Sermon - Quiet Desperation

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Quiet Desperation

James Sledge                                                                                       July 22, 2012

Jesus and the disciples needed a little R and R.  They had scarcely had a moment’s rest for weeks.  It had been a nonstop preaching, teaching, and healing tour. The crowds were everywhere, pressing in on them, demanding access to Jesus.  Perhaps that is why Jesus had sent the disciples out in pairs on a tour of their own.  He needed surrogates to help in the face of so much demand.

When the disciples returned from their mission trips with tales of their own crowds and of teaching and healing many, everyone was exhausted.  But still people swarmed around.  And so Jesus said, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.” And like celebrities escaping the paparazzi, they got into a boat and slipped away.

But the crowds were as persistent as paparazzi.  Jesus and his entourage had not made their getaway completely undetected.  They had been spotted, the direction they were headed observed. Word quickly spread, and by the time Jesus and his crew came ashore at their deserted hideaway, a huge, clamoring crowd was waiting for them.

Time to make another break for it. Time to give the crowds the slip.  Send a couple disciples one way, a few more the other, then slip out the back.  Except that Jesus looks into the faces of the crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

How pathetic those folks must have been. They were so desperate that they chased after Jesus like pre-teen girls chasing Justin Bieber.  They were so desperate for help that they begged just to touch his clothes. The disciples could have made a fortune if they had known about mass marketing.  “Get you own piece of Jesus’ cloak for only $19.95, plus shipping and handling.”

I’m sure glad I’m not like those pitiful Galileans.  Sure, I’ve got my problems, but I’m not going to come unglued over them.  I don’t need to push and shove and beg.  I have things under control. I have resources as my disposal.  I’m not going to let myself get in a situation where I need to act like those folks who chased after Jesus, begging for him to help.

Feelings this way may be why the images out of New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina were so disturbing. 

Not Much to Say

I imagine there were people who expected that I would write something about the horrible shooting in Colorado yesterday, but the truth is I really had little to say.  Calls for prayer were everywhere, I and I didn't feel the need to echo those.  Facebook and Twitter were filled with comments and messages. Many faith based responses struck me as trite. Other struck me as almost cruel, insisting so forcefully on joyful hope that they seemed to deny people their grief.  And so I said nothing.

I don't have much more to say today.  I'm not at all certain how to salvage any "good" from this terrible and evil act. But neither am I comfortable simply chalking this up to how things are in a broken and fallen world.

There's a line in the old John Prine song, "Sam Stone," about a man who gets addicted to morphine after being wounded "in the conflict overseas." His life spirals downhill upon his return home, and he finally dies of an overdose.  The chorus to the song goes,

There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin' I suppose.
Little pitchers have big ears,
Don't stop to count the years,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios. 
Mmm....

 Sometimes I don't feel very far from such sentiments, and I simply rest in a quite, poignant sadness. But feeling I should say something, I looked at the lectionary readings for yesterday, and there were these verses from Paul.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

 I've often heard the line, "Vengeance is mine" quoted, but rarely with Paul's intent, rarely arguing that we are to love our enemies and leave all the vengeance stuff to God. Paul seems to think that evil can be defeated with good.  But evil seems amazingly resilient.  Can we really believe it will be overcome by good, by love?  Dare we believe it?

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Non-conformists

I've likely mentioned this before, but one of the classic 20th Century works in my faith tradition is a book by H. Richard Niebuhr entitled, Christ and Culture.  It speaks of several possible relationships between the two, "Christ against Culture, The Christ of Culture, Christ above Culture, Christ and Culture in Paradox," and finally argues for "Christ the Transformer of Culture." 

I'm not sure the Apostle Paul is thinking at all along Niebuhr's lines when he wrote the verses in today's epistle reading, but I think they underlie such thought. 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul says that being in Christ makes us non-conformists.  That might not lead directly to Niebuhr's conclusions. A non-conformist might choose simply to be "against culture."  But clearly a non-conformist has to have some sense of tension with any culture this side of the reign of God, the full-blown arrival of the Kingdom on earth.

Church congregations vary widely with regards to their level of non-conformity, but I don't think it unfair to say that on the whole, church congregations are a fairly conformist group.  My own Presbyterian tradition, which proudly claims both H. Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr, certainly has been very at  home in the culture for much of its time in America.  We Presbyterians have been referred to as the "Republican party at prayer" (a moniker we've shared with others). Granted, this referenced a Republican party no longer in existence, but I'm not sure the Republican party was very non-conformist in the 1950s either.

For much of American history, Mainline churches were viewed as cultural institutions that helped raise solid citizens who shared a common moral framework.  That did not necessarily prevent working to make changes in the culture, but it did pose problems.  Mainline churches often came late to movements to change society, drawn to things such as the Civil Rights movement by members who caught the fever for change outside their congregations.  (I should add that much of that fever was faith induced, but its origins tended to be non-Mainline churches.)

Of course we Mainline denominations have lost our special place in the culture.  There are still vestiges of it, especially in the South, but by and large the culture decided it doesn't need us as one of its key institutions for raising good, community citizens.  And perhaps this is nothing short of a gift from God, though one we don't yet know how to use.

We Presbyterians still love to pass resolutions with regards to the environment, the Middle East peace process, health care reform, gambling, immigration, and so on as though we spoke with some authority to the culture.  We still operate out of patterns that evolved when we were an important cultural institution.

I'm not sure I know just what patterns we should be embracing in this new time, although I suspect such patterns will require a lot more being "transformed by the renewing our your minds" at a congregational level. Congregations need to become places of personal transformation if we are to be non-conformist, transforming agents in the culture, in the world. 

And so that is what I'm struggling with myself right at this moment.  What sort of non-conformity am I being called to in Christ?  And what sort of transforming non-conformity needs to catch fire in this and other congregation?

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Becoming Least

Today's gospel reading with its famous Jesus quote, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me," is loved by many. But I'm not entirely sure what to do with this passage, sometimes called "The Judgment of of the Nations," other times "The Judgment of the Gentiles."  And my dilemma is related to those different titles.

When "the nations" are gathered before the Son of Man and separated "as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats," just who is it that is gathered?  For much of my life, I assumed it was everyone who was so gathered, but I'm now reasonably certain that is not the case.  In the original Greek of the gospel it is the ethnos who are gathered.  This word can mean "nations" but it more regularly is used to refer to the "Gentiles."

Matthew's gospel is a very Jewish gospel, and in Jewish thought, ethnos, Gentiles, nations, provides the ultimate us-them demarcation. Matthew seems here to use it just that way. The Gentiles, the goyim, the others, are gathered for judgment.  And in a surprising turn, they are judged worthy because they were kind to members of Jesus' family (presumably meaning his followers) who were in need.

When I think about the gospel passage from this point of view, it resists simple, moralistic understandings, but it is rich with interpretive possibility. If Jesus judges outsiders, not on their receptiveness to the Christian message but on their kindness to Christians in need, what does that say about Jesus' priorities?  And if this passage is about how Jesus judges outsiders, what does that say about how the Church should relate to outsiders?

Matthew's gospel ends with Jesus commanding his disciples (and the Church) to "make disciples of all ethnos," and so the Church is clearly charged to call people to lives of following Jesus. Yet Jesus says here that these ethnos won't necessarily be judged on how they respond to this disciple making enterprise.  In fact, putting ourselves at the mercy of the ethnos, thus giving them a chance to show us kindness, would seem to offer salvation every bit as much as the stereotypical evangelistic appeal.

As part of a denomination that is not terribly good at evangelism, and sometimes seems to dabble in it only out of some survival instinct, I wonder what it would look like for us to reach out to them in an entirely different way.   What would it mean for us to put ourselves at the mercy of them, to become the "least of these" who are dependent on others' kindness?

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Risky Business

I'm guessing that most church folks have at one time or another heard a sermon from today's gospel with an Aesop's Fable type moral.  "Use your talents wisely."  Trouble is, the parable of the talents is not about that at all.

The two slaves who doubled their master's investment most certainly had to engage in risky behavior.  They were no safe, prudent investors.  But the third slave was.  In Jesus' day, there were no reliable banks.  On top of that, the Bible has prohibitions against lending money at interest.  And so the third slave did the safe and prudent thing, the one thing that guaranteed he would not lose any of his master's money.

On a number of occasions, I've been part of groups that were discussing how to invest a church's endowment funds.  And I probably don't need to tell you that risky, speculative investments were not seriously considered. I don't disagree with such financial prudence, but the same sort of timidity often saturates all church planning and thinking.  Yet Jesus' parable lifts up risky behavior and says, "Well done, good and trustworthy slave."

I don't think that Jesus meant that we are never supposed to consider the risks before doing something. In fact, he tells a parable about doing just that.  But clearly Jesus thinks there will be times and places where we are called to risk it all for the sake of God's coming reign.  Jesus certainly did so, risking even his very life.

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Sermon audio - Dancing Naked

Sermon and worship audios also available at Falls Church Presbyterian site.

Acting on Predictions

One of the comic strips in this morning's paper featured a scraggly character holding a sign that said, "Repent! The world ends tomorrow."  The fellow is a stock character we've all seen many times, the crazy who has figured out the end is coming and wants everyone to be ready.

But if this is a fringe, stock figure, tamer versions of him are quite popular. On the one hand are those who presume they can do reasonably accurate predicting by deciphering a code for the book of Revelation.  And on the other hand are the larger number of folks who laugh at such attempts but do a different sort of predicting themselves, insisting that nothing will happen in any foreseeable future.  Things will go on pretty much as they are well beyond all of our lifetimes.  And both sorts of predicting are used to support behaviors, or the lack of them.

"Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour," says Jesus in today's parable.  Jesus says this sort of thing a number of times, but his followers seem not to have heard him. Some insist they will not be surprised by the kingdom's arrival because they will have seen it coming, but others insist they will not be surprised because it won't come.

 I have really been intrigued in recent years by the Emergent Church movement and its attempt to reclaim an emphasis on the Kingdom, on the promise of God's coming rule. This is certainly central to what Jesus teaches. He calls people to reorient their lives in preparation for a very different world whose arrival will take us by surprise. But somehow Christianity's focus shifted over the centuries to an off-world heaven rather than the transformed world Jesus proclaimed.

My own faith is probably more about personal solace, about hope and guidance for the day than it is about being transformed so that I conform to an as-yet-unseen, new world.  "It's gonna happen.  It's gonna happen," says Jesus.  Sure it is, but right now I need a nap.

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Sermon - Dancing Naked

2 Samuel 6:1-19

Dancing Naked

July 15, 2012                                                                           James Sledge

One of the things I still miss from my time in Raleigh, NC in the late 1990s is the campus radio station at N.C. State, WKNC.  It was student run station that played songs rarely on commercial radio.  One Sunday while driving home from church I turned on the station expecting the reggae program normally on at that time.  Instead I heard bouncy pop tune with a chorus that went, “He’s dancing naked!” over and over.  It was quite a toe-tapper, and I soon found myself singing along, “He’s dancing naked!”

Programing at WKNC was always dependent on whether the student DJ woke up and got there in time. The reggae DJ must have overslept because the “Rez Rock Show,” short for Resurrection Rock was still on in the reggae hour.  It was a Christian rock and roll program, and the Christian band singing “He’s dancing naked!” was singing about King David.

Actually David wasn’t completely naked.  Our scripture says that he had on an ephod, a little apron or loin cloth.  Dancing around with nothing but a loin cloth is hardly what one would expect from a king.  It’s embarrassing.  David’s wife certainly thinks so.  She looks down on David in disgust.  And if you read a little further than we did this morning, she tells David what a fine spectacle he made of himself and calls him “vulgar.”  Michal was the daughter of King Saul, so she had some knowledge of how royalty should behave – certainly not like David.

You have to admit, it’s pretty strange behavior for a king, a head of state.  (Think how people would react if President Obama suddenly ripped off his clothes at a state dinner and started offering prayers in his underwear.)  Had David taken leave of his senses? 

A little background may help. David is bringing the Ark of the Covenant, which held the Ten Commandments, into his new capital of Jerusalem. 

Getting Personal

On a handful of occasions, I have been surprised by someone who seems religiously progressive and open-minded as well as open to interfaith dialogue, who then says something like, "I feel bad for Jews who can't really have a personal relationship with God." The first time this happened, I got the impression that the person didn't actually know anyone who was Jewish, that her notion of a Jewish person was a mistaken caricature she had picked up somewhere.  Still, her remark startled me.

Today's morning psalm begins:

   I love the LORD, because he has heard
          my voice and my supplications.    Because he inclined his ear to me,
          therefore I will call on him as long as I live.    The snares of death encompassed me;
          the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
          I suffered distress and anguish.    Then I called on the name of the LORD:
          “O LORD, I pray, save my life!”
   Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
          our God is merciful.
   The LORD protects the simple;
          when I was brought low, he saved me. 

This hardly sounds like the words of someone for whom God is a distant concept or unapproachable deity. And if you read through the psalms, you will discover cries to God that many Christians wouldn't dare utter for fear of being irreverent,  or perhaps simply out of fear.  I've known many church folk who could never say, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" unless they were reading it from the Bible. But of course some ancient psalmist felt close enough to God to shake a fist and demand an answer from God long before Jesus borrowed the psalm while on the cross.

As a Christian, I certainly believe, among other things, that Jesus is a unique window on God, an encounter with God not available otherwise. But that is a far crying from saying no one else can draw close to God in a personal sense.  In fact, I'm intrigued by the question of what constitutes a personal relationship with God.  What allows someone to feel an intimacy with God, to engage God in a personal sense? 

It seems to me that any sort of personal relationship has a significant experiential component.  We don't really have relationships with people we've never met, talked to, or done things with. We have to respond to one another, react to one another, and so on.  You have to go through things together to really get to know someone, which is why the first year of marriage is often tumultuous. The couple is getting to know one another and working out a deep relationship with each other.

Does God inclined her ear to me?  I can't really know unless God has responded to me.  Does Jesus save me?  Hard to say unless I've experienced that in some way. Simply believing a few things as part of a contract that promises me heaven in some hereafter is not personal, and it's not a relationship.

I love the LORD.  My God, why have you forsaken me?  Exactly the sort of things you would expect someone who gets personal with God to say.

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Sermon audio - Constrained by What We Know

Audios of sermons and worship available at Fall Church Presbyterian website.

Favorite Hymns

     O sing to the LORD a new song;
          sing to the LORD, all the earth.  

(from Psalm 96)

Falls Church Presbyterian, where I recently became pastor, has a wonderful music program. I was blown away by the choir the first time I heard them, and they have continued to astound me. I've not yet had the chance to hear the children's choir, but if they are half as good as the youth, that will be a treat as well.  And the congregation itself seems to be very musical.  They throw themselves into the hymns and are deeply appreciative of the music program.  Many of them sit back down after the benediction at worship service end to listen to the organ postlude.

All this is a preface to saying that our denomination has a new hymnal coming out.  Like all new hymnals, it will have some wonderful new additions and some head-scratchers, although from what I've seen of it, this one looks better than most. Given what I've observed about music in this congregation, I'm assuming that we will be getting new hymnals sooner rather than later.  But I know that will not be the case everywhere. There are still plenty of congregations who have not bought the "new" hymnal that came out over 20 years ago.

When I arrived at my first congregation in 1995, they had bought those "new" hymnals not terribly long before I came.  And there was a sizable contingent of folks who were quite vocal in their dislike of it. Not only had it messed with lyrics to make them more gender neutral ("God of our Fathers" became "God of the Ages"), but it had removed beloved favorites such as "Onward Christian Soldiers." (That it had added old favorites such as "How Great Thou Art" and new favorites such as "I Danced in the Morning" was conveniently overlooked.)

Christian faith looks forward to the new.  In Christ we become new creations. We await a new heaven and new earth. The Bible concludes with the promise, "See, I am making all things new."  Well that's great, but don't change any of the songs.

In truth, I think that people's attachment to songs and hymns actually speaks to a spiritual power in music that is rarely present in words alone.  Music impacts us more deeply than the neck up religious experience that dominates Presbyterian worship.  It may be the one part of our worship that touches us deep down in our soul.  No wonder people sometimes react so viscerally over a new hymnal.

Perhaps this sort of reaction speaks to a spiritual hunger that has not always found sustenance in our worship. And perhaps fights over music and hymnals are sometimes proxy battles that are really about the fear of losing a personal, spiritual connection in worship.  If so, how do we address that directly so that we can joyfully sing the old favorites and sing to the LORD a new song?

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God Is for Us... and for Them

A lot of people in the Presbyterian Church USA are still in pain with regards to last week's General Assembly.  The defeat of a proposed change in language about marriage - from a contract between "one man and one woman" to a contract between "two people - was a bitter pill for many.  This is especially so for many younger members.  Young Adult Advisory Delegates and Theological Student Advisory Delegates at the General Assemble supported the measure by 78 and 82% respectively, and I have to imagine that many of them feel that "the old guard" is thwarting the fresh winds of the Spirit.

Of course there are other people of deep faith who feel the Assembly made the correct decision. I don't agree with them, but that is hardly a sure fire indicator that they, unlike me, ignore God's will.  However, it is clear that both side cannot be right with regard to God's will. Regardless of how faithfully we have approached this issue, how diligently we have listened for God, at least one of the "sides" in this issue has misunderstood what God is saying.

And here is where Christian faith can get very difficult.  When we feel convinced that we are indeed doing as God desires, that we are responding to the Spirit's movement, it can be very tempting to view those who oppose us as opponents of God in some way.  And if they are against God then no doubt God is against them. "If God is for us, who is against us?" writes the Apostle Paul. Yes, God is for us, but surely not for them.

I don't for a moment think it unimportant correctly to discern God's will, and there most certainly are consequences for getting it wrong. But the new thing God is doing in Jesus is not rooted in our getting it right. It is rooted in "while we still were sinners, Christ died for us." In Christ, God is for even those who are against God.

And more than that, God is not thwarted by our failures.  God is not thwarted even by concerted resistance to God's will.  God's transforming love is at work, and gospel logic does not reckon victory or defeat by the same standards we use. Failure, set-back, and defeat do not always mean what they seem.

Surely Jesus' greatest moment of testing and doubt was the cross.  This was total and absolute failure.  It was absolute triumph for those who resisted God's will.  Or so it seemed. So it seemed.

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Sighs Too Deep for Words

One of the difficulties of entering a congregation as a new pastor is the relational nature of congregations and pastoring.  But as the new pastor, I don't really have any deep relationship with church members at first. And, to a degree I had not anticipated, I find myself grieving the loss of relationships from eleven years in a previous congregation. These two things seem to conspire to emphasize the sense of being an outsider.

An outsider doesn't see things the same way insiders do. This is not a matter of one viewpoint being the correct one.  It is simply a different perspective. Things that are cozy and familiar to insiders may seem off-putting or strange to an outsider, just as the treasured things of the outsider may strike the insiders as strange or worse.  Compounding this is a natural tendency to become focused on those things that seem strange or off-putting.  And so an outsider pastor can seem an overly critical guest in the congregation while that congregation may seem an impenetrable other to the pastor.

I must confess that at times I find myself worried that I come across as much more critical than I mean to be in my new position. Yett the very same time, I find myself a little lost, like a college freshman who just arrived on a huge, urban university campus from a small town high school.

I assume that such feelings are not all that unusual, and that time will rectify much. (Most college freshmen eventually figure out their new surroundings.) Still, I suspect that my current situation has a lot to do with how a line from today's epistle reading grabbed me. "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."

Sighs too deep for words. That sounds like the perfect prayer right now. Much of my present anxiety is about what I should do. What should I focus on? What should I change? What should I emphasize? What should I encourage? What should I leave alone? How should I allocate time and energy? Etc, etc, etc. So much anxiety about doing, but God easily gets lost in such busyness. Such busyness makes it difficult to "Be still, and know that I am God!"

The Spirit helps us. The Spirit comes to my weakness. Sighs too deep for words; sighs too deep for words.  Come, Holy Spirit, in sighs too deep for words.

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Sermon - Constrained by What We "Know"

Mark 6:1-13

Constrained by What We "Know"

James Sledge                                                                                       July 8, 2012

Some years ago, the PBS show Frontline did a four hour long documentary entitled, “From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians.”  I enjoyed it, and it was well done, although its scholarship was largely from the “Jesus Seminar” school of thought.  But my recalling it today has nothing to do with its merits.  It’s that title, “From Jesus to Christ.”  The title implies that the person Jesus and the religious figure labeled Christ are not always one in the same. 

You don’t necessarily need to be a biblical scholar to wonder about Jesus’ identity.  Simply read the four gospels.  (By the way, they’re not very long and were originally meant to be read at one sitting.  Try it sometime.)  If you read Matthew and then read Luke; or if you read Mark and then read John, you will see that the Jesus in one gospel has much in common with the Jesus in another.  But you will also see that there are significant differences.  And this is no modern discovery. Christians down through the centuries have addressed the topic, “The harmony of the Gospels,” grappling with the different pictures of Jesus that emerge there.

However, that the idea of recovering a correct, historical picture of Jesus is a modern idea and, I think, a misguided one.  The gospel writers did not share our modern, scientific notions of truth being a matter of getting all the facts right.  They were not writing history as we understand it.  Those gospels were not used to tell unbelievers about Jesus. They were not evangelical tools.  They were written for communities of faith who already knew the story of Jesus.  They did not so much attempt to tell people what happened, but rather to make sense of what happened.  As the author of Luke says in his introduction, the gospel is written “so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

But regardless of the New Testament writer’s original intent, the varied and different images and concepts of Jesus that people construct from the Bible are a problem.  Consider the amazingly different faith based stances that Christians take.  Some followers of Jesus are complete pacifists, taking very seriously Jesus’ command to love even your enemy and to offer your left cheek when struck on the right.  But some churches have held special worship services where members are encouraged to bring their concealed weapons, where self-defense is lauded as a God given right, and gun regulation proclaimed the work of the devil. 

It seems there are a number of very different versions of Jesus floating around. 

Demographic Harbinger?

I just finished watching the debate and vote from my denomination's General Assembly. The hot topic today was an attempt to change the definition of marriage from between one man and one woman to between two people. Suffice to say that there was a fair amount of parliamentary maneuvering; that and debate that could often be characterized as mean-spirited and hurtful. But in the end, the motion to change the definition of marriage failed by a close margin, 48-52%.

The church headlines will be about that vote, but there were other votes. Our General Assembly has Advisory Delegates. There are four categories: Missionary, Ecumenical, Young Adult, and Theological Students. They vote prior to the vote that really counts, and these votes "advise" the regular commissioners. The ecumenical delegates are from other denominations so they don't say much about our denomination, and the missionaries are a pretty distinct niche group. But the other two groups are the future members and pastors of our denomination, and their vote was quite different from that 48-52%.

78% of the Young Adults favored changing the definition of marriage, as did 82% of the Theological Students. Clearly there is a substantial difference of opinion between younger members and the denomination at large. I don't suppose this is all that startling. Religious institutions tend to be conservative entities, prone to preserve traditions and practices. And young people tend to be more embracing of change. But they will eventually mellow and begin to feel more comfortable in their institutional faith. Or will they?

I'm inclined to think that the "old guard" is fighting a losing battle, although I can see two different ways to lose. One way to lose is for enough of the old guard to age out, allowing the views of the younger members to become a majority. But another way to lose is for a well established trend to continue and even accelerate. More and more younger people may simply leave the church. Then the old guard remains the majority, but of a disappearing church.

Is the huge disparity in votes between the younger advisory delegates and the, for the most part, older regular commissioners a demographic harbinger of some sort? I tend to think so, but I also think it points to a deeper problem. This vote disparity mirrors our culture at large. The divisions on this issue are very much like the divisions in our nation, right down to young people being much more open to same sex marriage. But aren't we who are "in Christ" supposed to be different from "the world?"

Watching the debates this afternoon, I saw much of the same partisan nastiness that has come to mark American politics. Perhaps my disappointment in those who were hellbent on their side "winning" obscured my view of those who faithfully tried to seek God's will. But still, I fear that we do not look much like the body of Christ, nor do we offer much in the way of witness or hope to the world. And perhaps that's the most worrisome harbinger of all.

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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