Text of Sunday Sermon - God's Desire; Salvation; and Us

1 Timothy 2:1-7

God’s Desire, Salvation, and Us

James Sledge                                                      September 19, 2010

For me and many of my seminary classmates, one of the most intimidating things about becoming a pastor was taking something called ordination exams.  These were separate from seminary itself, given by the denomination.  And they were really scary because until you passed them all, you could not be ordained, and generally were not allowed to look for a job in a congregation. 

And so, most Presbyterian seminaries offer help with these exams.  Just prior to my last year of seminary, we had a seminar on how to take and pass these exams.  They walked us through the process, talked about how the exams were structured, and shared wisdom gleaned from exams in previous years.  One time honored piece of wisdom went, “If you are struggling with a theological question, you can never go wrong talking about the sovereignty of God.”

The absolute sovereignty of God, the idea that nothing operates outside of God’s ultimate control, is a centerpiece of John Calvin’s work, and Calvin is the founder of our theological tradition.  And this focus on God’s sovereignty lies behind a doctrine often associated with Presbyterians: Predestination.

Now the fact is that predestination was not dreamed up by Calvin nor is it restricted to Presbyterians.  Augustine came up with the idea that God’s salvation is a gift given to whomever God chooses some 1600 years ago.  And so predestination found its way into Roman Catholic theology.  When Martin Luther broke off from the Catholic Church about 500 years ago, he emphasized Augustine’s teachings on grace and salvation as a gift, and so he kept predestination as a Lutheran doctrine.

So how did we Presbyterians get stuck with the predestination label?  Well, it seems Calvin got a bit carried away talking about God’s sovereignty.  Calvin reasoned that if God was totally sovereign, if nothing could happen without God’s okay, then not only did God choose those who are saved, the members of the elect, but God must have also chosen not to save the others.  This is a little something that became known as double predestination.  Some are predestined for salvation and some for damnation.

Even Calvin found this a bit uncomfortable and said it was a difficult doctrine.  And Presbyterians essentially called the doctrine off a century ago.  But I’ve always wondered how Calvin could have come up with the doctrine in the first place considering today’s verses from 1 Timothy.  Is says right there that God desires everyone to be saved.  And if God is totally sovereign, if everything God wills will be, then that sounds more like universal salvation than double predestination.

God desires everyone to be saved.  Jesus is the mediator between God and all humanity, and he died for everyone.  You’d have a hard time coming to that conclusion listening to some Christians.  In their version of the faith, God seems almost gleeful at the prospect of sending folks who won’t believe the right things into eternal punishment.  But according to 1 Timothy, God would surely be distraught and weeping at the prospect.

God desires everyone to be saved.  Jesus died for everyone.  Of course that begs the question of just what it means to be saved, of just what Jesus’ death accomplished.

I have become more and more convinced over the years that the Church went badly astray when it began to speak of salvation, of being saved, in terms of an either/or, in or out category.  In this view, saved has to do with us believing certain things and so getting our tickets punched for eternity.  Jesus’ death is a part of the magic formula that makes all this work.  And we’ve been talking this way for so many centuries that we hear Jesus and we hear the Bible with salvation already defined this way.  But I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t understand saved or salvation this way.

Not everyone seems to realize this, but Jesus was never a Christian.  He was a Jew.  And as a Jew, his preeminent picture of salvation, of God’s saving activity, was the Exodus story.  Passover is the biggest Jewish festival and holiday because of this.  It celebrates God saving Israel, which of course has nothing to do with going to heaven.  It is about being freed from slavery, about safety and security, about being rescued from oppression.

And not only was Jesus a Jew, he also identified himself as a prophet.  Israel’s prophets had taken the salvation story of Exodus and envisioned a salvation extended to all creation, perhaps best known in Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom.  This prophetic view sees God’s saving acts in the Exodus as prefiguring a bigger act that will rescue all, that will bring all creation to freedom, safety, and security, that will rescue all from oppression.  And these prophets speak of this as a new day, as a new age, something Jesus calls the Kingdom of God.

Of course, just as freeing the Israelite slaves was a threat to Egypt’s Pharaoh, the Kingdom of God is a threat to all worldly kingdoms and governments and systems.  All such systems depend on certain inequalities.  Some must be poor so others can be rich.  Some must lose for others to win.  Some must work hard so others can enjoy leisure.  Some must be at the bottom so others can be at the top.  Some must die so others can live.

But Jesus says that the Kingdom, God’s new day, the end of all such inequalities, has drawn near.  No wonder they had to kill Jesus.  Speaking of a new way to heaven wouldn’t have been a problem.  But declaring an end to Rome’s empire, to all empires, and calling his followers to become citizens of that coming community rather than this current one, well that’s something that will get you in serious trouble.

But Jesus stays true to God’s vision.  He will not adopt the ways of this age, and he will not fight the powers of this age on their terms.  He will not engage in hatred and violence.  His Kingdom is one of love and peace and acceptance, and it does not come by force.  And so Jesus dies.

His death makes clear how far our ways are from God’s.  It shows clearly how far the powers of this age will go to preserve their power.  His death condemns us all, for all of us, to varying degrees, are willing participants in and self-proclaimed citizens of this age.

But Jesus’ death also makes clear that the lengths God goes to draw us toward that new age, that new day that has come near.  Jesus is willing to bear the brunt of human foolishness, of our commitment to systems that are passing away.  God loves everyone, desires for everyone to become a part of a renewed and redeemed creation, and so God will not lash out.  Instead, in Jesus, God will weep, suffer, and die.  God will gently beckon, and God will wait.

But God does not just wait.  Jesus also calls those who will follow him to be witnesses to the hope of God’s new day, to show by their lives the living Jesus, God’s love in the flesh, God’s desire for all people everywhere.  And so we heard a letter to the followers of Jesus urging that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, including kings and those in high positions, the very people who sometimes persecuted and oppressed those early Christians.

God desires everyone to be saved.  Jesus is the mediator between God and all humanity, and he died for everyone.  And when we get caught up in this remarkable love and desire of God, when it takes root in our hearts, how can we help but see everyone with new eyes, with the eyes of Jesus.  And when we do, how can we keep from sharing God’s love and embrace, with every single one of them?

Spiritual Hiccups - Afraid to Speak Up

In today's reading from John, Jesus' arrest is drawing near.  In the midst of these deteriorating conditions, we hear this, "Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But  because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they  would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God."

Pharisees tossing folks out of the synagogue was not really an issue during the lifetime of Jesus, but it was a very pressing issue at the time John's gospel is written.  After Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, Priestly Judaism basically disappeared.  In the struggle to control Judaism that ensued, the followers of Jesus (who considered themselves Jews) found themselves in competition with the Pharisees.  The Pharisees (forerunners of modern rabbinical Judaism) were the much larger group, and in the manner typical of internal religious disputes, they insisted the Jesus followers drop their messianic claims for Jesus or risk expulsion.  Apparently many Christians decided to keep their faith private so they would not be kicked out.  And John's gospel is written, in part, to address these Christians and call them to bold, public faith.

Fast forward to our day, and I'm not in any danger from Pharisees for being too public about my faith.  Nevertheless, there are other sorts of pressures that encourage me not to be too obvious about following Jesus.  I suspect that many pastors feel a significant amount of pressure not to emphasize teachings of Jesus that make people uncomfortable or that challenge the prevailing cultural norms.  And we've somehow managed to make following Jesus fully compatible with acquiring wealth and possessions no matter the cost to the environment or to those who labor under horrible conditions to produce our inexpensive food and clothes.

As a pastor, I'm as captive as the next person to our culture of success and consumerism.  We pastors almost always receive "calls" to bigger churches with larger salaries.  And our salaries are often the biggest single items in our church's budgets, budgets that often struggle to dedicate significant percentages of our monies to mission. 

Many have noted that serving as a pastor is a difficult job that enjoys little of the status it once did.  And certainly it does not pay at the same levels of many other similarly educated professionals.  Yet despite these real difficulties, it strikes me that I want to serve as a pastor without it being really costly, without it including a cross.  And it is very easy to hear John's gospel speaking of me when it says, "for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God."

If you happen to be a member of my congregation, don't worry that something dramatic is going to happen on Sunday.  To be honest, I'm not at all sure how to address this captivity of Church and pastors to the prevailing culture, this fear we have of faithfully articulating what Jesus says and, even more, actually doing what he says.  But we surely need to have some serious conversations in our congregations about what it actually means to be a follower of Jesus.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Save Me!

In today's verses from Acts, Paul and Silas are in prison when a violent earthquake throws open the doors and frees them.  The jailer presumes that everyone has escaped and so pulls his sword to kill himself.  (Apparently this was preferable to what would happen to him for letting prisoners escape.)  But Paul shouted for him not to kill himself, that none of them had fled.  The jailer rushes in to Paul, falls on his face, and cries out, "What must I do to be saved?"

This passage was used by Brian McLaren at the Church Unbound Conference I recently attended.  And as Brian pointed out, seeing that the jailer was just about to kill himself, it seems highly unlikely that his desire to be saved has anything to do with the disposition of his eternal soul.  His life has just been spared - for the moment - and he would probably like to make that a long term proposition. 

This jailer is a part of the Roman empire, a small cog in that massive kingdom.  His allegiance is to the emperor, but Paul suggests that he will be saved if he switches allegiance to a different king, Jesus.

We are so used to thinking that "saved" has to do with our approved or disapproved status in God's little black book that we presume a Roman jailer who moments earlier was more than ready to kill himself has somehow suddenly become concerned about the fate of his soul.  Surely "saved" has a much more concrete meaning for him.  Of course if we hear "saved" in the manner the jailer likely meant it, then that may require us to rethink what save means for us.

I think that the Church desperately needs this sort of saving.  I think that our society and culture desperately need this sort of saving.  Like the jailer, we need to turn away from our loyalty to Caesar, to the Almighty dollar, to a particular political view or ideology, to status and power, even to Church institutions and transfer that loyalty to Jesus.  Two traditional titles for Jesus make this clear, Lord and Master.  Both were ways to address someone who has power over you, who can tell you what to do.  Caesar was supreme Lord in the First Century, Mediterranean world, but those who followed Jesus defected from Caesar and became obedient to Jesus.

This sort of thinking sometimes gets labeled heretical, but I would go so far as to say that if someone did all that Jesus commanded, but didn't believe in him, she would be closer to the Kingdom than lots of people who profess Jesus as their Savior but seem to have forgotten the Lord part.  And Jesus himself says as much in a number of places, notably in the parable of the Judgment of Gentiles in Matthew 25:31-46.

And when I think of it this way, I need saving as much as anyone.  Lord, save me!

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Spiritual Hiccups - I Don't Care if You Believe in God

A number of my Facebook friends have said they like a page called,  "Let's see if there are 5 million people on FB who believe in God!  Press Like if you do!"  If they need me to make it to 5 million, they're going to come up short.  Not that I don't believe in God.  But all sorts of people believe in God.  In fact, the vast majority of people believe in God.  But for many of those it just doesn't make a great deal of difference in how they live their lives.  And for another sizable group, it makes a great deal of difference, but in ways that are harmful and destructive.

A couple of today's readings speak to this.  Job's three friends believe in God.  In fact, they haves spent much of the book defending God to Job, insisting that Job accept his fate as just punishment from God.  But God says to Eliphaz, one of these friends, "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has."  So according to God, Job, who has shaken his fist at God and demanded God give account for his unjust suffering, has spoken "what is right."  But those who have spouted the conventional rhetoric of religious belief earn God's anger.

To my ear, a great many religious folks sound a lot like Job's friends.  And so it seems their religious belief may not be all that pleasing to God.

In the gospel reading today Jesus says, "Those who love their life lose it."  Nearly everyone we meet in the New Testament gospels believes in God, many of them fervently.  But this matters little to Jesus.  Jesus wants to know if their lives conform to God's ways, if they would choose to suffer and even die for God's cause. 

I saw a bumper sticker on a car yesterday that said simply, "Trust Jesus."  I have no idea what the driver meant by this.  But I know a lot of people who mean, "I believe in Jesus so I get to go to heaven."  But it seems to me that trusting Jesus should mean trusting in and doing what he tells us. That includes things such as loving your enemy, giving to all who ask from you, taking up the cross, teaching others to do everything Jesus commands, and a great many other things many of us like to ignore.

If you believe in God (and you probably wouldn't be reading this if you didn't), that's great.  But if that's the extent of your "faith," I'm not sure it matters very much.  The world doesn't need more believers.  It needs more disciples, people who follow Jesus and do as he says.  But I'm not sure you can really cover that with a Facebook page.

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Spiritual Hiccups - As It Is Written

"As it is written" is a common phrase in the New Testament (along with several variations meaning the same thing).  It's there in today's gospel reading about "Palm Sunday."  This is an effort by the writers to make clear how Jesus is in perfect continuity with what God has been doing all along through the people of Israel.  In fact, the first several generations of Christians were quite content to have what we call the Old Testament as their only Scripture.  When 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness..." the scripture being referred to is, of course, our Old Testament.

Given the great lengths the New Testament writers go to connect Jesus to Judaism, it is remarkable how disconnected Christianity has become from it.  Many Christians seem to think Jesus rejected the faith of his childhood and started a new one.  And this divorcing of Christian faith from its Jewish roots has made it much easier to distort Jesus into someone who came to punch our tickets to heaven, rather than someone who stood firmly in the prophetic tradition of a coming Messianic age when all creation would be drawn back into right relationship with God and each other.  Even though the prayer Jesus gives us broadcasts this clearly, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." People still think of Jesus saving them from earth for heaven.

It is an obvious fact, but many seem not to know it.  Jesus was never a Christian.  For his entire life, he was a Jew.  And most of his followers considered themselves Jews for generations afterward. There is no reversing history, so I won't advocate calling our churches synagogues and such.  But we Christians would do well always to remember that we follow a Jewish Messiah.

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Sunday Sermon Video - Just Do It

Spiritual Hiccups - I'm God, and You're Not

If you've been following the daily readings, you've heard Job complaining about how he has suffered unjustly, demanding a response from God.  You've heard Job's friends insist that Job must have done something to deserve all his misfortune, and he should repent of his misdeeds.  Now finally, God has answered Job, though to my mind, the answer is not terribly satisfactory. 

As today's reading begins, God has already pummeled Job with a barrage of questions.  "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without wisdom?.. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"  And it has gone on like this for two chapters when we get to today's reading.  But God does not say that Job's friends were correct.  In fact, God will condemn them and their advice shortly. 

In short, God's answer to Job, even if it is a flight of fancy three chapters long, amounts to, "I am God, and you're not."

I wonder if most faith crises don't struggle right here.  In the face of so much suffering in the world, of so much that surely is at odds with any hoped for Kingdom of God, can we trust that God is indeed God, much less that God is good?  When we judge God's apparent willingness to tolerate evil and suffering, can we be satisfied with, "I am God and you're not," as Job was? 

In the end, Job's acceptance rests on the fact that God does indeed show Godself.  I think I could use a little of that about now.

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Sunday Sermon - Just Do It

Just Do It - September 12 sermon.mp3

Text of Sunday Sermon - Just Do It

Luke 15:1-10

Just Do It

James Sledge                            --                September 12, 2010

In case you’ve missed it when I’ve said so before, I think the Pharisees get something of a bum rap.  The Pharisees were a reform movement in Judaism, a group that worried about a faith too focused on rituals, festivals, and Temple sacrifices.  They had read those verses by the prophet Amos where God says, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…. But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  And so the Pharisees were serious about doing more than professing their faith.  They tried to walk the walk.  And they encouraged other Jews to do the same.  And their movement was a rather successful one.  They were the forerunners of modern, rabbinical Judaism. 

Of course when you start to focus on how people live it gets fairly easy to tell those who are serious about faith from those who aren’t.  And the tax collectors and sinners we just heard about in our gospel reading certainly belong to the latter group.  These tax collectors had nothing in common with our IRS or local tax office.  They were Jews who secured, often bought, their position from the Romans.  It was essentially a license to steal, and corruption was an integral part of the system.  These tax collectors had a set amount to collect for the Romans, and everything they collected above that was theirs.  And they could used Roman soldiers to bully and strong-arm folks.  They were hated and regarded as traitors because they worked for a foreign power and grew wealthy by cheating their fellow Jews.

Similarly, the sinners in our gospel reading are not those who have had some small lapse and needed forgiveness.  These were clearly distinguishable folks who did not keep the moral law or follow the purity rules.  They lived outside the faith community, either by choice or because they engaged in unsavory occupations.  To eat with these folks was to become unclean and impure yourself.  Their status as sinners is not questioned, not even by Jesus.

And so the issue is not whether the Pharisees have judged these tax collectors and sinners too harshly.  The issue is why Jesus feels so at home with them.  To explain, Jesus tells a parable.  Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

Jesus begins his parable with this question, but it isn’t really a question.  He presumes that every one of the scribes and Pharisees listening to him is nodding in agreement.  “Oh yes, of course we would drop everything, leave the ninety-nine, and run look for the one lost sheep.”

But I don’t know if I would.  It doesn’t seem to me a cost effective way to run a business.  That one sheep is a paltry one percent of the sheep farmer’s total investment.  It seems difficult to justify jeopardizing ninety-nine percent for the sake of one.  Better to safeguard the ninety-nine percent, forget the one, and take the tax write off.

But I suppose shepherds in Jesus’ day viewed it differently.  Their small flocks became like extensions of their family.  They knew each sheep individually, and they couldn’t leave the one out there alone.

The Pharisees seemed to get Jesus’ parable with no problem, but it isn’t quite the same no-brainer for me.  So what would be a no-brainer?  What would make me immediately nod my head yes, would justify dropping everything?

I know one thing that it isn’t, not for me or apparently for many others.  It isn’t the loss of scores of mainline church members.  Mainline, Protestant congregations have lost millions of members since 1960.  Some of those have joined non-denominational mega-churches, but most have simply left active church life.  Presbyterians alone have lost around 2 million members.  We’re about half the size we were 50 years ago.  We’re not talking about any one percent here.  Surely this would cause us to take notice, to drop everything.  But in fact we have mostly shrugged.  We wonder where they all went, but we’ve pretty much kept doing exactly what we’ve always done.  We’d love it if they all came back, but…

What sort of thing would cause you to drop everything you were doing?  What would cause you to set aside everything else and focus all your energy on that problem?  How about if you heard that someone you love dearly had just had a terrible accident and was on the way to the hospital?  I know that would do it for me.  If I learned right this moment that one of my daughters was in an ambulance headed to the hospital, I would not be staying with you for the rest of this worship service.  And if I found out she was going to be okay, I would be calling everyone to tell them the good news, to share my joy.

And Jesus says God feels that way about all those who are lost, about the tax collectors and sinners of that day, about the drug dealers and gang members of our day.  Jesus hangs out with such folks and God is ready to rejoice and throw a party when they repent. 

So where do we fit into all this?  How do we become a part of this thing that God is so passionate about?  How do we become a part of something that God wants to celebrate?  I think that we often have difficulties with this because we misunderstand what Jesus is talking about in today’s parables.  We misunderstand what it means to be lost, to be found, to repent. 

You can see this when people talk about evangelism.  Anytime I’ve been part of such a discussion, invariably someone says, “I don’t know enough to share my faith with someone.”  In this view of things, evangelism is about transmitting enough convincing information that someone decides to believe in Jesus.  Lost equals not believing in Jesus, found is what happens when that changes, and repenting is the move from lost to found.  Trouble is, the Jesus we meet in Luke’s gospel doesn’t talk this way. 

Jesus spends most of his time teaching about God’s kingdom, God’s new community, something Jesus insists has come near.  It is a new day that will lift up the poor and oppressed, that will bring justice to those who have been mistreated.  When Jesus sends out his followers he tells them to proclaim this kingdom and to cure the sick.  In the beginning, being a part of the Jesus movement was less about believing the right things and more about living in ways that conformed to the kingdom, that cared for neighbor even when it was costly, that reached out to those others found unclean and undesirable.  And I suspect that those tax collectors and sinners came to listen to Jesus because it sounded like they were welcome there, that God wanted them to be part of that new day every bit as much as the go-to-church-every-Sunday folks.

And that means that getting involved in what God is passionate about, getting involved in what makes God want to celebrate, doesn’t require an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible or a seminary understanding of Christian doctrine.  It merely requires a willingness to welcome and love people wherever you find them, just like God does.  It merely requires sharing the amazing love Jesus give us with others.

On most days, every single one of us encounters someone who is hurting, who is suffering, who has been made to feel inferior, who has been told she isn’t wanted or needed, who is lonely, who is frightened, who feels there is something wrong with him that makes him unacceptable, who has been shunned by others.  Almost every single day, we meet people who need us to drop what we’re doing and move toward them, to reach out to them, to help them, to let them know that they are not alone and not outside God’s embrace. 

And so, almost every single day, in ways large and small, each one of us has an opportunity to become a part of what God is passionate about, to become a part of what God is excited about and wants to celebrate.  Every day, we all have the chance to be the living body of Christ to others.  We don’t need to know more.  We just need to do it.

Spiritual Hiccups - The Time is Now

Very often when I lead a funeral service, I begin with these words.  "I am  the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though  they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me  will never die."  These words are from the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and a portion of that story is today's gospel reading.  They are a staple at funerals, but I wonder if they should be.

Jesus says these words in response to Martha, Lazarus' sister, who has just said that she knows Lazarus will be raised "in the resurrection on the last day."  Martha already believes in the resurrection.  And is doesn't seem to be some sort of faulty view of resurrection.  It is pretty much the same thing the Apostle Paul says many times.  On the last day, when the trumpet sounds, the dead will be raised.

So Jesus is apparently not correcting her view of resurrection.  Rather he seems to be correcting her view of the time.  If Jesus is the resurrection, then the last days have broken into the present.

But we Christians have had 2000 years to lose the urgency Jesus' words require.  We've lost a sense of the new age dawning, and have perverted resurrection to mean "going to heaven when we die."  For that matter, I'm not so sure I want this age to end and the new age to arrive.  I've got this age pretty well figured out, and I happen to be reasonably secure and comfortable.  Let's leave resurrection and the age to come to some future date.  That way I don't have to change the ways I live.  I just have to believe the right stuff.

I once had a Jewish friend ask me an old question.  "If Jesus is the Messiah, where is the Messianic age?"  Too bad we Christians have gotten so disconnected from our Jewish roots that we've forgotten the two go together.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Enemies

I'm not sure there is much need for me to jump into the fray over a the planned Qur'an burning by a few lunatics who call themselves Christians.  They have been repudiated by religious leaders of every stripe, and even by General Petraeus.  And while they have their supporters, the vast majority of Americans find these folks foolish, if not offensive.

However, I wonder if such folks are not engaged in a lunatic fringe version of behavior we all practice.  We all seem to need enemies, and the more frightened we are the greater this need.  Having an enemy is a great builder of unity and common purpose.  Many remember the unity America briefly experienced following the 9-11 attacks.  We were all one because we all had a common enemy. 

But that common enemy has proved illusive and hard to define.  So we find substitutes and stand-ins.  Saddam Hussein worked nicely for a while.  "Islamic Fascism" has a nice ring to it, even if no one knows exactly what that means.  If we can't agree on an external enemy, internal ones will do.  The bitterness of current partisan politics is a prime example of this. 

Because enemies are so helpful in building unity, people who are seen as "different" make great enemies.  If they don't fit into a particular vision of unity and oneness, then perhaps they are in league with the enemy.  Many Americans, who wouldn't think of burning a Qur'an, are nonetheless deeply suspicious of Muslims.  Their otherness makes them, if not an actual enemy, a group that bears watching.  But this is only a slightly subtler version of Terry Jones and his Burn a Qur'an day. 

The need for enemies seems to be a part of our human nature, and so labeling Muslims the enemy is hardly surprising.  But, as many have pointed out, it is behavior that seems terribly at odds with the teachings of Jesus.  He says we are to love our enemies and pray for them.  Paul writes that if our enemy is hungry, we are to feed them.  In other words, even if someone really is an enemy, the Christian response is to love them, to treat them as one of us and not as enemies.  And if this is how we are to treat genuine enemies, such as Osama bin Laden, how can declaring any group our enemy justify anything other than our love?

The Apostle Paul writes, "Do not be conformed to the world..." But the fact is we want to believe in Jesus while still living by the ways of the world.  We want to call him Lord, Lord, without actually doing as he says.  We want to react to our fears even though "perfect love casts out fear."

And so Terry Jones, the Florida pastor so much in the news of late, is a window into a darkness that lives in all of us.  And as such, he is a reminder of what a radically different way of living Jesus modeled and calls us to follow. 

Sunday Sermon - Greater Than All Other Loves

Spiritual Hiccups - Doing God's Work

To my mind, one of the real problems of Christianity is the tendency of its adherents to see the world in terms of us and them.  There are those who believe in Jesus, who have affirmed him with the correct formula, and then there is everyone else.  This strikes me as not so very different from some Pharisees and other Jewish leaders who insisted on people vigorously keeping the Law.  This included the purity codes that made it impossible for Jews to share a meal with non-Jews, and it also included concerns about not using God's name in incorrect ways or ways that dishonored it.  This concern gets Jesus in trouble in today's reading from the Gospel of John.

When Jesus answers the charges of blasphemy leveled against him, his primary defense is rooted in the works that he does.  Even if you don't believe in me, Jesus asks, can't you see the works of God being done by me?

Over the centuries, it seems to me that the Church has gotten less concerned with the works of God, and more focused on believing the right things about Jesus.  Evangelism is generally considered convincing people to believe those right things about Jesus.  And not believing the right things about Jesus puts you in the "them" camp, period.  It matters not one whit whether such folks are doing the works of the Father.

I wonder what would happen if we understood Christianity to be primarily about helping people to live in ways that revealed God's hopes and dreams for humanity and creation.  What if we worried less about whether or not people espoused the right creeds, and worried more about loving God and neighbor.  After all, Jesus, in Matthew 25:31-46, speaks of Gentiles, of others, of them being welcomed into the Kingdom because the lived Kingdom shaped lives, even though they didn't realize they were serving Jesus in the process.

Is your faith mostly about what you believe, or how you live?

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Sunday Sermon - Greater Than All Other Loves

Greater Than All Other Loves - Sept. 5 sermon.mp3

Text of Sunday Sermon

Luke 14:25-33

Greater Than All Other Loves

James Sledge                                                  September 5, 2010

Not being from Ohio, I sometimes find the obsession with all things Buckeye a bit much.  And so I don’t usually mention OSU in sermons.  But I think that the experience of having a favorite sports team may be of some help in understanding what Jesus says to us today.

When we have a favorite team, say the Buckeyes, we feel affection and loyalty for that team.  Perhaps it’s because we grew up in a family that always supported that team.  Maybe we went to school there.  Maybe we just liked the colors of their uniforms.  But whatever lies behind our affection and loyalty, we support and pull for our team.  We cheer when they are winning and we suffer when they lose, which accounts for why winning teams tend to have more fans that losing ones. Who wants to suffer all the time?

But there is a counterpart to the affection, love, and zeal we feel for our team.  There is a corresponding lack of affection and love for their opponents.  A few Buckeye fans take this to ridiculous and sometimes unhealthy levels, but even the most modest, polite fan knows that pulling for your own team means pulling against the other.  You don’t actually have to hate the other team, but you certainly have to like them less than you do your own.

Jesus says something similar when he talks about what it takes to follow him. 
When we decide that we want to be his disciples, that we will give our loyalty to him, Jesus insists that it has an impact on all our other loyalties. 

Now admittedly Jesus’ words about hating father and mother come across a little like the most rabid sort of Buckeye speaking about Michigan.  But that is mostly because something gets lost in rendering those words in English.  The word in Luke’s gospel can mean “hate,” but in the hyperbole filled style of Middle Eastern speech, this is actually an emphatic way of saying to love the other less.  Jesus does not say that we need to feel genuine hate for our families or our own lives.  Rather he says that following him requires all those other things to take a back seat to loving Jesus.  If there is any sort of conflict, any need to choose between the two, we have to pull for Jesus ahead of all others.

There may be a way to speak of this that doesn’t sound quite so negative.  When a person grows up, falls in love, and gets married, that demands some adjustments in relationships that may have previously been the center of someone’s life.  This usually happens so naturally that we scarcely take notice of it.  But leaving home and marrying means a certain severing of ties and loyalties to one’s parents.  For many of us this didn’t involve any conflict or anything resembling hate, but nonetheless, our primary loyalty shifted to our spouse. 

And if you never thought about how absolutely necessary this shift is for a marriage to work, simply recall that marriage most all of us have seen where this shift didn’t happen.  Such marriages sometimes produce letters to Dear Abby complaining about how his or her relationship with Momma is still number one.  When a person can never say “No” to a parent for the sake of a spouse, that marriage is destined for serious trouble.

As I said, most of us know this almost instinctively.  Only the most callous, maladjusted sort would get married and insist on still dating old girlfriends.  When you get married, when you fall in love, they are new ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends.  The new relationship demands the giving up of some things if it is to work.

And speaking of giving up some things, there’s no avoiding the topic of money.  Money is often cited as the number one factor in failed marriages.  Sometimes this is simply a matter of money trouble causing so much stress that the strain damaged the marriage.  But more often the issue is how money is spent.  Sometimes a spouse is unwilling to give up, or at least cut back on, an expensive hobby or expensive tastes for the sake of the marriage.  When spouses are unable to put the needs of the relationship or partner ahead of their own, that makes a long marriage very unlikely.

Jesus speaks in much the same way.  Money and things are a huge barrier to walking with him. No doubt many of you have heard that Jesus speaks more on the problem of money and possessions than he does any other topic.  But we Christians have had a very long time to massage Jesus’ words, to domesticate them and cage them in a religion that often seems to be more about morality and right beliefs than it is about what Jesus actually said. 

But the Bible tells us that before Jesus’ followers were ever called Christians, they were known as people of The Way.  In other words, their identity was shaped more by the manner in which they lived than by the set of beliefs they proclaimed.

Many of us in the Church desperately need to rediscover this.  We need to return to the roots of the faith, to reengage in The Way Jesus shows us, a life shaped and ordered by loving God and loving neighbor, a life than is drawn deeper and deeper into the life of God, a life that transforms all our other relationships and loyalties.

I was in my mid-thirties when I had the first stirrings of what might be termed a mature faith.  And only in the last few years have I begun to discover a deepening relationship with God that can, for brief moments, dwell in the embrace of divine love.  And all along the way, the need for my love of Jesus, my love of God to supersede other loves has been a challenge.  When I went to seminary at age 35, I had a career.  Shawn and I had a house payment and two little girls.  Questions about ultimate loyalties, about loving Jesus more and loving others less were not abstract theological questions.

As with all relationships, I still have to work at this.  Sometimes when I am wrestling with what God is calling me to do, I realize that my pleas to God for guidance, for direction, contain an unspoken “as long as it doesn’t cost me anything, as it includes a good salary and a nice location.”  Sometimes my own comfortable, familiar life and routines make it difficult to risk falling too in love with Jesus.

What about your walk with Jesus, your life in God?  Where does it fit in the various loves and loyalties of your life?  Does it look anything like what Jesus asks?  The love and loyalty Jesus demands is no petty jealousy.  It is nothing less than the desire that each of us discover the joy of the deepest, most wonderful love we have ever known.  Jesus is speaking the language of a lover, and so our own experiences of love may help us here.

When you give of your time doing what you think Jesus wants you to do, when you put your money in the offering plate, what lies behind that?  Are these obligations like community service hours now required by most high schools?  Are they your share of making sure we keep the lights turned on and salaries paid here at the church?  Or are they the joyful experience of one lover giving something precious to the other?

If you’ve ever fallen deeply and passionately in love, you already have a pretty good sense of what Jesus is talking about when he speaks of loving everything else less.  But if you’ve never experienced falling in love with Jesus, I don’t know that someone can preach you into that, anymore than they could preach you into falling in love with anyone.  It will help if you spend time each day reading and reflecting on Scripture.  It will help if you spend time in places where Jesus can be found, among the needy, the sick, those needing comfort, acceptance, hope, or a kind word.  It will help if you begin to shape your life to be more like his.  But in the end, it will only happen when you open yourself, risk yourself, to the passionate love Jesus already has for you.

Spiritual Hiccups - What to Do?

When you look at all the problems in the world, war, hunger, poverty, and more; when you observe the bigotry, partisanship, and hatred that seems so pervasive, a natural question to ask is, "How did things ever get this way?"  I suppose that's the sort of question asked by Jesus' disciples when they met a blind man.  "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that  he was born blind?"

Knowing how things got the way they are can sometimes be very helpful in figuring out solutions.  But often questions about cause are mostly about laying blame.  Knowing whose sin resulted in someone's blindness does nothing to help the situation.  Sometimes it may even have the opposite effect.  If it is someone else's fault, it isn't my problem.

Why things are the way they are is an intriguing question that may be worth our time, but Jesus doesn't waste his time on it in our gospel reading.  He dismisses his disciples' question by saying that the blind man is an opportunity for God's work to be revealed.  I have my doubts that Jesus meant God caused this man's blindness just so Jesus could heal him.  Rather I think that Jesus is so focused on the caring, loving, healing, transforming work of God that every such encounter is a moment of revelation, a moment when God's hopes and dreams for humanity can be demonstrated.

In the Western world, with our deep roots reaching back into Greek philosophy, we can sometimes become paralyzed by questions of why.  We become so engaged in seeking to understand that we forget to act.  I'm not trying to sound or be anti-intellectual.  Faith seeks understanding, after all.  But faith begins with a step, a movement along the path Jesus blazed.

Most of us aren't able to restore a blind person's sight, but most of us encounter situations every day that are at odds with God's hopes.  We see people in need.  We see people who are ostracized.  We see people who are lonely.  We see people who are hurting.  The list goes on and on.  And every one of those encounters is an opportunity for us to be agents of revelation, for us to demonstrate God's dreams for the world.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Leave Us Alone, God

I've mentioned before that that those who use the phrase "the patience of Job" must never have read very far into the biblical book of Job. Job's patience quickly wears thin as he struggles to understand his suffering.  His "friends" insist he must have done something to deserve his fate, but Job knows this is not true.  And so in today's verses, he laments the fact that God pays attention to humans.  He says life would be better if God would "look away from them, and desist, that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days."

What an interesting notion.  Religious people are often trying to figure out how to get closer to God, how to improve the lines of communication, but Job wishes God would just go away and leave us alone.  It seems to me that this is a popular option for many today.  At least a lot of people seem content to live as though God had nothing to do with their lives.  Not that many folks opt for outright atheism, but a lot are happy to assume that what Job wishes for is actually the case.

I won't claim to know why this is so.  I don't think it's because the hand of God has weighed so heavily on them that, like Job, that wish it would go away.  But I do wonder if the God they have met via some Christians and some congregations doesn't make a distant God seem preferable. 

We church folks often look at our more secular neighbors and wonder, "What's wrong with them?"  Sometimes I think we'd do better to ask, "What picture of God have we presented that makes them so determined to stay away?" 

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Spiritual Hiccups - Assumptions

Why is it that so many "good, religious folks" who encountered Jesus dismissed him?  How is it that people who were trying to be faithful to God, saw Jesus as a threat to that faith?  These are hardly academic questions, and their answers say something about what might cause us to miss God at work in our midst.

How do we know when our religiosity (my spell check says that's a real word) draws us closer to God and when it actually pushes God away.  If we assume that this simply can't happen, then I suspect we find ourselves in precisely the same place as those Pharisees, priests, and other religious leaders who found Jesus so problematic.  Often we tend to minimize this problem by turning the Pharisees and  priests into dastardly villains, people of such wickedness that they are nothing like us.  But there is really nothing to support such a view beyond our desire for them to be nothing like us.

The fact is that many of Jesus' opponents objected to him not because they were terrible people, not because they set out to be enemies of God, but because Jesus acted so counter to their assumptions of what it meant to be good, religious folks.  If we try to view Pharisees as the good, church-going, upstanding citizens of their day, who winced at the immoral behavior of those who never darkened the door of a synagogue, who thought their society would be a lot better off if people were more serious about keeping the commandments, who worried about a culture that was becoming less attuned to the faith because of the enticements of Greco-Roman hedonism, we may see that they are not so different from some of us.  Which brings me back to the question of how such folks missed God at work in Jesus.

What are your religious assumptions about what it means to be Christian, about how we encounter God, about what God is up to in the world and how we connect to that?  And if Jesus showed up, would he fit those assumptions?  Would the Jesus who hung out with outcasts and riff-raff, who saved his harshest words for good religious folks, who never let a religious rule get in the way of helping someone, would he not offend good church folks like us?

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Sunday Sermon video - Eyes To See

Spiritual Hiccups - Right Beliefs

I enjoyed a delicious dinner last night at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center as part of their Ramadan Iftar.  A large crowd of non-Muslims joined Muslims as they broke their Ramadan fast at sundown.  My dinner table included a couple of fellow Presbyterians, one Jew, a couple of young Muslim men, and a non-Muslim friend of theirs.  I ended up in a long and very enjoyable conversation with Omar, the OSU sophomore seated next to me.  We agreed that I would read the Qur'an and he would read the Bible and we would help each other understand what we read.  Both of us lead pretty hectic lives.  It will take some effort on both our parts to honor that agreement.  Pray for us.

In the course of our discussion, I found myself thinking about the way people of faith sometimes encounter one another.  Even when both are committed to interfaith dialogue, we come with our own truth claims, and for Muslims, Jews, and Christians, those claims are rooted in a text.  Dialogue can often break down over claims about the truth of my text versus your text. 

I suppose that is unavoidable to some extent, but I also wonder about the degree to which this emerges from a modern, Western mindset.  Enlightenment, rational thinking often seeks a right answer.  Empirical data support or undermine different possible answers, leading to the conclusion that this answer is right and that answer is wrong.

This sort of thinking works very well for some sorts of questions, such as whether or not this medicine will help people with a certain disease, but I increasingly doubt its effectiveness in handling matters of faith.

As a pastor, I do my share of weddings, and when I meet with couples for "premarital counseling" (I hate the term but don't know what else to call it) I usually ask them to tell me about why they want to get married.  Their answers used to surprise me, but after 15 years I've come to expect it.  Almost never do couples tell me about deep feelings, about things they can't quite name, about a knowledge that isn't really in their head.  Instead they talk about the traits they admire in the other.  "He's kind and loyal, always there for me."  "She's friendly and just listens when I need to vent."  I'm sure that's all true, but for the life of me sometimes it sounds like they're describing their dog.

Sometimes it seems that we've taken sacred texts that are meant to touch and transform the heart and treated them like empirical data.  And when that happens we end up talking about something that is beyond beauty, that is beyond simple knowing by the intellect, as though we were describing the most mundane sort of thing.  On top of that, interfaith discussion can become little more than a conversation about our different sets of empirical data.

I have some hope that we are moving beyond the Enlightenment, beyond modernity, into an age when we may learn to view "truth" as something more complex than right beliefs, as something that embraces paradox and even contradictions.  Maybe Omar and I can work on that.

What sort of truth do you find in Scripture?

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Sunday Sermon - Eyes to See

Eyes to See - August 29 sermon.mp3

Text of Sunday Sermon - Eyes to See

Luke 14:1, 7-14 (Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16)

Eyes to See

James Sledge                         --                      August 29, 2010

I was at a church conference a couple of weeks ago that attracted quite a few pastors under the age of 40.  In the course of the conference we had a very interesting intergenerational discussion that grew out of frustration some of these younger pastors felt with us older pastors. 

Now I don’t much enjoy thinking of myself as older, but the fact is I was born in the late 1950s.  I’m old enough to be a father of some of those younger pastors.  But I’m also a Baby Boomer, and we Boomers are a rather narcissistic lot.  We think the world revolves around us, and one of our conceits is insisting that we’re not getting old.  A Boomer coined the phrase, “50 is the new 30,” a phrase those younger pastors find particularly irksome.

I learned this in that intergenerational discussion.  The discussion happened because a conference leader wondered why so many younger pastors had stayed outside during a previous open discussion.  Seems many felt discounted and found it difficult to get a word in.  They felt that older pastors pushed them aside and monopolized discussion.  And so a discussion was held where we older folks had to just sit there and listen for the first hour.  
And we behaved, remaining silent, a task eased somewhat by a keg of beer.  We listened as they spoke of what they saw happening in the church, of their dreams and frustrations.

Now I suppose it is true that every new generation feels put upon by their elders, but I think that the self absorbed tendencies of Baby Boomers may have taken this to new levels.  In our narcissistic insistence that we are the center, that we are still young, we younger pastors scarcely see these younger pastors.  If we are still young, what are they, still children, still waiting for us to admit they have grown up and have much to offer the church?

Now I hope I’m not over generalizing about entire generations based on the discussions of a group of pastors, but I do know that when we are focused on ourselves, we don’t see others very well.  Focus on self hinders our vision.  And I think that is why Jesus pairs two seemingly independent sayings about banquets, one on humility and one on hospitality.

Jesus came from a culture that was big on hospitality.  In the ancient Middle East, in a time before hotel chains and restaurants, travelers were often dependent on the hospitality of strangers.  The Old Testament, the only Scripture Jesus knew, was filled with commands to welcome and care for the stranger, the alien, the traveler.  But Jesus took hospitality to a whole new level.

There seemed to be no boundary Jesus would not cross to show love, care, and concern.  Lepers, beggars, the poor, outcasts, the unclean, foreigners, and those who were considered too sinful to be part of the community, Jesus reached out to them all.  And I think it was because he saw them all, really saw them, met their eyes so that he could not miss the pain, the suffering, the rejection, the hurt in those eyes.  And when he saw them that way, he could not help but give himself to them.

And I think that is where Jesus’ parable on humility comes in.  When Jesus shares his advice about sitting in the lowest place and being honored when you’re moved up, this is not simply a piece of advice for parties.  Our reading says explicitly that it is a parable, a story with meaning larger than the simple elements it contains.  And so going to the end of the line, the bottom rung, the last place, must be a metaphor that speaks of far more than how to get noticed at parties.

I have long been convinced that Jesus was the most fully human person who ever lived.  He was so fully alive because he knew total communion with God, and he was fully present to others.  There was a radical humility about Jesus.  Everyone he met was important, someone he wanted to be with.  Jesus was never looking to move up the social ladder.  He was never trying to figure out who he could ignore because they were unimportant and didn’t matter.  Jesus was perfectly happy to sit at the last table at the banquet even if the host never saw him there and invited him to move up. 

And this radical humility of Jesus is what lay behind his radical hospitality.  Because everyone he met was important to him, he saw them deeply.  For Jesus, no one was ever a faceless “them.”  They were all fellow human beings who needed his help.  Sometimes they needed healing; sometimes they needed correction, but no one was faceless and invisible to him.  And when we squirm hearing Jesus tell us to invite the poor, the lame, and the blind to our dinner parties, in part it is because we realize that many of those folks are indeed invisible to us, a faceless “them.”

No doubt most of you are aware of the furor surrounding plans to build an Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero in NYC.  I hesitate to wander into this minefield, but I think it has something to teach us about humility and hospitality.  Beyond the misinformation about a mosque at Ground Zero when it is a community center open to the general public containing a mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero, I understand the emotions behind this issue.  I understand that reasonable people can disagree about how close is too close for a big new development. But listening to conversations on the issue, one thing has become clear to me.  Many of us view Muslims as a nameless, faceless “them.”  We don’t look into individual eyes and see hurts, pains, hopes, dreams and want to reach out.  We just see a “them.”

That’s not what Jesus called us to do and be.  When Muslims as a group are made outcasts and demonized, then they are precisely the people Jesus calls us to reach out to.  For Jesus, every human being deserves to encounter God’s love.  For Jesus, even his enemy deserves God’s love.  And as the body of Christ, we are called to show that love.  But we can’t love the world in general.  We embody Christ’s love by seeing others as he saw them, by reaching out to them as he did.

In a few moments we will celebrate an infant baptism.  It will be a wonderful, joyous moment.  But it will also be a small, first step in doing what Jesus called us to do, helping people become his disciples by teaching all that he commanded.  And so we must be a school of love, a school of radical humility and hospitality, a school that teaches the way of Jesus. 

So here’s your homework, I want you to pay attention to the people around you, on the sidewalk, at the store, beside you at the traffic light, at work, in the school cafeteria.  I especially want you to notice those who are others, who are different, who you might label “them.”  Perhaps it’s the unpopular kid at school who others tease, the person of different ethnic background or social status, the person who is a lot older or younger, the person whose eyes you normally try to avoid.  I want you to look into their eyes and see the joy and the pain, the hopes and the rejections, the dreams and the wounds.  See the fellow children of God who just may need you to reach out if they are to experience some real, tangible sign of God’s love.

I know this is a difficult homework assignment for a lot of us.  But it’s actually a beginner’s lesson, not nearly so difficult as inviting “them” home for a meal as Jesus instructs us.  But if even this beginner lesson seems a challenge, don’t despair.  This school of love goes on for a lifetime. And were all here, and the Spirit is here, to help one another in our lessons.

Thanks be to God.

Spiritual Hiccups - The Authority of Scripture

Our local paper, The Columbus Dispatch, has an article this morning on the split occurring in the Lutheran Church as more conservative congregations break off from the ELCA to form a new denomination.  Such a story is hardly surprising.  We Presbyterians have our own, similar movements.  But just once when I read about such things, I would like to hear someone say, "We disagree over the meaning of Scripture, and so it seems best to stop fighting over that and form separate groups."  But instead the quotes normally read like the one in today's article.  Explaining that the split was over bigger issues that gay/lesbian ordination, a spokesperson for the new NALC said, "Also at play is a misunderstanding of what authority - Scripture or 'the mood of the times' - should guide the church."

In today's reading from Acts, we are in the middle of the account explaining how Peter comes to understand that distinctions of clean and unclean do not matter for those following Christ.  While many current Christians are unaware of it, welcoming Gentiles into what was a Jewish faith community caused serious divisions in the early Christian movement.  Jewish Christians continued to follow Torah, and saw no reason for Gentile converts to do otherwise.  Those who would become part of the Jesus movement would need to become Jews, with males being circumcised, women undergoing a ritual cleansing, and both observing the dietary laws.

But the Apostle Paul saw things differently.  He championed the view that emerges in the Acts story about Cornelius.  Those Gentiles who accepted Jesus' gospel were to be baptized and welcomed into the faith as Gentiles.  The old distinctions were gone.  Problem was, the Jewish Christians claimed to have Scripture (which at that time meant what we call the Old Testament) on their side.  The division in the early Church was severe, and many believe that Jewish Christians orchestrated the arrest and eventual execution of Paul.  And I have little doubt that these Jewish Christians were certain that they were following the authority of Scripture, unlike this crazy Paul who was coming up with all these wild innovations that threatened their deeply held faith.  In other words, they followed the plain truth of Scripture while Paul perverted it.

Interestingly, similar arguments were used 150 years ago in defense of slavery.  Many theologians and church people, both north and south, were convinced that slavery was sanctioned and supported by the Bible.  Thomas Cobb, one of the founders of the University of Georgia Law School wrote in large letters on his home when SC seceded from the Union, "Resistance To Abolition Is Obedience to God." 

In the novel Nellie Norton: or, Southern Slavery and the Bible, (written by a Protestant clergyman and published in 1864) the title character is a young, naive New England girl who believes slavery to be a cruel abomination.  But on a visit to Savannah with her mother, through encounters with slaves and discussions with Southerners, she comes to realize how wrong she has been.  After all, as the pro-slavery people she meet point out, "The Bible is a pro-slavery Bible and God is a pro-slavery God."  Also, "The North must give up the Bible and religion or adopt our views of slavery."

And there it is, the same tired argument.  Those who disagree with me have thrown out the Bible.  To borrow from the Lutheran bishop quoted in my local paper, they have traded the authority of Scripture for the "mood of the times."

Sometimes I think it no small miracle that the Christian faith survives and thrives.  How many times have people of deep faith been found to be standing squarely in opposition to God?  And apparently they have had good company all the way back to the very first generation of Jesus followers.

Sometimes I wonder if we haven't gotten this Bible thing completely wrong.  Rather than trying the follow the Bible, maybe we would be better served if we simply tried to catch a glimpse of the God hinted at by all the various stories, rules, songs, and accounts.  Maybe we would be much better off if we quit trying to find support for our views, and simply tried to get to know Jesus a little better.  Maybe if we spent more of our time trying to know Jesus more deeply, trying to draw nearer to him, we'd all be a lot less sure that we know exactly what he'd say about every hot button issue of the day.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Room for Faith

By nature I tend to be something of a control freak.  This is often a real liability as a pastor, stifling the efforts of other leaders in the church.  And it also poses a deeper, spiritual problem.  It gets in the way of true faith.  Faith is about trusting something outside myself, trusting God.  By definition that means giving up control.  Richard Rohr's daily meditations this week focus on the theme of paradox, and today's piece spoke to this problem of giving up control.

So when we speak of paradox, I’m trying to open up that space where you can “fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31), because YOU are not in control.  That is always the space of powerlessness, vulnerability, and letting go.  Faith happens in that wonderful place, and hardly ever when we have all the power and can hold no paradoxes.  Thus you see why faith will invariably be a minority and suspect position.  (Click here to read the entire meditation.)

 As I think about my own difficulty giving up control, I wonder about Rohr's comment on faith always being "a minority and suspect position."  Indeed our culture mitigates powerfully against faith as an absolute trust in God.  Many speak of America as a Christian nation, but we trust our security not to the LORD who "builds up Jerusalem" (see today's Psalm) but to a massive military complex.  In faith the psalmist can sing, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea."  (Psalm 46)  Yet fear drives much of American life.  We fear terrorists, those who are different from us, those who disagree with us, etc.

If letting go and discovering faith is indeed a minority position, then perhaps the most faithful thing those who would embrace faith can do is to make a powerful minority witness.  I say I am, or at least strive to be, a person of faith.  And so I will strive to be a person who is not afraid, who discovers joy in turning over my fears to God, and who learns to live without needing to control.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Yet More Holy Conversations

I while back I wrote for several days running about Scripture engaging us in holy conversation rather than being a set of absolute rules and edicts.  Today's reading from Job draws me back to these thoughts. 

One of the problems with treating the Bible as some sort of divine reference set is that it requires very selective reading of the Bible to maintain such a view.  There are many devout Christians who, when they undergo great pain and suffering, wonder what they have done to deserve it.  They presume that their struggles are related to being out of favor with God.  Such a notion will find plenty of support in the Bible.  The book of Deuteronomy is littered with the phrase "so that it may go well with you," this going well always a byproduct of keeping God's commandments.  But to Deuteronomy's theological certainty that God's blessing and curse springs directly from how one keeps the Law, Job raises its voice to say, "Now wait just a minute!" 

Job is good and righteous.  Even God says so.  Yet Job is visited with all sorts of horrible pain and suffering.  And contrary to quaint sayings about the patience of Job, the Job found in the book bearing his name rues the day he was born, shakes his fist at God and demands an explanation for how it is he can suffer so despite being a righteous man.

The book of Job stands as a kind of protest, a minority report if you will, over and against the more accepted theology behind Deuteronomy.  And unless we are willing to say that one book is right and the other wrong, then it seems to me that we should say that Scripture itself is engaged in a conversation about the nature and shape of faithful life, a conversation in which we are called to become partners.

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