Trust Issues

I must admit that today's gospel reading unnerves me a bit.  Its ending is quite gruesome, with those who opposed the ascension of their king executed.  I must also admit that I often skip over such passages, excising them from my abridged version of the gospel.

But for some reason, I felt the need to sit with this "parable of the ten pounds."  It's so similar to Matthew's "parable of the talents" that both must point to a common parable.  But Luke's version is so different that he must have had a very different message to get across. As I contemplated it, I thought of all sorts of things that mitigated some of its objectionable nature. For instance, it would have sounded very real to life to people of Luke's day. Local, Middle Eastern kings were incredibly cruel to their enemies.  And it is a parable, not doctrine or even allegory.

But then I quit trying to explain away its difficult parts and simply sat with it a while.  And I found myself drawn to a line not in Matthew's version. "But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We do not want this man to rule over us.' "The line doesn't really fit with much else in the parable.  Presumably the slaves that are the main characters are not "the citizens" who sent a delegation.

I can certainly locate myself in the parable as a servant of Jesus who has been given resources to use on Jesus' behalf.  But today I found myself identifying with those citizens who did not want Jesus to become their king.  I like Jesus just fine, and I am happy for him to bless me or give me some spiritual goodies, but I'm not so sure about having him be my king.  Perhaps that's not so different from Jesus being my master, but it struck me as so today. I want to be a citizen, with all its benefits.  But I don't want to be under the rule of Jesus.

If you are a student of history, you probably know that kings are sometimes wonderful rulers.  When kings truly have their subjects' best interests at heart, kingdoms can run much better than democracies. Democracies don't really provide a better government in terms of getting needed things done. Rather they attempt to prevent power from accumulating in ways that can abuse and oppress.  In a sense, we embrace a very inefficient form of governing in order to preserve our freedoms and prevent our being treated like slaves.  We just don't trust kings.  The really good and kind ones turn out to be quite rare.

And I think I bring some of that distrust to my relationship with Jesus. Is it really a good idea to turn my life over to him? 

One of the things I have very slowly, and still only partially, come to realize is that it is impossible to convince someone or argue someone into letting Jesus be king.  You simply must experience something of the depth of God's love, of Jesus' longing for you, before it makes much sense to hand over your life to him.  And Luke certainly knows about such love.  After all it is Luke's gospel where Jesus says "Father, forgive them" from the cross.  And it is Luke's second volume, the book of Acts, where Saul, a sworn enemy of Jesus, encounters the risen Christ and becomes Paul, one of the most dedicated subjects Jesus has ever had.

Right now, in my own spiritual journey, I find myself spending less time trying to be better at following Jesus. Instead I'm trying to pay attention to, and become more aware of, just how much God loves me, just how much Jesus wants to love me. I need to feel that, to experience that, because it seems I have some trust issues.

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God's Coming Dominion and Wal-Mart

“Because the poor are despoiled, 
        because the needy groan,
     I will now rise up,” says the LORD;
    “I will place them in the safety 
         for which they long.”  Psalm 12:5

As the mad dash of Christmas shopping began in earnest last week, with Black Friday sales that started on Thursday, there were also protests at Wal-Mart.  In the DC area, a large crowd - though not nearly so large as the crowds inside - gathered to complain that Wal-Mart paid its employees too little, gave them scant benefits, and used intimidation and coercion to keep them keep them silent. I don't know about any intimidation or coercion, but the low pay and lack of benefits are public record.

In today's gospel, a blind man shouts at Jesus and his entourage as they pass by. People tell the man to be quiet.  Presumably Jesus has more important matters.  After all he has just explained to his followers that he is headed to Jerusalem, to arrest, abuse, and death. But Jesus comes over to the man and gives him what he longs for.  And I have to think that Luke includes this story in this spot as a reminder to us of Jesus' priorities.

As we enter into another Advent, we will once again hear of God's long awaited dominion. From Luke we will hear that this dominion will lift up the poor and the lowly, but will bring down the powerful and send "the rich away empty." The gospels speak of a coming great reversal that we are called to become part of now.

Over the centuries, Christians have often been involved in efforts to help the poor and needy. At times such efforts have helped transform society and make God's kingdom a bit more visible.  But at times these efforts are charity done to make us feel better. Churches spend huge sums of money to go on mission trips to exotic locales, but the run of the mill poor in our midst are often invisible to us. Wal-Mart employees who don't make enough to live on don't quite generate the interest or excitement of a mission trip to Haiti.

I don't mean to disparage missions to Haiti. I am not against such things at all. But if we pass by the blind man on the side of the road, scarcely noticing him as we travel along the way, we have gotten off track.

I am no socialist, but it is clear that unrestrained capitalism is antithetical to the gospel picture of God's kingdom, the new realm or dominion of God.  We Presbyterians claim that one of the primary purposes of the church is "the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world."  I take it that a similar purpose is what made it impossible for Jesus to ignore a blind man on the roadside, even when he was so focused on going to Jerusalem.

Me, I'm sympathetic to those workers at Wal-Mart, but hey, they're having a really big sale on flat screen TVs inside.

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Dryness

"Once God has spoken." That's a line for this morning's psalm.  It then continues, "twice I have heard this: that power belongs to God."  But I was already stuck on the first part. Sometimes this is what communication with God feels like to me, so infrequent that I might say, "I heard God speak once."

One of the more common spiritual complaints I've heard over the years is about what many have labeled "dryness."  I called it that myself before learning that it was a well established term to describe those periods when prayer or meditation or Bible reading feel empty. Perhaps that is why Psalm 42 begins, "As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God."

I can never remember who said it (I think it was someone from the Alban Institute.), but I've always remembered this succinct comment about Mainline Church difficulties.  "People come to us seeking an experience of God, and we give them information about God."  Thirsty people come to our churches, and we talk a lot about water, but don't seem actually to have any. Turns out that thirsty people aren't really much interested in complex discussions about how water works, its molecular properties, or its capacity to wear down rocks dripping over the eons.  They just want a drink of water.

The possibilities for quenching spiritual thirst seem to multiply continually.  There are more spiritualities available than one can count. (If you don't believe me, check out the category in a Barnes & Noble or browse it online.) Such proliferation suggests a lot of dryness and thirst out there, and so it seems that any church that provided a good watering hole would be overwhelmed with folks. But on the whole, most congregations experience a different dryness.  They are parched for people.

 Not that Mainline churches haven't tried to address this. We recognize that something is wrong, and if you look around, you will find every sort of experimentation with worship. Contemporary, traditional, weekly communion, Taize, informal, and more; and on a variety of days and at a variety of times. Sometimes such experimentation has indeed produced a long, deep drink of cool water. But other times it seems the proverbial "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

I think this morning's psalm may provide a little help in understanding why worship works or fails, regardless of style.  "For God alone my soul waits in silence; from God comes my salvation. God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken." A lot of activity in churches is little more than institutional machinations, new and creative ways to talk about water.  Very often it forgets about God. I does not wait for God or trust that God is there.  Instead it desperately attempts to create that which it seeks.

We are about to enter into Advent, a time of waiting. Waiting is a much neglected discipline in our world. It does not feel productive or busy or any of the other things that our culture so values.  But waiting is the spiritual equivalent of listening, an attentiveness that allows the other to speak. Maybe the lack of such attentiveness is one reason God seems to speak so infrequently.  Come to think of it, maybe that's the reason we so seldom actually hear one another.

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Sermon video: Our Truthiness - God's Reality

Other sermon available on YouTube.

Sermon audio: Our Truthiness - God's Reality

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Sermon: Our Truthiness - God's Reality

John 18:33-38b

Our Truthiness – God’s Reality

James Sledge                                                                              November 25, 2012

If I were forced to choose, I think I would probably say that the best show on television, certainly the funniest, is The Colbert Report on the Comedy Central.  If you’re not familiar, Stephen Colbert is a real person, but also a character, a parody of an egotistical, conservative, cable-news talk show host, and one of the better satirists since Will Rogers. 

One of the recurring features on the show is a segment called “The Word” which is always introduced with the phrase, “And that brings us to tonight’s word,” eliciting wild cheers from the studio audience.  The segment appeared in the show’s premier episode in October of 2005, and that night’s word was “truthiness.” 

Truthiness made fun of the all too common practice of cable news pundits stating as fact things that are only the speaker’s opinion.  Colbert says facts are not things you get from books but that you feel in your gut. “That’s where the truth comes from ladies and gentlemen, the gut,” says Colbert.  “Did you know that you have more nerve endings in your stomach than in your head?  Look it up. Now somebody’s gonna say, ‘I did look that up, and it’s wrong.’ Well mister, that’s because you looked it up in a book. Next time, try looking it up in your gut.”

For some reason, the word “truthiness” caught on.  You can find all sorts of articles on it.  It is actually in the New Oxford American Dictionary, with Colbert credited for it.  The American Dialect Society named it their word of the year for 2005, defining it as “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.”  I suspect the word caught on because it is such a perfect word to describe what is sometimes passed off as truth.  But I wonder if it doesn’t also resonate simply because we humans have such a difficult relationship with truth.

Grateful

The picture on Facebook makes fun of Black Friday saying, "people trample other for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have." Today's gospel reading tells of 10 lepers who were healed, but only one (and he was a Samaritan) came back to say "Thank you," prompting Jesus to ask, "Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"

Tomorrow we will be grateful, or at least say that we are. Some of us will list things for which we are grateful. A good exercise, I suppose, if often perfunctory.  And I'm not sure that the things we are thankful for, the things we count as blessings, are always the best lists. Many of us are thankful for our stuff, our nice cars and clothes and houses. It makes sense in a way, but Jesus warns that our wealth can be a curse rather than a blessing.

I find myself in a weird place with regard to gratitude as I write. Not only is it the eve of Thanksgiving, but I've also just returned from a Presbyterian CREDO conference, a rather intense event for pastors where we examine our sense of identity and call including how that intersects with our physical and financial health.  One piece of this is how our church work and busyness can take us away from our actual call from God. The priorities of our work lives often get out of sync with God's priorities.

During my time at CREDO, as I explored my own faith and call, as I questioned my own priorities, I found myself feeling profoundly grateful for certain people, my wife especially.  And I found myself profoundly sad for how my life and its priorities often do not reflect such gratitude.

Today, I'm also doing some work on a sermon for the first Sunday in Advent. Each year the readings for this Sunday focus not on Jesus' arrival in a manger but on his still anticipated one.  And the scripture reading always contains some sort of call to be alert and ready for that arrival. It's not the scary or silly stuff of Left Behind novels, but rather a call to live now according to the priorities of God's coming new realm.  And different priorities make for different gratitude lists, and for different sorts of regrets and sadnesses.

For someone who did very well in seminary and has managed okay as a pastor, I can be really slow to catch on about faith. I had one of my "Aha" moments in the thick spiritual ether of a CREDO conference in the beauty of the NC mountains.  I encountered God's love in something other than a contractual or intellectual or judicial manner.  I encountered it as God's desire for me, and lots of things suddenly felt reoriented. It suddenly felt easier to be vulnerable and not worry about doing it just right.

One specific example was particularly illuminating for me. The notion of confession suddenly felt more like gratitude. Nothing like a child saying he's sorry after being caught doing something wrong, but rather a response to discovering how far a lover has gone to keep loving you regardless. And "Sorry" all of a sudden sounds like "Thank you."

It's Thanksgiving, and I have my list of things I'm grateful for, but the list feels a bit different this year. It feels fresh, and strange, and wonderful.  Thank you!

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Sermon video - New Clothes

Sermon audio - New Clothes

I've been away for a CREDO conference.  Here's the sermon audio from Nov. 11.


Audios of sermons and worship available on FCPC website.

Sermon - New Clothes

Mark 12:38-44

 New Clothes

James Sledge                                                                                       November 11, 2012

I have been to three high school reunions.  It makes me feel terribly old to say so, but I attended my 35^th a couple of years ago.  This one was a little different from a tenth or twentieth.  After 35 years, my classmates and I were a lot closer to the ends of careers than beginnings.  Quite a few have died, and some had or were just about to retire.  At a tenth reunion, so much lay ahead. Only provisional judgments could be made about how your life had gone.  But at a 35^th.

When you gather for a 35^th reunion it is difficult to look at people and not make judgments.  Some are fairly superficial. If you’ve been to such reunions you know what I’m talking about.  Some folks have aged better than others.  Some look little changed from their senior class picture.  Some you can’t figure out who they are.

Other judgments require a little more information, some catching up.  Graduate degrees, places they’d worked, where they now live, where their children go to college, and other such things let you begin to rate folks on some sort of success scale.  One is an Air Force general, others are doctors, some own businesses, some are fire fighters, some are teachers, and so on.  Of course not everyone uses the same success scale for their measuring. Some are impressed with Air Force general, and some are not.  Some are impressed with teacher; some are not. Some are impressed with pastor (not many); some are not.

Whether or not you’ve ever attended a high school reunion, you probably use some sort of success scale, some type of measures for making judgments or life choices.  Parents want their children to do well, so they worry about the school district they live in, and children learn at very young age that they will be measured.

Think about all those scales we use: grades, SAT or ACT scores, state school vs. Ivy League vs. community college.  And it keeps going after school: salary, car you drive, where you live, where you vacation, who you know, how important you are, and so on.

Numbers figure prominently in many of these success scales, and such scales show up at church as well. Successful pastor means one at a church with lots of members, and successful churches are ones with large membership and budgets. We’ve just completed a stewardship campaign that talked about giving as a spiritual discipline and the tithe as a way of gauging spiritual health, but we’ll still measure the success of the campaign in total dollars. 

There is a certain practical necessity to this I suppose, but it sure seems out of sync with what Jesus says to us today.  When he sees a widow drop a couple of pennies in the Temple treasury, he says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.”  He calls it “more.”

Sermon video - Lengths in the Chain

Sermon from November 4

Sermon video - Almost Ready

Sermon from October 28

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

I love social media, but it has its downside. Somewhat like alcohol, it seems to lower inhibitions. People fire off tweets and Facebook posts in the heat of the moment, saying things that they must surely regret later. Or perhaps the lack of face to face contact simply removes the sense of propriety that might be there if the person were standing amongst a group of coworkers.

Today, post election, the venting is going full force. I suppose that Donald Trump had become such a caricature that people barely shrugged when he called the election a "sham" and "travesty" and called for a "revolution." Still, even Trump seemed to think better of it later, removing the tweet. (Social media 101; you can never really remove a tweet. It's still out there.) On Facebook this morning, some of my "friends" are overcome with doom and foreboding. "American is screwed," and "Goodbye America, it was nice knowing you," are prime examples. 

Hopefully such statements are heat-of-the-moment feelings that will subside, but no doubt they are real to those saying them. And I find myself wondering why so many folks feel the reelection of Obama is a death knell for America. And for that matter, why did so many of my liberal friends thing the election of Romney would have been much the same.

In his acceptance speech last night, Obama addressed the pettiness that so often seems to dominate politics, making them seem "small, even silly." He went on to address important and non-petty things he encountered on the campaign trail and then said, "It’s not small, it’s big. It’s important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy."

I get what he's saying, and I agree to a point, but only to a point. I would never argue that fundamental issues of democracy or people's economic security are small things. But I will argue that in politics, as in all other areas of life, humans tend to overestimate the largeness of their cause, their issue, their concern, etc. I say this as a Christian with a fundamental belief in a human brokenness that issues forth in idolatry, giving ultimate status to things that are not. Idols can be quite good and important things. In fact the best idols always are. But when any cause or institution or idea or ism becomes ultimate for us, our sense of reality is distorted, and we act as if things are larger and more important than they actually are.

There seems to be an innate need for humans to attach to something larger than self. Some label this an innate religiosity. But O how this often leads us astray. From a Christian perspective, anything that gets in the way of loving God with my entire being and loving my neighbor as myself is an idol that distorts me and my life. It creates loyalties and passions that are out of kilter, and so I live in ways that are not true to who I really am.

You can see such out of kilter loyalty and passion at work in today's gospel. The synagogue leader's loyalties are misplaced. They are to doctrines and practices meant to encourage faithful life with God. But the leader has mistaken them for the ultimate. Similar things happen all the time in the Church when pastors and members confuse the success of their congregation with the work of Christ.

And I think that much of the partisan bitterness in our world today (in both secular and church politics), is because we have given ultimate loyalty to sub-ultimate things. And so my ideas for a better country are more important than the country itself. My country is more important than the world. My notions of how the church should act are more important than the church itself. And my notion of what God is like and how God should act replaces the living God who is beyond my full understanding.

There's a saying that became a book title which reads, "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff." Perhaps we would all do well to apply that adage to our loyalties and big things from time to time. A reminder of the universal human tendency to find subordinate substitutes for what should truly be ultimate.

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Voting against "Christian"

I'm trying not to pay much attention to the election today.  I'm not going to sit around and watch returns come in as I've done in past elections. I'll check in now and then and hope there's a decision before I go to bed.

Still, you can't be on social media and not hear some news about the election.  I already saw the results of one exit poll that claimed people who attend church weekly voted for Romney, 62-37 percent, while those who never attend broke 62-34 for Obama. I have no idea if this is accurate or if it portends anything about the final results. I am curious, however, about what this says about faith in Jesus and whether or not attending church has much to do with that.

As a follower of Jesus (admittedly not always a very good one), I have my problems with both candidates. Both went on and on about their concern for the middle class, presumably because that's where the most votes are. But neither said much about the poor, and that was one of the first things Jesus said his ministry was about, "good news for the poor."

In today's gospel, Jesus tells a parable about bearing fruit. He talks about a fig tree that has produced no figs for years. Unless you just happen to like the look of fig trees, one without fruit isn't worth much, and so this one is slated to be cut down.  In the parable, it gets a reprieve, but only a brief one.  It will get tender loving care, but it still needs to bear fruit, or it's a gonner.

It's hard to miss Jesus' point. We are expected to bear fruit. Attending church on Sunday is a good thing, but I don't think it's the fruit, or at least not the only fruit, that Jesus is talking about.  After all, his opponents were meticulous in their religious observance. Jesus expects us to worship God, but he expects more than that.  And I feel confident that the fruit he's looking for is not whether we voted for Romney or Obama.  Perhaps our understanding of how best to love our neighbor causes us to prefer one candidate over the other, but the notion that one candidate is the Christian candidate makes me think a lot of people have gotten confused about what that term means.

And so in the spirit of elections and voting, I'll make a motion to do away with the term "Christian." It's not an idea original to me nor is it the first time I've suggested it.  But I think it painfully obvious that the term, along with Sunday church attendance, often has little to do with following Jesus. And that is as much a problem for liberal Christians as it is for conservative ones. We both assume that Jesus is with us.  But very often, we need to be thinking about how we must change in order to go with him.

I went to my polling place today and voted for the candidates I prefer.  My faith figures prominently into my choices, but I don't think this means that people who vote opposite me are "un-Christian." And so I'm voting a second time today, this time against the label "Christian." (I know this is out of order from a parliamentary standpoint; no second, no discussion, but hey, it's all metaphor anyhow.) I'm still looking for a candidate that rolls off the tongue easier than "follower of Jesus," but I'm increasingly convinced it's time to give "Christian" the boot. 

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Partisan Jesus

As one who lives in a "swing state," tomorrow evening cannot arrive soon enough. I'm as tired of the commercials for my issues and candidates as I am for those of the other side. And I'm convinced that the local news programs are shortening their actual broadcasts to create more and more available ad time.

Maybe I'd feel less disgusted by it all if the commercials had much substance, but more often than not, they massage "facts" or tell straight out lies in order for one side to say that the other side's candidate hates babies, America, Jesus, and puppies.  And the partisan name-calling has invaded Twitter and Facebook with a vengeance. The distortions and name-calling there are only more outlandish and preposterous than on TV.

I thought about our partisan divisions today as I heard Jesus say, "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three."  Sound familiar?

So is Jesus just one more dividing line in an already polarized world? I think I have something of a "yes and no" answer to such a question. Certainly Jesus is not the meek and mild sop who never offends anyone or creates any conflict. No one fitting such a description ever got executed for his trouble.  Clearly Jesus scared some people, and so it stands to reason that his followers might scare the same people. I might add that this provides a useful measure of whether your or my divisiveness is of a pair with Jesus'. Are the same sort of people upset with you? (If you aren't sure, you would do well to get to know you Bible a bit better and discover just who it was Jesus offended and who he embraced.)

But while Jesus scared people and even called them a few choice names on occasion, he did not seem intent on creating divisions. He did not go around looking for folks to label as bad or as outsiders.  If anything, he worked to pull outsiders in.  However, his very presence was a source of division. To encounter Jesus and his message created a kind of crisis moment. Could people accept, embrace, or go with Jesus and his message, or did they have to turn away.

Let me quickly add that I'm not talking about the stereotypical, evangelical choice to accept Jesus as your personal Savior or else. The positive judgment on the Gentiles in Matthew 25:31-46 clearly speaks of those who choose the way of Jesus unwittingly. Rather, the crisis Jesus' presence confronts us with is whether we will consider following Jesus and his ways over the ways honored by the world.

There's a famous quote from Mahatma Gandhi that speaks to this. He studied several faiths and was drawn toward Jesus' teachings. Yet he was repelled by what he experienced from those who called themselves Christian and said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

To spend much time around someone who really does try to follow Jesus, who is not so unlike Christ, can be a little unnerving. Such people can be difficult to relate to because they don't function out of the world's norms, and their presence can be an uncomfortable critique of our lives. They are easy to admire from afar, but to get very close can provoke a crisis. It can demand that we acknowledge their Christ-like way or turn away from it. And they need not call us names or condemn us. Their presence itself is sufficient.

Such moments of crisis and division are rare. Like religious leaders in Jesus' day, religious leaders in the Church manage and domesticate Jesus so that our divisions are along much more trivial lines, lines that typically mirror the dividing lines active in our culture. More fundamental questions about true life, true community, true relationship with God and other, get lost amongst our petty differences. 

Despite claims to the contrary, our divisiveness is rarely about the future of our society or country. It is almost never about the hope of a new day that Jesus insists had drawn near. Perhaps that is why people have become so tired of our present day partisanship. After all, partisanship is a long-standing part of American political history. But our present divisiveness often seems to be for the sake of itself, rancor for rancor's sake, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Oh, for some divisiveness that was actually over Jesus and the Way he proclaims rather than the small and petty divisions that so often occupy us.

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Sermon - Lengths in the Chain

Hebrews 11:39-12:2

Lengths in the Chain

James Sledge                                                                                       November 4, 2012

I subscribe to a magazine called The Christian Century. It’s been around since the late 1800s, and long served as a prominent  voice for liberal, Mainline Protestantism.  But I mention the magazine today, simply because of its name, The Christian Century.

It took that name at the dawn of the Twentieth century as America and its churches entered a new era brimming with hope and optimism. The remarkable technological advances of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led many to believe that humankind was on the verge of solving all sorts of problems, from wiping out diseases to increasing agricultural production so that hunger might soon be a thing of the past.

The dawn of the Twentieth Century was accompanied by a nearly unshakable faith in human progress, a view shared by American Christianity. The missionary movement had grown exponentially in the late 1800s, and many in the church, both conservative and liberal, envisioned a fast approaching day when the gospel truly had been carried to all the world.  Along with utopian visions of a world without poverty, hunger or childhood diseases, there would be a parallel progress in the advancement of faith.  The world would progress and become Christian, and so it would be the Christian Century. And from that optimism, the magazine took its name.

Obviously things didn’t work out quite like people expected. Barely a decade into the new century, World War I broke out, demonstrating clearly that “progress” also meant progress in our ability to maim, kill, and terrorize on a scale that had previously seemed unimaginable.

And that was followed shortly after by a worldwide Great Depression that makes our current economic difficulties look like a party.  Then came World War II, the Holocaust, and nuclear weapons.  No one was any longer talking about the inexorable march of progress toward an ideal human society. 

At the same time, anti-colonialism movements were accompanied by a resurgence of indigenous faiths such as Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, and talk of bringing the kingdom began to subside.  There was not going to be a Christian Century, and with the loss of such hope, faith took on a more personal focus.  Faith was about getting right with God personally. It was primarily about believing the right things, being moral, and getting a ticket to heaven, to a better place.

On Not Grieving the Spirit

On All Saints' Day, the gospel passage is not anything warm and fuzzy. Jesus' opponents seek to trap him, and he speaks of his followers not fearing death, of hell and judgment and unforgivable sin. It's the sort of passage that might prompt me to look at the other readings if this were one of the Sunday passages for use in preaching.

Many are familiar with Jesus' words saying, "even the hairs of your head are all counted." But I've most often heard them quoted to mean, "Don't worry, God won't let anything bad happen to you."  But Jesus uses them to reassure us about facing death, and not a natural death at that.  They're part of a warning to hold fast to faith when the going gets tough, even deadly, a reminder to trust God's care even when facing death, because, says Jesus, there are things worse than death.

It's a little unnerving to hear Jesus say that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable. I must admit, however, I'm not entirely sure what that means. We can say all sorts of nasty things about Jesus and get a pass, but not the Holy Spirit?  What's that all about?

I'm not at all certain, but considering that the author of Luke is the same person who tells us in Acts about Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, I wonder if this warning isn't only for people of faith.  Are only those who have received the Spirit able to blaspheme the Spirit?

Given the context, that seems to make sense. And so this would have nothing to do with typical discussions around "believe and be saved, don't and you're in trouble," but rather would be about how those who do feel the Spirit at work in their lives respond to that Spirit.

Understood this way, perhaps the tendency of Presbyterians to stay away from the Spirit is an unintentional act of self-preservation. If we're never aware of the Spirit's presence, perhaps we can't actually blaspheme her.

But all that aside, I have to think that part of what Jesus is saying is that once we really experience the Spirit's presence within us, granting us faith and strengthening us to follow Jesus into even the most difficult situation, it would require the most incredible act of willful and intentional disobedience to turn away that Jesus can't imagine us doing such a thing. That's why he concludes his warning about facing persecution, arrest, and even death this way. "Do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say."

Do not worry.  So why is it so hard for me, and many like me, to entrust myself to the Spirit?

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Halloween and Other Costumes

Before long the trick-or-treaters will arrive.  I have no idea how many. The first Halloween in a new neighborhood, you don't know how much candy to buy.  Hopefully we have too much rather than too little. I'll be happy to polish it off.

I always enjoyed Halloween as a child.  It was fun to dress up as something you weren't. Once when I was around 10, I made myself a robot costume.  A couple of boxes, some silver spray paint, and some antennae fashioned from household utensils, and I had a crude, but serviceable facsimile of a robot inspired by the Lost in Space TV series showing back in those days.

But whether the costumes were crude, home-made jobs or fancy, store-bought ones, everyone understood that the masquerade was fleeting. Other than the occasional very young sibling or family pet, no one was really fooled by these remodeled exteriors. Under the costumes, we were still the same. Nothing had really changed.

Yet despite knowing this, most of us still worry a lot about our costumes.  Not our Halloween ones, but the costumes we put on every day. Sometimes these are literal, the clothes we wear to project just the right image.  Sometimes that are a persona that we don, hoping it will make us look more impressive, attractive, sexy, knowledgeable, powerful, datable, and so on. But often they are not much more effective than Halloween costumes. Who we really are inside still shows.

Jesus goes after the Pharisees in today's gospel over their concern with the outside rather than the inside.  Seems that nothing has change in 2000 years.  And this isn't simply a personal thing. We church folks worry a lot about the outside of our buildings and our worship, sometimes to the neglect of deeper, more important things.

We all know that the Church is people, a communion of saints who together constitute the living body of Christ in the world. Yet very often we we mention "church," we are talking about our costumes.

What's beneath the costumes your church wears? And what sort of Jesus does that show to the world?

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The Crisis of Jesus' Presence

The storm blew through last night. There's a tree down in the church parking lot, but that's about it. And we didn't lose power as we did in this summer's derecho, so I feel fortunate. Not so for many in other places such as New Jersey and NYC, not to mention the Caribbean. And as I read today's lectionary passages, it reminded me of how the poor suffer disproportionately at such times.

I was none too happy this summer when we lost the contents of a recently filled refrigerator/freezer to days without power. No one likes to throw away expensive food, but it did not really impose any great financial hardship on me to replace all that food. Not the case for some. And that is just one small example. For those who struggle to get by, storms like Sandy can mean days with no income, damage to cars or homes with no money for repairs. I don't mean to make light of someone's vacation home being washed away at the beach, but there is a difference.

What got me thinking about such things was a line from today's psalm and a statement from Jesus in Luke's gospel.  From Psalm 12,  
       “Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan,
          I will now rise up,” says the LORD;
       “I will place them in the safety for which they long.”
And from Jesus, when someone blesses the womb that bore him, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!"

The gospel of Luke emphasizes themes of love and forgiveness as much or more than any other gospel. It is in Luke alone that Jesus says from the cross, "Father, forgive them." But today Jesus speaks of obeying God, and of his presence as judgment, a sign requiring repentance or change. Jesus says we need to hear and obey. But too often in the church, we stop at "believe."  Worse, we pervert Jesus' message, reducing it to nothing more than one of personal salvation. And we conveniently forget that Jesus says his coming is about good news for the poor, release for the captive, sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of Jubilee. (This Jubilee was a time when debts are forgiven and those who had sold land to survive have it returned. Clearly it is something that benefits the poor at the expense of the rich.)

The fact is, we have heard God speak of caring for the poor, of doing justice and mercy. We have heard Jesus call us to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbor as much as self. We have heard Jesus call us to be servants, but still we build our churches to serve us.  Look at the budget of the typical church, and care of the poor and needy will be one of the smallest slivers on the budget pie chart. It's not that we have no compassion for those in need, it's just that it's way down at the bottom of our priority list.

It's pretty rare to hear judgment preached in Mainline churches, unless it is judgment on others. But the presence of Jesus is a sign that brings judgment, that demands change. When we encounter Jesus, we must either go with him, or turn away. I'm not talking about getting into heaven or not, but I am talking about the crisis that Jesus' presence provokes. Perhaps that's why we Presbyterians are so uncomfortable talking about presence or the Holy Spirit. It is much safer to discuss Jesus than to encounter him.

On that note, let me start to lobby for something I've seen suggested by others. It is time to abandon the label "Christian."  It has become so vague as to be meaningless. "Follower of Jesus" would be much better. At least that would remind us of the response that his presence demands.

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Hurricanes, Prayers, and Our Place in the Story

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 called to the Lord out of my distress,
     and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
     and you heard my voice.  
You cast me into the deep,
     into the heart of the seas,
     and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
     passed over me.  
Then I said, 'I am driven away
     from your sight;
how shall I look again
     upon your holy temple?'  
The waters closed in over me;
     the deep surrounded me; 
                           (from Jonah 2)

These readings seem fitting on a day when Hurricane Sandy (or if you prefer, Frankenstorm) threatens the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. Here in the Washington, DC area, most everything is shut down in anticipation, though as yet the weather is fairly tame in Falls Church, VA.  In the meantime, my Twitter feed has an interesting mix of religiously-oriented, hurricane-related tweets.

A large number offer prayers for those affected or encourage others to offer similar prayers. But a handful regard such activity as silly. I follow God on Twitter (actually a mostly humorous account, @TheTweetOfGod), and God tweeted this earlier. "Afflicted by #Sandy? Please turn to Me for comfort from the pain I'm causing you"

Speaking of cause, there's a lot of Twitter activity responding to folks who say Sandy is divine retribution for gay marriage or some other supposed "immorality." All the religious types I follow are trashing such notions. God chimed in on this one, too."I send natural disasters to punish mankind for being stupid enough to believe in a God who would send natural disasters to punish it."

I struggle sometimes with the notion of a sovereign God who rules over all history, a Jesus who "even the winds and the sea obey," alongside a perfectly predictable, destructive storm such as Sandy which has precisely followed computer models based on the best available science, unmoved by the prayers of many faithful people. What does this say about our faith, about our God?

A couple of things strike me. For many, God's chief concerns has become the status of our "eternal souls." (Never mind that the eternal soul is a Greek philosophical idea and not a biblical one.) And we are unsure about how God operates in other arenas. Even conservative evangelicals can get unnerved by Pat Robertson type announcements of praying away a hurricane. Best to leave hurricanes to the meteorologists.

At the same time, modern people are very immediate. We make judgments based on the moment and have great difficulty with a long term view, even more so if long term means not just a few years, but beyond my lifetime. We not only vote in elections based on how we think we will be affected in the coming days, but how we feel about God is often a matter of how it's going with me today.

One item of truly good news in the gospels is that God is concerned with each of us as individuals, that the hairs on our heads are numbered. But that concern does not mean that God measures all things based on how they affect me. The biblical story is primarily a corporate one. Each of us is valued, but we are also part of a larger whole. To be Christian is to become part of a larger story, a story whose meaning, direction, and ultimate culmination is not necessarily tied to what happens to me today.

None of this provides terribly satisfactory answers to why God permits hurricanes to kill and destroy. But it does speak directly to the fact that Hurricane Sandy barely showed up on my Twitter feed when it was wreaking destruction and death in Cuba and Haiti.  It's okay for God to ignore hurricanes that don't impact me.

I think it safe to say that a great deal of arrogance is required to imagine that God is not beyond my understanding. Clearly there are and will be many things for which there are no good answers, although the Bible endorses fist shaking and yelling at God in many such instances, at least according to Job. Indeed not to do so may be indicative of a lack of faith, of notions God whose power is restricted to admitting me to heaven.

But one thing is almost certain, wrestling with questions of where God is in the storm will raise questions of my place in God's larger story. What does it say if I barely noticed Haiti, or if I'd prefer Sandy to hit New York City rather than hit me? 

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Sermon audio - Almost Ready

Audios of sermons and worship services available at Falls Church Presbyterian website.

Sermon - Almost Ready

Almost Ready
Mark 12:28-34

October 28, 2012                                                                              James Sledge

 When someone takes flying lessons, the first big milestone in the process is flying solo.  The first time the instructor gets out and says, “Take it around the pattern yourself,” is a huge moment in the life of a student pilot.  Many students who solo never actually get their pilot’s license, but still, they have flown by themselves.  They can truly call themselves pilots.

That first solo flight is a big deal among pilots.  It’s traditional to cut off the student’s shirt tail and tack it to the flight school wall with the student’s name and the date of the solo flight.  Not surprisingly, many students are anxious about when they will solo.  They bug the instructor.  “Do you think I’m ready yet?  Do you think I’m ready?” 

A few students never get it, but they are rare.  For most, eventually it clicks, and the instructor says, “You’re starting to get it.  You’re almost ready.  Let’s schedule your next lesson, and if everything goes well, you’ll solo at the end of it.”

It’s an exciting moment in the life of pilot, and even if you’ve never held the controls of an airplane, most of you can probably understand.  After all, life is full of such moments.  At some point, babies are almost ready to walk.  Children are almost ready to take the training wheels off.  Students are just about ready to graduate.  Couples are almost ready to get married or start a family. People are almost ready to retire.  We all experience such moments.  We reach those points in our lives when we are ready to move on to something new. 

In our gospel reading this morning, a scribe who has noticed Jesus’ keen religious insight asks him a question.  It was a question much debated among rabbis.  What commandment took precedence over others?  Or as the scribe says, “Which commandment is first of all?”

Jesus does not break any truly new ground with his answers. He quotes Scripture, first from Deuteronomy, then from Leviticus.  And interestingly, he can’t stop with one commandment but requires two, although both involve love.

The scribe is clearly impressed with Jesus’ answer.  And I don’t think it’s simply a matter of his agreeing with Jesus.  I get the impression that the scribe’s eyes are opened just a bit.  Things come into focus for him, and he gets. “You are right, Teacher. Now I see. To love God with every fiber of your being and to love your neighbor as yourself, that’s the point.   It’s so much more important than getting the liturgy or music or rituals just right.

And then it’s Jesus’ turn to be impressed. He says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  At least that’s what our Bible translation says.  But translating from one language to another is never an exact business. There’s usually more than one way. And this one could also be translated, “You are almost ready for the kingdom of God.”

Asking the Wrong Questions

Who is my neighbor?  That's the question Jesus is asked in today's gospel. In Luke's rather interesting take on this story, Jesus does not tell this fellow what the greatest commandment is. (See Matthew 22:34-40 or Mark 12:18-27) Rather the questioner provides Jesus with the commands to love God with all your being and to love neighbor as self.  Jesus simply affirms the man's response saying, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

"But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'" I shouldn't say this during "stewardship season," but this question from today's gospel has always recalled for me a question about tithing. "Are you supposed to tithe from pre-tax or after-tax income?" I suppose some people might simply be asking so as to be sure and tithe correctly, but it usually strikes me a diversionary question, and my answer is, "Either would be fine."

The lawyer in today's gospel knows the commandments.  ("Lawyer" here refers to Mosaic law from the Old Testament.) He knows he is supposed to love his neighbors as himself, but is that pre-tax or after-tax neighbors?  What's a reasonable neighborhood zone?  Inside the zone equals neighbor while outside is not.

Jesus' answer is one of his most famous parables, even though it appears only in Luke's gospel. And this "parable of the Good Samaritan" does not actually answer the man's question, at least not directly. Jesus answers a question about who might fall outside a reasonable neighborhood zone with a story about a man who was already presumed to be outside that zone.  A thoroughly despised Samaritan, the definition of an outsider to many Jews of Jesus' day, goes out of his way to care for someone in need.  And Jesus says, "Be like him."

Much like the lawyer in today's gospel, our questions are sometimes not the right questions. I think that Christians often sound ridiculous and sometimes cruel because we insist on asking Jesus or the Bible questions that are the wrong questions. The lawyer knows what he is supposed to do, but he asks a question in hopes of limiting the command to be neighborly.  And when you consider how un-neighborly Christians often are both to outsiders and to one another, it seems we are still are taking our cues from the lawyer in Luke's gospel.

I wonder what might happen if every time we found ourselves thinking that some "other" did not deserve our help, our hospitality, our welcome, our love, our concern, our friendship, etc. we let Jesus retell us this parable.

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Sermon video - Not So Among You

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What Makes God Mad

These words from today's reading in Micah are familiar to many.
  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. 

But I wonder how many know the context of these hopeful words.
   Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob
       and chiefs of the house of Israel,
   who abhor justice
       and pervert all equity,  
   who build Zion with blood
       and Jerusalem with wrong!     
  Its rulers give judgement for a bribe,
       its priests teach for a price,
       its prophets give oracles for money;
   yet they lean upon the Lord and say,
       "Surely the Lord is with us!
       No harm shall come upon us."    Therefore because of you
       Zion shall be ploughed as a field;
   Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
       and the mountain of the house a wooded height.

God's promise of a new day comes because leaders of the present day neglect justice, concern for the poor, and the ways of mercy and peace. Government and the religious apparatus is tilted toward the wealthy, in cahoots with the rich. God is not happy because of behavior as current as this morning's headlines.

People of faith sometimes worry about what makes God happy and what makes God upset, although they often don't agree about the answers.  There's a lot of focus on what people believe and on certain sorts of moral behaviors. Because we are a sex-obsessed culture, sexual sins often head the lists of things God is riled up about.

The biblical prophets sometimes mention these, but most of the prophets seem much more worked up about injustice, the plight of the poor, the corruption of both governance and religion for the sake of the wealthy.  Another prophet, Amos, sounds a bit like Micah in condemning those who go to church on Sunday but exploit the poor.
  I hate, I despise your festivals,
       and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies...
  Take away from me the noise of your songs.
       I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
  But let justice roll down like waters,
       and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

At the most basic and fundamental level, what sort of behaviors emerge in your life based on what you think makes God happy or upset?

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Faith and Hospitality

The topic of hospitality has become big in the church of late. It is a chapter heading and one of the big "practices" in Diana Butler Bass' book, Christianity for the Rest of Us. And it is the focus of a new book by Henry Brinton, pastor at Fairfax Presbyterian, entitled The Welcoming Congregation: Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality. 

Hospitality in these books and in many other church discussions is about much more than being friendly. It is about a ministry to which each of us is called. It is about going out of our way to welcome the stranger, to see ourselves as hosts. And as such, it does not always fit well into the habits of typical mainline congregations.

In another of her books, The Practicing Congregation, Diana Butler Bass follows up on her aforementioned book, and in it she speaks of "established congregations" and contrasts them with "intentional congregation." (She argues that this is going to become a much more important contrast than conservative versus liberal, but that's another discussion.)  She contrasts them in a number of areas. For example she says that established congregations think of congregants as members or family, while intentional congregations think in terms of companions, pilgrims, and friends. The controlling image of church for the established folks is chapel, while it is community for the intentionals. 

An area of contrast I find particularly interesting is that of piety. Here Butler Bass says that the established are introverted, private, and devotional compared to extroverted, expressive, and spirituality for the intentional. And I can't help but think that some very different takes on hospitality emerge from these different takes on piety and church.

If I go to chapel for my personal, devotional time, I may well be convinced that I should show hospitality to a visitor in worship, but that is not likely to be part of my devotional/spiritual activity. It isn't a spiritual practice for me, and it may simply be a strategy to recruit new members.

But if my piety needs to connect with the other in order to build community, if my spirituality is about sharing a pilgrim journey with others, then I may view hospitality as an essential part of my faith life. It isn't something I ought to do so that people think mine is a "friendly church." Instead it is central to my faith life.

Now I don't know if Butler Bass is correct in her assessment of an established/intentional continuum or of its characteristics.  But I thought of her writings when I read today's gospel. Jesus has sent out 70 of his disciples on mission tour, and this is a portion of their instructions. "Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'"

The only requirement for people to be cured and to have good news of the kingdom delivered to them is hospitality. Nothing about their faith, or whether they were convinced by what the disciples say. But if they are welcoming, if they show hospitality...

Considering how often the Bible speaks of hospitality, and how frequently it calls us to welcome the stranger, it seems odd that hospitality has lost its place as a core faith practice.  "... for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me..." 

How do you engage in the spiritual practice of hospitality in your congregation?

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Priorities

Today's gospel reading opens with this line about Jesus. "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem."  Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross. His life was organized around getting to Jerusalem and the cross. Because Jesus' life was totally centered on serving God by giving his life for us, nothing could deter him from journeying to the cross.

As Jesus prioritizes his life around this journey to Jerusalem, he becomes the living embodiment of the commandment he will speak just a scant chapter later in Luke's gospel.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

Priorities, we all have them. We're in stewardship season at my congregation, and so I'm talking about what our giving says about our priorities. If almost none of our money goes to loving God or neighbor, surely that says something significant about where God and neighbor fit among our priorities.

The ways we use our money and our other resources are faith statements and moral statements. They declare, often much more clearly than our professed beliefs, what is really important to us. The measly giving of many Christians often make a poor witness when it comes to our faith, but I think such stinginess is merely symptomatic of our real problem. When it comes to priorities, human beings have a universal tendency to make ourselves the center or the universe. And this tendency seems to have teamed up with American individualism to produce some disturbing results.

Individualism has religious roots, especially from the Protestant Reformation, and it has made real contributions to our society. But it has a dark side. Unchecked, individualism measures everything based on how it impacts me. Without a larger good to which the self owes allegiance, everything's worth is measured by whether or not it makes my life better.

Even God and faith fall under such measures. To the degree that faith makes my life better or improves it, it is worth my time.  But if there are not some clear, short-term benefits for me (we Americans struggle to think long term), it is not.  In such a climate, much church activity focuses on style, on whether or not this or that style of worship peps me up, feeds me, or makes me feel better.

This is not to say that worship should not feed us or at times make us feel better. But if we measure it purely on such terms, we rob it of any power to change us, to call us to a new life with different priorities such as loving God with all our being and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

What is the absolute core, the center around which your life is organized and prioritized? Regardless of how much importance we Americans put on the individual, I am certain that the answer to this question cannot be "Me."

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Sermon audio - Not So Among You

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

Sermon - Not So Among You

Mark 10:35-45

Not So Among You

James Sledge                                                                                       October 21, 2012

I’ve been reading a new book by MaryAnn McKibben Dana, the pastor at Idylwood Presbyterian just west of here. It’s entitled Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time.  If you’ve ever thought about Sabbath keeping, or simply thought about how life is too busy and distracted, I highly recommend it.

MaryAnn has young children, and in the book she tells of a time she attended a parenting workshop where the leader asked them to write down their goals and dreams for their children, to say where they hoped their children would be at age twenty-one.

She writes, “It was a heartwarming experience to imagine our children on the verge of being launched, all full of glowing potential without the messy inconvenience of reality mucking up the fantasy.  My list was filled with lofty goals—that they would understand their strengths and limitations, that they would have a spirit of service toward others, and so forth.  (Later, I asked Robert what he would wish for our children—what success would look like at age twenty-one.  Without hesitation he said, ‘Their own apartment.’)”

After writing our lists, the workshop participants read them to one another and basked in the radiance of all these self-actualized Eagle Scouts and lacrosse captains, confident yet humble.  They were like young adult ghosts, beaming all around us. Then the leader said something that made them all disappear: Poof!”

“ ‘This list is for you,’ she said.  ‘You want your children to have a spirit of service?  A sense of the Holy?  A curiosity and openness to the world?  Cultivate those things in yourself.  Let them see you do it.  Become the person and parent you want to be.  It’s one of the most important things you can do for your child.’ ”[1]

The book goes on to say that if we want our children to have a different sense of time than most of the world, some sense of sabbath or holy time, we will need to practice it ourselves.  And the point is easily expanded. If you want your children to have a real sense of generosity, be truly generous yourself.  If you want your children to adopt some of Jesus’ priorities over those of the world, adopt those priorities yourself.

Jesus is pretty clear that following him is about a different set of priorities.  He says that we are to love God will all our heart, mind, soul, and being, and we are to love others as ourselves.  And much of his teaching is about fleshing this out, talking about what this looks like in various settings and contexts.  I think that’s the case in today’s passage.

Although they have been with Jesus for quite a while, the disciples still seem very much caught up in the patterns of the world.  They understand that Jesus is the real deal, but they try to shoehorn that into the ways of the world.  You see that with James and John.  They act just like any career consultant will tell you to do.  “Use your connections to get ahead.”  And so when the get a moment where they have Jesus to themselves, they make a move.  “Rabbi, let us be your right and left hand men when you take over.” 

Pride and Forgetfulness

I've always thought that Hosea was a remarkable book of the Bible. Its picture of God's anguished relationship with Israel, of God's inner conflict over how to respond to repeated unfaithfulness, is moving and poignant. In one moment God's anger seems to boil over. It's there in today's reading. "So I will become like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs."

But at other times God's tender mercies overwhelm divine anger. Following a moment of anger, God pivots.  "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?.. My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath."

This view into God's heart, into the internal struggle that seems literally to cause God anguish and pain, grows out of God's desire for relationship with Israel. But the particulars of relationship with Israel can easily be transferred to God's desire for relationship with Christians, Muslims, and others.  God reaches out in love, but gets suffering for the trouble.

It's there in the heart of today's reading. "When I fed them, they were satisfied; they were satisfied, and their heart was proud; therefore they forgot me."  It's an old story, one repeated over and over.  People cry out to God in moments of distress, begging for help. But when the danger is over, the storm past, or the crisis navigated, we begin to imagine we made it through alone. We have triumphed, and our successes are a testament to our hard work and determination.  In short, we are proud.  And pride leads to forgetfulness.

When an actor gets up to accept his Academy Award, he will sometimes pause to thank the people who helped him win. At times this seems a genuine act of remembering that works against pride. At other times thanking these "little people" only serves to highlight how insignificant they are next to the great actor.

I imagine that being a successful actor tends to encourage pride in a way most of us rarely experience.  And perhaps that is a reason that so many actors struggle with personal relationships. It really is hard to remember where they came from.

And God knows all about being forgotten.

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Functional Atheists

Modern day Christians have sometimes been a little embarrassed by the miracles found in the Bible, and modern commentators have sometimes offered rational explanations for those miracles.  For instance, today's feeding miracle is interpreted by some as a "miracle of sharing." Many people in that crowd had a little food tucked in their robes but kept it hidden lest others wanted some of it.  But when Jesus begins to share the meager provisions his followers had, that prompts others to share, and before long there was more than enough to go around as everyone brought out what he or she had.  If you're familiar with story of "stone soup," it's the same idea.

But if you are embarrassed by miracles, you have your work cut out for you in today's gospel. Not only does Jesus feed the crowd but he heals people and also gives his followers "power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases."

Can Jesus really give power and authority to his followers?  What about present day followers?

I have to admit that very often I act as though my answer to the second question is "No." Some have referred to this as "functional atheism." Functional atheists don't deny the existence of God. Christian ones don't deny the divinity of Jesus. It's just that such beliefs don't much impact how they live, how they function. They can't do anything they couldn't already do all on their own, and their churches can't do anything beyond what the combined abilities and efforts of the members could do on their own.

The term "leap of faith" is a familiar one to many. It usually refers to the need to accept something for which there is not empirical proof, such as religious belief. But while believing in God may indeed be a move made without much empirical evidence, I'm not sure it involves much leaping, and a leap of faith seems to imply an action taken in hope or trust that things will turn out differently than suggested by the empirical evidence.  An individual or congregation trying to do something beyond what seems possible for instance.

But can Jesus really confer power and authority on us?  Or are we really all on our own?

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Sermon audio - Because of Love

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

Sermon - Because of Love

Mark 10:17-31

Because of Love

James Sledge                                                                                       October 14, 2012

In 1889, James Bryan graduated from seminary and became pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, having served there part time while still in school.  He would remain there for the next 50 years, becoming a beloved figure in Birmingham known simply as Brother Bryan. He was well known as an evangelist and for his work on racial reconciliation.  But he was best known for his work with the poor and homeless. 

There’s still a Brother Bryan Mission in Birmingham, and a Brother Bryan Park, and a statue of Brother Bryan kneeling in prayer that is one of the city’s better known landmarks. 

Brother Bryan was pastor of Third Presbyterian, but he thought of himself as pastor to everyone he met, and one day he happened to strike up a conversation with a well to do businessman.  At some point Brother Bryan asked the man about tithing.  The man neither tithed nor knew exactly what it was, so Brother Bryan launched into a stirring biblical argument for tithing, for giving the first 10 percent of his income to God. 

The businessman said, “Oh you don’t understand.  I make a lot of money.  Ten percent would be a whole lot more than I could afford to give to a church.”

Brother Bryan responded, “Well sir, I think we ought to pray about this.”  He got down on his knees and cried out to heaven, “Cut him down Lord, cut him down!  Lord, please reduce this man’s income, so he can afford to tithe!”

In our gospel reading today, Jesus meets a well to do businessman who can’t afford to tithe.  Actually, Jesus asks a great deal more of him than a tithe, but the man’s problem is similar to that Birmingham businessman’s.  Other people could toss aside all that they had to follow Jesus, but not this fellow.  And our gospel reading is quite clear why; he had many possessions. It was too much to let go of, and so he went away grieving.