Musings on the Daily Lectionary

"I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see." So goes a line of the popular hymn "Amazing Grace." And today's reading from John 9 is also about the blind seeing. In a recurring pattern from John's gospel, blindness here functions on two levels. A man who was literally blind has been healed by Jesus, but by the end of the reading, blindness has become a metaphor. Jesus says, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."

Once more it is the learned, religious folks who cannot see. Their certainty about the rules, about the proper channels and methods that God would use, blinds them so that they cannot recognize Jesus. Worse, they are convinced he is the enemy of God because he doesn't fit their doctrines and their understanding of Scripture. As religious experts, they know, they understand, they "see." But in the presence of God's power and wisdom in the flesh, they become blind.

My own Presbyterian Church (USA) has been embroiled for years now in arguments about whether gays and lesbians may be ordained as elders, deacons, or pastors. As Presbyterians, we naturally go to the Bible to see what it says, and then we claim to know, to understand, to "see." It makes me wonder about that questions the Pharisees ask Jesus. " 'Surely we are not blind, are we?' Jesus said to them, 'If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, "We see", your sin remains.' "

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

When I was growing up in the Presbyterian Church, I think that I likely heard more sermons preached from the Apostle Paul's letters than anything else. That's certainly not the trend nowadays. The "narrative preaching" that I learned in seminary doesn't work as well with Paul. He is a bit wordy, after all, as this portion of today's reading from Romans demonstrates. "But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, 'Why have you made me like this?' Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory - including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?"

But wordiness isn't the only problem with these words. Paul's description of God's sovereignty jars me. Yes, I know that Presbyterians and others in the Reformed tradition have always insisted on a radically sovereign God. But I chafe a bit at the notion of simply being the clay God fashions. I'm more impressed with myself than that.

Now clearly God has tremendous concern for humanity. The whole Jesus event makes that obvious. But it seems that I still want more. I want God to conform to my expectations, to work in ways that honor my notions of proper human existence. My father once told me, "Any God I can fully understand is no God at all." But I still want God to make sense. I don't want to be told, as Paul does, "But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God?" It sounds like the divine version of a parent saying, "Because I told you so."

But I did learn as a parent that sometimes, that is the only answer. And, in the end, isn't faith about trusting in God, trusting that God's reasoning, God's wisdom, God's plans, are better than any that I have?

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Sermon for March 29, "The System"

In John 12:20-33, Jesus speaks of his death judging the world. The sermon title comes from a commentary's suggestions that "the world" might be better understood if translated "the system."
(Sorry, no video this week.)

Sermon, 3-29.mp3

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

In my nearly 14 years as a pastor, I have discovered that most people seem to think the term children of God is a synonym for human being. I'm not sure how this came to be. Perhaps because Christians are referred to as children of God, and because for many years our culture was presumed to be Christian, the moniker children of God came to be thought of as ours by birth, as a biological thing.

The Bible clearly has other thoughts. C.S. Lewis is following biblical thinking when he has the children in his Narnia books called "sons of Adam" or "daughter of Eve." This is our nature by birth, the heirs of rebellion against God. But the Bible also speaks of a change in this nature through Jesus by virtue of being adopted. Jesus claims us as his brothers and sisters, and it is here that we become God's children.

Paul speaks of this in today's reading from Romans 8:12-27. Speaking of the transformation that comes from being "in Christ," he writes, " ...but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God."

I know that some folks greatly prefer that they be God's children by birthright. But I find it incredibly heartening to realize that I am God's child because God chose me, because God has gone to the trouble to adopt me. It is no accident of biology. A loving God has claimed me, at great cost, to be part of God's family. Now that's good news!

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

In today's reading from John 6:16-27, Jesus says to the crowds who have sought and found him, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."

Jesus raises the interesting question of what we are looking for when we seek Jesus. My wife has a quote on our refrigerator which I don't remember exactly, but I can paraphrase it. "Stop asking God to bless what you are doing. Get involved in what God is doing. It is already blessed." I know that very often I want God to help me do what I want to do. I spend more time pleading for God's help than I do asking God what I should be doing. But over the years I have found that life seems well ordered and at peace when this is reversed, when I am more focused on discovering what God desires for me.

O God, help me to want most what you want for me.

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Sermon Thoughts on a Non Preaching Sunday

I'm not preaching today, but I've done a little thinking about the passage from John 3:14-21 nonetheless. This is the passage where Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. (It's worth remembering the way that John uses dark and light as symbolic categories.) And in these verse we hear the familiar line "For God so loved the world..." These words are beloved by many, but I suspect that people often miss some of what is meant by these words.

The "world" in John is not a place but a realm. It is fallen creation. It is the realm that is opposed to God and God's will. God's love here is not a warm feeling toward a place, but a determination to redeem a system that seems hell bent on going its own way. And while that might not be what we generally think of when we first hear these words, those are pretty comforting words. I, for one, am glad to know that in Jesus, God is seeking to draw the very system that opposes God back into the divine arms.

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

"Jesus said to them, 'Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.' So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple." Jesus really pushes his opponents' button with these words. The "I am" Jesus speaks is used repeatedly in John's gospel to express Jesus' divinity. It picks up on the divine "I am" from Moses' encounter with Yahweh at the burning bush. (Sometimes this "I am" is hidden in English translations. See John 18:5-6 for an example where it translated "I am he.")

This echo of God's name on Jesus' lips is highly offensive to his opponents. The inflammatory nature of Jesus' words is probably lost on most of us, but we have our own "buttons" when it comes to faith. Once or twice I have had a youth at the church push my button by expressing some outrageous statement about church or God or Jesus. Sometimes I've been foolish enough to take the bait, and I've almost always regretted it. When people push my buttons and I feel compelled to defend God or the church or religion, I usually do the opposite of what I intend.

Sometimes my own faith, my own trust in God can be fragile enough that I feel the need to protect it against assault. The emotional level of my response is often more a measure of my own doubts and anxieties than anything else. I've never picked up a stone to throw at anyone, but I've felt like it. Somewhere, God is probably amused and sad at the same time.

A prayer that I find more opportunities for witnessing to God's love and less for defending it.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

"Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin." So Jesus says in today's reading from John 8:33-47. None of us likes to think that we are slaves. We fancy ourselves to be free, to have free will and to be the products of the free choices that we make. But Jesus says we are captives and must be freed. (Paul says a lot about this in his letters as well.)

The people Jesus addresses insist that they are free, that they have never been slaves. It is hard to be freed from a slavery you don't recognize -- a bit like an alcoholic being trapped in that disease because he can't admit to it. I wonder what places Jesus might act more powerfully in my life if I better recognized the ways in which I am captive to sin.

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Text of 3-15 Sermon

John 2:13-22 (Exodus 20:1-17) "Startled by Clint Eastwood"
James Sledge -- March 15, 2009

The other night I was doing a little channel surfing, and I came across the old Clint Eastwood movie, Pale Rider. For those who’ve never seen it, it’s a fairly typical Eastwood western. The setting is the days of the California Gold Rush and a conflict between a group of poor prospectors with their families and a greedy, mining corporation that wants to take over their claims. Some ruffians hired by this corporation are harassing the prospectors when a mysterious stranger played by Eastwood rides into town and manages to bust up these hoodlums wielding an ax handle. The mysterious stranger then takes up with the prospectors, at which point we realize he is wearing a clerical collar. For the rest of the movie he is known only as “Preacher”

At a key moment in the drama, the owner of the mining company attempts to buy off the preacher. He invites him into his office for a drink and explains that he could be more than a preacher for just the prospectors. He could be a pastor to the town. It could be his parish and the mining company would build him a nice church building.

The Preacher seems intrigued and discusses these prospects, and one point noting that as a pastor with a congregation and a building he would naturally be worried about collections. The mining owner can scarcely contain his glee as he explains how there is a lot of money in the town and those collection plates would be overflowing. To which the Preacher responds, “That’s why I can’t do it. The Bible says you can’t serve God and mammon,” and he stares at the owner with steely eyes as he continues, “mammon being money.”

Now I have no idea if Clint Eastwood, in a movie filled with religious overtones, meant to take a swipe at the church with this line or not. But the line rattled me just a bit. After all, rare is the church pastor who doesn’t worry about how much will be in the collection plate. We Presbyterians tend to resist some of the more overt forms of church fund raising; no bingo or fund raising dinners here. But we still worry about how to get members to give enough to meet the budget. Our denomination has a Stewardship Office that produces materials to help with Stewardship Campaigns. And while stewardship and fund-raising aren’t quite the same thing, sometimes it can be awfully hard to tell them apart.

As coincidence or providence had it, I caught the movie, Pale Rider, the evening before I first looked at today’s Scripture readings to begin preparing this sermon. And there was Jesus, fashioning a whip and chasing the money changers and those selling animals out of the Temple. Now years ago I would probably not have made any connection to Jesus cleansing the Temple and that Clint Eastwood movie line. But years ago I didn’t really appreciate the situation Jesus found at the Temple.

I think there is a tendency to make stereotyped bad guys out of the money changers and animal sellers, to view them a little like villains in a Clint Eastwood western. But the fact is that these folks who get Jesus so riled up don’t look much like villains. You see, the Temple in Jerusalem didn’t function like a church sanctuary does for us. Rather it was the center of the Jewish religion, perhaps a bit like the Vatican is for modern day Roman Catholics. Depending on how far away you lived from Jerusalem, you might make a trip there once a year, maybe every few years, or maybe only once in your life. And at times of year such as Passover, huge crowds of pilgrims would flock to Jerusalem and the Temple.

Now naturally these pilgrims wanted to make offerings to God. But for most of them, the money they used in daily life could not be brought inside the Temple. These coins had images of Caesar, who had proclaimed himself divine. These were graven images that were perhaps unavoidable in daily life, but no good Jew would dare present such a graven image to God as an offering. To help alleviate this problem, money changers were stationed in the outer courtyards of the Temple complex, not inside the Temple itself.

And the pilgrims who had come from far away usually could not bring animals with them to offer as sacrifice. And so, there in the same outer courtyards of the Temple complex, you could buy an animal to sacrifice as an offering to God.

Now admittedly animal sacrifice seems a bit odd to most of us, but it was the norm in Jesus’ day, not just in Judaism but in most all religions. And I’m not sure that helping folks buy these animals was any different from being able to buy a candle for you to light in a Cathedral, or even from being able to buy Christian books in a church bookstore. And is it all that different from money changers to offer worshipers the chance to pay their offerings with credit cards or have their pledges directly drafted from their checking accounts, something we’re considering here?

And so perhaps you can see how, for me, when I start to look at the cleansing of the Temple story from this angle, Jesus morphs into Clint Eastwood’s Preacher, looks at me with a steely squint and says, “You can’t serve God and mammon… mammon being money.” And I squirm.

I squirm but I don’t for a moment worry that Jesus is going to chase me out of the sanctuary, or that Clint Eastwood is going to beat me up with an axe handle. Rather I think that Jesus wants to use my squirming to drive me in a much more helpful way, to drive me into deeper trust in and relationship with God.

As a religious professional, one of the real dangers to my faith is that I can find myself serving the church rather than serving God or Jesus. And Jesus and Clint jar me into taking a hard look at myself and discovering those places where my trust and loyalty have gotten misplaced. The 10 Commandments work in similar fashion. While the second part of these commandments deal with run of the mill morality, stealing, murder, etc, the real focus of the commandments seems to be on right relationship with God, on not seeking to manipulate God’s blessing for personal gain, on making sure that all of life is properly oriented toward God.

Now I realize that most of you are not religious professionals, and so Clint Eastwood’s Preacher may not speak through that steely squint to you in quite the same way he does to me. But most all of us have those things we serve or trust in rather than serving or trusting in God. And I’ve known more than a few church members whose loyalty to a particular congregation, or to some group in that congregation, seemed to be considerably stronger than any loyalty to Jesus’ call to follow him.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Jesus thinks the church is a bad idea. Clint Eastwood may, but Jesus has called us to be the Church. But he also knows that from time to time we need to remember what it means to be the Church. We need to do a little cleansing of those things that have deflected us from loyalty to God and God’s call to discipleship in Jesus, the things that distract us from the temple that is destroyed and raised up in three days.

You know, beautiful temples and sanctuaries are wonderful places. They can often help draw us toward God, open us to God’s presence, remind us of God’s majesty and transcendence. But there is a more wonderful temple, one not made by hands, and he calls us to follow him into true and full relationship with God.
Thanks be to God!

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

"Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." These words from today's gospel (John 8:21-32) sound a bit odd to me because of where Jesus says them. Jesus' hearers have been totally befuddled by his words, misunderstanding most of what he teaches them. As so often happens in John, people hear Jesus literally and miss what he really means, and yet, "As he was saying these things, many believed in him." But how can these folks continue in his word or know the truth when they don't understand what Jesus is saying?

The 11th century theologian St. Anselm is perhaps best known for his motto, "Faith seeking understanding," and I wonder about this motto as a help with today's gospel reading. Many of us are drawn in some way to Jesus without fully understanding what the heck he is talking about. But as we do come to faith in him, we are called to continue in his word so that we will be disciples and come to know the truth.

American Protestantism often wants to reduce Christian faith to "believing in Jesus." But today's reading seems to call us to a disciplined living with Jesus' words, to a lived out discipleship that is a life of "faith seeking understanding."

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" So begins today's evening psalm, Ps. 27. It was the morning psalm last Thursday, and I commented on the abundance of fear in our time. But while there is a great deal of fear in our nation right now, it sometimes pales compared to the fear that I often see in the Church. And this fear was going full tilt long before our current economic crisis.

I suppose I should say that it's the Mainline Protestant Church where I've seen this fear, and it's a fear about survival. Presbyterians and other Mainline groups were used to being important players in the culture, but now we are dwindling, losing numbers and influence, and people are afraid. They fear for the future of their individual congregations. They fear for the future of their denominations. And often they grasp at solutions. Evangelism has become a hot topic for Presbyterians, although it is often a very self serving take on evangelism. How do we find enough new people so we can stay alive, so we can pay the bills?

How easy it is for us to forget that our congregations, our denominations, are not the same thing as God's kingdom. God's future is not dependent on us. Ours is dependent on God. I'm all for churches learning new tricks, starting better programs, and doing a better job of connecting with the so-called unchurched folks around us. I think that pastors do need to learn new patterns and methods of leadership. But I don't think any of it will much matter if we don't count most of all on God, if we don't spend more time listening for what God is calling us to do, and trusting in the Spirit to animate and equip us to carry out that call.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

In today's reading from John 7:37-52, some who hear Jesus become convinced that he must be the Messiah. But others raise an objection. "Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?" Now we may want to quickly dismiss this objection by pointing out that Jesus is born in Bethlehem and not Galilee. However, the gospel of John makes no mention of this. It makes no attempt to explain away this objection. Rather, the fact that the Messiah cannot come from Galilee is simply one of those things that is "known" by the teachers and leaders of Judaism. And what they "know" prevents them from seeing what is right in front of their faces.

In my own faith life, I often want to get things all figured out. I want to get my theology and doctrines all neatly arranged, and I'd just as soon God not go around doing things in ways that mess up my neatly ordered theological and doctrinal precepts. And here I find kindred souls in the Pharisees of John's gospel.

I've probably raised the following question before in this space, but I think I need to hear it over and over again. How many times do I miss what God is doing in my very midst because I "know" that God wouldn't do things that way, wouldn't work through those folks, or wouldn't go against my understanding of Scripture?

What do you think?

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