Monday, October 29, 2018
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Sermon: What Do We Want from Jesus?
Mark 10:46-52
What Do We Want from Jesus?
James Sledge October 28,
2018
Along
with The Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Westminster Confession of Faith, and
others, our denomination’s Book of
Confessions includes something called A Brief Statement of Faith. Written
in the 1980s, it has three, distinct sections, one for each person of the
Trinity. The section on the Holy Spirit contains these words. “In a broken and
fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness
among all peoples 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.”
The
Spirit gives us courage to live as disciples. If we are the Church, if we are
followers of Jesus, the Spirit will help us to do these things. And today’s gospel
has me thinking specifically about courage “to hear the voices of peoples long
silenced.”
In
recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Me Too movement have
tried to lift up voices long ignored, silenced, and disregarded. Some folks have
listened, have become more aware of the systemic ways that black voices, female
voices, and other voices from the margins have been ignored and discounted.
Others, however, resent this demand for
marginalized voices to be heard. For a variety of reasons, ranging from benign
to malicious, some do not want the disruption these new voices cause. They’re
happy with how things are, privileged by how things are, or just accepting of
how things are, and would just as soon leave it alone.
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In
our gospel reading, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus demands to be heard, but
“many” among the crowd and disciples insist that he be quiet. His voice is an
intrusion that they do not want to hear, although the gospel story isn’t clear on
why. Jesus has made a name for himself by healing people. It’s a big part of
the show that crowds come to see, so why shut down Bartimaeus?
Monday, October 22, 2018
Sermon: Beloved and Invited to New Life
Mark 10:35-45
Beloved and Invited to New Life
James Sledge October
21, 2018
I
read an column in The Washington Post
the other day entitled, “As Jesus said, nice guys finish last.” It quoted a
tweet from Jerry Falwell, Jr., president at Liberty University. “Conservatives
& Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys’. They might make great
Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at
every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps
& many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”[1]
The
column went on to note that it is hardly a new thing for religious folks to want
powerful politicians to support their agenda. For much of European and American
history, faith and power have had something of a symbiotic relationship. Rulers
made sure that the population participated in the faith, and the faith gave
spiritual blessing to the ruler.
This
sort of deal almost always ends up compromising and cheapening the faith. In
our American experience, Christianity ended up being used to buttress slavery,
sanction the genocide of Native Americans, and support imperialism in Africa
and Asia. More recently, evangelical leaders were singing the president’s
praises on the very day that thousands of migrant children were moved, under
the cover of darkness, to a detention facility in Texas.
This last event prompted The Washington Post columnist to write,
“This is disturbing and discrediting. How can anyone supposedly steeped in the
teachings of Jesus be so unaffected by them? The question immediately turns
against the questioner. In a hundred less visible ways, how can I be so
unaffected by them?”[2]
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