Semon: Listen to Him!

Matthew 17:1-9

Listen to Him!

James Sledge                                                                                       February 23, 2020

Lately I’ve been thinking about quitting Facebook. Too much nastiness there, too many conspiracy theories, too much political manipulation. And maybe Mark Zuckerberg might address some of the damage Facebook does to our society if enough people quit using it.

But then some colleague or notable person that I follow posts something wonderful that I would never have seen otherwise. That happened the other day when Frederick Buechner posted something on his page. I may yet ditch Facebook, but I’m glad I saw Buechner’s post.

For those who don’t know of him, Buechner is a Presbyterian pastor who’s probably better known for his novels, essays, and short stories. The other day he posted something from an old book of his. It’s a bit longer than the typical sermon quote, but I hope you’ll indulge me.

PREPOSITIONS CAN BE VERY ELEGANT. A man is "in" architecture or a woman is "in" teaching, we say, meaning that is what they do weekdays and how they make enough money to enjoy themselves the rest of the time. But if we say they are "into" these things, that is another story. "Into" means something more like total immersion. They live and breathe what they do. They take it home with them nights. They can't get enough of it. To be "into" books means that just the sight of a signed first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland sets your heart pounding. To be "in" books means selling them at B. Dalton's.

Along similar lines, New Testament Greek speaks of believing "into" rather than believing "in." In English we can perhaps convey the distinction best by using either "in" or no preposition at all.

Believing in God is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on your life than believing in Freud's method of interpreting dreams or the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Romeo and Juliet.

Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. It doesn't leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.

We believe in God when for one reason or another we choose to do so. We believe God when somehow we run into God in a way that by and large leaves us no choice to do otherwise.

When Jesus says that whoever believes "into" him shall never die, he does not mean that to be willing to sign your name to the Nicene Creed guarantees eternal life. Eternal life is not the result of believing in. It is the experience of believing.[1]

Sermon video: On Being Salt and Light

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Catching the Dream

Matthew 5:21-37

Catching the Dream

James Sledge                                                                                                   February 16, 2020

As baseball fans are probably aware, Derek Jeter, longtime short stop for the New York Yankees, was voted into the Hall of Fame last month. In other recent news, Major League Baseball announced the results of its investigation into sign stealing by the Houston Astros, including some of the harshest penalties ever handed down by MLB. Many thought the penalties too lenient, and the scandal has raised larger questions about cheating in baseball.

These two, seemingly unrelated bits of baseball news reminded me of an episode from Derek Jeter’s playing days. He was batting and squared around to bunt, but the pitch was way inside. Jeter turned away as the pitch struck the bat right on the knob at its base. He threw the bat away and began shaking his hand in pain. The trainer ran out to examine his “injury,” and the umpire awarded him first base. Jeter trotted down the base path still shaking off the pain. 

But replays showed that the baseball never came anywhere near Jeter’s hand. Jeter himself later admitted as much. A debate ensued as to whether Jeter had pulled off a savvy play or if he was a cheater, a debate that landed Jeter’s at-bat on the evening news.

In some ways, this debate depends on your view of rules. What are they for? Are they simply meant to define limits and boundaries, or do they mean to create an ethos, a way of doing things? Those who saw Jeter as a consummate competitor understood winning as the ultimate goal which is to be pursued by whatever means not actually prohibited, while those who thought him a cheater understood the rules to create something bigger than winning.

All of us function in a world filled with various sorts of rules. I remember going into my daughters’ elementary school classrooms and seeing the “Class Rules” listed on a poster. Every day most of us see speed limit signs that we sometimes obey and sometimes don’t. And questions about whether speeding is wrong or if it’s okay as long as you don’t go too much over or get caught perhaps mirror questions about whether or not Derek Jeter cheated.

And what about religious rules? The Bible is full of rules. There are well known rules like the Ten Commandments. (At least their existence is well known; most people can’t actually name them.) Then there are more obscure rules. Flip through the pages of Leviticus or Deuteronomy some time. There’s a rule against eating shellfish. And you’d better not be wearing clothing made of a blended fabrics. If that label says “cotton/polyester” or “wool/cotton blend,” you’re breaking the rules.

Of course most of us don’t get too worried about those rules. We’re Christians, and so we don’t have to obey all those Old Testament rules. As long as we believe in Jesus, as long as we have faith, we’re okay.

Yet in the portion of the Sermon on the Mount we heard last week, Jesus said that he didn’t come to call off the Law but to fulfill it, that not a single letter of the Law would pass away. And today, far from calling off rules, we hear Jesus seeming to add to them. Don’t murder is doable for most of us, but Jesus stretches the rule to include not getting angry. And in Jesus’ new version of the rules a middle aged man going through a mid-life crisis needn’t have an affair. He can just think about it, and it’s pretty much the same thing.

Sermon: On Being Salt and Light

Matthew 5:13-20

On Being Salt and Light

James Sledge                                                                                       February 9, 2020

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away.” For some reason this song popped into my head when I was thinking about salt and light in our gospel reading. I was wondering whether those words have the same impact they did in Jesus’ time. They’re both rather mundane.

“Turn on the light,” someone says, and we flip the switch. Light is everywhere. You can’t see the stars very well at night in the DMV because there is so much light. As long as the power doesn’t go out, we take it for granted, which may be why I thought of the song. You are my sunshine sounds pretty impressive. I get the metaphor of “You are the light of the world,” but it doesn’t sound as impressive as sunshine

So too with salt. A lot of us get too much of it. There’s nothing special about salt. It’s nothing precious. No one would ever think of salt as an extravagant, Valentine’s gift.

Yet in ancient times, salt was often literally worth its weight in gold, one of the most important commodities of the ancient world. It was used not only to season food but to preserve it so it could be stored. It was used as an antiseptic; it was required in the offerings made at the Jerusalem Temple. In some areas, slabs of rock salt were used as coins.

Light was also precious. In a world of candles and torches, oil lamps were cutting edge technology. You had to buy oil to use them, and so no one lit a lamp and put it under a bushel basket.

“You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” Not something mundane or taken for granted, but precious, valuable, essential for life.

Sermon video: Slaves to Freedom

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Slaves to Freedom

Matthew 4:12-23

Slaves to Freedom

James Sledge                                                                           January 26, 2020

I once saw a newspaper comic strip that depicted a teenager who was angry at his parents for not letting him do something he wanted to do. He yelled, “I’ll be glad when I’m 18 and no one can tell me what to do!” The final panel showed his parents doubled over in laughter.

As much as we celebrate freedom and individualism in this country, almost none of us ever reach the point where no one can tell us what to do.  It may be parents, a teacher, or professor; it may be our boss; it may be the speed limit and the police radar gun, but much of the time, we either do as others say or suffer the consequences.

We often wish it were otherwise. That starts early. Toddlers love the word “No!” Children and adults enjoy saying, “You can’t make me.”  Part of American mythology is that anyone can grow up to be whatever he or she wants to be. We know it’s not really true, even if it’s truer here than in many countries. But still, we love the idea that we’re free to become whatever we want, that we can simply decide, and if we try hard enough, we will make it.

In some countries, children are given aptitude tests and then slotted into certain academic or vocational tracks as early as elementary school.  That would never fly here.

Yet despite this, people often ask themselves the question, “What should I do with my life?” That’s a somewhat different question from “What do I want to do?” What I want to do is about preference, but what I should do speaks of something outside myself having a say.

Sometimes people go to career counseling services to help figure out what sort of thing they should do. Some colleges offer such services to their students. People who are thinking about changing careers sometimes use them. And our denomination requires people who want to become pastors to be evaluated by a reputable career center.

This career counseling usually includes tests that chart personality, interests, and aptitudes. The process assumes that certain traits are necessary for certain careers. When I was 12, I would have loved to become a rock and roll star, but it didn’t take all that many guitar lessons to make it obvious that would never happen.

So I’m wondering, what information would you consider in making a decision about what you should do with your life? Whose voice would you listen to; what authority would you recognize as having a say in that decision? 

And this isn’t limited to decisions about career. Life is full of should questions. Where should I go to college? Should I go to grad school? Should we get married? Should we have children? How should we raise our children? How should we spend our retirement?  What should we do with our estate? The list goes on and on. Perhaps you’re wrestling with such a question right now.

How do you answer such questions? Who and what get a say in answering the question, “What should I do?”

Sermon video: Good News, Total Depravity, and the Lamb of God

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Good News, Total Depravity, and the Lamb of God

John 1:29-42

Good News, Total Depravity, and the Lamb of God

January 19, 2020                                                                                             James Sledge

A vaccine for polio was developed a couple of years before I was born. Prior to that half a million people were killed or paralyzed by it each year. In 1952 nearly 60,000 US children contracted polio. Over 3000 died and more than 20,000 were left with some sort of paralysis.

The vaccine was life-altering, front page news. Its developer, Jonas Salk, was a national hero. I have vague recollections of mass immunization drives at schools with public service announcements encouraging anyone who’d not yet been vaccinated to show up, but by the time I was a teenager, you rarely heard anything about polio. It became part of the normal routine, a required vaccination, and there wasn’t a lot of need to get the news out anymore.

Our gospel reading for today contains big, life-altering news from John the Baptist. At least it’s front page news for Andrew, Simon Peter and others. “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John tells Andrew and he tells Simon Peter. If you keep reading more people get told, and it won’t be long before crowds start to appear.

Sharing good news is central to the biblical story of Jesus and the first Christians, so much so that the our word “gospel” is simply an archaic synonym for “good news.” And the word “evangelism” is just an anglicized version of the Greek word meaning gospel or good news.

When people met Jesus, when people encountered early Christian missionaries, were baptized and received the Holy Spirit, they told others. It was life changing news. How could they not. And so what started out a small, apocalyptic Jewish movement swept over the entire Mediterranean world in short order, drawing in both Jews and non-Jews.

But eventually, Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire. And then it came to be expected, even required. Before long, Jesus wasn’t front page news anymore. It was just one of those things you acquired by being a part of the empire.

Even after the Roman Empire fell, Christianity remained enmeshed in the empires and states that followed. For much of the Western world, this Christendom persisted into the 20^th century. With a few exceptions, being Italian or French or American meant you were expected to be Christian. And baptism was often seen as a bit like a vaccination given to children. It was on the checklist. Whooping cough, polio, measles, baptism.

A lot of people lament the demise of this Christendom, but I’m not one of them. In Christendom, faith often became just background noise. People blissfully imagined that faith and nation were perfectly compatible. Not surprisingly, this Christendom faith made wealth a virtue, supported slavery, was not much troubled by the genocide of indigenous Americans, and thought God created Africans inferior to serve whites.

Tomorrow we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. who challenged the vapid faith of Christendom. As part of the commemoration of his life and work, the television will show old, black and white news footage from the Civil Rights movement. We’ll see police dogs and fire hoses turned on peaceful marchers, and we’ll see police brutally, sometimes gleefully, beating them, police who were upstanding members of their local churches.

Occasionally when such events are being discussed, people – always white people – will explain such behavior as “a product of the time.” Similar arguments are made in opposition to removing statues of southern, Civil War generals. They weren’t bad people. They were good people. They were simply of their time. That was the problem. Not them, the time.

Sermon video: Remembering Who We Are

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Remembering Who We Are

Matthew 3:13-17

Remembering Who We Are

James Sledge                                                            January 12, 2020 – Baptism of the Lord

It’s an old joke, one I’m sure I’ve told before, so if you’ve heard it, please bear with me. A group of pastors are meeting for lunch. As I assume happens with other professions, such lunches often include a fair amount of talking shop. There is some complaining and venting, some idea sharing. “What are y’all doing for Lent this year?” and other such discussions.

At this particular lunch, one of the pastors shared that they were having a problem with bats at the church she served. They had discovered a huge colony in the steeple and needed to get them out. She wondered if any of the other pastors had experience with this sort of thing. She didn’t want to hurt the bats but they were starting to make a pretty big mess.

One colleague shared the name of a local pest removal company. Another suggested an ultrasonic pest repeller, but the pastor said they’d already tried one of those with no success.

Finally another pastor said, “We had the same problem a few years ago and decided to enroll them all in confirmation class. When it was over, we never saw them again.”

For those of you from other religious traditions, confirmation is step two in a two-step process for becoming a full-fledged member of a Presbyterian church. Step one is baptism, something that typically happens when a child is still an infant. Confirmation, which includes making a public profession of faith, is the confirming of those baptismal vows, claiming the faith of one’s parents or guardians as one’s own.

Unfortunately, confirmation has a long history of becoming a graduation from church. Children are baptized, attend Sunday School as children, do confirmation as teens, and pretty much disappear after that. For much of the 20^th century, they often returned to church when they married and had children of their own, but that pattern has largely broken down. By the latter part of the 20^th century, many of those who graduated never came back.

I sometimes wonder if we in the church didn’t set ourselves up for this. In a variety of ways, we portrayed Christian faith as a status that one attains. Some evangelicals talk about being born again or saved. But what comes after that? We Presbyterians have rarely used the language of “born again” or being “saved,” but we still tended to treat Christianity as a status. In many congregations, Sunday School is seen as something for children. Presumably that means you are done at some point. You’ve finished, graduated, gotten your Christianity pin.

Some parents skip a step and just make infant baptism the graduation. They “get the baby done,” often at the urging of grandparents. And then they never go near church again.

Sermon video: Pharaoh and Herod vs God's Love

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: The Threat of Christmas

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Pharaoh and Herod vs God's Love

Matthew 2:13-23

Pharaoh and Herod vs God’s Love

James Sledge                                                                           December 29, 2019

Every evening when I drive home at this time of year, I pass by a house with an elaborate nativity scene in the front yard. It’s not terribly realistic, but it is huge, covering half of the front yard. It has steps that go up to the floor where Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus are, along with wise men and some animals.

The holy family and their visitors are wooden, stylized figures, illuminated by strands of Christmas lights. But on those steps leading up to the floor are two more realistic figures. They are plastic, brightly colored, and glow from their own, interior lighting. One is Santa Claus and the other is a snowman, Frosty perhaps?

A little odd, I suppose, but it’s hardly the first time I’ve seen Santa and the manger side by side. I don’t suppose anyone actually thinks that Santa was there at Jesus’ birth, but I can understand why people might add Santa to the display. In popular imagination, the story of Jesus’ birth is a joyous, magical, miraculous story, often depicted as sweet and idyllic, something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Likewise the story of Santa is also joyous and miraculous. It is full of warmth and happiness and a sense of magic that even adults long for. It is easy to see why people would feel that the two stories go well together.

It may surprise some, considering all the attention we lavish on it, to realize how little coverage the Christmas story gets from the Bible. Of the four gospels, only Luke tells of Jesus in a manger. There’s no actual mention of a stable, and many scholars think this manger was inside a home, in the area where the animals were brought inside at night.

If the nativity display at your house is like the one at mine, the Wise Men are visiting the baby in the manger along with shepherds and angels. But the visit of the Magi doesn’t quite belong with Christmas. Young Jesus is likely a toddler in this story from Matthew’s gospel, a story that ends with the fearsome, frightening events from our scripture reading this morning. All the male children two years old and under in the little hamlet of Bethlehem are taken from their parents by government officials, and then killed.

The gospel writer borrows a line from the prophet Jeremiah to describe the scene. The words originally spoke metaphorically of the children of Israel carried off into exile while Rachel, one of Israel’s founding matriarchs, weeps for them. But now the metaphor has turned literal. “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Sermon: The Threat of Christmas

Matthew 1:18-25

The Threat of Christmas

James Sledge                                                                                       December 22, 2019

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. “A righteous man.” Outside of the Bible, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone actually described that way. Have you? I can’t think of a single example. For that matter, I almost never hear the word righteous at all, other than to speak disparagingly of someone who is “self-righteous.”

Some Bible translations try something else: a just man, a man of honor, a noble man, a good man. Unlike righteous, I’ve heard people described as good, noble, honorable, or just, and meant in a complimentary way. Righteous, however, just isn’t part of our everyday vocabulary. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that any of those other words quite capture what the gospel writer is trying to say.

To say that Joseph is a righteous man is to say that he is faithful in keeping God’s law. He is more than simply good. He lives his life by God’s commandments. He is guided by the principles laid out in the Torah, and Torah says he should divorce Mary.

Divorce is required because Mary’s engagement to Joseph is something very different from engagement in our day. When two people get engaged in our culture, they have declared their intent to marry, but there’s no legal change of status. They are still single and, should they call off the engagement, the only issues to navigate depend on how far along things are. It could be a simple as letting friends and family know that the wedding is off. Or it could involve unbooking reception venues and dealing with angry members of the wedding party who’ve already bought bridesmaid dresses or non-refundable airline tickets. But regardless of how easy or complicated, calling the wedding off doesn’t require any legal action to undo the engagement.

Not the case for Joseph and Mary. Their engagement is as legally binding as marriage is for us. It cannot be called off. It can only end with a divorce.

I can only imagine what goes through Joseph’s mind when he learns that Mary is pregnant. He might feel betrayed, although if this is an arranged marriage, perhaps not. In the eyes of the Law, however, Joseph has been wronged. He has made Mary his wife, even if the final formalities are yet to come, but now that Joseph has learned of her presumed adultery, he must divorce her, regardless of what he does or doesn’t feel for her.

Sermon video: Needing John (and Accountability) for Advent

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Needing John (and Accountability) for Advent

Matthew 3:1-12

Needing John (and Accountability) for Advent

James Sledge                                                                                            December 8, 2019

Many of you are aware that the Scripture passages used in worship each week come from something called a lectionary, in our case the Revised Common Lectionary. This is a published list of readings for each Sunday, typically with a reading from the Old Testament, a psalm, a passage from an epistle or letter, and a gospel reading. We never use all the readings, but on most Sundays, we use some of them.

The lectionary follows a three year cycle, imaginatively titled years A, B, and C. Year A features the Gospel of Matthew, year B, Mark, and year C, Luke. The Gospel of John doesn’t get a year but gets woven into all three. As we entered into Advent last Sunday, we transitioned from Year C to A, and so we hear from Matthew today.

If you looked at all the passages listed in the lectionary for Advent, you might be surprised to discover that none sound very Christmassy until the gospel reading on December 22. And John the Baptist shows up on both the second and third Sunday in Advent. A person unfamiliar with church who happened to wander into our worship on those Sundays could be forgiven for suspecting that we didn’t realize what time of year it was. Do we really need to  hear from John so much and so close to Christmas?

Sermon video: Advent, Eschatology, and Moral Arcs

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website

Sermon: Advent, Eschatology, and Moral Arcs

Isaiah 2:1-5

Advent, Eschatology, and Moral Arcs

James Sledge                                                                                       December 1, 2019

Recently I’ve seen a number of articles and posts on social media commemorating thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. What a momentous time. The Soviet Union collapsed. East and West Germany became one country. Former puppet regimes began new lives as independent nations. And people heralded the end of the Cold War.

There was great hope for the future and talk of a “peace dividend.” America was the sole remaining superpower, and many hoped that military spending could be curtailed, allowing increased funding for social programs, education, infrastructure projects, and so on.

There were reductions in nuclear arsenals. Military spending remained flat for a few years, but no big peace dividend materialized. After 9/11, military spending increased dramatically, and we’ve been in an endless “war on terror” ever since. Now Russia’s war in Ukraine and interference in US elections feels a little like a return to Cold War days.

Through much of history, hopes for peace often seem to disappear like mist burned away by the morning sun. “Peace on Earth” will soon by plastered all over Christmas cards and Christmas displays, but our hopes for peace always seem to get overwhelmed by our tendency towards violence and war.

Back in 1928, France, the US, and Germany signed something called the “General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy,” better known as the “Kellogg-Briand Pact.” By the time the treaty went into effect a year later, the majority of the world’s nations had signed it, including all the major players in World War II, which would begin only ten years later.

Sermon video: Saying "Yes" to God's New Day

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Failing the Cowboy Test

Luke 23:33-43

Failing the Cowboy Test

James Sledge                                                               November 24, 2019

I was sitting on the couch watching television the other night. More accurately, I was looking for something to watch. I pulled up the channel guide and scrolled through it, but nothing really grabbed me. As I got to the very end, I saw a listing that read simply, “Cheyenne.”

I used to watch a show called Cheyenne when I was a little boy, and so I clicked on it to see if it was that. Sure enough, there, in beautiful black and white, was Clint Walker starring as Cheyenne Bodie.

Now I suspect that many of you have never heard of either Cheyenne Bodie or the actor who played him, but the show was a huge success when it aired from the mid-1950s to early 60s. According to Wikipedia, it was the first hour-long Western and the first hour-long dramatic series of any sort to last more than a single season.
Cheyenne was a large and muscular, but a gentle fellow, at least until someone needed justice. Then he was more than willing to use his brawn, or his gun, to set things right.

Cowboy heroes were all over the television when I was a boy, both in afternoon reruns and in primetime. There were many variations in the slew of Westerns that filled the airways, but in most all of them, the dramatic climax of the show came when good defeated evil in a fist fight or a gunfight. Good put evil in its place, and, for a moment at least, things were right with the world again.

My and many others’ notions of heroism and bravery and masculinity were shaped by Cheyenne and the Lone Ranger and Marshall Dillon and Roy Rogers and on and on and on. These heroes weren’t afraid to fight for what they believed in, even when the odds were against them. A real hero, a real man, might not want to fight, but he was more than ready to do so in order to defend himself or others.

I wonder if this isn’t one reason that so many of us Christians struggle with following Jesus. He asks us to live in ways that are contrary to accepted notions of strength, of bravery, of masculinity, of might and right. He tells us not to fight back. He tells us to love our enemy. He says not to seek restitution when someone takes something from us.

Jesus fails miserably at the cowboy test, the superhero test. Yes, he does best his opponents in verbal repartee on a regular basis, but when push comes to shove, he refuses to fight back. When he is arrested, he goes meekly. When people give false testimony at his trial, he makes no attempt to defend himself. When he is convicted for being a political threat to the empire, he raises no objection. No wonder that when the risen Jesus comes along a pair of his disciples on the afternoon of that first Easter, they say of him, “But we had hoped that he was the one…” They had hoped, but clearly he was not. If he had been, he would not have gone down without a fight. If he had been, it wouldn’t have ended like this.

Sermon: Saying "Yes" to God's New Day

Isaiah 65:17-25

Saying “Yes” to God’s New Day

James Sledge                                                                                  November 17, 2019

A few weeks ago, one of my Facebook “friends” posted this on her page. “When the time changes next weekend could we please go back to 1965 when life was simple!!!!! I think most will agree the 60’s were the best years of their life!!!” 

“Most”  here obviously doesn’t include anyone born after 1970. It might not include those who served or lost loved ones in Vietnam. It’s probably doesn’t include civil rights marchers who faced dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and death threats. But for many, including an eight year old me, it did seem a wonderful, simple time. We lived what I thought was the nearly idyllic life of a typical suburban family. Oh, for life to be that easy again.

Nostalgia is a way that many of us react when things are not going as well as we’d like. As with my Facebook “friend,” it usually involves some selective remembering that focuses on the good and forgets the bad. Those who want to make America great again, recall a time when American was in its ascendency, the preeminent superpower with a growing middle class, burgeoning suburbs, and an interstate highway system beginning to be built. Of course this nostalgia forgets the large numbers of people who were systemically excluded because of  race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. It forgets the ecological damage being done without the least bit of concern.

There’s a lot of nostalgia in the church these days. Remember when the sanctuary was always full? Remember when the confirmation class had forty youth in it? Remember when we couldn’t find enough rooms for all the Sunday School classes? Remember?

Of course nostalgia forgets that 1950s Christianity often actively supported laws enforcing racial segregation and criminalizing sexual orientations or behaviors seen as “deviant,” The Church gave religious sanction to American society, speaking in biblical terms of a new Jerusalem, in exchange for the culture all but requiring people to participate in religion. But it was an easier time to be church, although Jesus did say that following him would be difficult.

Sermon video: Rightly Ordered Priorities

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Rightly Ordered Priorities

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

Rightly Ordered Priorities

James Sledge                                             November 10, 2019

I’m not sure when children’s sermons became a standard part of American worship services, but my church had them when I was a child. As with other elements of worship, there are resource books on children’s sermons. I have a couple of old ones that a retiring pastor gave me. Unfortunately, almost all the ideas are object lessons, practical examples used to explain more abstract ideas about faith. But child development experts say that object lesson don’t work with young children whose thinking is too concrete, which explains why it is often adults who enjoy the children’s sermons while the little ones fidget through them.

A colleague once shared with me a children’s sermon on tithing. I really like it, but it’s another object lesson. And so I’m using it in a regular sermon. A basket of ten apples represents a person’s income. Our faith says that all we have is a gift from God. The only thing God asks is that we use the first part of our gifts to do God’s work.

God has given me ten apples. A tithe would be one of them, so I will give one apple back to God. And I still have a whole basket full to use for the things I need and want.

But very often, people don’t do it that way. I take my ten apples and buy a car and food, pay rent, take a vacation, fund hobbies, pay for streaming and cell service, and so on until little is left. Then I think about giving to God, but it would be everything I’ve got.

I can’t imagine that many young children ever made head nor tails of this lesson, but the point is a good one for those of us old enough to understand. The practice of generosity is much, much easier when it comes first. It is difficult to be generous when you only give from what is left over after you are done.

That’s true of faith and discipleship in general. If we seek to follow Jesus, to pray, study, serve others, worship, and so on, only after we’ve done everything else we need and want, there is never enough time or money left over.

Faith, discipleship, true spirituality, are largely about getting life rightly ordered. On some level, we know this intuitively. You may have  heard the adage, “No one on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’” We nod our heads in agreement yet we still struggle with disordered priorities.

Sermon video: Experiencing Love, Sharing Love

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Experiencing Love, Sharing Love

Luke 19:1-10

Experiencing Love, Sharing Love

James Sledge                                                             November 3, 2019

I read an article the other day about recent research on partisanship in America. It said that 9 in 10 Americans say they are “frustrated by the uncivil and rude behavior of many politicians.” But at the very same time, 8 in 10 Americans are “tired of leaders compromising my values and ideals” and want leaders “who will stand up to the other side.”[1]

It would seem, at least the case of partisan divides, that Americans decry the political boundaries that divide us into camps, recognizing that these divisions are caustic and destructive. And yet, these same Americans want “their side” to fight against the other. We lament our divisions while, at the same time, encouraging them.

And in case you haven’t noticed, politics is just one of many things that create “us and them” dynamics. We divide by race, income, gender, age, education level, and more. Some boundaries are more rigid than others, but we learn at an early age how to navigate and deal with them. It doesn’t take long for school aged children to recognize divisions between rich and poor, in and out, cool and not so cool, athletes and nerds, and so on.

Religion gets in on the game, too, with all sorts of boundaries, some clear, some subtle. Are you a member? Are you saved? Do you believe the right things? Do you fit in or not?

We’re a liberal church. We’re a conservative church. We’re a liturgical church. We like highbrow music. We like praise songs. I suppose that some such preferences are unavoidable, but we often take it a step further. It’s not really church if it doesn’t have the right kind of music, right kind of liturgy, right political stance, or, perhaps, no political stance. And if you don’t think such boundaries fence people out here at FCPC, serve at one of our Wednesday Welcome Tables and observe the hundreds of people there. Then observe how nary a one returns for worship on a Sunday. They know that they don’t belong.

Sermon video: In Their Shalom, You Will Find Yours

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: In Their Shalom, You Will Find Yours

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

In Their Shalom, You Will Find Yours

James Sledge                                      October 13, 2019

Has the ground ever shifted under your feet, something you thought sure, permanent, certain, unchanging, suddenly failed you? For much of the 20^th century, American factory workers assumed there would always be good, high-paying manufacturing jobs with pensions for them and their children. But then factories began to close, and jobs began to dry up.

On a more personal level, someone you counted on, the one person you were certain would always be there for you, suddenly betrays you. It could be a spouse, a best friend, a child, a parent, but the trauma of such a betrayal can leave people unmoored and at a loss for what to do next.

American Christianity, or perhaps I should say, American churches have experienced the ground shake under them as well. It happened more gradually than a factory closing or a spouse leaving, but it has been no less devastating for many congregations.

When America sought a return to “normal” after World War II, church was assumed to be a big part of that normal. As suburbs exploded in the 1950s, denominations put scores of new churches in them. Mainline denominations like Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Episcopalians used a formula that almost always worked. If we build it, they will come. People were “supposed” to go to church, and so the new neighborhood churches easily found new members while existing congregations built additions to handle all the people.

Those were heady times for Presbyterians and others. We enjoyed significant influence in the public square. Our seminaries were filled with bright young minds. Denominational headquarters swelled and expanded. “The Protestant Hour” was broadcast on over 600 radio stations nationwide, as well as on the Armed Forces Network.

I grew up assuming that you went to church on Sunday morning, unless you were Jewish. It was a fairly safe assumption in 1960s South Carolina. Nothing much else happened on Sunday morning. The stores and movie theaters were closed. The pool didn’t open until after lunch, and no youth sports team even thought about playing or practicing.

I suspect that many congregations assumed it would always be so. The suburbs would keep growing and so would the churches. We would keep building new churches, keep holding worship services, and the people would keep streaming in, encouraged by a culture that expected religious participation as a part of American citizenship.

But for many of you here today, such a world has never existed. You grew up with Sunday soccer leagues, walk-a-thons, 5Ks, and other community events. Almost no businesses closed on Sunday, and church was just one option in a plethora of them.

Sermon video - Meeting God in Scripture: Enough Faith

Audios of sermons and worship available on FCPC website.

Higher Loyalties

I recently had the honor of attending the promotion ceremony of a church member. (Congratulations, Colonel Balten!) At that ceremony, she once again took her military oath of office. I had heard it before, but I'm always struck when I do. Here it is.

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

I find it remarkable that our military officers swear to support and defend not their service branch, not their leaders, military or civilian, not even the nation itself, but rather the ideals on which the nation is built. They swear to defend freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably protest, and more from "all enemies, foreign and domestic." The oath demands a loyalty to higher principles, and as such, it is aspirational. I doubt anyone is able to keep it perfectly. At times it surely comes in conflict with climbing the career ladder, obeying an order, etc. I do suspect, however, that many in the military come closer to upholding their oath than do some others in the service of our country.

Members of Congress, the President, Supreme Court justices, and so on take oaths to defend the constitution. They all pledge a higher loyalty than party or political gain, but in these highly partisan times, this higher loyalty is often difficult to detect. On occasion, the good of the nation overrides partisan interests, but those occasions seem to be more and more rare.

Our current president has added a new wrinkle to this problem by seemingly conflating loyalty to the nation and its ideals with loyalty to him personally. Perhaps this is simply a natural progression in the move away from a loyalty to higher principles toward smaller and smaller loyalties. And the smallest loyalty of all is one to self alone.

America's emphasis on individual freedoms and rights may at times encourage this problem, although our founding documents attempt to strike a balance between the good of the individual and the good of the whole. It's not a new problem though. In a letter to his congregation in Corinth, the Apostle Paul addresses members there whose personal freedoms and rights seem unconcerned with the good of others.

The issue in Corinth is eating meat that has been sacrificed in pagan temples, something forbidden by the Scripture (which for Paul and the first Christians was what we call the Old Testament). This might seem a minor problem but most meat at the butcher shop had started out as a sacrifice somewhere. Buying meat for supper risked violating the Law unless one was very careful.

But Paul said that through Jesus, he had been freed from the Law, and some Corinthians decided they could eat meat without a second thought. But others were bothered by this. In Monday's daily lectionary passage from 1 Corinthians 10:14-11:1, Paul addresses this conflict, writing, " 'All things are lawful,' but not all things are beneficial. 'All things are lawful,' but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other."

For Paul, the exercise of freedom or rights that would harm another is inconceivable. For Paul, freedom does not mean he gets to do what ever he wants. Paul has been freed for a new life "in Christ," a life that is profoundly for others, a life guided by Christ-like love as its highest loyalty.

As with politics, this fealty to a higher principle - in this case a love for others - is too often absent from American Christianity. Faith is often viewed in highly individualistic terms, almost like a consumer commodity. Faith, spirituality, belief, is something undertaken for personal benefit. This may be divine blessings, the promise of heaven, a spiritual buzz, or some other good. In its worst manifestations, it becomes almost totally focused on one's personal salvation, spiritual fulfillment, peace of mind, heavenly reward, etc. with little concern for others beyond a very limited sphere.

The guarantee of personal freedoms and rights is one of the real strengths of the founding principles of our nation. But those freedoms and rights were never intended to be absolutes, and when they become objects of ultimate loyalty, they are what Scripture calls "idols." The problem of idols is not a mechanical one, a danger from certain sorts of statues or images. The problem is one of loyalties, and the very human tendency to misplace our loyalties. The problem is perhaps even more acute among religious sorts for we are endlessly able to enlist our gods and beliefs in our personal causes, at which point we have converted our god into an idol.

There's a well worn quote from writer Anne Lamott that is well attuned to this problem of idol making. "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns our God hates all the same people you do." In other words, is your god loyal to you, or are you loyal to the God we meet in Jesus?

You can find the Daily Lectionary here.

Sermon video: Vision Problems

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Meeting God in Scripture: Enough Faith

Luke 17:1-10

Meeting God in Scripture: Enough Faith

James Sledge                                                      October 6, 2019

Over the summer, I read a church-focused blog post on preaching entitled “Don’t Start with the Bible.”[1] It suggested bringing Scripture into a sermon only at the last possible moment, after raising some issue, examining ways the culture is responding, and identifying fruitful responses. Then and only then, connect the fruitful responses to Scripture.

The author is concerned that starting with Scripture invites folks to tune out the preacher because people don’t see the Bible as an authority. In fact, many view Scripture with suspicion, an antiquated religious book with little connection to their everyday lives.

I can’t argue with that, but still, I’m inclined not to follow the blog’s recommendation. Yes, there are difficulties. Some of you may view the Bible with a degree of skepticism, and I would never expect to win any argument with, “Well the Bible says so.” Yet in a time with so few cultural inducements or expectations to attend church or be Christian, surely most people who do show up are looking for something more than what they can find on their own. They are hoping to find meaning or purpose not found from culture, from work or hobbies or other experiences. They are hoping Church has something unique to offer.

The Bible would seem ready made for this, a huge collection of stories, poetry, imagery, regulations, teachings, letters, and more drawn from the various experiences of the faith community over the centuries. All of these explore, examine, and reflect on the encounters with and efforts to live in relationship to the mystery we call God.