Ferguson, Advent, and God's Dream

In the aftermath of last night's rioting in Ferguson, Jeff Krehbiel, a friend and colleague, posted this quote on his Facebook page.

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

These words are from Martin Luther King, Jr. Clearly he was not addressing the events in Ferguson, but the words ring true for today's headlines and for today's America, regardless of those who say that racism and the civil rights movement belong to the past.

In our church staff meeting this morning, we read Isaiah 2:2-4, which includes the famous words, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." In light of events in Ferguson, it felt appropriate to hear a prophet's vision of "days to come," a time when people will "walk in (God's) paths."

Prophets are good at sensing God's dream, and holding it up to us. Dr. King was able to do that. "I have a dream..." he said. He cast a vision of a different day, a new day, a day God dreamed of and so a day that must someday be. And that dream called people to action, to service and sacrifice in a long and difficult journey toward those "days to come."

The events in Ferguson occur just before the first Sunday in Advent. The Presbyterian Book of Common Worship contains a litany for the lighting of Advent Candles that says, "We light this candle as a sign of the coming light of Christ. Advent means coming. We are preparing ourselves for the days..." and the words that follow speak of swords transformed into farming implements, wolves living with lambs, the desert blooming, and Immanuel, God with us. But all too often, all we are not preparing ourselves for any of these things. We are simply getting ready to celebrate another Christmas.

I have nothing against celebrating Christmas, but to do so without attending to the prophetic vision, to God's dream, seems to miss the point somehow. Outside the Church, the coming weeks may be about nothing but decorating and shopping and listening to Christmas music, but that cannot be for us if we are to be the body of Christ.

We celebrate Christ's birth because it is proof that God is engaged in the world, in history. We celebrate Christmas because it is the beginning of our call to be participants in making that dream visible. And so Advent must be a time when we recall the vision of "days to come," when we remember that God is faithful, and God's promises will bear fruit. Advent and Christmas should be a time when all Christians recommit ourselves to the prophetic visions of Isaiah and Micah and Martin Luther King, to God's dream of a day that is surely coming.

Regardless of the exact sequence of events in Ferguson, regardless of where "fault" lies in the shooting, the grand jury decision, or the unrest that followed, we who follow Jesus are called to show the world a different possibility. We are called to embody and work for that prophetic vision, that divine dream that so easily dissipates in the face of cynicism and hopelessness.

If we are to prepare during Advent and celebrate at Christmas, surely it must be because we have good news for the citizens of Ferguson, especially for those who have lost all hope. We must be able to declare, "God is with us. God will strengthen us as we give ourselves in service to the prophetic vision and divine dream." We may not be able to bring the Kingdom in all its fullness, but we can make it visible and tangible and so help create hope. Otherwise our Christmas is little more than an exercise in nostalgia and manufactured cheerfulness.

Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday (Ezekiel 34:11-24)

Some of you likely recall the old Beatles song from The White Album entitled, “Piggies.” The four, short verses were set to a fun, bouncy little tune, but the words contain biting, social commentary. Here are the first three verses.

Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt?
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts?
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in

In their styes with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking

Little piggies and bigger piggies. The prophet Ezekiel makes a very similar move, but being Jewish, he can't use pigs. Instead he speaks of lean sheep and fat sheep, offering the same sort of social commentary George Harrison did with his song. Ezekiel joins a long line of God’s prophets who speak of judgment against the wealthy who enjoy the good life at the expense of the weak and the poor.

I don’t know that the world has changed all that much from Ezekiel’s day. America has had  rather remarkable run where a large, middle class enjoyed the fruits of the economy, but many fear that this is breaking down, that our economic system is becoming more and more skewed toward the wealthy, the one percent, the bigger piggies, the fat sheep.

But Ezekiel insists that God will intervene on behalf of the lean sheep, the scattered and hungry sheep. God will seek out the lost and bring back those who have strayed and been battered and injured. And this claim is all the more remarkable given the people to whom Ezekiel speaks it, exiles in Babylon.

The notion that God will protect the sheep and bring them home is an audacious claim to make in the face of the awesome power of the Babylonian Empire. They are a great superpower that has easily smashed cities of Judah and destroyed the capital of Jerusalem. The palace and the great Temple built by Solomon lie in ruins, all the finery from both now contained in the Babylonian treasury. What possible hope can the displaced remnant of Israel have in the face of such power?

But Ezekiel insists that despite all evidence to the contrary, God is sovereign. Not King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon nor the gods of Babylon, but Yahweh. And Yahweh will rescue the sheep who now find themselves at the mercy of powers and principalities that seem to hold all the cards. But why should anyone believe such a thing?

You may have seen the recent news reports documenting how the economic doldrums we've experienced since 2008 have impacted charitable giving. Strangely, giving by the wealthiest Americans, the people who have benefited the most from the stock market rebound, has decreased. At the same time, those toward the bottom of the economic ladder, who have seen little of the "recovery" we've been in for the last five years, have increased their giving. Fat sheep and lean sheep; bigger piggies and little piggies.

I heard a pastor this week speak on church stewardship, quoting the statistics above. He said something about those with wealth having to give an account of what they have done with their riches. Not language much used in our day, but it is the same sort of language Ezekiel uses. "Thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep." And Ezekiel is pretty clear that God is on the side of lean sheep, of little piggies.

But why should anyone believe such a thing? Clearly, many do not. We have confined God to a narrower and narrower slice of our lives. Even many who are believers reduce that to "believing in Jesus" and therefore receiving a heavenly prize. Many more dismiss with God's power altogether. They may even "belong" to a church but their money is theirs, to do with however they see fit. No account to God for them.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. Many churches will mark this in their worship, but it won't really seem much different from any other Sunday. All that will change in the coming weeks as we draw close to Christmas. (We'll call it Advent, but often that simply means "pre-Christmas.") Attendance will swell and sanctuaries will get all decorated. We'll enjoy all the glad tidings and good cheer, but it won't really change anything. The great thing about a baby Jesus is he doesn't speak, nothing like that pesky adult Jesus who sounds a lot like Ezekiel at times.

Christ the King, our ruler, master and Lord, or so we say. Christ the King falls on the last Sunday of the Christian calendar, the culmination of the year that begin in Advent. Our king is the one who lived and preached and died and was raised. And this risen Jesus commanded his followers, us, to make disciples, "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." I'm assuming "everything" includes all that stuff about caring for the poor, about wealth making it hard to enter the kingdom, and so on. But why should anyone believe such a thing?

I guess that is the crux of the matter. Do we dare believe such a thing? Not do we believe in God or Jesus? Not do we go to church and therefore hope God is well disposed toward us? But do we believe that Christ is Lord of all, seated above all the great powers of our day, above all the armies and technology and wealth? Do we believe that we are called to follow him and obey him, and that whether or not we do ultimately matters? Do we?

Retrieving Jesus

A church member recently shared with me a Nov. 9th NY Times opinion piece by James Carroll entitled "Jesus and the Modern Man." A couple of quotes from it grabbed my attention. The first had been lifted out of the piece, reproduced in large print and so was unavoidable. "Retrieving the centrality of Christ can restore the simplicity of faith." The second struck me as I read the essay. It spoke of the current pope saying, "For this pope, the church exists for one reason only -- to carry the story of Jesus forward in history, and by doing that to make his presence real. Everything else is rubrics."

That such a thing needs to be said at all seems strange. Of courses the Church is about, above all else, Jesus. And yet, how easily he can slide from view in the day to day life of that institutional thing the Church -- whether denomination or congregation -- is tempted to become. Our theological statements would never say such a thing, but our practicalities often refute our stated theology. My own denomination's constitution speaks of the Church as "the body of Christ" and says it "is to be a community of faith, entrusting itself to God alone, even at the risk of losing its life." (Book of Order F-1.0301) In reality, however, the Church will often seek to preserve its own life at all costs.

How easily the Church's mission becomes maintaining its structures and buildings, protecting its ways of doing church, or providing a religious product that is appealing to its "consumers." Nominally, at least, all these things can make some appeal to the person of Jesus, but practically, Jesus often disappears from view as congregations spend countless thousands of dollars to maintain facilities that sit vacant most of the time, argue incessantly about institutional details, or agonize over what new program might entice more participation. How easily we lose sight of Jesus as we become so focused on those "rubrics" that we forget who we are.

The 21st century is a time of great anxiety for most churches in America. Church participation has fallen precipitously; we have become less relevant culturally;, and many congregations have closed or will soon do so. In these anxious times churches often look for someone or something to bring them back. New pastors may be viewed like new head coaches who will be judged on how quickly they "turn things around." A slew of books, consultants, and organizations will show you new methods and programs that promise to increase worship attendance, build your youth program, or draw in those notoriously difficult to attract millennials. But what happens when, in the midst of all th is, we lose our focus on Jesus?

There is much to be learned from books, consultants, and organizations. Pastors have a key role to play in building congregational vitality. But absent Jesus, does it matter how successful our "rubrics" are? If the Church does not make Jesus known to the world, if we do not, in some way, incarnate Christ to and for the world, does anything else really matter very much?

"Retrieving the centrality of Christ can restore the simplicity of faith," says James Carroll. And within that simplicity can also be found the beauty of faith, the meaning of faith, and the relevance of faith. It may even be that the reason so many find the Church irrelevant to their lives is because those "rubrics" we devote so much time and energy to have nearly obscured Jesus.

And so, what might happen if we not only said but actually lived out this truth? "The Church exists for one reason only -- to carry the story of Jesus forward in history, and by doing that to make his presence real."

Faith, Works, and an Advent Swallowed by Christmas

Supposedly the great church reformer, Martin Luther, lobbied for removing several books from the New Testament. He thought they ran counter to his understanding of the gospel's focus on grace and faith. One of these was the Epistle of James, and a line from today's reading in that book surely bothered Luther.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

In the years and centuries since Luther, Christians, especially those of Protestant extraction, have created an often false dichotomy of "faith versus works." This has typically reduced faith to belief, creating a popular theology of "believing in Jesus" in order to get a ticket to heaven. Huge swaths of Jesus' teachings are dismissed, and we are left with what Brian McLaren aptly labels "a gospel of evacuation." Faith has little to do with earthly life. It is simply a cosmic insurance policy with premiums requiring mental assent to a certain doctrines.

I find myself thinking about faith and works and evacuations as the season of Advent draws close, as I begin looking at familiar prophetic passages about spears beaten into pruning hooks, good news offered to the oppressed, and release to the captives. These passages will likely make appearances in many congregations' worship during Advent, but our culture, and often the Church, has little use for Advent, other than as a warmup for Christmas.

Over the years, Christmas, originally a rather minor date on the Christian calendar, has largely swallowed Advent. The secular observance and commercialization of the holiday have certainly contributed to this. But so has a faith disconnected from living in ways that prepare for God's kingdom, lives that work for peace, for freeing the oppressed, and releasing the captives. When faith becomes about nothing more than believing a few things, what's to get ready for?

I'm glad James didn't get taken out of Protestant Bibles. It's a good reminder that faith is more than believing in God or Jesus. Luther knew that. After all, he was happy to leave in the Gospel of Matthew which ends with Jesus commanding those first disciples and the Church to go out and makes disciples of all peoples through baptism and by "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." If you've not read it, Matthew has lots and lots of works commanded by Jesus.

Learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon video: Doing the Impossible

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Doing the Impossible

Matthew 25:14-30

Doing the Impossible

James Sledge                                                                             November 16, 2014

Most congregations have a story or two about doing the impossible. There’s the congregation formed in the midst of the Great Depression, when everyone said it was a terrible time to try to start a church. But a group of people felt God’s call and saw the need for a congregation, and somehow, despite the difficult times and financial hardships, a congregation was born and thrived.

There’s the congregation that felt called to begin a comprehensive ministry to the poor in their community. They dreamed of converting an unused store near their church into a facility with job training, food pantry, health clinic, and after school tutoring. The rent on the building was well beyond the church’s small budget, and they did not have sufficient volunteers. But the church leadership decided to do it anyway, trusting that they would find the money and volunteers. And despite all the obstacles a new ministry was born and thrived.

There’s the famous story of the youth group at Spring Valley Presbyterian in Columbia, SC, gathered for a Super Bowl party. A seminary intern offered a prayer asking that as they enjoyed their Super Bowl festivities and food, they might be mindful of those who had nothing to eat. Some youth decided they wanted to do more than be mindful, but what could a youth group do in the face of a problem so big as hunger? Nonetheless they contacted other local youth groups, and at the next Super Bowl they collect nearly $6000 for hunger relief. The Souper Bowl of Caring was born and thrived. Since 1990 it has collected more than $100,000,000 for hunger, including over $8,000,000 this year alone.

There are countless such stories. Some who have been around at FCPC for a long time may well know some such stories from this congregation that I’ve not heard, and I’d love for you to share them with me.

Of course, there are plenty of times in plenty of congregations when someone said a provocative prayer or someone pointed out a pressing need, and nothing happened. There is much that works against doing the impossible. Fear of failing afflicts many of us, and churches can be particularly paralyzed by this fear. Money, of the lack thereof, often seems an insurmountable obstacle, and worries about money feed into the fear of failing. In our day, many congregations worry about surviving. Almost every US denomination is experiencing significant numerical decline, and the millennial generation is more disconnected from the church than any in recent history. A lot of church people are worried, and congregations worried about survival tend to get cautious and timid and rarely risk the impossible.

The congregation for whom Matthew writes his gospel was surely worried about survival. These were Jews who followed the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. But life as not all that easy for Jewish Christian in the latter part of the 1^st century.  The Romans had destroyed Jerusalem and its spectacular Temple a few years earlier. And while this did fulfill Jesus’ words about the Temple’s destruction, it also threw Judaism into turmoil.

The loss of the Temple put an end to priestly form of Judaism focused on sacrifices and offerings at the Temple. Rabbinical, synagogue Judaism, the movement begun by the reform minded Pharisees, became dominant. Trouble was, as rabbinical Judaism became the norm, the Jewish followers of Jesus, who also called the synagogue home, found themselves labeled heretics. They were told to keep quiet about Jesus if they wanted to remain members of the synagogue, and they did want to remain members there.

Sermon: Forsaking All Others

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

Forsaking All Others

James Sledge                                                                                       November 9, 2014

Choose this day whom you will serve… but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord, (Yahweh). So says Joshua in one of those signature lines from the Bible. Of course there are other options. Joshua even mentions a few: the gods their ancestors served back in Egypt or in the wilderness, or perhaps the gods of the people in the land where they now live.

Bob Dylan once put is slightly differently in song called “Gotta Serve Somebody.

You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Choose this day whom you will serve is part of something called a covenant renewal ceremony. God had made a covenant with the people of Israel, and Joshua takes them through its history and what that means. Then, in something akin to the renewal of marriage vows, the people once more state their loyalty and fidelity to the God known as Yahweh, to God and God alone. In fact, they could well have used a line from the old, traditional wedding liturgy, “And forsaking all others, be faithful only to you…"

We have a covenant renewal ceremony in our worship today. We have one any time someone joins the church or is baptized, and it has its versions of Choose this day whom you will serve, put away the foreign gods that are among you, and “forsaking all others.”

Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?

Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?

Choose this day whom you will serve. Forsaking all others, be faithful only to Christ. Put away the foreign gods that are among you. Of course that last one doesn’t really connect with us. Foreign gods, the god our ancestors served beyond the river or back in Egypt. What does any of that have to do with us and our lives?

Post-Election Theology

As on who can be labeled a "progressive Christian," I'm not among those celebrating yesterday's election results. I'll admit to a certain level of disappointment and even depression over the morning headlines, but I also think that we on the right, left, or middle tend to overstate the events of the moment.

Perhaps it arises from the immediacy of our culture, with information and results available instantly with the click of a mouse or finger to the touchscreen. Or perhaps it is simply human nature to imagine the good or bad things happening to me at this moment have tremendous significance because, after all, they are happening to me.

There certainly are long term trends in our world that concern me: the growing gap between rich and poor, the way campaign financing has become a big-money, free-for-all, or the seemingly unavoidable impact of climate change. But the realization that climate change is a near scientific certainty says very little about any particular weather event. Similarly, we may not want to draw overly large conclusions from any election.

So what conclusions to draw? For me such questions are always filtered through a theological lens. That means I wonder about the ways in which religion and faith enter into elections (often in ways that distort or undermine key tenets of that religion or faith). Even more, I wonder about what the curious twists and turns of politics say about the human condition, about the power of sin to distort us, and about the possibility of that power being broken or diminished.

We live in anxious times, and fear and anxiety seem to amplify the problem of sin. Fear tends to focus me more on me and mine, making it more difficult to consider the needs of the other. From a basic, Christian perspective, that moves me away from Jesus' command to love the other as much as I love myself. But if my ability to love others requires me to have enough excess for myself that there are leftovers, then I don't really love others as myself. Neither do I really trust God. Instead I must secure mine at the expense of the other. God will not provide, and so I must, a view often expressed in that non-biblical quote, "God helps those who help themselves." (Not only is this proverb, popularized by Ben Franklin, not to be found in the Bible, but it is quite contrary to the biblical witness.)

We "progressive Christians" like to think we are better at loving the other. After all we are willing to pay higher taxes to benefit those less fortunate than us and support a higher minimum wage even if it raises prices a bit at the store or restaurant. But even if it is true that we are better at one facet of following Jesus, I suspect that we are merely myopic in different ways from those Christians celebrating yesterday's election. I don't think we are any better at the more fundamental issue of trusting ourselves to God. And so we are just as prone as those with differing views to think the sky is falling when people who disagree with us get elected.

I'm not arguing for stoicism or passivity here. Rather I'm saying that if we come to politics or the big issues of the day from a Christian perspective, we cannot measure where things stand based simply on whether I am pleased with things at this moment. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was far from passive, but his dedication to his work was rooted in a deep faith and did not come and go based on the day's headlines. Dr. King could say, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," not because he was winning in the polls, but because he trusted in a God who is a God of justice.

That brings me back around to the question of how the the power of sin to distort and deceive us can be broken. And here I must confess to an all too typical, "progressive" problem: the tendency to think of progress as an almost entirely human enterprise. We have been prone to see Jesus as a philosopher and moral teacher divorced from his claims to be part of God's movement on the stage of history. We have been prone to embrace Christ's words on loving neighbor and lifting up the poor while ignoring and even disparaging his words on the power of God's Spirit at work in us and through us. We have imagined that the kingdom, that new day of God Jesus proclaimed, is about convincing everyone to agree with Jesus (and us). We have done far to much trusting in our powers of reason and persuasion rather than the power or God. But deep down, I know better.

And so while I am not all that happy this morning, while I do worry that there will be serious consequences from yesterday, ones that some who celebrate today will later regret, I do not despair. For I do not believe that the fate of the world or history finally and ultimately rests with us. If the Christian claim of resurrection means anything, it surely means that the very thing that seems to be the victory of forces opposed to God can become the means by which God's purposes are fulfilled.

But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews (think "good, church folks") and foolishness to Gentiles (think everyone else), but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power and wisdom of God.  - 1 Corinthians 1:23-24

Sermon video: On Being Children and Saints

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: On Being Children and Saints

1 John 3:1-3

On Being Children and Saints

James Sledge                                                               November 2, 2014 – All Saints

Some of you may be familiar with the writings of Kathleen Norris who has authored books such as Amazing Grace, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, and The Cloister Walk. The title of that last one comes, at least in part, because Norris, a married Protestant, spent nine months as an oblate in a Benedictine monastery. The book as a chapter entitled, “The War on Metaphor.” In it Norris describes attending an event for a group of Protestant clergy, mostly Lutherans, where the poet Diane Glancy did a poetry reading. As a way of introduction, Glancy said she loved Christianity because “it was a blood religion.” The audience gasped in shock, says Norris, who goes on to say that Glancy shared how she appreciated the Christian faith’s relation to words and how words create the world we live in. But Norris worries that we Christians have lost our sense of the power of words, and especially of metaphor. She writes:

My experience with Diane (Glancy) and the clergy is one of many that confirms my suspicion that if you’re looking for a belief in the power of words to change things, to come alive and make a path for you to walk on, you’re better off with poets these days than with Christians. It’s ironic, because the scriptures of the Christian canon are full of strange metaphors that create their own reality—the “blood of the Lamb,” the “throne of grace,” the “sword of the Spirit”—and among the name for Jesus himself are “the Word” and “the Way.”

Poets believe in metaphor, and that alone sets them apart from many Christians, particularly people educated to be pastors and church workers. As one pastor of Spencer Memorial - by no means a conservative on theological or social issues - once said in a sermon, many Christians can no longer recognize that the most significant part of the first line of “Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war” is the word “as.”

…This metaphoric impoverishment strikes me as ironic, partly because I’m well aware, thanks to a friend who’s a Hebrew scholar, that for all the military metaphors employed in the Old Testament, the command that Israel receives most often is to sing. I also know that the Benedictines have lived peaceably for 1500 years with a Rule that is full of terminology, imagery, and metaphors borrowed from the Roman army. [1]

I’m inclined to think that our “metaphoric impoverishment,” as Norris calls it, extends to the terms “children of God” and “child of God.” In current usage, these are often little more than flowery ways of saying “human being.” Indeed to suggest that the terms do not apply equally to all people sounds almost fundamentalist.

I can appreciate why. Especially to our metaphorically impoverished ears, where words simply impart information, to apply “child of God” in a non-universal fashion, is to engage in the worst sort of exclusivism where some people matter and some do not, where some have value, and some do not. But “child of God” is no pedestrian label.

Relationship Problems

I suppose there are exceptions, but generally, even the best relationships go through rough spots. These rough spots may be dramatic blowups, but perhaps more often they are rather mundane. Things become routine and stale. There is a sense of going through the motions with little in the way of the dynamic, exciting feelings from a previous time.

I imagine that many couples experience this, but I'm talking about the human-divine relationship. To fall in love with God/Jesus, to feel the life changing rush of the Spirit, to have one's life completely reoriented is a remarkable experience as powerful and life changing as any romantic encounter. But as with romantic love, life with God can turn routine and stale. The animating spark of the Spirit can feel absent.

The Church has not always been of much help in such things. So often faith has been reduced to believing certain things, saying the right formula, adhering to some doctrine, or showing up on Sundays. In my own Presbyterian tradition there are strong currents of intellectualism that sometimes turn faith into more philosophical exercise rather than passionate relationship. I know people who can get very passionate about philosophy and such, but I'm not sure that qualifies as a relationship.

An oft stated bit of biblical wisdom says that among the psalms, those of lament are the most numerous. But you don't hear a lot of lament in the Church. You do hear it more frequently from poets and writers and pop songs celebrating and wrestling with the difficulties and pains of human relationships. Has the Church so domesticated and institutionalized this faith business that we no longer realize its fundamentally relational dynamic?

How do you handle it when a human relationship had gotten stale, stuck, rutted, or empty? Does it work in a similar manner with God? I wonder if our faith could learn a thing or two from our love lives.

October 19 sermon video: Not a Party Without You

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Hiding from God

I am currently on "study leave," one of the perks we pastors enjoy. My denomination requires that churches give their pastors at least two weeks of such leave on top of vacation. I often use this time to attend conferences or workshops, but this one is different. I had the free use of a beach condo, and so I packed up my books (or in this case my iPad with Kindle app) and headed to Myrtle Beach.

It's fairly quiet here in late October, but the weather has been lovely. I've been able to sit on the balcony in the warm sun as I read, looking up occasionally across the dunes to the water beyond. There are a few people on the beach, largely hidden by the dunes, but the pool right below me is deserted. There is almost nothing to distract me save an occasional dragonfly buzzing by. And so I've had to create my own distractions.

I have been getting a lot of reading done, but I've done less well with another piece of my time here. I told some folks I was coming here for "a time of study and personal retreat." For a pastor, the term "retreat" carries some significant spiritual connotations, the expectation that my time here would include some very deliberate time of drawing near to God. But it feels more like I've been hiding.

That thought didn't really occur to me until today. This morning was the first chilly one, and so I had been reading on the couch inside. At one point I got, refilled the coffee cup, then stepped out onto the small balcony for a moment. I stood there, leaning on the railing, and for some reason, the story of Elijah fleeing into the wilderness and ending up at Mt. Horeb came to mind. (If you're not familiar with it, the story begins at 1 Kings 19.)

In the story, Elijah is fresh off one of his greatest triumphs, but there is also a threat on his life. Considering all the wonders God had just done through Elijah on a different mountain, Mt. Carmel, it is a bit strange the Elijah falls into such a deep funk, but he does. He journeys into the wilderness, sits down, and asks to die. Eventually an angel provides food and prods him to travel to Horeb. There he finds shelter in a cave, but his depression seems little improved.

My own back story and situation have little in common with Elijah, but still the image of emerging from the cave struck me as I leaned on the balcony railing. There was no violent wind, no earthquake or fire. There wasn't even a "sound of sheer silence," what older translations rendered "a still, small voice." The sound of the waves was enough that no one would call it silent, but is was still. And I could not help but wonder if God didn't pose the same question to me long ago spoken to the prophet. "What are you doing here?"

What am I doing here? What am I up to? I'm on study leave, of course, but the question is bigger than that, just as it was for Elijah. I imagine it's the sort of question we are all meant to wrestle with at times. Perhaps we even need to be in a bad, depressed, uncertain, confused, or similar place for the question to have the required poignancy. Just what is it we are up to? And along with that, what are we supposed to be up to?

Elijah snaps out of his funk when God gives him work to do and sends him on his way. I suspect that God's "What are you doing here?" question is always connected to a calling, to what it is we're supposed to be doing. It's easy to imagine this being only for larger than life characters such as biblical prophets, but I'm convinced it's equally true for pastors and every other sort of regular person of faith. I wish God would be as obvious as in the Elijah story. Then again, maybe that's just the story's way of making its point clear. Maybe Elijah struggled to hear God a much as I do. After all, he got depressed enough to run away and want to die.

What are you doing here, James? And what are you doing, whoever and wherever you are? I think there is always a command that follows the question, a call to "Go." And somewhere in that "Go" is what it means to be fully alive.

Sermon: Not a Party Without You

Luke 15:1-2, 11-32

Not a Party Without You

James Sledge                                                   October 19, 2014 (Stewardship 3)

How many of you enjoy a good dinner party or a big cookout or a great wedding reception with lots of good food and drink? I like nothing better than a gathering of friends enjoying great food and good wine. I’ve been to a few such parties and gatherings where I’m tempted to sound like a commercial and say, “Life doesn’t get any better than this.”

Turns out Jesus thought much the same. When he wants to talk about the coming of God’s new day, he doesn’t use the image of prophets like Isaiah who spoke of a peaceable kingdom where “the wolf shall live with the lamb.”  Instead Jesus speaks of a great wedding banquet.

Wedding were the social occasions of Jesus’ day. They were often huge, lavish events that lasted for a week, and Jesus uses them as an image of the day that is to come. “People will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God,” says Jesus. The book of Revelation sounds a similar note as it moves to its joyful conclusion. “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

In the early church, worship included a meal where the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. The imagery is largely lost in our day, but the church gathered at table understood itself to be participating in a preview of the great banquet to come. We still proclaim, “This is the joyful feast,” even if our meager communion elements look little like a grand party.

If a sociologist who knew nothing of Christianity were to study American congregations, I wonder if she would ever conclude that our faith anticipates a grand, extravagant party. Christian faith in our country is so individualistic, about my salvation or my spirituality. People can be members in good standing at most churches with little sense of a joyful, community gathered for a feast. Many seem uninterested in joining a party.

Sermon video: Citizens and First Century Stewardship Problems

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Citizens and First Century Stewardship Problems

2 Corinthians 9:1-15

Citizens and First Century Stewardship Problems

James Sledge                                                   October 12, 2014 (Stewardship 2)

Comedian and actor Bob Newhart is probably known better today for roles such as the elf father in Will Ferrell’s movie Elf or guest appearances on “The Big Bang Theory,” for which he won an Emmy last year. Some likely recall a couple of different Bob Newhart TV shows. And if you’re my age and older, you may remember that he started as a standup comedian, and his signature bit was the one-sided phone conversation.

Newhart, with his slow, deadpan delivery, is a bit of a comic oddity, a straight-man who gets the laughs. That slow delivery allows people to supply the punchline, to imagine the unseen person on the other end of the phone providing it. If you’ve never seen a Newhart phone bit, you should watch a YouTube video of him.

I mention Newhart and his phone routines because we encounter something similar with Paul’s letters. Not that there’s much comedy, but these are one-sided conversations. We hear Paul responding to questions, problems, controversies, situations, and events without having much specific knowledge of those things. We must do some filling in the gaps based on the side of the conversation we can hear.

“Now it is not necessary for me to write to you about the ministry to the saints, for I know your eagerness…” Of course for us, it’s not at first clear what this ministry to the saints might be, why it’s not necessary for Paul to write about it, or why he does, in fact, write a great deal about it.

The ministry to the saints is apparently an offering Paul is collecting for the church in Jerusalem. Paul’s work on this offering shows up in several of his letters, including a previous one to those in Corinth. It’s not clear exactly what the need was, but Paul has obviously placed a great deal of importance on helping the Christians there.

It’s worth recalling that Paul is not always on the best of terms with the folks in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Christians are Jewish, and they require any non-Jews who want to join them to become Jewish first, adopt Jewish dietary restrictions and males be circumcised. But Paul, although he is Jewish, has been starting non-Jewish churches in places like Corinth without requiring circumcision or dietary restrictions. He even insists these not be done.

Yet Paul has no desire to separate from the Jewish Christians or to start a different, non-Jewish faith. Paul understands Jesus as God’s way of joining Gentiles to God’s salvation story that runs through Israel, and he sees the offering for the needy Jewish Christians in Jerusalem as a tangible witness to their unity in Christ. He is excited about this opportunity to demonstrate this unity that they have in Jesus despite their significant theological difficulties.

Apparently the Corinthians were excited, too. Or at least they had been. Now, Paul seems worried that things have changed. He’s bragged about their enthusiastic support of the offering, inspiring others in the process, but will the Corinthians follow through?

And here Paul runs smack into a basic stewardship problem. On the one hand, there is the practical matter of needed funds. He’s made a commitment to help needy Christians in Jerusalem and is determined to keep that commitment. He’s even willing to do a bit of arm twisting, saying both he and the Corinthians will be humiliated if the offering is not ready.

But on the other hand, simply avoiding humiliation and providing funds is not what Paul is after. This explains the tension in Paul’s appeal, and in many church stewardship campaigns. The money is needed, and Paul is willing to work hard to get it. But Paul also wants the Corinthians to discover something deeper. He wants them to be the cheerful, happy, joyful givers that God loves.

Now it may sound hard to believe, but I did not originally notice the connection between today’s reading from 2 Corinthians and this year’s stewardship theme, “Our Community of Joyful Givers.” I’m not sure how I missed it, but I did. When I finally did notice, I went back and read the passage over and over again, wondering just what makes for cheerful, joyful givers rather than reluctant, begrudging ones.

Sermon video from Oct. 5: Falling into God

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Make Me Happy, God

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
     whose hope is in the LORD their God,
who made heaven and earth,
     the sea, and all that is in them; Psalm 146:5-6

If you enjoy trite theology, join Facebook. And you don't need to seek it out. Just "friend" enough folks, and it will find you. Some good stuff may find you, too, but you are sure to see plenty of posters and pictures with pithy sayings such as "God is about to make your greatest pains become your greatest strengths." Perhaps. Or perhaps your greatest pain is some dreadful disease that will shortly kill you. I'm not suggesting that God can't do anything with you beyond that, but I'm not sure that's the same as turning your Alzheimer's or cancer into a great strength.

Sometimes Facebook theology posters feature a scripture verse, but rarely with much context. I don't that I've seen one using today's psalm, but it could work. "Happy are those whose help is in the God of Jacob" plastered over a big smiley face. I don't dispute the psalm, but it turns out that God sometimes defines happiness much differently than I do. Read the entire psalm and you'll get a better sense of that. Jesus' beatitudes offer some more insights.

Of course trite theology is not restricted to Facebook. In fact, most all of us lapse into it at times. We imagine that what we want or what we are trying to do is somehow synonymous with what God wants. And so we pray that God would heal our illness or help our congregations grow and deal with their financial difficulties (which is all well and good). But if we or our congregations don't get better, we may be left wondering what is wrong with our faith or what is wrong with God.

I think that trite theology, both the sort on Facebook and the sort in my life, often arises from a religious life motivated by "my good." I want something that I think only God can give me, and now I have to figure out how to get God to give it to me. But any faith that starts with me rather than God is bound to get off track.

I do think that God wants us to be happy or content or fulfilled or something along those lines, but I'm not so sure that we can ever get there by pursuing those things, by making them our goal. Jesus talks about the need to deny ourselves and lose our lives in order to find true life. But my own life, along with all that trite theology on Facebook, shows just how hard it is to trust Jesus on this one.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon: Falling into God

Philippians 3:4b-14

Falling into God

James Sledge                                                             October 5, 2014 (Stewardship1)

Seminary students sometimes have a bit of nerdy fun translating today’s Philippians passage. When Paul says the immense value of knowing Jesus has made all he once valued “rubbish,” the word he uses has a bit more shock value. One Greek dictionary defines it simply as “dung, excrement.” And so at least one seminarian in any class will inevitably translate it using a four letter word I can’t repeat here.

But what is it that would make Paul so thoroughly reassess his former life? Despite how large Paul looms over the New Testament, I’m not sure the Church – and especially the Protestant Church – has always had the best answer.

Heavily influenced by Martin Luther, Protestants have typically understood Paul’s experience, and so salvation and conversion, as rescue from some failed past. This was Luther’s personal experience. As a priest, he was racked by feelings of guilt, sure he could never follow Jesus well enough or confess his failings fully enough to be acceptable. But Paul’s writings on grace, on how restored relationship with God is a gift and not earned, freed Luther from his guilty past.

Five hundred years later, Luther’s notion of faith and salvation as this sort of rescue still exerts great influence on Protestant theology and thought, even if it fails to connect with many in pews. One reason lifelong Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc. say they’ve never had a “conversion experience” is because they understand it as rescue, but they’ve never really thought they needed rescue, having grown up in the church.

But it turns out that Martin Luther’s faith experience did not mirror Paul’s. Unlike Luther, Paul never felt oppressed by God’s law. He wasn’t seeking freedom from guilt and worry. In our reading this morning, he describes himself so, “…as to righteous under the law, blameless.” That doesn’t mean he thought he was perfect. It simply means he tried diligently to live a life ordered by God’s law, and could be forgiven when he failed.

But now that he is “in Christ,” Paul views everything from his past in a new light. And many of us have had a similar experience even if we’ve never had a religious conversion: the experience of falling in love.

Holy Waiting

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
     from him comes my salvation.
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
     my fortress; I shall never be shaken.  Psalm 62:1-2

I'm not very good at waiting. That doesn't make me at all unusual. We live in a results oriented culture. We want things fixed, straightened out and made better, and we want it right now. The coach, CEO, or politician brought in to work wonders often gives way to a new savior after failing to meet expectations. And school systems, companies, and church congregation sometimes jump from one fad to the next, ever hopeful that some new way will turn things around. Rarely do we do much waiting. Even more rarely do we wait for God.

"Be still and know that I am God," says Psalm 46. Stillness is surely a close cousin to waiting, and so we aren't terribly good at it either. Being still isn't productive. We need to do something.

And yet, many of us complain about the cost of our hectic lives. We lament the stress and anxiety of our age that demands more production, more results, more efficiency. But to what end? Why do we complain about how things are but seem so resistance to an alternative, even a holy one?

A fair amount has been written about what stressed out and anxiety laden places congregations have become in our time. Not that anyone wants this to be so. Indeed many hope that church would offer something better, yet we manage to import our hectic, impatient, productive ways into our congregations.

I fear there is a great deal of idolatry in all our busyness. We think nothing can happen unless we do it. God's not going to do it; it's up to us. It could be risky to wait for God. How long to wait? What if God doesn't come through? Perhaps it's better to believe in our concept of God than to wait for God and be disappointed. Such disappointment could be an existential threat to our faith. Better to believe in God but not expect anything much.

"For God alone my soul waits in silence." How do we learn to wait? More to the point, how do we learn to trust in something other than our own productive capacities? Perhaps it begins simply by acknowledging that there is a holiness to slowing down, to resting,  to stopping and waiting for God.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

For Just Such a Time

The book of Esther is surely one of the more obscure parts of the Old Testament. I remember once reading something that suggested the book existed only to give a reason for the Jewish festival of Purim. Many have noted that there is no mention of "God" or "the Lord" anywhere in the book. It seems almost oblivious to the Torah's understanding of what it meant to be a Jew, and it was far from a unanimous choice for inclusion in the sacred texts of Judaism (a process that ended several centuries prior to Jesus).

Nonetheless, there is a line from today's reading in Esther that has always drawn me up short, "for just such a time as this." This is spoken to Esther when she states that she cannot help the Jews who are about to be annihilated. Even though she is queen, she is not permitted to approach the king without invitation. To do so is to risk death. (Esther is queen only because the king had gotten rid of her predecessor, and she has hidden her Jewish heritage from him.) But Mordecai, Esther's adoptive father, urges her to act, saying, "Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this."

For just such a time as this... In a sense, it is always just such a time as this. There are always events, situations, injustices, wrongs, and so on that need someone to act if they are to be corrected. And there is generally some risk to those who do act. Both the situations and the risks may be large or small, earth shattering or barely noticeable, but Mordecai's surely applies in all cases. Perhaps we find ourselves wherever it is we are "for just such a time as this."

Perhaps you or I are in a position to make a difference on something  as big as income inequality or racism. Perhaps we are in a position simply to help one person. But for any of us, at any given moment, there is something we can do if we will take the chance, if we will take the risk. For who knows? Perhaps we have come to where we are for just such a time as this.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon video from September 14: Ridiculous, Extravagant Love

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video from September 7: Struggling with Scritpure - A Life Founded on the Word

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Acts of Extravagance

Any time I've read today's passage from the Gospel of John, I've wondered if Judas Iscariot really was a thief who stole from the disciples' "common purse," or if this was simply a bit of revisionist history. No doubt the fact that Judas had betrayed Jesus was a little embarrassing for the first Christians, and so there was no small temptation to demonize him.

Of course Judas' objection to the anointing at Bethany actually has a certain logic to it, and calling him a scoundrel doesn't really change that. (In Matthew and Mark, Judas isn't the one who objects. It's "the disciples" and "some who were there" respectively.) It's the sort of objection that is still raised today, often with merit. It's not unusual to hear questions about the expense of mission trips taken by church groups. "Think of all the good that could have been done with that money."

Sometimes mission trips are little more than thinly disguised mission-tourism. Such trips are almost never the most "effective" way to help the people whom such trips seek to help. But following Jesus never has been about what is most "effective." Mission trips can be transformative faith experiences for those who participate in them. (We in the church would probably do well to acknowledge this in our church budgets.) And being part of a mission trip can also be a dramatic act of love that seeks to give concrete form to one's faith.

Most of us have some experience with dramatic and extravagant acts undertaken because of love. The gifts and extravagances that people sometimes shower on the person they love are rarely the stuff of logical computation. Romantic and practical rarely go hand in hand. Love can never be reduced simply to what is effective.

Neither can faith. Faith is not necessarily illogical or impractical, but it is much more than these. It is relational. It is encounter. It is experiencing the almost unimaginable depth of God's love, an experience that is beyond practicalities and efficiencies. Like romantic love, it is overwhelming in its power, and so it calls forth acts of extravagance such as that celebrated in today's gospel.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.