Sermon: Miraculously Healed by Jesus

Mark 10:46-25

Miraculously Healed by Jesus

James Sledge                                                                                       October 25, 2015

I came across a story recently that’s a bit lame, or worse than that, but I think I’ll share it anyway. A farmer lived along a quiet, county road, but over the years, it became a busy highway, and the speeding cars began to kill more and more of the farmer’s free-range chickens.

He called the local sheriff to complain. “You’ve got to do something to slow these cars down,” he said. “They’re driving like mad men.” The sheriff wasn’t sure there was much he could do, but after repeated calls from the farmer then he agreed to put up a sign that might make people more attentive. It said, “SLOW: SCHOOL CROSSING.”

But a few days later the farmer called to say that the sign hadn’t worked at all. If anything, the drivers seem to have sped up. So the sheriff tried a slightly different tactic, installing a sign that said “SLOW: CHILDREN AT PLAY.” And the cars went even faster.

Finally, the exasperated farmer asked if he could put up his own sign. The sheriff was tired of the farmer calling every day, so he agreed, and the calls stopped. Eventually the sheriff decided to call and check on things. The farmer said he hadn’t lost a chicken since he put up his sign. The sheriff had to see this, so he drove out to the farm where he saw a piece of plywood with spray-painted wording that said, “NUDIST COLONY: Go slow and watch out for the chicks!”[1]     …I told you it was bad.

I told this story, lame as it is, to raise the issue of what it takes to get folks to slow down and pay attention. We live in a fast paced world where we are often busy and overscheduled. It’s a threat to our mental health and overall well-being, and that of our children. Even more, it is a huge threat to a relationship with God, to getting to know Jesus, because that requires stopping, waiting, silence, and attentiveness on our part.

But lest you think this a peculiarly modern problem, the people in our gospel reading also seem unable to slow down enough to see what truly is important. Jesus has just passed through Jericho. Jerusalem is not very far away, and the very next episode in Mark’s gospel is Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city of David. Jesus is picking up something of an entourage. He, his disciples, and a large crowd are all headed down the road when a blind beggar begins to cry out. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

The beggar’s name is Bartimaeus… or perhaps not. Our story says he is Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, but Bartimeaus means son of Timaeus. I’m suspicious that Mark’s gospel gives us the original Aramaic and then its translation. This blind beggar is insignificant enough that no one remembers his name, only that of his father.

An unnamed, blind beggar is hardly important enough to warrant stopping, especially for this procession headed to big events in Jerusalem. “We’ve got to keep moving. Be quiet!” blind beggar. We’ve got somewhere to be.”

Our readings says, Many sternly ordered him to be quiet. Many? Many of the disciples? Many in the crowd? Many of both? The last time anyone spoke in this stern manner it was the disciples trying to chase away those bringing children to Jesus. Unimportant children, now an unimportant, blind beggar. “Shoo, get away. No time for you.”

In one of those wonderful ironies of Scripture, the blind man sees what the crowd and disciples cannot. Jesus came for people such as this blind beggar, and he came to help people see. Jesus heals the beggar’s blindness with little difficulty. But the harder work of healing his followers’ blindness continues and won’t come to full fruition until after the resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Sermon video: Radically Dissimilar Hearts

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Peace, Unity, and Purity... and Other Impossible Combinations

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
    righteousness and peace will kiss each other. 
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
    and righteousness will look down from the sky.  

Psalm 85:10-11

I've always loved these lines from Psalm 85, one of today's evening psalms. The psalm itself is a plea for God to restore, a prayer based in knowledge of God's nature and character. And so, even in the midst of difficult circumstances, the psalmists hopes for the wondrous day when "righteousness and peace will kiss each other."

God is often seen as having contradictory, almost incompatible attributes. God is a God of justice, who will not tolerate wickedness. God is a God of mercy and forgiveness, who in Jesus is a friend of sinners and tax collectors. A lot of people prefer one or the other of these images, and this, in part, accounts for some of the wildly different versions of Christianity floating around.

The psalmist is aware of both images, asking earlier in his prayer, "Will you be angry with us forever?" Presumably there is some reason for God to be angry. Israel has not lived as God has commanded. They in some way deserve the judgment they are experiencing, and yet the psalmist can cry out, "Grant us your salvation."

The psalmist hopes for righteousness and peace to kiss, but just how compatible are such things? Righteousness is about doing things correctly, about abiding by God's law. Does the psalmist simply mean that peace will emerge when people live rightly, or is there a hope that God's justice and love can coexist?

When Presbyterian elders, deacons, and pastors are ordained, one of the vows we make is to further the "peace, unity, and purity of the Church." It sounds lovely, but it is remarkably difficult to put into practice. Purity, like righteousness, is about doing things correctly, about living according to God's will. Peace and unity often seem to require some negotiating and compromise with purity. In the end, many congregations end up leaning one way of the other, some focused more on holy living and others focused more on loving each other and getting along. I'm not sure that either move looks very much like the psalmist's dream of a day when "righteousness and peace will kiss one another."

Perhaps we humans can never fully reconcile righteousness and peace, judgment and forgiveness, but does that mean God is bound by our limitation on this? People of faith speak of imaging God, of being the body of Christ. Surely that means that we are to move toward what God is like rather expecting God to be like us.

I suspect that most people who are serious about faith have a pretty good idea which image of God they prefer. And that means we already know about that side of God that unnerves us, that image of God we need to learn to embrace, even kiss.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Sermon: Radically Dissimilar Hearts

Mark 10:35-45

Radically Dissimilar Hearts

James Sledge                                                                                       October 18, 2015

Our gospel reading this morning would probably benefit from a bit of context. It takes place shortly after Jesus’ encounter with a rich man who works hard to keep God’s commandments yet feels there must be something more. But Jesus’ call to sell what he owns, give the money to the poor, and become a disciple, is too much.

Then Jesus and his followers hit the road again, headed to Jerusalem. The disciples don’t come off all that well in Mark’s gospel, repeatedly misunderstanding what Jesus teaches. But that is not to say that they are total idiots. They have clearly begun to grasp that danger lies ahead. The gospel says that as Jesus walks ahead of them, They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. To these amazed and frightened followers, Jesus explains for a third and final time what will happen to him in just over a week.

Then James and John come to see him. Their request seems the epitome of the disciples’ cluelessness. James and John, along with Peter, form Jesus’ inner circle, a privileged trio who’ve seen things the others have not. Now they take advantage of this. They appear to realize there is something unseemly in their request, but they make it anyway.

But perhaps this is not merely arrogance or an attempt to turn their inside connection into special favors. What if this is simply two terrified followers trying to save their own skin? They’ve started to understand that this trip to Jerusalem is not going to end well. Jesus is not going to overthrow the Romans. In fact he keeps saying people will kill him. In some ways it’s amazing that the disciples stay with him as he leads them toward Jerusalem and the cross.

Maybe because they’ve followed him this far, they decide to see it through. Maybe because he keeps talking about rising again, they hope there might be something beyond the horrible events that await. If there really is something after Jerusalem, maybe they can be part of it. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”

"The Other" and Christian Witness

"All things are lawful,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other. 

1 Corinthians 10:23-24

I read on The Washington Post website today where Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey suggested that devout Christians "should think about getting a handgun permit." This was in reaction to the shooting at an Oregon community college where the shooter seemed to target Christians.

I can understand why Christians who already are worried about the faith's place in our culture would be further unnerved by an act of violence aimed specifically at Christians (an experience other faiths know all too well). But I wonder what sort of Christian witness would be given if a gunman walked into a crowded venue and all the Christians whipped out their pistols and mowed him down.

St. Augustine long ago wrote that Christians might engage in violence and even deadly force to save another, but never to save themselves. His thought led to what is usually called "just war" theory, the idea that there are times when violence is required of those who follow the Christ who gives his own life and tells his followers to emulate him. But in such thinking, violence can never be for mere self preservation. It must be done in an act of loving the other. Just war or violence is an agonized choice to injure one in order to save others.

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Americans have a tendency to understand freedom in terms of a lack of restraints on what I want to do. I'm all for this sort of freedom - up to a point - but that is not the sort of freedom Paul or Jesus speak of in the New Testament. For them, freedom releases us from an overly selfish or narrow viewpoint, allowing us to love others more fully. Jesus goes so far as to include the enemy in the orbit of one's love and concern. This sort of freedom allows people to become Christ-like, living for God and others more than self.

You can see that in Paul's words from today's epistle. Paul's Corinthian congregation has embraced their new freedom in Christ, but they've misunderstood it in libertine and individualistic ways. Paul corrects them and reminds them that their freedom is always in service to "the other."

The American Church and body politic would both do well to listen to Paul. Both have become overly individualistic, concerned narrowly for self and those who agree with me. Add in the climate of fear which seem so pervasive these days, and "the other" is more likely to become the object of my derision or much worse than the one whose good I seek.

In the Greek language used to write the New Testament, the word translated "witness" is the root of our word "martyr." The connection of these two terms came from the way many early heroes of the faith, including its founder, maintained their faith even in the face of death. Surely there was the occasional Christian of that time who chose to pull out his sword and make a stand, but not one of them is lifted up in the Bible or early Church writings.

I do wish that someone had been able to stop the Oregon shooter. (We need genuine dialogue about the best ways to prevents such acts in the future, but unfortunately we are largely divided into political camps who spout talking points at one another.) But I will not be encouraging anyone to buy a weapon for self-defense. Christians are called to be the body of Christ, and for the life of me, I cannot picture the Jesus we meet in the Bible packing a gun.

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Sermon video: No Tokens Required

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: No Tokens Required

Mark 10:2-16

No Tokens Required

James Sledge                                                                                       October 4, 2015

If you go into our church parlor, you will find a few items from this congregation’s history displayed there. There’s an old pulpit Bible and a curio cabinet with an old hymnal, more Bibles, old photos, and other artifacts. Young congregations tend not to have such displays, but those that have been around long enough often have a history display somewhere.

I once visited an old church with an elaborate display going back to colonial days. And in one corner of this mini-museum, on a curio shelf, were some communion tokens.

If you’ve never heard of such things, they are just what the name implies, tokens that gained a person admission to the Lord’s Supper. They were used back in the days of very infrequent communion, and you got one after elders from the Session (our church governing council) visited and quizzed you about your understanding of the faith. John Calvin suggested such a practice to ensure that people correctly understood the sacrament. He worried about what he saw as magical or superstitious beliefs about the Lord’s Supper.

Calvin may have understood these tokens as a kind of impromptu communicants’ class rather than a gauge of personal worthiness, but even if he did, you can be sure that people were denied tokens for reasons other than insufficient understanding of Reformed theology. Inevitably, the elders made character judgments about church members and denied tokens to those who didn’t measure up.

Use of these tokens largely disappeared in the 1800s, but it’s interesting to wonder about what sort of moral failing would have prevented people receiving one. Could a young, unmarried woman with a child get one? How about those who were divorced? What about drinking or carousing or dancing? Tokens were done on a church by church basis, so there was likely a good deal of variety from place to place. Nonetheless I feel confident that there were plenty of congregations that would not have welcomed divorced folks to the table.

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“Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” When the gospel of Mark wants to take up an entirely new topic, the writer will often change locales, but he tells us about people bringing little children to Jesus with no break at all from the teachings on marriage. Curious.

Jesus has just finished talking about how relationships would work if people’s hearts weren’t out of whack, when the disciples demonstrate, for the umpteenth time, that they still don’t get this kingdom thing. Turn back one page in Mark’s gospel and you’ll hear Jesus saying, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” He has already said that children in some way exemplify what it means to be highly valued in the kingdom’s way of viewing things, but these disciples are fairly slow learners, like disciples in every age.

This seems to be the only place in Mark’s gospel where we’re explicitly told that Jesus got mad at his followers, “indignant” our translation says. Surely there is some significance here. Surely we are being told to pay attention.

Not again!

It happened again today - a shooting at a school. Current reports say 10 may have been killed at an Oregon community college in the 145th school shooting since Sandy Hook. Such a number - 145 - should make even the most ardent gun collector or avid shooter say, "Something is terribly wrong."

Recently some of my "friends" on Facebook have shared a pro-gun post that talks about how Switzerland encourages gun ownership, having one of the higher rates of gun ownership in the world, and yet has one of the lower murder rates. What the post conveniently leaves out is how regulated this ownership is, with required classes and registration. There is even a regulatory process one must follow to buy ammunition, with certain types banned. But those who tout Switzerland as an example of why it is good to own guns usually insist that any regulation or registration regarding guns infringes on their rights.

Obsessing about "my rights" is a popular American pastime, one not restricted to any political persuasion. But in the case of rights related to guns, my Facebook "friends" who seem obsessed with such rights are very often the same "friends" who regularly share posts encouraging people to "share this picture of Jesus" or do some other act that confirms their faith. Yet the Jesus of whom they speak calls his followers to willingly let go of their own good, their own rights, for the sake of others.

I never cease to be amazed at the human capacity to link personal preferences, beliefs, biases, etc. to one's faith, even when the founder of that faith speaks in ways completely counter to such preferences, beliefs, and so on. And so Jesus, the pacifist Messiah ends up being pro-military, pro-self defense, and pro-gun. The Christ who speaks of wealth and greed as huge barriers to life in God's coming kingdom ends up wanting you to be successful and rich. And the Jesus who calls on a rich man to sell all he has and give the proceeds to the poor would never ask that of me.

Almost all people who call themselves Christian have ways of distorting faith to make it line up with their wants and desires. It is a sin where we all need to repent. But right now, at this point in our life together as Americans, there is a terrible and pressing need for gun enthusiasts who call themselves Christian to repent and say, I am willing to deny myself, to give up my rights, to do whatever it takes to safeguard the lives of school children and innocents everywhere.

Either that, or stop with the Jesus Facebook posts.

What Me Worry?

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. " 

Matthew 6:25

I wonder if telling someone not to worry has ever stopped that person from worrying. Jesus clearly thinks that worrying is a problem for living the life he teached, the way he calls Christians to walk. Yet we Christians sure do a lot of worrying. (We're also accomplished at fear, another thing that runs counter to the way of Jesus.)

Not that we have no reasons for worrying. Most American denominations are experiencing significant numerical decline. Congregations worry about budgets and where to cut if this year's stewardship campaign disappoints. Sports leagues and a plethora of other activities are scheduled at times once reserved for church activities. Who wouldn't worry?

Right this moment I'm doing a mental inventory of the big items on my worry list. They are a mix of the personal and the professional, which in my case has to do with church. I have the run of the mill concerns shared with many others. Is there enough money for everything? Did we pay too much for our house? Will we get enough when it comes time to sell it? Will the crazies in Congress cause another sequestration and accidentally send the economy over the edge, and the DC area housing market with it? What will this mean when it finally comes time to retire?

On the professional/church front, our stewardship campaign is just starting, and I'd be lying if I said I had no worries regarding it. Like many churches, we are disproportionately dependent on a handful of bigger givers. What if one moves or simply decides to give a lot less? And will we find the right person to fill that open staff position? And what will happen to the program if we don't? In the meantime, am I doing what I should be, or am I going about things all wrong? Do I need to learn some new trick or get a lot better at some facet of my ministry if things are to go well? There is plenty to worry about.

At the same time, I wonder how many of my worries have even the tiniest thing to do with Jesus or the the new day (kingdom) he calls people to be a part of. Jesus taught his followers to pray for "daily bread" so the sort of security he promises may have little to do with getting a good return on my housing "investment." Actually, when I reflect on Jesus' priorities, it does often help with my worries. As I think more about a different set of priorities from those that sometimes drive me, it often has a calming effect

But what about church? Church is all about Jesus, all about God's new day, and so if I'm worried about Church then my worries are of a deeper and more troubling sort (with a personal, financial component added in because the church writes my paycheck). Except that the Church is often about all manner of things having little to do with Jesus or God's new day. 

Yesterday during worship, Kerry, one of the elders who serve as the spiritual leaders of our congregation, gave a wonderful, brief "stewardship moment." In it she shared a quote from Pope Francis.  “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security."

Very often my worries about Church are worries about security. They are not concerns over how faithful we are being to Christ's call, or worries about whether Jesus wants us to do this as opposed to that. Buildings and classes and music programs and youth group may be related to our call to be Christ in and for the world, but they also can easily become things that distract us from that work. They can be the very things that keep us focused on our own security rather than our call to risky work out on the streets.

I suspect that church professionals such as myself can be especially prone to such temptations. I also suspect that many of us are good at absolving ourselves and blaming our congregations for this problem.  I wonder what might happen if pastors and congregations could together listen to Jesus, stop worrying for a moment, and take a good look at our priorities. If we discovered we were worrying about a lot of the wrong things, what might change?

Click to learn more about the lectionary.

Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.  - James 5:16

As a pastor, I deal regularly in prayer. I lead prayers in worship. At committee meetings, I'm often the one who gets asked to pray. People ask me to pray for them or their loved ones in moments of crisis. Our denomination even requires that all meetings of the church's governing council open and close with prayer. Prayer is clearly a "big deal" in the church.

Prayer is a big deal in the Bible as well. Jesus is frequently shown praying, and the disciples ask for instruction on praying from him. Today's lectionary passage talks about length about prayer. I glanced at a Bible concordance, and it listed hundreds of verses featuring the word "prayer" or forms of the word "pray."

But if prayer is clearly central to the Christian life, it is also problematic. From football teams praying for victory to armies doing the same to people praying for a winning lottery ticket, prayer gets employed for questionable purposes. I once read about a boxer who prayed to win his bout. He explained that after the prayer he could feel the power of God in his fists, pummeling his opponent into submission. Really?

Thoughtful Christians who are uneasy about such prayers have every right to be. The notion that God is some sort of genie who must grant requests offered with the correct formula, or that God can be compelled to act if enough "prayer warriors" fill God's inbox to overflowing, is more than a little troubling. No wonder many Christians become uneasy and hesitant about prayer.

Of course the "prayer of the righteous" refers not to prayer offered the right way but to prayer offered from a right heart, a heart aligned with God. Many popular ideas about prayer are huge distortions of what the Bible actually says. Prayer has never been about getting God to do our bidding or convincing God to see things as I do.

But while prayer is often misunderstood and abused, I'm not sure that is the primary reason it is problematic for some Christians. Recognizing that God won't buy me a new Mercedes Benz just because I want one is not a reason to conclude that God does not respond to prayer. However, if I am convinced that God is distant and removed, never actively engaged in human life of history, then prayer may indeed seem unnecessary and even a waste of time. If God is not very real, why bother to pray?

If as Christians, we are bothered by the way prayer is trivialized and abused, treated it like asking Santa for goodies, then it will serve us well to develop a deeper understanding of prayer. As we learn about contemplative prayer, centering prayer, prayer that seeks to draw closer to God, prayer that listens more than it speaks, prayer that seeks Christ's call and the strength to live out that call... our prayer lives will become more central to our faith just as Jesus' was to his, and we will become models of prayer for others.

And if we are Christians who wonder about prayer because we have difficulty imagining that they "do" anything, then it will serve to an even greater degree to develop a deeper understanding of prayer. As we learn about contemplative prayer, centering prayer, prayer that seeks to draw closer to God, prayer that listens more than it speaks, prayer that seeks Christ's call and the strength to live out that call... God and Christ will become more present and more real to us, and we will learn about the power of God at work in our lives, and in the world.

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The Christ We Show the World

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons — not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one.    

1 Corinthians 5:9-11

Very often we Christians have done the exact opposite of what Paul tells the Corinthians to do. Paul himself seems to worry about being misunderstood. "When I wrote about avoiding immoral folks, I wasn't referring to non-Christians but to church members," he says. Paul expects followers of Jesus to be in the same places Jesus was, among the least and the lost. The good church folks of Jesus' day complained because he hung out with sinners and prostitutes, making the same mistakes many modern Christians make, doing what Paul warned the Corinthians about. Paul expected the community of faith to hold one another to high ethical and moral standards rather than worrying about the morals of those outside the church. But being "the body of Christ" requires the Church to be at work in the same places Jesus was.

We live in a time when fewer and fewer people have more than a passing understanding of what it means to be a disciple, to follow Jesus. A majority of Americans identify as Christian, but large numbers have little familiarity with church, the Bible, or basic tenets of the faith. This means that, increasingly, congregations and individual disciples become the way many people encounter or fail to encounter the living Christ.

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I live in the DC metro area, and we are currently being visited by Pope Francis. The adulation of this pope can get a bit overblown at times, but it is easy to see why it happens. (I'm smitten with him at times myself.) He seems to embody what Paul is talking about and what Jesus lives in ways that churches and Christians often do not. His harsh words are for those in power and inside the faith. But he is full of love and concern for those who are struggling: for Syrian refugees, migrants, and the poor, regardless of faith. He is a refreshing view of Christ in a world where Christians often reflect a horrible distorted image of Jesus. 

I have a number of Facebook "friends" who regularly post "Christian" memes with a picture of Jesus asking me to share his image if I love him. They post pictures pleading with America to turn back to God and pray for our wayward nation. Then they post angry rants insisting no Syrian refugees should come to America, or threatening to shoot you if you try to take their guns. I wonder what Christ people see in their "witness."

On the flip side are "progressive" Christians who speak of embracing all people in love, who criticize the idea that we can be a "Christian nation" without caring for of those who are poor or hungry or suffering. Then they post blistering personal attacks on Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to give out any marriage licenses rather than give one to a gay couple. They attack her looks, her weight, her personal failings. I wonder what Christ people see in their "witness."

What Christ do people meet through me or you? What Jesus do they encounter through our congregations? These are difficult times for many congregations in the US. Attendance is down; giving is down; our place in the culture is less secure. Churches have a lot to worry about. But I wonder if we don't need to spend a lot more time reflecting on the Christ we reveal to the world.

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Sermon video: Long Journey to Something New

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Long Journey to Something New

Mark 9:30-37

Long Journey to Something New

James Sledge                                                                                       September 20, 2015

How many of you remember having to write essays or papers in high school or college of a certain word number? Some of you are no doubt enjoying this experience right now, and some of our younger worshipers have this to look forward to as you get a bit older. What word count would you expect for a modest, high school essay? What about a term paper for a college class? How about a Ph.D. dissertation? Anyone here who’s done one and can say? Forty or fifty thousand words sound reasonable?

I ask because I want us to think for a moment about what is required to cover a major topic in a fair amount of detail and in a good deal of depth. For example, if you were going to write something that thoroughly covered what someone would need to know to live a life of deep Christian faith and discipleship, how many words would suffice?

Of course we do have a book that Presbyterians say is the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus and for life and faith. But if anyone had ever submitted the Bible as a dissertation or as any other sort of publication, surely some academic advisor or editor would have quickly returned it saying, “Get back to me when you’ve done some serious trimming and editing.”

The Bible weighs in at somewhere near 800,000 words. By comparison, Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a bit over 500,000. If you were God and wanted to explain this faith thing to folks, don’t you think you could have come up with a nice pamphlet, or at least something you could read in a few afternoons? Why on earth have something of this magnitude, a text that gets squeezed into a single book only because of tiny print and ridiculously thin sheets of paper?

The Bible is an unbelievably complex mix of stories and myths and poems and songs and rules and advice and letters and theology and teachings. Yet we Christians often examine a few verses here or there and then attempt to distill great theological truths or axioms from them. I engage is something of this sort most Sundays when I deliver a sermon rooted in a tiny handful of the Bible’s 800,000 words, 175 words in the case of today’s gospel reading.

Without some care and restraint, there is a danger of such efforts being akin to carefully examining the earlobe of the Mona Lisa with a microscope and then proclaiming to understand the significance of the entire painting.

When you think about it, the Bible is a strange and wonderful way to make God known to us, to draw us into relationship with this God. It isn’t a bit of empirical information to be learned. Rather it is an amazing array of experiences and stories that share how God has been encountered in a variety of contexts. It is not unlike getting to know another person, and without understanding context and circumstances, without knowing to whom certain words were spoken, it is easy to misconstrue or misunderstand.

Sermon video: Helping Each Other See

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Helping Each Other See

Mark 8:27-38

Helping Each Other See

James Sledge                                                                           September 13, 2015

I’m going to ask you to imagine a scenario that may terrify some of you. Imagine that there is someone seated near you that you have never met or seen before. That’s not the terrifying part… I hope. Worship comes to an end and she turns to you and says, “I’ve really never done the church thing. Could you tell me what your church believes about Jesus?”

Let that sink in for a moment. How would you respond? What would you say to this person? Really think about it. What would your first words be?

Countless authors have noted that Mainline Christians, especially those who think of themselves as more “progressive,” struggle to answer such questions. More often than not, we instead began to explain what we don’t believe. “We’re not like that county clerk in Kentucky who won’t give a marriage license to gay couples. We don’t believe that Jews and Muslims are going to hell. We’re not fundamentalists who take every word of the Bible literally.” And so on.

Now some of this may be helpful, even welcome information, but none of it actually answers her question about what we actually do believe.

In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus asks a “What do you believe?” sort of question. He starts with, “What are other folks saying?” Then he moves to, “But who do you say that I am?” Not so different from someone asking, “What do you believe about Jesus?”

I wonder how long it took Peter to answer? Peter seems to be one of those folks who talks first and thinks later, so I’m betting pretty quickly. I wonder about the other disciples. If Peter had been quiet for once, what would they have said? Or were they relieved that Peter had taken the risk and blurted out something?

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The gospels were written to help Christians with “What do you believe?” questions, especially “What do you believe about Jesus?” Because people in our day sometimes hand out Bibles as a way of introducing Jesus, it’s easy to forget that the gospels were written, not for people who had yet to hear the story of Jesus, but for people who already knew it, who were already in a church. They’re written to help Christians better understand who Jesus is and what difference that is supposed to make in their lives.

Like Peter, these folks correctly could identify Jesus. So can most of us. If pressed, most of us could share a bit of his story, could identify him as Messiah, or Christ, or Son of God.

But it turns out that being able to Jesus doesn’t really mean Peter, or any of us, understand who he is or what it means to follow him. Peter is clearly expecting a different sort of Messiah than what Jesus describes with his words about suffering and death, and I’m not so sure that has changed very much in our day.

Probably all of us have ways in which we would like Jesus to be something or someone other than he says he is. We want Jesus to help us get where we want to go, but he insists that following him means letting go of our agendas and connecting to God’s.

Something More Than Writer's Block

I've not been writing here very much of late. I like to humor myself by imagining that I am a writer, and I've read that genuine writers suffer through times when they cannot find words. I wonder if the term "writer's block" adequately describes that experience. It seems too pedestrian for something that robs a person, however temporarily, of a significant piece of her identity.

My own identity is not much rooted in the musings that show up in this blog, but it is rooted in the faith and spiritual life that lies behind many of my posts. There are times when not writing a blog is simply a matter of too much going on. Some days fill up with events and commitments and activities of a higher priority than blog posts. Still, when my posts become as sporadic as they have in recent months, something more is at work, and "writer's block" feels too pedestrian to describe it.

I read a piece in The Washington Post by Jen Hatmaker where she worried about us pastors. ("How a consumer culture threatens to destroy pastors") Drawing on recent polling data she writes that pastors

suffer in private and struggle in shame: 77 percent of you believe your marriage is unwell, 72 percent only read your Bible when studying for a sermon, 30 percent have had affairs and 70 percent of you are completely lonely.
    You are a mess! Which makes sense because you are human, like every person in your church. You are so incredibly human but afraid to admit it. So few of you do.

She has a good point. And while I've largely avoided the particular statistics mentioned above, I'm my own sort of mess, one I generally prefer to keep hidden.

When I was in seminary, a pastor nearing retirement shared with me his plan not to darken the door of any church facility upon leaving the pulpit. His best guess was he'd not do church for a year or so. Being an enthusiastic seminary student, I found this strange, bordering on bizarre. Twenty years later, I can better appreciate his plans. Yet I can still get annoyed over church members who don't take their faith "seriously," something generally measured by their level of attendance, giving, or volunteering.

When I encounter a writer's/spiritual block time in my life, I wonder how it would manifest if I were not a professional Christian. (I can't really stop attending on Sundays and still draw a paycheck.) Would I sleep in for a season?

I've frequently heard that non-church folks feel intimidated at the thought of attending worship with church-people who have the faith thing all figured out. They worry that they will stand out and feel lost or out of place. Most church members likely marvel at the idea of their faith intimidating anyone, and I wonder if a similar dynamic might not be at work between many pastors and those in the pews. Perhaps the dynamic is even worse.

Robes and titles and ordination and salary all serve to divide pastors from members, providing means for pastors to hide all those ways that we are a big, human mess. Sometimes members, who pay those salaries, may expect pastors to be "better" Christians than themselves, but the division between pastor and parishioner is detrimental to both. It encourages pastors to keep up an image that is most often far from true, and it robs pastors and parishioners of of the support and companionship they could give one another as they face the inevitable "blocks" that get in the way of full aliveness.

When pastors get together, they sometimes talk, even vent, about their congregations. During full fledged venting, the congregation almost always gets described as "they," or "them." Rarely is it "we" or "us." I would be surprised if church members don't sometimes engage in similar venting about their pastor, with a similar "her and us" or "him and us" divide.

There is something about us humans that looks for a "them" when things are going badly. How different that is from God, who in Christ responds to broken relationship with humanity by becoming fully involved in the pain and suffering of human existence. Strange that we followers of this Christ so often move away from one another when we go through times that challenge, threaten, or frighten us, times when our true selves and identities feel hidden or blocked. Surely Jesus shows us a better way.

Sermon video: Welcomed to the Table

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

August 30 sermon video: Transformative Religion

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Welcomed to the Table

Mark 7:24-37

Welcomed to the Table

James Sledge                                                                                     September 6, 2015

There are numerous pictures on the internet of black and white toddlers holding hands or hugging with a caption saying “No one is born racist.” I like the sentiment, though I wonder if it’s a bit optimistic. Hatred and racism may indeed be cultural and learned, but we humans seem to have a tribal nature, a tendency to coalesce into groups and create boundaries separating us and them. Culture teaches the norms that grow up around such boundaries, but the tendency seems to be innate.

How many of you ever had the childhood experience of moving and attending a new school? My family moved several times over my elementary and middle school years, and while this felt exciting and adventurous, it was also terrifying. Walking into an elementary classroom where you know no one, or worse, walking into a school cafeteria… At least in elementary school the teacher took you to the cafeteria as a class, but in middle school, you were on your own.

Where do I sit? Will I be welcome at that table, or maybe that one? I certainly wasn’t going to go sit at the table with all girls, and being new, it was hard to tell which tables had which sort of students. The athlete’s table was sometimes easy to spot. Easiest of all were the tables populated by those who didn’t really fit in at any of the other tables. Pushing aside those who are different may be learned behavior, but we start learning it awfully early.

If humans had no tendency to be tribal, I wonder if there would be political parties or politics as we know it. I wonder if there would simply be varying ideas about the best way to deal with this or that problem. But we are tribal, and so our varying ideas get turned into boundaries between us and them.

The surprising success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign seems almost inexplicable, and many have speculated on what makes him appealing. One suggestion is that he loudly proclaims us and them boundaries that are already there but not spoken aloud in polite conversation. Some suggest that Trump has tapped into tribal fears of them, immigrants, the Chinese, and so on. He’s given voice to an us versus them fear that makes some think, “He’s on my side, unlike those regular politicians.” Perhaps Bernie Sanders appeal is not so different, just aimed at different tribes.

Us versus them tribalism was an issue for Christian faith almost as soon as it got started. It’s easy to forget in our time, but all the first followers of Jesus were Jewish. That did not change after Jesus was raised from the dead. It did not change as new followers began to join the Jesus movement. Jesus was a Jewish Messiah who remained firmly in the Jewish tradition all his life, and as the Church began to grow, no one thought of it as anything but Jewish.

When non-Jews began to come into the movement, that meant becoming Jewish first. Males had to be circumcised, and everyone had to adopt Jewish dietary and purity restrictions. But as the number of non-Jewish converts grew, so did the tensions. And people like the Apostle Paul began arguing that the Jesus movement was open to non-Jews without them becoming Jewish. It was the first really big church fight. Read Paul’s letters and you’ll get some idea of how heated and nasty things became.

Sermon: Transformative Religion

James 1:17-27

Transformative Religion

James Sledge                                                                                       August 30, 2015

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this… Religion… The term could use some PR help. Most of the stories associated with it are negative. Article after article has chronicled the dramatic rise of the “Nones” those folks who check “none of the above” when asked to list a religious preference. They and many others sometimes say they are  “spiritual but not religious,” SBNR for short.

The exact distinction between “spiritual” and “religious” is a bit fuzzy. One dictionary says that “spiritual” has to do with sacred things, with religion, with supernatural deities, but the definition of “religious” mentions many of the same things. However “religious” feels more connected to the corporate and institutional: congregations, denominations, churches.

In her delightful, witty, snarky, and insightful book, When “Spiritual But Not Religious” Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church, UCC pastor Lilian Daniel challenges SBNR thinking about church. She complains about such folks needing to share their spiritual insights with her upon learning she is a pastor. Writing of one such encounter she says, “Everybody loves to tell a minister what’s wrong with the church.”

This particular fellow had started out Roman Catholic but had left for a variety of church “failures.” After college he become part of a conservative Baptist church, drawn by relationships with the people there. But he chafed under a long list of prohibitions and eventually drifted away. Later he married and became part of his wife’s Mainline congregation. It fit him rather well, but then they divorced and it felt like her church, so he drifted away again. Now he spent his Sunday mornings sleeping late, reading the New York Times, and going for runs through the woods.

This was his religion today, he explained. “I worship nature. I see myself in the trees and in the butterflies. I am one with the great outdoors. I find God there. And I realized that I am deeply spiritual but no longer religious.”

He dumped the news in my lap as if it were a controversial hot potato, something that would shock a mild-mannered minister never before exposed to ideas so brave and different and daring. But of course, to me, none of this was different in the least.

This kind and well-meaning Sunday jogger fits right into mainstream American culture. He is perhaps by now in the majority— all those people who have stepped away from the church in favor of …what? Running, newspaper reading, Sunday yoga, or whatever they put together to construct a more convenient religion of their own making.[1]

Daniel shares a good bit more of this fellow’s story and his attempts to enlighten her before concluding, “It finally hit me what was bothering me about this self-styled religion he had invented— he hadn’t invented it at all. It was as boring and predictable as the rest of our self-centered consumer culture, and his very conceit, that this outlook was somehow original, daring, or edgy, was evidence of that very self-centeredness.”[2]

Guns, Tribalism, Mustard Seeds, and Hope

There are days when I find it depressing to be a pastor. This isn't because of anything going on in my congregation or any personal faith crisis. Rather it's because I am seeing fellow Christians cheer on Donald Trump as he denigrates immigrants, Latinos, and women. It's because I hear fellow Christians go on and on about the sanctity of gun ownership, and I can't understand how this can be.

I am a pastor, a designated leader in the Christian movement. Our movement is rooted in the God of the Bible who demanded welcome and concern for the poor, the alien, and the outsider. Our movement follows a pacifist Messiah who calls us to deny ourselves and love our enemies, who dies willingly for his enemies, whose most fundamental command is to love. Yet many "Christian" voices spew hatred toward the neighbor who is different. They are obsessed with their "right to defend themselves." Everyone else be damned. How did we get following Jesus so horribly wrong? It's depressing.

No doubt some of Christianity's decline in America is because so many of us look so appallingly little like our religious namesake. And this problem is not restricted to conservatives, liberals, or any particular group. We all have our methods choosing a few Christian attributes that suit us and ignoring the rest.

Of course this is nothing new. Jesus' disciples struggled to make sense of him or follow his teachings. Peter "rebuked" him over his willingness to die, and Judas eventually decided to turn him in. One follower drew his sword - the open carry of his day - when they came to arrest Jesus, but Jesus stopped him. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus gives a chilling indictment of those who use weapons to serve their ends. "For all who take the sword will perish by the sword."

After the resurrection, the disciples (minus Judas) understand Jesus a lot better, yet the Church they start almost immediately starts fighting about whether or not to allow those dirty, non-Jews to be a part of their little movement. Welcoming the Gentiles eventually became the norm, but not before a lot of nasty fights and, apparently, a few martyrs.

Jesus goes to incredible lengths to drag us out of our "us versus them" ways of viewing the world. But we keep trying to drag Jesus back into our tribal view of things, hoping to make him captain of our team and so the enemy of theirs. (Of course Jesus loves his enemies, but we forget that.)

And yet... And yet Jesus, the real, biblical Jesus, keeps breaking loose from our tribal boundaries. In New Testament times it happened with the Apostle Paul, who, at no small risk to his own life, welcomed in those dirty Gentiles without requiring them to become Jewish first. (Paul's arrest and imprisonment in Rome may well have been orchestrated by Christians opposed to his non-tribal understanding of Jesus.) And Jesus keeps breaking loose in small, mustard seed moments down through history. In our own US history this happens when some Christians began to see African slaves as full human beings loved by God, and they agitate for an end to slavery. It happens a hundred years later when white and black Christians march peacefully for civil rights, sometimes at the cost of their lives.

In recent days, a non-tribal Jesus has been visible in the faith of Jimmy Carter who, facing his own battle with cancer, is focused not on himself but on helping others all over the world and teaching others about Christ-like love.

Thinking of these and many other "mustard seeds," I feel less depressed... and a lot more hopeful.

Sermon video: In the End, Beloved Community

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: In the End, Beloved Community

Luke 15:11-32

In the End, Beloved Community

James Sledge                                                                                       August 23, 2015

Just over a year ago, Shawn and I traveled to Austin, Texas for the wedding of our daughter Kendrick and now son-in-law Ryan. In many ways, it was like a lot of weddings, with bridesmaids and groomsmen, tuxes and dresses, and friends and family gathered from here and there. If you’ve been involved in many weddings, you know that they have their share of family dynamics, tuxes that don’t fit, and frayed nerves. Here again, this wedding was probably typical, although it all came together beautifully. But when my father of the bride duties had all been completed, this wedding, in my admittedly biased opinion, did become distinctive.

I can’t say exactly why. It was a reception like many other receptions with a band and a bar and dinner, but this one worked better than most others I’ve been to. Perhaps it was just the right combination of food that was good, drink that was good, a band that was good, a venue that was good, and a great mix of family and friends from the various places we’ve lived over the years. Whatever the reason, I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed myself more. I ate, drank, mingled, talked, laughed, danced (I rarely dance), and I did not want it all to end.

I think that experience gave me a greater appreciation for Jesus’ and the Bible’s use of wedding banquets as metaphor for the kingdom, the reign of God. Weddings were huge deals in that time, feasts and celebrations that went on for a week. People pulled out all the stops for a wedding. When the father in our parable today kills the fatted calf to celebrate his younger son’s return, he throws a wedding banquet type party. No wonder the elder son is so upset, giving this party its own family dynamics and drama. “I’m not going if he’s going.”

I’ve long loved the exchange between father and elder son that concludes the parable, leaving the situation unresolved. The Presbyterian son – in the Greek he is the “presbuteros” (presbu/teroj) son, root word of our denominational name – has disowned his younger sibling. He is no longer his brother, and so he yells at his father, “When this son of yours came back…” But the father will not let the family disintegrate so easily. “But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life…”

The elder brother might have been happy for his sibling to return in the manner the younger had imagined, a hired hand and not a son. But the father’s love makes that impossible and leaves him in anguish at parable’s end, longing for reconciliation among his children.

Presence, a Shared Smile, and Selfie Sticks

I normally keep "office hours" late each Monday afternoons at the Starbucks just down the street. Yesterday I was sipping my coffee and reading when I heard an infant who wasn't quite crying but was making a good bit of noise. I looked around and saw the mother bouncing the child on her shoulder, trying to calm him. She had a nervous expression on her face as she looked around.

Her eyes caught mine. Another time I might have been perturbed or frustrated by this interruption, but yesterday I was simply taking it in and even enjoying myself as I watched this small slice of life play out. I smiled at her and laughed a bit to myself. She smiled broadly back at me. After a moment I looked back down at my book. My mother taught me it is impolite to stare. But I looked up at her again a few moments later, and she smiled at me once more.

We were on opposite sides of the Starbucks, and we never spoke. Soon the child settled down, and I eventually got back to my book, but not before ruminating a bit on how alive I had felt in those brief moments of shared smiles. I also reflected on how that might not have happened had I glared at her, indicating my displeasure at being disturbed.

The reason I responded with a smile rather than a glare likely has to do with the book I was reading, The Naked Now by Richard Rohr. (I should say re-reading. I'm slow to learn Rohr's lessons.) The subtitle of the book is Learning to See as the Mystics See, and Rohr was talking about learning a different way of seeing, one that is truly and fully present to the moment.

It happens whenever, by some wondrous "coincidence," our heart space, our mind space, and our body awareness are all simultaneously open and nonresistant. I like to call it presence. It is experienced as a moment of deep inner connection, and it always pulls you, intensely satisfied, into the naked and undefended now, which can involve both profound joy and profound sadness. At that point, you either want to write poetry, pray, or be utterly silent. (p. 28)

I'm not much of a poet, so I did the last two.

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On my recent trip to Turkey, my companions and I were struck by the large numbers of people carrying around selfie sticks and spending much of their time with backs turned to the breathtaking churches and mosques and ruins that drawn millions of tourists. How odd to experience such wonders "over your shoulder." 

I don't own a selfie stick, but that hardly means I don't miss plenty myself. More often than not, I'm in a hurry or in the middle of something or lost in thought or concerned with defending my position, and so I'm unable simply to take in what is around me. The miracle of that shared smile in Starbucks was that it happened at all, that I did not miss it.

Think of how rarely we simply take things in, simply experience the moment without making a judgment, without worrying about how to respond, without thinking about what we have to do next, without any need to defend a point of view. For many of us, what a rare gift it is to be absolutely and only in the moment.

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In today's gospel reading, Jesus refuses to answer a question about the source of his "authority." His refusal has nothing to do with a need to hide the source or to be secretive. Rather Jesus knows (and demonstrates) that his opponents are not really interested in his answer. They will not roll it over in the minds, considering it and wondering about it. They will hear Jesus only in order to find something to use against him. 

How like me they are, already knowing what the answer is, needing only to protect and defend that. But for a brief moment yesterday, I experienced the world differently, and it was lovely and beautiful.

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Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday - Hope

We here at Falls Church Presbyterian are about to finish our preaching journey with Brian McLaren's book, We Make the Road by Walking. Today Diane preaches from the next to the last chapter, and it is drawn from the book of Revelation. Appropriate, it seems, to go to the concluding words of the Bible as we get to the end of our journey, focusing on hope.

Revelation suffers from benign neglect in most Mainline churches. That's understandable, given the difficult imagery that modern people struggle to understand. Unfortunately, however, this has basically ceded the book to the lunatic fringe, whose use of Revelation has largely defined public perceptions of the work.

In truth, Revelation was written as a word of encouragement to Christians suffering through difficult times. It does not mean to predict the future in any exact sort of way. There is no secret formula from which can be drawn timetables of specific, future events. Instead it calls people to remain faithful, sure in the hope that God will triumph in the end.

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One of my favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. If you’ve never seen it, you really should.  Tim Robbins plays Andy, a bank executive falsely convicted of murder, who is serving two life sentences in a brutal penitentiary. There he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a long-timer named Red, played by Morgan Freeman. Despite his false imprisonment, Andy never gives up hope of someday being free, of one day opening a hotel and operating a fishing boat in a little Mexican town on the Pacific Ocean. He even asks Red to be his assistant. But Red warns Andy to let go of his hope. “Hope is a dangerous thing,” he says.  “Hope can drive a man insane.  It’s got no use on the inside.”  But Andy will not let go of hope.

Finally, after nearly twenty years in prison, Andy pulls off a remarkable escape. A full scale search ensues, but they never find him. Not long afterwards, Red is finally paroled, but after a lifetime in prison, he simply cannot adjust to life on the outside. He is all ready to commit some petty crime so he will go back to prison, but one thing stops him, a promise he made to Andy.  

 

And so he journeys to a field, finds his way to a particular tree, and the rock wall below it. And there, buried at the base of the wall is a box containing money and a letter from Andy. It invites him to come to Mexico, to help Andy get his venture off the ground. The letter concludes, “Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend, Andy.”

The very last words we hear in the movie are Red’s thoughts as he rides a Trailways bus to Fort Hancock, Texas. “I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.  I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”

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What is it that allows you to hope? More to the point, what is it that allows you to hope when very little evidence exists that hope is a good thing? Christian hope has always been connected to the cross and the empty tomb. In many ways, Jesus suffers the same fate as others who speak against the powers of empire, the powers of exploitation, the powers of terror. But Jesus' movement on behalf a a different sort of world, God's new commonwealth where the poor hear good news, the captives are released, and the hungry are fed, does not end with his death. God raises Jesus.

God brings life out of death, hope out of hopelessness. It's a wonderful and heartwarming story... if by some chance it is true.

But is it true? Certainly many people believe that it is. But is it a foolish hope. Ultimately, who is right about hope, Andy or Red who said, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.  It’s got no use on the inside.” When things are going to pot, when the world seems headed in the wrong direction, does hope make much sense?

Christians have often relocated Jesus' hope to a hope for heaven when we die. It's easy to understand why. Maintaining hope in God's will being done on earth, in the world becoming a sort of heaven, is difficult in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. Yet this is precisely the situation facing to Christians for whom the book of Revelation is written. But why should we or they believe in and trust in hope that God is ultimately in charge of history?

For me, it all hinges on the living Christ. If I can, in fact, experience the presence of Jesus, here and now, then the powers that seem so terrifying and real - empire, evil, death - could not overcome Jesus. Their victory was a sham, for he is still here. And it isn't simply a matter of believing an old story. It is about coming to know Christ, sensing his presence, as the Spirit makes him known to me.

And so.... I hope.

Paying Attention: Good News in a Consumer Culture

“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

Mark 10:14-15

Jesus' words in today's gospel reading are likely among the more familiar and beloved in the Bible. However, just what Jesus means by "as a little child" is not clear. Certainly the understanding of children and childhood was quite different in Jesus' day, and so some modern assumptions may be well off the mark. But no doubt Jesus' words sounded ambiguous in his own time as well. There is probably no one, correct understanding.

Yesterday a friend of mine posted a picture of his granddaughter on Facebook. (Thanks, John.) She was lying down on a beach, propped up on her elbows. Most of her legs were in the water while her upper body was, for the moment, clear of the gentle waves. Her fingers worked into the wet sand as she stared intently at them. My friend had captioned the picture, "Even sand is interesting to a 7 year old."

When Jesus spoke of being like a little child, perhaps he referred to children's relative powerlessness. Perhaps he was talking about their needing to receive what they need as opposed to acquiring it for themselves. Or perhaps he was referring to their ability to be enthralled by whatever is at hand, to be present to the wonder of what is right in front of them. We adults are often too busy to pay attention.

Countless spiritual writers have spoken of prayer in terms of being attentive or paying attention to God. But the busyness of our culture makes that difficult. Living in a consumer culture, we are bombarded with messages telling us that only "more" will feed our deepest desires. We will not be content until we get enough, though enough proves endlessly elusive.

Our consumer mindset is about much more than convincing us to buy a new car or a bigger TV or a  fancier smartphone. Our relentless consumerism leaves us anxious that we may miss out. We worry that our children may miss some experience they "need" and so we over-schedule them. We worry that we may miss an important piece of information and so we check our phones in the middle of our conversations. (I'm guilty of this one.) And even if we aren't on our phones we often find it difficult simply to listen to someone, giving her our full attention. We are too busy evaluating what she is saying or calculating our response to it. (Guilty again.)

Living in a consumer culture and having a consumer mindset, we are often prone to hear the good news of the gospel in terms of "more," as something we add to our busy lives to help feed the longing we experience deep within us despite all the "more" we already have. But according to Jesus, the gospel is more about subtraction than about addition. And a seven year old stares at the sand in wonder. She has not yet been totally enveloped in consumerism, able for the moment to be fully present, content and not worried about an email she might be missing or what is next on the schedule.

And a little child shall lead them...

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