Sermon: Cross-Shaped Mindsets

Mark 8:31-38

Cross-Shaped Mindsets

James Sledge                                                                                       February 25, 2018

Imagine for a moment that a political candidate has caught your eye. The office doesn’t matter. It could be school board, state legislature, Congress, anything You’re incredibly impressed, and the more you hear, the more you read, the more your admiration grows.

You decide to get involved in the campaign, and your tireless efforts are noticed. You’re invited into meetings about strategy, policy, and advertising purchases. You become a part of the inner circle and see things the public doesn’t, Yet even here, you admiration only grows.

But then one day in a strategy meeting, your candidate insists on taking a position that everyone knows is political suicide, a position so unpopular with the voters that defeat is inevitable. Everyone is stunned. Jaws drop, mouths hang open, a pall descends on the room.

Something similar happens in our gospel reading this morning. Up to this point, the gospel of Mark has largely focused on the question of who Jesus is. The disciples have heard teachings and seen healing and other miracles that witness to Jesus’ identity. Following one spectacular miracle, these disciples ask the very question Mark is focused on. “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

In Mark’s gospel, no human realizes that Jesus is Son of God prior to his death. But the disciples have seen enough to know that Jesus is no ordinary guy. Clearly God’s power is with him, and so when Jesus asks them directly, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter quickly answers, “You are the Messiah,” a term that means God’s anointed.

Peter gives a correct if incomplete answer, and Jesus takes this as a cue to begin teaching about what lies ahead. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

Jaws drop, mouths hang open, and a pall descends over the group. At first, no one speaks, but finally Peter decides he had to do something, has to make Jesus rethink this. Peter is discreet and pulls Jesus aside to rebuke him, to warn him what a huge mistake he’s making. Jesus responds by making sure all the disciples are listening when he calls Peter “Satan”

Then Jesus calls in the crowds. These words aren’t just for disciples. They’re for anyone thinking about following Jesus. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” The gospel does not say, but I would be surprised if many in the crowd did not pick up and head home right there.

Sermon: The Gospel of Noah

Genesis 9:8-17

The Gospel of Noah

James Sledge                                                                                       February 18, 2018

My mother-in-law collects Noah’s arks, and she gave me a wooden one that sits on a bookshelf in my office. The little animal pairs are typically lying on their sides because children who accompany a parent into my office can rarely resist playing with them. Like those animals on my bookshelf, the animals in the Noah story have proved irresistible to people over the years. That’s just one of the reasons the flood story in Genesis is so misunderstood, even by those in the Church.

Many know the broad strokes of the story: a wicked world, the good and faithful Noah, and a plan to start over fresh. The whole idea seems rather primeval or primitive. It’s an entertaining story in a way, but it has little to say to us, or so many believe.

Many cultures in the ancient Middle East had some sort of flood story. Some scholars speculate that a catastrophic flood centuries earlier provided the raw material for such myths, and it’s safe to say that people of ancient Israel were familiar with more than one version of the story. If you read the story in Genesis with any care, you will notice parts of at least two different accounts included there.

The writers and editors who pull together the book of Genesis are happy to include these sometimes conflicting accounts because they are only peripherally interested in reporting what happened. Their real interest is to use the story, along with other stories in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, to address deep, theological questions about the nature of God and about God’s relationship to creation, especially the human creature. It is this primary purpose of these stories that gets missed when we imagine them to be primitive, ancient tales.

The Noah story begins, some three chapters prior to our reading, with this comment. Yahweh saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And Yahweh was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.  Or perhaps, it grieved her to her heart. Men wrote down the stories after all.

A heartbroken God may seem strange to us, but the Hebrew Bible has no problem portraying a God emotionally impacted by humanity. And so the flood story begins. You’ve surely heard it. A great ark is constructed and animals of every sort are brought on board. Subterranean springs burst forth and rain falls for forty days and nights. Creation returns to its pre-creation chaos where the Spirit of God moved over the waters. But finally, after months, God remembered, and the waters begin to subside. Now, as the story is often understood, creation and humanity can start fresh.

Self-Denial, Guns, and "My Rights"

Compared to most of my colleagues, I'm something of an oddity when it comes to sermon preparation. I try to stay a week or so ahead in preparing them. That means that I was working on a sermon from Mark 8:31-38 when I heard the news of yet another school shooting.

This passage in Mark occurs immediately following Peter's confession of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus then begins to teach his disciples that he will suffer, be rejected, and finally be killed, but be raised on third day. This is too much for Peter, who pulls Jesus aside to straighten him out. In return, Jesus calls Peter "Satan" in front of all the disciples. Then he calls in the crowds and teaches them.

Jesus' words are deservedly famous in Christian circles. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."

Self-denial is not all that popular in our culture. We're all about acquisition and freedom, and we bristle at the notion of any curbs on those freedoms or our ability as consumers to acquire whatever we want. Many Americans are drowning in credit card debt because they cannot even deny themselves those things they cannot afford.

Yet Jesus insists that being his followers requires denying ourselves, and it requires a cross, a willingness to take up voluntary burdens and suffering for the sake of others. Jesus' words are at totally at odds with the American ethos, which perhaps explains why American Christians are so often raving hypocrites.

Nowhere is the hypocrisy greater than on the issue of gun rights. For reasons I cannot fathom, many Christians have somehow linked their faith to a love of guns and an absolute right to defend themselves, Jesus' pacifist teachings be damned. But the insistence that protecting "my rights" are more important than the lives of young children runs completely counter to Jesus' absolute demand for self denial and cross bearing. This core teaching of Jesus demands that as his follower, I must be ready and willing to give up things dear to me, no matter how costly to me, for the sake others.

I am perfectly willing to concede that it is easy for me to call out this particular hypocrisy because I am not a gun owner (although I did grow up hunting and shooting). And no doubt I am prone to other hypocrisies that are harder for me to see because impact me personally in a way that gun rights do not. But Jesus does not provide for any sort of "Everyone is doing it" loophole. If we cannot give up things dear to us for the sake Jesus' message, if we cannot endure suffering that could be avoided, then we cannot call ourselves followers of Jesus. And I'm quite sure that this is what it means to say "I'm a Christian."

It is popular in some circles to speak of America as a "Christian nation," a dubious claim at any point in our history. But as long as our knee-jerk reaction to any event is to worry about "my rights" and "my privileges," Jesus certainly won't claim us as his followers.

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Sermon video: Healing Spiritual Amnesia

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Healing Spiritual Amnesia

Isaiah 40:21-31

Healing Spiritual Amnesia

James Sledge                                                                                       February 4, 2018

Over the past year, I have  heard numerous calls for the Church to find its prophetic voice, to “speak truth to power.” At a time when some Christians are willing to excuse the most hateful, misogynist, racist behavior to gain or keep political power, it is incumbent on us to proclaim the way of Christ, a way that has special concern for the weak, the poor, the despised, the oppressed. Yes, we do need to speak God’s truth to power.

The biblical prophets often did exactly that, condemning kings and ruling class for policies that benefited the wealthy and injured the poor, blasting outward religious show that was uninterested in matters of justice and a rightly ordered society. But there is more to prophetic speech than this.

Prophets are about getting people aligned with God. Sometimes that means chastising them or warning what will happen if they don’t straighten up. That explains why some think that prophecy is about predicting the future, but such prophecy is rarely meant to be predictive in an absolute sense. It is, rather, a call to change and create a different future.

But prophecy need not be warning. Such is the case in our reading today. Here the prophet speaks to exiles in Babylon, people who’ve been defeated, Jerusalem and its great Temple have been destroyed, and these exiles struggle to maintain their religious traditions in a strange, foreign land. Some conclude that the Babylonian gods are stronger than their God. Or perhaps God has simply abandoned them. If only they had heeded the words of prophets in the past, but now it is too late. God pays no attention to their prayers any longer.

In this situation, the prophet’s job is not to call the people to straighten up. Rather it is to call them out of their spiritual amnesia. They have forgotten who this God called Yahweh is. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Memory has failed them. They cannot see beyond their loss and suffering, and so faith and hope evaporate. Is such a moment, the prophet’s work is to help the people remember.

Sermon video: Life Changing Words

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: LIfe Changing Words

Mark 1:21-28

Life Changing Words

James Sledge                                                                                       January 28, 2018

I’ve been delivering Sunday sermons for over twenty years now. Some people like them; some don’t. Now and then a sermon may touch folks, and I’ll hear more comments than usual. Now and then one touches a nerve ,and I hear more complaints than usual. But if I ever had any illusions to the contrary, one thing I’ve learned over these twenty plus years is that preaching has limited power actually to change people.

Even when I preach a sermon that folks love, it doesn’t mean that it makes a great difference in their lives. It has its moment, then it evaporates. Other pastors tell me much the same. We have a scant examples of a sermon making a big difference in someone’s life.

Perhaps it wasn’t always so. A word from the pulpit likely carried more weight and influence long ago, had more of “Thus sayeth the Lord” quality to it. But as individualism grew stronger and trust in institutions grew weaker, messages from the pulpit were taken with a grain of salt. People need to be convinced.

In one church I served there was a member who would often say to me, “I enjoyed the lecture today.” He meant it as a compliment, but I suspect the only authority my “lecture” had was found in how good an argument it made. It had no intrinsic authority because it came from a pastor or was based in Scripture.

The Bible itself has suffered a similar fate. People will accept what it says if it makes sense to them, if it seems reasonable, but it isn’t assumed to be correct, true, or life-giving just because it’s the Bible.

Sermon video: Insane Discipleship

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Listening for God

Audios of sermon and worship available on the FCPC website.

Christmas Eve sermon video: The View from Our Bubbles

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website

Sermon: Insane Discipleship

Mark 1:14-20

Insane Discipleship

James Sledge                                                                                       January 21, 2018

At our session meetings (Session is the discerning and governing council for a Presbyterian church.) we always spend some time discussing a passage of scripture. At the January meeting, we discussed our gospel passage for today.

For this particular discussion, I had primed the pump a bit by including some discussion questions in the agenda. “What differences do you see between the two sets of brothers? Do those differences make it harder for some to follow Jesus? What gets in the way of our following Jesus? In the way of the church following Jesus?”

We started with the first question, quickly noting what many of you may have also noticed. The two sets of brothers appear to come from different circumstances. Simon and Andrew have only casting nets to toss from the shore, meaning they are likely subsistence fishermen. James and John, on the other hand, are part of a family business that has employees. The gospel writer emphasizes this for us by saying precisely what these two sets of brothers leave behind when the go with Jesus. Simon and Andrew leave only their nets, but James and John leave their father in the boat with the employees.

We discussed the impact that having a little or having a lot has on being able to follow Jesus. There were a variety of thoughts on this, but most of us agreed that it gets harder to let go of what you have the more that you have. Jesus says as much in his teachings, pointing out what a hindrance wealth is to becoming part of God’s new day.

But then one of our elders observed that for both sets of brothers, what happens is “insane.” They drop everything and go off with this Jesus fellow who just happens by and calls to them. As far as we know from the story Mark’s gospel tells, they’ve never met Jesus, perhaps never even heard of him.

That is insane, and the relative wealth of the different brothers seems not to make any difference at all. We might have expected James and John to struggle a bit more. They were leaving a lot more behind. The gospel writer has made a point of describing the different circumstances of these sibling pairs, but then it plays no role in what happens. Both pairs drop everything and go with Jesus. What on earth accounts for such insane behavior?

Undomesticating Jesus and MLK

Yesterday I preached a sermon from 1 Samuel 3 that wondered how prophets such as Martin Luther King, Jr. are able to hear God speak, able to catch divine visions or dreams. The sermon was written well before President Trump made his remarks about immigrants from sh**hole countries.

Those remarks made me contemplate a different sermon using the gospel reading for the day instead, John 1:43-51, which includes a comment about how Jesus’ hometown was considered a sh**hole country. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But in the end I decided I didn’t want to do an entire sermon on Donald Trump’s racism.

Still, the confluence of Trump’s comments, the MLK holiday, and the president’s own proclamation honoring Dr. King on Friday, still has me feeling that I need to say something more than I did in worship yesterday. (I did note the gospel reading and its implications prior to the 1Samuel sermon.) I cannot imagine the prophet Martin not speaking out when immigrants of color are disparaged while ones from Scandinavia are lauded.

The strange contrast of President Trump honoring Dr. King on the day after the president’s racist remarks makes me worry about King’s legacy. That Trump could honor him while consistently acting in ways that would have appalled King says something about how King has become a revered image with much of his prophetic speech conveniently removed. Increasingly Dr. King is known by a few pithy and uplifting quotes. His scathing words against moderate whites, his resistance to the Vietnam War, and his outcry against police brutality are rarely mentioned. King has been sanitized and domesticated.

There are too many photographs and too much TV footage for King to be stripped of his blackness. Were that not the case, he could perhaps be made blonde and blue-eyed, totally domesticated in the manner of Jesus. Have you ever seen a depiction of Jesus as African and been jarred by it? But a fair-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus seems fine?

There is no better way to rob prophets and Messiahs of their power than by domesticating and honoring them. I fear that is happening to Dr. King, and I know it has already happened to Jesus. That people can profess to be Christian, followers of Jesus, and still loudly support Donald Trump, who so often stands diametrically opposed to Jesus’ teachings, reveals a Christianity that honors and celebrates Jesus without taking seriously anything he says.

Jesus reserved his most scathing remarks for wealth and for smug, respectable religious leaders. He came from a sh**hole part of Palestine and was happy to spend much of his time hanging out with those whom respectable people thought were sh**holes. He had special concern for the poor and oppressed, insisted that his followers not defend themselves when struck, demanded love of enemies as well as friends, and required disciples to give up their own good and willingly embrace suffering for the sake of his ministry. That Christians so seldom look like this is an indictment of the Church and of the religion that claims the name Christ.

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

Last year I saw the Oscar nominated, 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, based on an unfinished manuscript by James Baldwin. (If you’ve not seen it, it will be airing soon on PBS.) Baldwin has never become enough of an icon that there’s been much need to domesticate him. He remains a figure of his own telling, his own words, unlike King, who is being transformed into a comfortable, benign Negro who is no threat to the white, American status quo.

The real Dr. King terrified much of white America, and many of his words would terrify people still if they were spoken aloud and celebrated. So too Jesus terrified the powers that be in his day. Jesus was no sweet, saccharine Savior interested only in granting tickets to heaven for those who “believed in him.” He proclaimed the coming reign of God, a new day when the poor and oppressed would be lifted up and the rich and powerful pulled down. And he warned those who would follow him about honoring him without doing as he said. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)

If Christians are to wear that name in any meaningful way, and if America is to honor Martin Luther King in any real sense, we will have to un-domesticate them. We must listen to them speak. We must let them startle and challenge us. We must let them change us, or they have become little more than empty symbols. They are neither prophet nor Messiah. They are idols, pocket talismans we expect to bless us on demand.

 

Sermon: Listening for God

1 Samuel 3:1-10

Listening for God

James Sledge                                                                                       January 14, 2018

The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.  When I was young, and even sometimes as an adult, I’ve thought that it would be great to have lived in biblical times. How much easier faith would  I’d been there to see God act, to hear Jesus teach, to encounter a prophet filled with God’s Spirit and speaking directly to me.

But the opening of our Scripture reading this morning doesn’t sound much like that.  The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.  Sure, people knew stories of God acting in the past, but there wasn’t much current activity. I wonder if people at the time of our reading wished they had lived in an earlier time, when God’s activity had been more vivid and obvious. But for them, God’s word was rare. No dreams or visions to share. No prophets speaking God’s word directly to them.

The opening of our scripture doesn’t sound so different from today, although many of us were alive when one of God’s prophets did speak. I was just a child, but I remember. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet if there ever was one. God called him and gave him a vision to share. If Dr. King had lived in biblical times, I suspect his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial would have been written down with an introduction something like, “The vision that the prophet Martin was given about the things to come.”  

Dr. King used the term dream instead of vision Perhaps he thought that would work better with both religious folks and more secular types who don’t think much of prophetic visions.

Sermon video: Savoring Old Stories

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Countercultural Preparation

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: The View from Our Bubbles

Isaiah 9:2-7

The View from Our Bubbles

James Sledge                                                                                       December 24, 2017

Recently I was talking with someone about how we American increasingly live in little bubbles of our own making. Our Facebook and Twitter accounts are often echo chambers of like-minded people passing around articles and statements that nearly everyone there already agrees with. Because of the high cost of housing around here, many of our children attend schools filled with people just like them.

Churches often reflect these bubbles. Martin Luther King once said that 11:00 on Sunday mornings was the most segregated place in America. It’s changed, but only a little. And in the identity driven politics of our time, churches are increasingly segregated by where members fall on the political spectrum. One more echo chamber. We also tend to be financially homogeneous. Even churches that do a lot of social justice work and advocacy on behalf of the poor often have no poor members. They just don’t fit into the church’s bubble.

Many of us spend much of our time in an affluent, privileged bubble. We have contact with people who aren’t part of our bubble, but it tends to be sporadic and at the edges of our lives. We can volunteer at our Welcome Table meal program and spend part of our afternoon with people from a different world, but we can step back into our bubble whenever we wish.

Our Welcome Table guests aren’t part of our world, and can be easy to imagine that the bubble they occupy is at least partly of their own choosing. So too, we like to think we earned a spot in our comfortable, well-off bubble, our bubble that insulates us and makes it easier to ignore those outside it.

Inside our cozy, comfortable bubble, I wonder if we can really hear the Christmas story, hear it in the way the author intended. Neither the Christmas story nor our Isaiah prophecy are written for comfortable, secure people. Only shepherds attend Jesus’ birth. If these shepherds lived in our time, they would occupy a very different bubble from ours. Some of us would likely joke about their being from West Virginia or living in a double-wide. They would probably like hunting, love their guns, and consider us snobby elites.

Sermon: Savoring Old Stories

Isaiah 35:1-10

Savoring Old Stories

James Sledge                                                                           December 17, 2017

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find it hard to watch the news these days. O I’ll watch the network news if I’m home in the evening. And I’m one of those dinosaurs who still goes out to pick my newspaper from the driveway every morning. I look at every page most mornings, but I don’t always read all the articles. It’s too depressing.

I can only read so much about the latest shooting, or the terrible wildfires and devastating hurricanes and how both will likely become  more common with climate change. I can only stomach so much information about racial hatred going mainstream, or about legislation that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

I see many online who respond to all this with a visceral anger. I can still feel anger, but I’m probably more inclined toward despair.

I’m reasonably certain that others are struggling with today’s news as well. Over the past year, I’ve frequently seen a cartoon from The New Yorker’s David Sipress posted on social media. A well-dressed man and woman walk on a city sidewalk, and the woman says, “My desire to be well informed is currently at odds with my desire to stay sane.”

I assumed that the cartoon was drawn for our current situation, but turns out it’s from the 1990s and Sipress can’t even remember what events inspired it. He did republish it in a New Yorker article earlier this year about how he’s trying to stay sane these days. A prominent strategy is rationing his intake of news.

Of course other people have more personal reasons for anger or despair, from those facing terrible disease or tragedy to those who constantly must navigate the institutional racism of our culture to those who’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted but felt they could do nothing for fear of losing their jobs, healthcare coverage, and respectability.

A time with the news being troubling and depressing, when people feel anger or despair, is the setting for the prophecy we just heard. So too, Mary’s Magnifcat is spoken into a time when Israel was under the thumb of Rome, when being poor or disabled or widowed or orphaned was often a death sentence, when hope for the future seemed grim.

Sermon: Countercultural Preparation

Isaiah 11:1-9

Countercultural Preparation

James Sledge                                                                                       December 10, 2017

How many Christmas shows have you seen so far? Many that I grew up with have already made their annual appearance. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas have all run at least once. It’s amazing their staying power. Rudolph first ran in 1964, and Charlie Brown the following year.

I’ve seen these programs so many times that I can easily recall scenes from them. In A Charlie Brown Christmas, Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas to Charlie Brown, reciting from the gospel of Luke. “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.”

The story Linus tells is well known to many of us. Like the Christmas shows themselves, we encounter it every season. It is warm and familiar. For me it evokes memories of long ago Christmas pageants and my father reading it before bed on Christmas Eve.

The story is nostalgic for many of us, and so we may overlook how odd and subversive it is. In the midst of imperial Roman might, in the shadow of a Caesar called “Lord, Savior, Son of God,” a rival king is born, a different Savior and Son of God. Amidst the pageantry and royal finery of empire, the birth of a competing Lord is witnessed only by shepherds.

The contrast is absurd. Caesar, with all the might a of superpower at his disposal versus a baby, his parents, and a small entourage of dirty shepherds. What chance does this new king have? Why tell such a ridiculous story? Why would anyone choose to align themselves with Jesus rather than the emperor and all his vast wealth and power?

Our reading from Isaiah this morning has its own fanciful, absurd scenario. Wolf and lamb, leopard and kid, lion and calf, and children playing with poisonous snakes. It’s lovely and all. It makes for a great painting, but if anything, it is even more ridiculous than Jesus as an alternative to Caesar. It can’t really happen. It’s against the natural order of things.

But there is another scene in our reading that is much less absurd. It speaks of one from the house of David who will have God’s spirit, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. This one will truly discern the will of God and so bring justice for the poor and weak. Yes, the scene lapses into a bit of hyperbole at the end, but the core of it is not at all fanciful, not at all ridiculous. Indeed we claim these very things for those we baptize.

Sermon video: Sheep, Goats, Identity Politics, and the Way

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Entrusted With a Great Treasure

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Sheep, Goats, Identiy Politics, and the Way

Matthew 25:31-46

Sheep, Goats, Identity Politics, and the Way

James Sledge                                                   November 26, 2017 – Christ the King

In the past, I’ve questioned whether it might be time to retire the term “Christian.” To my mind it has become a meaningless label that anyone can bestow on themselves. The label tells little about how a person acts. Quite often it does not mean that the person diligently seeks to follow the teachings of Jesus. It’s simply a label that wants to claim some bit of divine blessing for that person and their views. Hillary Clinton says she is a Christian. Donald Trump says he is one. Some members of the alt-right insist they are Christian. And Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore claims to be a champion for Christians.

Speaking of Roy Moore, the recent controversies around charges that he preyed on high school students when he was in his thirties, along with ardent support for him from some evangelical Christians, have prompted a number of articles and blog posts about the term “Christian” losing its usefulness. Moore helped this process along when he was the Alabama Supreme Court chief justice. He insisted on a display of the Ten Commandments, even after the US Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional. In so doing, he only drug the term “Christian” further from any notion of doing what Jesus said, instead coopting the term as one more label in the identity politics that have so divided our culture.

When you think about it, the Ten Commandments are a rather odd choice for a Christian symbol, Yes, the commandments are in our Bible, but there is nothing distinctly Christian about them. They don’t come from any teaching of Jesus. Why not the Beatitudes? Why not “Love your enemies.”? Why not, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of  my Father in heaven.”?

We seem to have reached a point where “Christian” is such an empty label that we have to modify it to give it any real meaning: Evangelical Christian, Mainline Christian, progressive Christian, and so on. And even then, these labels likely tell us more about people’s politics than about how serious they in actually following Jesus.

Sermon video: Like Staying Woke

Audios of sermons and worship are available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Entrusted with a Great Treasure

Matthew 25:14-30

Entrusted with a Great Treasure

James Sledge                                                                                       November 19, 2017

If you’ve ever explored the buildings here at Falls Church Presbyterian, you’ve no doubt noticed that things have been added onto many times over the decades. The back of the sanctuary, the narthex, and steeple date to the first construction in the 1880s. Since then there’ve been a number of additions, expansions, and renovations, the last being the new Fellowship Hall, kitchen, and classrooms added less than fifteen years ago.

As with many congregations, these building and renovation projects involved stepping out on faith. Would there be enough money to pay the mortgage? Was the hope that the church would grow well founded? Prior to seminary, I was on the Session of a church that decided to build a new sanctuary. It’s now clear that was a great decision, but at the time, it was a difficult one. Many were worried about the cost and the risk the congregation was taking on, not to mention worries that growth might change the character of the congregation.

I was not here for any discussions about whether to build or renovate, although I was here for the discussion on hiring a full time youth director. That’s not permanent like a building, but it also involved stepping out on faith, of saying this is an investment in the future and we trust that the money will be there.

When you’re part of a church that isn’t brand new, you inherit a treasure from those who came before you. You’re entrusted with structures, a music program, children’s programs, Christmas Eve and Easter traditions, and so on. That means that most churches have to decide how to take good care of their treasure and how to utilize it well, But decisions about utilizing treasure sometimes run afoul of the desire to care for and protect it.

In the first church I served as pastor, the Mission Committee wanted to find a significant, ongoing project that would engage a lot of volunteers on a regular basis. Such an opportunity almost fell in our lap. A local homeless ministry was building a day center not from us that would allow them to accommodate more people, and they were seeking additional churches to host five homeless families for a week at a time, multiple times a year.

It was quite a system. On Sunday afternoon, a truck arrived with portable beds and mattress that had been taken out of another church early that morning. Volunteers would set up five bedrooms for families who arrived that evening and left around seven each morning. Supper and breakfast were provided, along with bag lunches for the day. The following Sunday morning, volunteers would turn bedrooms back into classrooms and put the beds back in the truck that would move on to another church later that afternoon.

It seemed a perfect fit. We had a number of classrooms that were not used during the week. The day center was less than a mile away, making transportation back and forth easy to manage. It needed a lot of volunteers to set up and tear down, serve as hosts, make supper and bag lunches, spend the night, tutor children, etc. It was exactly the sort of opportunity the Mission Committee was looking for, and so they brought a recommendation to the Session that we become an Interfaith Hospitality Network congregation.

Many greeted this as a wonderful opportunity, but not everyone. Some were worried about added wear and tear on our building and added risks from families and children we didn’t know using our classrooms and kitchen as their home for a week. For some, the need to take care of the treasure bequeathed to us made this a risk they did not want to take.

Sermon: Like Staying Woke

Matthew 25:1-13

Like Staying Woke

James Sledge                                                                                       November 12, 2017

“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” So says Jesus to his disciples in a final round of teachings just prior to his arrest and crucifixion. Our reading is part of a larger section sometimes referred to as a second sermon on the mount. It takes place on the Mount of Olives, and just as happened in the previous mountain sermon, Jesus sits down, the pose of a rabbi who is teaching, and his disciples come to him.

They ask about the timing of God’s coming new day and the signs to look for. Jesus speaks of suffering and difficulties, but nothing that will allow anyone to predict the event. When it gets here, you will know it, says Jesus, but don’t listen to anyone who claims to know the date.

Then Jesus tells a series of four parables, each addressing some aspect of his return and a final judgment. The first two speak of wisdom and foolishness in regards to awaiting Christ’s return, with our reading is the second of that pair. It features wise and foolish bridesmaids, but exactly what sort of wisdom Jesus is recommending is not immediately obvious. He says, “Keep awake,” but both the wise and foolish bridesmaids fall asleep.

Parables typically are not allegories, but this one may well be. Jesus is the bridegroom who appearance is delayed, and the bridesmaids, all of them, are followers of Jesus who have made plans to be there for the great banquet, the glorious feast of God’s new day.

That makes this a parable about and for insiders, followers of Jesus. That makes it a parable addressed directly to us, challenging us to think about whether we are wise or foolish. But what exactly does that mean? Both wise and foolish fell asleep. So what does Jesus mean when he says to us, “Keep awake.” ?

There may be a couple of hints found in Jesus’ earlier Sermon on the Mount. Two issues from that sermon seem to reappear in this parable. In both, Jesus speaks of those who call him “Lord, lord,” expecting to be embraced when the kingdom arrives, only to be told that Jesus does not know them. In the first sermon, these people are ones who did not do God’s will. Does the foolish bridesmaids lack of oil somehow speak about this?

Apparently the job of bridesmaids was to provide a lighted procession from the bride’s family home to that of the groom where the ceremony took place and his parents hosted the wedding feast. Weddings were the big social event of that day with the party starting at the bride’s house. When the groom arrived, the entire wedding party journeyed to his family’s home in a lighted procession led by the bridesmaids.

 In the first Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also speaks of lamps and light. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Are the foolish bridesmaids somehow unwilling or unprepared to do the good works asked of them? Are these foolish bridesmaids somehow unaware of effort required of them?

Sermon video: Passionate, Fearless Love

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Passionate, Fearless Love

Matthew 22:34-46

Passionate, Fearless Love

James Sledge                                                                                       October 29, 2-17

A version of today’s gospel reading appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which all follow the same basic timeline. But only Matthew has the question about the greatest commandment as part of Jesus’ final confrontation with his opponents. In Matthew, this is the last effort to catch Jesus in some mistake, to outwit him in some way.

 Perhaps Matthew wants to highlight two issues for his Jewish congregation before  he gets to Jesus’ final teachings and then his arrest and crucifixion. Perhaps he wants to highlight Jesus as the faithful and reliable interpreter of the Law and the Prophets, the chosen successor to Moses, and who Jesus is as Messiah, the anointed one of God.

Using a quote from the Psalms to talk about Jesus as Messiah probably doesn’t grab us like it might have people in Jesus’ day. The way Jesus uses scripture to prove his point was typical of rabbis in his day, but it doesn’t sound all that convincing to me, or perhaps to you.

But Jesus’ words on the greatest commandment have resonated down through the centuries. People with little connection to church may well be familiar with, “Love God with heart, soul, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus of course quotes from what we call the Old Testament. After all, he’s been asked which commandment from there is number one. Jesus names his  choice, calling it “the greatest and first commandment,” but he’s unwilling to stop with just one, adding a second that is “like it.” Taken together, says Jesus, obeying these two commandments will keep you in line on pretty much all the rest.

In my experience, many people tend to move quickly past the greatest and first commandment, turning the focus on loving neighbor. That happens in the gospel of Luke, where the person questioning Jesus has an immediate follow-up. “And who is my neighbor?” To which Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

But we’re in Matthew, not Luke, and there is no follow-up to Jesus’ statement on the greatest commandment. There are simply the two commandments, and one of them is the greatest and first commandment. It is also the longer commandment, with more elaborate language. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And so I wonder if we wouldn’t do well not to be in a rush to get to the one about loving neighbor. I wonder if we wouldn’t do well to linger here a bit and consider what it means to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.

Sermon video: Whose Image Is This?

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Whose Image Is This?

Matthew 22:15-22

Whose Image Is This?

James Sledge                                                                                       October 22, 2017

In the time of Jesus, Palestine was a colony under Roman rule. Rome allowed a certain level of self-governance, but they retained ultimate power. They levied heavy taxes, a burden that often fell especially on the poor. Many Jews resented the Romans, their armies and taxes. Open rebellion had broken out around the time of Jesus’ birth, and would break out again 30-some years after his death. 

At the same time, many Jews found Roman occupation beneficial. It brought peace and stability to an unstable region. Commerce benefited from Roman presence. Besides, except for brief periods here and there, Israel had been occupied by some power for centuries.

In our gospel reading this morning, pro-Roman Herodians become unlikely partners with Pharisees in an effort to trap Jesus. Normally you wouldn’t expect these two groups to have anything to do with one another, but here they join forces against Jesus, hoping to force him into either a pro-Rome or anti-Rome statement. “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

The question is more difficult and volatile than it may appear. These taxes could only be paid with Roman coins such as the one pictured on the bulletin. Its inscription says “Caesar Augustus, son of God, Father of His People” on one side and “Tiberius Caesar, Son of Augustus, High Priest” on the other. For Pharisees, who meticulously tried to keep the Commandments, this coin, with its divine pretensions and graven image, violated a couple of them. They objected to using such coins at all. Perhaps that’s why they needed the Herodians’ help, but our scripture simply says they brought (Jesus) a denarius, and “they” seems to include the Pharisees.  Strange that they appear unfazed by this idolatrous coin. 

“Whose head is this, and whose title?” Jesus asks. That is not in dispute; it is the emperor’s. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Or as some of us learned from an earlier Bible translation, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s…”

Speaking of Bible translations, I’m not sure why our Bible translates Jesus’ question, “Whose head is this?”  The word Matthew uses is the same word in his Bible’s creation story where God says, “Let us create humankind in our image.”

When the Emperor Augustus or Tiberius put their image on coins, it is an explicit statement about whose coins they are. It’s not unlike the branding that companies practice today when they emblazon their names and logos on their buildings and equipment. 

“Whose image is this?” asks Jesus. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 

But as so often happens when people try to trap Jesus, he does not really answer their question. He doesn’t say what things are the emperor’s and what are God’s.  Does the emperor’s image on the coin really make it his? And what of the image of God that we bear? 

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it.  So begins Psalm 24, a psalm that Jesus no doubt knew well. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 

Sermon video: Discovering Our Christ Identity

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

A Different Sort of "Me Too"

To you I lift up my eyes,     
    O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants
    look to the hand of their master, 
as the eyes of a maid
    to the hand of her mistress, 
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
    until he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
    for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Our soul has had more than its fill
    of the scorn of those who are at ease,
    of the contempt of the proud.                                                                                             Psalm 123

If you've been online at all the last few days, you can't have missed the "Me Too" posts, women letting the world know that they too have been sexually assaulted or harassed. My own Facebook page is filled with friends, family, and colleagues who've added their "Me Too" to the growing list. And I can only assume that many others have chosen not to go public with their own experiences.

My initial response to the posts is a mix of sadness and anger. But if I am honest with myself, I also must admit to a reflexive reaction that attempts to soften the impact of all those "Me Too" posts. "Exactly how is 'harass' being defined," I thought to myself. Then I recoiled at my own (male?) reflex that wanted to find a way to make the problem less terrible. No wonder women don't feel safe calling out male behavior. They know from experience that even "allies" may be inclined to dismiss them.

My own male, knee-jerk reaction didn't make it out of my head, but I saw others that did, sometimes from people I assume to be very sympathetic to those posting "Me Too" online. "Women sometimes harass men," read a comment to one "Me Too" on Facebook. Likely a true statement and perhaps not offered with bad intent, but if not then surely another reflexive reaction that softens the impact, that makes the problem seem less terrible. Just as a culture of white supremacy finds it easy to believe African Americans exaggerate the bias, prejudice, and danger they face, so too male supremacy finds it easy and convenient to believe it isn't really all that bad for women.

The psalmist uses words that perfectly capture how easily those with status and power dismiss those who do not share that status and power. "Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud." In addition, the psalmist is quite sure that God will respond with mercy to the cry of those dismissed and scorned.

Jesus seems to agree, publicly proclaiming that he has come "to bring good news to the poor... release to the captives... to let the oppressed go free." Jesus spends much of his ministry with those who are dismissed, scorned, and held in contempt by the privileged, the powerful, the religious, the comfortable. And so one might well assume that the followers of Jesus, that the Church, would  be the champion of all who are scorned and held in contempt. But alas...

From time to time, I find myself deeply disillusioned with Church. It's not that I expect the Church to be perfect. It is made up of sinful people, all who are profoundly shaped and influenced by culture and society. My own reflexive minimizing of "Me Too" is a perfect example. But while any church will be imperfect and caught up in the larger sins of its society, surely the Church should still offer hope, should still be a beacon for those scorned and held in contempt. 

At times we are. We do engage in mission and ministry with those the society dismisses and abandons. But as anyone who has ever worked in a church will tell you, we spend a lot more time and energy worrying about ourselves than we do worrying about those Jesus said he came to help. 

My own "progressive" congregation is part of a denomination that has ordained women for decades and now ordains LGBT folk. We have a wonderful Welcome Table program that feeds hundreds and provides financial assistance for those in need. But we also have a white, male lead pastor (me) and a female associate pastor. I can count on my hands the members of color, and discussion about becoming more diverse can run into a fierce allegiance toward the white, Western forms of worship and music most prefer, even claims that these are "superior."

In ways sometimes intentional and sometimes not, we continue to model the white, male structures of our society. And if someone points this out, we have our own reflexive reactions that minimize the problem or absolve us of blame.

Perhaps I and many others in the Church could use a different sort of "Me Too" hashtag, one that says, "Yeah, me too. I'm a part of the problem." Perhaps that could help us better embody the words from my denomination's "Brief Statement of Faith." 

      In a broken and fearful world

      the Spirit gives us courage

          to pray without ceasing,

          to witness among all people to Christ as Lord and Savior,

          to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,

          to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,

          and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace. 

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