Sermon: Faith Prenups

Matthew 19:16-26

Faith Prenups

James Sledge                                                                                                   March 5, 2017

I’ve told this story before, but it’s a favorite of mine and, I hope, worth telling again. It took place a long time ago in Birmingham, Alabama, where James Bryan served as pastor at Third Presbyterian from 1889 until 1939. Over that time he became an influential and beloved figure in the city. Everyone knew Brother Bryan.

He was noted as an evangelist, for work on racial reconciliation, and especially for his work with the poor and homeless. There’s still a Brother Bryan Mission in Birmingham, along with a Brother Bryan Park and a statue of him that’s a well-known city landmark. 

Bryan thought of himself as pastor to everyone he met. One day he met a well to do businessman, and in their conversations asked the man whether he was a tither. The man was not familiar with this practice of giving the first 10 percent of one’s income to God, so Brother Bryan launched into a stirring biblical argument for tithing. 

The businessman responded, “Oh you don’t understand. I make a lot of money. Ten percent would be a whole lot more than I could afford to give to a church.”

Brother Bryan replied, “Well sir, I think we ought to pray about this.” He got down on his knees and cried out to heaven, “Cut him down Lord, cut him down! Lord, please reduce this man’s income so he can afford to tithe!”

 I don’t know if this story really happened, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. Many make a lot or have a lot that gets in the way of being a disciple, just like the rich man who visits Jesus.

This rich young man seems like a pretty good guy, the sort any church would want as a member. He’s serious about the biblical commands, so unlike that businessman, he did tithe. But like the businessman, there were things he could not let go of. He wanted to follow Jesus, but he went away grieving. The thought of what he would lose was just too much.

This story has unnerved Jesus’ followers from the moment it happened. It might have been an isolated story about one rich man except Jesus adds a blanket statement. “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven… it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.” This stuns the disciples. Like many of us, they think of wealth as a blessing. But Jesus speaks of it as a curse.

A lot of time in a lot of sermons has been spent trying to un-curse wealth, but the meager level of giving in many churches suggests that clinging to our wealth is still a major hurdle for those who would follow Jesus. But while a discipline of giving is critical for anything resembling spiritual maturity, I’m not sure that’s what today’s scripture is about.

Feb. 19 sermon video: Fulfilling Our Purpose

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Giving Love for Lent

It’s sometimes referred to as the Shema, from the Hebrew word that begins the command. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This verse from Deuteronomy is the one Jesus quotes when asked for the “greatest commandment." He then pairs it with another from Leviticus. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

I wonder if either command is really possible, but I’m especially doubtful about loving God with all one’s heart, soul, and might. Do we ever really give our all to another? Think about the loving relationships that you have been a part of. Was there not always some small part of yourself that you held back? Can a psychologically healthy self be maintained without some holding back of that self?

Perhaps I’m nitpicking. No doubt God makes allowances for such limitations, but even then I wonder about this command to love God with our all. I certainly don’t do it, and in twenty plus years as a pastor, I’ve not run across anyone I thought was close to pulling it off. Even taking into account the hyperbole typical of biblical/Middle Eastern speech, what does it mean to fail so regularly to keep what Jesus says is the most important commandment?

Of course we Protestants have a long history of neglecting the commandment/obedience side of faith. However it isn’t our theology that has led us astray so much as popular thinking and practice. Our theology correctly points to the love and grace of God that is offered to us simply because that’s how God is. We can’t get God to love us by being obedient. But too often this truth has been perverted to say that we don’t need to be obedient. Pop theology and practice speaks of faith in Jesus being all that’s needed. In such thinking, faith replaces obedience, but that is not so.

Consider those loving relationships you have had with other people. Think especially about the love a parent has for a child. When a child comes into the world she doesn’t usually have any accomplishments to merit love from her parent, but most parents are wired to love their children anyway. Such love simply is. But if a child never learns to respond to that love, never learns to love back, it will be a messy relationship. Her parent may never stop loving her, but just knowing and trusting that she is loved is not sufficient for a relationship.

Marriages and other loving partnerships are similar. One person in a partnership may love the other deeply and give of herself as fully as is humanly possible. But if the other does not respond, never choosing to love back, the relationship is doomed. Even if the one doing all the loving never stops, the relationship cannot work.

The biblical commands are how we love God back. Unfortunately, religious folks have tended to think in terms of requirements and formulas. Such thinking often views commandments/obedience as the old formula now replaced by a new formula of belief/faith. But Jesus rejects such thinking. He even insist on those old commandments to love God with our all and to love neighbor as ourselves, saying that they embody all the “law and the prophets.”

That brings me right back to where I started, those impossible commands to love. I’ve chased myself around in a circle, but perhaps I gained one small insight along the way. Thinking about those human relationships I mentioned above, I would say that on the whole my wife is probably better at loving me than I am at loving her. That imbalance can create problems, but I do try to love her, and I do try to get better at it from time to time. I may not be very good at it, but I do love her back. I do respond to her love, and somehow it is enough to keep the relationship going, even when it is far short of my all.

I have confidence that God is even more tolerant than my wife, which is a good thing because I’m even worse at loving God than I am at loving my wife. But I am trying to work on it. I am trying to get better. Maybe what I need to “give up” for Lent is a little bit more of myself to God.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon: Listening for Who We Are

Matthew 17:1-9

Listening for Who We Are

James Sledge                                       February 26, 2017 – Transfiguration Sunday

When you watch a movie or read a novel, do you ever relate to one of the characters? How about a story or fable with a clear moral or lesson like some of Jesus’ parables?

Consider the parable of the lost sheep where the shepherd leaves the 99 in search of the one. It is endearing partly because we realize that we may get lost now and then. But if we don’t identify with the lost sheep, if we think of ourselves as good little sheep who would never stray, the parable may be less appealing.

The parable of the prodigal is similar. It’s beloved because many like the notion that God welcomes us back and celebrates our return no matter how badly we’ve strayed. But if we only identify with the elder brother, the good, well-behaved, dutiful son whom Dad never celebrated or rewarded, we may not like the parable so much.

Today’s scripture is not a parable so this whole discussion may seem pointless. But Matthew expects us, as the Church, to identify with some of the characters in the story.

We modern folks struggle to use the gospels as originally intended. For ancient people, history and myth were not necessarily at odds, and truth was not primarily about facts. Our modern notions of truth lead us to read the gospels as accounts of what happened. Even those who don’t take these accounts literally still tend to hear them as reports of events.

An online joke shows a Sunday School picture of Jesus teaching the disciples. He says, “Okay everyone, now listen carefully. I don’t want to end up with four different versions of this.” It is funny, but it also misunderstands why we ended up with four gospels.

Sermon: Fulfilling Our Purpose

Matthew 5:33-48

Fulfilling Our Purpose

James Sledge                                                                                       February 19, 2017

What are some of the groups or organizations you belong to? I’ve never been a big “joiner,” but over the years I’ve been a member in good standing with a number of groups. I once was a member of the AWSA or American Water Ski Association. I’m a member of alumni associations at two universities and one seminary, and the AARP has sent me multiple invitations to become a member, but I always throw them away.

What does it mean to be a member of a group or organization? Why join the AARP or Water Ski Association or Chamber of Commerce or a club at school? Why are you a member of the groups you belong to?

Reasons for joining groups and organizations vary. I had to join the AWSA in order to enter waterski tournaments. I didn’t really ask to join the alumni associations, and the AARP promises me discounts on products and services along with various other benefits.

I’m not a member of the Smithsonian, though I could become one for $26.00. But I did recently have the chance to visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. You can’t really see it all in a day, but it is a remarkable experience.

The history portion is designed so that you start at the very bottom floor, well below ground, moving through dark exhibits about slave ships and the early slave trade. As you continue you, you move up through the Civil War, Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow and segregation, the Civil Rights movement, ending at the inauguration of our first African American president.

As I worked my way through sections focused on the Civil Rights movement with exhibits on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Riders, and the March on Washington, the term “member” was largely absent. There were certainly organizations that one could join that supported the movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) or the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), but the big moments of the Civil Rights Movement weren’t about membership. They were about active participation.

I’m not sure how it was that the Church came to use the term “member” to speak of the participants in a local community of faith. After all, we already had a perfectly good word: “disciple.” It’s the word used for the first followers of Jesus and the word Jesus uses when he commands those disciples to begin building the Church. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

The Church’s job, according to Jesus, is to make disciples, something that happens by baptism and by obedience, by learning to obey the commands Jesus gives us. And the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ first big discipleship lesson.

Sermon video: Fulfilling the Law

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Fulfilling the Law

Matthew 5:21-32

Fulfilling the Law

James Sledge                                                                                       February 12, 2017

Today’s Old Testament reading is part of a covenant renewal ceremony. Moses has led Israel for decades in the wilderness, but before they finally enter the land of promise, Moses reminds them of the covenant with God made at Mount Sinai, That includes the Ten Commandments, some of which Jesus recalls in our gospel reading. You shall not murder. Neither shall you commit adultery. Neither shall you steal. Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor. Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife.

Notice there’s nothing about coveting your neighbor’s husband. That’s because women were thought of as property. To covet a man’s wife was to think about stealing his property. Similarly, adultery was a property crime in that it damaged another man’s property.

Things had not changed much by Jesus’ day. Wealthy Roman women enjoyed a bit more freedoms, but by and large women were subordinate to and dependent on men. When a man divorced a woman – which could be done easily – she could quickly find herself in poverty and danger. We live in very different times, but residue of those ancient views is still with us.

I recently read a book by local colleague Ruth Everhart. It’s a memoir that begins with a home invasion at the place she and her college roommates rented in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Two intruders held the women for hours at gunpoint and raped them repeatedly. The rest of the book is about the long, long struggle to put her life back together, to become whole again. The title of the book is telling: Ruined.[1]

Perhaps some of you saw Ruth’s column in The Washington Post just before Christmas. She spoke of a religious “culture of purity” that celebrates the virgin Mary in ways that only add to the pain of those like her.[2] Religion has often enforced and encouraged standards of sexual purity that weigh much more heavily on women, echoes, no doubt, of a time when women were reduced to property.

So what to do with religious rules from ancient times and cultures? Christians have sometimes viewed this as an Old Testament problem that gets fixed by Jesus and the New Testament, but there are multiple problems with such a view.

Sermon video: A Place for the Little People

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: What Does God Want from Us?

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: A Place for the Little People

Matthew 18:1-14

A Place for the Little People

James Sledge                                                                                       February 5, 2017

It’s not clear that anyone actually ever said it at the Academy Awards, but the phrase is closely associated with the Oscars. “I’d like to thank all the little people who helped me win this award.” I searched the internet and found times when it was parodied. Paul Williams, on sharing a win for best song with Barbra Streisand said, "I was going to thank all the little people, but then I remembered I am the little people."

Paul Williams’ self-deprecating humor aside, most of us do not want to be one of the little people. Somebody has to be the third string guard on the football team, the janitor on the movie set, or the mail room clerk at the company headquarters, but most people don’t aspire to such positions. We want to be the starter, the star, the big wig.

In the world Jesus lived in, children would have been numbered among the little people, and not just in stature. Unlike in our world, first-century children did not enjoy much in the way of status or rights. Childhood was short and hard. Until they could begin to take on adult roles, usually early in puberty, children were not regarded as full persons. No one tried to get in touch with their inner child, nor did they point to children as examples to be followed. All of which makes Jesus’ words more radical than we may realize.

Like many of us, the disciples don’t aspire to be one of the little people, and they ask Jesus what makes someone a star in God’s coming new day. “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Perhaps they expect it will be the one who can do miracles or who has the strongest faith or who understand the scriptures inside and out. But Jesus places a child, one of the unimportant, little people, in their midst and says, “Unless you change and become like this, you can’t be part of the kingdom at all.”

Ever since he first called the disciples, Jesus has been teaching them about how different the kingdom is from the world, how the first will be last, how those who mourn and are persecuted are considered blessed. Still, I suspect they were stunned by Jesus’ words.

Church or Jesus

Psalm 15

¹   Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly;
          the faithful have disappeared from humankind.
²   They utter lies to each other;
          with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

³   May the LORD cut off all flattering lips,
          the tongue that makes great boasts,
⁴   those who say, “With our tongues we will prevail;
          our lips are our own — who is our master?”

⁵   “Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan,
          I will now rise up,” says the LORD;
          “I will place them in the safety for which they long.”
⁶   The promises of the LORD are promises that are pure,
          silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
          purified seven times.

⁷   You, O LORD, will protect us;
          you will guard us from this generation forever.
⁸   On every side the wicked prowl,
          as vileness is exalted among humankind.

I've not read the Newsweek article featured on the cover picture. I stumbled onto the picture doing a Google search from something else, but it's an intriguing title: "Forget the Church - Follow Jesus." Not having read it, and can't really weigh in on what the article says. I do think it is nearly impossible to follow Jesus without a church community of some sort. That said, quite a few instititutions that call themselves "church" don't seem terribly interested in following Jesus.

I suppose that is why the Church must be reborn from time to time. 2017 will mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation on October 31, 1517, the date Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to door of the church in Wittenberg. That would lead to a long period of upheaval, conflict, and change that would help usher in the modern era.

I wonder if many churches in our day aren't just as detached from the teachings of Jesus as Luther thought the church of his day was. We have associated church with our political views, our nation, our agendas and issues, and those things guide us more than anything Jesus says or commands. In the past, Mainline denominations have gotten into bed with the powers that be. In the most recent election, many evangelicals cast their lot with Donald Trump in the hope he would further issues dear to them. In neither instance does Jesus seem to have been the primary driving factor.

Such problems are hardly unknown to the people of Old Testament times. Israel's history is filled with stories of their falling away from the way of God. Often they continued to maintain the religious rituals and offer their worship and prayers to Yahweh. But, as a cursory reading of the prophets will show, they did not live in ways that were pleasing to God.

Today's psalm seems to address such a time. Surely the psalmist would have no trouble writing some of those same words in our day. "They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak." Our "post-truth" world with its "alternative facts" is far removed from Jesus' command that our truthfulness be so sure that we need never swear an oath. (Matthew 5:33-37) And I'm not sure that is any less true inside the church than outside.

Is there a way to undo this, to do church in such a way that people don't see a disconnect between church and following Jesus? If so it will surely require the church to focus its life more on Jesus and the way that he teaches. For Mainline churches like my own, that may mean less talk of a generic God and more attention on the person of Jesus. For more conservative churches that already insist on the centrality of Christ, it may mean letting go of a Christ who functions as part of a salvation formula and recovering the Jesus of the gospels. But regardless of what sort of church, there is much work to be done.

Church will always have its failings. It is filled with humans after all. But if its central purpose is not to embody the way of Jesus, then that Newsweek title cease to be a provocative, eye-catching statement and become the conventional wisdom accepted by many.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon: What Does God Want from Us?

Micah 6:1-8

What Does God Want from Us?

James Sledge                                                                                       January 29, 2017

I feel confident in saying that this congregation has more lawyers in it than any congregation I’ve served or been a part of. I mention that because it means many people here should recognize what’s going on in our scripture passage. Rise, plead your case… The scene is a courtroom, a cosmic one. Mountains and hills and the foundations of the earth are seated as a jury. Israel is subpoenaed to testify, for God has a case against her.

I’m not sure why our translation says the Lord has a controversy with Israel. Better, Yahweh has a lawsuit. But what is it that has caused God to take this step, to take God’s own people to court?

Here, once more, we encounter the problem of dealing with short snippets of scripture in worship. God’s lawsuit makes little sense without what comes before. The evidence against Israel is already before the court, but we don’t know it if we’ve not read the book of Micah. There Micah rails against the wealthy who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, pushing families off ancestral lands in order to expand vast holdings. He condemns politicians who have sanctioned such activities and religious leaders who have invoked God’s blessings on an economic boom for the wealthy built on the suffering of the poor.

This was not appreciated by the wealthy and powerful. “One should not preach of such things…” they complain. I’m reminded of the old joke about parishioners complaining when the pastor leaves the expected confines of faith, belief, and the spiritual. “He’s stopped preaching and gone to meddling.”

The rich and powerful are not much different in our day than in Micah’s. They still want religious sanction without religious critique. Donald Trump, like every president before him, invited religious figures to pray at his inauguration, to associate God’s blessings with his presidency. At this inauguration and others, those asked to pray are chosen and vetted to ensure that they know and appreciate their proper role, as Micah clearly did not.

Beloved Daughters of God

That's me on left wearing red stole.

When you remember that Jesus and the gospel writers who tell his story were products of a patriarchal society that thought of women as less than fully human, it is remarkable how well women fare in the gospel story. (That women are primary witnesses to the resurrection is astounding considering that women could not serve as legal witnesses.)

Today's gospel reading is a good case in point. Jesus is headed to the home of Jairus, an important synagogue leader, to tend to his sick child. But Jesus is interrupted by an unamed woman. Not only is she unamed, she is unclean. Under one of those laws that only makes sense to patriarchy, women were considered unclean during their menstrual flow. And this woman has been bleeding for 12 years. For 12 years she has been deemed unfit to participate in community life.

This likely explains why she approaches Jesus as she does, not speaking to him but using the crowd as cover so she can get close and touch his clothes. It's a great plan until Jesus notices and demands to know who touched him. Caught, the woman comes forward in fear. Surely Jesus will be angry that his important mission has been interrupted by a destitute woman, and an unclean one at at that.

Instead, Jesus calls her "Daughter." He commends her faith and, declares her healed, and says she is "saved" or "made whole." (The word can mean "made well," but that seems a bad translation when Jesus uses a different word to speak of her being "healed.") Jesus embraces her and restores he to life in the community, not at all what the woman, or anyone else, had expected.

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

I participated in the Women's March on Washington on Saturday. It was an incredibly uplifting event, and despite suffocating crowds and difficulties finding a place to see or hear the speakers because of unexpectedly large turnout, the spirit of the day was remarkably upbeat, light, and joyful. Not that everyone appreciated that. Yesterday one of my Facebook "friends" posted a meme with a crowd picture and this caption. "In one day Trump got more fat women out walking than Michelle Obama did in 8 years." 

Jesus may have responded to an unimportant, unclean woman with surprising kindness, insisting on her worth as a child of God, but patriarchy dies slowly. The author of the meme seems to view "women" as a derogatory term, one made worse when combined with "fat." That is not unexpected considering that patriarchy values women largely as sexual objects.

In the gospel stories, Jesus has many encounters with women, and never does he dismiss them or speak ill of them. He saves his ire for those who criticize his interaction with women and others considered sinners.  It is religious leaders who draws lines of exclusion and keepers of patriarchy whom Jesus condemns. But we still seem not to have fully learned the lessons Jesus teaches.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon video: Choosing the Right Arc

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Choosing the Right Arc

Matthew 4:12-23

Choosing the Right Arc

James Sledge                                                                                       January 22, 2017

I did not get down there for Martin Luther King Day last week, but his memorial is one of my favorite spots. I especially like walking along and rereading his quotes carved into the granite walls that arc along the memorial. One of my favorites is, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Dr. King was a pastor, but his status as civil rights icon means that many don’t appreciate how much Christian faith drove his civil rights work. It was about much more than people of color gaining the same fundamental right enjoyed by whites. It was also a deeply Christian activity that sought to embody God’s kingdom, God’s new day.

For Dr. King, the hope that all people would someday be one was not rooted solely in  what is possible if human beings strive hard enough. It was also rooted in the certainty of his faith that glimpsed a day when all divisions were ended, when what the Apostle Paul wrote came fully to pass. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

My fondness for Dr. King, and for his quote on “the arc of the moral universe,” caused me to do a double take when I happened upon an online column in The Washington Post with this quote.  “The arc of the political universe is long, and it doesn't have to bend toward progress or justice or anything else good. It can point backwards if that's where we aim it.”[1]

Sermon video: Glimpses of God's New Day

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Foolish Faith

Give ear to my words, O LORD;
      give heed to my sighing.
Listen to the sound of my cry,
      my King and my God,
      for to you I pray.
O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;
      in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
     evil will not sojourn with you.
The boastful will not stand before your eyes;
      you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies;
      the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful.

Psalm 5:1-6

Clearly the author of Psalm 5 is facing some sort of difficulty. No details are given, but presumably those who are evil doers, who are boastful, deceitful, and speak lies, are the people who cause the psalmist to sigh and cry and plead to God. His plea is rooted in his understanding of God’s character as one who will not abide boasting, deceit, and lying.

I’d like to think the psalmist is correct, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Lies, boasts, and deceit seem very popular these days, and I’ve seen little indication that God is about to intervene against those who are so fond of them.

Politics has long been a realm of “spin” and stretching the truth, but our current president-elect has taken this to new heights. In one of his latest tweet storms, Mr. Trump insisted that he had never mocked a disabled reporter despite an often shown video of him doing just that. Where is this God who destroys those who speak lies?

It is possible that the psalmist may be asking just such a question. It is not at all unusual to find people in the Bible pleading with God, appealing to God’s character in an attempt to move God to action. Such pleas are not so much statements of fact about God as they are attempts to sway God. “Remember who you are, God, and act accordingly. Remember your promises to uphold the weak and vulnerable. Remember who you are, O God, and save me!” (For a remarkable example of this sort of speech, read how Moses talks God out of destroying the Israelites following the golden calf episode in Exodus 32:1-14.)

If the psalmist is speaking in this manner, demanding that God be true to Godself and take action, I wonder if it worked. Israel suffered through long periods of corrupt and inept leadership without any divine intervention. Despite the words of psalmists and the insistence of prophets, God’s timetable was often excruciatingly slow.

Modern people have often “solved” this problem by relegating God to the spiritual realm. This God is primarily concerned with the disposition of souls after they’ve died and not much interested in the created order. Such a notion is extremely difficult to find in the pages of the Bible, but that has done little to dissuade those who think the primary work of Christian faith is to get one into heaven.

The fact is that living as though God was the destroyer of those who speak lies has always been a minority position. Faithfulness has always been difficult, always been costly, and always been seen as foolish by most people. There are just too many things that are easier to trust than God. There are too many ways of living that are easier and seemingly more rewarding than following the commands of Jesus.

And the Church is often of little help. Like Israel before, it also succumbs to the promises of power and wealth. It ignores the plight of the poor and oppressed if there is any real cost or loss of prestige involved. We prefer being safe and respectable to speaking like psalmists or prophets or Jesus.

Nevertheless, faith has remained all these centuries. Always, it seems, there are a few who take seriously Jesus’ call to deny self and follow him. Like Jesus who goes to the cross despite the obvious foolhardiness of such an act, there are those who take up their crosses. I want to, but oh how I wish God would provide a little more assurance that it’s a good idea.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon: Glimpses of God's New Day

Matthew 3:13-17

Glimpses of God’s New Day

James Sledge                                                                                       January 8, 2017

I have a number of books featuring sermons by Barbara Brown Taylor, along with a book by her on preaching. She’s famous for being a great preacher, and I’ve quoted her in sermons often. But a few years back she wrote a very different book entitled Leaving Church: a memoir of faith. It is about just what the title suggests, and here’s a bit from the introduction.

By now I expected to be a seasoned parish minister, wearing black clergy shirts grown gray from frequent washing. I expected to love the children who hung on my legs after Sunday morning services until they grew up and had children of their own. I even expected to be buried wearing the same red vestments in which I was ordained.

Today those vestments are hanging in the sacristy of an Anglican church in Kenya, my church pension is frozen, and I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin. Sometimes I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me. These days I earn my living teaching school, not leading worship, and while I still dream of opening a small restaurant in Clarkesville or volunteering in an eye clinic in Nepal, there is no guarantee that I will not run off with the circus before I am through. This is not the life I planned, or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine…^[1]

When the book came out, many of the pastors I socialized with agreed with one colleague who labeled Taylor “a whiner who never should have entered ordained ministry in the first place.” But I could not dismiss her so easily. I resonated with some of her frustrations with church and the world. And if anything, this last year has left me with an even more skeptical and frustrated view of the world, its institutions, and humanity. 

This can prove challenging for faith, and the combination of post-Christmas let down, winter doldrums, and news of the latest shooting doesn’t help. Christmas speaks of peace on earth, of God decisively entering into human history, and God’s new day beginning to appear. But all these centuries later and the kingdom seems a long way off. The world is still a place of horrible suffering, violence, greed, and selfishness. And the church often just shrugs. Worse, the church is too often an agent of prejudice, greed, hate, and violence.

Today, barely out of the Christmas season and moving into the heart of winter, we hear once more of the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry as he comes to the Jordan to be baptized by John. It is a strange story, one that troubled those early Christians who wrote the gospels. After all, John the Baptist said quite plainly that he baptized people for repentance. So why would Jesus come to him for baptism?

Christmas Meditation video

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Christmas Identities

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Hard To Be Christian At Christmas

When I looked at the daily lectionary passages for today, once again there wasn't much connection to Christmas. Elizabeth's pregnancy with the child who will grow up to be John the Baptist is announced to his father, Zechariah, so we are getting closer. But I suspect that a lot of casual observers of Christmas would not connect this story to the birth of Jesus.

Because the daily lectionary has readings daily, duh, it cannot bring out Christmas passages until we're almost there. People not well acquainted with the Bible might expect, based on the amount of attention paid to Christmas, that it is a major deal in our sacred texts. But there's just not very much Christmas in the Bible. None at all in the gospels of John and Mark, and only Luke has anything about a baby in a manger, visited by shepherds.

It is a beautiful story, though, and I'm not at all bothered by how much people like it and enjoy hearing it repeated this time of year. For that matter, I'm well and good with many traditions connected to Christmas; decorating trees, giving gifts, stringing lights, gathering with family, Christmas movies, and even Santa Claus. Most have little connection to Jesus' birth or to Christian faith, but neither do any number of other things that I appreciate and enjoy.

Still, I often find faith more difficult at Christmas than at any other time of the year. That may sound odd considering more people show up at church over the next week than any other time of year. At times, Christmas even draws people back to the Church, for which I'm thankful. But my own faith might be better served by going to sleep around Thanksgiving and waking up mid-January.

If I were to point to a single culprit for this situation, it would be the "War on Christmas," or more correctly, the soldiers who would defend Christmas in this imagined war. Every time I hear someone take offense at "Happy Holidays," or boldly proclaim their use of "Merry Christmas" as though they were a Christian martyr confessing the faith before a Roman tribunal, I want to give up the label "Christian" until the season is well past.

The whole squabble about "Merry Christmas" trivializes faith, making it more about easy statements and comfortable nameplates than about anything Jesus commanded us to do. And in the worst instances, the "Merry Christmas" enforcers act in ways antithetical to Jesus' teachings, treating neighbor in a manner they would never wish for themselves over mostly imagined slights. If this is Christianity, why would anyone want to join such a mean-spirited little clique.

But I shouldn't be too hard on the defenders of "Merry Christmas." In many ways they are carrying on the Church's own work of trivializing the faith, making it mostly a matter of belief statements attendance at worship services. Neither of these require much in the way of following Jesus or obeying his commandments. Perhaps that's why the silliness around the War on Christmas gets me so down. It brings into sharp focus the ways in which the Church itself has undermined authentic Christian discipleship.

The Church's fascination with Christmas may well be a part of this. Aside from the beauty of the Christmas story and the good news of a Savior born for us, there is also the added advantage of a Messiah who cannot yet talk. The babe in the manger will not tell us to love our enemies. He most will certainly not say, "Woe to you who are rich," words spoken by the man Jesus. The babe in a manger is a perfectly safe object of worship and devotion, one who will not ask anything of us.

Regardless, Jesus' birth calls for celebration, and I hope you enjoy the Christmas season with its warmth and joy, its beautiful music and splendor, its promise that God is indeed for us. But I hope you'll forgive me for wanting it to hurry up and be over, for looking forward to the time when there's a slightly better chance we may encounter the Jesus who says to us, "Let go of the things you thought were so important, and come, follow me."

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon: Christmas Identities

Matthew 1:18-25

Christmas Identities

James Sledge                                                                           December 18, 2016

It’s getting close enough to Christmas that the gospel reading for today actually speaks of Christmas. It’s not what most of us think of as the Christmas story, but it’s all that Matthew’s gospel has. (Matthew also tells of the visit from the Magi, but Jesus may have been two or so when that happened.)

Nearly a hundred years ago, today’s gospel, along with the annunciation to Mary in Luke, provided ammunition in something known as the fundamentalist controversy. To be ordained in the Presbyterian Church back then required belief in a set of fundamentals, one of them being the virgin birth. This was part of a larger fight about the truth of the Bible. In this case it led to a rather ridiculous argument about whether or not the gospels got the science and biology of Jesus right. Never mind that the gospel writers had no notion of such things.

We’re still living with residue of those fights. There is a Christianity that insists on a literal reading of the Bible with cut and dried meanings to the text. It’s a view that’s not very tolerant of questions and tends toward a “believe it or else” mentality.

Then there’s a Christianity not at all bothered by whether or not Mary is a virgin. It’s perfectly content to accept scientific notions of evolution, the Big Bang, and so on. But this Christianity sometimes struggles with just what role Scripture plays in the life of faith. Often Scripture is “true” only if it doesn’t contradict science or my sense of what is possible, and so it cannot really tell me much of consequence that I don’t already know from other sources. 

________________________________________________________________________________

Recently a church member dropped by the office with a concern. He wasn’t upset with me or with anyone else. Rather he had a nagging worry that the church had lost its way in some sense. Not just this church, but others like it. It seemed to him that our sort of congregation is often a nice group of like-minded individuals, many who do a great deal to make the world a better place. But he wasn’t sure there was much distinctly Christian about it.

As we discussed his concerns, it seemed to me that he was speaking of an issue that has troubled me for some time, one of identity, specifically Christian identity.

Hung Juries and Christmas Hope

Several times in the last week, I've found myself wide awake in the middle of the night, struggling to make sense of a hung jury in the trial of the former police office who shot an unarmed Walter Scott. There is video showing Scott being shot in the back as he runs away. If that is not enough to convict, what is?

If you did not pay attention to the trial, one key moment was when the former police officer took the stand and explained how Scott's actions left him so fearful he had no choice but to shoot. And some jurors accepted that argument.

Fear of black men has deep roots in American culture, especially in the South. In colonial SC, fear of slave revolts was not without good reason. When you oppress someone, they may well try to undo that oppression. They may even simply want to make you pay for it.

When slavery finally ended, oppression did not. Former slaves and their descendants were "kept in their place" by all manner of laws and customs, and so fear was still warranted. To make matters worse, all this was wedded to the Christianity practiced by whites, particularly white southerners.

This fear of blacks did not simply go away as legal discrimination came to an end. I was an eighth grader in Charlotte, NC when the courts ordered a bussing plan to end segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Many white students left for privates schools, an option I never heard discussed in my home. That may have been because my parents were fairly progressive on racial issues. It may also have been because my family didn't have the means to put four children in private school.

Regardless, I clearly recall events early in the start of my ninth grade year when the school lines had again been redrawn to comply with the court, necessitating my attending a third junior high school in as many years. That this school was a formerly black school in a black neighborhood did not seem to bother my parents. My mother had volunteered in the Head Start program at the next door elementary school, after all. But then something happened that was too much for my mother.

The bus that picked me and my brother up as the new school year began was nearly full when it came by my home out in the sparsely populated "country." And almost every other child on the bus was black. It made me nervous, and it must have terrified my mother. She got onto the bus and had words with the driver. She and a few other white parents were soon on the phone to school officials and soon the bus route was changed. There were still black students on my bus, but they formed a more appropriate minority, allaying my and my mother's fears.

I don't know, but I suspect the police officer who shot Walter Scott was shaped by the same fears I learned as a child. No doubt some of the jurors at his trial were as well. It we would be nice to think that the fear I experienced in junior high was a thing of the past, but events keep reminding us that is not so.

As I think about all this, I am troubled by how seldom I have heard the church I grew up in address fear and race and privilege. The churches of my youth, much like my parents, were not racist in any overt way. Some reached out to develop relationships with black congregations. Still, I don't recall ever hearing a sermon addressing the evils of racism, much less one taking on the white privilege that so advantaged me and my fellow congregants. I can't recall a critique of a culture that defined itself by white standards, a culture that was unnerved by too much blackness in much the same way I was unnerved as a 14 year old getting on a school bus.

And now, as we move deeper into Advent and closer to Christmas, many would like to forget about the bitterness of the recent election. Many would like to focus on joy and peace and goodwill. But if we are listening at all to the prophets who herald a Messiah, we realize that their promises are connected to scathing critique of oppressive systems in their day. If we pay attention to the stories connected to Jesus' birth, we will see the powerful lashing out in fear and killing the innocent.

If there is real and meaningful hope to be found at Christmas, it is not located in the warmth of nostalgia or gathered families, as wonderful as those things may be. It is to be found in the assurance that God enters into human history on the side of the poor and the weak and the oppressed. And even if the Church too often forgets that, too often aligns itself with the powerful and with fear, God does not. Not if the Christmas story is true. God, I hope it is true.

Sermon: Is Jesus the One?

Matthew 11:2-6

Is Jesus the One?

James Sledge                                                                                       December 11, 016

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” asks John the Baptist from his prison cell. This is same John who did not want to baptize Jesus, who said, “I need to be baptized by you.” Perhaps John had expected more of Jesus, more vivid signs that God’s reign was indeed arriving. After all, John had announced the kingdom was coming. He had told people to repent, to change and get ready for it. But now he was in prison, soon to be executed, and the world didn’t look very different. Maybe he’d been wrong about Jesus.

Is Jesus the one? I think a lot of people still ask that question. Maybe not out loud, but it’s there, unspoken. In less than two weeks, our sanctuary, like many other sanctuaries, will fill to overflowing with people celebrating Christmas. I suspect that most will want the message of Emmanuel and Peace on earth to be true. They hope it might be and come on Christmas Eve, hoping to glimpse signs of it.

But soon enough, they will look around, see that the world still looks unchanged. Like John the Baptist, they’ll have trouble holding onto the hope of Christmas and believing that Jesus really is the one. Hope may stir once again next Christmas, but it is hard to maintain during most of the year.

When John’s question is brought to Jesus, he says to go and tell John, “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  This is the proof Jesus offers John.

It’s a curious list Jesus provides. It includes some pretty impressive miracles and healings, but such things were not unknown from Israel’s past. Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha healed the sick and even raised the dead with no expectation that they were about to bring God’s reign. So why would Jesus’ miracles be proof that God’s new day was close?

I wonder if Jesus’ point isn’t more about the last item in the list, “the poor have good news brought to them.” Come to think of it, most of the people on the list were poor. There was no social safety net in those days, and the lame, blind, and deaf mostly survived by begging. For Jesus to end his list with the promise of good news for the poor suggests that he’s not just making a point about his ability to do miracles. He’s saying that he is the fulfilment of prophetic hopes that God would one day lift up the poor, put an end to oppression and exploitation, raise up those at the bottom, and pull down those at the top.

Is Jesus the one? The Church says he is, and so we might expect that the Church would be largely focused on good news for the poor. But somewhere along the way, the Church’s message became more about personal salvation.

Sermon video: When God Stirs

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.