Sermon: Catching the Dream

Matthew 5:21-37

Catching the Dream

James Sledge                                                                                                   February 16, 2020

As baseball fans are probably aware, Derek Jeter, longtime short stop for the New York Yankees, was voted into the Hall of Fame last month. In other recent news, Major League Baseball announced the results of its investigation into sign stealing by the Houston Astros, including some of the harshest penalties ever handed down by MLB. Many thought the penalties too lenient, and the scandal has raised larger questions about cheating in baseball.

These two, seemingly unrelated bits of baseball news reminded me of an episode from Derek Jeter’s playing days. He was batting and squared around to bunt, but the pitch was way inside. Jeter turned away as the pitch struck the bat right on the knob at its base. He threw the bat away and began shaking his hand in pain. The trainer ran out to examine his “injury,” and the umpire awarded him first base. Jeter trotted down the base path still shaking off the pain. 

But replays showed that the baseball never came anywhere near Jeter’s hand. Jeter himself later admitted as much. A debate ensued as to whether Jeter had pulled off a savvy play or if he was a cheater, a debate that landed Jeter’s at-bat on the evening news.

In some ways, this debate depends on your view of rules. What are they for? Are they simply meant to define limits and boundaries, or do they mean to create an ethos, a way of doing things? Those who saw Jeter as a consummate competitor understood winning as the ultimate goal which is to be pursued by whatever means not actually prohibited, while those who thought him a cheater understood the rules to create something bigger than winning.

All of us function in a world filled with various sorts of rules. I remember going into my daughters’ elementary school classrooms and seeing the “Class Rules” listed on a poster. Every day most of us see speed limit signs that we sometimes obey and sometimes don’t. And questions about whether speeding is wrong or if it’s okay as long as you don’t go too much over or get caught perhaps mirror questions about whether or not Derek Jeter cheated.

And what about religious rules? The Bible is full of rules. There are well known rules like the Ten Commandments. (At least their existence is well known; most people can’t actually name them.) Then there are more obscure rules. Flip through the pages of Leviticus or Deuteronomy some time. There’s a rule against eating shellfish. And you’d better not be wearing clothing made of a blended fabrics. If that label says “cotton/polyester” or “wool/cotton blend,” you’re breaking the rules.

Of course most of us don’t get too worried about those rules. We’re Christians, and so we don’t have to obey all those Old Testament rules. As long as we believe in Jesus, as long as we have faith, we’re okay.

Yet in the portion of the Sermon on the Mount we heard last week, Jesus said that he didn’t come to call off the Law but to fulfill it, that not a single letter of the Law would pass away. And today, far from calling off rules, we hear Jesus seeming to add to them. Don’t murder is doable for most of us, but Jesus stretches the rule to include not getting angry. And in Jesus’ new version of the rules a middle aged man going through a mid-life crisis needn’t have an affair. He can just think about it, and it’s pretty much the same thing.

Sermon: On Being Salt and Light

Matthew 5:13-20

On Being Salt and Light

James Sledge                                                                                       February 9, 2020

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away.” For some reason this song popped into my head when I was thinking about salt and light in our gospel reading. I was wondering whether those words have the same impact they did in Jesus’ time. They’re both rather mundane.

“Turn on the light,” someone says, and we flip the switch. Light is everywhere. You can’t see the stars very well at night in the DMV because there is so much light. As long as the power doesn’t go out, we take it for granted, which may be why I thought of the song. You are my sunshine sounds pretty impressive. I get the metaphor of “You are the light of the world,” but it doesn’t sound as impressive as sunshine

So too with salt. A lot of us get too much of it. There’s nothing special about salt. It’s nothing precious. No one would ever think of salt as an extravagant, Valentine’s gift.

Yet in ancient times, salt was often literally worth its weight in gold, one of the most important commodities of the ancient world. It was used not only to season food but to preserve it so it could be stored. It was used as an antiseptic; it was required in the offerings made at the Jerusalem Temple. In some areas, slabs of rock salt were used as coins.

Light was also precious. In a world of candles and torches, oil lamps were cutting edge technology. You had to buy oil to use them, and so no one lit a lamp and put it under a bushel basket.

“You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” Not something mundane or taken for granted, but precious, valuable, essential for life.

Sermon video: Slaves to Freedom

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Slaves to Freedom

Matthew 4:12-23

Slaves to Freedom

James Sledge                                                                           January 26, 2020

I once saw a newspaper comic strip that depicted a teenager who was angry at his parents for not letting him do something he wanted to do. He yelled, “I’ll be glad when I’m 18 and no one can tell me what to do!” The final panel showed his parents doubled over in laughter.

As much as we celebrate freedom and individualism in this country, almost none of us ever reach the point where no one can tell us what to do.  It may be parents, a teacher, or professor; it may be our boss; it may be the speed limit and the police radar gun, but much of the time, we either do as others say or suffer the consequences.

We often wish it were otherwise. That starts early. Toddlers love the word “No!” Children and adults enjoy saying, “You can’t make me.”  Part of American mythology is that anyone can grow up to be whatever he or she wants to be. We know it’s not really true, even if it’s truer here than in many countries. But still, we love the idea that we’re free to become whatever we want, that we can simply decide, and if we try hard enough, we will make it.

In some countries, children are given aptitude tests and then slotted into certain academic or vocational tracks as early as elementary school.  That would never fly here.

Yet despite this, people often ask themselves the question, “What should I do with my life?” That’s a somewhat different question from “What do I want to do?” What I want to do is about preference, but what I should do speaks of something outside myself having a say.

Sometimes people go to career counseling services to help figure out what sort of thing they should do. Some colleges offer such services to their students. People who are thinking about changing careers sometimes use them. And our denomination requires people who want to become pastors to be evaluated by a reputable career center.

This career counseling usually includes tests that chart personality, interests, and aptitudes. The process assumes that certain traits are necessary for certain careers. When I was 12, I would have loved to become a rock and roll star, but it didn’t take all that many guitar lessons to make it obvious that would never happen.

So I’m wondering, what information would you consider in making a decision about what you should do with your life? Whose voice would you listen to; what authority would you recognize as having a say in that decision? 

And this isn’t limited to decisions about career. Life is full of should questions. Where should I go to college? Should I go to grad school? Should we get married? Should we have children? How should we raise our children? How should we spend our retirement?  What should we do with our estate? The list goes on and on. Perhaps you’re wrestling with such a question right now.

How do you answer such questions? Who and what get a say in answering the question, “What should I do?”

Sermon video: Good News, Total Depravity, and the Lamb of God

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Good News, Total Depravity, and the Lamb of God

John 1:29-42

Good News, Total Depravity, and the Lamb of God

January 19, 2020                                                                                             James Sledge

A vaccine for polio was developed a couple of years before I was born. Prior to that half a million people were killed or paralyzed by it each year. In 1952 nearly 60,000 US children contracted polio. Over 3000 died and more than 20,000 were left with some sort of paralysis.

The vaccine was life-altering, front page news. Its developer, Jonas Salk, was a national hero. I have vague recollections of mass immunization drives at schools with public service announcements encouraging anyone who’d not yet been vaccinated to show up, but by the time I was a teenager, you rarely heard anything about polio. It became part of the normal routine, a required vaccination, and there wasn’t a lot of need to get the news out anymore.

Our gospel reading for today contains big, life-altering news from John the Baptist. At least it’s front page news for Andrew, Simon Peter and others. “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John tells Andrew and he tells Simon Peter. If you keep reading more people get told, and it won’t be long before crowds start to appear.

Sharing good news is central to the biblical story of Jesus and the first Christians, so much so that the our word “gospel” is simply an archaic synonym for “good news.” And the word “evangelism” is just an anglicized version of the Greek word meaning gospel or good news.

When people met Jesus, when people encountered early Christian missionaries, were baptized and received the Holy Spirit, they told others. It was life changing news. How could they not. And so what started out a small, apocalyptic Jewish movement swept over the entire Mediterranean world in short order, drawing in both Jews and non-Jews.

But eventually, Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire. And then it came to be expected, even required. Before long, Jesus wasn’t front page news anymore. It was just one of those things you acquired by being a part of the empire.

Even after the Roman Empire fell, Christianity remained enmeshed in the empires and states that followed. For much of the Western world, this Christendom persisted into the 20^th century. With a few exceptions, being Italian or French or American meant you were expected to be Christian. And baptism was often seen as a bit like a vaccination given to children. It was on the checklist. Whooping cough, polio, measles, baptism.

A lot of people lament the demise of this Christendom, but I’m not one of them. In Christendom, faith often became just background noise. People blissfully imagined that faith and nation were perfectly compatible. Not surprisingly, this Christendom faith made wealth a virtue, supported slavery, was not much troubled by the genocide of indigenous Americans, and thought God created Africans inferior to serve whites.

Tomorrow we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. who challenged the vapid faith of Christendom. As part of the commemoration of his life and work, the television will show old, black and white news footage from the Civil Rights movement. We’ll see police dogs and fire hoses turned on peaceful marchers, and we’ll see police brutally, sometimes gleefully, beating them, police who were upstanding members of their local churches.

Occasionally when such events are being discussed, people – always white people – will explain such behavior as “a product of the time.” Similar arguments are made in opposition to removing statues of southern, Civil War generals. They weren’t bad people. They were good people. They were simply of their time. That was the problem. Not them, the time.

Sermon video: Remembering Who We Are

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Remembering Who We Are

Matthew 3:13-17

Remembering Who We Are

James Sledge                                                            January 12, 2020 – Baptism of the Lord

It’s an old joke, one I’m sure I’ve told before, so if you’ve heard it, please bear with me. A group of pastors are meeting for lunch. As I assume happens with other professions, such lunches often include a fair amount of talking shop. There is some complaining and venting, some idea sharing. “What are y’all doing for Lent this year?” and other such discussions.

At this particular lunch, one of the pastors shared that they were having a problem with bats at the church she served. They had discovered a huge colony in the steeple and needed to get them out. She wondered if any of the other pastors had experience with this sort of thing. She didn’t want to hurt the bats but they were starting to make a pretty big mess.

One colleague shared the name of a local pest removal company. Another suggested an ultrasonic pest repeller, but the pastor said they’d already tried one of those with no success.

Finally another pastor said, “We had the same problem a few years ago and decided to enroll them all in confirmation class. When it was over, we never saw them again.”

For those of you from other religious traditions, confirmation is step two in a two-step process for becoming a full-fledged member of a Presbyterian church. Step one is baptism, something that typically happens when a child is still an infant. Confirmation, which includes making a public profession of faith, is the confirming of those baptismal vows, claiming the faith of one’s parents or guardians as one’s own.

Unfortunately, confirmation has a long history of becoming a graduation from church. Children are baptized, attend Sunday School as children, do confirmation as teens, and pretty much disappear after that. For much of the 20^th century, they often returned to church when they married and had children of their own, but that pattern has largely broken down. By the latter part of the 20^th century, many of those who graduated never came back.

I sometimes wonder if we in the church didn’t set ourselves up for this. In a variety of ways, we portrayed Christian faith as a status that one attains. Some evangelicals talk about being born again or saved. But what comes after that? We Presbyterians have rarely used the language of “born again” or being “saved,” but we still tended to treat Christianity as a status. In many congregations, Sunday School is seen as something for children. Presumably that means you are done at some point. You’ve finished, graduated, gotten your Christianity pin.

Some parents skip a step and just make infant baptism the graduation. They “get the baby done,” often at the urging of grandparents. And then they never go near church again.

Sermon video: Pharaoh and Herod vs God's Love

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: The Threat of Christmas

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Pharaoh and Herod vs God's Love

Matthew 2:13-23

Pharaoh and Herod vs God’s Love

James Sledge                                                                           December 29, 2019

Every evening when I drive home at this time of year, I pass by a house with an elaborate nativity scene in the front yard. It’s not terribly realistic, but it is huge, covering half of the front yard. It has steps that go up to the floor where Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus are, along with wise men and some animals.

The holy family and their visitors are wooden, stylized figures, illuminated by strands of Christmas lights. But on those steps leading up to the floor are two more realistic figures. They are plastic, brightly colored, and glow from their own, interior lighting. One is Santa Claus and the other is a snowman, Frosty perhaps?

A little odd, I suppose, but it’s hardly the first time I’ve seen Santa and the manger side by side. I don’t suppose anyone actually thinks that Santa was there at Jesus’ birth, but I can understand why people might add Santa to the display. In popular imagination, the story of Jesus’ birth is a joyous, magical, miraculous story, often depicted as sweet and idyllic, something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Likewise the story of Santa is also joyous and miraculous. It is full of warmth and happiness and a sense of magic that even adults long for. It is easy to see why people would feel that the two stories go well together.

It may surprise some, considering all the attention we lavish on it, to realize how little coverage the Christmas story gets from the Bible. Of the four gospels, only Luke tells of Jesus in a manger. There’s no actual mention of a stable, and many scholars think this manger was inside a home, in the area where the animals were brought inside at night.

If the nativity display at your house is like the one at mine, the Wise Men are visiting the baby in the manger along with shepherds and angels. But the visit of the Magi doesn’t quite belong with Christmas. Young Jesus is likely a toddler in this story from Matthew’s gospel, a story that ends with the fearsome, frightening events from our scripture reading this morning. All the male children two years old and under in the little hamlet of Bethlehem are taken from their parents by government officials, and then killed.

The gospel writer borrows a line from the prophet Jeremiah to describe the scene. The words originally spoke metaphorically of the children of Israel carried off into exile while Rachel, one of Israel’s founding matriarchs, weeps for them. But now the metaphor has turned literal. “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Sermon: The Threat of Christmas

Matthew 1:18-25

The Threat of Christmas

James Sledge                                                                                       December 22, 2019

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. “A righteous man.” Outside of the Bible, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone actually described that way. Have you? I can’t think of a single example. For that matter, I almost never hear the word righteous at all, other than to speak disparagingly of someone who is “self-righteous.”

Some Bible translations try something else: a just man, a man of honor, a noble man, a good man. Unlike righteous, I’ve heard people described as good, noble, honorable, or just, and meant in a complimentary way. Righteous, however, just isn’t part of our everyday vocabulary. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that any of those other words quite capture what the gospel writer is trying to say.

To say that Joseph is a righteous man is to say that he is faithful in keeping God’s law. He is more than simply good. He lives his life by God’s commandments. He is guided by the principles laid out in the Torah, and Torah says he should divorce Mary.

Divorce is required because Mary’s engagement to Joseph is something very different from engagement in our day. When two people get engaged in our culture, they have declared their intent to marry, but there’s no legal change of status. They are still single and, should they call off the engagement, the only issues to navigate depend on how far along things are. It could be a simple as letting friends and family know that the wedding is off. Or it could involve unbooking reception venues and dealing with angry members of the wedding party who’ve already bought bridesmaid dresses or non-refundable airline tickets. But regardless of how easy or complicated, calling the wedding off doesn’t require any legal action to undo the engagement.

Not the case for Joseph and Mary. Their engagement is as legally binding as marriage is for us. It cannot be called off. It can only end with a divorce.

I can only imagine what goes through Joseph’s mind when he learns that Mary is pregnant. He might feel betrayed, although if this is an arranged marriage, perhaps not. In the eyes of the Law, however, Joseph has been wronged. He has made Mary his wife, even if the final formalities are yet to come, but now that Joseph has learned of her presumed adultery, he must divorce her, regardless of what he does or doesn’t feel for her.