasn’t a rock, of course. It turned out to be a pair of street preachers. They were loud and animated, and everyone was giving them a wide berth while avoiding eye contact, looking back only after having passed by.

We stayed with the flow and did the same. I too turned once we passed and watched them shout at the crowd coming toward them. If I heard exactly what they were shouting, I don’t remember it, but I can make some pretty good guesses. Many of you probably can as well.

They might have been telling us we needed to repent. They might have asked if we knew what would happen to us when we died. They might have wanted to know, “Are you saved?” though in my experience, those last two are just different ways of asking the same thing. “Accept Jesus and you will be saved, meaning you’ll get into heaven.” They might even have had a sign quoting the Apostle Paul. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

I recall this encounter at a fair because our gospel reading this morning also raises the issue of being saved. You likely missed it because the word translated “saved” in that quote from Paul gets translated differently in our gospel. Jesus says to the Samaritan, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well." But it could also be translated, “your faith has made you whole,” or “your faith has saved you.”

Sermon: Job Description

Luke 17:1-10

Job Description

James Sledge                                                                                       October 2, 2016

Way back in my high school days, I had a wrestling coach who was something of a yeller and screamer. He had a well-deserved reputation for being tough, and for building tough, winning teams. Back in my day, high school coaches who yelled and screamed were not all that unusual, but even then, this coach had a reputation for being especially intense.

I loved this coach. He was the best coach I ever had in any sport. Most of my teammates felt the same. At practices near Christmas time, a steady stream of former wrestlers on college break would come back to work out with us. It was a special fraternity.

Coach really cared about his wrestlers despite all the yelling. Yelling was his way of pushing us to do our best, and he often said, “You don’t need to worry if I’m yelling at you. That means I love you and care about you. It’s when I don’t yell at you that you should worry.”  But I don’t recall that ever happening.

Most of us had a unique devotion to Coach, but there were those who didn’t feel that way. I recall a handful of teammates who didn’t respond well to Coach’s methods. I think that Coach’s intense manner, his yelling and screaming, only worked when you really knew that he loved you and cared about you. I had no doubt about this, but had I not felt that way, I suspect I would have experienced his yelling differently.

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When I hear Jesus speak about faith the size of a mustard seed and being like worthless slaves, I cringe a bit. But I suspect those first disciples heard Jesus differently. They’d come to know Jesus intimately in their journeys with him. They’d experienced first-hand his tender care and love for them.

But hearing Jesus more like I used to hear my wrestling coach is not the only reason that my initial cringe may not be warranted. The way we read scripture in worship, a few verses ripped out of their larger context, can be misleading. Too often we hear Jesus without much connection to the larger narrative, to the ongoing story of the gospel.

I think it’s important for us to try and put ourselves in the same place as those disciples if we are to hear Jesus correctly, and that includes more than simply appreciating their close, intimate relationship with him. These disciples have also begun to understand that Jesus will soon leave them. And as they draw near to Jerusalem, and Jesus speaks of the difficult work ahead, they freak out a little. They worry that they are not ready.

Reverence, Awe, and Call

"Go away from me, Lord!"  So says Simon Peter in yesterday's reading from Luke. A lot of us would love to meet Jesus in the flesh and can't imagine trying to shoo Jesus away if we ever did. Peter says it's because he is a "sinful man." He is a rough and tumble fisherman, an occupation assumed to be filled with irreverent, irreligious sorts. Perhaps that's why Peter says, "Go away."

Of course the prophet Isaiah says something similar when he encounters God in the Temple. "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Isaiah is no uncouth fisherman, but he responds pretty much as Peter does.

In the Bible, there is a great deal of reverence, awe, even fear about encountering the Divine. People thought that God's holiness did not mix well with humans. There's even a story about a man struck dead when he reached out and touched the Ark of the Covenant, despite his only wanting to keep it from falling. The presence of God is a wild and dangerous thing.

Perhaps there is something primitive in this ancient reverence of God, one that insisted on special preparations before getting too close. For Jews, this meant not even speaking one of their most treasured possessions, the personal name of God, YHWH.

Most of us are much more casual in our approach to God. For some this may be because of a deep and abiding relationship. For others, could it be a sense of equality with God? Most of us create God in our own image at times, and why would we have much awe for such a God.

Still, Jesus' response to Peter is very different from what Isaiah experienced. Then a seraph took a coal from the altar and touched it to Isaiah's lips to purify him. But Jesus simply says to Peter, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." With Jesus, the "otherness" of God still exists, but it feels more easily bridged. There is no cleansing ritual, just a call to follow.

As a pastor, I've rarely witnessed the sort of awe and reverence shown by Isaiah or Peter when they encounter divine presence. I'm not sure what that means. Have we rarely encountered God? Is our experience too wispy and ethereal to seem real? Or, as some have suggested, have churches trafficked more in "talk about God" than actual "experience of God?"

One place that I do see a great deal of deference, of keeping God at a safe distance, is in the very topic of this gospel passage. Jesus' call to share the good new, to catch people, literally terrifies many Christians that I know. They don't know their faith well enough, some say. They are still exploring and figuring things out and not ready to speak to anyone about their faith. Similar objections are often raised when people are asked to teach or lead a project or guide some aspect of the church's work.

I wonder if there is not a connection between our caution about Jesus' call and our rare experience of awe and reverence for the divine. Has our tendency to think of faith in intellectual terms, ideas to learn and understand, shackled us in ways we don't realize?

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience." Simon Peter has been wowed by Jesus' presence prior to his obedience, but that is not always the case in the gospels. Routinely Jesus simply calls as he passes by, and some drop everything and follow. They get wowed later.

I wonder if the call to follow Jesus is not the more typical opening for us to encounter God's presence and power, and we get to be wowed later. Of course that requires taking a chance. Or, as Bonhoeffer said, it has a cost.

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

Charlotte, NC is my hometown, and so I've watched the events unfolding there closely. I also have friends there, along with many more Facebook friends. That means I've seen a deluge of reactions on social media from people who live in or around Charlotte, as well as posts and comments from people all over the country.

There is much to be troubled by in the events of this past week, but I don't know that the conversations on social media are all that helpful. I would include my own contributions in that judgment. In fact, social media seem to be contributing to the divide around issues of race, police actions, and more.

There certainly are plenty of thoughtful posts online that do a good job of discussing the issues, but even these tend to prompt a stream of comments that frame everything as us versus them, good and bad. Individual people disappear into the group they are associated with, and then are labeled as good or bad with little in the way of nuance. Protesters, police officers, city officials, the media themselves, white, black, and more are depicted as monolithic entities. They are called thugs, biased, trigger-happy, untruthful, racist, and lots of other terms I won't repeat.

All of this makes me wonder if people, at least those of us waging dueling posts and comments on Facebook, really see one another. Or do we only see sides? And once we slot someone on a particular side, we simply assign to them all the behaviors we attribute to that side.

In today's gospel reading, the division of rich and poor is highlighted, but the parable Jesus tells runs counter to the way people typically talk about such groups. We are told the poor man's name while the rich man is anonymous. Not the way that usually works. And the rich man's wealth seems not to be a blessing, but rather a curse.

The parable also implies that the rich man never really noticed poor Lazarus. No doubt he saw him when he passed him in the street. But he was just another poor man. The rich man only notices Lazarus after they've both died, and then he sees Lazarus as someone who might assist him. The parable doesn't say whether the rich man simply assumes that that's what people like Lazarus are for. But I'm left wondering if the rich man ever really sees Lazarus, the person, at all.

The labels we use for each other are often excuses not to see. They make life easy and simple for us by allowing easy judgments and easy decisions. Which of course means that our judgments and decisions are very often wrong.

I wonder what could happen if we learned to see, really see, the other.

On Not Noticing: White Privilege - White Blindness

A parable that Jesus tells begins this way. "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores." (Luke 16:19-31)

This is all we are told about either man prior to their deaths. Lazarus ends up in "Abraham's bosom" while the rich man is tormented in Hades. Nothing is said about what accounts for their different fates other than these words spoken to the rich man. "Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony." There is also a note about how "Moses and the prophets" should be more than enough to prevent the fate suffered by the rich man.

Without this note about Moses' Law and the prophets, the rich man's only sin would seem to be his wealth. Jesus actually says as much in Luke 6:20-26. "Blessed are you who are poor... But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation." That fits exactly with what happens to Lazarus and the rich man. But if the Law and the prophets could have provided some warning, there must more to the parable.

Lazarus' location seems to be the key. He lay right there at the rich man's gate. He was aware enough of the rich man that he long for the scraps from his table. But the rich man apparently took no notice of Lazarus. The Law and the prophets required helping the poor, feeding the hungry, caring for those in need. But this rich man passed by every day without even noticing. Nothing in the parable suggests he was a particularly cruel man or that he acted out of great malice. But he did not help. Because he did not see?

Jesus' parable draws on a division of rich and poor that is still with us. But if Jesus were walking around telling parables today, I wonder if he might choose a different division, one of white and black. Surely Jesus would never say, "Woe to you who are white." But then again, why would Jesus condemn everyone who happened to be rich? In Jesus' day, most simply would have been born into that state.

The point of Jesus' parable seems to be about not noticing, not seeing. And that is a huge issue for those of us born white. Many of us assume that the way we experience life is how everyone experiences it. When someone speaks of "white privilege" we cringe. What privilege? We've not experienced any special privileges; we've just lived our lives. And because for so long whiteness defined life in this country, we have felt right in our views. But we've never really seen what it is to be black. We can be as blind to that as the rich man was to the experience of Lazarus.

I've not needed much convincing that white privilege is a real problem in America, but that doesn't mean I truly see. I really cannot imagine that if my car broke down a police officer who stopped to investigate might even consider shooting me. So when that does happen, surely there must have been something other than blackness involved. Surely some action made the shooting more likely.

I recently read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It moved me more than any book I've read in a long time because it opened my eyes. By that I mean that it allowed me to see as another does, to experience a terrible fear and dread and anger that I have never known in my lifetime of middle class whiteness. I wonder if I didn't experience something akin to what the rich man felt when he actually saw Lazarus for the first time (if in fact he ever did; read the parable yourself and see what you think).

The mostly white Presbyterian Church I grew up in was generally sensitive to the needs of the poor. Despite many failures, it has tended toward more progressive stands on race and civil rights. But that does not mean we see. Far too often, we have assumed that if we just weren't overtly racist or prejudiced, everything would get better and be fine. All the while we were blind, oblivious to our own privilege, not noticing the plight of our neighbor.

But the news assaults our blindness. Regularly we are confronted with evidence of what we have not seen, of what we have walked right by without noticing. Some are clinging to the blindness, like addicts clinging to their addiction and insisting there is nothing wrong with them. But more and more of us are beginning to see. At least I hope so. God, I hope so.

Pessimism, Idols, and Church Decline

I've always thought of myself fundamentally as an optimist. I won't claim this is something that emerges from a deeply held faith. It's just how I am. Maybe it was how I was raised. Maybe I inherited it from my family. It's not a Pollyanna, everything is okay sort of view, but it is a sense that somehow, in the end, things will turn toward the best.

But I have to confess that such a view has become more difficult for me, and if my original, optimist bent did not emerge from my faith, the current, more pessimistic turn certainly challenges my faith. When I look at the horrible loss of life in Syria, the resurgence of openly racist views in Amerian politics, or the increasing income disparity in our country, it is difficult to thing things are going well. It is also easy to wonder where God is in all this.

Terrible situations in the world are hardly new, and it is helpful to recall this. Today's morning psalm speaks of "destroying storms," clearly referring to something other than actual weather. It also says, "I lie down almond lions that greedily devour human prey; their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp swords." There are many who could easily pen the same words today.

Yet the psalmist still speaks optimistically of such forces falling into the traps they constructed for others. I don't know if this is a statement of hope, or if it is rooted in events that have already transpired. Has the psalmist experienced God acting to set things right? Or does the psalmist simply trust that this will indeed occur?

My own, Christian faith is in a God most fully known in Jesus. This God is most often to be found in the midst of human suffering. This God speaks of being manifest in the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the sick, the stranger. And this Jesus clearly expects that his followers will continue to be found in the midst of suffering. He clearly expects that his followers will live at odds with the ways of the powerful and wealthy. Yet the Church, especially the American Church, very often looks little like the Jesus whose body it claims to be.

My recent, more pessimistic view of the world has challenged my faith, but I wonder if that faith is in a false god, an idol. If so it is an idol that the Church has helped construct. It is a god who aligns easily with American materialism, consumerism, and individualism, all of these at odds with the message of Jesus. It is a god who hangs out with the rich and powerful, and who wants you to be rich and powerful. It is a god of trite promises to those with faith and not much concerned with a just and equitable society. It is a god who says "Blessed are those who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, but screw those who are disadvantaged or who don't work hard enough to overcome all their disadvantages."

The Church I grew up in, a church that too often proclaimed an American, capitalist god, is in decline, perhaps in large part because a lot of people have lost faith in such a god. American churches of all sorts and types and theologies are shrinking, loosing members at an accelerating rate. The younger they are, the less likely Americans are to be part of any church. That might seem one more reason to be pessimistic, but it may be one place where I can feel hopeful. Perhaps the decline of the Church I grew up in will mean the death of the idol it helped create. And perhaps, somewhere in the aftermath, we can rediscover the living God known in Jesus.

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Sermon video: Street Parties & Country Club Problems

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

The Mirror That Is Donald Trump

Our church congregation recently utilized a sophisticated survey instrument designed to measure energy and satisfaction, reveal strengths and weaknesses, and give us a better understanding of just who we are. After the results had been tabulated, our congregational leaders received a three hour long presentation of findings that walked us through charts and graphs and interpretations of the data. It was a very positive report, describing a healthy congregation, doing well and with a great deal of potential to do greater things. Of course we have our weaknesses; every congregation does. And I found the discussion of those most illuminating.

The report listed a number of performance areas such as worship and music, governance, morale, education, spiritual vitality, conflict management, and more. We were ranked above average in most of them but had two very low scores. We scored in the 21st percentile in an area we already knew was one to work on. When we saw this score we began discussing ways address it, suggesting ideas that might help us improve.

Then came our other low score, in the second percentile. That's correct, a 2. This would seem to be an area where we would work even harder to improve than the previous area, but the response was entirely different. Rather than suggestion on ways to improve, the discussion focused on why the score had to be wrong.

The first low score had produced no question about the score's validity, but the second score really unnerved us. It said something about us that we didn't want to hear, and so the survey instrument must be wrong. We eventually moved past this initial, knee-jerk reaction, although some still don't fully embrace the survey's findings. From my standpoint as a relatively new pastor (here just over four years), the findings are spot on, mirroring my experience of the congregation when I first arrived. But the findings are too out of sync with the congregation's self-image, too disturbing for some.

In the long run, I think the information from the survey will be a great benefit to us. We may not like the information, but we will make better decisions and plans if they are based in reality rather than in a more pleasing but false picture of ourselves.

The success of Donald Trump's presidential campaign has provided our nation with a similar bit of helpful information, though it may be even more unnerving than that low score our congregation received. Trump's success has defied all manner of convention. It began with calling Mexicans "rapists" and move on to calls for banning Muslims from entering the country. At every step of the way, pundits and experts and lots of everyday folks assumed the campaign could not last. How could it with its regular appeals to fear and bigotry. Far too few Americans shared such views for Trump to garner the sort of support needed to win the nomination, much less a general election.

As Trump moved through the primaries and captured the nomination, people had to keep reassessing how this could be so. His success flew in the face of a self-image of America that many people held. You can hear it in the "This is not the America I know" statements that have been made following yet another statement by Trump that would seem to be so far outside accepted norms that it would surely doom his campaign.

Struggling to explain Trump's success while holding onto a vision of a tolerant, post-racial America is getting more and more difficult, not that people aren't trying. It reminds me a bit of our church leadership trying to hold onto its image of our congregation while making sense of that second percentile score. And just as it's helpful for our congregation to grapple with a  self image that doesn't mirror reality, the same may be true of that America we thought we knew.

Trump's campaign success has placed a mirror in front of our faces, a mirror that reveals an image many of us don't like. I'm not suggesting that all of his supporters are racists or bigots, but clearly many are. Many others are perfectly willing to tolerate Trump's open flirting with white supremacists and others who seemed completely out of the mainstream not so long ago. And if we are willing to look in the mirror and not turn away, we may learn some hard truths that allow us to make better decisions and plans than we would by holding onto a more pleasing but false picture of ourselves.

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When the Supreme Court invalidated much of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it did so in part because the America of 2013 was much changed from nearly 50 years earlier. The election of an African American president surely pointed to a very different racial landscape, and clearly things are different. They have changed and largely for the better, but the hope of many that racism and bigotry would simply fade away over time was overly optimistic. 

I have my own, anecdotal evidence that says as much. I grew up in the South and still have occasion regularly to visit small town South Carolina. There I've witnessed college-educated, pillar-of-society sorts routinely use the N-word and explain their disgust for President Obama and his family as being because "They're just not like us." But perhaps my encounters are aberrations. Perhaps they don't represent a significant portion of the population, even in South Carolina or other parts of the deep south. But then along comes Donald Trump, appealing directly to this presumably fringe population and winning.

Perhaps Trump is an aberration, or the product of some perfect storm of middle and working class angst, economic uncertainty, dislike for Hillary Clinton, and more. Perhaps. But I think we would do well not to turn away from the glimpse of ourselves Trump's candidacy has provided. It is a gift, and like that unwelcome finding in the survey our congregation took, it may even guide us to a better future.

For those of us who find the view in the mirror of Donald Trump disturbing, perhaps it will jar us out of our complacency. Simply not being  overtly racist ourselves is not enough. Many of us in mostly white, mainline congregations are especially culpable here. We quote Martin Luther King and preach tolerance; we're proud of ourselves for such tolerance, even as we worship in our mostly white churches and live in our largely white suburbs. Sometimes we even manage to enjoy our white privilege at the same time we're feeling smug about how open and tolerant we are.

But Trump has given us a mirror. Hopefully, we will make good use of the disturbing picture we've seen.

Sermon: Street Parties & Country Club Problems

Luke 15:1-10

Street Parties & Country Club Problems

James Sledge                                                                                       September 11, 2016

I don’t know how common it is now, but at one time, big steeple churches often included  a country club membership as one of the perks for their senior pastor. I suppose they reasoned that because many of them were country club sorts, they wanted their pastor to be able to join with them.

I’m not a golfer, and so I’ve not spent that much time around country clubs other than the occasional wedding reception. The closest I’ve ever come to a country club membership was joining local pools back when our girls were younger. And I don’t remember much about that process because my wife handled all that.

The pools we belonged to weren’t anything exclusive, but you still had to be a member. There was some sort of application process and once you joined you had to pay the annual dues to maintain your membership.

My guess is that joining a country club involves a similar, if a bit more selective, sort of process. There is an expectation that members will meet certain standards, and so you may have to be sponsored by an existing member, provide references, talk with a selection committee, and so on. How much you get vetted depends on how exclusive the club is.

Church congregations sometimes get compared to country clubs, for obvious reasons. You can become members, and once you do there is some expectation that you give financially, pay annual dues as it were. Some congregations feel exclusive, even if there is no formal vetting process for prospective members. And like real country clubs, many congregations once had rules against minorities joining or women serving in leadership roles.

Typically, church congregations use informal, often unintentional standards to maintain whatever level of exclusivity they expect. And so congregations can usually be labeled by income levels, race, education, and more. Such things may not have been conscious choices initially, but over time, they become standards that are enforced to some degree.

Sermon video: A Death in the Family

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.