Sermon video: What Should We Do? - Ethical U-Turns

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Sermon: What Should We Do? - Ethical U-Turns

Luke 3:7-18

What Should We Do? – Ethical U-Turns

James Sledge                                                   December 13, 2015 – Advent 3

Who invited John the Baptist to the Christmas party? The big day is less than two weeks away. If your house isn’t yet decorated, what are you waiting for? Trees are up, presents are already wrapped and under many. Most everyone is starting to get into the Christmas spirit. Congregations are starting to sing Christmas carols. And into the midst of the joy and cheer of the season comes John the Baptist.

I once tried to find a Christmas featuring John. I couldn’t, but leave it to the internet to correct such an omission. This one says, “Merry Christmas, you brood of vipers! Now repent!”

Of course Advent always has a big dose of John. We may be in a Christmas spirit, thinking about angels, a baby, and shepherds, but John screams, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” He speaks of an ax poised at the tree, of judgment and unquenchable fire.

Yet in our Scripture reading, people have sought out John. They seem to think he has good news in the midst of their troubled world. They do not run off when he calls them snakes and demands fruits of repentance. They simply ask, “What then should we do?”

What should we do? The question has been asked countless times. Three years ago, in my first December as pastor here, the Sandy Hook school shootings occurred just days before the third Sunday in Advent. Questions about what to do were everywhere. But little was done.

I had several church members ask me the question again right after the Charleston church shootings this year. A few suggestions came up, some online resources were shared, but then…

Charleston seems a long time ago. Cruel terror attacks have continued regularly around the world without us much noticing, but the Paris attacks jarred us, in the middle of a modern, Western democracy. Then came the Planned Parenthood shooting and then San Bernardino. And the question echoes over and over. What should we do?

For many Christians, our first response it to pray. That is certainly appropriate. To pray, to lift up those in San Bernardino or Paris or Beirut or Charleston; to hold them in the only embrace we can offer at that moment, is the closest thing to a hug we can give. Progressive Christians sometimes underestimate or even dismiss the power of prayer. Still, “thoughts and prayers” can feel like something to do without doing anything.

A colleague posted this on her Facebook page the day after the San Bernardino shootings.

Prayers are ringing hollow. Arguments on how to solve what seems to be an "American" problem go round and round with nothing changing. Many of us are weary, numb, and feel helpless to put a stop the madness. I'm afraid we have simply rolled over and accepted that murder is a given part of our national landscape. Oh well. We aren't the only culture ever to have done so. Power and violence are not the same thing, but too often they go hand in hand. Collective outrage doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing!

Blame whoever or whatever you want to blame. What scares me the most is that it really doesn't matter. Pray. Get angry. Write a letter. Send a check. It won't really matter until... until what? That's what I'd like to know.[1]

Loving Our Neighbors

In light of the current climate of fear, hate, and anti-Muslim sentiment, the Session (governing council) of Falls Church Presbyterian Church has approved the following statement.

We are grateful to worship God in a nation that explicitly protects our freedom to do so. We affirm the freedom of others to practice as they so choose, whether they profess different creeds, a different faith, or no faith at all. We know we are living in a troubled world—we are angered by injustice, we are grief-stricken by senseless violence, we are heartbroken by cruelty. But we renounce attempts to use our anger and grief and heartbreak to stoke fear. We reject messages that tell us to be afraid of outsiders. We condemn the persecution of and discrimination against believers and non-believers around the world, regardless of whether such actions target and victimize Christians, Muslims, atheists, or those of other faiths. We further condemn the encouragement of and incitement to such persecution and discrimination whether initiated by politicians, the clergy of any faith, or violent sects claiming the mantle of religious authority..

We remember that God says “Fear not, for I am with you,” (Isaiah 41:10).

We remember that our God has given us a spirit of power and of love, not a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7).

We remember that God’s perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18).

We will, with God’s help, work to do as God commands, practicing forgiveness, standing up for those who are persecuted, and welcoming one another, as Christ has welcomed us, for the glory of God (Romans 15:7)

Famine

The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, 
when I will send a famine on the land;
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the LORD.
They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD,
but they shall not find it.

Amos 8:11-12

People come to churches for lots of reasons, but presumably a good many church attenders have some hope of hearing God's word. They may not express it that way, but they hope to have some sort of encounter with the divine. Why else would people go and listen to a pastor read from the Bible and then talk for 15, 20, 30 minutes? Most of us aren't really all that funny or entertaining. Surely people could find a better way to spend their time if they were just looking for a show.

Likely some attendees are hoping to hear that God agrees with them, and very often we pastors are happy to oblige. If you like your religion liberal, a liberal pastor will tell you about a liberal God. If you like your religion conservative, a conservative pastor will tell you about a conservative God. I suppose that a certain amount of this in unavoidable. God is hidden enough that we probably can't help doing a bit of projecting ourselves onto God. But I worry we've gone way past that.

Perhaps you are familiar with this quote from writer Anne Lamott. "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do." I suppose it's a fairly easy move for people who like God and know God likes them to assume God is on "their side." I fall into that one from time to time. But I worry that we've gotten so good at twisting God to our own purposes that we can neither see nor hear the genuine thing. We've entered into a famine like the one Amos describes, a famine of our own making.

The recent hate-filled, bordering-on-fascist statements by Donald Trump, a candidate who says he's Presbyterian and enjoys a fair amount of support from conservative Christians, have rightly brought an avalanche of condemnation. But the very fact that Mr. Trump can spew the hatred he does, seemingly unaware that it might conflict with the teachings of Jesus, speaks to the level of famine we are experiencing. We have become so accustomed to shoe-horning God into our particular political, social, cultural worldviews that we've come close to obscuring the real thing.

The Session of the church I serve is currently weighing a number of options for responding to the fear mongering and hate that has become so prominent in our country of late. By Sunday we will likely have approved two or three ways to repudiate this hate and to show support for our Muslim neighbors. I don't see how we could not. There is no way to love our Muslim neighbors without doing all we can repair the damage, to show kindness to people who have very real reasons right now to be terrified of some of their neighbors.

That said, all the options we are weighing come fairly easily to me and to many in this congregation. They fit neatly into our political, social, and cultural worldviews. Without hesitation I can say that they are completely consistent with and faithful to the word of the Lord. But is that because we have heard the word of the Lord, or is it, to some degree, simply a happy accident?

In the biblical witness, the word of the Lord tends to create a fair amount of discomfort and disruption. It calls people from where they are to something new. Jesus says that it requires us to deny self and embrace the cross. (Here "the cross" means suffering that I could avoid.) The Word of the Lord made flesh, the Incarnation we celebrate at Christmas, has amazing power to get people to drop everything and go in directions they have never imagined, but I worry that such a Word is rarely encountered in our churches today.

One good thing about biblical famines; they never last forever. I suspect the same is true of any famine we may be in now. But I also wonder how many of us are starving without ever realizing it. We're wasting away on a steady diet of words of our own making, perhaps dimly aware that something is amiss but never suspecting we are in the midst of a famine.

In the Beatitudes Jesus says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." (In Luke's version it's, "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.) There is a promise to fill our longing, but if we don't even know we're hungry...

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us." Lord, help us long for your Word.

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That's Not Christian

I think I'm getting a tiny taste of what it must feel like to be a typical Muslim at a typical mosque when people twist Islam to justify their hate or violence. It happens when I hear someone like Jerry Falwell, Jr. encouraging Liberty University students to get concealed-carry permits so they would be able to "end those Muslims before they walked in."He even joked about "what I have in my back pocket right now..." chuckling as he asked, "Is it illegal to pull it out? I don't know."

Falwell later clarified that he was speaking of Islamic terrorists when he said, "those Muslims," but I don't think that helps at all. Worse, I'm certain that people both inside and outside the Christian faith are saying to themselves, "This is what Christians believe." But that cannot be if they are truly followers of Jesus. That is my response.

In some of the most strained biblical interpretation I've ever heard, Falwell claims that Jesus' words, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" somehow justify the use of deadly force. Falwell is talking about the same Jesus who stops his own followers from pulling swords (the concealed weapon of choice in those days) to save his life, adding, "For all who take up the sword will perish by the sword." This is the same Jesus who demands love of enemies. But now some people hear Jerry Falwell, Jr. and think to themselves, "Jesus approves of my gun and my hatred/fear of Muslims." And others think to themselves, "Jesus tells Christians to carry guns and hate me."

That is a lie, a gross misrepresentation of Jesus and his teachings. Yet it is a lie that far too many embrace. And those of us who are followers of Jesus have been terribly negligent in allowing such lies to go unchallenged. As my Muslim friends know well, challenging those who co-opt faith for their own agendas of hate is no easy task. Challenging others' lies does not mean that people stop accepting those lies as truth. Yet followers of Jesus are called to be people of truth.

It is common in America to hear calls for moderate Muslims to do more to repudiate radical Islam. (No amount of such repudiation is sufficient for some.) But American Christianity needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror on this issue of misrepresenting the faith.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From time to time, I'm made the case for retiring the term "Christian." I think it largely meaningless, a paper thin veneer that too often implies nothing in the way of actually following Jesus' teachings. I am constantly amazed at the ways "Christians" on both the left and right trivialize faith and imagine it lines up neatly with their own personal and political preferences. I'm not speaking of how we fail to do all that Jesus asks of us. (We all fall short on this.) Rather I'm speaking of a total failure to see the many ways that Jesus' call is totally incompatible with our culture, our politics, our fears, our aspirations, etc.

Jerry Falwell, Jr. may well be a "Christian." He may well "believe in Jesus," though I'm never quite sure what that means. But I am convinced that he is not following Jesus. And he is sullying the Savior's name in the process.

Sermon: Sound and Fury

Luke 3:1-6

Sound and Fury

James Sledge                                                               December 6, 2015 – Advent 2

In the final act of the play, shortly before his own death, Macbeth learns that Lady Macbeth has died, prompting him to launch into a brief soliloquy ending with these famous words. “Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Macbeth seems unimpressed by our sojourn through mortality. I hope he’s wrong about life being a poorly told tale with lots of noise, but ultimately meaningless. Yet we might well borrow his words to describe a great deal in our world.

 If you frequent Facebook or Twitter or other social media you know something about sound and fury. The internet overflows with bombastic speech with no hint of nuance. People hurl unequivocal statements at one another, apparently unable to imagine that their opinions could have the slightest flaw, or that their opponents’ opinions a sliver of truth. And right now there are many such posts about guns and Muslims and Islamic terror.

Social media are often just a less polished versions of the talking heads so prominent on so-called “news channels.” There is much sound and fury, but is sometimes difficult to say if there is anything more. And in the wake of events like Paris or San Bernardino, the sound and fury can be deafening.

But for the ultimate in sound and fury, nothing tops what passes for political discourse in our age. Such noise is bipartisan, but perhaps because of so many candidates, each needing to get noticed, the Republican presidential field surely pushes the sound and fury meter to absurd levels. This past week even more so.

In such a climate, where does one go to hear a word that is wisdom and truth? Where are we to find a word that actually signifies something? Who has a word to give meaning and hope and life?

Where Is God?

"You give your mouth free rein for evil,

     and your tongue frames deceit.

You sit and speak against your kin;

     you slander your own mother's child.

These things you have done and I have been silent;

     you thought that I was one just like yourself.

But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

Psalm 50:19-21

Another shooting. We almost expect them these days. When you walk into the room and tell folks the news about the latest, no one says, "Oh, I can't believe it!" They may gasp, but then they look downcast and say, "Not again." 

What are people of faith to say and do at such times? Very often, I wish they would say a lot less, other than an occasional, "Lord, have mercy." Like others at such times, people of faith would like answers, would like things to change, would like some way to fix things. Naturally some mine their faith for answers and solutions, sometimes grasping desperately and ridiculously. Some will declare that the pain and violence in our world are somehow punishments from God. Some will even imagine that the victims somehow "deserved it." 

Other people of faith will react very differently. Such moments bring their faith into question. "How can God allow such things to happen?" This actually strikes me as a much more faithful response. The Psalms are filled with cries of "How long, O LORD?" where the faithful state their case and wonder in anguish why God does not intervene. One of today's morning psalms speaks (or perhaps hopes) of such long delayed intervention. The psalmist insists to the wicked (In this psalm God's judgment is aimed at Israel.), that God will not remain silent and inactive forever.

But where is God now?

I suppose that God might ask the same of us. It is our society and our culture of gun violence after all. We certainly bear responsibility, but I will leave that discussion for another time. For the moment, and especially in light of our obvious ineptitude, why doesn't God do something?

If I were God... Surely most of us have imagined such a scenario, and in it, surely we have done something to fix things. All that power at God's disposal. Either God doesn't really exist, or God doesn't act and react in the least bit as we do.

I saw this on Twitter shortly after I learned of the shootings in San Bernardino. It's a quote from Thomas Merton. I don't know if it was tweeted in response to the shootings or not, but it seems appropriate. “Into this world, this demented inn, where there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes, uninvited.” 

This demented inn... That seems an apt description of our world. And if the Christian story is to be taken with any seriousness, God's response to our demented state is to come to us and live among us in a manner totally at odds with our ways. Jesus hangs out with the wrong folks, loves enemies, serves the last and the least, speaks truth to power, and calls folks to follow him in embodying an entirely different manner of living. It gets him killed, of course, How could it not. But even the certainty of death does not turn Jesus aside from his strange way of confronting the brokenness, sin, and demented nature of our world. And the story insists that even in death, he triumphs.

I have to admit that on some days this is not enough for me. I want God to "do something" more in the manner that I would. But Christ is the heart of faith I proclaim. And it is this faith that at times takes root deeply enough in me to seem more real than the reality of this demented inn we inhabit. And if Christ is indeed alive, and if we in the Church are indeed his body, then we do have some notion of how we are supposed to react to the brokenness, sin, and demented nature of our world.

But for the moment, all I can muster is, "Lord, have mercy; Lord, have mercy."

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Hoping... Because of God

It seems a bit strange to read today's gospel passage. Just as we are getting into Advent and folks are starting to decorate church sanctuaries for the season, here is Matthew's account of Jesus entering Jerusalem on "Palm Sunday." Not very Christmasy.

As Jesus enters into the city, the crowds shout, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" It all sounds so wonderful and exciting, greeting this king who enters triumphantly into the city of David. Of course Jesus will be dead in just five days.

All those people who celebrate Jesus' entry into Jerusalem apparently lose their excitement by Friday. That's not to say that the crowds who shout "Crucify him!" are the exact same crowds yelling "Hosanna!" just days before, but no one takes Jesus' side on Friday. No one is hailing him king. They've all come to their senses by then. Rome is the real power. What were they thinking? All those Hosannas are long forgotten.

It strikes me that Christmas functions for a lot of us a bit like Palm Sunday did for the people of Jerusalem. We'll jump up and down about Jesus. We may chastise those who don't seem to realize that Jesus is the "reason for the season." We may even get all huffy at those whose holiday greetings don't keep Christ in them. (I wonder if there were any arguments in the crowd about the appropriate scriptural passages to use for hailing Jesus' entry. Did anyone correct people who just said, "Go, Jesus!"?) But once Christmas is over, Jesus will recede until next Advent when we can be bothered by the commercialization of Christmas or "Happy Holidays" all over again.

The crowds that hailed Jesus as he entered Jerusalem said the right things. They correctly identified Jesus. He was the king entering into the city of God's king. But the crowds had no notion of what it meant to serve or follow this king. In fairness to them, they knew nothing of the cross and the resurrection. They had no real reason to think that this Messiah who was betrayed by one of his own inner circle, who was so easily done away with by the powers that be, could possibly be God's anointed.

We say we know better. We know about the empty tomb and Pentecost and the Holy Spirit. And yet, I still don't act all that different from the crowds of Jerusalem. I hail Jesus when it is easy or fun or comfortable, but bail when it gets difficult. I'm happy to claim Jesus as my king, but I'm pretty selective about which of his commands or teachings I'll actually follow. And looking at politics and public opinion in America, I'm clearly not alone. A lot of people are quick to embrace the label "Christian," to speak of America as a "Christian nation," and then proceed to act in such un-Christlike  ways that it's little wonder less and less people are attracted to the Christian faith or the Church.

But despite no one sticking with Jesus once Palm Sunday gave way to Friday, God's plans moved forward. Easter was not dependent on enough people "getting it" or liking Jesus on their Facebook page. Easter did not happen because of anyone's faith or belief or prayers. Easter happened simply because of God. And that is a bit of good news and hope to hold onto in a day when people like to shout Jesus' name yet seem filled with anything but peace and hope and love.

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Sermon video: Heads Held High

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Heads Held High

Luke 21:25-36

Heads Held High

James Sledge                                                               November 29, 2015 – Advent 1

What are the things that weigh heavily on you, that cause you to lose sleep at night? I’ve read several articles talking about a growing fear of terrorist attacks among Americans. And we’ve all seen this fear being aimed at Muslims.

Perhaps your worries are more immediate, financial concerns. The economy is better than it was a few years ago, but not for everyone. And in a region with the economy so tied to the federal government, and with a largely dysfunctional Congress, who knows when another sequester or other budget mess might arrive.

Or maybe you’re concerned about getting into the college of your choice, graduating from school, or getting a decent job when you do. What will you do if you don’t get in? Or what if that job you’re hoping for doesn’t pan out? Or what if it doesn’t pay enough to live on?

Perhaps your worries and anxieties are of an entirely different sort. Health, relationships, retirement, the environment, and many more possibilities can leave people feeling anxious, burdened, and weighed down.

But now comes the Christmas season, a time of year that is supposed to fill us with joy and good cheer. Bathed in Christmas lights and feasting on a steady diet of Christmas music and broadcasts of It’s a Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, we can enjoy a respite from all our worries.

I’m sure this works for some folks, but for a lot of people, the holidays and Christmas season just leaves them feeling more stressed out.

When I lived in Columbus, Ohio, I volunteered and served on the board of a non-profit that worked to help people dealing with mental illness lead productive lives. It was staffed and run by people who themselves were living with various mental illnesses. One happened to be a member of the church I served which is how I got connected with them.

Most every year as the Christmas season approached, the good folks at Partners in Active Living would ask me to do a presentation on faith, mental health, and the holidays. For a lot of clients at Partners, Christmas made them feel worse rather than better. Most were living on limited incomes, and the focus on gifts and buying only reminded them of that. For those dealing with depression, the idea that they were supposed to be joyful and cheerful seemed like added pressure. In addition, long years of struggle with mental illness had often frayed family relationships and caused estrangements from parents, siblings, or children. Christmas could be lonely.

For a lot of the clients at Partners, the difficulties of day to day life were enough to leave them feeling weary and heavily burdened. Christmas sometimes felt like “piling on.”

I was careful never to proselytize when I did my “Christmas and Mental Illness” presentations, but I never pretended to be anything other than a pastor. A lot of clients had religious baggage connected to their mental illness and family estrangements. And so they often wanted to talk about faith with me.

A revelation for me in these discussions was how relieved some were to hear that our culture’s obsession with Christmas was neither biblical nor part of Christian tradition for most of history, and how much some of them preferred Advent to Christmas. In most congregations, people are itching to get to Christmas. I was warned in seminary that if you don’t start singing Christmas carols by the third Sunday in Advent you’re going to get yourself in trouble. But many at Partners would have been happy to stay in Advent.

Thanksgiving and Religious Stereotypes

I have many things to be thankful for. The list is long enough that I won't even try to catalog them here, but I will mention the special blessings I've received this year via friends at the Institute of Islamic and Turkish Studies in Fairfax, VA. Not only did my congregation have the wonderful opportunity to break the Ramadan fast with the congregation from IITS's Ezher Mosque, but I and pastors from several area congregations enjoyed a ten day trip to Turkey with their Imam, Bilal, thanks to their generosity and hospitality. In fact, the "Thanksgiving Feast" pictured here is actually one of several meals our group enjoyed in people's homes in Turkey.

While visiting Turkey, we were received with amazing graciousness and hospitality. We feasted on wonderful food. And we experienced remarkable warmth and love from people we had never before met. This was in part because of the hospitality that is a big part of Mediterranean culture, and because such hospitality is a central part of Islam, as it is with Judaism and Christianity.

As I give thanks for my friends at IITS and in Turkey, I am saddened and frightened by the tone of political discourse that speaks openly of registering Muslims. That sadness only deepened as I read an article in yesterday's Washington Post entitled, "Americans are increasingly skeptical of Muslims. But most Americans don't talk to Muslims." The article contains the startling statistics that a majority of Americans thing Islam is at odds with American values while 70 percent of Americans have seldom or never spoken to a Muslim.

People who are my friends, people who have treated me with the utmost courtesy, hospitality, and respect, are being demonized and scapegoated in large part because ridiculous stereotypes of Islam go unchallenged by actual encounters and experiences with living, breathing Muslims.

Most of us are familiar with disgusting stereotypes of Jews, African Americans, gays, etc. But most of us also know at least a few Jews, African Americans, gays, etc. and so we know real people who don't fit the stereotypes. Apparently most Americans cannot say that with regard to Muslims.

I have a troubling suspicion that this is also the case for many Americans and Jesus. Based on a lot of rhetoric that gets passed off as "Christian," I have to wonder if these people have ever met the Jesus portrayed in the pages of the Bible or if they only know some popular stereotype of Jesus they encountered who knows where.

There are ridiculous stereotypes of Jesus on both the left and the right. In the worst cases of both, there is a willful attempt to reshape Jesus to fit people's particular political views. But the bigger problem seems to be similar to that with Muslim stereotypes. People simply accept stereotypes because no actual experience with Jesus challenges them.

Especially for Protestants, this problem is largely one of failing to regularly and seriously engage with the Scriptures. Huge swaths of American Christianity seem perfectly content to assume that the Jesus of the Bible largely conforms to their stereotypes. They may even know of a few Bible passages that buttress that stereotype, but their Jesus almost never confounds or challenges them. Yet the biblical Jesus did that on a regular basis, both with the religious establishment of his day and with his own followers.

When you hear Donald Trump or some other candidate talking about Muslims, who is that to you? What comes to mind when you hear the words Muslim or Islam, and where do these images come from? And what about Jesus? What comes to mind when you hear his name, and where did that image come from?

Seems to me that with both Islam and Jesus, a lot of foolishness, a lot of hate, and a lot of harm, arise because people have so little experience with the reality of either.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Sermon video: Embracing the Truth

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.