Monday, February 12, 2018
Sunday, February 4, 2018
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.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
Sunday, January 28, 2018
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.
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