Sermon: Whose Are You?

 Whose Are You?
John 17:6-19
James Sledge                                                                                                 May 16, 2021

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 I grew up outside of Charlotte, NC, on land once owned by my great-great grandmother and grandfather. It was still out in the country, though the suburbs were getting closer and closer. In high school, I had a summer job with a landscaping company. We had several tractors, and one day I took a tractor tire that needed repairing over to Bonsal’s Tire.

I pulled up in the parking lot of this ancient garage, dragged the tire from the bed of a beat up El Camino, and rolled it toward one of the two open garage doors where a couple of elderly gentlemen were sitting in chairs. I did not recognize either of them, but one looked at me and said, “You must be Hartwell’s grandkid.”

Now it so happens that my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all named Hartwell, but only my great-grandfather went by that name. And so I answered the gentleman saying, “I believe I’m his great-grandson,” and the ensuing conversation confirmed that this was indeed the case.

Growing up in the vestiges of the rural south, who your daddy or granddaddy was, was important. More often than not, an introduction was likely to include something of your lineage.  “This is James, Ken Sledge’s son, Dick’s grandson. Such identifications were, for me, usually beneficial. My family had been in the area for generations and was reasonably well respected That meant I was assumed to be respectable myself unless I did something to prove otherwise. Had I been from a different family, I might have been assumed no-good unless I worked hard to convince people differently.

It’s a notion that is fading away in our culture, the notion that the family you belong to says something about who you are. People don’t stay in one place as much as they once did, and we live in an increasingly individualist culture. We don’t want to be identified by who we belong to. We want to be our own person, to make our own mark.

May 9 sermon video: As I Have Loved You

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

May 2 sermon video: On Being the Beloved Community

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: As I Have Loved You

 John 15:9-17
As I Have Loved You
James Sledge                                                                                      May 9, 2021

 In the Holocaust Museum not too far from here, there is a heart wrenching letter written by Vilma Grunwald to her husband, Kurt. They were Czechoslovakian Jews who, along with their two sons, we held in the infamous Auschwitz death camp. Kurt was a doctor, and the Nazis used him to care for the prisoners forced to do factory work which meant that he was held in a separate part of the camp from his family.

Like so many others, Vilma and her two boys, John and Misa, were paraded in front of the notorious SS doctor Josef Mengele as he decided who would be gassed. John, the older son, had a congenital condition that left him with a pronounced limp, and so he was put in the group marked for death.

Vilma could not bear to see her son taken to the gas chambers alone, and so added herself to his group. The evening before they were taken to the gas chambers, she managed to write a short note. She gave it to a sympathetic guard and asked him to deliver it to her husband. Amazingly, he did so. This is the note.

You, my only one, dearest, in isolation we are waiting for darkness. We considered the possibility of hiding but decided not to do it since we felt it would be hopeless. The famous trucks are already here and we are waiting for it to begin. I am completely calm. You — my only and dearest one, do not blame yourself for what happened, it was our destiny. We did what we could. Stay healthy and remember my words that time will heal — if not completely — then — at least partially. Take care of the little golden boy and don’t spoil him too much with your love. Both of you — stay healthy, my dear ones. I will be thinking of you and Misa. Have a fabulous life, we must board the trucks.

 Into eternity, Vilma.[1]

This short letter displays both the human capacity for the vilest of evils along with the most remarkable, self-giving love. The horrors of Auschwitz are almost beyond comprehension and a warning of what can happen whenever the other is demonized. But I think I can comprehend the love of a mother that could not let her child die alone.

Sermon: On Being the Beloved Community

 Acts 8:26-40
On Being the Beloved Community
James Sledge                                                                                                 May 2, 2021

Herbert Boeckl, Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

 In December of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. appeared at Western Michigan University
in Kalamazoo. He spoke and held a question-and-answer session with faculty and students where someone asked this question. “Don’t you feel that integration can only be started and realized in the Christian church, not in schools or by other means?”

Dr. King’s answer began with words that may be familiar to you. “We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing that Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this.”[1]

That was nearly 60 years ago. In the meantime, America has become a much more integrated place. Much of corporate America has embraced diversity as an ideal to strive for. Some of you work in places that are a salad bowl of race, gender, sexuality, religion, and more. But Sunday morning stubbornly remains one of the most segregated places in our culture. Even among churches that are openly progressive or liberal, segregation stubbornly persists.

Tribalism in the human creature has deep, evolutionary roots. Early humans were able to survive only by living in groups that cooperated for protection and finding food. Such groups were likely based on kinship, and somewhere along the line, humans become genetically predisposed to seek comfort and safety with those who are like them.

Like fight or flight reflexes, tribalism was helpful, even necessary, for survival at one point in history. But such evolutionary adaptations work much less well in larger societies composed of different sorts of people. For our society to function well, these primitive tendencies need to be overcome. Yet even a church that holds a Silent Witness Against Racial Injustice every other Saturday stubbornly remains largely white.

Sermon video: Trusting the Shepherd

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Trusting the Shepherd

 John 10:11-18
Trusting the Shepherd
James Sledge                                                                                                 April 29, 2012

 When I was in seminary, I had the opportunity to take a three-week long trip to the Middle East and Greece. There were students from number of seminaries, and we spent a good deal of time on charter buses.

One day we were traveling through some rather hilly country in the West Bank of Israel, and I was sitting by the window seeing what there was to see. I looked down into a small valley below the bus, and I noticed a young, Palestinian boy who was maybe ten or twelve years old. He was walking along a little path and right behind him, in a single file line, were a handful of sheep. I watched him for as long as I could still see him as he descended into the valley, that line of sheep right behind. It looked a little like a teacher leading a single-file line of kindergarteners to the cafeteria.

I later learned that this was typical in the area. Often a family’s flock would number less than a dozen, and it was not unusual for a child to have charge of the flock. When they would head out from the house in the morning to find pasture, that child would call to the sheep, and they would follow along behind, knowing that their young shepherd would lead them to food.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”

Many years ago, at the church I served in Ohio, we were holding the weekly staff meeting. As was our custom, we spent some time talking about the scripture reading for the coming Sunday, the same reading we heard today. When I finished reading the passage, our parish associate pastor said, “Sheep like to go their own way.”

Bob was a retired pastor who worked for us several hours a week, mostly helping with pastoral care. It turned out that when he had first started in ministry, he served a church in Montana, a congregation with a number of sheep farmers. They were the ones who had told him, “Sheep like to go their own way. They have to be watched carefully.”

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.”

Sermon: Living as God's Children

 1 John 3:1-7
Living as God’s Children
James Sledge                                                                                      April 18, 2021

 In recent years, I have begun to wonder if the Church is any longer viable. I’m not talking about Falls Church Presbyterian in particular but about church in general. And I’m not talking about whether the institutional church can survive. I’m talking about whether the Church is in any way capable of living into its calling, of being what it is called to be by God.

A number of understandings lie behind my worries. I understand the Church to be the body of Christ, a community that is meant to show and be Christ in and for the world. It is to model the way of Jesus, in stark contrast to the typical ways of the world.

I understand the Church to be an alternative community that shapes and forms people in the way of Jesus, a way of love and self-giving that looks little like the individualistic consumerism of our age. It is to be an alternative community where people so experience the love of God that it transforms their lives.

I understand the Church to be a community that embodies the way of peace over violence, even when that is risky and costly. It is to be a community that would risk its own life in the cause of love and peace.

I understand the Church to be a community that embodies the life of God’s coming new day, a day when all divisions end, when the poor are lifted up as the rich and powerful are brought lower, a great leveling.

In short, I understand the Church to be a square peg in a world built for round ones, a community that holds fast to the way of Jesus even when that makes it hard, impossible perhaps, to fit in.

I also understand that the Church will live into its calling imperfectly because the ways of the world are familiar and comfortable and seductive. But it will keep being drawn back to its calling through the pull of God’s love and the guidance of the Spirit.

But I’m not at all sure these understandings describe church in 21^st century America. Rather than looking different from the world, church mirrors the world’s divisions. There are conservative churches and liberal churches, rich churches and poor churches, Black churches and white churches, contemporary churches and traditional churches, and on and on.

Sermon video: Living as God's Children

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Resurrection Shaped Community

 

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website

Sermon: Resurrection Shaped Community

 Acts 4:32-35
Resurrection Shaped Community
James Sledge                                                                                                  April 11, 2021

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common… There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.

That couldn’t actually happen, could it? I once heard a sermon where the preacher said that it never really happened. His proof didn’t come from any scriptural or historical research. His proof was that he had known a great many churches and it had never happened there, could never happen there, and so clearly, it never happened. He went somewhere with the sermon after that but I don’t remember that part.

Biblical scholars sometimes wonder if it were always quite so wonderful as the book of Acts would have us believe. They point to the book of Acts itself. Just a few verses from our passage, it tells of a couple, Ananias and Sapphira, who sold their property and claimed to give all the proceeds to the community but in fact kept some for themselves.

By the way, Ananias and Sapphira both fall dead as the result of their attempt to fool God and the community, but that’s a different sermon.

The biblical scholar’s answer to the question of whether the community described in Acts could have happened is a little more nuanced than that preacher I heard years ago. It might have partly happened, suggests the scholar, but it wasn’t quite so perfect as first reported.

What do you think? Could it have happened, even partly? Or does your experience with the human condition suggest even that would be impossible?

Easter sermon (in-person worship) Hoping in the Dark

 John 20:1-18
Hoping in the Dark
James Sledge                Resurrection of the Lord (in person worship)                 April 4, 2021

The Empty Tomb, He Qi © 2021 All rights reserved.

 It is so great to see you all, actually to gather together to celebrate Easter. And what a perfect setting, a bright blue sky while the sun warms the day. What a glorious Easter morning. I think we expect Easter to be bright and sunny, even more so if you head to an outdoor sunrise service, or when you gather in a parking lot.

But as much as we may associate Easter with the brightness of spring, the Easter story in the gospel of John takes place in the dark. Sunrise services are popular at Easter and some of you went to ours, but there is no mention of a sunrise in our scripture passage. It simply says that Mary came to the tomb while it was still dark.

While it was still dark… The darkness is literal, but in John’s gospel, the metaphor of darkness is never far off. I’ve become more hesitant in using such metaphors as I’ve realized more the depths of our society’s systemic racism, part of which is having dark always mean bad and light always mean good.

However, I’m not quite sure how to avoid such metaphors when working with John’s gospel. He contrasts dark and light so often. At least I can rest assured that there are no racial overtones in the gospel. The gospel writer lived in a time without electricity or streetlights. The literal darkness of night could be frightening, even dangerous.

When Mary heads to the tomb, it is literally dark, but there is also a sense of fear and danger. Her beloved Jesus had been executed by the Romans for sedition. She is distraught, confused, afraid, unsure what will happen next. The gospel writer’s while it was still dark reflects this, and it hangs over the entire story. There is no mention of daylight ever arriving.