If Slavery Had Found A Different Scriptural Emphasis

          When the Civil War divided the nation, most church denominations  divided north and south.  To support the slave economy of the south, two very different theological interpretations of the Bible were undertaken. 

         What I believe is that the use of the Bible to justify slavery in this country may be the worst misinterpretation of the Bible in our nation’s history.  The consequences of that theological framework, that way of thinking about God, still haunts us as a nation over the question of race.

         But imagine if the North had grasped Deuteronomy 23: 15-16, and made it their call and response to slavery?  “If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master.  Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.”  Imagine if ‘refuge’ had been the watchword of the nation as it divided?  How much more of Jesus do we see in that?

         The great fear of the South in regards to their slaves was that of an uprising.  There were many places where, locally, the slaves far outnumbered the free and a rebellion would have caused much death and desolation.  Imagine if the great fear was, in fact, flight?  What if Harriet Tubman and those who followed her lead were the great heroes of the time, carrying out this mission from Deuteronomy 23?

         I am very aware of how deeply racism runs in this country and how much deeper it was in the time of the Civil War.  But prooftexts, verses taken on their own, can take on a life of their own, for good or for ill.  How powerful would it have been if this one had taken hold?

Pastor Peter

Imagine a Sacred Shelf in the Library of Congress…

             Imagine if you would a sacred shelf in the Library of Congress.  On this shelf would be displayed a unique treasure of hand-crafted work from the highest office in the land.  Imagine if there were, on this shelf, a collection of carefully bound and preserved copies of the United States Constitution.  Well, the Constitution and notes and personal commentary, each one well worn and thoroughly used.

            Imagine if the practice of this nation was that every succeeding President, between the time of their election and inauguration, had the task of copying over the Constitution in their own hand and the responsibility of daily reading, studying, and elaborating their own thoughts about it throughout their Presidencies?  Call it a time of ‘civic devotions’. 

            Perhaps there would be a standard type of workbook to facilitate this copying.  Maybe a fresh workbook would be left by the sitting President for their successor.  With all the other practices and rituals and symbols of the office that were established by President George Washington, perhaps there, this time of ‘civic devotion’ could have been established.

            At the conclusion of their Presidency, their hand crafted Constitution would become part of the archived materials of their time in office.  The President could be given the option of having the contents of their Constitutional missive publicly shared at that moment or shared after their death.  But shared it would be, tying together the framing document of the United States and the person most powerfully charged to defend it.

    Perhaps we would have a massive political blowup within Government to decide where these missives should be stored and displayed. I like the idea of the Library of Congress because I consider it to be the nation's library.

            What would each successive Presidential Constitutional Missive pass along to the next?  Continuity?  Challenges?  Grace under pressure?  Disasters when things went astray? 

            Okay, um, Pastor…this is not your typical blog post.  Where is this coming from?  It is a reimaging, for our present times, something that I read in the book of Deuteronomy.  Deuteronomy 17: 18-19 to be precise.  These are verses dealing with the eventuality of the People of Israel being ruled by a king.

            “When he (the King) has taken the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law (the book of Deuteronomy), taken from that of the priests, who are Levites.  It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the worlds of this law and these decrees.”

            The NRSV translates this as the king having a copy of the law written out for him, but I like this idea even more, the king writing it out in his own hand.  With all the stuff going on in politics in our own nation, what if we translated that command into our own context?  We make fun of politicians so we may not claim they left behind ‘wisdom’, but what experiences would they have left us?

Pastor Peter

More Binds Us To One Another Than Divides Us

             There is a universal statement in the Christian faith, that we are all ‘children of God’.  That God created us, cares for us, sustains us (even as we sinfully work so hard to undermine that creation).  Then we get particular, in Jesus Christ, in our belief in Him as our Lord and Savior.  This, with the indwelling Holy Spirit is how the Christian faith distinguishes a Triune presence of God as a foundation of our faith.

            Among the resources of the ministry that I have recently gone through, I found interfaith resources obtained at the time when I was doing interfaith chaplaincy with our local police department and interfaith spiritual care in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.  And while the names change and the sources of religious inspiration differ, the root needs and aspirations of the people do not.

            In other words, the need for the love, caring, rescue, healing, and grace from a Source more powerful than ourselves is a constant in its expression across different faiths.  I do not say this because I am a ‘universalist’, that all religious expression somehow leads to the same God.  I say this because it underpins the universality of the human experience, the universality that we are all children of God. 

            All humans can suffer.  All humans need love.  All humans are worthy beings.  All humans are God’s children.  As a Christian, I believe that is where I need to begin.  We live in a time where we more quickly begin in what divides us, for how ‘those’ people are different from us.  Too often, those divisions are meant to designate who is ‘wrong’ in opposition to who is ‘right’ (which is usually us).

            But in a time where there are more than ten thousand presumed dead in Libya, where a war continues to rage in Ukraine, where we continue to watch Lee plowing north, Margot out beyond it, and another gearing up to take up the mantle of a named storm, where there is so much need in the world, the need to come together is more powerful now than ever.

            We are all God’s children.  If we embrace that truth in love and compassion, across our faiths and beliefs, we will do so much better.

Pastor Pete

The Movement of God Into Our Lives and Hearts

So the announcements have been made.  In church, via correspondence, both mail and email, that with the end of August will come the conclusion of these Daily Feeds as a part and parcel of my preaching and ministry at the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  There has been a gap already as things have flown into high gear with change just around the corner. 

Does not mean the Daily Feed is ending, but I will be taking a break to consider how it will fit with the next stage in the road God has set before me.  It won’t be called “daily” any longer.  That has been more dream than reality.

But this is why John is the final ‘book of the month’ for preaching here in Perth Amboy.  It’s message is uniquely powerful.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  It is that opening verse of the Gospel of John that sets the tone for the entire Gospel.  Jesus is the Word.  The man, the Messiah, the Son of Man and the Son of God is being identified with God.  Jesus is born into the world, not made.  God’s presence is uniquely among us in the Person of Jesus Christ.

But it is not just a matter of God entering into the world.  Jesus’ presence among the disciples was not eternal, at three years, not even prolonged in the age of the world.  But our passage this Sunday, from John 14, is where God takes the next step.  God has entered the world as Jesus.  But now Jesus will enter our hearts.  We will have a Counselor, we will have the Giver of Truth, we will have an Advocate, we will have Peace.  Jesus will leave His peace with us.

Thus, as my ministry concludes here in Perth Amboy, as the questions of what the future will bring wash up powerfully around us, I hope we can depend on the truth from John’s Gospel.  Jesus’ peace will be left to us.  We have the Spirit with us, no matter where we are or where we worship.  God’s strength is sufficient.

Peace,

Pastor Peter

The Word and the Word and the Word and the Word

God is the Word.  Well, John actually flips that, the Word was God, but one of the few bits of math I remember is if a=b then b=a.  Or at least it should.  Well, that is all fine and dandy, but what does that mean?  Well, Jesus is God.  Because Jesus is who is meant by ‘the Word’ here at the beginning of John.  But what about the theology of Word?  What are we thinking about in terms of our God when we look at the word “Word”? 

(Now I have “The Bird is the Word” by the Ruffled Feathers going in my head-and now on Spotify).

For me, the most immediate association of Word and God is the Bible.  The Bible is the Word of God.  It is the Word as inspired by God.  It is the handbook of the faith.  There are a lot of metaphors and adjectives we could use on this. 

And then there is the presentation of the Word.  This is inclusive of the presentation of the Word, the sermon, which is the centerpiece of our worship service.  It is where I dare to stand in the presence of the Spirit and the congregation and presume to say something of faithful importance. 

Then there is the Word received, by those listening.  Again, in the arrogance of the preacher, I will presume the Lord has given me something worthy to say. 

The first associations of Word and God for me are those of Creative Intent.  God said, “Let there be light” in the Old Testament creation story.  And there was.  The Word is the way that God reveals God’s creative powers in ways for we humans to attempt to wrap our minds around.

Jesus as the Word, the words of Jesus, they are the centerpiece of the Scriptures (yes, the Word of God to keep flogging the repetition).  Jesus’ words teach us all we need to know of the faith and how to live our lives in Him.  Jesus as the Word is the Redemptive power of God.  It is not simply what Jesus said but what Jesus did to save us. 

“In the beginning was the Word.  And the Word was with God.  And the Word was God,” 

The Word.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

God and More Than God: Was This The Thing That Split Church from Temple?

 “You believe that God is one, you do well.  Even the demons believe-and shudder.”  James 2:19.  So, demons believe and they shudder, that played large in our sermon this past Sunday.

But there is an even more powerful bit in that verse.  “You believe God is one…”  James was pressing on the understanding of God.

This is a complicated bit for Christianity.  Perhaps our largest presuppositional differences with our fellow religious siblings of Abraham, Islam and Judaism, is “One God” versus “God is One”.  It is a new thing for James.  He is writing to the twelve tribes of Israel in the Diaspora, those Jews dispersed beyond the Promised Land.  And he is pushing the accepted boundaries of how to understand God.

If I were going to attempt a scholarly treatise, I might say something like this is ‘a Theological consideration of the proto-Trinitarian understand of the Christian God.’  Almost sprains my brain to say that out loud.  Well, a theological consideration, that is code to tell us that in this moment, we are thinking about our faith, considering something about our faith. 

I am particularly proud of “proto-Trinitarian”.  Our understanding of God is well established in the Nicene and the Apostle’s Creeds, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  We draw that understanding as we think through how our God reveals Godself to us in the Bible.  And I say the Christian God, because this consideration is different from how I understand God to be understood in Judaism. 

Maybe this is the place where Judaism and Christianity broke ranks.  We know that the church began among the Jews.  That it spread to Gentile believers.  I have always thought of that as the reason for the breaking point, that the Gentile ‘wing’ of the church became far larger than the Jewish ‘wing’, that in the opening up of the traditional laws of Moses, things became untenable between the two communities.

Maybe this is the point of breakage.  A fancy title like “proto-Trinitarian” simply means “before Trinitarian”.  Before there was a full development of the theology of, the thinking about God in God’s revealed form, that we understand as “Trinity”, three-in-one.  Maybe what James is getting at in this understanding that “God is one” is the expanded revelation of God, from only God the Father, to God the Father and God the Son.  This is not to dismiss the person or importance of the Holy Spirit, but to understand how Christianity grew away from Judaism, in stages.

Which connects us to where our preaching comes from this month, from the Gospel according to John.  We, okay-I, Bible nerd, am going to have a lot of fun with origin stories about the Gospels.  John “versus” the Synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Yes, I will elaborate on that in the future.  But I want to look particularly at the opening of the Gospel of John, the ‘creation story’ of the New Testament.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  (John 1: 1-5)

The Word is Jesus.  Jesus was in the beginning.  Jesus was with God.  Jesus was God.  Jesus was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Jesus.  And it goes on from there.  The gospel writer is not laying out a specified “Duality” of God (first God is two and then three-when we add the Holy Spirit in John 14).  That kind of organizational thinking comes later. 

No, what is happening here, what James is pushing on, is the expanded understanding of God.  Jesus the Messiah?  That works in the theology of the Old Testament-how the Old Testament presents its thinking about God.  Son of David works.  Even Son of God, although that is skating near the edges of a Unity understanding of God (JUST God the Father).

But Jesus was God.  That is the gauntlet thrown down.  That is the dividing wall between Christianity and what came before.  This is what we believe the Old Testament points toward but it is only here where it becomes such a bold statement of intent. 

The other gospels have their own introductions to set Jesus in context.  The most explicit introduction to set things up comes in Luke.  He is writing to someone named Theophilus to give them the rundown on this new thing that is happening.  Luke is Book 1, Acts is Book 2.  Matthew sets the context by laying down Jesus’ lineage, his genealogy back to Abraham.  Mark begins where the narrative portion of John begins, at the baptism of John. 

But John backs it up.  Takes his cue from Genesis.  In the beginning…  The first chapters of Genesis are often seen as a Divine Prologue, huge displays of God’s power, people lived for centuries, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, all coming off the Creation.  The human story begins with Abraham.  John sets up his Divine Prologue in 6 verses.  This is what we will find in his Gospel.  The human story begins with John the Baptist (ANOTHER John-and ANOTHER post).  Jesus was, is, and ever shall be God.

Peace,

Pastor Peter

Faith Is Not Enough: Sermon based on James 2: 14-26 July 30, 2023

             FAITH IS NOT ENOUGH.  How’s that for an opening?  You got faith?  Great, fine.  Remember those moments from the gospels where Jesus was confronting the demons?  When he tossed them out?  When Satan tempted him in the wilderness?  Guess what, they had faith too!  So what else you got?  There is some of the homespun theology we have come to know from James.  “Demons believes in Jesus, just like you!  What else you got?”

            The story seems to be that some people are claiming to be of exceptional faith while others are of exceptional works.  It could be people attempting to understand and interpret spiritual gifts, as Paul lays out in Romans 12: We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.  There is precedent to dividing up the work of the church according to the gifts of the Spirit.  But is that what is actually happening here?  Or is it spiritual laziness?

            The examples coming to the ears of James seem to be different.  As he illustrates, “if a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill”, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?  So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.  Maybe its an apocalyptic view.  Jesus is coming soon, so the end will come before we need to work out this faith of ours.  Or perhaps the idea is a good one, clothe naked and feed the hungry (Jesus likes these in Matthew 25), so ‘someone’ should do that?  But the people who have works as their spiritual gift, not simply faith.

            I have seen the T-shirt, “Sola Fide”, By Faith Alone.  Jesus has done all that we need to receive salvation and eternal life as Children of God.  There is nothing we need do, nothing we can do, to earn a place in heaven.  But does that mean we need do nothing?

            If there is a pendulum in our religion, it is pretty much all the way to one side with James.  Faith without works is dead.  Can’t get much more explicit than that.  So why is this even a thing today?  Because of the Reformation.  It was in that movement that the modern Protestant churches emerged, Presbyterian, Reformed, Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran.  Martin Luther was the big cheese to get the ball rolling.  Faith alone baby!  95 theses nailed to the church door in Wittenburg.  Call it a five hundred year old email blast. 

            By the time of Martin Luther, the Church and what it represented was inextricably bound up in the political, military, and economic lives of the nations of the Europe.  In an attempt to stop the wars between Christians in Europe, the Church leveraged its eternal authority to tap all that military energy and send the warriors of Europe to invade the lands of the Bible, promising full forgiveness and eternal life in heaven for their efforts.  Reigning monarchs and lords could be forced out or forced to back down because the Church had the power to declare their lands and all their people excommunicated from the faith.  It got to a point of economic privilege where someone could buy forgiveness, buy indulgences, to save their eternal souls.

            This was also a time when all people worked off the presupposition that the Christian Heaven and Hell were all there were after death. 

            In a time of reemerging literacy, the realities of the Bible were being rediscovered.  From what I was taught in Seminary, the reason Martin Luther became so convicted of the truth that our salvation comes by faith alone is because, as a monk, he was so concerned about the destiny of his own soul that he drove his confessor nuts.  The priest confessor assigned him Bible study to give himself some breathing space.  There Martin Luther found “faith alone”, sola fide.  So when James said that faith without works is dead, Luther had a very particular point of view as to what the ‘works’ of the faith were.  And he rebelled.

            Yes, that is the Reformation, several centuries old at this point.  And it is true that the church does not hold the absolute power it once did.  Nor does it demand or offer the kinds of works that Luther found so offensive to someone who claimed Jesus as Lord and Savior.  But the intermixing of religious, political, and economic authority and power did not disappear with the Reformation.  It was reformed, but power, once seized, is very hard to put down.

            If we are going to think about our faith in terms of political activities, what if we used the expression “moral agenda”.  What I mean by that is taking the morality of our faith and how we use that as a basis for a political agenda?  Take for example “blue laws”, laws that restrict commerce and shopping activities on Sundays.  Still exists in Bergen County, I believe.  That is a Sabbath application of Christian morality on a political agenda.  Churches open, businesses closed.  It has a tremendous appeal.  I don’t know how many times I, as a pastor, have wished the law was that churches were open and children’s sports activities on Sundays were closed. 

            But even the political right and the evangelical conservatives that are in concert with each other in American politics, their power is only a faint shadow of the power the church used to hold.  When the Church was a monolithic organization, it had a monolithic moral agenda to impose on the political will of a continent and beyond.  Now, denominations are divided, as are our moral agendas as well as our discussions of what is appropriate and inappropriate to thrust into the public sphere.  Our own denomination has a moral agenda, part shared in a “Take Action” notice I received this wee in regards to Defending Human Rights of Palestinian Children.  Please note, I am not questioning the validity of such agendas, only marking their reality.

            While our moral agendas may be widely differentiated from one another, the most politically active moral agendas gain traction in the age-old political tactic of creating the common enemy, “those” people for us to unite against.  “Those” women who dare to want control of their bodies.  “Those” people of the weird alphabet sexuality community who are not defined according to “man and wife”.   “Those” people who are not from this country but are sneaking in to steal our jobs.  “Those” people who speak weird.  “Those” people who look different.”  “Those” people that some moral agenda in the divisions of Christianity calls ‘sinful’.  Those people who are hurt by the Church and turn away in fear and disgust from what we know to be the place of our salvation.  Unfortunately, these are political tactics added on to our moral agendas.

            When taken out to its extreme, faith alone looks pretty good, doesn’t it?  The activities of the Church, or select pieces of that church, are hurting people.  How far backed into a corner do we feel?  How do we fight against something like that?  How do even begin to exercise our faith?  How are we even relevant?  Our dwindling numbers would seem to provide us with an answer we do not want to that question.

            This is where theological consideration is so very important.  What I mean is this is why it is SO important to think about our faith.  If a Church or a Christian is putting forward a moral agenda in the name of Jesus Christ, we, as Christians, should be in the best possible place to evaluate that agenda for 1. its accuracy in reflecting faith in and our understanding of Jesus Christ and 2. How pursuit of that moral agenda does indeed provide that in doing this work, our faith is, in fact, not dead.

            What we are looking for in thinking through and evaluating a moral agenda in light of our faith in Jesus Christ begins here.  How does what this person or organization is claiming in the name of Christ is the right work to do reflecting how Jesus died for my sins?  How does it reflect how, in Jesus’ resurrection, I have received the gift of eternal life?  Another way to look at it, how does this moral agenda work in light of how Jesus worked out loving his neighbor as himself?  Jesus’ moral agenda was that he loved us so much that he died for us.

            There are times I wished we lived in a world where we could separate our faith entirely from politics.  Where our moral agenda and our political agenda as a nation did not intersect.  That may be a nice abstract, but it is not reality.  While we no longer live in a world where the power of the state is used to induce belief in Jesus, the name of Jesus is still used extensively to justify all kinds of moral agendas.  All kinds of work is claimed to effectively demonstrate our faith in our Savior.  And all too often, for some Christians to disagree with the moral agenda of another group of Christians, we are to be condemned as unsaved, demonic, or worse.

            So what are we to do?

            If it is a moral agenda that we are putting forward to answer the call that ‘faith without works is dead’, James gives us some important examples to use as we think through what it means to live into our faith by our works.

            His opening example is particularly clear.  Tell those who are naked and hungry to “go in peace and be satisfied” without lifting a finger to help them get there?  That is all talk and no action.  That is all “faith”, and I put faith into quotation marks here, and no work being done.  So that is where our work can begin.  Making sure everyone has enough to eat and drink, has enough to wear, has basic safety and sanitation, that the resources of our faith are used to bring everyone to an equitable, dignified level of existence?

            Despite what we are going to our planet, we have the resources to make that work.  The will, that’s another story.

            Or we use the examples that James cites from the Old Testament.  He cites Abraham, and how could we not?  The Father of Judaism and Christianity and Islam?  “Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?”  I have to say that being a father, the story of Abraham and Isaac is one of the tough ones for me.  How could Abraham do that?  How could God demand that?  How did Isaac stay faithful to a God who demanded that?  But those are my issues, that is where my faith continues to grow. 

            Abraham did what God commanded him to.  And God saw to it that the gruesome potential of what God asked for did not happen.  God provided a sacrifice in place of the sacrifice of Isaac.  Like Jesus is the sacrifice in place of our dying for our sins.  James says, “You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works.”  He goes on to call Abraham a friend of God, that he is justified by works and not faith alone.

            And the other example?  A prostitute.  A person of a questionable moral character.  Rahab lied to her own people to protect the spies sent out by Joshua in anticipation of the Lord’s granting them the Promised Land by conquest.  She became a part of the nation of Israel.  Heck, she is one of four women referenced in the gospel’s genealogy of Jesus.  Her works justified her faith.  She was ‘bearing false witness’ in the words of the Ten Commandments, but she was working out her faith in protecting God’s people.

            When I say it out loud, “faith without a moral agenda”, it sounds political in its intent, almost pompous in my own ears.  But James is addressing a powerful truth of our faith.  What is our faith without works?  What is it to believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior without that causing some kind of change in our lives?  It is a faith that is dead.  It ties into the piece about the human tongue that James spoke of a couple of weeks ago.  We can say whatever we want to convince people to listen to us.  Politicians wave around Bibles.  Christian leaders who have railed against sin, only to be caught in it themselves, they cry and confess and promise never to do it again.

            What our faith will truly be is how it works out in our lives.  It will be how we express the love of God in Jesus Christ for our neighbor.  In my theological considerations, in how I think about my faith, I do not believe it is in our best interest to press a moral agenda into the world of politics.  I do not believe there ought to be a “Christian” voting guide.  And that is because power is involved and power is temptation and corruption and takes us down dark, sinful roads. 

            For me, the questions I have for us to consider in the works of our faith concern how we discern the neighbors we have in need?  Where do we make a difference in this moment, even on this block, in this town?  Where do we see people working out their faith in our very midst, living the law of loving neighbor, but as something that a good person does, something disconnected from the faith in Jesus Christ that brings goodness back into who we are? 

            I think it would be fair to think that James would, in his homespun theology, talk about the truth of the faith in the lives of people being better witnessed in what they do, in their work, than in what they say.  The demons believe, and they shudder.  What then do they do?  They work to undermine the love of God for humanity.  We believe, and what?  Receive the gift of a new life in Jesus Christ, where sin is forgiven and everything is made new.  How could we, if we are going to live into that new life, do anything less than work for the world to be made new?  One neighbor at a time maybe, but they will know our faith by the works we do.  Amen.

Even the Demons Have Faith and Shudder (Well, They Believe...)

That’s the image that stuck with me this week.  James said “faith without works is dead”.  That was one thing.  But the apparent demonstration of faith without works is in citing demons?  I mean, they are certainly creatures of belief.  Seems that every time Jesus tossed one out of a human in the gospels, they were fearful for their own survival.  They were the ones who identified Jesus for who he really was.  And Jesus kept shushing them.

I am not a great fan of the either/or.  What I mean by that is labeling things as black or white, with no gray between.  At first glance, this seems to be a clear dichotomy, faith with or without works.  Demons believe (have faith-although for me, having faith has a positive connotation), but are they without works?  But demons are not demonstrated to be passive agents.  They are active agents of evil.  They have faith, believe in Jesus-or the power of Jesus-but they work actively against that faith (by definition, they are demons).  So there is the either/or, working for or against the Lord?

Demons have faith and shudder, they are afraid, as well they should be.  So their belief provokes a work ethic of attack and assault against what God, through Jesus, is seeking to bring to the world?  But this is not the thesis James is presenting.  James is telling us ‘faith without works is dead’.  The belief of demons provokes evil workings. 

It is with humans, with our faith, if it does not provoke works, then that faith is dead.  The presupposition seems to be that faith provokes action.  If not, it is dead.  It is passive.  Maybe a means of expressing that is “Jesus is my Lord and Savior, He died on the cross for me, rose again from Calvary, welcomes me to the joy of forgiveness and eternal life, and it means nothing to me-I just do what I want.”

A dead faith is an unexpressed faith.  An unlived faith.  A faith that either doesn’t care or doesn’t know what love is (“I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner just started in my head).  Accept demons as Scriptural literal truth or Scriptural literary truth, the actual experience behind them is absolute.  It is the active work of sin and evil in creation.  There is no ‘passive’ sin in the world, it is destructive by nature.

To have faith, to declare faith, to have a living faith, demands a response.  It demands that the love Jesus shows us is shown through us to the world in need.  Demons have faith and shudder-their destruction is nigh.  We have faith and we need to sing out in joy.  Act out in joy.  If we really know that Jesus has done something wonderful for us and in us, how can we possibly do anything different?

Peace,
Pastor Peter

The Moral Agenda: We All Got One

In an effort to quantify Christian belief and practice into something that finds play in the language of the political sphere of life, I find myself using the expression of a “moral agenda”.  What I mean by that is the drawing out of one’s faith into a ‘political platform’ of proposed laws, practices, and other impositions on life that come from the government. 

Some historic examples of the ‘moral agenda’ of the church include the call to Crusade from the papal authorities in the medieval period.  For the promise of forgiveness of sins and the promise of heaven, soldiers from kings on down were encouraged to go East to 'liberate the Holy Land’ from the Muslims.  God's forgiveness as a medium of exchange for political or economic ends came to a head at the moment of the Reformation over the purchases of indulgences.

When tax money is used to pay the salary of clergy, we have another application of the “moral agenda”.  Such things occurred in North America as well as England and elsewhere. 

Blue laws, where businesses are not permitted to open on Sundays because that is the day to go to church is another plank in a “moral agenda”.  A town that does not permit the sale of alcohol within its borders is another. 

We may be more familiar with the calls of Christian Nationalism that are going on here and in other countries.  Such movements often have an extremely thorough ‘moral agenda’ that is foundational to their movement.  Issues like abortion, sexual and gender identity, who gets to be married, and so on are often at the center of such agendas.

And explicitly Christian moral agendas can be at odds with one another.  Take the issue of abortion.  Certain Christians feel that a woman should lose control over her body at the moment of conception.  Other Christians feel that women should have complete autonomy over their bodies at all times.  Both come to these conclusions from their understanding of God's Word.  One group of Christians can then demonize another group for having the wrong moral agenda. 

I believe the blessing of our country is that it is deliberately founded as a secular nation.  That people of faith are free to practice their religions and to be informed by their beliefs in making moral and political choices.  The moral agenda is present, but implicit rather than explicit.  I am very much against any idea of this being a “Christian” nation.  Christian history of political authority runs red with blood.  And if we believe God is all-powerful, what Jesus-motivated reason could we have for wanting political authority?  Like God needs our help.  We would probably do better to obey God instead of always trying to help God along.

James said that our faith without works is dead.  I agree with that statement (which is probably good as I believe the Bible is God’s Word).  But how we do faithful work is something good Christians need to think about (to build a theology about).  Political power and its pursuit in the name of doing the work of faith is a place where I believe we need to tread very lightly.  Power and temptation and corruption are proven bed fellows across the world and throughout history.

Thinking in terms of a moral agenda, what I, as a person of faith, want to see put into political and legislative practice, is an important way for us to be clear in our faith and how we wish to see it work.  It is a good way for us to keep an eye on things when they are working badly or turned to sin. 

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Faith Versus Works: A Historic Battle

So, we were gone for a week or so on vacation, but we are back and sharing once more.

It is the historic theological battle of the Reformation, about how they were thinking about their faith in God Almighty.  Martin Luther, the first and perhaps best known reformer, rediscovered the central truth of the New Testament of “sola fide”, faith alone.  It is only by faith in Christ that salvation can occur.  What that means is that Jesus does everything on our behalf.  His death on the cross, his resurrection on Easter morning, that is sufficient to our salvation. 

The importance of this rediscovery is when we set it against the political reality of the day.  The Roman Catholic church, well, the Church, was universal across Western Europe.  Its power was unparalleled in human history.  So politics, economics, military events and preparations, all of these mixed into the faith structures the church governed. 

It had also grown far from the original biblical message.  There was a point where the rich could purchase ‘indulgences’, essentially pay to have their sins forgiven.  In our day and age, that may sound underwhelming.  But imagine a time where an essential part of the political and religious landscape is the ongoing worry of whether our souls would end up in heaven or hell?  That part of the work of the divinely appointed monarch was to work for the salvation of their subjects?

Among all the pieces of the Bible that Martin Luther was reading and studying were the words we have from James, “faith without works is dead”.  This, in a time where works all but bypassed any faith as a portion of the Christian experience.  It is said that he would have removed James from the New Testament if that were up to him.

It is virtually impossible to understand the political power of the Church at the time of Martin Luther.  Yes, the Roman Catholic Church still exists around the world.  It is still the largest denomination of Christianity, but to consider that it had the power to call for war?  That it had the power to deprive kings of their kingdoms through excommunication?  That the authority of the church was sufficient to declare an entire nation going to hell as a political means of influence to bend a king to its will?

The declarations of America as a Christian nation by certain lines of theological thought are tame in comparison.  But the results are not so different.  Whenever the church aspires to political and economic authority in the world, it is attached to a moral agenda that the legal authority is pressed into service to enforce.  It takes a Reformation to push back against such power-grabbing.

Today’s situation is different however.  Yes, there is a push for a certain moral framework to be the law of the land.  But it is no longer a monolithic agenda.  The church is diverse, blessedly so.  There is a wide swath of how people think through what it means to act as a Christian.  To what our ‘moral agenda’ encompasses.  To how we act on our moral impulses. 

For me, the guiding principle is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And the way we are called to love ourselves is how God loves us.  And God so loved the world that God gave us Jesus to die on our behalf.  That is ‘sola fide’, by faith alone.  God’s faithfulness is sufficient.  The counterbalance of James is then not to sit back on our laurels and wait for salvation.  It is the call to live out love in a world in need.  Yes, God did everything we need to be saved from our sins.  And we, in turn, are called to do everything we can to demonstrate this love to a world in need.  We are all Children of God.  We are all loved.  We have realized that love in our lives.  Our call is to see that love realized in the lives of all.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Monday Morning: Day Late, Dollar Short

Homespun theology from James continues this week.  How do we tackle the question of “class favoritism” in church?  “Class”?  Do I mean like my favorite grade in school?  Or is this some odd application of Marxist thought about class warfare?  Or is it simpler than that? 

We are starting up a new worship in a community, inviting people in to come join us, and we show favoritism to the more obviously well-to-do, because they are the better donors, the more influential, the better heeled in the community?

This is an uncomfortable topic.  Do churches really judge people based on their outward appearance?  Well, James certainly believes that we do.  And he is not shy about speaking up on the subject, “Do you, with your acts of favoritism, really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”  Whoa, James is questioning the faith of someone who makes these kinds of judgments about people? 

Seriously, the poor, smelly person that I would prefer to be upwind from, over and against the well dressed, socially appropriate individual?  James is actually saying that the validity of our faith is on the line based on how we treat people differently?  Dirty clothes versus fine clothes?  What about their language?  What if they are ‘foreign’?  Immigrant?  Addict?  What about the color of their skin?  Their accent? 

Yah, so James is pretty direct in his words.  The law: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Then, verse 9: ‘⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.’  And if you break one piece of the law, you break the whole thing.  In the eyes of God, this puts the person who shows partiality on par with adulterers and murders.

Homespun theology, straightforward thinking about God.  It also carries with it an uncomfortable directness.  Does James really say all that?  The passage is below, James 2: 1-13:

“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? ²For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” ⁴have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? ⁶But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? ⁷Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

⁸You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”

To sound colloquial in a way my parents did, “How about them apples?”

Peace

Pastor Peter

Ten and Ten...Again

So who are we?  We are the Regulars, the ten (plus) who worship regularly on the Lord’s Day.  Who are we?  We are the extended community of family and friends who call the church home.  For reasons of health, of work, of timing, not everyone is able to come out on Sunday mornings.  During Covid, we added a virtual presence to keep people with us.  Who are we?  We are the people who have contact and connection but have slipped away.  Ten and ten is as much an invitation to return to the worship and work of the church as anything else.  Who are we?  We are a neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.  By God’s grace we exist, in the freedom of the Holy Spirit we worship, by the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ we have new life, eternally in the life to come, renewed by grace in the life right now. 

So, week 1 of checking in on the Ten and Ten challenge, ten members of our church family who are not among the ‘regulars’ and the $10K for our roof challenge.  The cliched response might be a graphic of the old Uncle Sam Recruiting Posters:  We Need You For…  Funny how today, a graphic might be a meme instead.

The First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy has a ‘founded’ history of two hundred and twenty years.  And I say founded history, because its roots in the community go back even further.  The ‘official’ founding was in 1802, but there was a Presbyterian Meeting House in the City before that dates to the Revolution and even earlier. 

What makes me really proud of that earliest history is our place in the Loyalist City of Perth Amboy during the Revolution, with the Royal Governor’s Mansion and Ben Franklin’s son serving as the king’s stooge…er…governor until his arrest. We Presbyterians served on the side of freedom. Not sure exactly what we did, but it was so irritating to the British that they turned our Meeting House into a stable. Holiest horses of the Revolution says I! Makes me want to boast to all the other pastors out there.

Taking us even earlier, if you go down to the International Park on the corner of High Street and Sadowski Parkway, you will find a quote pointing back to the Presbyterian minister and his flock who came ashore here in 1683.  We have been here since the very beginning.  Now, one story I was told is that they were aiming for New York but missed, well, things happen when Jesus takes the wheel. And Jesus brought Presbyterians to Perth Amboy.

Something that really blew my socks off about the history of our church was the final chapter of the Sanctuary do-over in 1902.  In 1802, a white clapboard church was erected on the site of the present church.  That architecture can be seen ALL over the state and the eastern seaboard.  But, in 1902, the sanctuary was replaced with our present sanctuary. I never gave it much thought, but I assumed the final chapter of the first sanctuary was demolition and removal. My socks were blown off when I found out it was still around.

They moved it several blocks up Market Street and re-purposed it as a residence, the function it still serves today.  In those days, things were not just thrown away, but reused, renewed, and recycled.  How is that for a life lesson for today? This is OUR church.

So ten people of our church community to come join us this summer?  Renew old acquaintances, enjoy the fans, worship the Lord in the post-Covid environment?  What’s the church worth to us?  A new roof?  How much else?  Ten and ten, reuse, renew, rejoice?

Peace,

Pastor Peter

Homespun Theology: Living the Life of Faith

Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  So says James in Chapter 1, vss. 23-24.  You don’t just show up and see what’s going on.  The Christian faith is about doing things in a new way.

There is an expression in the Reformed tradition of the church, “Sola Fide”, which means ‘faith alone’.  The fuller expression is “justificatio sola fide”, justification by faith alone.  What that means is that salvation in Jesus comes through faith alone.  There is nothing that we, as humans, need to do-nothing we can do-to earn a place in God’s favor. 

This is important because at the time of its formulation, at the Reformation, there was an ‘abuse of privilege’ that the church engaged in when it came to belief in Jesus and salvation for the soul.  The Crusades, generations of invasions of the Holy Land by the Western church, gained traction among the royalty, nobility, and every layer of society because of the bargain made by the church.  Go on Crusade and have your sins forgiven and your salvation assured.  In mass violence.  Past sins, sins while there, future sins. 

This abuse of privilege only grew.  Once forgiveness became a commodity, to be bought and sold, taking it off the market required remaking the marketplace.  When I was taught about the Reformation, I was taught about ‘indulgences’, things the rich could buy that were essentially “get out of hell free” cards.  So, you could do whatever you wanted and buy forgiveness afterward.  If you could afford it. 

When the pendulum swung away from that, it swung away powerfully.  It is not about what we humans can do, it is about what God has done for us.  We are sinners and there is nothing we can do, on our own, to earn salvation.  But God’s got us covered.  In Jesus Christ, we have the free gift of salvation through His death and resurrection.  We must have faith, we must believe.  There is nothing we can do.

But then the pendulum swings in the other direction.  If there is nothing we need do, faith is something where we need do nothing.  We do not have the motivation of heaven or hell behind our actions.  Just mouth the words.  Sure, there is talk about ‘right belief’ and ‘not fooling the Holy Spirit’, but fooling our fellow human beings?  Easy enough. 

So James’ homespun theology.  Get rid of moral filth.  Do what the word says, do not just listen.  If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.  You believe what Jesus tells you and you do what Jesus tells you.  Those go hand in hand.  Simply put, belief in Jesus is life changing. 

It is changing in the life to come, as we receive the gift of salvation, as we are justified for the sins we have committed.  But it is also changing in the life right now.  We live differently.  We work, in Christ, to change our behaviors to reflect the law of love, loving God and loving neighbor. 

How do they, faith and works, connect to each other?  How do they, belief and actions, feed one another?  That is good stuff too, deepens our faith in heart and mind.  But that comes next.  It follows living our faith by faith and action, hearing and doing, assurance of the new life to come and renewal of the life right now.  Thus we are taught by our Savior.

Peace,

Pastor Peter

Celebrating America

 We have two things to celebrate tomorrow.  The first is our nation.  July 4, 1776 was the beginning of the Great Experiment.  A nation without a king.  Colonies on their own.  A nation founded on freedom. 

The second thing to celebrate is that we are not done yet.  Freedom is not here yet for everyone equally.  But in comparison to where we were a century ago?  Two centuries ago?  1923?  1823?  Very different times.  But the steps we have taken are monumental.  They ought to give us courage for the steps we have yet to take.

For me, as a pastor, the greatest thing about this nation is that we have the free exercise of our religion here.  We broke away from England, where the monarch is the head of the church.  We broke away from a continent that was wracked with religious wars-in Jesus Name, with deep pain I offer Amen.  We separated church and state in this country. 

I do not want to live in a Christian nation.  How is that for controversy?  I don’t want to live in a Christian nation because there is NO human being or assembly of human beings who can truly lead us as Jesus will someday.  Sin will always get in the way.  Greed will always get in the way.  There will always be “hearers” of the word who will then use it to manipulate people of faith to their own ends.  So it has been since the founding of the church.  Paul railed against people who preached for their own ends and not that of Jesus.  It was all about their own power, not the loving power of our God.

I want to live in a nation where I can freely practice my religion.  When it comes to sharing the truth of my faith with others, guess what?  Jesus will do the heavy lifting to change hearts and minds.  I want to be able to love God and love my neighbor and, by the grace of God, gather with like-minded and like-hearted folks who want to do God’s word as well.

We have that gift in the United States of America.  We have come a long way to demonstrating what freedom is to the world.  We are not done yet, not by a long shot, but I pray God’s blessings to carry us on our way.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Ten and Ten

Today is a two-part appeal of faith to the community of the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy.  The first is an appeal of attendance.  There are many in our church family.  I am requesting and praying in faith that we see ten of our community return to worship with us.  Do I mean every Sunday?  Well, a pastor can dream.  No, a return to church for more than one Sunday over the next couple of months.

Well, what if we have kids?  Two things.  The first will be a children’s sermon during worship.  The second will be a commitment to some time after church with family and pastor for faith based, kid-friendly activities (the only reservations being on a couple of holiday Sundays).  What is that going to look like?  It is going to look like something customized to the kids coming with their family.

Do the kids count toward the ten?  Absolutely.  But I would like to have way more than ten.

Who will you find when you come to worship?  The Present Ten.  We have a cadre of the faithful who are there, pardon the pun, faithfully.  Come and join us.  

Will attendees get a sticker or something?  I do not know.  That is not the kind of thing God has gifted me to excel at.  But if there is someone reading this who is so inspired, absolutely. Please reach out to me so we can coordinate this.

Ten and ten.  The second ten is Ten Thousand.  $10,000.  We have roof repairs to get done that will bring our church back into the usual market for insurance instead of the excess and surplus market, where we currently lie.  It will mean a savings of that much or more to the insurance bill of the church.  But we do not have that money all up front. 

So this is an appeal to fix the roof.  $10,000 is a guesstimate based on past work.  But inflation is killing us, so generosity is our desire.  This is your church, this is our church.  Please contact me, Pastor Peter, if you have any questions.  The church does not exist in a vacuum.  The building is a gorgeous house for the people who are the reality of our church and congregation.  We need your support to make it good, better, and best.

Ten and ten.

According to our church’s constitution, members of a church are marked by those who participate in the work and worship of the place.  I am asking for you to join us in this endeavor.  This is the day, this is the house that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Peace,
Pastor Peter

Homespun Theology: The Letter of James

“Count it all joy that you meet various trials…”  So James begins the body of his letter.  His is one of the Pastoral Letters, to be distinguished from the Pauline Letters. The first difference is that it is not by Paul, which the Pauline Letters are.  The second is that it is not as specific as the letters of Paul.  Paul’s letters are to places and people, the churches in Rome, Corinth, and so on or to Timothy or Titus.  James addresses his letter “To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion…”

What that means is the twelve tribes of the Jews who are scattered across the Roman Empire and beyond.  We can get a sense of the Dispersion from the story of Pentecost in Acts 2. If we take the list of places the Jews are said to have from to the city of Jerusalem and plot them on a map, we will see the dispersal both in and outside of the Roman empire. 

Our focus in July is on the ‘homespun’ theology of James.  ‘Homespun’ has two meanings.  The first, more literal, meaning is “course, handwoven cloth”, like something "pioneer" women would create to clothe their families.  But it also means “simple and unsophisticated”.  This can be used negatively, essentially calling someone a simpleton for what they say.  But “simple and unsophisticated” can also be a counter to complex and excessive.  Put it together with “theology”, whose working definition in this blog is “thinking about God” and what we have in James is “simple and unsophisticated thinking about God.”

So why is it a good thing, something to be counted for joy, when I have met various trials? 

First, we need to recognize that, in the New Testament, there are trials and there are trials.  On the one hand, there are the trials that Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 11 that lead him to boast in the faith:

 “Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.  Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned.  Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.”

That is not what James is speaking of, not the “Christ-preaching” trials of potential death that was the lot of the apostles.  Rather, James says “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all generously and without reproaching, and it will be given.”  These are not the trials of people persecuted for the faith, these are trials of people trying to live the faith in a world of sin. 

The reality James is speaking of is our world of faith where we are constantly barraged by the trials and temptations of sin.  There is what love calls for and there is what feels good here and now.  Why is there joy in these trials?  Because in these trials, the power of God has the opportunity to act in our lives.  We have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Where do we experience the reality of this new faith?  In the power of our Savior to overcome the trials of the world.  In the practical realities of overcoming sin with good.  Of celebrating that there is an enemy, a trial of heart and attitude, that has been overcome by our Lord Jesus. 

The joy is not the trial, the joy is the trial overcome.  The joy is the power of Christ coming out in our lives.  The joy is in the victory of God’s love.  The joy is that new life has come, and we are actually seeing it lived out now.  Amen and hallelujah.

Peace,

Pastor Peter