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. 

Us, Them, and Christian Identity

I attended a presentation by Brian McLaren last night via Twitter.  By that I mean I read the Twitter feed of someone who was at the presentation. It's a little like reading the notes someone takes as she takes them. I had not known about this event in advance, but when I saw this from Debra, "Live tweeting @brianmclaren in PHX," I perked up.  I love Brian McLaren's books and think he is the best conference keynote speaker I've ever run across.

As the Tweets of McLaren's presentation appeared on my phone, I was especially drawn to a string about Christian identity.  Here they are (combined and slightly edited to remove the abbreviations and shortcuts necessitated by Twitter's 140 character limit).

Christians know how to do 2 things 1) have a strong identity and be hostile to others with different identity. The correct people have the right to be here but everyone else is taking up our space. 2. We know how to have a weak identity in the name of tolerance. Weak/tolerant identity is less harmful to the other, but is also hard to pass on to the next generation. We need a third option: strong Christian identity that is benevolent toward other religions.

I couldn't agree more. Obviously these are generalizations, and don't apply to every individual Christian or congregation.  But in general, more fundamentalist, evangelical churches have tended to have a very clear and strong identity, but it often emerges from an "us and them" view of the world. And any positive view of the "thems" is largely limited to their status as potential converts.

On the other hand, mainline churches, and especially the more progressive wing of the mainline, often is very tolerant and accepting of others, seeing less of an "us and them" world and more of a one big "we."  But this inclusivity is often achieved by minimizing the differences and particularities of  Christian faith.  There's an old joke about about the liberal, UCC denomination that plays on their initials but could probably be applied to other liberal Christians. It goes, "What does UCC stand for?  Unitarians Considering Christ."  In reality it's the United Church of Christ, but the joke works because liberal Christians sometimes sound more like Unitarians than followers of Jesus.

That's no knock on Unitarians.  But if we prefer being Unitarian to being Christian, we should come clean and say so.

Today's readings from Acts and Luke remind us that Christian faith is rooted in the specific and messy particularities of the man Jesus. They speak of "a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous," and of sinners who are in need of forgiveness that Jesus can and does give.  And this is just the tip of the messy, particular iceberg.  Basic Christian identity includes a  bloody cross, a resurrection, an insistence that God is actively at work in human history, and more.

A few years ago, Kenda Creasy Dean authored a book entitled Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church.  The book is largely rooted in a massive study of adolescent spirituality in the US done from 2003-2005.  This study concluded that the faith of the typical American teenager was not really Christian, but something they labeled "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." And Dean says that this "Christian-ish" faith is a parasite draining the faith of its vitality. And the tenants of this Christian-ish faith are remarkably vague and innocuous, not in the least offensive to anyone. The is a god. God want people to be good and nice and fair. The main purpose of life is to be happy. God is uninvolved in our lives except to solve the occasional problem. And good people go to heaven. 

And the most troubling aspect of this study and book is that the Christian-ish faith of our teenagers is not the result of their misunderstanding something or perverting what they learned at church. Rather it is an accurate reflection of their parents' faith and the faith of the churches where they grew up. It's also a faith that does not bind teenagers to the church in any significant way.

I take it that this is precisely the sort of thing Brian McLaren was talking about last night when he spoke of a weak identity that was very tolerant but did not transmit well to the next generation.  And in fact, the study behind Dean's book found that typical teenagers had not rejected the church nor were they hostile to it. Rather the faith they had learned there was so vague and short on specifics that they saw little reason to continue participating. They could be moralistic, therapeutic deists without attending some anachronistic worship service.

And that brings me back to the challenge McLaren issued, to come up with a Christian identity that is strong, particular, and vital without any need to denigrate others. It is easy to build an identity using hostility, by defining us in contrast to "them." (Partisan politics is a good example.) But that is not the only way.  And I do not think it was the Christian way in the beginning. Only after Christians gained political power a few hundred years after Jesus did anyone begin to suggest forcibly converting people or killing those who would comply. Only when Christians resided in places of power did societies begin requiring conformity to a strong Christian identity under threat of the sword.

Progressive Christianity correctly rejects such coercive faith. It correctly champions freedom of religion and the denial of the sword to those who would say, "Believe as we do or else."  But these stances do not require us to water down our faith. The particulars of our faith are not the problem.

There is a concept from the world of business referred to as "the culture of mediocrity." It refers to a process where ideas or proposals are tweaked and modified in response to objections or concerns, but in the process of removing anything that bothers or upsets anyone, the end product is gutted to its core, leaving something that doesn't bother anyone, but accomplishes little. 

This process has a parallel in many churches, where proposals to do something new get whittled down to mediocre or worse.  And a similar process seems to have happened with faith itself. We have whittled it down and sanded off its corners and reduced it to something that offends no one but speaks to no one either.

I think that the challenge Brian McLaren issues is the big challenge facing Progressive Christianity. Can we articulate and proclaim a bold, vibrant, Christian faith and identity - emphasis on Christ - that is distinct and requires alterations to one's life to be a part of it, while at the same time remaining open, hospitable, and benevolent to those of other faiths and practices?

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