Monday, July 20, 2020
Sunday, July 19, 2020
Sermon: New Life as Exiles
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
New Life as Exiles
James Sledge July
19, 2020
Back
in March when the stay-at-home order was first announced, I don’t think any of
us could have imagined that we would be holding worship today in an empty
sanctuary, live streaming it into people’s homes. And even now, in mid-July, we
still don’t know when we might have anything resembling worship as it used to
be.
COVID-19
has turned the church world upside down. No one knows exactly what church is
going to look like in the coming years. No doubt, livestreaming is here to
stay, even when we can have some sort of in person worship. But it also seems
highly likely that many congregations will never recover. Unlike FCPC, many
churches have no real financial reserves and operate on extremely tight budgets.
Some who study religious institutions are predicting large scale church
closings in the coming years.
But
what about church in general? Will worshiping from home open church up to new
people, or will it accelerate an already established trend of church decline?
Will people start to treat church like Netflix, watching a little worship when
they have time or the mood strikes them? Will church move further and further
from the center of people’s lives and from the center of the culture, further
diminishing the prominent place church once held?
Over
twenty years ago, long before COVID-19, Old Testament scholar Walter
Brueggemann suggested the metaphor of exile
as a good way to describe where the Church finds itself in America.[1]
He said that we had been deported from our comfortable homeland of the mid-20th
Century into a world that no longer works in ways we fully understand. The
stores stay open and youth sports teams play games during our sacred worship
times. Neither public schools nor the culture at large encourages church
participation as they once did. The landscape of America has changed dramatically
since the 1950s, and institutions like the Presbyterian Church, which had their
heyday then, find themselves aliens in a strange land.
If
exile was an appropriate metaphor at the close of the 20th century,
surely it is even more so today. The forces that led Dr. Brueggemann to speak
of the Church in exile are still with us, perhaps even stronger. And now
COVID-19 could push church even further to the edges of society and daily life,
increasing the sense of exile.
In
the Bible, when Israel is carried off into literal exile in Babylon, it created
a crisis. As exiles in a strange land, nothing supported their religious life.
The Temple was gone, the Ark of the Covenant lost, and no altar existed where
offerings could be made. The Babylonian culture around them had different ways,
different gods, different religious practices. It would be easy, even tempting,
simply to adopt the ways of the prevailing culture.
Exiles are always in danger of
disappearing, of being absorbed into the culture where they find themselves.
Countless cultures have simply disappeared over the centuries as a result. To prevent
this, exiles must cultivate a distinctiveness, a peculiarity. They must live in
ways that set them apart, allowing them to maintain a distinct identity different
from the surrounding culture. For the Hebrews in Babylon, Sabbath keeping and
synagogue emerged in exile as crucial elements that marked them as different
and distinct. But what about us?
Monday, July 13, 2020
Sunday, July 12, 2020
Sermon: The Hard Work of Unity
Philippians 2:1-8
The Hard Work of Unity
James Sledge July
12, 2020
Recently
I was discussing our sermon series on the Confession of Belhar with Diane. I
was wondering whether we should have a fourth installment or stop at three. Two
of the primary themes from Belhar, reconciliation and justice, would get
covered fairly thoroughly in the first three sermons. That left only the theme
of unity.
I
suspect I grimaced a little at the thought of preaching about unity. I think I
said something to Diane along the lines of, “I don’t know. I hate to do
something trite.” The phrase, “Can’t we all just get along?” popped into my
head. Unity often gets spoken of as something that should be simple if only we
all just worked together, if we all just realized that we’re basically the
same, if we all just loved one another. Unity isn’t all that hard, such words
seem to say. We just have to do this.
We just have to do that.
Diane
first suggested of a sermon series on Belhar in the wake of George Floyd’s
murder. Because Belhar addressed apartheid in South Africa, it seemed
particularly well suited to the most profound and persistent source of division
in our country, that of race.
Despite
the intransience of racism in America, we still want to believe we could be rid
of it if only we just did this or just did that. Despite decade after
decade where corporate boardrooms remain largely white, where “better”
neighborhoods and “better” schools are largely white, where everything from
wealth to education to job opportunities to pay to home ownership to medical
care and more are skewed in favor of whites, we want to believe that there is
just one more little thing we need to do, and it will go away.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Sermon: Justice at the Center?
Amos 5:18-27
Justice at the Center?
James Sledge June
28, 2020
I
recently read an article by a Black, Baptist minister entitled, “Why I’m Skeptical of New Christian Allies.”[1]
His target seems to be more evangelical churches, but I don’t think progressive,
mainline churches are completely spared. Pastor Lavarin is encouraged that so
many Christians, including large numbers who’ve not previously been active in
issues of race, are speaking out against police brutality in the wake of George
Floyd’s murder. But these feelings are tempered by worries that the change
doesn’t go deep enough.
He writes, “Although numerous Christians have
finally chosen to name racism, I am woefully skeptical of new allies who have
rushed to protest without examining the ways in which their own theologies
continue to nurture it. The failure to address theological racism will
cause new allies to come to this moment believing that the fight for justice is
merely theologically adjacent to their brand of evangelism as “the real work of
ministry”. For some, this is still just a societal issue, and not a
theological one.”
As I said earlier, this doesn’t seem to target us
Presbyterians. We tend not to have evangelism high up on our list of “the real
work of ministry,” but I’m not sure justice is much higher for us than
evangelism. For many Presbyterians, the real work of ministry is holding good
worship, educating and nurturing children, and perhaps engaging in some
charitable acts in the community. And so some of Pastor Lavarin’s critiques may
apply equally to us.
He continues, “Prior to this moment, new allies have
preached a gospel of Jesus devoid of justice. They failed to make the
theological connection that Jesus and justice are, in fact, mutually inclusive.
To invoke Jesus and then to invoke justice is redundant. Every time we invoke
the name of Jesus, we commit ourselves to the ministry of justice. Every time
we invoke the name of Jesus, we declare the Psalmist’s decree that justice and
righteousness are the foundations of God’s throne. Every time we invoke the
name of Jesus, we summon the Messianic prophecy that the Spirit of the LORD was
upon Jesus, to preach the good news to the poor, to set the prisoners free from
the Roman industrial complex, and to proclaim liberty to those who were
oppressed. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we remember that Jesus was
convicted of a crime he did not commit, received an unfair trial, and was
sentenced to a state-sanctioned lynching on a tree. We cannot divorce our
theology from the ministry of justice, for to do so, is to divorce ourselves
from Jesus, himself. The ministry of justice is the ministry of Jesus.”
But this pastor saves his most pointed barb for the
end of his article. “Before your church decides to go out and protest, consider
protesting your own theology that continues to intentionally and
unintentionally do harm to Black and Brown bodies. Before taking a knee and
holding a prayer vigil, consider this: there is no real substantive difference
between a racist bigot holding a Bible in front of a church, and a Christian
holding up a #BlackLivesMatter sign with no plans to parse out the
practical implementation of the holy truth of justice.”
Ouch. Even if
we are not the intended target of this arrow, it still has a sting for we have
often viewed justice as a good thing, but not necessarily something central to
our faith. It’s one of those extras like joining a prayer group or volunteering
at Welcome Table. It’s optional, an elective in the walk of faith curriculum.
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Sermon: Breaking Down Dividing Walls
Ephesians 2:11-20
Breaking Down Dividing Walls
James Sledge June
21, 2020
Shortly
after the murder of George Floyd touched off waves of protests around the
country, I began to see people on Facebook and Instagram posting lines lifted
from the Confession of Belhar. For those who have no idea what that is, it is
the newest confessional statement in our denomination’s (the PCUSA) Book of Confessions.
We
Presbyterians love well-crafted and carefully articulated statements on what we
believe and what that leads us to do and be in the world. Our Book of Confessions begins with ancient
Creeds, the Apostles’ and Nicene, moves to a number of confessional statements
and catechisms from the time around the Reformation, then jumps to the 20th
century.
Even
though Belhar is new to our Book of
Confessions, it isn’t all that new. It took shape in South Africa in the
early 1980s when apartheid was still the law of the land there. It was written
by members of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, originally the denomination
for those labeled “coloured” in the system of apartheid. This denomination was distinct
from the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, the white church.
The
Dutch Reformed family is one of our theological cousins whose roots go back to John
Calvin just as ours do. But I don’t think Calvin’s theology had anything to do
with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa developing sophisticated
theological justifications for apartheid that cited biblical evidence for a
divinely ordained separation of the races.
Of
course we Presbyterians did exactly the same thing during the times of slavery
and segregation. When I attended Union Theological Seminary in Richmond (now
Union Presbyterian Seminary), Dabney Hall was a residence for some students.
Robert Dabney was a professor at Union who served as a chaplain in the
Confederacy, and who wrote stirring theological defenses of slavery and the
noble cause of the South well after the Civil War.
His
views held sway long beyond his time. My brother and I once found some of the
my father’s school work in a box in my grandmother’s attic. Amongst the papers
was some sort of quiz or worksheet where the correct answer labeled Blacks as
the accursed descendants of Ham from the biblical Noah story, part of the
rationale Dabney used to justify slavery and the marginalization of people of
color.
The
Belhar Confession correctly calls such foolishness sin and insists that the
Church is called to precisely the opposite sort of activity, to ministries of
reconciliation and justice. Even so, it took us Presbyterians until 2016 to add
Belhar to the Book of Confessions.
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Sermon: Unmanageable God
Genesis 1:1-2:3; Matthew 28:16-20
Unmanageable God
James Sledge June
7, 2020, Trinity Sunday
In the beginning when God created the heavens and
the earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the
face of the deep, while a wind(or perhaps Spirit) from God swept over the face
of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was
light. So
opens Genesis and the Bible. So opens a lot of religious silliness as well.
For
some people, the literal account found here becomes a critical item of faith,
one that prohibits them for believing in things such as evolution. Other
Christians, some in reaction to the first group, insist the story is merely
symbolic, describing a well ordered cosmos. Or they dismiss it entirely, a
primitive tale with no real bearing on the modern world.
I
think all these views miss the mark, in part because religion, both
conservative and progressive, has a tendency to become utilitarian. Religion
becomes about getting something that I want. Perhaps its a certainty that I’ll
go to heaven when I die. Perhaps it’s a sense of spiritual well-being that has
eluded me despite buying into the competitive, success oriented, consumerist
version of life that our culture peddles.
When
religion is utilitarian, it’s a resource to be used, a way to get those things
I want. That’s true if I’m a conservative who needs a list of things I must
believe in and affirm so I get to heaven. And it’s true if I’m a progressive
looking for spiritual purpose and meaning. In either case I decide what I need
from religion, from the Bible, from God. In essence, I determine what God’s
purpose is.
We
all witnessed one of the most crass examples of utilitarian religion this past
week when President Trump stood in front of St. John’s Church and waved a
borrowed bible. It was brazen and shameless in enlisting religion, enlisting
God to the president’s cause. But most all of us engage in more subtle, nuanced
forms of enlisting God to our causes.
But
back to our story from Genesis. When this story was written, it was, in part,
meant to undermine utilitarian notions of God. The ancient Middle East was filled
with gods; every kingdom had at least one of their own. These deities ensured
that the crops produced and the herds grew. And when conflicts between kingdom
erupted, they were viewed as power contests between gods, holy war in the
truest sense of the term.
And
Israel’s God had lost. The Babylonians had conquered them and carried all the
important citizens into exile. Never mind prophecies promising an endless
throne of David. Never mind assurances that Jerusalem would stand forever. Now
there was nothing; the great city, the palace, Solomon’s magnificent Temple,
all lay in ruins. Their God had failed them.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Sermon: Every One of Us Afire
1 Corinthians 12:1-13
Every One of Us Afire
James Sledge May
31, 2020 – Pentecost
As
often happens with seaports, Corinth was a cosmopolitan city with people from all
over, many of them hoping to make it big there. It had reputation as a place
where upward mobility was easier than in much of the Roman Empire. In that
sense, Corinth was not totally unlike America. It was a land of opportunity, a
place where even former slaves might become respected figures in the community.
There was a sense of freedom and possibility.
No
doubt the cosmopolitan, Gentile populace of Corinth posed challenges for the
Apostle Paul when he first arrived and began a Christian congregation there.
His converts often weren’t familiar with Hebrew ideas of a covenant community
that cared for the least of these, notions which permeated the teachings of
Jesus. Jesus doesn’t fit easily into a worldview of advancement and upward
mobility, a world view that often sees those left behind as failures.
Most
all we know about the congregation in Corinth comes from the letters Paul wrote.
When Paul founded a church, he didn’t stay on as pastor. He was a missionary,
always looking to spread the gospel, but he still tried to care for his congregations,
visiting them occasionally, getting reports from travelers whenever he could,
and communicating by letter.
Based
on Paul’s letters, the Corinthian church was an exuberant, energetic place.
People were excited about their new faith and the experience of the Spirit.
But, as often happens with religion, they tended to view their faith through
the lens of culture. American Christianity has become so individualized that
might well be unrecognizable to Jesus, and the Corinthians saw their faith as
another aspect of competitive, upward mobility.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Sermon: Faithful Witnesses
Acts 1:6-14
Faithful Witnesses
James Sledge May
26,2020
“Lord, is this the time when you
will restore the kingdom to Israel?” It seems like it would be a good
time. Jesus had been raised from the dead a little over a month earlier. He’d
been hanging out with the disciples, talking more with them about the kingdom
of God, and telling them to stay in Jerusalem awaiting the promise of the Father… waiting
to be
baptized with the Holy Spirit.
Something big was about to happen.
Maybe now God was going to straighten things out, set the world right. And by
the time the two volume set of Luke-Acts gets written, likely over fifty years later,
the world looked like it needed even more straightening out. The Romans had
completely destroyed the city of Jerusalem, its magnificent temple totally
obliterated. Jews and Christians alike had fled to various parts of the
Mediterranean world.
By that time, the break between
Judaism and Christianity was pretty much complete. Christians were no longer a
sect within Judaism, and so they no longer enjoyed the special religious
exemption that Rome gave to the Jews for being an ancient religion. And then
there was the problem with that basic faith statement, “Jesus is Lord.” Rome
said Caesar was Lord, that the emperor was a god. Christians were clearly
trouble makers, a threat to the social fabric that held the empire together.
Lord, this would be a really good
time to restore the kingdom, to straighten things out, to make life easier for
the faithful. It’s a mess, God. Do something! But Jesus answers, “It
is not for you to know the times and periods that the Father has set… But you
will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my
witnesses…”
Fast forward nearly two thousand
years, and it’s not hard to sympathize with those early disciples. Lord, this
would be a really good time to do something. Many scientists are worried that
we are perilously close to a tipping point on climate change, if it isn’t
already too late. COVID-19 is decimating communities, sending countless people
into poverty, and exposing our broken healthcare system. The partisan divide in
our country has become so extreme that even the pandemic cannot overcome it,
and wearing a mask in public, a simple act of loving one’s neighbor, has
somehow been politicized.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Sermon: Learning to Love Back
John 14:15-21
Learning to Love Back
James Sledge May
17, 2020
For
those who’ve never read her, Lamott is a novelist who may be better known for
her bestselling writings on faith. These contain a mixture of her often strange
personal story, wry wit and humor, and sometimes irreverent thoughts on how faith
has helped her navigate it all.
With
a little effort I found the quote I had recalled in one of her books. She was
discussing her then fourteen year-old son, Sam, and the struggles of raising a
teenager as a single mom who is a recovering addict. She spoke of Sam’s
religious sensibilities, how he believes that Jesus is true, how he prays, even
prays with his mom at bedtime on occasions. But he hates church, even the
quirky little Presbyterian congregation Lamott belongs to. She writes:
Then why do I
make him go? Because I want him to. We live in bewildering, drastic times, and
a little spiritual guidance never killed anyone. I think it’s a fair compromise
that every other week he has to come to the place that has been the tap for me:
I want him to see the people who loved me when I felt most unlovable, who have
loved him since I first told them that I was pregnant, even though he might not
want to be with them. I want him to see their faces. He gets the most valuable
things I know through osmosis.
Also, he has no
job, no car, no income. He needs to stay in my good graces.
While he lives in my house, he
has to do things my way. And there are worse things for kids than to have to
spend time with people who love God. Teenagers who do not go to church are
adored by God, but they don’t get to meet people who love God back. Learning to
love back is the hardest part of being alive.[1]
I
think she’s right. We’re all born needing to be loved. The desire for it is
innate. Infants and young children who do not receive love struggle to thrive.
But we are not born knowing how to love in return, to love back, and many of us
never learn to do it all that well. The world is full of people who always take
a lot more love than they give. Countless marriages and relationships fall
apart because the balance of giving and receiving love gets so badly out of
whack, because so many of us have not learned well that hardest part of being
alive.
Sunday, May 3, 2020
Sermon: Easter Life
Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10
Easter Life
James Sledge May
3, 2020
Most
of you have likely seen news reports about churches that insist on having
in-person worship during this time of stay at home. I saw a newscast where a
reporter interviewed members as they drove away from one such worship service. A
woman said that she wasn’t worried about catching the virus because, “I’m
covered in the blood of Jesus.”
The
reporter asked her several more questions, and she seemed happy to talk with
him. But her answer to nearly every question ended, “I’m covered in the blood
of Jesus.”
If
you’re like me and didn’t grow up singing hymns such as “Nothing but the Blood
of Jesus” or “Precious, Precious Blood of Jesus,” you may not be familiar with
this graphic, formulaic notion of how Jesus’ death saves and protects people. But our own hymnal can also be formulaic, if
not so graphic. On Easter Sunday we sang, “But the pains which he endured… our
salvation have procured.”
I’m
not sure why religious formulas are so popular. A friend remarked about the
“tendency for faith to degrade into magic” when he shared a Washington Post article about a Virginia
pastor who died from COVID-19 despite his certainty that God would protect him.
I suppose that magic has a certain appeal over the difficulties, nuances, and
messiness of biblical faith. Believe this and you are saved. Say this and all
will be well. Abracadabra.
But
if Christian faith were formulas and magic, the Bible would be a pamphlet, not over
a thousand pages of stories, poems, letters, teachings, sayings, etc. Jesus
wouldn’t have spoken in parables and vivid metaphors. He would have just given
us the magic words. Abracadabra.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Sermon: On Our Way to Emmaus
Luke 24:13-35
On Our Way to Emmaus
James Sledge April
26, 2020
On
the day of that very first Easter, two disciples headed to the village of
Emmaus. No one knows exactly where that is. Various places have been suggested,
but none is certain. Maybe it’s just as well.
In
our day, Emmaus has become a metaphorical destination, one associated with
spiritual awakenings. You can find spiritual retreats described as Emmaus
walks, and there is an intense, three day retreat for spiritual renewal and
formation called Walk to Emmaus, a Protestant adaptation of the Catholic
Cursillo movement.
But
in Luke’s gospel, I don’t know that Emmaus is really a destination at all. It
may simply be a place to spend the night on the way somewhere else. A stop on
the way to some place that isn’t Jerusalem, that isn’t about pain and betrayal
and loss.
Those
disciples aren’t on a spiritual journey. They’re on a journey away from the
cross and the grave. Their hopes have been dashed. They’re shocked and stunned,
still grieving their loss. They don’t
know what they need but they know it isn’t in Jerusalem.
Some
of you know that I’m one of many mourning the death from COVID-19 of singer-songwriter
John Prine. A line from one of his songs that I’ve played a lot lately could
easily have been uttered by these two disciples headed for anywhere but
Jerusalem. “Just give me one thing that I can hold on to. To believe in this
living is just a hard way to go.”[1]
Curiously,
these two disciples have already heard the report from women who visited the graveyard
early that morning. They heard of an empty tomb and angels who said Jesus was
alive, but it had not mattered. I don’t know if that was simply about men not
believing women or if their sense of grief and loss was so overwhelming nothing
could break through. Whatever it was, they were headed to Emmaus, to anywhere
but Jerusalem.
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Love Your Neighbor. Wear Your Mask
I went for a run this morning along one of the many trails we are blessed to have in the DC area. I was far from alone. There were a good many people out walking, running, biking, roller blading, etc. I was not surprised by the numbers, but I was a little surprised at how few of them were wearing masks.
I’m sure the reasons for this were varied. They are a little inconvenient. I find them especially annoying for running. They interfere with my breathing (though perhaps this simulates altitude training?). But I’ve read of one study showing how the slipstream effect causes runners to leave a trail of droplets floating 30 feet in their wake. For cyclists, it’s 60 feet. So I wear the mask. I would hate to unknowingly infect someone else.
I imagine there are still those who don’t yet understand that masks are not for protecting you but for protecting others. However I see people online proudly broadcasting their refusal to wear a mask, couching it in terms of personal freedom that won’t be taken from them. Curiously, some of these same people claim to be conservative Christians, yet there is something profoundly un-Christlike about elevating one’s personal freedom above the good of the other.
Jesus is clear that following him involves self denial. He is just as clear that loving God is inseparable from loving your neighbor as yourself. To declare, “My neighbor be damned; I’m not wearing any mask,” seems fundamentally at odds with the core of the Christian life.
If anything, wearing a mask in these days of pandemic is a relatively easy and painless way to embody love of neighbor, to enflesh Jesus’ call to faithful discipleship. Do good. Love your neighbor. Wear your mask.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Monday, April 13, 2020
Easter sermon: Unfinished Business
Matthew 28:1-10
Unfinished Business
James Sledge April
12, 2020, Easter
“Unfinished business lingers in
every graveyard—broken promises, betrayals, countless secrets left to perish
with the departed.”[1] That
quote really resonated with me when I first read it years ago. I suspect that
it is true for most people. There’s always something that should have been said
but wasn’t, a conflict that wasn’t resolved, a wound that still festers, a
chance for reconciliation lost.
I once heard about a woman who could not get
past the unfinished business with her late husband. After his death she learned
of a terrible betrayal by him, and it poisoned all her memories of their life
together. She was able to move on only after following her pastor’s suggestion
of going to the cemetery to have it out with her husband. I presume that he remained
silent for this “conversation,” but through it she was able to deal with some
of her hurt and anger, some of the unfinished business from her husband’s death.
In a Jerusalem graveyard all those
centuries ago, unfinished business lingered. The followers of Jesus were left
to contemplate how they had abandoned him in his hour of need, deserting him
when he was arrested. For Peter, that included cursing and swearing that he did
not even know Jesus. Peter had wept bitter tears afterward, but they had not
washed away the horrible memory.
And then there was their
disappointment and anger at Jesus. How could he have let this happen? He put up
no fight at all. Maybe he was not who they thought he was, who they hoped he
was.
Perhaps all this unfinished
business is the reason that only two women go to the tomb that first Easter
morning. For others, memories of abandonment, desertion, denial, failure,
disappointment were too fresh, too raw. Visits to the tomb would have to wait.
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Sermon: Palms, Parades... and Lament?
Matthew 26:14-21, 36-46, 27:11-23, 35-46
Palms, Parades… and Lament?
James Sledge April
5, 2020
I’m
sure that I’ve spoken before about my experiences of Easter as a child. I say
Easter because for me as a young boy, Palm Sunday was simply the pregame show
for Easter, a big celebration that prefigured the bigger celebration to come.
My brothers and I I already had our new Easter sport coats, my sister her new
Easter dress, and we had already dug out our Easter baskets.
On
Palm Sunday, we got to march around the sanctuary waving palms. On Palm Sunday,
we had a celebratory parade, a grand, rah-rah moment. On Palm Sunday we left
the church with shouts of “Hosanna!” echoing in our ears; just a week to the
even grander celebration.
As
a child, I never heard the term Passion Sunday. This was Palm Sunday. Period.
No thoughts of betrayal and a cross, of suffering and death. No thoughts of
despair and darkness.
I’m
not sure when I first encountered Palm/Passion Sunday. It’s possible it wasn’t
until I attended seminary. Oh I knew about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and
the cross. But they didn’t intrude much into Sunday worship. I could go from
one parade to another, not bothering with the cross and the darkness of Good
Friday.
Passion
Sunday intruded into the rhythms of Holy Week and Easter I learned as a child.
It was something of a downer. Who wants to mourn when you could just celebrate?
But can we really go straight from “Hosanna!” to “He is risen!” without the
cross?
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Sermon video: Resurrection Life
During this time of COVID-19, we are not posting audios of worship, but you can find sermon videos and the church website and videos of the worship services on the church Facebook page.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Sermon: Resurrection Life
Resurrection Life
John 11:1-45
James Sledge March
29,2020
Often
at funerals, I open with a quote from our reading today. “I am the resurrection and the
life, (says the Lord). Those who believe in me, even though they
die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” The
Presbyterian Book of Common Worship calls
a funeral “A Service of Witness to the Resurrection,” so that seems fitting.
I
also have vivid memories of using part of our gospel reading at the funeral
service of my father-in-law, Roy. I had just started seminary, taking an
intensive summer course in Greek before my first semester began. I had no
experience or training to do a funeral, but the pastor at his church was new,
and my mother-in-law wanted someone who knew Roy to speak.
I
talked about the tenderness and love of Jesus who was moved when he saw Mary
weeping, who despite knowing that he would shortly raise Lazarus from the dead,
nonetheless wept for him. But while I was well into my summer Greek course, I
still had a lot to learn about Greek and about using it to study scripture. And
so I didn’t realize that I misunderstood Jesus’ emotions.
Of
course there’s such a long history of reading these verses as examples of
Jesus’ compassion and humanity, that even Bible translators are wary of rendering
them in a straightforward manner. Our NRSV Bible says, When Jesus saw (Mary) weeping,
and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit
and deeply moved. But a more direct reading of the Greek would be
something like, he was deeply angry and agitated.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Sermon: Here Is an Astonishing Thing
John 9:1-41
Here Is an
Astonishing Thing
James Sledge March
22.2020
I want to tell you a story. It
isn’t really a “true” story, at least not in the sense modern people tend to
use the word. The story doesn’t report actual events, but what the story talks
about has happened and does happen. In our own denomination, it happened only a
decade ago. In other denominations, the “truth” of this story is still on
display.
As graduation neared, a young
seminary student searched for a position as solo pastor of a small church. But
being female and single, many churches seemed hesitant to consider her. She
preached well, but didn’t fit the image that many seemed to have for a pastor.
Finally, she accepted the call of
a tiny, struggling – most would say dying – congregation in a small Alabama
town. Thirty people on Sunday was a big crowd, and finances were always a
problem. In three years without a pastor, they had saved up some money, but
even paying her the minimum salary the denomination allowed, they worried about
being able to afford her for more than a few years.
It wasn’t exactly what she had
dreamed of when she entered seminary, but it was where God had led her, and she
threw herself, heart and soul, into the work. She embraced and loved her
congregation, people very different in culture and background from
herself. Despite their small numbers and
paltry finances, she acted like they and their church mattered. She not only
loved and comforted them, she boldly proclaimed God’s word and challenged them
about where and how they would minister to their community.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Sermon: Getting Reborn
John 3:1-17
Getting Reborn
James Sledge March
8, 2020
I
have a love-hate relationship with today’s gospel reading. It is a beautiful
passage, filled with all manner of imagery and symbolism and nuance. But it
also has been much abused and so has a fair amount of baggage. For too many
these words are read as a litmus test. “Have you had a born again conversion
experience?” If not, you’re on the outside looking in.
This
passage is the rainbow wigged guy who used to go to sporting events and hold up
his John 3:16 sign. But that verse also gets reduced to formula. “Believe in
Jesus and you are saved.” Yet Nicodemus clearly believes in Jesus, believes he
is from God, but he leaves the scene more befuddled than when he first arrived.
Nick
is an interesting fellow. He comes in for his share of bad press, this guy who
can’t understand what Jesus is talking about. But Nick may be a lot like many
of us. He is a respected, educated member of his community, a leader in his
church. He’s a bright, rational fellow who is impressed by Jesus. Clearly Jesus
is someone special, and the wonderful things he does couldn’t happen if God was
not with him, could they?
Churches,
especially Mainline churches, are filled with people like Nick, people who are
drawn to Jesus but who also struggle to embrace him completely. We’ll listen to
him up to a point, but we’re often not quite sure what he’s saying, and so not
quite ready to go all in.
Nick
comes to see Jesus at night. That’s more than the time of day. Light and dark
are symbolic categories in John’s gospel, and Nick is not ready to step into
the light. Like some of us, he is drawn to Jesus but prefers to remain on the
periphery, in the shadows.
I’m
not entirely sure why Nick comes to see Jesus. If he has some question to ask
he never gets the chance. He barely gets the chance to make his introduction. “Hi,
Jesus. Great to meet you. Really impressed with what you’re doing. No doubt,
God is with you.” But before he can say more, Jesus speaks. He says that no one
can see the kingdom of God, can see God’s new day, without being born anothen. (a[nwqen)
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Sermon: Discovering Who We Are
Matthew 4:1-11
Discovering Who We Are
James Sledge March
1, 2020
In
fact, ever since Israel had returned from exile in Babylon some 500 years
earlier, and the hoped for glorious revival of the kingdom of David had failed
to materialize, people had been looking for the One who would change all that.
People
carefully examined Scripture, finding those passages that seemed to offer clues
about where the Messiah would come from, how he would act, and what he would
do. But there was no single image that everyone agreed on. Even today,
Christian have many different images of Jesus. We agree that Jesus was Messiah,
and yet we still have a warrior Jesus, a hippy Jesus, a blonde-haired blue-eyed
Jesus, a meek and mild Jesus, a wise sage Jesus, a personal Savior Jesus, and
so on and so on.
So
if we can’t agree on the exact nature of Jesus, imagine how difficult it was
for people who only had verses from the Old Testament. How did they know which
verses were about the hoped for Messiah? How were they supposed to reconcile
verses that seemed to suggest different sorts of Messiahs?
Messiah
simply means “anointed one.” That title, along with “Son of God,” had long be
used to speak of Israel’s kings. So it’s hardly surprising that many expected
the Messiah would revive the days of King David. He would throw out the hated
Romans and their puppet, Herod. He would restore Israel to greatness.
Jesus
knew well the varied images and expectations of a Messiah. And if Jesus is
genuinely human, as Christians insist he is, then he must have wrestled with
just what it meant to be the Messiah. He must have prayed and struggled to
discern just what sort of Anointed One God wanted him to be.
Monday, February 24, 2020
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