Blesssings, Curses, and False Gods

Cursing is a relatively trivial thing in most of our minds. Curse words aren't dangerous, just unsavory. Many people consider the command against taking the LORD's (Yahweh's) name "in vain," to be about being reverent and respectful. But the command is actually against using the power of God's name for purposes other than God intends. (The NRSV translation captures this well with its "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God.")

In ancient times, to invoke a divine curse was serious business. The revealing of the divine name, Yahweh, to Moses and to Israel is a big deal in the Old Testament. It implies an ability to call on God by name, granting Israel access to God and God's favor as well as God's ire against enemies.  But as the commandment makes clear, this access is not something to be abused or misused.

Today's Old Testament reading continues the story of Balak and his attempt to curse the Israelites through the services of Balaam.  Balak is a local king frightened by the arrival of the Israelites as they move into land God has promised them. Balaam appears to be some sort of shaman who performs divinations and other religious services for a fee. Balak seeks to hire Balaam in order to curse the Israelites, but Balaam is no mere profiteer, and he heeds a word from Yahweh not to do as Balaam asks. (The famous story of Balaam's talking donkey pokes fun at "seers" like Balaam but does not seem to fit logically into the larger story surrounding it.)

Balak grows increasingly angry with Balaam as he refuses to curse but instead blesses Israel. As he rails against Balaam for failing to curse on demand, Balaam reminds him, "Did I not tell you, 'Whatever the LORD says, that is what I must do'?"

We don't much believe in curses in the 21st century, but that does not stop us from invoking God on our behalf.  But unlike Balaam, we frequently fail to inquire of God to see what God wants. Instead, we assume that God wants what we - being the good religious folk we are - want. And so we easily enlist God in our causes, be they national, political, personal, or even congregational. Church people often assume that God is for whatever we are wanting to do.

Writer Anne Lamott famously said, "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." To this obvious truth I would add the corollary, "and supports all the same things you do."  


Balaam is not of our time and culture. He looks little like anyone we know today, but I think the Church would do well to emulate him. We need to learn ways of drawing near to God and listening for God's voice prior to proceeding with our plans, no matter how well conceived, appropriate, and likely to succeed they seem to us. We need to recover spiritual disciplines of discernment so that we take the time, as well as know how, to seek God's will. If we do so, I have no doubt that we will find people who look at us like we are crazy and demand to know why we are not doing what makes good business sense, what we've always done, what people want, etc. To which we will reply, "Did I not tell you, 'Whatever the LORD says, that is what I must do'?"

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Institutions, Communion, and Community

Doug Ottati, my very favorite professor from seminary, said on a number of occasions that all the salvific activity of God, the entire Jesus event, was about "true communion with God in true community with others." In other words, it is about relationship in cruciform shape. It's not just about me and God, and it's not just about getting along with others. Jesus' life, death, and resurrection means to create a transformed relationship with God within a transformed community of relationships.

This relational activity on God's part certainly has substance and content. There are standards of behavior, and there are calls to right living. But these are invitations to move toward something new and wonderful, not boundaries that declare who's in and who's out.

This boundary issue is on display in today's gospel. Jesus, as happens so regularly in the gospels, is enmeshed in conflict with religious authorities.  It is a recurring theme: Jesus is rejected by the good, religious folk of his day but very much at home with sinners and outcasts. And it seems likely that Jesus' focus on relationship is at the heart of this.

Religions inevitably acquire institutional components and functions. This is not entirely bad, and it is necessary to some degree. It is nearly impossible for groups larger than just a few people to function without some sort of organization, some sort of institutional structure.  But it is very difficult for institutions to nurture relationships. Relationships often seem threaten to institutions for they easily subvert institutional boundaries.

On some level, most congregations seem to sense this. The tendency for churches to speak of themselves as families points to it, although this family is often more dream or illusion than reality. I've seen a number of congregations that view having a single worship service as a measure of all being one big family or community.  But having 200 people all in one service doesn't make them family, doesn't put them in relationship with one another. On more than one occasion I've been in discussions with church leaders who have just declared, "We're really a family; we all know one another" only to realize they don't recognize any of several names put before them to serve on a church committee.

I think that congregations need constantly to reflect on the degree to which the institutional overwhelms the relational. Jesus' own encounter with the good, religious folk of his day should be a constant reminder that well-intended, sincere guardians of religious institutions can have more difficulty recognizing God in their midst than sinners and outcasts. This tragic tendency begs religious institutions to repeatedly ask themselves, "Are all our actions serving the goal of true communion with God in true community with others?"

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Moving, Sin, and Other Stuff

The moving van arrived at the church manse on Saturday morning. (The storm that left us without power until today complicated this only slightly.) We are moving from a home with a garage, a basement, and a large shed into a church manse with a small shed, no basement, and no garage. Let's just say there are lots and lots of boxes, along with a washer, dryer, and a good deal of furniture and lamps stashed away in the attic.

There nothing quite like a move to reveal the degree to which you are afflicted with the American idolatry of stuff.  (George Carlin used to do a hilarious comedy routine about us and our stuff. You can find it on YouTube.) My wife got rid of a lot of stuff before we moved to Falls Church, but still we will soon be looking for a home of our own in the area, one with a basement and garage so we can store all that stuff that won't quite fit where we are now.

And now, after several days offline, I look at the daily readings and see Paul talking about how we are no longer slaves to sin. In Christ we are freed from sin and become "slaves to righteousness."  And Jesus is all worked up about how the Temple has stuff being sold there, how it has gone from a "house of prayer" to a "den of robbers."

I'm not entirely sure exactly where these verses intersect with me and my stuff. But it does seem that in some ways I am still a slave to the ways of this world, thinking that I won't be happy without more and more stuff. And my life is often animated more by the stuff I have and the stuff I want than by a desire to do God's will. But of course some stuff is necessary for life, and knowing just where one crosses the boundary between necessary/reasonable and idolatry of stuff can be difficult to figure precisely.

I think that Christians like me, who grew up in what purported to be a Christian culture, sometimes have difficulty reflecting on how our day to day lives do or don't square with our faith. Because we were products of this "Christian culture," there is a certain presumption that typical, middle-class, American-dream values arein fact Christian.  All of our stuff is "God's blessings."

I've been talking with the Stewardship Committee here about a Fall campaign that moves away from fundraising and focuses instead on growing in faith through spiritual disciplines of giving and generosity. I want us all to reflect on the ways in which we struggle to be the generous disciples we are called to be because so much of our energy, efforts, and cash are devoted to stuff.

Paul promises that we can be set free.  We can become new creations, no longer bound by what marketers or ego or envy tells us we cannot live without. And surely we want to be freed and made new.

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Sermon audio - Standing Up to Goliaths

Sermon - Standing Up to Goliaths

1 Samuel 17:32-49

Standing Up to Goliaths

James Sledge                                                                                       June 24, 2012

Some years ago a church member came to me with a problem. Her child was planning to do something she thought foolish, and she was looking for some help from me.  This woman was very involved in the congregation.  She was an elder, a tireless volunteer at that church, and I always got the sense that she was serious about her faith.

Her son was also a person of significant faith, having been very involved in the youth group at church before attending college. And he was quite involved in campus ministry there. In fact, the foolish thing he was planning to do involved a campus ministry mission trip.  The trip was to Haiti, and it was one of those times when Haiti had descended into political chaos.  The campus ministry organization had discussed cancelling the trip, but in the end, the decision had been made to go ahead with it.

Needless to say this mother was not happy.  Along with typical concerns for such mission trips – unsanitary conditions, tropical diseases, and so on – there was now the added the risk of political instability accompanied by violence. It was not too difficult for Mom to imagine some group thinking that kidnapping an American college student would be a great tactic.

However, this woman’s son truly felt called to take part in this mission trip. He was motivated by a deep faith commitment to help the poor, to take God’s love to people who lived in terrible circumstances.  And ultimately he did go, although his mother did succeed in getting the campus ministry group to take some additional safety and security precautions.

This story is far from unique.  I know of many cases where parents raised their children in the church and worried about them wandering from the faith.  But they were mortified when that faith led children to do something dangerous, called them into a low paying career, or caused them to adopt a lifestyle that didn’t fit well with the parents’ suburban, upper middle-class values.  These parents wanted their children to have faith, just not too much of it.

And that makes me wonder what David’s Mom thought about the whole Goliath episode.

Be Nice

A retreat leader once led an exercise to help a group of church leaders determine what their core values were. As a church, this group naturally assumed that their core values were somehow connected to their faith, but the retreat leader challenged them.   "What," he asked, "were the norms that, if you violated them, you would know rather quickly you had done something wrong?"

After a great deal of discussion, the group decided that there was a vague expectation of belief in God, but pretty much anything short of full blown atheism or Satan worship would not violate any real norms.  The only other norm or core value they could identify was something they labeled "Be nice."

After reading this account, I shared it with the governing board where I served at the time. At first they assumed that this would not describe that congregation, but after some discussion began to think that it did.  And they began to openly wonder whether or not this constituted significant enough core values for them to be the Church of Jesus Christ.

Now I certainly think the world would be a gentler place if everyone tried to be nice.  It is an admirable trait. But "Be nice" was not the core of Jesus' message as I understand it.Today's gospel even features Jesus talking about disciplining church members, an event I have never personally witnessed in a congregation. And I'm not sure if that is because such action was never warranted, or if it wouldn't have "been nice."

Now many of us have witnessed the bad side of enforcing standards. There have been terrible abuses of power against those who take unpopular stands or who are different from the majority. But I'm not sure that this problem is really fixed by "Be nice." (I wonder if there is a parallel to this with regards to evangelism. Sometimes the Presbyterian and Mainline response to the manipulative, coercive, and heavy-handed evangelism practices of other groups has been to do no evangelism at all. No danger of doing it badly, but is that what Jesus expects of us?)

Have you ever considered the core values of your congregation?  What are they, and where did they come from? And perhaps most importantly, are they what Jesus is calling your congregation to be and do?

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Similes, Metaphors, and Religious Arrogance

Similes and metaphors, by their very nature, allow for a variety of meaning.  To say something is like something else leaves a great deal up to the listener's experience of that something else. Those who use metaphor and simile have made a move toward art or poetry and away from scientific precision.  And for whatever reasons, much of what we know of God and life with God comes to us in this less than precise fashion.

But poetic rendering does not necessarily permit a "God is whoever or whatever I imagine God to be" proposition that is sometimes heard in popular religious thought.  God may be beyond our comprehension, and no image of God may be adequate. But if there is a God then presumably there are things of which it can be said, "God is like this and so not like that," or "A follower of Jesus should be like this and not like that."

Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." In making sense of this, a lot is riding on what a person thinks it means to become "like children." And this problem is compounded by a kind of religious arrogance (a perhaps peculiarly Protestant one) that imagines the Bible is written for us and addresses us directly.

If you want to see this in full blown form, consider how a great many people handle the book of Revelation as a book of predictions.  Some imaginative interpreters even claim there are accurate accounts of nuclear naval battles depicted in the book. (I tried, but I couldn't see it.)  But of course the book is actually a letter written to Christian congregations many centuries ago. And while it may have been intended for wider circulation than the congregations mentioned in it, if it is written for us, telling of the end of the world in our time, what were the original recipients supposed to do with it?

The letters of Paul and other epistles point to this same problem. With them we are reading someone else's mail, and because such letters were the only means Paul and others had to communicate with distant congregations, we are essentially hearing one side of a conversation. We are not always sure of the problem being addressed by a letter, and if we don't know what Paul is talking about when he instructs or corrects a congregation, we may misunderstand him badly.

That brings me back to becoming "like children." I have frequently heard people start talking about the psychological makeup of a child and how Jesus is calling us to emulate this. But if Jesus is actually speaking to the people in front of him 2000 years ago, doesn't it stand to reason that he expects them to understand what he says without the benefit of any psychology. The Gospel of Matthew is written not so many decades after Jesus lived, and so wouldn't its author have reported Jesus' words fully expecting his readers to understand what Jesus meant? And so doesn't it stand to reason that this simile depends on a First Century understanding of what is involved in becoming like a child?

This does not necessarily mean that all modern understandings of childhood are useless in understanding what Jesus is saying. But if we imagine there are no historical or cultural barriers to encountering Jesus, surely we will create for ourselves a peculiarly modern Jesus who would be unrecognizable to his first followers. Of course if Jesus came of us and not them, that may not be a problem.

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Sermon audio - Seeing as God Sees

Sermon and worship audios also available on Falls Church Presbyterian website.

Restless Hearts

 As a deer longs for flowing streams,
     so my soul longs for you, O God.
 My soul thirsts for God,
     for the living God.           from Psalm 42

"Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you."  So said Augustine of Hippo some 16 centuries ago. The book of Acts quotes the Apostle Paul speaking of a human inclination to "search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him..." Some writers in spirituality have said that this restlessness to find God is the beginning of spirituality.  And if you walk through the Spirituality section in your local Barnes & Nobles, or if you search the topic at Amazon.com, your will find ample evidence that this restlessness is as strong as ever in our "post religious" age.

This would seem to be wonderful news for the Church, this realization that, in a time of shrinking congregations, people are groping, searching, and longing for God. I think it is good news, but it does require that congregations become places that feel open, welcome, and inviting to those who are groping, searching, and longing.

Many of us in the Church grew up in a very settled religious landscape. People might experience a time of restlessness, such as when they went off to college, but there was a basic assumption that religious questions were settled ones. Restlessness was a phase some young people went through, but its primary religious implication was a period of time away from church.

But for a variety of reasons, old patterns of restlessness have broken down. The religious landscape itself is far from settled, and becoming older and more settled no longer means a return to church. Indeed, the term "return" no longer applies because many were never in church as children to begin with.  Restlessness, and particularly religious restlessness, is no longer a phase people go through at some predictable moment in their lives.  Rather it is a desire, a longing for something that is not fully known.

Congregations have a tremendous opportunity to assist people whose restlessness has them searching and longing. But I think that requires a subtle shift for some of us. It does not change our core beliefs or proclamation, but it does mean becoming more of a place for restless people. As I look back, my childhood notion of church is a settled place for a settled people. But in a new day and age, I think it needs to become more of a place where restless people can find their rest in God.

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Sermon video - Seeing as God Sees

Sermon videos also available on YouTube

Are You There, God?

 Give ear to my words, O LORD;
     give heed to my sighing.
 Listen to the sound of my cry,
     my King and my God,
     for to you I pray.       Psalm 5:1-2

I had one of those nights that I assume all people have from time to time. I was trying to sleep, but my mind would not be still. Questions about how to handle this situation or that kept rearing their heads and insisting on wrestling with me. But these internal discussions seemed largely futile, leading nowhere. Contradictory options kept playing out in my head, but none seemed a good answer.  I would really have liked some clarity, some good guidance.

Being a pastor, one might assume that I immediately turned to God for help, but I must confess that I wrestled for some time without trying that. Funny how it sometimes requires desperation to move me toward God. But if I was expected a blissful, divine deliverance, none was forthcoming.

This morning's psalm may not be the best example (Try Psalm 22's "My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?"), but it is a reminder that even the writers of Scripture were quite familiar with what some have labeled "the absence of God."  They too struggled, turned to God, and found themselves groping in the dark, crying out without a response. And so they pleaded with God to listen, to heed their cries.

There is something comforting in knowing that people of deep faith struggle at times with God's absence (as Jesus did on the cross). But even more comforting is something else I share with the psalmists, the assurance that God's absence is not permanent. This assurance is born of previous experiences of God's deliverance and reliability, and virtually all the psalms of lament, those psalms that cry out to God in agony, resolve in praise for what God has done.

If you are anything like me, there are times when the problems of the moment capture your attention so fully that it is difficult to see past them. In that moment, there can seem to be no options, no help, and a kind of paralysis sometimes sets in. But in my experience, God is faithful, even though I often am not. I do know there are people who suffer in ways that I cannot comprehend and for which I have no easy answers.  But with the sort of struggles that so often paralyze me, I invariably end up looking back and wondering why my difficulty seemed so overwhelming.  Sometimes I even think I hear Jesus asking, "Why did you doubt?"

Are you there, God? Ah, yes, there you are.

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Sermon - Seeing as God Sees

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

Seeing as God Sees

James Sledge                                                                                     June 17, 2012

Let’s be honest. Unlike Samuel, most of us would have gone ahead and anointed Eliab. I know that I would. If I had somehow been paying enough attention that I heard God in the first place and went to Bethlehem looking for a new king, I’m pretty sure that Eliab would have seemed an answer to prayer. Here’s the one! Pour the oil on his head. Glad that’s over. Can’t believe we found a new king so quickly.

We Presbyterians have our own version of Samuel.  Because we’re big on representative government, Samuel is not one person but rather a committee – a nominating committee to be precise. We have nominating committees charged to find those called to be deacons and ruling elders, and we have pastor nominating committees to find the person God is calling to be a teaching elder or pastor. Like Samuel, these committees are charged to find the one or ones that God already has in mind, and we use fancy words like discernment to make clear that the task is to hear and sense the Spirit guiding us to the one God has already chosen.

Now clearly I’ve had some recent experience with this congregation’s pastor nominating committee, although I did not see how they went about discerning and deciding. I’ve not been here long enough to see an officer nominating committee at work.  However I have seen them in a number of other congregations, and I’ve talked with enough pastors about how it works in their churches to have some sense of what is typical.

The stereotypical officer nominating committee works like this. A group of folks, including representatives from Deacons and Session, are cajoled into this task. Often people are chosen to represent some of the different groups and interests in the congregation. It is common to have someone from Presbyterian Women, someone from the youth, and so on.  Then this group is “elected” at congregational meeting.

Then comes the hard work. A first meeting is set, and nominating committee members arrive with pictorial directories in hand.

Clarence the Cross-Eyed Bear

I've used this title before in a post, but I couldn't help myself.  I'm not sure where the title comes from. There was a Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion character that was popular many years ago. Perhaps familiarity with this lion got conflated with the song "Gladly the Cross I'd Bear" to form Clarence, the sight impaired bear. Regardless, this apparent child's misconstruing of a Christian song has lots of company among adults who have distorted Jesus' words just as badly.

The term "my cross to bear" is a common one, even outside the Christian faith.  It has come to mean little more than some difficulty to endure.  The strange thing about this phrase, it least in my experience, is that it is most often used by people to speak of a difficult they have no control over. Be it some illness or chronic condition, ungrateful children, a crummy job, or countless other examples, these crosses are not something people picked up willingly. Bearing crosses has come to stand for patient endurance, but it seems to have nothing to do with self-denial.

The words of Jesus on bearing the cross are all about self-denial. When Peter objects vehemently to Jesus saying he is going to Jerusalem to die, Jesus reprimands him and then insists that following him requires a willingness to act contrary to self interest and take up a cross.

Now it occurs to me that there are plenty of Christians who willingly, in ways large and small, deny themselves in order to do what the think Jesus asks of them. It may simply be denying themselves some consumer item in order to give more money to the church or some ministry or cause. Or it may involve much larger sacrifices such as giving up a high paying career to run a non-profit that does the work of Jesus.

But while most congregations have shining examples of cross bearing, individuals who take on burdens they did not have to for the sake of Jesus and the new day he heralds, congregations themselves often have much more difficulty with cross bearing and self denial.

When congregations or their governing bodies discuss new ministries or new directions for the congregation, there is almost always an absolute assumption that no decision should endanger or injure the church in any way. In a parallel to most other institutions, congregations have a very strong survival instinct, and they almost always discuss what they should do or are called to do from that standpoint.  And so while individual members may embrace the call to deny self and take up their crosses, congregations seem less likely to do so.

Our denomination's Book of Order speaks of the Church's calling in its opening pages. "The Church is to be a community of faith, entrusting itself to God alone, even at the risk of losing its life." (F-1.0301) But in practice, the Church is very unwilling to lose its life. In its practice, the Church very often sounds much like Peter, who responds to Jesus' willingness to take up the cross by saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." Clarence the Cross-Eyed Bear.

So... how does a sense of self-denial and a willingness to take up the cross, something many church members know well how to do, become a core part of who we are as congregations?

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Sermon audio - Like Falling in Love

Sermon and worship audios can be found on FCPC website.

Evidences of the Spirit

Writing to the Galatian church, Paul rattles off a list of "the works of the flesh." Some of the stereotypical things we might expect in such a list are there: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,  drunkenness, and carousing. Religious folks often seem fixated on "sins" of this sort, even though they make up a minority of Paul's list. Religious folks rail much less against enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy, perhaps because we enjoy these so much.

According to Paul, when the Spirit is present and active there is: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  If you have ever attended a regional or national governing body meeting in the Presbyterian Church (USA), there is a good chance you witnessed precious little of Paul's "fruits of the Spirit" but plenty of enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy. And even within congregations, factions and quarrels and distrust are all too common.


Some years ago our denomination promoted the theme, "Theology Matters." It most certainly does.  And despite those who say that it's actions that count and not theology, the fact is that bad theology leads to bad practices. However - and this is a big however - getting our theology correct will make little difference in the absence of the Spirit. And when our theological fights degenerate into enmities, strife, anger, quarrels, dissensions, and factions, what does that say about us, regardless of our theological positions?

We live in a time when there is a great deal of spiritual hunger and curiosity in our culture.  At the very same time, there is a significant drop off in participation at church congregations. Could it be that we humans come hardwired with some ability to sense divine presence? And when people see enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy in congregations, they correctly surmise that the Spirit is not active there.

What evidences of the "fruits of the Spirit" do you see in your congregation? And how might we be more open to the Spirit moving in our midst?

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Signs of the Times

It probably wasn't original, and it certainly expressed a commonly held sentiment. I'm referring to a post I saw on Twitter awhile back. It was from a Presbyterian pastor and it said, "If the 1950s ever come back, we're ready."

We church folks do often seem remarkably oblivious to the world around us.  That is especially true of mainline churches which once lived squarely in the center of American culture. If it weren't so depressing it would be funny to watch congregations who think that some improvement will return them to their former glory. If they just had a better preacher, a better music program, or maybe even a contemporary service...

Such thinking often seems completely unaware that church is an optional activity. Even in my own congregation, which is doing remarkably well by mainline standards, there seems to be an assumption that "visitors" are church shopping and they will end up somewhere.  But such assumptions are likely to be off the mark. We live in a culture where an ever larger percentage of people do not grow up in church. Even the notion that the church is a logical destination for someone who becomes spiritual curious is likely false. There are countless other options.

In today's gospel, Jesus blasts religious leaders who cannot read the signs of the times. They do not see God's reign drawing near in Jesus. They are oblivious to the seismic shift that is taking place. Like many religious leaders in every age, they are decent people who have become focused on running the institution, so focused on it that they miss God at work in their very midst.

The Spirit is stirring in our world right now. All around us are signs. Small faith communities are emerging where spiritually hungry people are finding a genuine presence of God. People are being drawn into communities of faithful, spiritual practice where they are transformed and the promise of God's coming reign is glimpsed.

But many of us, busy running our little religious enterprises, imagine all this is nothing but a matter of style, a passing religious fad.  We'll keep doing what we're good at, what is tried and true.  And if the 1950s ever return, we'll be ready.

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More Than Enough

Jesus looks out at a crowd numbering in the thousands and tells his disciples that they can't send them away without first feeding them. It's easy to make the disciples the bad guys in this story, but the fact is they don't have the resources. The story tells us there are 4000 men, besides women and children. The crowd might have numbered 8 or 10,0000 in all. Clearly the sparse supplies the disciples had on them were nowhere near sufficient for such a huge undertaking. And yet, Jesus takes those meager supplies - 7 loaves and a few fish - and feeds them all. "And all of them ate and were filled."

Sometimes in my work as a pastor I find myself facing situations I feel ill equipped to handle. I see a spiritual problem in the church or a need in the community that begs to be addressed, but I think, "I don't have the gifts to do this. We don't have the resources to pull this off."

I suspect that the disciples in today's gospel had compassion for the crowd just as Jesus did. They saw those hungry people who had been with Jesus for days in an area where there was no food to be had. They felt bad for them, but what could they do? They had so little. The did not have anywhere near enough resources even to make a small dent in the problem.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann once wrote an article entitled "The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity."  Our faith is rooted in the promises of a loving God who provides in abundance, but in practice we more often live out of the myth of scarcity. There is not enough to go around, and we need to protect our share. We do not have enough to respond the the needs we see around us, and so we say, "I don't have the gifts to do that. We don't have the resources to help."

One of my own recurring faith struggles is trusting that God can do more with me than my own gifts and talents might indicate. Doing a faithful job as pastor of a congregation is not a simple matter of doing the best I can with the abilities and gifts that I have. Christian faith insists that God can take my gifts and abilities and do far more than would seem possible based on those alone.

I think congregations need to struggle with this same faith issue. Just as I am tempted to think I can do no more than my gifts allow, congregations are often tempted to say, "We don't have enough talents, volunteers, money, space, etc. to do that." But Christian faith insists that God can do far more with our talents, volunteers, money, space, etc. than a simple accounting of those resources would indicate.

So where in my life or yours or our congregations is Jesus saying, "I have compassion. Let's do something about it." And where is he saying to our protests that we can't possibly do that with our meager resources, "What do you have?.. With my help, that is more than enough."

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No Time for Silence

I just got an email that asked for 20 minutes of time in an upcoming session meeting (sessions are Presbyterian's governing board). The request itself is no problem. It's an issue we need to discuss and consider.  But still I gave a little involuntary flinch when I saw the email because I worry about time pressures in session meetings.  More specifically, I worry about what we don't do when we get pressed for time.

Being the new pastor here, I've only been to two session meetings. But in my experience elsewhere, when the meeting agenda gets full, the natural place to save time is that portion of the meeting set aside for meditation, Scripture, reflection, and prayer.  I like to include a good 20-30 minutes of such time in Session meetings, but there can be immense pressure to "get down to business."

Of course I can't simply blame the elders on the session for this. In my own work as pastor, I'm prone to follow the exact same pattern.  The busier I am, the less time for prayer, for quiet, for meditating on Scripture, and so on.  Martin Luther may have said that he was so busy he needed 3 hours of prayer to get it all done, but I too often do the reverse.

Today's psalm begins, "For God alone my soul waits in silence." But in our culture, silence and stillness aren't productive, and so they are wastes of time. I and members of the sessions on which I've served have been well trained by our culture, and when there's a lot to do, and we want to get people home at a decent hour, we certainly don't want to waste anyone's time.

Every now and then it hits me just how badly I've lost my way on this. A pastor who acts as though it's a waste of time to wait in silence for God? A church session, the body charged to watch over the spiritual health of a congregation, that would jettison time for prayer and discernment so there is plenty of time to debate whether or not to pave the church parking lot? (Not an agenda item here.) It seems that we sometimes get so caught up in running the church that we forget what it means to be the church. We become so focused on functioning and logistics that we have no idea what God is asking us to do.

Surely, above all else, we have to make time for silence.

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Sermon video - Like Falling in Love

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Sermon - Like Falling in Love

Mark 3:20-35

Like Falling in Love

James Sledge                                                                                       June 10, 2012

So, Jesus’ family thought he had taken leave of his senses, that he was out of his mind.  Probably not the most unusual occurrence in families.  Families frequently think a child is acting in ways that aren’t rational.  And on occasion I’ve had parents come to me as a pastor, seeking assistance in some sort of intervention they were planning for a child they thought had taken leave of his or her senses.  But that’s pretty rare.

 However, I’ve had a lot of dealings with another situation where people can seem to have lost touch with reality.  It’s a common condition, one that afflicts most all of us at some point in our lives. It’s usually called “falling in love.”

Falling in love leads people to do any number of less than completely rational things.  There’s a good reason that people who are in love say, “I’m just crazy about Jane,” or John or whomever.  People who are in love will drive for hours and hours just to spend a brief bit of time with their beloved.  Natural tightwads will inexplicably experience bouts of extravagant gift giving.  Meticulously laid out career plans may be put on hold or abandoned altogether.  And sometimes such behavior becomes too much for friends and family to sit idly by, and they feel the need to stage some sort of rescue or intervention.  Someone needs to reconnect the person with reality.

Jesus’ family seems to be engaged in just such an activity in today’s gospel reading.  The story is pretty short on details so we can’t say for sure why the family thinks an intervention is in order.  The NRSV translators seem to think the family is only trying to protect Jesus’ reputation.  They go to “restrain him” because other folks were saying Jesus was crazy.  I understand the translators preferring that Jesus’ family not come off too bad in this story, but suspect that may have colored their translation. 

Rethinking Church

Yesterday I reflected on a God who sees a hungry raven and is moved to help. Today the gospel lection shows Jesus trying to get away by himself. But the crowds find him, and when he sees them, he is moved with compassion.  He heals their sick and later feeds the entire bunch, once again revealing a God who is moved by need. Yet the Church often seems focused more on other issues. The recent crack-down on nuns by the Vatican seems to me to place doctrine well above compassion, and that does not seem to be the God revealed in Jesus.

Not that there is any need to single out Roman Catholics. We Presbyterians have been engaged in theological and doctrinal wrangling over ordination standards for decades now. It has most certainly diverted time, energy, and money from missions of compassion and from acting as Jesus did.

Of course Jesus wasn't just saccharine sweet and nice. He scared people because he looked like a threat to those in power. But we Presbyterians are mostly a threat to ourselves.

It seems to me that the Church is very often focused mostly on itself. I don't want to diminish the considerable good done by Christians and the Church, but if you look at the typical church budget, you will see that it is mostly directed inward. It goes to fund worship that we like, music that we prefer, programs for our kids, fellowship events for us, and so on. Some of this is essential activity in cultivating a faith community, but a lot of it is a consumerist driven desire for the church to "meet my needs."

My own congregation is fairly typical on this. We have many wonderful things that we do, but when push comes to shove, we are driven more by what we want than the example of Jesus or what God wants. And I'm embarrassed to say the percentage of our budget that actually goes to mission.

We Christians say that we are the body of Christ, but I sometimes wonder what sort of glimpse of Jesus people get when they encounter us.  And that makes me wonder if we don't need to do some serious rethinking on what it means for us to be the Church.

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Pictures of God

W. C. Fields is quoted as saying, "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand." It's easy to be for something in principle but struggle to demonstrate it in individual, concrete encounters. Lots of people want to help the poor, but they wouldn't dare invite them into their homes. It can be difficult to reconcile the big picture with on the ground realities.

It strikes me that big picture notions of God don't always cohere with on the ground expectations of how God acts. It is common for people to speak of a loving God and then direct God's ire at those they don't approve of. And those who pride themselves on not denying God's love to anyone often don't expect that love actually to do anything. God's love is a nice concept, but we often seem to think it quite impotent.

What a contrast to the words of today's psalm. Young ravens cry, and God acts. I think that is a rather startling picture of God to a lot of people. Our images of God are often of a very removed and distant figure, not so different from the Deists' "watchmaker" god who designs and builds the universe, winds it up, and walks off. Such a god never says, "Oh look, a baby raven is hungry. Let me help."

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Offended by Jesus

Jesus' experience at Nazareth is not so unusual. Many of us have found ourselves trapped in old identities. I grew up in "the country" and there I was Rose and Ken's boy. Even as an adult, this is some way remained my identity. Likewise a bad reputation gained as a youth can follow someone around for years, sometimes preventing people from seeing the very different person that youth as grown up to be. And this same phenomenon affects groups, organizations, and institutions. Once people "know" who or what a group is, they respond based on that "knowledge," even if it no longer is accurate.

Years ago, the now defunct GM car brand, Oldsmobile, ran a series of ads that trumpeted the theme, "Not Your Father's Oldsmobile." Clearly this was an attempt to redefine their brand, to break free from what people already "knew" about them. (Given that Oldsmobile no longer exists, I'm guessing they were unsuccessful.)

When Jesus acts in ways that do not fit into what his neighbors already "know" about him, even though they are impressed, they take offense. Literally translated, they are scandalized by it. It's an experience that I imagine must be tiring for Jesus. After all, it still goes on all the time.

Lots of people, even ones who've had little experience with Christianity or the church, think they "know" Jesus. And we who are church folks certainly think we "know" Jesus, although depending on which church you go to, this Jesus can look remarkably different.

In the same way, people inside and outside the church "know" it is. We "know" what it's about and what it does. And if it acts in ways contrary to what we "know," we'll take offense, just as we'll take offense if someone speaks of a Jesus who acts contrary to what we "know."

Where do we get what we "know" about Jesus? About the Church? About what it means to be a Christian, a disciple of Jesus? And when we encounter something that offends our sensibilities about these things, how do we figure out whether or not we've just taken offense, just been scandalized, by Jesus himself?

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The Kingdom is Like...

"The kingdom of heaven is like... The kingdom of heaven is like... The kingdom of heaven is like..." so says Jesus.  I wonder if we modern folks wouldn't have gotten frustrated very quickly with Jesus.  "Don't tell us what the kingdom is like!  What is it?"

A conceit of the modern era is that everything can be explained. We haven't figured it all out yet, but we will. Modern people do not do so well with mystery. (Some argue that post modern folks do better, but that's another discussion.) It's no coincidence that Unitarianism was a modern, Enlightenment undertaking. And while that movement was in part a reaction against wars and violence in Europe that seemed to be driven by competing religious doctrines, it was also a move away from mystery. Its god was high concept: rational, logical, and not engaged in human affairs or natural events. 

But I do not mean to pick on Unitarians. Most Trinitarian Christians have God safely secured behind walls of doctrine, logic, and a thoroughly modern, scientific worldview. Even fundamentalists, who may view science as an enemy, see the world and God through this scientific, modern worldview, where truth is about demonstrable facts. (Belief in supernatural "facts" has little to do with embracing mystery.)

Jesus begins his ministry with the proclamation, one shared with John the Baptist, that the Kingdom has come near. Clearly this Kingdom has to figure prominently in the work of the Church, but the Kingdom is like... Its arrival, its actual shape, our place in it, etc. are shrouded in mystery. But we don't care for mystery so we have decided we will turn this thing we cannot fully embrace or understand into something plain, clear, and straightforward: going to heaven when we die. No mystery required at all. Unitarians, Trinitarians, and even those who aren't religious at all are happy to embrace such a notion.

Who in their right mind would start a religious movement around something only partially grasped and hidden in mystery? "The kingdom of heaven is like..." No church consultant would ever let that become a centerpiece of a congregation's life and ministry.  So where does mystery live in the Church?

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching (Trinity) Sunday

I have a lot of colleagues who would be perfectly happy if there were no Trinity Sunday on the Christian calendar.  Certainly doing a Trinity sermon can pose challenges.  Because the the term Trinity never occurs in Scripture, Bible readings for this Sunday sometimes have fairly strained relationship to this central, Christian doctrine.  And then there is the basic logical problem of 1+1+1=1 that leads many, even many preachers, to relegate this doctrine to "only of interest to academic theologians" status.

I am not dealing with such problems myself this year. Our congregation is doing a lessons and carols styled journey through the Christian year, and so there is no sermon today. But I am in some ways sorry not to be preaching on Trinity Sunday. Despite the obvious challenges , I think the doctrine provides some very practical help when it comes to envisioning God.

A seemingly universal, religious tendency is to render God manageable. As a good Calvinist, I know that we humans love our idols, substitutes for God that are much more willing to do our bidding and much less inclined to challenge us or frighten us or demand that we change. But a Trinitarian God resists such attempts if, for no other reasons, the difficulty we have explaining and picturing this God.

Of course most of us are not really Trinitarians. We are functional Unitarians. You can promote any member of the Trinity to top status and make the other two junior partners, but my Presbyterian experience has been almost entirely a Unitarianism of the Father sort.  God is Father and Father is God.  Consider how people began their prayers.  Rarely do they pray to Jesus or the Spirit.  "Father God" is even a popular opening. Jesus and the Spirit are not discounted, but they don't have the full godhead credentials for some reason.

Now there are plenty of people who are Unitarians on purpose, but that is not the issue on my mind. I'm talking about Presbyterians who today sing "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty" with great gusto.  They don't flinch singing "God in three persons, blessed Trinity," but when it comes to relating with God, this goes out the window.

I think it was C.S. Lewis who called God the great iconoclast who keeps shattering our images of God so we can replace them with better, but still incomplete ones. And the Trinity keeps chipping away at our too small images of God, forever reminding us that God is always beyond, fuller, more than we can ever imagine.

Sermon video - Pregnant with God's Nevertheless

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Dealing with Weeds

There is an unfortunate tendency among us liberal Christians to act as though sin and evil are not real problems. There are only environmental factors, lack of education, poverty and desperation, etc. This tendency is not as strong as it was a century ago when many liberal Christians expected "progress" to bring the kingdom, but it is still one of our biases.  And so we sometimes think it quite easy to follow the lesson of today's parable.  We have no difficulty leaving the field a mix of wheat and weeds.  After all, weeds are just disadvantaged and misunderstood.

Now I don't mean to make light of the very real impact that social forces have in shaping our world and in shaping individual's lives. There are countless human problems that can and have been addressed via education, increased opportunities, social reforms, and so on. But these cannot address a more fundamental problem with the human condition. There is something inherently tragic and self-destructive about us. We are quite proficient at doing the wrong thing even when we know full well what the right thing is and know it is in our self interest to do that right thing. We have a tendency toward greed and covetousness that only seems to get worse the more that we have.

I don't understand acknowledging the basic problem to lead to a pessimistic outlook. Instead is like an alcoholic or addict admitting his fundamental problem as the first step inrecovery. It is acknowledging that I need help, that I need "saving." I cannot be who I am meant to be without help from God and others.

Jesus' parable presumes that when we are transformed and made new in him, we will no longer feel quite at home in the the world as it currently operates. We will be fundamentally out of sync with many of the forces that drive society, politics, economics, and so on.  And I think that it is only when we experience this strong dissonance with the world that Jesus' parable begins to resonate. Only when we recognize that the way of Jesus is in deep conflict with the ways of the world do we face the dilemma of the slaves in the parable who want to do something about the weeds. Only then do we recognize that parable is not about tolerance or those who are simply different, it is about a tolerance of those who are our enemies.

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Church as "Family"

The term "Church Family" is very familiar to many of us who grew up in church.  This was likely the most common way the congregations where I learned church self-identified. Ask church members to describe the congregation and the word family was sure to be used.

I assume that this metaphor of family drew on positive aspects of family life, people who loved you and cared for you, etc. But of course there were negative pieces to the metaphor as well. And these probably are more problematic for churches than they are for real families. Families are rather closed systems. One does not join a family. You are either born into it or marry into it. And while things are changing today with more blended families and interracial families, on the whole, families tend to all look the same.

Churches often amplify some problematic aspects of family. In some congregations, you can be a member for years and still get treated like an outsider, not fully a member of the family. Church congregations are often made up of folks who all look very much the same. And not only is racial diversity a real problem for many congregations, but class diversity, income diversity, cultural diversity, and so on are problems as well.

I have recently become pastor at a vibrant congregation that, thankfully, has more diversity than I've typically experienced in Presbyterian congregations. But if you don't like classical music and you aren't at a certain income level and you don't lean a little toward the "progressive" side of politics, you may not feel that you really fit here.

Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”  But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”   Matthew 12:47-50

I suppose the Jesus sanctions the use of the family metaphor for the church, but it is a significantly redefined picture of family. The likeness of this family is not about race, ethnicity, culture, income, etc. It is about discipleship, about doing God's will. Now I imagine that just about any church would embrace the idea that doing God's will is integral to being a Christian. But I suspect that more often than not, doing God's will is not what binds congregations together as families.

If we're going to sing songs in worship, I suppose there is no avoiding that worship at one place may appeal to someone more than worship somewhere else. But I still wonder. What is it that really defines us as a congregation? What notion of family, or some other metaphor, creates and shapes us? And where does God's will fit in all that?

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Where Did This Come From?

One of the difficult things about being a new pastor in a congregation is figuring out what changes to make. I take it as a given that changes must be made. This is a continual, ongoing process. The kingdom, God's reign, has not yet arrived, and we must be continually open to where the Spirit is leading us.

However, it is often quite different to differentiate between the Spirit's leading and personal preferences and inclinations.  Incoming pastors arrive with notions of what works well and presumptions of what is needed. Likewise, congregations have notions of what works well and presumptions of how things should be.  And it can be very easy for pastors and congregations each to assume they know best what is appropriate for their particular congregations. But such "knowledge" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the Spirit's guidance.

In today's gospel, Jesus shows up at his hometown, and people are astounded. He makes a big impression, but then they start thinking about who he is and what they already "know" about him.

"Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?" And they took offense at him.

Most church folks have notions and expectations about how to do and be church. The more serious we are about church, the more rigid such expectations and notions often become. Pastors and other dedicated leaders in congregations are perhaps most prone to such problems. So how are we to sense the guidance of the Spirit who - like the wind - "blows where it chooses," who - like Jesus - often shows little respect for how we've always done it or how we're sure it should be.

 I'm more than a little suspicious that if we've never had our religious certainties upended; if we've never felt threatened and dislocated regarding our religious habits, we're doing a remarkably good job of hiding from the Holy Spirit.

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Sermon - Pregnant with God's Nevertheless

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 1:1-14

Pregnant with God’s Nevertheless

James Sledge                                                                           May 27, 2012 – Pentecost

I suspect there are very few pastors who have not had a conversation like this one.  “Pastor, we raised our children in the church.  We tried very hard to bring them up in the faith.  But now that they’re grown and have children of their own, they want nothing to do with the church.”

Or this one.  “Pastor, how are we supposed to keep our teenager engaged at church?  He doesn’t like Sunday School.  He hates worship.  And he thinks youth group is a waste of time.”

Such conversations sometimes lead to reminiscing about those days, not so long ago, when stores were closed and the sports teams didn’t play on Sunday.  When I was growing up the schools didn’t schedule games on Wednesday nights because of Wednesday night prayer services.  It sure was nice when the culture cleared the table of everything else and said, “The only sanctioned activity right now is church, and we expect you to participate.”

But that’s not our world, and in a very real sense, the church finds itself in exile.  Church has been unceremoniously cast out from the center of culture.  Church is increasingly pushed to the margins and, all too often, to the margins of our own lives.  Some even proclaim that Church is dying. 

The prophet Ezekiel has a vision where he is brought out and set down in the midst of a valley, a valley filled with bones.  If we’re familiar with the bouncy, “Dem Bones” song, we may miss the horror of the scene.  It is a battlefield, perhaps even the scene of a massacre.  There was a slaughter so complete that no one was left to bury the victims.  The bodies were stripped of valuables by those who killed them, then left for buzzards and other scavengers.  Finally, the sun baked and bleached the bones.  There were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.

“Can these bones live?”  What a strange question.  Of course they cannot.  But at least the prophet has the good sense not to say so to God.  “O Lord Yahweh, you know.”

Last year a group of conservative, Presbyterian pastors wrote an open letter to our denomination expressing their fears about where we were headed.  The phrase in the letter that caught the most attention, that became a shorthand term for the letter, said that the PC(USA) is “deathly ill.”

A local pastor, Maryann McKibben Dana of Idylwood Presbyterian, recorded a video responds to this letter. (You can view it at her blog, The Blue Room.) 

What I Really Need

Today's gospel is one of those passages that has always made me a bit uncomfortable. People bring a paralyzed man to Jesus, presumably for healing. Jesus is impressed by this act of faith on their parts and responds, not by healing the man, but by saying, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven." Only after some biblical experts complain that Jesus is doing what only God can do does Jesus actually heal the man.  And so the healing seems motivated less by compassion and more as a proof.

Now I suppose that Jesus' compassion is more than evident in numerous other passages, and Matthew may simply be making a point that has little to do with Jesus' actual motivations. Nonetheless, I can't help wondering what Jesus thought this man most needed. Did he need forgiveness, restoration and peace with God, more than he needed to walk?

I also wonder about myself.  What is it that I most need from Jesus?  There are certainly times when I feel an acute need for restoration and forgiveness, but more often these are quite a ways down my needs list - or at least my wants list. 

When our children were very small, we often did not give them what they wanted because we knew it was not what they really needed. Recalling this reminds me of a time when Jesus told a rich man exactly what he most needed.  "Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, 'You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.' "

I know that's not what I want.  I hope that's not what I really need.

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Hi, My Name Is ____, and I'll Be Your Host

At my first meeting in my new presbytery, there was a time before the actual meeting for break-out groups on different topics. I went to one on hospitality led by Henry Brinton, pastor at Fairfax Presbyterian. He has a new book entitled The Welcoming Congregation: Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality.  During his presentation he said something along these lines. "Members must start to think of themselves as hosts rather than guests."

I have yet to meet the church congregation that did not describe itself as "warm and friendly," but that warmth and friendliness is often difficult for an "outsider" to encounter.  In every church I've been a member or served I've heard people share their experience of attending worship and standing around in a fellowship time afterwards while nary a soul speaks to or even acknowledges them. In a day when it was somewhat safe to assume that most people were church goers, this may have had little impact other than to turn away a potential member. But in a day when larger and larger percentages of our population have little or no church experience, such a lack of hospitality may well be how that person meets Christ. And even though our congregation may speak of a Christ who embraces the outsider, the outcast, and the marginalized, a guest in our worship may find scant evidence of that.

Brinton's comment about church members understanding themselves as hosts rather than guests, goes to the heart of what Christian hospitality is.  It is less about warmth and friendliness and more about realizing that each of us is called to be Christ to others. But all too often, the consumerist mindset of our culture has transformed the church. We go to get something, to be served. Staff and leaders are hosts who are supposed to wait on and care for those who come.

Today's reading from the letter to the Ephesian church has a famous line where the writer says the Jesus gifts each of us "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ." ("Saints" refers to all believers, not a select few.) The work of ministry is a communal task. Some of this work requires special gifts, but Christian hospitality is not one of them. Some of us are more outgoing than others, some of us can strike up a conversation with a stranger easier than others, but I dare say there is hardly a one of us who does not understand how to be a good host.

The problem of hospitality - or the lack of it - in many churches is not a lack of skills, it is a problem of perspective. If you are a churchgoer, when you head to your local congregation on a Sunday, do you understand yourself as going, at least in part, to engage in the work of ministry?

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Sticking with Eliab

Have you ever spent time in prayer, hoping to figure out what God wanted you to do, came up with some sense of what that was, and then sometime later realized you were completely wrong? That certainly has happened to me, although I suspect it is more common that I come up with what seems a very good idea with no input for God, then simply assume that God approves. I may even have enough arrogance to blame God when the plan goes awry.

In today's Old Testament reading, Samuel takes neither of the approaches I often do. To begin with, he doesn't want the task that God gives him, so it's certainly not his idea. And when he finally concedes to do as God wants, he sees a great plan coming together. Eliab, Jesse's oldest son, looks like an ideal candidate for king. He has all the qualifications.  Samuel is all set to say, "This is the one." But...

"But Yahweh said..." How did Samuel hear that "But?" I think I would have been so thrilled that a clear answer had arisen for what God had called me to do that I would have latched on to Eliab and never let go. I'm busy. I have a lot of things to get done. Eliab is better than anything I could have hoped for. No way I'm going to listen for a "But."

"Successful" congregations are often filled with "successful" people and pastors. And in our culture, successful mean getting things done. So I wonder how often we stick with Eliab and never meet David.

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What Is Faith?

In today's gospel reading, a Roman centurion comes to Jesus seeking healing for one of his servants.  When Jesus says he will come and heal him, the centurion insists that Jesus need only speak the word and not actually travel to the centurion's home.  Jesus is astounded and says, "Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith."

What is faith?  In American Christianity, faith has often come to mean believing the correct essentials about Jesus.  Certainly belief is part of being a Christian, but the faith of the Roman centurion is surely short in the belief department.  He may well believe nothing more than Jesus is a powerful healer.  This centurion may not have embraced any of Jesus' teachings, and he need not even be a monotheist in order to have faith that Jesus can heal.  Yet Jesus heaps praises on this man's faith.

What does faith mean to you.  Our "Christian nation" does not seem to have much faith in Jesus' call to turn the other cheek and seek the good of our enemy.  We clearly don't trust him when he calls us to non-violence and a willingness to suffer for others.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who fully trusted Jesus.  I certainly don't.  Jesus says plenty of things that I ignore or rationalize away because they just don't seem like a good idea to me.  They ask for greater faith than I seem able to muster.

Just how far do I trust Jesus? How about you?  What assessment would Jesus make about your or my faith?

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday: Whatever Happened to Matthias?

Preaching may be my favorite activity as a pastor, but it is nice to have Sundays when I don't preach.  To have a week where I'm not concerned with sermon or service liturgy or bulletin allows a focus on other things.  But I am too much the preacher not to think about the Sunday texts, and so today I am wondering.  Whatever happened to Matthias?

Matthias is the person chosen to take Judas' place as twelfth disciple.  He is chosen by lot (in our day we would say be chance) from two candidates.  This practice of rolling dice was done in faith that God was making the final choice.

This is Matthias' one and only appearance in the Bible.  I once heard a preacher use this as evidence that churches should be slow and deliberate in filling positions.  Clearly there was someone that would have made more of a splash than Matthias.

But as Diane so aptly pointed out in her sermon today, almost none of the other apostles are mentioned again following the choice of Matthias.  He joins seven other apostles who disappear from the story at this point.  Following the logic of that preacher I once heard, Jesus probably needed to be more careful in whom he called to follow him.

The fact is that the work of the Church is done mostly be anonymous individuals.  The fact that Matthias doesn't get a certificate of recognition anywhere in the New Testament has little bearing on whether or not he was a good choice.  And remembering that Jesus said, "Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave," the Church would probably have a lot more anonymous greats if we took Jesus seriously.

But I still sometimes wonder what happened to Matthias.  I guess I'll never know.  But given the improbable way that the Christian movement spread like wildfire across the Mediterranean world, I can only assume that his faithful witness played a significant role in the vitality and vigor of the early Church.  And I can't help but think that the Church today could use a lot more folks like Matthias.

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No Earthly Good

Today is The Ascension of the Lord, a feast day I was totally unaware of for much of my life.  (I barely knew about Advent and Lent as a child in a small, Southern, Presbyterian church.)  The reading from Acts for this day naturally features Jesus' ascension into heaven.  This occurs after he has instructed the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit.  When that happened, they would be his witnesses to all the earth.

And then Jesus elevators up into the clouds, leaving the disciples standing there, staring up at the sky.  I can only imagine that their mouths were hanging open and they looked incredibly stunned and confused.  In my imagination this must have gone on for a long time.  That explains the appearance of "two men in white robes."  These men or angels presumably show up both to end the heavenly gawking and to let the reader know something important.  They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

As a Southerner, I am rather fond of the comedy routines of the now deceased Jerry Clower.  If you're not Southern he is an acquired taste, but his stories of rural life in Mississippi are hilarious.  He was also a Southern Baptist who was very serious about his faith, a faith was also quite nuanced and exhibited a great deal of self-reflection.

I know Clower from his recordings, but I have a book of his that was given to me, a gift from my brother if I recall.  The book is a mix of his stories along with reflections and thoughts.  In one chapter, he recalls being taken to task by fellow Baptists for working in a nightclub that served alcohol. (That it was for an AA Convention had apparently escaped them.)  The title of the chapter is "Some People are so Heavenly Minded, They Ain't No Earthly Good."

I think Clower's title might be a very loose paraphrase of what the men in white robes tell those disciples staring up at the sky.  Jesus will return when he returns, they say.  In the meantime, your work is here, on earth.

One of the great failings of the Christian Church was losing sight of this.  All too often, we have acted like the work of the Church was getting people to heaven (or at least failed to correct this idea).  But Jesus says nothing of the sort to his followers.  They are to be his witnesses, to continue his work so that all the world experiences his healing and hope, his call to a new way of life, his dream of a world where God's will is done. 

Followers of Jesus, why do you dream of heaven?  You have earthly good you are called to do.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary as well as the Revised Common Lectionary readings for Sundays and feast days such as today.

A Dangerous God

The LORD is king; let the peoples tremble!
     He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; 
         let the earth quake!     (Psalm 99:1)
 
 Those of us wearing the label "progressive Christian" are sometimes a bit squeamish at the notion of God making folks tremble.  "God is love," we say.  Jesus loved people and helped them.  He didn't try to scare them.  And plus there are enough people running around talking about a God who has it out for anyone who doesn't have her beliefs nailed down just so.

However, as true as all this may be, we sometimes end up with a very safe, user-friendly, manageable God.  And even sweet, loving Jesus scared folks badly enough that they thought it necessary to kill him.

One a those paradoxes inherent to a deep, mature faith is the experience of a God who is loving, merciful, and filled with endless grace, and yet is awe inspiring, wild, dangerous, and not the least bit manageable.  No wonder Jesus said that following him meant losing yourself, allowing your life to be taken over by this strange new thing that begins to happen in Jesus.

In my own spiritual life, I'm often more than happy with a hint of God.  A wisp of spiritual warmth will do.  I'm not sure I want to meet a God with the power to transform me, to spin me around and drive me in some direction I'd prefer to avoid at all costs.  God is supposed to grease the skids of my comfortable, middle-class, pastoral enterprise, not startle me or unnerve me or demand that I change.

Yahweh is king; let the peoples tremble!  Actually, just the thought that God is actually in charge, rather than me, is enough to make me tremble just a bit.

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A Feminine God

In his meditation for today, Fr. Richard Rohr speaks of salvation depicted in feminine form.  (see Revelation 12)  Pregnant and in labor, this woman escapes "into the desert until her time."  He writes,

Could this be the time? It is always the time! The world is tired of Pentagons and pyramids, empires and corporations that only abort God’s child. This women-stuff is very important, and it has always been important, more than this white male priest ever imagined or desired! My God was too small and too male.

Do not put your trust in princes,
        in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
        on that very day their plans perish.  (Psalm 146:3-4)

Princes, Pentagons, pyramids, corporations, denominations, theologies, our ways of doing things, our ideologies, our heroes, ourselves; we have endless things to trust other than God.  I wonder if Rohr is right, and some of this problem is a male thing.  As he also notes in his meditation, Jesus came not exercising power in typical, male ways.  He was meek and lowly, come "to undo the male addiction to power."

 I wonder how much damage we do to faith, to the Church, because we imagine God in the form of princes, of Pentagons and generals and presidents, largely muscle-flexing, male images.  I wonder how often our faith and trust is in plans and institutions that we devise around such muscle-flexing images rather than in the Living God "who keeps faith forever," who comes meek and lowly, as a servant, in Jesus.


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