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.

Sermon: A Death in the Family

Jeremiah 18:1-11

A Death in the Family

James Sledge                                                                                       September 4, 2016

I’ve recently been reading a new book that’s getting a lot of buzz, The End of White Christian America. It’s a fascinating read, especially if you’re a bit on the wonkish side. It is helpful in understanding a great deal of what is happening in American society these days, everything from Black Lives Matter to the current, bizarre political season. But before delving into all of this, the book opens with a tongue-in-cheek obituary.

 After a long life spanning nearly two hundred and forty years, White Christian America— a prominent cultural force in the nation’s history— has died. WCA first began to exhibit troubling symptoms in the 1960s when white mainline Protestant denominations began to shrink, but showed signs of rallying with the rise of the Christian Right in the 1980s. Following the 2004 presidential election, however, it became clear that WCA’s powers were failing. Although examiners have not been able to pinpoint the exact time of death, the best evidence suggests that WCA finally succumbed in the latter part of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The cause of death was determined to be a combination of environmental and internal factors— complications stemming from major demographic changes in the country, along with religious disaffiliation as many of its younger members began to doubt WCA’s continued relevance in a shifting cultural environment.[1]

The obituary continues, as they typically do, with some of the notable moments from the deceased’s life and then concludes,

WCA is survived by two principal branches of descendants: a mainline Protestant family residing primarily in the Northeast and upper Midwest and an evangelical Protestant family living mostly in the South. Plans for a public memorial service have not been announced.[2]

White Christian America has something of mixed legacy. It gave us American democracy but also gave us racially based slavery, the Civil War, and racial divides that persist to this day. As noted in the obituary, Presbyterianism is one of its children, and we are just beginning to process the death of our parent and figure out what it means for us.

Sermon: Leaky Cisterns and God's Love

Jeremiah 2:4-10

Leaky Cisterns and God’s Love

James Sledge                                                                                       August 28, 2016

Back when I was twenty-something, the mother of a good friend suffered a heart attack. She had many risk factors including smoking, not exercising, and being overweight. But the damage was minimal, and she was back home and feeling well soon after.

I dropped by to visit after she’d been home for a few weeks. She demonstrated her new exercise bike for me, telling me how many minutes a day she was up to. She sounded upbeat as she told me about throwing out her cigarettes and the new, healthy diet she’d begun. She was actually enjoying the healthy food, in part because not smoking had improved her sense of taste.

Everything seemed to be going incredibly well. Her husband and children were very supportive and encouraging. They did everything they could to help her maintain this new, healthy lifestyle. But…

Some of you may have lived stories like this one. She began to ride the bike less and less. The diet got less healthy, and the lure of cigarettes was too much. Her family was terrified. They encouraged her more. They pleaded, cajoled, threatened, bargained, cried, and got angry. But nothing worked, and in the end, she died of another heart attack.

Imagine how you would have felt and reacted if you’d been her family member. Perhaps you don’t need to imagine. Someone you know and love has engaged in self-destructive behavior and gotten stuck in a downward spiral. Perhaps you’ve even been in a downward spiral yourself and somehow pulled out of it.

Trying to help someone in such a place can be incredibly frustrating . People caught in self-destructive, downward spirals can be impervious to the attempts of loved ones to help. Attempts to intervene are often are met with angry outbursts, and at times they seem blind to the pain they are causing to those around them. It sometimes gets so bad that relationship fail.

Israel’s relationship with God seems to be experiencing something of this sort in the time of Jeremiah. Their relationship has a long history, going back to God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah, liberation for slavery in Egypt, the Mosaic covenant given at Mt. Sinai, the growth of the nation under David and Solomon. But the relationship is in crisis. Israel is trapped in self-destructive behaviors and unwilling to listen to reason.

The prophet Jeremiah, through his close relationship with God, feels the anguish in God’s heart. Speaking for God, Jeremiah tries to get through to Israel, using a standard, prophetic tactic, a lawsuit. God brings charges against Israel in a heavenly courtroom scene, but behind the tactic is a broken-hearted parent’s inability to understand. How can Israel have forgotten all God had done for them. How can they have turned away? How can they repeatedly act in ways that are so self-destructive, so displeasing and hurtful to God?

They act as though there is no relationship. Even when things have go horribly awry with threats from Assyria and t hen Babylon, they do not cry out to God. They do not plead, “Where are you, God?” Israel seems to have amnesia, acting as though God was not there at all. In their downward spiral, the relationship has disappeared, and there is no getting through to them.

Don't Take It Literally (or historically)

There are times, especially in John's gospel, when Jesus seems to go out of his way to be misunderstood. "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life." These words are spoken early in his ministry, long before any Last Supper, which doesn't appear in John's gospel anyway. How could anyone have made sense of this?

Over and over, John's gospel makes clear the hazard of taking Jesus literally. If you read through the the gospel, you may notice a pattern of Jesus saying things which are misunderstood when they are taken literally. This provides an opening for Jesus to speak at length on a particular subject. It happens with his "I AM the bread that came down from heaven" statement that happens a few verses before today's reading.

It happened with his "born again/from above" statement to Nicodemos a few chapters earlier, a word play that cannot be reproduced in English, or in Jesus' own Aramaic tongue for that matter. That deliberately confusing statement could only happen in Greek, which Jesus and Nic would not have been speaking. Turns out that the truth John's gospel hopes to convey is hard to find reading it literally or historically. The writer is perfectly happy to tell events that could not actually happen as told, and where Jesus says things that are impossible to understand unless you're reading the gospel from this side of Easter. His concerns are not with historical or literal accuracy.

I'm not entirely sure why this has caused such problems for modern day Christians. I suppose it grew out of an Enlightenment reverence for logic and scientific fact which imagined truth was a matter of getting all the details correct. (I'm unclear how this will change if the post-modern trend of thinking my opinion is more valid that facts continues.) Yet the Christians I've found most compelling, most Christ-like, are not the ones who are most certain of the facts (or their opinions). They are the ones who have hearts that are more expansive, more gentle, more loving than most. And while studying Scripture does help shape, refine, and direct such people's behavior, I don't think anyone's heart was ever enlarged simply by learning more facts.

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Sermon: Fear, Deep Gladness, and God's Call

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Fear, Deep Gladness, and God’s Call

James Sledge                                                                                     August 21, 2016

There’s a famous quote from writer and Presbyterian pastor, Frederick Buechner about calling, one I’ve used myself on a number of occasions. “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” I love this idea, the notion that discovering your true purpose in life both deepens your own joy while making the world a better place. Still, the quote has always left me a little uneasy.

No doubt there is truth to it. Many people have found vocations or callings that bring them much happiness while doing good, helping others, benefitting society. But the quote still makes me uneasy for a couple of reasons. First, in our individualistic culture, the focus on my deep gladness tends to overshadow the world’s deep hunger. And second, the quote isn’t always true.

I first encountered Buechner as I explored my call to become a pastor. The quote is often trotted out at discernment weekends held by seminaries and by pastors and others advising would be pastors. However, there is another pearl of wisdom often shared by the same people. This one comes from Charles Spurgeon, a famous preacher from the 19^th century, who said of becoming a pastor, “If you can do anything else do it. If you can stay out of the ministry, stay out of the ministry.”

I don’t know about you, but I detect a certain tension between the Buechner and Spurgeon quotes. The latter sounds like a warning. It suggests, to my ear at least, that being a pastor may be more difficult, less rewarding than one might imagine. Be really sure about this calling, it says. It may not be non-stop, deep gladness.

Now like any calling, being a pastor features good and bad. It can be very rewarding, although those rewards may not mirror our society’s idea of reward. But it should not surprise anyone if a calling from God isn’t loaded with non-stop joy and gladness. After all, at the very core of Jesus’ calling is the cross, a cross he prays that he might not have to endure, a cross he does not want.

Sermon video from August 7: Wearying God - Finding Hope

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video from July 31: God's Inner Turmoil

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Wearying God - Finding Hope

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

Wearying God – Finding Hope

James Sledge                                                                                       August 7, 2016

In spring of 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian, had been in a Nazi prison for a year because of his ties to the German resistance. Later that year, things grew more dire as the Nazis discovered his role in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and he would be hanged in 1945 at a Nazi concentration camp just two weeks before US soldiers liberated it.

Previously, Bonhoeffer had been a prominent leader in the Confessing Church movement, Christians from both Lutheran and Reformed churches who protested Nazi intrusion into church affairs, and the church’s willing to cooperation. Bonhoeffer was appalled by a requirement to expel any church member with Jewish ancestry.

Bonhoeffer spoke out against the Nazis from the beginning, arguing publically that Christians’ ultimate allegiance was to Christ and not to the Fuhrer. Although he was not involved its actual writing, these ideas became part of the Theological Declaration of Barmen, approved in May of 1934 by the Confessing Church. Barmen is in our denomination’s Book of Confessions, and its banner hangs in the back of our sanctuary, notable for the crossed out swastika on it.

Bonhoeffer could have safely ridden out the war as a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, but in 1939 he returned to Germany, convinced that he had to be there to have any say in some dimly glimpsed, hoped for future.

Even in from prison in that spring of 1944, Bonhoeffer was thinking about the future. From his cell, he penned a letter to a colleague’s infant son who was being baptized. The many-page letter includes these words near its end.

Today you will be baptized a Christian. All those great ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be spoken over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out on you, without your knowing anything about it. But we are once again driven back to the beginning of our understanding. Reconciliation and redemption, regeneration and the Holy Spirit, love of our enemies, cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship – all these things are so difficult and remote that we hardly venture any more to speak of them. In the traditional words and acts we suspect that there may be something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet grasp or express it. Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christian will be limited to these two things: prayer and righteous acts among men. All Christian thinking, speaking and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action.[1]

As he wrote his letter, churches all over Germany were still holding regular worship services, but Bonhoeffer clearly did not think such actions meant much. They had become too detached from the gospel, from the words Jesus spoke, and from the hope for that new day Jesus proclaimed –  the kingdom, the reign of God.

Visible Faith

I try not to engage in every Facebook debate that comes down the pipe, but I give in to temptation with some regularity. I have a terrible time leaving falsehoods or misunderstandings unchallenged, more so when these occur in my area of "expertise."

I recently felt compelled to comment on a "friend's" post where James Dobson vouched for Donald Trump's Christian faith. The post spoke of the disposition of his heart, which some reminded us, cannot be seen. Trump himself has used this argument in objecting to the pope's statements about him. And in these and other instances, Trump's heart is apparently supposed to negate (I was going to say "trump") his words and actions.

I struggle to understand how some Christians can defend this divorce faith from action. I too come from the Protestant tradition that emphasizes faith over works, but this emphasis never meant actions are unimportant. In fact, the model for faith and action is on display in today's reading from Acts.

Today's verses are part of the larger Pentecost narrative. After receiving the Holy Spirit, Peter addresses the crowd. He argues convincingly that the risen Jesus is the Messiah they have longed for, ending his address with a final dagger, "this Jesus whom you crucified."

The crowd is "cut to the heart" and pleads, "What should we do?" Peter tells them to repent and be baptized. In good Protestant fashion he says their former actions do not prevent God from embracing them, but that is hardly the end of the story. Not only is the call to repent a call to change (the basic meaning of the word), but we are shown the changed behaviors of the newly converted. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and prayers." This leads to even more radical change. "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need."

The letter of James highlights this relationship of faith to works. If faith in the heart does not lead to new behavior, it is not real faith. "So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."

The American notion of faith as a private, personal affair seems indefensible when measured against the words of Jesus and his early followers. Yet the divorce of faith from action appears equally popular among all political persuasions and church denominations. My own faith too often flits about in my brain, at times provoking the best of intentions that never take on much substance.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When Jesus began his ministry he said, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near." Put another way, "Change, for a new day is coming." Yet we persist in our old ways even as we profess our faith.

There's a famous quote from G.K. Chesterton that speaks to this. "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

I wonder what might happen if enough of us actually tried it.

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