Sermon: Advent Imagination

 Isaiah 64:1-9
Advent Imagination
James Sledge                                                               November 29, 2020, Advent 1

On my office computer, I have files of my sermons stretching back 25 years. Often when I contemplate a new sermon, I’ll look back at those files. I’ll check to see what I said about the same passage in the past. And so I looked to see what I’d said about Isaiah 64 on the first Sunday in Advent.

Advent marks the start of a new year on the Christian calendar, and I saw that several of my previous sermons for this day looked back on events of the previous year. This year has been one we may well want to forget. The pace of climate change accelerated and climate projections became more dire. A devastating pandemic swept the globe, sickening tens of millions, and killing a quarter of a million in the US alone. Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and far too many others were murdered, in large part because black skin is still less valued than white. This unleashed waves of protest and unrest. And just to put a cherry on top of this awful year, our president seems incapable of losing with a shred of class or dignity, or even admitting he lost.

But 2020 is hardly the only year we wanted to put in the rearview mirror. My Advent sermon from 2005 noted that the previous twelve months had seen a horrific tsunami in southeast Asia, mounting US casualties and violence in Iraq, a then record hurricane season that included Katrina striking New Orleans, then shortly thereafter, a devastating earthquake in Pakistan. For good measure an AIDS epidemic was wiping out entire communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

More recently, my 2014 sermon looked back on events eerily similar to this year. Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri. Prior to that, Eric Garner died in a police chokehold as he cried, “I can’t breathe.” Is it too much to hope this will someday change?

Dismay at the state of things is at the heart of our Old Testament reading this morning.  Some folks have this idea that real faith insulates you from despair, that people of deep faith do not experience God’s absence. But the writers of the Bible feel despair. Jesus feels abandoned by God.

Sermon: Good News for Little Piggies

 Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Ephesians 1:15-23
Good News for Little Piggies

James Sledge                                                                           November 22, 2020

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

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

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

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

Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggie lives
You will see them out for dinner
With their piggie wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat the bacon

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

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

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

Sermon: Big Risks

 Matthew 25:14-30
Big Risks
James Sledge                                                                                       November 15, 2020 

The Parable of the Three Servants, JESUS MAFA, 1973
from the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN

In every place where I’ve served as a pastor, I’ve become a part of some sort of clergy group, sometimes multiple ones. Some were purely social; some were lectionary study groups; some were meant to be support groups of some sort. But whatever their primary purpose, all of them featured a certain amount of pastors sharing, and sometimes complaining about, their congregations.

Different congregations can have very different personalities. Just like people, some are introverted and some are extroverted. Some always worry about money, no matter how much they have, and some manage to keep conflict going most all the time. But congregations that are very different can still share things in common.

One thing I’ve seen in many congregations is a kind of conservatism. I’m not talking about politics. This conservatism can be quite strong in the most politically liberal congregation. Merriam-Webster gives two different definitions of conservatism. One is a “disposition in politics to preserve what is established,” The other is “the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change.” I’m talking about the second.

There’s an old church joke that gets used interchangeably with Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and a few others. It goes, “How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?” The answer, “Change?!!” Generally speaking, the times when people have gotten the maddest at me was when I changed the order of worship or the doxology, or when I was seen as supporting a change from “the way we’ve always done it.”

Prepared to Wait

 Matthew 25:1-13
Prepared to Wait
James Sledge                                                                                     November 8, 2020

The Wise Virgins, James Tissot

During the day on Tuesday, election day, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw a post from a “friend” asking everyone who believed in the power of prayer to take a moment and share his post, a prayer for the nation. It wasn’t one of those ridiculous posts promising something good if enough people shared it. My “friend” was simply hoping that by sharing it others would offer the same, short prayer for healing and guidance. At least I think that’s what it said. I only looked at it briefly before scrolling on down the page.

I started scrolling almost as soon as I realized what the post was asking. I don’t really know why, but later it dawned on me that I do that most anytime I run across a prayer on Facebook. And not  just when the prayers are trite or formulaic. I’ll scroll right past prayers posted by our denomination, by the editor of Presbyterian Outlook, and so on.

Perhaps this is just an aversion I’ve developed over the years from hearing too many prayers that sounded like magic formulas or seemed to view God like a genie or fairy godmother. Maybe seeing and hearing so many bad prayers has made me cynical and suspicious about all public prayers. Maybe.

Or maybe I have a deeper issue with such prayers, even when they’re not bad prayers. Praying for God to heal our bitter partisan divide or to give our leaders the wisdom needed to govern well involves some level of expectation that God might actually do something, might actually touch people’s hearts and remove hatreds, might actually change the hearts and minds of elected leaders. Perhaps when I quickly scroll past prayers on Facebook, it’s really just a way to avoid dealing with my own faith issues.

Sermon: Living as Saints

 Matthew 5:1-12
Living as Saints
James Sledge                                                                         November 1, 2020 – All Saints

The Sermon on the Mount
Gary Bunt

    Every culture has its wisdom literature, wise sayings and proverbs. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” said Benjamin Franklin.  A lot of American proverbial wisdom speaks of things that lead to success such as Thomas Edison’s, “Genius is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.”

Such proverbial wisdom is generally meant to be self-evident. By that I mean that once you hear it, its truth will strike you. You will agree that while some people are smarter and more creative, hard work matters greatly. Either that or you will reject it as wisdom entirely.

People have sometimes approached the Sermon on the Mount, and especially its Beatitudes, as though they were pearls of wisdom to guide us on the path of success and well-being. Robert Schuller, of Crystal Cathedral fame, wrote a book back in the 1980s entitled, The Be (Happy) Attitudes: 8 Positive Attitudes That Can Transform Your Life. In it he says, “As we look upon the Beatitudes – The Be-Happy Attitudes – of Jesus Christ, you will discover our Lord’s key to joyful living.”[1]

Schuller sees each Beatitude as a wise saying that is a guide to happiness. The word translated “blessed” in our scripture can mean “happy,” but it is quite a stretch to speak of happiness being found in poverty of spirit, mourning, or being persecuted. And in fact, Schuller must get quite creative in explaining how Jesus’ blessings lead to happiness, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” becomes “I’m really hurting—but I’m going to bounce back!” And “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake” becomes, “I can choose to be happy—anyway!”[2]

This twisting of Jesus’ words is patently absurd, but Schuller’s bigger mistake is thinking that Jesus’ blessings are proverbs at all. They’re not. They are categorical statements about an unexpected reality not evident to the world. It is God’s view of things and so the shape of the new world that God is creating, the Kingdom that Jesus says has “come near.” 

This reality is not self-evident. It is rooted in the character of God and is dependent on the trustworthiness of the one who speaks it, not anything we do. Jesus is describing something at odds with the world as we know it. No one listens to Jesus and nods in agreement saying, “O yes, yes, it is quite good and enjoyable to be persecuted or to weep and mourn.”  Instead, Jesus speaks of a new reality that we are invited to become a part of.