Church or Jesus

Psalm 15

¹   Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly;
          the faithful have disappeared from humankind.
²   They utter lies to each other;
          with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

³   May the LORD cut off all flattering lips,
          the tongue that makes great boasts,
⁴   those who say, “With our tongues we will prevail;
          our lips are our own — who is our master?”

⁵   “Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan,
          I will now rise up,” says the LORD;
          “I will place them in the safety for which they long.”
⁶   The promises of the LORD are promises that are pure,
          silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
          purified seven times.

⁷   You, O LORD, will protect us;
          you will guard us from this generation forever.
⁸   On every side the wicked prowl,
          as vileness is exalted among humankind.

I've not read the Newsweek article featured on the cover picture. I stumbled onto the picture doing a Google search from something else, but it's an intriguing title: "Forget the Church - Follow Jesus." Not having read it, and can't really weigh in on what the article says. I do think it is nearly impossible to follow Jesus without a church community of some sort. That said, quite a few instititutions that call themselves "church" don't seem terribly interested in following Jesus.

I suppose that is why the Church must be reborn from time to time. 2017 will mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation on October 31, 1517, the date Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to door of the church in Wittenberg. That would lead to a long period of upheaval, conflict, and change that would help usher in the modern era.

I wonder if many churches in our day aren't just as detached from the teachings of Jesus as Luther thought the church of his day was. We have associated church with our political views, our nation, our agendas and issues, and those things guide us more than anything Jesus says or commands. In the past, Mainline denominations have gotten into bed with the powers that be. In the most recent election, many evangelicals cast their lot with Donald Trump in the hope he would further issues dear to them. In neither instance does Jesus seem to have been the primary driving factor.

Such problems are hardly unknown to the people of Old Testament times. Israel's history is filled with stories of their falling away from the way of God. Often they continued to maintain the religious rituals and offer their worship and prayers to Yahweh. But, as a cursory reading of the prophets will show, they did not live in ways that were pleasing to God.

Today's psalm seems to address such a time. Surely the psalmist would have no trouble writing some of those same words in our day. "They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak." Our "post-truth" world with its "alternative facts" is far removed from Jesus' command that our truthfulness be so sure that we need never swear an oath. (Matthew 5:33-37) And I'm not sure that is any less true inside the church than outside.

Is there a way to undo this, to do church in such a way that people don't see a disconnect between church and following Jesus? If so it will surely require the church to focus its life more on Jesus and the way that he teaches. For Mainline churches like my own, that may mean less talk of a generic God and more attention on the person of Jesus. For more conservative churches that already insist on the centrality of Christ, it may mean letting go of a Christ who functions as part of a salvation formula and recovering the Jesus of the gospels. But regardless of what sort of church, there is much work to be done.

Church will always have its failings. It is filled with humans after all. But if its central purpose is not to embody the way of Jesus, then that Newsweek title cease to be a provocative, eye-catching statement and become the conventional wisdom accepted by many.

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Sermon: What Does God Want from Us?

Micah 6:1-8

What Does God Want from Us?

James Sledge                                                                                       January 29, 2017

I feel confident in saying that this congregation has more lawyers in it than any congregation I’ve served or been a part of. I mention that because it means many people here should recognize what’s going on in our scripture passage. Rise, plead your case… The scene is a courtroom, a cosmic one. Mountains and hills and the foundations of the earth are seated as a jury. Israel is subpoenaed to testify, for God has a case against her.

I’m not sure why our translation says the Lord has a controversy with Israel. Better, Yahweh has a lawsuit. But what is it that has caused God to take this step, to take God’s own people to court?

Here, once more, we encounter the problem of dealing with short snippets of scripture in worship. God’s lawsuit makes little sense without what comes before. The evidence against Israel is already before the court, but we don’t know it if we’ve not read the book of Micah. There Micah rails against the wealthy who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, pushing families off ancestral lands in order to expand vast holdings. He condemns politicians who have sanctioned such activities and religious leaders who have invoked God’s blessings on an economic boom for the wealthy built on the suffering of the poor.

This was not appreciated by the wealthy and powerful. “One should not preach of such things…” they complain. I’m reminded of the old joke about parishioners complaining when the pastor leaves the expected confines of faith, belief, and the spiritual. “He’s stopped preaching and gone to meddling.”

The rich and powerful are not much different in our day than in Micah’s. They still want religious sanction without religious critique. Donald Trump, like every president before him, invited religious figures to pray at his inauguration, to associate God’s blessings with his presidency. At this inauguration and others, those asked to pray are chosen and vetted to ensure that they know and appreciate their proper role, as Micah clearly did not.

Beloved Daughters of God

That's me on left wearing red stole.

When you remember that Jesus and the gospel writers who tell his story were products of a patriarchal society that thought of women as less than fully human, it is remarkable how well women fare in the gospel story. (That women are primary witnesses to the resurrection is astounding considering that women could not serve as legal witnesses.)

Today's gospel reading is a good case in point. Jesus is headed to the home of Jairus, an important synagogue leader, to tend to his sick child. But Jesus is interrupted by an unamed woman. Not only is she unamed, she is unclean. Under one of those laws that only makes sense to patriarchy, women were considered unclean during their menstrual flow. And this woman has been bleeding for 12 years. For 12 years she has been deemed unfit to participate in community life.

This likely explains why she approaches Jesus as she does, not speaking to him but using the crowd as cover so she can get close and touch his clothes. It's a great plan until Jesus notices and demands to know who touched him. Caught, the woman comes forward in fear. Surely Jesus will be angry that his important mission has been interrupted by a destitute woman, and an unclean one at at that.

Instead, Jesus calls her "Daughter." He commends her faith and, declares her healed, and says she is "saved" or "made whole." (The word can mean "made well," but that seems a bad translation when Jesus uses a different word to speak of her being "healed.") Jesus embraces her and restores he to life in the community, not at all what the woman, or anyone else, had expected.

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I participated in the Women's March on Washington on Saturday. It was an incredibly uplifting event, and despite suffocating crowds and difficulties finding a place to see or hear the speakers because of unexpectedly large turnout, the spirit of the day was remarkably upbeat, light, and joyful. Not that everyone appreciated that. Yesterday one of my Facebook "friends" posted a meme with a crowd picture and this caption. "In one day Trump got more fat women out walking than Michelle Obama did in 8 years." 

Jesus may have responded to an unimportant, unclean woman with surprising kindness, insisting on her worth as a child of God, but patriarchy dies slowly. The author of the meme seems to view "women" as a derogatory term, one made worse when combined with "fat." That is not unexpected considering that patriarchy values women largely as sexual objects.

In the gospel stories, Jesus has many encounters with women, and never does he dismiss them or speak ill of them. He saves his ire for those who criticize his interaction with women and others considered sinners.  It is religious leaders who draws lines of exclusion and keepers of patriarchy whom Jesus condemns. But we still seem not to have fully learned the lessons Jesus teaches.

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Sermon video: Choosing the Right Arc

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Choosing the Right Arc

Matthew 4:12-23

Choosing the Right Arc

James Sledge                                                                                       January 22, 2017

I did not get down there for Martin Luther King Day last week, but his memorial is one of my favorite spots. I especially like walking along and rereading his quotes carved into the granite walls that arc along the memorial. One of my favorites is, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Dr. King was a pastor, but his status as civil rights icon means that many don’t appreciate how much Christian faith drove his civil rights work. It was about much more than people of color gaining the same fundamental right enjoyed by whites. It was also a deeply Christian activity that sought to embody God’s kingdom, God’s new day.

For Dr. King, the hope that all people would someday be one was not rooted solely in  what is possible if human beings strive hard enough. It was also rooted in the certainty of his faith that glimpsed a day when all divisions were ended, when what the Apostle Paul wrote came fully to pass. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

My fondness for Dr. King, and for his quote on “the arc of the moral universe,” caused me to do a double take when I happened upon an online column in The Washington Post with this quote.  “The arc of the political universe is long, and it doesn't have to bend toward progress or justice or anything else good. It can point backwards if that's where we aim it.”[1]

Sermon video: Glimpses of God's New Day

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Foolish Faith

Give ear to my words, O LORD;
      give heed to my sighing.
Listen to the sound of my cry,
      my King and my God,
      for to you I pray.
O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;
      in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
     evil will not sojourn with you.
The boastful will not stand before your eyes;
      you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies;
      the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful.

Psalm 5:1-6

Clearly the author of Psalm 5 is facing some sort of difficulty. No details are given, but presumably those who are evil doers, who are boastful, deceitful, and speak lies, are the people who cause the psalmist to sigh and cry and plead to God. His plea is rooted in his understanding of God’s character as one who will not abide boasting, deceit, and lying.

I’d like to think the psalmist is correct, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Lies, boasts, and deceit seem very popular these days, and I’ve seen little indication that God is about to intervene against those who are so fond of them.

Politics has long been a realm of “spin” and stretching the truth, but our current president-elect has taken this to new heights. In one of his latest tweet storms, Mr. Trump insisted that he had never mocked a disabled reporter despite an often shown video of him doing just that. Where is this God who destroys those who speak lies?

It is possible that the psalmist may be asking just such a question. It is not at all unusual to find people in the Bible pleading with God, appealing to God’s character in an attempt to move God to action. Such pleas are not so much statements of fact about God as they are attempts to sway God. “Remember who you are, God, and act accordingly. Remember your promises to uphold the weak and vulnerable. Remember who you are, O God, and save me!” (For a remarkable example of this sort of speech, read how Moses talks God out of destroying the Israelites following the golden calf episode in Exodus 32:1-14.)

If the psalmist is speaking in this manner, demanding that God be true to Godself and take action, I wonder if it worked. Israel suffered through long periods of corrupt and inept leadership without any divine intervention. Despite the words of psalmists and the insistence of prophets, God’s timetable was often excruciatingly slow.

Modern people have often “solved” this problem by relegating God to the spiritual realm. This God is primarily concerned with the disposition of souls after they’ve died and not much interested in the created order. Such a notion is extremely difficult to find in the pages of the Bible, but that has done little to dissuade those who think the primary work of Christian faith is to get one into heaven.

The fact is that living as though God was the destroyer of those who speak lies has always been a minority position. Faithfulness has always been difficult, always been costly, and always been seen as foolish by most people. There are just too many things that are easier to trust than God. There are too many ways of living that are easier and seemingly more rewarding than following the commands of Jesus.

And the Church is often of little help. Like Israel before, it also succumbs to the promises of power and wealth. It ignores the plight of the poor and oppressed if there is any real cost or loss of prestige involved. We prefer being safe and respectable to speaking like psalmists or prophets or Jesus.

Nevertheless, faith has remained all these centuries. Always, it seems, there are a few who take seriously Jesus’ call to deny self and follow him. Like Jesus who goes to the cross despite the obvious foolhardiness of such an act, there are those who take up their crosses. I want to, but oh how I wish God would provide a little more assurance that it’s a good idea.

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Sermon: Glimpses of God's New Day

Matthew 3:13-17

Glimpses of God’s New Day

James Sledge                                                                                       January 8, 2017

I have a number of books featuring sermons by Barbara Brown Taylor, along with a book by her on preaching. She’s famous for being a great preacher, and I’ve quoted her in sermons often. But a few years back she wrote a very different book entitled Leaving Church: a memoir of faith. It is about just what the title suggests, and here’s a bit from the introduction.

By now I expected to be a seasoned parish minister, wearing black clergy shirts grown gray from frequent washing. I expected to love the children who hung on my legs after Sunday morning services until they grew up and had children of their own. I even expected to be buried wearing the same red vestments in which I was ordained.

Today those vestments are hanging in the sacristy of an Anglican church in Kenya, my church pension is frozen, and I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin. Sometimes I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me. These days I earn my living teaching school, not leading worship, and while I still dream of opening a small restaurant in Clarkesville or volunteering in an eye clinic in Nepal, there is no guarantee that I will not run off with the circus before I am through. This is not the life I planned, or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine…^[1]

When the book came out, many of the pastors I socialized with agreed with one colleague who labeled Taylor “a whiner who never should have entered ordained ministry in the first place.” But I could not dismiss her so easily. I resonated with some of her frustrations with church and the world. And if anything, this last year has left me with an even more skeptical and frustrated view of the world, its institutions, and humanity. 

This can prove challenging for faith, and the combination of post-Christmas let down, winter doldrums, and news of the latest shooting doesn’t help. Christmas speaks of peace on earth, of God decisively entering into human history, and God’s new day beginning to appear. But all these centuries later and the kingdom seems a long way off. The world is still a place of horrible suffering, violence, greed, and selfishness. And the church often just shrugs. Worse, the church is too often an agent of prejudice, greed, hate, and violence.

Today, barely out of the Christmas season and moving into the heart of winter, we hear once more of the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry as he comes to the Jordan to be baptized by John. It is a strange story, one that troubled those early Christians who wrote the gospels. After all, John the Baptist said quite plainly that he baptized people for repentance. So why would Jesus come to him for baptism?

Christmas Meditation video

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Christmas Identities

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Hard To Be Christian At Christmas

When I looked at the daily lectionary passages for today, once again there wasn't much connection to Christmas. Elizabeth's pregnancy with the child who will grow up to be John the Baptist is announced to his father, Zechariah, so we are getting closer. But I suspect that a lot of casual observers of Christmas would not connect this story to the birth of Jesus.

Because the daily lectionary has readings daily, duh, it cannot bring out Christmas passages until we're almost there. People not well acquainted with the Bible might expect, based on the amount of attention paid to Christmas, that it is a major deal in our sacred texts. But there's just not very much Christmas in the Bible. None at all in the gospels of John and Mark, and only Luke has anything about a baby in a manger, visited by shepherds.

It is a beautiful story, though, and I'm not at all bothered by how much people like it and enjoy hearing it repeated this time of year. For that matter, I'm well and good with many traditions connected to Christmas; decorating trees, giving gifts, stringing lights, gathering with family, Christmas movies, and even Santa Claus. Most have little connection to Jesus' birth or to Christian faith, but neither do any number of other things that I appreciate and enjoy.

Still, I often find faith more difficult at Christmas than at any other time of the year. That may sound odd considering more people show up at church over the next week than any other time of year. At times, Christmas even draws people back to the Church, for which I'm thankful. But my own faith might be better served by going to sleep around Thanksgiving and waking up mid-January.

If I were to point to a single culprit for this situation, it would be the "War on Christmas," or more correctly, the soldiers who would defend Christmas in this imagined war. Every time I hear someone take offense at "Happy Holidays," or boldly proclaim their use of "Merry Christmas" as though they were a Christian martyr confessing the faith before a Roman tribunal, I want to give up the label "Christian" until the season is well past.

The whole squabble about "Merry Christmas" trivializes faith, making it more about easy statements and comfortable nameplates than about anything Jesus commanded us to do. And in the worst instances, the "Merry Christmas" enforcers act in ways antithetical to Jesus' teachings, treating neighbor in a manner they would never wish for themselves over mostly imagined slights. If this is Christianity, why would anyone want to join such a mean-spirited little clique.

But I shouldn't be too hard on the defenders of "Merry Christmas." In many ways they are carrying on the Church's own work of trivializing the faith, making it mostly a matter of belief statements attendance at worship services. Neither of these require much in the way of following Jesus or obeying his commandments. Perhaps that's why the silliness around the War on Christmas gets me so down. It brings into sharp focus the ways in which the Church itself has undermined authentic Christian discipleship.

The Church's fascination with Christmas may well be a part of this. Aside from the beauty of the Christmas story and the good news of a Savior born for us, there is also the added advantage of a Messiah who cannot yet talk. The babe in the manger will not tell us to love our enemies. He most will certainly not say, "Woe to you who are rich," words spoken by the man Jesus. The babe in a manger is a perfectly safe object of worship and devotion, one who will not ask anything of us.

Regardless, Jesus' birth calls for celebration, and I hope you enjoy the Christmas season with its warmth and joy, its beautiful music and splendor, its promise that God is indeed for us. But I hope you'll forgive me for wanting it to hurry up and be over, for looking forward to the time when there's a slightly better chance we may encounter the Jesus who says to us, "Let go of the things you thought were so important, and come, follow me."

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Sermon: Christmas Identities

Matthew 1:18-25

Christmas Identities

James Sledge                                                                           December 18, 2016

It’s getting close enough to Christmas that the gospel reading for today actually speaks of Christmas. It’s not what most of us think of as the Christmas story, but it’s all that Matthew’s gospel has. (Matthew also tells of the visit from the Magi, but Jesus may have been two or so when that happened.)

Nearly a hundred years ago, today’s gospel, along with the annunciation to Mary in Luke, provided ammunition in something known as the fundamentalist controversy. To be ordained in the Presbyterian Church back then required belief in a set of fundamentals, one of them being the virgin birth. This was part of a larger fight about the truth of the Bible. In this case it led to a rather ridiculous argument about whether or not the gospels got the science and biology of Jesus right. Never mind that the gospel writers had no notion of such things.

We’re still living with residue of those fights. There is a Christianity that insists on a literal reading of the Bible with cut and dried meanings to the text. It’s a view that’s not very tolerant of questions and tends toward a “believe it or else” mentality.

Then there’s a Christianity not at all bothered by whether or not Mary is a virgin. It’s perfectly content to accept scientific notions of evolution, the Big Bang, and so on. But this Christianity sometimes struggles with just what role Scripture plays in the life of faith. Often Scripture is “true” only if it doesn’t contradict science or my sense of what is possible, and so it cannot really tell me much of consequence that I don’t already know from other sources. 

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Recently a church member dropped by the office with a concern. He wasn’t upset with me or with anyone else. Rather he had a nagging worry that the church had lost its way in some sense. Not just this church, but others like it. It seemed to him that our sort of congregation is often a nice group of like-minded individuals, many who do a great deal to make the world a better place. But he wasn’t sure there was much distinctly Christian about it.

As we discussed his concerns, it seemed to me that he was speaking of an issue that has troubled me for some time, one of identity, specifically Christian identity.

Hung Juries and Christmas Hope

Several times in the last week, I've found myself wide awake in the middle of the night, struggling to make sense of a hung jury in the trial of the former police office who shot an unarmed Walter Scott. There is video showing Scott being shot in the back as he runs away. If that is not enough to convict, what is?

If you did not pay attention to the trial, one key moment was when the former police officer took the stand and explained how Scott's actions left him so fearful he had no choice but to shoot. And some jurors accepted that argument.

Fear of black men has deep roots in American culture, especially in the South. In colonial SC, fear of slave revolts was not without good reason. When you oppress someone, they may well try to undo that oppression. They may even simply want to make you pay for it.

When slavery finally ended, oppression did not. Former slaves and their descendants were "kept in their place" by all manner of laws and customs, and so fear was still warranted. To make matters worse, all this was wedded to the Christianity practiced by whites, particularly white southerners.

This fear of blacks did not simply go away as legal discrimination came to an end. I was an eighth grader in Charlotte, NC when the courts ordered a bussing plan to end segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Many white students left for privates schools, an option I never heard discussed in my home. That may have been because my parents were fairly progressive on racial issues. It may also have been because my family didn't have the means to put four children in private school.

Regardless, I clearly recall events early in the start of my ninth grade year when the school lines had again been redrawn to comply with the court, necessitating my attending a third junior high school in as many years. That this school was a formerly black school in a black neighborhood did not seem to bother my parents. My mother had volunteered in the Head Start program at the next door elementary school, after all. But then something happened that was too much for my mother.

The bus that picked me and my brother up as the new school year began was nearly full when it came by my home out in the sparsely populated "country." And almost every other child on the bus was black. It made me nervous, and it must have terrified my mother. She got onto the bus and had words with the driver. She and a few other white parents were soon on the phone to school officials and soon the bus route was changed. There were still black students on my bus, but they formed a more appropriate minority, allaying my and my mother's fears.

I don't know, but I suspect the police officer who shot Walter Scott was shaped by the same fears I learned as a child. No doubt some of the jurors at his trial were as well. It we would be nice to think that the fear I experienced in junior high was a thing of the past, but events keep reminding us that is not so.

As I think about all this, I am troubled by how seldom I have heard the church I grew up in address fear and race and privilege. The churches of my youth, much like my parents, were not racist in any overt way. Some reached out to develop relationships with black congregations. Still, I don't recall ever hearing a sermon addressing the evils of racism, much less one taking on the white privilege that so advantaged me and my fellow congregants. I can't recall a critique of a culture that defined itself by white standards, a culture that was unnerved by too much blackness in much the same way I was unnerved as a 14 year old getting on a school bus.

And now, as we move deeper into Advent and closer to Christmas, many would like to forget about the bitterness of the recent election. Many would like to focus on joy and peace and goodwill. But if we are listening at all to the prophets who herald a Messiah, we realize that their promises are connected to scathing critique of oppressive systems in their day. If we pay attention to the stories connected to Jesus' birth, we will see the powerful lashing out in fear and killing the innocent.

If there is real and meaningful hope to be found at Christmas, it is not located in the warmth of nostalgia or gathered families, as wonderful as those things may be. It is to be found in the assurance that God enters into human history on the side of the poor and the weak and the oppressed. And even if the Church too often forgets that, too often aligns itself with the powerful and with fear, God does not. Not if the Christmas story is true. God, I hope it is true.

Sermon: Is Jesus the One?

Matthew 11:2-6

Is Jesus the One?

James Sledge                                                                                       December 11, 016

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” asks John the Baptist from his prison cell. This is same John who did not want to baptize Jesus, who said, “I need to be baptized by you.” Perhaps John had expected more of Jesus, more vivid signs that God’s reign was indeed arriving. After all, John had announced the kingdom was coming. He had told people to repent, to change and get ready for it. But now he was in prison, soon to be executed, and the world didn’t look very different. Maybe he’d been wrong about Jesus.

Is Jesus the one? I think a lot of people still ask that question. Maybe not out loud, but it’s there, unspoken. In less than two weeks, our sanctuary, like many other sanctuaries, will fill to overflowing with people celebrating Christmas. I suspect that most will want the message of Emmanuel and Peace on earth to be true. They hope it might be and come on Christmas Eve, hoping to glimpse signs of it.

But soon enough, they will look around, see that the world still looks unchanged. Like John the Baptist, they’ll have trouble holding onto the hope of Christmas and believing that Jesus really is the one. Hope may stir once again next Christmas, but it is hard to maintain during most of the year.

When John’s question is brought to Jesus, he says to go and tell John, “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  This is the proof Jesus offers John.

It’s a curious list Jesus provides. It includes some pretty impressive miracles and healings, but such things were not unknown from Israel’s past. Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha healed the sick and even raised the dead with no expectation that they were about to bring God’s reign. So why would Jesus’ miracles be proof that God’s new day was close?

I wonder if Jesus’ point isn’t more about the last item in the list, “the poor have good news brought to them.” Come to think of it, most of the people on the list were poor. There was no social safety net in those days, and the lame, blind, and deaf mostly survived by begging. For Jesus to end his list with the promise of good news for the poor suggests that he’s not just making a point about his ability to do miracles. He’s saying that he is the fulfilment of prophetic hopes that God would one day lift up the poor, put an end to oppression and exploitation, raise up those at the bottom, and pull down those at the top.

Is Jesus the one? The Church says he is, and so we might expect that the Church would be largely focused on good news for the poor. But somewhere along the way, the Church’s message became more about personal salvation.

Sermon video: When God Stirs

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: When God Stirs

Matthew 3:1-12

When God Stirs

James Sledge                                                                                       December 4, 2016

I wonder if I would have gone out to see John the Baptist, or would I have missed him entirely? It’s not like you could bump into him by accident. He wasn’t any place I ever lived, not the city, the suburbs, or even out in the rural countryside. He was in the wilderness.

When I hear wilderness I sometimes think of pristine forests. In American thought, wilderness often describes lands untouched by human hands. The US has designated wilderness areas, set aside to protect them from human encroachment. But the wilderness in our gospel reading is a different sort.

The word “wild” forms the basis for our word “wilderness,” but not so the word in our gospel. It speaks of deserted, desolate places. It describes deserts and the barren wilderness where Israel and Moses wandered for forty years, surviving only because God provided manna for food.

John the Baptist is not some back to nature guy, living in a remote area where we might want to go hiking. He is grizzled prophet, living on the margins of society, where life is precarious,. Why would anyone go out there to see him?

Israel had an interesting relationship with wilderness. It was a hostile, inhospitable and dangerous place, yet it was also the place where God had given the Law and had been with Israel most concretely. And so when Israel was worried or hoped for God to intervene, they sometimes turned toward the wilderness, where their ancestors had once experienced God more directly than seemed possible for them.

I don’t know that we Americans have anything comparable, anyplace where we turn our gaze, longing for some sign that God may be stirring. This time of year we do turn our gaze toward Christmas, but I’m not sure it’s because we hope for signs of God about to do something. If anything, Christmas becomes a balm, a distraction, a respite, one we don’t expect to last much beyond the new year.

John the Baptist is something of an intrusion into our Christmas preparations. He breaks into the warmth and nostalgia to insists that God is stirring, and that we must change if we are to be part of it. Sure, John. Whatever.

I doubt I would have gone to see John. We may live in worrisome, difficult times, but I’m not much expecting God to intervene. I’m even less inclined to think I need to repent, to change because of my part in how things are. No, I probably would have stayed in Jerusalem.

Sermon video: Walking in the Light

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

But What Does God Think?

 Some of my more evangelical Facebook friends regularly post calls to praise God. A few of them engage in those manipulative posts declaring, "If you love Jesus you will share this." Psalms of praise are often cited, and the need for us to worship God and to pray is highlighted.

Some of these same people regularly share posts that attack Muslims as vile and evil, or that imply people on food stamps are addicts and social leeches. And so when I read today's passage from Isaiah, I couldn't help wanting to fling it at them. "When you come before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile... I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates."  See, God has no use for your worship when you don't care about the oppressed and the poor and weak.

But just when I'm feeling a little smug, I remember what I do for a living. I'm a pastor, and many of the members at my church see my primarily in worship. They evaluate me primarily by how well I preach and lead worship. Ultimately, I have to attract people to our worship services for me to be "successful" as a pastor, and I keep a wary eye on the weekly worship attendance figures.

My uneasiness is only amplified by the fact that we've entered Advent. I can get away with some non-Christmasy sermons for the first two Sundays, including some more somber sounding Advent hymns. But as the big day draws near, the carols will show up, along with familiar choir pieces and Bible verses that people love. It will culminate in some of the largest worship crowds of the year on Christmas Eve. It will be beautiful and moving with candles and carols and the story of Jesus' birth. Hopefully, God will be pleased.

I'm not suggesting that God will take any offense, but I do wonder about Isaiah and other prophets' critiques of worship that is divorced from social justice. I wonder about faith that doesn't somehow reshape and re-form us so that our concerns and priorities begin to mirror those of Jesus.

Modern American Christianity has some impossible expectations of worship. It is supposed to inspire, entertain, feed, comfort, uplift, and more. Church leaders spend a great deal of time trying to manage these expectations and provide worship that is both theologically appropriate but still sensitive to what people need and/or expect. But how often do we ask ourselves what God thinks of our worship? More to the point, how often do we ask ourselves what God thinks of us as worshippers?

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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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