Sunday, January 22, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - Banned in the Bible
In Hebrew poetry, ideas are rhymed rather than words, and so in the Psalms you see verses that describe pairs, parallelisms. And so the 23rd Psalm ends, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long."
In this morning's psalm, the final pair links lending money at interest with taking bribes against the innocent. Bankers have certainly taken a big public relations hit in recent years, but I don't think many of us associate making loans with bribery. We may distrust big banks, but many of us know local bankers we consider pillars of the community. But our psalm says those who lend money at interest may not enter God's presence, and it pairs them with those who take bribes to pervert justice.
If I were to employ Scripture the way people so often do, I would need to start a campaign to stamp out lending as we know it. Perhaps I and any followers I could garner would make signs and protest outside of banks the way people protest against same-sex marriage. After all, my group would be able to quote the Bible in the same fashion.
The fact is that Christians were generally forbidden to engage in banking for the first 1500 years of the faith. (Jewish stereotypes related to finance and banking grew, in part, out of their doing this "despised" work that Christians could not.) But 500 years ago, John Calvin argue persuasively for lending money at interest despite a biblical prohibition. In a creative, innovative move that many may have trouble associating with their image of Calvin, he argued that borrowed money used to build factories that employed people and improved their lives was in keeping with the intent of the prohibition on lending. That prohibition, he said, was there to protect the poor from being trapped by debt. But if lending actually ended up helping the poor, then it produced the good that the ban on lending intended.
Just as an aside, it should be clear that lending which did trap people in poverty, or which did not seem to produce the sort of "good" the ban on lending intended, would not fit within Calvin's exception to the biblical ban. But of course, once Calvin opened the door to lending, people soon forgot that it was an exception that had conditions. And then they, and we, forgot that the Bible banned the practice in the first place.
All this is a long way of getting at how often we use the Bible to get the results we wish. We find those verses that give ammunition to our causes, often employing them in a context totally different from the one is Scripture. Much more rarely, if at all, do we read the Bible as a whole, listening to its overall witness. That was what Calvin was trying to do when who came up with his exception to the ban on lending, but he was also influenced by the growing business need for capital in Geneva at that time.
I think that every Christian occasionally needs to assess his or her relationship with the Bible. Is it a witness that points us to Jesus, revealing to us things we could never know otherwise? Or do we simply believe what we believe - wherever that may have come from - and then cling to those Bible passages that fit with what we already hold dear?
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - Unequal Partners
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
As the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
until he has mercy upon us.
Psalm 123:1-2
I was in an interesting discussion the other day about how Presbyterians are related to Scripture and to our tradition's faith statements. I said something about entering into a conversation with both the Bible and our Book of Confessions, and spoke of being enriched by the give and take of this conversation. But someone wondered about this image of a conversation with Scripture and tradition. If I am a conversation partner, do my opinions carry the same weight as Scripture and tradition? Do they speak to me with any "authority?"
That thought had not occurred to me. In fact, I presumed that this "conversation" was not one among equals. It is more like a student in conversation with a learned professor or novice speaking with a master craftsman. It is akin to the relationship in today's psalm of servant to master.
But the person who wondered about my "conversation" imagery had good reason for concern. It is quite typical for us to come to denominational teachings, and even to the Bible, as equals in the ensuing conversation. We will listen, but we will also measure what we hear with what we think, and then we will dismiss what we don't agree with or do not like. We all do this to some extent, cherry picking from the Bible - putting those passages we like in one basket and those passages we don't in another. And then we store that second basked somewhere we seldom go.
But if God agrees with all my political stances and all my plans, that seems to me an almost certain indication that this is not God at all. The God I meet in Jesus loves me where he finds me and embraces me even when others will not. But he always calls me from that place to somewhere new. And he calls me to become something new and different and more like him. And while Jesus is happy to engage me in conversation over this, I do not think that conversation ever ends with Jesus saying, "You know, you're right. Worry about yourself and let everyone else worry about themselves. I did come so that you would be successful and happy, and if you accomplish that, I don't really care about any of that other stuff."
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Sunday, January 15, 2012
Sunday sermon - When God Speaks
1 Samuel 3:1-10
When God Speaks
James Sledge January 15, 2012
I’ve read this passage from First Samuel many times, and I think that every time I do, I’m struck by the line that says, The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. The biblical writer could easily have left this line out. It doesn’t really advance the story at all. If it wasn’t there we would still have heard a story about the young Samuel hearing God calling but not realizing that it was God. It’s almost a throw-away line, and yet there it is, and it never fails to grab my attention.
As a child I thought it would have been great to live in biblical times when God was showing up all the time, talking to people, giving them visions. It must have been exciting to live when God actually appeared in burning bushes and carved commandments onto stone tablets. Not like today when God can seem awfully quiet.
But our Scripture reading for this morning sounds a lot like today. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. There it is, straight from the Bible. God could be awfully quiet back then, too.
God was quiet, and visions were rare. I sometimes wonder if I would get the message if God sent me a vision. I’m one of those people who almost never remember their dreams. I’ve read that whether I remember them or not, I do dream. But most of the time, you couldn’t prove it by anything I recall. Which makes me wonder; if visions are like dreams and God appeared to me in a vision, would I remember it?
Of course it isn’t as though God hasn’t spoken or given visions in my lifetime. Many of us recall a prophet who heard God’s voice and shared the word of the Lord with us. I was only six years old when he spoke some of his most famous words. I think I may have heard them on the news, but I’ve seen the speech so many times since that I can’t really trust my memory.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet if there ever was one, and God had called him and given him a vision to share. Maybe it was because he was a prophet that he used the phrase, “I have a dream” over and over in that speech. That part of the speech is pretty far in, near the end. And if you lived in the South when Dr. King shared this vision, you know well that it was only a vision, a dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I know that there are some who may not have thought of Dr. King as a prophet. Strangely enough, it doesn’t occur even to some who admire him. You’re probably aware that a memorial to Dr. King opened last August in Washington, DC, located on the Tidal Basin between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. Before the dedication ceremony was cancelled because of the approach of Hurricane Irene, it was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, August 28th. I understand the desire to hold the dedication on the 48th anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, but the 11:00 a.m. times makes me wonder how many of the planners remembered that King heard God’s call as a church pastor. Perhaps they’d forgotten the last line of the dream, which is a quote from another prophet, Isaiah.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
But just how was it that the prophet Martin heard the word of the Lord that called him into a struggle that would eventually get him killed? How did he glimpse the vision that he shared in his I Have a Dream speech? Perhaps he was better at remembering his dreams than I am, but how did he know which dream was from God? How did he recognize God’s voice, especially considering how that voice called him to a task that would put his life in danger?
Samuel doesn’t recognize God’s voice in our reading today. Our story depicts God repeatedly speaking to Samuel, but Sam didn’t know what God sounded like. And so he assumed it was someone else, Eli. Eli apparently did know what God sounded like, but even Eli took a while to figure out what was going on. Who knows how the story might have turned out if Eli hadn’t been familiar with God. What if Eli had just gotten upset and screamed, “Go to sleep and quit bothering me!”?
Have you ever heard God speaking to you? Has God given you a vision, a dream that you are supposed to share with the world? Most people I’ve asked such questions tell me, “No.” Many of them think, like I did as a child, that the God who was forever speaking to biblical folks doesn’t really operate that way any longer. We simply assume that God isn’t speaking now. We think of biblical times as being different, like fairy tale times. We imagine Bible stories opening with “Once upon a time when God was a lot more active.” And we assume that the word of the Lord is rare, even nonexistent, to us.
But then here comes Samuel, who lived in those “Once upon a time” days, and yet the word of the Lord was rare then, too. And he would not have recognized it at all had someone not told him how to do that. And then there is Martin Luther King, Jr. In a day when many assume God no longer speaks, he heard the Lord and saw a vision.
I’m thinking that Samuel and Dr. King shared something in common. Both of them had mentors who instructed them in how to hear the voice of God, how to be attuned to divine dreams. Samuel had Eli. Dr. King had many mentors, some whom we’ll never know. There were Sunday School teachers, his parents, and wise elders in the church where he grew up. These folks had tutored him in deep practices of prayer, time spent with God, time listening for God. And of course there was Scripture itself. Dr. King grew up listening to God in Scripture and was so deeply immersed in the Bible that the voice of God must have sounded almost familiar when it called him to be a prophet.
Who taught you to listen for God’s voice? Did you recognize God’s voice when you first heard it? Who taught you how a vision from God would look and feel? And if you’ve not heard God, do you think that voice will sound familiar when God calls you? God is still speaking, you know.
There is a quote I share so often that many are likely sick of hearing it. I can never recall who said it. It may have been Ed White or Roy Oswald from the Alban Institute. One of them was talking about the difficulties facing Mainline congregations such as us Presbyterians, and he said, “People come to us seeking an experience of God, and we give them information about God.” Perhaps I may paraphrase, “People come to us longing to hear God’s voice, and we give them information about God.”
Even in a culture that seems more and more secular, people do long to hear God’s voice. And who should be better at helping them than us. After all, we say that we have been joined to Christ in baptism, that whenever two or three of us are gathered, Christ is here with us, and that each of us is given gifts from the Holy Spirit so that together, we become the living body of Christ. Surely we should be able to help those who long to hear God. And if not, then perhaps we need to be helping each other hone our own listening skills.
“Jeremy, Pat, Stephanie, Becky, Mary Ann, Bob, Adam, Carol, James…” Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - Long Live the King!
Actually the Old Testaments contains many texts where God is enthroned. There are ancient echoes here of a time when people thought of Yahweh as one of many divine beings, and within this divine council, Yahweh had been chosen as the ruler, the head of the gods. "The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice."
We're not accustomed to kings in America, but we have some idea how they work. British monarchs don't have very much real power, but there was time when that power was nearly absolute. But such kings could die or be overthrown. Some were better than others. "Long live the king" carries with it some hope that this king will be a good one. It also a voice of support for a new king and thus recognizes there were or may yet be other options.
"The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice." Long live the king. Be glad because this is a good one. We could have gotten a different one. But are there really other options?
My Presbyterian heritage (along with others in the Reformed/Calvinist family) like to speak of God's sovereignty. The idea of predestination, a concept often distorted or misunderstood, grows out of this notion of sovereignty. God is in charge. God's purposes shall be worked out. What God desires shall be. But for all our claims of divine sovereignty, we often live as though there were other options, other candidates for ruler.
As a pastor, I am often tempted to think that my successes are simply a matter of my prowess or my hard work. I make calculations about what to try or not try based on the same sort of measures any organization use, without much reference to any authority or power on God's part. Successful congregations have good leaders and less successful ones less capable leaders. Congregations often see what they can or can't do as a simple function of the resources brought by the members. They can do what their energy, funds, and talents will allow. We may talk about a king, but often that king has no real power, no authority to say to us, "Do this."
Those ordained in the Presbyterian Church take vows in which we proclaim Jesus Christ "Lord of all and Head of the Church." In other words, he is our ruler, our king. But of course our congregations are often better reflections of what we want than what Jesus wants.
"Rejoice, the Lord is King!" But there are indeed other options.
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Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - That's Gonna Leave a Mark
But the mark of Cain comes in for even worse misunderstanding. (It's worth noting that the issue that leads to the mark seems preposterous at face value. Cain is worried that, as a wandering fugitive, he will be killed, but this seems a foolish concern. To date there are only four humans in all of God's creation, and one of those now lies dead.) The mark of Cain is often understood to be a mark of shame, a visible sign of the curse God places on him. Yet God says quite clearly that the mark is to protect Cain from reprisals by those he may meet.
The rather remarkable thing about all this is that despite the heinous murder Cain has committed, despite God's insistence that Cain will suffer for his guilt, Yahweh is still concerned for Cain, and takes steps to insure his safety. Despite Cain's role in Creation's continuing downward spiral, God is still committed to him.
People sometimes speak of the "wrathful God of the Old Testament," and there are verses that might seem to support such a view. But there are likewise many passages where God's nature as both a God of judgment and a God of graces, mercy, and steadfast love is clearly visible. Religious folks often want to resolve this apparent paradox and opt for either a God of judgment or a God of grace. We struggle to hold to two in tension. Indeed, in the biblical stories, God at times seems to struggle with this tension. (Check out Hosea 11:1-11 for one such example.)
This tension is within today's reading, and I see the gospel enacted in the story of Cain and Abel. We humans seek to go our own way, to make our own way. We grasp for what we want, often with no concern about who gets hurt by our grasping. In so doing we reap a world filled with animosities and hostilities. There are consequences to us, and to all of Creation for our arrogance and hubris. But God will not abandon us to our own devices. God still reaches out to claim us. As Christians we say that we are sealed, marked in our baptisms. People don't usually associate the sign and seal of baptism with the mark of Cain... But I wonder.
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Monday, January 9, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - The Truth of the Bible
My Presbyterian tradition speaks of the Bible as a "unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ," but in our modern notion of truth, the validity of a witness is based on whether or not she gets her facts straight. And so some who want to "preserve" the truth of the Bible insist that it is factually, historically, and scientifically correct. But in what strikes me as a very strange twist, these protectors of Scripture (who often view science as the enemy of religion) have adopted science's definition of truth.
Of course the problem with preserving the truth of the Bible in such a manner is that it creates insurmountable hurdles for anyone who pays much attention to what the Bible actually says. Today's Genesis reading is a good case in point. If we are to apply modern, scientific notions of truth to today's reading, we immediately must deal with God creating in quite a different order from what we read in chapter one of Genesis. On top of that, we must take as historical, scientific fact that God created earthworms, blue jays, and alligators, thinking they might make a suitable partner for the man.
We Presbyterians have tended to be less threatened by science than some other Christian groups, and we have tended to steer clear of the obvious problems with biblical literalism. But we too have found ourselves captive to a modern, scientific worldview. And so at times we have used all the scholarly tools at our disposal to get to the truth behind the text. We have searched for the "historical Jesus" and tried to understand the historical forces that caused biblical writers to say what they did. But in the process, we sometimes acted as though the truth could not be found in the text itself.
Fortunately, much of biblical scholarship has recognized this and turned more of its focus back to the text itself. Yet among rank and file Christians, I worry that there is a difficulty speaking of the "truth" of the Bible in other than modern, scientific, historical terms.
I would never argue that the Bible is "fiction," but I do think we could learn something from great works of fiction that speak the "truth" to us. Indeed art can sometimes speak to us at a much deeper level. No one reads an encyclopedia in order to be touched or moved deeply. No encyclopedia will every launch a movement. And any good painter knows that his purpose is not to create something that looks exactly like a photograph. A great painting shows you something that you likely would not have seen had you looked at the painter's subject. It reveals a deeper truth, a truth that has a spiritual dimension to it.
If one amassed all the world's knowledge, she could still be far from the truth. Strange that religious people would not know this well. I sometimes wonder if the fascination with spirituality in our day isn't a longing for a deeper truth than can be found in either a literalist fundamentalism or a progressive, scholarly attempt to explain what the Bible means. Perhaps it is a longing for a truth that cannot be known from any amount of correct information.
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Sunday, January 8, 2012
Sermon - Ketchup on Black-Eyed Peas
Mark 1:4-11
Ketchup on Black-Eyed Peas
James Sledge January 8, 2012 – Baptism of the Lord
I grew up putting ketchup on my black-eyed peas. In my home as a child, if we were having black-eyed peas, a bottle of ketchup went on the table. I naturally assumed that most other people did the same. Ketchup on black-eyed peas was just like ketchup on French fries. If you could have gotten black-eyed peas at McDonalds, they would have asked, “Do you want ketchup with that?”
But when I got married, I discovered that this wasn’t the case. My wife Shawn considered the practice downright odd. She sometimes makes fun of me for it. I’ve occasionally tried to explain to her what she’s missing, but to no avail. In fact, I’ve even grow a bit self-conscious about it. I still use ketchup in my own home, but I’m less likely to do so at a restaurant or a church dinner.
Sometimes our Christian faith is a bit like putting ketchup on black-eyed peas. Not so many decades ago it was possible to be unaware of this. We thought most everyone was Christian, that the culture was Christian, that everyone put ketchup on their black-eyed peas. But such an assumption is becoming more and more difficult to maintain. Some of us have even started to realize that there are some strange, odd elements to our Christian story that we had not noticed before.
Today’s story of Jesus being baptized may be one of those oddities, although the oddity here is not just the story itself but also what is missing from the story.
Have you ever wondered what Jesus did before he began his ministry? We don’t know for sure how old Jesus was at the time of today’s gospel reading. You hear 30 years old a lot, but that comes from a stray remark by some of Jesus’ opponents, so I don’t know how much stock we should put in it. Nonetheless, when Jesus begins his ministry, he’s old enough that nothing is ever mentioned about him seeming too young to be a rabbi. So perhaps 30 years old is not a bad guess.
And therein lies the oddity. Where has Jesus been for nearly 30 years? What has he been doing all that time? How is it that the Son of God can go completely unnoticed for that long?
In all of the New Testament, there is almost nothing about Jesus except as an adult thirty something. None of the letters of Paul or others show any awareness of Jesus’ youth or the circumstances of his birth. Of the four gospels, two, including Mark’s gospel that we read this morning, introduce us to a full grown Jesus with no mention of birth or childhood. Only Matthew and Luke make any mention of his birth, and Luke alone includes a single story about a 12 year old Jesus. In that story people are amazed at Jesus’ understanding, but even here, Luke insists that Jesus is still growing in wisdom. He is no all-knowing, divine figure masquerading as a human.
One thing all the gospels agree on is that the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is somehow connected to John the Baptist. Jesus, who has lived such an ordinary life that no one has taken any note of him, that not even friends and neighbors from his hometown expect him to be anything special; this Jesus shows up where John is baptizing. John is a rather odd fellow who dresses funny and eats strange food. But he seems to have touched a nerve among many people near Jerusalem. John was talking about changing your life to be ready for something big God was going to do, and people responded to his message.
So, it seems, did Jesus. For some reason, Jesus goes out with all those other people who were hoping for God to do something big. Maybe Jesus was hoping the same thing. Of course it turns out that Jesus is that big thing.
People have speculated as to Jesus’ own sense of who he was prior to his baptism. Many of us are so accustomed to thinking in Trinitarian terms, where Jesus is God, that the idea of Jesus not being fully aware of this divinity seems strange. But especially in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ baptism seems to be a key moment for him. Notice how the coming of the Holy Spirit is a private moment for Jesus rather than a demonstration for the crowds. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” These words seem spoken for Jesus’ benefit. Did the Holy Spirit descending on him awaken something in him? Did it open his eyes to who he truly was and what that was going to require of him?
When we were discussing this passage the other day in our staff meeting, Jeremy, our music director, recalled an episode from Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz. In it, a woman named Laura is having something of a spiritual crisis. She is not a Christian and doesn’t really believe in God, yet she is speaking with Miller, looking for some sort of help from him. And he encourages her to open up to God, to ask God for grace and forgiveness. But Laura finds such an idea odd, and she says:
“I can’t get there. I can’t just say it without meaning it.” She was getting very frustrated. “I can’t do it. It would be like, say, trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself that your favorite food is pancakes. You don’t decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me.”[1]
John the baptizer announces that there is one coming after him who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I baptize with water so you will get ready, he says. But the one who is coming will make God happen to you.
Has God happened to you? We Presbyterians say that if you’ve been baptized, God has happened to you. We don’t say God can’t happen to you if you haven’t been baptized, but we do insist that God happens to you in baptism. Yet many of us seem blissfully unaware of any such happening. We’ve missed it somehow, settling instead for a comfortable God of habits and assumptions, an unexamined picture of God we picked up somewhere, like me thinking everyone puts ketchup on black-eyed peas.
When Jesus is baptized, God happens to him, and he takes up his true identity as Son of God, going from anonymous unknown to someone causing so much trouble they have to execute him to shut him up.
In our baptisms, God promises to happen to us as well, to pour out the Holy Spirit on us so that we discover our true identities and our calling as daughters and sons of God. Has God happened to you?
[1] Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), p. 53.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - Invaded by Heaven
In the exams that I graded, most all the test takers struggled with this question, and I heard a similar report from other exam graders. In nearly all cases, the problem arose from understanding resurrection and eternal life to mean nothing more than going to heaven when you die. But biblically speaking, resurrection has nothing to do with souls winging their way to heaven. Resurrection was something that was supposed to happen "on the last day," as Martha says quite clearly in today's gospel. And so when Jesus says, "I AM the resurrection and the life," (The peculiar Greek grammar of Jesus' "I AM" is supposed to remind us of God's personal name.) he seems to be saying that the promise and hope and power of that last day has come into the present. Those who are "in Christ" can began to experience a new quality of life, a new life born of the Spirit, here and now.
One of the exciting things going on in Christian faith right now is a recovery of a gospel of the Kingdom, of God's coming reign, a gospel that had been supplanted by what Brian McLaren has called a "gospel of evacuation." This gospel says that if you have faith in Jesus, you will get evacuated from this earth (which is apparently beyond hope), and relocated to the paradise of heaven. But of course Jesus never says any such thing. He says the God's reign has "drawn near." And the Apostle Paul speaks of creation itself longing and groaning in labor pains for the new thing that is coming.
It seems rather odd to me that so many Christians, who know very well the creation story where on the sixth day God looks out and judges the whole shebang "very good," somehow conclude that this same creation has gotten so badly off track that it is beyond God's power to rescue and restore.
"I AM the resurrection and the life." God's power to restore, redeem, and make new has burst into the present. Heaven is not some distant evacuation zone for those who qualify. Rather heaven has invaded creation, intent on conquering it through love.
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Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - Where's Your Pride?
Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses,
but our pride is in the name of the LORD our God.
This verse struck me as a bit odd at first. Why would one be proud of God, or of God's personal name? (The "LORD" in the verse is a reverent, deferential rendering of the divine name, YHWH.) The psalm obviously draws a contrast with those things that normally produce pride: successful football teams, children who get scholarships, or, in the case of the psalm, powerful military technology. Pride is normally associated with our accomplishments or the accomplishments of those we love. In the cases of football teams and military might, we often view those as extensions of ourselves.
So how does one experience pride in God? Is it like pride in our team, being impressed because God did a great job? Perhaps I'm obsessing over a single word in a psalm, but this is in part prompted by a line from St. John of the Cross I saw quoted in one of Richard Rohr's Daily devotions. It says, "God refuses to be known; God can only be loved."
Pride most often seems to go with things we love, self, team, country, children, etc. But the psalmist's pride is not in any of these things. It is "in the name of the LORD our God." Perhaps that is because the LORD is the one the psalmist loves more than all others. So where's your greatest pride?
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Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Spiritual Hiccups - Something New
I've never done them much myself, but the new year is a time when many make resolutions, promising to change in some way and therefore become something new. The idea that we can start fresh is a compelling one and an idea at home in the Christian faith. After all, God continually reaches out to us, beckoning us to new life and relationship. But is this newness our doing or God's? New Year's resolutions are clearly about our trying harder and becoming a new and better version of ourselves, a self who is lighter and leaner, healthier, nicer to one's spouse, no longer smokes, etc. This is a newness that we do if we have the tenacity to stick to our resolutions.
I heard a Christian being interviewed on the news the other day with regards to her support of a certain presidential candidate. In explaining her position she said, "As a Christian, I believe that people can change." Certainly Christian faith speaks a lot about people changing, but where does that come from?
If you've spent much time in a church congregation beyond coming on Sunday, you likely know how good churches and church members are at figuring out what they cannot do. Be it the mission project we can't afford, the class a person knows she could never teach, or the new worship service we don't have the resources and talent to pull off, we are good at saying "No" to newness. And it seems to me that very often an implied theological statement lies hidden in our "No." It says, "Newness is dependent on us." Of course quite often we seem to prefer the old, and even when we don't, we aren't sure we have what it takes to change things.
In Isaiah 43, God speaks through the prophet to exiles in Babylon saying, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" What an interesting question for the prophet to ask? What newness of God is springing forth around us? Do we not perceive it? And if not, why?
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Sunday, December 25, 2011
Christmas Meditation: Another King?
Angels are part of our Christmas celebration, but like bows on packages, are mostly decorative. In his sermon, "Gosh, Some Angels," Walter Brueggemann says we need to take another look at angels. Perhaps this may help us rethink our understanding of Christmas. (from Luke 2:1-20)
Christmas meditation - 12-25-12.mp3
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad
As we draw close to Christmas, this morning's psalms seem jarring next to images of a babe in a manger, of shepherds, angels, and nativity scenes. Psalm 18 speaks of being in danger from enemies and crying out to God. And God responded to that cry.
Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
It is easy for some to dismiss such images of God as something archaic, a violent God of the Old Testament unlike the God of love we meet in Jesus. But I've noticed that most children who come from homes with loving parents where they feel safe and secure assume that their mother or father would whip all comers in order to protect them. And I wonder if that isn't what we see in this psalm. The childish boast that "My Dad can beat up your Dad" grows out of the sense of security children experience, and the psalmist seems to know something similar.
If one has experienced a security in the love of God, in God's parental care, it is pretty easy to think along such lines. In an ancient world inhabited by many gods, it is hardly surprising that some Old Testament passages sound a bit like, "My Dad can beat up your Dad."
Jesus does nothing to undermine the idea of God's parental-like love. Jesus repeatedly calls his followers to trust themselves to God's care. But Jesus does redefine what God's power looks like. The Apostle Paul calls this "power made perfect in weakness." And Jesus made clear what Israel (and the Church in our day) often forgot. God's parental love was not restricted to them. Indeed the call of Abraham was so that "all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
I felt very safe and secure as a child, and I probably thought my Dad could beat up some others. But to my knowledge, he never did. The safety and security of parental love is generally not experienced in such things.
As we celebrate the birth of one born to "save," we would do well not to reject an image of God as one who can and does protect and provide. The child born in a manger is not just a nice philosopher who teaches a good way to live. He is God's power unleashed for us.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Seeing the Future
There is a sense in which the father in this commercial sees the future. Nothing particularly dramatic about it, but he knows that a baby means a different life than the one he now has. And he must begin planning for that new day.
I think that biblical prophets are more like this father than they are psychics who promise to tell you your future. True, they've been given a bit deeper sense of what is coming than this dad, but they are not really predicting the future in the sense most people mean by that phrase. Rather they know God intimately enough that they know where things will end up when God acts. They know the character of God and so they know what will happen when God shakes things up.
That's what is going on in Mary's song in today's gospel. Mary's going to have a baby, and she knows that this baby will have a much bigger impact than the typical one. This baby is part of God's plans, and so she can sing her prophetic song just as surely as that father can see the need for a four-door car.
"(God) has brought down
the powerful from their thrones,
and Lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made
to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his
descendants forever."
God has; not God will, but God has. This is not so much a prediction of the future as it is a realization of what God's future looks like, a realizations that is so real for Mary that it seems already accomplished. As many have noted, prophets' sense of what God is up to is so vivid that they often get their tense wrong.
I think that people of deep faith always have a bit of this vision of the future within them. It is why they can actually love their enemies and work for a better world even when that work costs them dearly and does not show the sort of results our culture validates.
We're about the celebrate the birth of Mary's baby, as we most certainly should. But for that celebration to mean much, we also need to see a bit of the future that Mary sees.
Can you see the future? God's future?
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - A New Song?
There is certainly nothing wrong with reading the Bible for information, but that is hardly the only way to read it. In fact, Scripture often speaks powerfully when we listen in a very different mode. That happened to me today, though I can't say it was because I was being particularly attentive, doing lectio divina, or engaged in any other spiritual practice. I was rushing through the morning psalms, but nonetheless, a phrase struck me: "a new song."
I've heard and read that phrase countless times, but I'm not sure that it ever impacted me the way it did this morning. Perhaps the time of year helped, along with reading Hannah's song in the Old Testament reading. That song seems to be a model for Mary's song which follows on the heels of today's gospel reading. Those are both new songs, at least in the sense that they describe something new.
A new song. New songs are not a big part of this time of year. Even in contemporary worship services where people rarely sing any song more that 20 years old, worshipers want traditional carols at Christmas. That's fine with me. I love singing Silent Night, Joy to the World, and O Little Town of Bethlehem. But I wonder if our celebration of Christmas sometimes fails to leave much room for something new. It looks back and remembers. But does it look forward to the new thing that Jesus' birth heralds?
Amidst all the warmth and nostalgia of Christmas, I wonder if we don't need to add another tradition, a tradition of a new song. Perhaps we could write some new verses to an old favorite and add call to discipleship in our Christmas services. Regardless, what if every Christmas Eve Service included something that asked us to turn our gaze forward, to look for God's new heaven and new earth, and to join in the work of that coming reign of God? What if one of our special Christmas traditions was a renewal of hope, a hope rooted in a vision of God's future?
Sing to the LORD a new song, one like Hannah and Mary sang.
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Monday, December 19, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Remaking a Classic
But I'm not going to complain about this because I've noticed a bit of the same in the Bible. In today's gospel, Luke tells a story that looks like a lot of stories from the Old Testament. God is going to do something wonderful, and this will involve a previously "barren" woman giving birth. Sarah, Hannah, and now Elizabeth. Over and over God goes back to a tried and true story: life where it seemed there was none, hope where it had not existed, a future where one was not expected.
I take some solace from the fact that God sticks to a plot that we've seen before. Strangely though, it still seems to surprise us. We imagine that the story is all played out, that hope is gone, that this time there will be no happy ending. God has seemed too absent from our lives. The brokenness and cynicism of our world has the upper hand. The darkness has overcome the light.
And then an old, old story breaks through once more. Life in the face of barrenness. Hope where there had been none. Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
Sometimes, when we have a hard time seeing God, when we've relegated the power of God to some time after we die, it's good to remember that God keeps working from an old script. And we know how the story ends.
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Sermon text - Saying "Yes" to the Impossible
Luke 1:26-38 (47-55)
Saying “Yes” to the Impossible
James Sledge December 18, 2011 – Advent 4
There is a scene in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass where Alice is speaking with the white queen. Alice has just learned that the queen lives backwards, remembering things before they happen. In the course of this conversation Alice becomes a bit bewildered and begins to cry. During the queen’s efforts to cheer her up, she asks Alice how old she is.
“I'm seven and a half, exactly.”
“You needn't say "exactly",” the Queen remarked. “I can believe it without that. Now I'll give you something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can't believe that!” said Alice.
“Can't you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There's no use trying,” she said. “One can't believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Christians should surely know about believing impossible things. After all we speak casually of Jesus turning water into wine, and we say that he died and rose again on the third day. And of course there is that line in “The Apostle’s Creed” that says Jesus “was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.”
Even though not much is made of this virgin birth in the Bible, it became a big deal for the Church. The Roman Catholic Church expanded it, saying that Mary’s own birth was miraculous – Immaculate according to the doctrine, and that she remained a virgin her entire life, never mind that the Bible speaks of Jesus’ brothers and sisters, and one of those brothers, James, becomes leader of the fledgling Church following Pentecost.
When the Protestant Reformation came along, the Reformers insisted that we should only believe those impossible things that were actually in the Bible. And so we tossed out Mary’s perpetual virginity and Immaculate Conception, but we kept the virgin birth. Protestants like believing impossible things as much as Catholics. We just have a different list.
All this is a long way of saying that while we Christians may disagree and even argue about which impossible things we must believe, it generally goes without saying that we expect people to believe impossible things, perhaps even six before breakfast.
However, there is not necessarily much impact from believing these impossible things. Think about it. How much difference does it make in the way you live that Mary was or wasn’t a virgin? I know Christians of deep faith, who live exemplary lives, some who believe in a historical virgin birth, and some who don’t. Believing or not believing this particular impossible thing doesn’t seem to make all that much difference.
But in our gospel this morning, Mary hears of an impossible thing that will not happen without her cooperation, without her “Yes.”
We Protestants have tended to diminish Mary, at times overreacting to what we have seen as unsupportable doctrines of the Catholic Church. But Luke presents Mary to us a both disciple and prophet. Confronted with God’s impossible plans, she scarcely objects, exhibiting a faith more trusting than that of Moses and many other heroes of the Old Testament. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
And having said “Yes” to the impossible, the prophet Mary begins to see the impossible unfold. When she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, she sings of how God has “brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. (God) has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. Not God will, but God has. Mary has said yes to the impossible, and it is now a part of her. She experiences it as present in her life.
As Christmas draws near, we bring out some of those other impossible things that Christians proclaim. We remember a baby in a manger, shepherd in the fields, and we join with the angels in their impossible song of “Peace on earth.”
Of course we don’t believe that impossible thing, at least not in a way that makes any real difference in our lives. We sing of peace on earth, of a prince of peace, but we know that peace can be maintained only by the best military money can buy. And so even as our nation staggers under huge debt, talk of significant cuts in military spending is, well, impossible.
Meister Eckhart, a German priest and mystic who live in the 14th century once spoke of how, like Mary, we are all called to become part of the impossible thing that God is doing. He said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.” And it requires our “Yes” for that to happen. Mary must say “Yes” to the impossible, and so must we.
Christmas celebrates the results of Mary’s “Yes,” but all too often it stops there. It forgets that when we say our “Yes,” and the Spirit comes upon us, we become part of God’s impossible plan as well. We begin to see and live out that new, impossible thing, the reign of God that Jesus says has drawn near.
Back in 1998, a six year old boy named Ryan learned from his First Grade teacher that many children in Africa had to walk incredible distances just to get clean water. Stunned by this, he decided that he should build a well for a village. He began raising money by doing household chores. After four months he had raised only $70 toward a $2000 well, but he kept at it, and in 1999, seven year old Ryan’s first well was completed in a Ugandan village. Since then, the foundation begun by Ryan, now a 20 year old college student, has completed 667 water and sanitation projects in 16 countries.[1]
Perhaps if Ryan had been older and “wiser,” he would have known better, known that this was an impossible task for a little boy with no money. But being a child, he was more open to the impossible that many of us are. And maybe that’s why God’s impossible plan begins with a 15 year old girl named Mary, who wasn’t old enough to know better.
What impossible thing of God is just waiting for your “Yes?”
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Lamps Trimmed and Burning
Jesus' parable is about the pose of the faithful between the time of his resurrection and his return, but most times I've heard this passage preached or taught the readiness Jesus speaks of has been disconnected from the Kingdom. It is no longer about Jesus or God's reign coming, but about our going. "You never know when you might die, so you'd better be ready."
It seems somewhat odd to me that even though many Christians pray the Lord's Prayer on a regular basis (When I was growing up the sports teams I played on prayed it before every game.), the first petition of that prayer seems almost forgotten. Our faith is not much about "Your kingdom come on earth" but rather, "God take us to heaven when we die."
Christmas is growing close, and soon we will be singing "Glory to the newborn King." But king of what? Ruler of what? We will sing "Let earth receive her king," but we have done a pretty good job of locking Jesus up in heaven. Lord's Prayer or not, we'd rather not have Jesus running our world, or even our lives. He might tell us to give our wealth to the poor. He might say that the prostitutes and sinners are in line ahead of us. No thanks, Jesus. We'll catch you later, after we die.
I wonder what all our preparation and getting ready for Christmas might look like if we actually entertained the possibility that Jesus could show up and take his place on the throne; if we thought he might suddenly become head of the banks and armies and governments... maybe even the Church.
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