Sermon: Unexpected, Embodied Love

 John 1:1-18
Unexpected, Embodied Love

January 3, 2021                                                                                         James Sledge

 During our long pandemic, streaming shows and movies has become an even more popular pastime. People are watching The Crown or The Queen’s Gambit, or catching up on movies or shows they’ve missed or re-watching ones they loved.

Even though I’ve not done much binging myself, I did do a little thinking about what really good movies I wouldn’t mind going back and watching again. I enjoy movies that a purely fun. I’ve seen Independence Day more times than I can count. But when I say really good movies, I’m speaking of ones that wrestled with some major issue, that were poignant, that moved me or troubled me in some way. Movies such as One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Lion King, To Kill a Mockingbird, Spotlight, and Saving Private Ryan, although I’m not sure I want to watch the Normandy landing part of that one again.

One movie that both moved and troubled me, perhaps because of its religious themes, was the 1995 film, Dead Man Walking. For those who never saw it, the movie revolves primarily around two characters, Matthew, a death row inmate played by Sean Penn, and Sister Helen, a nun played by Susan Sarandon. Matthew is despicable man with no sense of guilt for his crimes, no concern or sympathy for his victims. He is a walking poster-boy for the death penalty and seems to have absolutely no redeeming qualities.

Sister Helen is not blind to this. In fact she is quite repulsed by Matthew. Yet she feels compelled to keep coming to see him, to try and somehow reach him, to find the image of God somewhere underneath all the evil and hate and viciousness.

Matthew realizes Sister Helen’s religious motivations, and so he toys with her, seeing how much he can shock and infuriate her, testing the limits of her faith convictions. At times she considers not returning, but she always comes back.

Somewhere along the way, Sister Helen’s presence starts to become a comfort to Matthew. He’s not really sure why, but he misses her when she isn’t there. He’s upset when he is unable to see her for any length of time. At the same time he still mistreats her, and seems to try to drive her off. It is as if her presence brings him both comfort and pain. 

Sermon: Joining Mary in Her Yes

 Luke 1:26-38
Joining Mary in Her “Yes”
James Sledge                                                                                       December 20, 2020

Annunciation to Mary, stained glass, Cathédrale de Chartres
from Art in the Christian Tradition,
a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library

There’s a banking commercial where a spokesperson walks through the bank, holding up his phone and says, “With a top rated app that lets you deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, banking with (our bank) is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like…” and the scene then shifts to an outdoor basketball court.

Two children are choosing players for their teams. Opposite them are four possible teammates to choose from: three children about their size, along with college and NBA great, Charles Barkley. The little girl who chooses first takes, not surprisingly, Sir Charles, who proceeds to celebrate saying “Yes! I still got it.” And looking down at the boy next him continues, “I told you she’d pick me first!” as the boy looks disgusted.

When I was a kid, we called this “choosing up sides.” It was a familiar ritual in the PE classes and playground gatherings of my youth. Basketball, softball, football, and more; two captains took turns picking teammates. It was great to be picked first, awful to be last.

Even if choosing up sides wasn’t part of your childhood experience, we’ve all dealt with versions of it. High school students take SATs and ACTs, send out applications to colleges and universities, then wait to see if they get chosen. Those graduating from college interview with employers and hope they get chosen. A supervisor position opens up at the plant and some of the workers apply and wait to see if they get chosen.

These adult choosing rituals may be a little more sophisticated than their playground cousin. For the most part they don’t include the public humiliation of being chosen last, but they still function in much the same way, trying to pick the best person available. 

This process is deeply ingrained into American culture. Traditionally, we are strong believers in meritocracy, in people being able to become and do all they are able to. We have little use for the rigid class systems of some other societies, where no matter how hard someone works, she can never advance beyond the status into which she was born.

Our system often serves us well, but it also shapes our understanding of what it means to be chosen. Whether it’s being able to shoot a basketball, close more big deals, design better software, and on and on, in our minds, being chosen means being judged superior or preferable to some other possible choice. 

And so we come to our gospel reading where the angel Gabriel shows up to say God has chosen Mary. “Greetings, favored one!”  Now we Protestants have never been quite sure what to do with Mary. A distaste for Roman Catholic practices of venerating, even praying to Mary has often led to dismissing her as much as possible. “She  had a baby, and she was a mom, nothing more,” said the men who ran the church.

 Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: The Grass Withers... BUT

 

Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Upside Down World

 

 Videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website. 

Sermon: Upside Down World

The Visitation, Jesus MAFA, Cameroon, 1973

Luke 1:46b-55
Upside Down World

James Sledge       December 13, 2020 – Advent 2

Many years ago, in the early 1960s, a small, rental car company begin to run what many consider the best advertising campaign of all time. Some of you no doubt remember this campaign from what was then called Avis Rent-A-Car. In various print and television ads, Avis proudly announced, “We’re number 2. We try harder.” The idea was that because they were number  2 behind Hertz, they had to work harder for your business.

The campaign was a huge success, and Avis just retired the “We Try Harder” slogan in 2012. At the time the ad campaign premiered, Hertz controlled the vast majority of the car rental business, around three quarters of it. Way back in Hertz’s dust were a group of smaller companies fighting over the remaining twenty five percent. But by the late 1960s, Avis was challenging Hertz for number one.

In in one of the first ever commercials to make a virtue out of being the little guy, Avis was very successful in convincing people that they would get better service from an upstart. But “We Try Harder” wasn’t the only message Avis was selling in their ads, even though it was the only clearly stated one. The claim, “We’re number 2” appeared to be a simple statement of fact, but in reality Avis may not have been number 2 at all, It was one of several bottom feeders fighting for the crumbs left by Hertz, but the ad campaign convinced everyone that they were Hertz’s rival. It changed people’s perception of things.

You may wonder what this has to do with Mary’s song. The Magnificat isn’t advertising. It does, however, make a number of bold claims. God is about to turn the world upside down, scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things while sending the rich away empty. But perhaps unnoticed by us, our attention focused on Mary’s words, Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth speaks of a world already turned upside down.

Sermon: The Grass Withers... BUT

 Isaiah 40:1-11
The Grass Withers… BUT

James Sledge                                                               December 6, 2020 – Advent 2

Christ the Good Shepherd, 5th century mosaic
in the Mausoleum of Gall Placidia, Ravenna, Italy

I’m no musician, but I love music. I like many kinds, though I typically listen to alternative, or indie music in the car or at my desk. One sort of music I don’t much like is Christmas songs from popular bands. That is true when they cover traditional songs, but even more so when they create original ones.

A notable exception for me is rather different holiday offering from Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer fame. It was released way back in 1975, but it has been covered more recently by folks such as U2. Some have said it is an anti-religious song, but Lake claims it was a protest over the commercialization of Christmas. Regardless, the lyrics are hardly the typical, cheery, holiday fare.

They said there'll be snow at Christmas.  They said there'll be peace on earth.

But instead it just kept on raining;  A veil of tears for the virgin's birth.

They sold me a dream of Christmas.  They sold me a silent night.

And they told me a fairy story 'till I believed in the Israelite.

Like I said; not your typical holiday fare, and Lake was surprised when it became something of a hit. He assumed people would think it anti-holiday and reject it, but no. 

I don’t know why it was a hit, but I do know why it touched me, why it still touches me. It seems to strip away the manufactured cheer that has become such a big part of the Christmas season. Perhaps it could even be called a rock and roll Advent song. Our culture’s celebration of Christmas works very hard to create warmth and good feelings, but these are usually quite shallow and fleeting. We don’t expect them to last. They’ll be tossed to the curb with the dried up Christmas trees, boxes, and old wrapping paper. Then we’ll have to wait until next December to get that holiday spirit, that Christmas cheer, once more.

But Advent is different. It doesn’t try to hide from the world’s pain or ugliness by covering it in colorful wrapping and holiday glitter or drowning it out in cheerful sounds of the holidays. It takes full stock of how things really are. Then, with eyes of faith, it sees God moving in history. Advent anticipates what God is doing to bring about something truly new.

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.