Doing Justice

The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
    he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted,
    and binds up their wounds.   Psalm 147:2-3

Our congregation has a ministry called Welcome Table that offers a free meal along with gift cards for a local grocery store. Currently this happens on the third Wednesday of each month, but we will add a second Wednesday in September. We are going to cut back on the number of gift cards, however. The numbers have begun to overwhelm our resources.

My volunteer slot at today's Welcome Table proved to be a repeat of last month. I had to tell people the bad news that we were at the building's capacity. If they waited for an hour or so, we would give them some food, but we had used up all our gifts cards, 290 of them.

I began to get more and more depressed as I told person after person, many with young children, that they could not come in. I'm sure that some had been counting on a few of those $10 gift cards to get groceries for the coming week. Most of them were very understanding, but I'm sure that many were brokenhearted. According to the psalmist, that the sort of thing that stirs God, and so surely it should stir God's people, the body of Christ.

The existence of Welcome Table says that the people of Falls Church Presbyterian have been stirred to action by this situation. (This ministry actually began during the interim time between my predecessor's retirement and my arrival.) The huge numbers of hungry and homeless in the very well-to-do area has moved people to do something, and Welcome Table is a tremendous ministry. It is, however, only a band-aid. It does nothing to solve the underlying problems that lead to the huge numbers of people who need such assistance.

Diane (the other pastor here) and I were talking the other day about the ministry of the Church, speaking beyond just this congregation. She noted that the Church is called to ministries of compassion such as Welcome Table, but we are also called to ministries of justice that address systems that lead to poverty and suffering.

Unfortunately, it is much easier to do compassion. Ministries of compassion are immediate. There is an obvious good that is done, and doing it often feels good. Justice is much more complicated. It usually means taking on entrenched systems, speaking truth to power, and long efforts that do no bear immediate fruit. Almost everyone will compliment ministries of compassion, as they well should. But people will often criticize ministries of justice. I wonder if it isn't at such moments that we truly experience what Jesus meant we insisted we must take up our cross. Jesus says that following him will cause others to hate us and work against us. Never is that more true than when attempting to doing ministries of justice that challenge and change the world around us.

As someone who was raised in a comfortable, suburban setting and is totally at home in a consumer culture, there is something in me that chafes at the notion that following Jesus will lead to personal discomfort and suffering. That somehow feels backwards. Jesus is supposed to make my life better.

To the degree that I am in any way typical, it's no wonder that our country has lots of shelters and food pantries, but struggles to tackle the deeper problems of affordable housing, education, living wages, and more. I do, however, take some comfort in the statement by Martin Luther King, Jr. one that seems to reflect Jesus' teaching on God's in-breaking kingdom. "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."



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Softening Jesus' Image

Maybe I'm just in a phase, or perhaps a rut, but I keep bumping into images of Jesus and God that run counter the benign, sweet and kind image that is more prevalent. These less benign pictures found their way into last Thursday's blog post and yesterday's sermon. Today I read the lectionary passage from Luke where Jesus "cleanses" the Temple. It's a little more of an angry picture of Jesus as well, but that's not what caught my eye. Instead it was where the chief priests and scribes begin to plot against Jesus, "for they were afraid of him."

They were afraid of him. How often does that get said about Jesus? I've known my share of "Christians" who were genuinely frightening, but I really don't think of Jesus as much of a threat.

There is gubernatorial race underway in Virginia right now, and that has prompted some articles about the different tactics and strategies employed to win primaries compared to general elections. The need to "play to the base" often requires more strident rhetoric, but when the general election comes around, a broader electorate comes into view. Then the political strategists advise softening the image from the primaries. Don't want to appear frightening to any of those undecided, middle-of-the-road voters.

As one who is often bothered by the extremes of both left and right, I'm happy to see candidates move toward the middle. But such moves sometimes make it hard to know where a candidate really stands. I don't think that was much of a problem with Jesus, at least not the one in the Bible. But the Church has done its share of softening Jesus' image over the years.

Jesus has some pretty uncomfortable things to say about wealth, about absolute loyalty to his cause, about loving your enemies, and about a willingness to suffer. But down through history, Jesus' image-makers in the Church have felt the need to make Jesus compatible with empire and war, slavery and oppression, colonialism and genocide, the American dream and suburbia, and on and on. In the end, about the only thing distinctive about Jesus is that you're suppose to believe he died for you in order to get a heavenly reward. Hardly something that sounds very frightening.

Considering the domesticated, nationalized, softened, etc. images of Jesus that the Church has peddled over the years, a lot of folks in a lot of church congregations might be downright terrified if the real Jesus ever showed up.

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Sermon video: Cardboard Jesus

Audios of sermons and worship available on FCPC website.

Sermon video: To Glorify God

Sermon from from August 11.
Audios of sermons and worship can be found on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Cardboard Jesus

Luke 12:49-56

Cardboard Jesus

James Sledge                                                    August 18, 2013

In your mind, what does Jesus look like and act like? What sort of mental image do you have of him. Diane commented to me a while back that we don’t really have many pictures of Jesus around FCPC. I’m not sure what, if anything, that means, but I doubt it means that no one has an image of Jesus. So what is yours?

Growing up, I suppose that my image of Jesus came from Sunday School artwork. Considering how long ago that was, that meant a very European looking Jesus. Maybe not blond haired and blued eyed, but close. As I grew older, I shifted away from that image, and mine continues to evolve.

I went online and looked at the depictions of Jesus I found there, from famous masterpieces to modern cartoons. This vast array of images looked very different, but they tended to have a common feature. Jesus looked kind and gentle in the vast majority. There were some pictures of a suffering of stoic Jesus. There were some of a laughing Jesus, but almost none of a frustrated or angry Jesus. I found one picture of Jesus arm-wrestling with the devil, but he still had a sweet, kindly expression on his face.

Perhaps your mental image is different, but prevailing images of a sweet and kindly Jesus make today’s gospel reading a little jarring. “You hypocrites!” Jesus yells at the crowd. Jesus isn’t talking to opponents, to people trying to trip him up or trap him. He’s talking to the people who have come out to hear him, the people who are attracted to him and want to know him. But he seems beyond frustrated with them. And his words about being a source of division rather than peace don’t make this picture of Jesus any more palatable.

A Little Frightened of God

The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice;
     let the many coastlands be glad!  
Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;
     righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. 
Fire goes before him,
     and consumes his adversaries on every side.
His lightnings light up the world;
    the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the LORD,
     before the Lord of all the earth.               Psalm 97:1-5

Despite the mention of rejoicing and gladness in the opening verse, the God depicted here is a little frightening. Clouds and thick darkness, consuming fire, lightening that causes the earth itself to tremble, and mountains melting like wax... it all sounds a bit scary.

A scary God is not real popular these days. Many of us who are Christians are downright apologetic about passages in the Bible where God is frightening, and I can't begin to count how many times I've heard someone explain that "fear of the Lord" means awe rather than actual fear. Well... perhaps.

When I look back on the adults who I admired and who were most formative for me growing up, they did instill at least a bit of fear in me. That includes parents, and especially one coach in high school. I would have done absolutely anything for him, and I knew he cared deeply for me. But he still scared me more than a little.

I don't know that my experience is universal. I do know parents who do everything they can so as not to give their children any cause to fear them. Usually this takes the form of being friends with their children. I know that such efforts are done out of love, but very often, such children are not only horribly behaved but also miserable. I'm not speaking in favor of corporal punishment and such, but even the most gentle discipline will evoke respect and a small measure of fear in a small child.

I take it as a given that God is quite a bit more beyond my comprehension than a parent is to a two year old. And so any god that doesn't evoke respect, awe, and yes, some measure of fear, is likely no god at all, certainly not the God of the Bible.

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The One Thing That's Needed

The violence and bloodshed in Egypt today is horrific. The last report I saw spoke of chaos with nearly 300 deaths, a number that seems likely to climb. When the so-called "Arab Spring" began over two years ago, many had hopes for something new and better in the Middle East, but such hopes have gone largely unfulfilled.

What went wrong? I'm no expert on the Middle East or foreign affairs. There are clearly many others who can better explain the historical, cultural, sociological, and systemic roots behind the depressing situation in the news today. But I do feel qualified to say something about the one thing that is needed.

That one thing is at the root of many troubles and problems in everything from personal relationships to national and international events. Almost all individuals, and all institutions, organizations, movements, governments, nations, and so on have at least one thing, often many things, that they cannot even contemplate giving up. The very idea of losing it creates tremendous anxiety and fear.

I moved to the DC area a little over a year ago, and I've never lived in a more anxious place. There are a lot of powerful and influential people and institutions around here, and there are even more people who work with and for them. And like the wealth of the man whom Jesus speaks to in today's gospel, power and influence and importance are terribly difficult to give up. And wanting to hang on to them or to acquire them make people act in ways that are toxic to good relationships, to building community, to creating trust, or bringing hope and peace.

Diana Butler Bass, who lives in this area as well, once commented on her Facebook page about returning from conferences in other parts of the country where things seemed much more civil and genteel. Her status update spoke of returning from the land of "Aloha" to the land of "Get out of my way, I'm more important than you." And I think that about sums up the anxiety I see here.

As I've too often experienced through my own actions, anxious people behave badly. That's why neither political party can stop trying to maintain whatever power it has even if the country suffers as a result. It's why nations do ridiculous things that lead to wars when their sovereignty or "national interests" feel like they have been threatened in some way. And it's why the Egyptian military felt it had to clamp down on protestors so its power and control would not be jeopardized.

I wonder what Jesus would say to Egyptian generals or Democratic and Republican officials or CEOs of large corporations or feuding spouses if any of them were to ask him what it was they needed for eternal life, good life, a better world, peace.  I suspect he'd say that they needed to let go of the one thing they are most terrified of losing.

And so we just keep doing things our way. Never mind what Jesus said. Perhaps that's why Jesus, in another place in Mark's gospel, quotes the prophet Isaiah. "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."

What's the "one thing" Jesus would say that you need?

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Too Busy to Listen

When I first began writing this blog, it grew out of my own spiritual practices. Reflections that came to me as I read the Daily Lectionary and spent time in prayer formed the basis of most blog post, and, to a large degree, continue to do so. But "going public" with these reflections changed them on some level. Not only are there some personal things that I'd rather not share, but just knowing that others may read them changes the process.

Just as teaching and preaching are often the most beneficial to the one preparing to preach or teach, writing this blog often opens my eyes to something or provides me with a helpful spiritual insight. But the blog also intrudes on my time of reading scripture and praying. Too often, I find myself thinking about what I might say in the blog as I am reading the lectionary. I am formulating my post even as I read, as well as when I "pray," and as I imagine many of you have discovered, it is quite hard to listen when you are talking. That's just as true for the mental talking I find myself doing as I read.

When I read today's gospel about Jesus welcoming the children and saying, "Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” I found myself thinking about how I would need to explain that children were viewed very differently today than in Jesus' day. People might not hear Jesus anything like the people in the day of Mark's gospel without knowing that. But of course I had stopped listening at that point. I was so busy thinking about explaining what Jesus meant that I wasn't actually hearing him at all.

One of the great spiritual discoveries for me was learning the ancient practice of lectio divina, a prayerful reading of scripture that does not so much seek to understand it as to hear where and how it is speaking to me at that particular moment. It is so different from traditional Bible study or from methods of exegesis I learned in seminary to help me dig into a passage of scripture. Those have their place, but they also can sometimes encourage me to hurry to an understanding rather than simply to listen.

I read somewhere that the typical attention span of American adults is less than 30 seconds. That probably explains the way my mind can wander even in the midst of reading a passage from the Bible. But how are we to hear God speak to us if we cannot listen for more than 30 seconds without beginning to formulate our opinions and responses, or just letting our attention wander off somewhere else?

Sometimes the greatest spiritual gift I can receive is the ability to listen. That is why both lectio divina and contemplative prayer have been so helpful to me. (They were also something of a revelation to me in that I was unfamiliar with either a decade ago.) And my own spiritual life never gets so askew as when I am "too busy" for such practices, "too busy" to listen.

What is it that helps you to listen? What is it that keeps you from listening? Lord, help us to listen.

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Libertarianism, Freedom, and Servanthood

On today's Renovaré Facebook page, a status update included this quote from Martin Luther. "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all." I suspect that this statement is befuddling to many, but it probably feels totally true to those who've experienced what Luther was talking about.

Unfortunately, American Christianity has often been marked by an embrace of the "perfectly free" but not the "servant of all" side of faith. Thus it is not unusual to hear Christians in America insist that no one can tell them how to live out their faith. Only those habits that feel right to them are valid. Indeed some Christians sound as if Jesus' message was primary message was one of personal freedom and libertarianism.

Today's gospel reading surely sits uneasily with such notions. Jesus makes perfectly clear that following him is a narrow path, one the from which the world frequently tries to deflect us. That is why Jesus uses graphic imagery to demand that we be careful about those things that would trip us up, as well as things that might trip up "little ones," presumably referring to people who are new to faith. What Jesus describes here is the absolute antithesis of unbounded personal freedom. Rather it is a path of great discipline for the sake of others and for ourselves.

In The Presbyterian Hymnal on my desk there's an old hymn entitled "Make Me a Captive, Lord." The verses are by George Matheson, and here are a couple of them.

Make me a captive, Lord,
And then I shall be free;
Force me to render up my sword,
And I will conqueror be.

My will is not my own
Till Thou hast made it Thine;
If it would reach a monarch's throne,
It must its crown resign.

I don't know that anyone can be convinced of the truth of such words. It is a gift of God's grace, an experiencing of the new creation we become in Christ. But it does not help create a climate open to such transformation when religion in America is so often hyper-personalized and individualized, when it celebrates personal freedom for the sake of personal freedom. I've even heard people proclaim that their right to bear arms and defend themselves is a part of their Christian freedom.

One way to talk about being "free" is to speak of being able to do whatever it is I want to do. Such freedom is only problematic when what I want to do is problematic. A classic understanding of God's grace, going all the way back to Augustine, is that God transforms our wills so that we want to do what God wants. This is pure freedom, but it looks totally different from freedom where our will has not been made God's own.

"A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all." I think Luther really knew what he was talking about.

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Sermon: To Glorify God

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 (Luke 12:32-40)

To Glorify God

James Sledge                                                                                       August 11, 2013

Being a pastor, it should come as no big surprise that I have lots of books on worship. One of them opens with this little anecdote.

One Sunday morning, a mother went upstairs to her son’s room to wake him for church.  Slowly opening the door, as it softly squealed in protest, she said, “Dear, it’s time to get up.  It’s time to go to church.”  The son grumbled and rolled over.  Ten minutes later his mother again went up, opened the door, and said, “Dear, get up.  It’s time to go to church.”  He moaned and curled up tighter under the blankets, warding off the morning chill.  Five minutes later she yelled, “Son! Get up!”  His voice muffled by the blankets, he yelled back, “I don’t want to go to church!”  “You have to go to church!” she replied.  “Why?  Why do I have to go to church?” he protested.

The mother stepped back, paused, and said, “Three reasons.  First, it’s Sunday morning, and on Sunday mornings we go to church.  Second, you’re forty years old, and you’re too old be having this conversation with your mother.  Third, you’re the pastor of the church.”[1]

The author, a Presbyterian pastor, shared the story to speak of the ambivalence many pastors feel about worship. I’ve noticed over the years that even those pastors who love preaching can still have very mixed feelings about worship. And I read somewhere that many pastors derive a kind of perverse pleasure from reading today’s scripture in worship. That’s rather odd when you think about it, what with pastors leading worship and all. But I suppose that most pastors worry at times about being complicit in worship that God doesn’t particularly appreciate; or worse,  complicit in worship that God hates.

Those of you who’ve been around the Presbyterian Church for long enough may recall the catechism that used to be taught to children and youth. The Shorter Catechism, which I received in a little pink booklet as a fourth grader, begins with a question about “the chief end of man.”  Written in the mid-1600s, the language is a bit dated, so I’ll paraphrase. Q. 1. What is the primary purpose of human beings? A. Humanity’s primary purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.

From a Presbyterian perspective, I think it’s kind of hard to argue with that. It makes perfect sense that Christians who have experienced God’s love in Jesus would want to live in ways that glorified God. But just what does it mean for us to glorify God? What does that entail?

No doubt worship is a part of this. The very term “worship service” speaks of our worship as serving God in some way. Which is not to say that God necessarily appreciates such attempts, not if today’s scripture is any guide.

Talking about Hunger to Hungry People

Today's gospel reading is Mark's account of the Transfiguration, where Jesus' appearance is transformed and Moses and Elijah join him for a little conversation, all in front of an awestruck Peter, James, and John. The three disciples are terrified and unsure what they should do. That must be why Peter grasps for something from the religious playbook. “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

These "dwellings" or booths would have likely been some sort of religious memorial to commemorate the event. Had Peter actually constructed them, they undoubtedly would have become shrines at some later date, and people would have come to worship there.

There is a religious tendency that wants to mark things and label them as significant. Then we can venerate them, meditate on them, talk about them, explain their significance, and so on. Sometimes this sort of tendency gets in the way of simply experiencing the thing. That seems to be the case for Peter. His desire to do something religious interrupts and gets in the way of the actual event. Fortunately Jesus, Moses, Elijah, and God all seem to ignore him.

I thought about the way our religious stuff sometimes gets in the way when I read Richard Rohr's meditation today. (I hate for this blog to sound like an ad for Fr. Rohr, but he has become a real spiritual guide for me.) He speaks of about the Lord's Supper or Eucharist and how we spend so much time trying "to 'understand' and explain presence. As if we could." He goes on to add, "Despite all our attempts to define who is worthy and who is not worthy to receive communion, our only ticket or prerequisite for coming to Eucharist is hunger. And most often sinners are much hungrier than the so-called saints."

The world is full of hungry people, both literally as well as figuratively or spiritually. And sometimes we religious sorts are more practiced at talking about  hunger than actually doing anything about it. I wonder if those who say they are "spiritual but not religious" are saying something about being hungry but not interested in talking about it.

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So When Did You Receive the Holy Spirit?

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you first joined the church? That's a question no one has ever asked me, nor have I ever heard it asked of anyone else. But Paul asks such a question in today's reading from Acts.

I'm not sure what prompts Paul to ask. The persons in question are called both "disciples" and "believers." We are told nothing about them that would indicate any sort of deficiency. Did Paul ask this a lot, or was there something about these particular believers that gave Paul concerns?

If you went around and asked this of everyone in a church congregation, what sort of response would you expect? In my own church experience, I can't imagine people saying they had never heard of the Holy Spirit, as those believers tell Paul. The congregations I've been a part of used the Apostles' Creed with some regularity, and so people hear about the Spirit frequently. But I would not be at all surprised if quite a few people answered with the same "No" that Paul heard.

I have heard the Spirit mentioned in Trinitarian formulas all my life. I've heard the story of the Spirit coming at Pentecost countless times. But as I was growing up in the church, I heard very little about the Spirit connected to the personal experience of anyone I knew. In the brand of Presbyterianism I grew up with, we pretty much left the Spirit to Pentecostals and other more "enthusiastic" sorts.

I'm not sure that the Enlightenment and the Holy Spirit play very well together. The Enlightenment is all about logic and reason, and Enlightenment forms of Christianity tend to explain and make sense of Christian faith. It isn't clear what to do with the unpredictable wind of the Spirit, swirling around where it may, stirring things up and prodding people to do things that don't always seem very reasonable or logical.

I think one of the inherent problems with liberal Christianity, a child of the Enlightenment if there ever was one, is a tendency to proclaim a belief system that is sometimes more philosophy than faith. It is a well thought out and helpful philosophy in many ways, but it may not really be alive. It may not be inhabited by the breath of God.

Did you receive the living breath of God when you became part of the church? If not, when did you? And if you didn't receive the Spirit, or if you just aren't sure, what does that mean?

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Sermon video: Trembling Home

Audios of worship and sermon available on FCPC website.

False Selves and Slamming Doors

Today's meditation from Richard Rohr begins with this. "We don’t teach meditation to the young monks. They are not ready for it until they stop slamming doors. — Thich Nhat Hanh to Thomas Merton in 1966"

Rohr is talking about how religion and spiritual practices can be places where the "false self" our egos construct can hide. All faiths and spiritualities are misused and abused by people who employ them to justify and support who they already are and what they want. One of the reason religion and faith is responsible for so much trouble in the world is that its adherents have very often not experienced the move Rohr is recommending, the experience the Apostle Paul describes as, "our old self was crucified with (Jesus)."

I know that in my own attempts at spirituality, very often I'm after spiritual validation and reassurance. Less often am I looking to be transformed, to have my true self uncovered. Despite the fact that Jesus insists on the need to deny oneself (I assume he's speaking of that false self),  I and many others vigorously protect and defend that self. And we who are practiced in the arts of faith and the church have learned how to use these in this project.

This morning's psalm opens, "For God alone my soul waits in silence." Perhaps I might restate this, "For God alone my self waits in silence," but in truth that's more rarely the case than I like to admit. More often, I want to enlist God in supporting and blessing what my self has decided. And on the corporate level, this tendency is even more problematic. God gets enlisted in the self-protective impulses of groups, organizations, movements, and nations. And there is little more dangerous than an ego-driven group, movement or nation that thinks God is on its side.

For God alone... Perhaps I could use this as a corrective mantra, spoken anytime I am feeling anxious about plans or ambitions I have, anytime I feel tempted to slam a door.

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Sermon: Trembling Home

Hosea 11:1-11

Trembling Home

James Sledge                                                                                       August 4, 2013

Nowadays they’re as likely to be on our smartphones or tablets as they are to be in an actual album with real pages, but wherever it is they’re located, most of us have had the experience of thumbing through a photo album. We’ve done a little reminiscing via photographs, have looked back and remembered a time when things were different, when we looked different, when the future perhaps looked different.

Now that both of my children are officially adults, having finished college and gotten jobs, it’s a bit more poignant for me to view pictures of them as babies, toddlers, or children. Different photos can evoke very different feelings, feelings of warmth, joy, and  happiness, as well as feelings of sadness and regret. On the child rearing front, Shawn and I were quite fortunate. We experienced the typical difficulties, but our daughters arrived at adulthood without a huge number of missteps on their part our ours. There were ups and downs, but still, things seem to have turned out pretty well.

On that count I feel quite lucky because I know that is not always the case. Things can and do go horribly awry in the course of raising a child. For those who’ve had such an experience, thumbing through those photos must be a great deal more difficult than it is for me. And when a child or parent has gotten caught up in their bad choices, and when this has led to estrangement, looking back at pictures from before all that, at a time of happiness, of great hope and promise for the future, must be terribly painful.

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son… it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms… I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

God thumbs through the divine photo album and is distraught. God has loved and tenderly cared for Israel. The picture Hosea paints seems feminine and mothering. God has lavished Israel with affection and done everything a parent possibly could, but Israel has been a rebellions child from the beginning. The more God called, the more they went the other direction. They seemed hell bent on self-destruction and oblivious to all that God had done for them.

How Things Got Like This

Save me, O LORD, from my enemies;
       I have fled to you for refuge. Teach me to do your will,
       for you are my God. 
Let your good spirit lead me
       on a level path.                 Psalm 143:9-10

Though I've not lived there in over a decade, I think of myself as a North Carolinian. So I have been distressed at some of the goings on in my homes state as the legislature has sought to curtail funding for education and make voting more difficult, along with other things that have greatly damaged NC's reputation as a "progressive southern state."

I try to make room in my worldview for a wide range of political ideas, and I have often times discovered some treasured position of my own to be ill-informed or incorrect. Yet I find myself dumbfounded by the mean-spirited tone, the outright lies, and the seeming lack of concern for others that has been spewed by some NC politicians. And as probably happens with anyone who worries about the state of the world, I wonder how it is things get this way. How is it that people can act in such ways without even a hint of remorse or self-doubt?

Such a question can be extended to all sort of areas. Just this week an FBI sweep arrested 150 pimps and rescued over 100 children used as prostitutes. The FBI called child prostitution as "persistent threat" in our country. How can this be? How can so  many seemingly normal people be involved in such reprehensible behavior?

I'm not comparing NC politicians to people involved in prostitution. These are two very different things. The only commonality I'm thinking about is one that all humans seem to share, a capacity for excusing the unsavory things we are inclined to do. Those engaged in child prostitution obviously have this capacity in grotesque proportions, but the capacity itself is regularly on display in all sorts of smaller ways. The amount of hate and violence that has been perpetuated over the centuries by those professing Christian motivations is an all too common, and often all too grotesque, example.

All of this may seem totally unrelated to the verses of Psalm 143 that open this post, but it was those verses, along with a little prod from Jesus in today's gospel reading, that got me thinking about NC legislators and pimps.

The psalmist seems to expect a couple of things from Yahweh because Yahweh is God. The first is salvation. No surprise there. We religious sorts are forever asking God to rescue us for all manner of things, some major, some minor, some beyond trivial. But the psalmist expects something else because God is God. "Teach me to do your will, for you are my God."

In my experience, we Christians are often more inclined toward trying to convince God to do our will than we are at wanting to be conformed to God's. And so we more liberal sorts expect God to have liberal leanings while conservatives assume God is a conservative sort. This of course means that we think fixing the world is about enough people seeing things the way we do.

But the psalmist wants to be taught God's will. This would seem to presume we don't simply know it on our own. We need to be taught it and led into it. Jesus says much the same thing, and he cautions us about how easily religious traditions substitute our own will for God's. According to Jesus, that's because we all have a "defiling" capacity within us. Yet most of us would like to think that such a capacity is only a problem for those other folks.

"Teach me your will, O God. Show me your ways." Surely a prayer that all of us should pray, as well as a reminder that our own ways need adjusting if they are to conform to God's. As the late cartoonist Walt Kelly said all too well, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

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That Could Never Happen

In yesterday's gospel, Jesus fed thousands with five loaves and two fish. Today he walks on water, and I love how nonchalantly the narrator reports this. "When he saw that they (the disciples) were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea." Well of course. How else would he have done so?

Some years ago I recall reading a Bible commentary that suggested this episode might be a misplaced resurrection story. I don't recall details, but this scholar seemed to think that such an event couldn't have actually happened with the actual person Jesus.

Scholars have given similar treatment to the feeding of the 5000, with that miracle cast as one of sharing. Jesus got all those folks to share what they had hidden under their robes in something akin to the folk tale, "Stone Soup."

Such biblical scholarship has largely fallen out of vogue in recent decades, but it is easy to see its attraction. Most all of us have notions regarding what is and isn't possible, along with ideas about what God is like and how God does or doesn't act. Most all of us have some sort of boundaries which we don't expect even God to violate.

Perhaps your or my boundaries are fairly accurate, but perhaps they are not. And I can't help wondering what sort of God it is who is fixed by my boundaries, who is not free to surprise me or act contrary to my assumptions.

I suspect this is particularly a problem for people like me who like to figure things out and understand how they work. I like things to be explained with a fair amount of precision and clarity. I'm very much a product of and comfortable with Enlightenment logic. Only in recent years have I begun to get more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty, and it is still easy for me to slip into old patterns of right and wrong, possible and impossible.

I'm not suggesting that one must read everything in the Bible as a real, historical occurrence, far from it. But I do wonder how much we constrain God from being at work in our lives and in our congregations by our certainties about what can and can't happen.

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The Gospel We Live

In the gospels, Jesus is often portrayed as needing to get away, to spend time in retreat and prayer. In today's gospel reading, he sees that his disciples need some time to rest as well, and he takes them to "a deserted place by themselves." The ministry that Jesus calls each of us to does require times of rest along with times of personal, spiritual nourishment. We cannot be the body of Christ without sabbath, without rest and retreat and prayer.

But neither can we be the body of Christ without giving ourselves to others. When Jesus and his disciples head out on for sabbath and retreat crowds discover them, and Jesus "had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things." And before he is done, Jesus will also feed the thousands who have gathered around him.

Yesterday on my Facebook page, I shared a status from James Kim, a colleague and seminary classmate. It read, "To be about Christ's mission, get your eyes off your church and make your neighborhood the focus of the gospel." I'm pretty sure James was not saying that the life of discipleship requires no attention to self, no attention to the spiritual needs of the congregation. But it is all too easy, and all too common, for church congregations to become so focused on self that ministry to others receives scant attention. "Mission" too often becomes small acts of charity that comprise a minimal part of a congregation's life. The gospel proclaimed by the lives of some congregations looks like today's gospel reading, but without teaching or feeding the crowds.

What gospel do people who aren't a part of your congregation encounter because of the life of your congregation? To what degree is James Kim's Facebook status helpful advice for your congregation?

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Strange Rewards

Even in denominations like my own Presbyterian Church, which emphasizes salvation by God's grace and not human effort, it is hard to get away from the notion of punishment or reward based on how we live our lives. The phrase, "There's a special place in hell for people who..." speaks to this expectation that people should get what they deserve.

Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, we like to think this about the success and good fortune in our daily lives. People who are successful tend to think they earned it. And there is a companion tendency to think people are responsible for their own bad predicaments. Not that personal initiative and effort don't count, but they are hardly the only variables involved. Working hard and doing the right thing do not always lead to rewards as we tend to think of them.

Take John the baptizer (that's what Mark's gospel calls him) in today's gospel reading. John's reward for doing just as God wants him to do is arrest and then execution. In Mark's gospel, this clearly foreshadows what will happen with Jesus, and no doubt there were people who said of both men, "Well when you go around challenging powerful people all the time, you can't be too surprised when they take offense and do something about it."

Jesus expects that those who follow him will run into many of the same problems he and John did. We will be rejected, hated, and will suffer. But that is the rarest of experiences for American Christians. If anything, we tend to think that church membership gives us an air of respectability. And though not as common as it once was, politicians and business people still join churches to gain contacts and project the right image.

The interesting question for me is, "What changed?" Did the world change so much that Jesus' message is no longer problematic or offensive? Or did we change Jesus' message to make it more compatible with the world? The answer likely includes some of both, but clearly there's been a great deal of domesticating and ignoring some things Jesus said. We keep trying to squeeze Jesus into our view of how the world works or should work. We keep trying to squeeze Jesus into our notions of reward and punishment. To lesser or greater degrees, we all do this because, to lesser or greater degrees, we all put ourselves and our direct interests at the very center of our lives.

Jesus puts God there, and he calls us to do the same. But look where that got Jesus.

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Sermon video for 7/21: Martha and Mary Problems

Audios of sermons and worship on FCPC website.

Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

I confess that I've often struggled with the whole prayer thing. Not only am I terrible about letting other things crowd out time for prayer, but I also wrestle with the very notion of prayer. Or perhaps my wrestling is with notions of prayer I've picked up over the years.

I've long been troubled when I hear people tell of how God answered their prayer and let them survive or their house be spared when nearly everyone else perished or had their house destroyed. Did no one else pray for the same thing? Was something wrong with their prayers so that God didn't listen to them.

Very often I've heard praying described in ways that sound much like a child asking Santa for presents at Christmas. And at first glance, Jesus seems to be encouraging such a thing when he encourages persistence in prayer saying, "For everyone who asks receives.."

But perhaps it matters that the gospel reading brackets this call for persistence with the Lord's Prayer and with the image of God as a good parent who gives good gifts to children. Good parents don't always give children what they ask for, and indeed, the only gift actually promised by Jesus is the gift of the  Holy Spirit. I assume that those who receive the Holy Spirit learn to pray as Jesus does, "Not my will but yours be done."

I suppose there are ways in which I'll always struggle with prayer, but there are two things I feel fairly confident about regarding it. One is that prayer has to do with the reality of God. Prayer, especially the non-Santa Clause sort, is conversation with another, connecting with the Other in whom my life becomes fuller and more complete. The second is that prayer, at least the sort Jesus teachings in his model prayer, forms me in ways that are quite different from the ways of the world around me. Praying for God's rule to govern all the world, that I would be totally dependent on God for my daily needs, and that I would forgive as freely as Jesus does; that is not our culture's model of how to get ahead.

A thought just occurred to me. Perhaps one of the reason I so often let other things crowd out prayer is that I realize deep in my bones that prayer can change me, and some of the changes Jesus asks of me are just a bit scary.

Not my will but yours, Lord.

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Confining Jesus to Heaven

One of the things I greatly appreciate about the emergent church movement is a reemphasis on the kingdom of God, the rule or reign of God. Somewhere along the way, Christianity got so focused on personal salvation that it developed a very other worldly tint. God's reign and heaven began to be thought of as synonyms, and salvation was about being there in heaven rather than here on earth. Brian McLaren calls this a "gospel of evacuation." But Jesus speaks of God's kingdom drawing near, and he instructs us to pray for its coming, that time when God's will is done here as it is in heaven. In other words, we are to pray for salvation coming to earth.

It's easy to see how heaven got substituted for the kingdom. It's hard to imagine the world getting straightened out and becoming an ideal place. It's simpler to locate an ideal world somewhere else, some place totally unlike here.

I also wonder if placing the kingdom beyond our lives on earth doesn't allow us to keep our distance from Jesus and his call for radical change in anticipation of a new day drawing near. Jesus tells his followers to turn, to live now by the ways of God's coming dominion. But those ways are very different from the ways that govern  much of our daily lives. They call us to live out of synch with much that the world values, and almost all of us are significantly captive to the values of the world.

I started thinking along these lines after reading today's gospel where Jesus heals the Gerasene demoniac, allowing the spirits that possess him to go into a herd of pigs which then charge into the sea and are drowned. After this amazing event, people come out to see what has happened, and they respond in rather odd fashion. "Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood."

Strange that when people encounter the power of God at work in their midst that they want it gone. It's certainly true that modern people often underplay the frightening aspect of God's presence, but I think the story speaks of more than that. I think the people in the story correctly realize that God's presence will radically reorder things in ways they do not want. So best to send Jesus on his way.

I wonder if we don't do much the same thing when we try to keep him cooped up in heaven, the changed life that he calls us to safely delayed until after we are dead.

In the gospel reading, only the former demoniac wants to stay with Jesus. Perhaps it is necessary to experience Jesus' healing and transforming power in our lives before we are quite ready to let him tell us how we are to live.

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Who Is This Jesus? And Who Am I?

One of my all-time favorite quotes is the opening line from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. It reads, "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves." Calvin thinks the two sorts of wisdom deeply intertwined, as most religious folk likely do. Insomuch as this is so, our lives get distorted from what they should be whenever we misapprehend who we are or who God is.

Another quote I've used often comes from Mahatma Gandhi. "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." But how could this be? If Christians are those who have been transformed by being joined to Christ, who have become a new sort of human because they have come to know both God and humanity in Jesus, then how can it be that Gandhi observed such a disconnect between what he saw in Christ and what he saw in Christians?

Today's gospel reading contains the famous story of Jesus stilling a storm on the Sea of Galilee. It ends with a question from the stunned disciples. “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Mark's gospel is terribly interested in this question, one that cannot really be answered short of the cross. But despite Mark and other gospel writers addressing this question of who Jesus is, it seems we're still struggling to answer it. How else to explain the experience Gandhi has, not to mention all the different and contradictory images of Jesus that are presented by those who claim to be the "body of Christ."

Thinking of this problem from Calvin's perspective, I wonder if it arises more from faulty knowledge of God, faulty knowledge of self, or perhaps from a misunderstanding regarding how the two relate and where we get such knowledge.

On the question of where we get such knowledge, we run into a significant problem, one that seems particularly acute in 21st Century America. We are prone not to trust any source of knowledge that does not accord with what we already feel or think. Thus we are inclined not to accept knowledge about God that is contrary to our existing ideas about how a god should be and act. To an even greater degree we are inclined not to accept any outside critique that suggests we have misunderstood what it means to be human. And the more captive we are to such inclinations, the more we will know a god of our own construction and a self validated by this self-serving god.

I suspect that the reason Gandhi found the Christians he met so unlike the Christ he read of in the Bible was that so many of us, despite our professions of faith, refuse to let Jesus redefine our notions of God or our notions of self. Instead we try to shoe-horn Jesus into faulty images of God and self that we will not abandon, not even for Jesus.

And so it seems to me critically important that those of us who in some way claim the name "Christian" to continue wrestling with the question the disciples raise for us today, and that we be open to that redefining who we think God is, as well as who we think we are.

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Getting Off Center

My wife and I recently bought a house that needed a bit of work. We've been fixing it up ourselves, including tearing out and redoing the kitchen. We got a good bit of work done before actually moving in, but we still don't have a kitchen. Things connected with the house have started to feel a little all-consuming. Every moment of spare time gets devoted to it, and both of us are looking forward to the day when it is not so much the focus of our lives.

Most all of us have times in life when something so dominates our routines that other things get squeezed out. When a child is born, life sometimes get turned upside down. A new job can do the same. Depending on the circumstances, these instances of our lives being reordered can be rewarding or frustrating, perhaps both. At times, we may even question our sanity in ever ending up in such a place.

Yesterday in my sermon, I asked the question (as much to myself as to anyone), "What is the one thing at the center or your life?" It came from Jesus' comment to Martha, "There is need of only one thing." And I thought of that question again as I read today's gospel parable where some seed produces abundantly while other does not.

A house does not really deserve the sort of attention and devotion that ours has been receiving of late. But at least that is something that will end in time (I hope). Other things need to be at the center for life to be what it should be, but we humans are very good at putting the wrong things there. As today's parable suggests, even when we put the right things at the center, we are easily distracted by "the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things," and our centers get all askew.

Our current focus on the house (however necessary for the moment) has left me feeling askew, and it is starting to wear on me. But other things that get us off center are more subtle and seductive. They play into the fact that more often than not, I make myself the very center of things. Never mind Jesus' insistence that God needs to be in that spot, with neighbor sharing a place with me.

I suspect that much like the strain I have felt from being so focused on a move and renovation, a great deal of the anxiety in our society today arises from an off centered focus on self that won't allow for a truly good and just society. After all, Jesus comes proclaiming a kingdom, a new social order, and it is built on lives that push self off to the side - Jesus says his followers are to "deny themselves" -  and are recentered on love of God and neighbor.

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Sermon - Martha and Mary Problems

Luke 10:38-42

Martha and Mary Problems

James Sledge                                                                                       July 21, 2013

Here at the church we have a staff meeting every Tuesday morning, and twice a month we have what we call an extended staff meeting. In it, we spend a significant period of time meditating on a scripture passage. Usually we do something called lectio divina or divine reading, an ancient practice that has been described as praying the scriptures.  The passage is read with each of us simply listening for a word or phrase that strikes us. Silence following the reading allows us to simply be attentive to the passage touching us in some way. 

Then the passage is read a couple more times, each time with additional times of silence to contemplate why that word or phrase touched us and how God might be speaking to us through it. It’s quite different from the more typical practice of reading the Bible and trying to understand what a passage or story means. Lectio divina is less Bible study and more a form of prayer.

A couple of weeks ago, as we finished our time of silent reflection and began to share with one another what each of us had heard or experienced, I was struck with what an odd practice this might seem to someone who walked in on it. Here we were, a group of employees “on the clock” if you will, and other than occasional breaks in the silence for the scripture to be read aloud, no one appeared to be doing anything, at least not as doing tends to be thought of.

In terms of the typical workplace, our times of lectio divina are indeed an odd practice. I cannot imagine such a thing going on in many places of employment. For that matter, I don’t know that it happens with that much regularity in churches. After all, churches are busy places. There is a lot to do, and there is limited time to sit around being “unproductive.”

Mary is rather unproductive herself when Jesus drops by to visit with her and her sister Martha. She also steps out of the normal role of women at that time. Sitting at Jesus’ feet is the stereotypical pose of a disciple studying under a rabbi, and that was only done by men.
Meanwhile, as Martha does all those things that need to be done when company comes, as she follows the biblical injunction to show hospitality, she gets more and more frustrated with Mary sitting there, not offering to help.

This is a simple little story, but it wrestles with some difficult issues. There’s an unfortunate tendency to reduce the story to either/or, good or bad choices, but as many have pointed out, “If no one gets dinner ready, what will Jesus and Mary eat?” And I’m pretty sure there was no take out or fast food available.

Our Bible translation doesn’t necessarily help on this as much as it might. Speaking of Martha as distracted by her many tasks has made it easy for some to portray her as a harried, Martha Stewart type, overly obsessed with getting everything just so. But in fact her “tasks” are more normally translated as “service” or even “ministry,” and the word is the root of our word “deacon.” And our Bible translation misses a second chance to note this by not translating Martha’s complaint to Jesus in what seems to me a more straightforward, word for word fashion. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me alone to serve?”

Uncertainty, Forgiveness, and Healing

Like a lot of pastors, I mentioned Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman in Sunday's sermon, although these were  more asides than the focus. To be honest, I'm not sure I have a lot to add to all the other voices seeking to explain what it all means.

I'll freely admit which camp I inhabit. I'm one of the people who had a hard time understanding why it took so long for Zimmerman to become a suspect, and who believes that Martin's race made his death more "acceptable" to some. If I were African American, I'd likely have a hard time not concluding that the life of a young black male is less important than the life of others, and that gun rights matter a lot more than Trayvon Martin's right to grow up.

That said, a lot of comments on all sides are pretty predictable and often knee-jerk. The terrible and troubled legacy of racism in this country is very much alive, but it is also very complex, and every event connected to it cannot be reduced to simple, clear-cut motivations and causes.

I have little doubt that race played a role in this sad affair. If George Zimmerman had not regarded a young black male as both suspicious and threatening, things would surely have turned out differently. For that matter, if people's lives grew out of reflections on loving neighbor and the parable about a Samaritan Jesus told to address that issue (one of my sermon asides), our world would be a very different place, regardless of whether or not it wore the label "Christian."

And so, while I don't have much to add to the commentary on the Trayvon Martin case, I find myself wondering - with some prodding by today's gospel - about which it is that America needs more, forgiveness or healing. Many people get irritated when hearing of the sins of slavery or racism. "That was long ago," they say. It has nothing to do with me. But as William Faulkner once said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

The wounds and scars of the past are far from fully healed, and the fact that I never owned a slave doesn't change that at all. And the all too frequent desire to minimize those wounds and scars only rubs salt in them. There is something therapeutic about naming and claiming sins, but we are often loathe to do so. As a child of the South, I heard often the absurd claim that the Civil War wasn't caused by slavery, a denial of sin that is still popular no matter how often it is debunked.

Regardless, there has been much progress in the area of racial reconciliation. Events from my childhood seem almost ancient when I see them in news footage. Maybe we simply need to focus on getting past race. Let's forget about sin and move on with the healing.

I've often been troubled by today's gospel  reading which seems to imply that Jesus only healed a paralytic to prove he had authority to forgive the man. But today I am appreciative of the passage's unwillingness to completely separate the two things. Not that sin caused the man to be paralyzed, but sin is a fundamental problem for human beings, and any healing that deals with physical healing without dealing with sin is at best a partial healing. And our difficulty with sin in matters of race makes full healing difficult.

And this is not simply a call for all those racists out there to confess their sins. I hope they will, but confessing other people's sin is part of the problem. I tend to imagine my lingering tinges of racism as benign. Only other, more virulent forms are a problem. Of course that's not so different from someone who looks like a racist to me talking about how he never owned slaves or barred people from his establishment on account of race.

And so in my uncertainty about just what to say about George Zimmerman or the meanings to be drawn from the verdict in his trial, I'll simply pray for forgiveness and healing. We still need both.

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Sermon video: Getting Straightened Out

Audios of sermons and worship service are on FCPC website.