The Crisis of Jesus' Presence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hurricanes, Prayers, and Our Place in the Story

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
     from him comes my salvation. 
He alone is my rock and my salvation,
     my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
                                   (Psalm 62:1-2)



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sermon audio - Almost Ready

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Sermon - Almost Ready

Almost Ready
Mark 12:28-34

October 28, 2012                                                                              James Sledge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asking the Wrong Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sermon video - Not So Among You

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What Makes God Mad

These words from today's reading in Micah are familiar to many.
  They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
       and their spears into pruning-hooks;
   nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
       neither shall they learn war any more. 

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

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

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

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

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

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Faith and Hospitality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Priorities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sermon audio - Not So Among You

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

Sermon - Not So Among You

Mark 10:35-45

Not So Among You

James Sledge                                                                                       October 21, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pride and Forgetfulness

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

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

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

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

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

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

And God knows all about being forgotten.

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