Month: March 2024

Into Your Hands

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Lenten devotion, spiritual discipline

I am one of the narrators for our church’s Good Friday cantata, “The Shadow of the Cross.” At the conclusion of the cantata each narrator will share one of Jesus’ last words from the cross. My line is “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” This opportunity has forced me to think about how to interpret those words.

Were they uttered in exasperation? “I give up God. You’ll have to take it from here!” Or maybe just a plea for help? Another way of expressing a feeling of abandonment or defeat, even anger? Luke 23:46, the only Gospel that contains this particular phrase, prefaces the words with “Jesus cried out with a loud voice,” which might support that kind of interpretation.

But Psalm 31:5, a source Jesus could have drawn upon, says, “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” That context seems to support what feels right to me. I believe this phrase expresses a surrendering and acceptance of death in all its forms to a mysterious power that makes all things new. They are uttered in the sure and certain belief in resurrection.

For Luke that is all there is to say, and he adds: “Having said this, he breathed his last.” For Luke this is the last of Jesus’ last words. That’s a great exit line, but how do average folks like us truly believe and trust that mystery? As one feeling much too close to the daunting age of 80 that question has taken on more and more significance for me.

Delivering these important words from the cross reminds me of the characters in Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel, “The Greek Passion,” where people in a Greek village take on the various roles in the story of Christ’s passion and so identify with their characters that they become them. The man portraying Judas is driven out of town for his betrayal of Jesus, and the man portraying Jesus, offers himself as a sacrificial lamb, confessing to a murder he didn’t commit to save others from being executed.

Obviously my one liner is not nearly as intense, but it feels like it can still be powerful and transforming for me and maybe others if the Holy Spirit works through me. It is always a heavy responsibility to speak hope into darkness, and God knows things are plenty dark just now, even days before the solar eclipse passes through our state. 

Help me Holy One.  I believe; help my unbelief.

Lent/Holy Week Video: Anointed

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Lenten devotion, Uncategorized

Our church, Northwest UMC in Columbus, Ohio, is doing a series of worship services and sermons on the events in Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem. For each Sunday in Lent our talented music director, Brian Luke, has recorded a short video of what each event might look like through the eyes of a contemporary character in the story.

For the fourth Sunday in Lent the text was the anointing of Jesus at Bethany in the Gospel according to Matthew. I was asked to portray a witness to the anointing who is being questioned by the authorities about what had transpired. A version of this event appears in all four Gospels, and here is Matthew’s account.

“Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, “Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” Matthew 26:6-13 (NRSV)

The link below will take you to the video:

drive.google.com/file/d/1ayIosZ7iMVaeXwPipeyKjrybF1e4aa87/view

Baring All Before God

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith Development, Lenten devotion

Kate Bowler’s Lenten meditation for today triggered a memory for me from nearly 70 years ago.  In her book, “Have a Beautiful Terrible Day,” Kate’s meditation for Monday of Lent Week Four is titled “letting yourself be known.”  She paints a wonderful contrast between fearing a God who judges our faults and one who knows all about us and loves us as we are.

She closes with this reflection prompt:  “We can have a very Elf on the Shelf view of God at times.  THERE IS GOD WATCHING YOU. Shudder.  What image of God seeing you and caring about you could you find comforting?”

A long-forgotten memory immediately popped into my head as soon as I read those words.  When I was young my maternal grandparents lived on a farm that had no indoor plumbing.  When I visited them I thought nothing of using their two-holer outhouse.  It was just the way they lived.  

I especially enjoyed visiting there because the 7th of my grandparents’ children, Gary, aka Butch, was only 4 years older than I. He was more like a cousin than an uncle to me and just enough older that I admired his greater knowledge of worldly things. Farm kids have a much earlier and healthier grasp of how life and death work than we city slickers did.

So here’s my memory.  One day uncle Butch and I were using the outhouse.  I’m guessing I was 9 or 10 and he was 13 or 14 at the time.  We were at that curious age where sex was often a topic of conversation.  I don’t remember any details of our conversation, much of which I later learned was misinformed.  But I have a vivid memory that for some reason we decided to take off all our clothes and run around the back yard naked.

Had we done that at my house I think my parents would have had a heart attack.  But my dear grandmother who had raised five boys and two girls simply watched us from the kitchen window and laughed.  

Isn’t that a great image of a God from whom nothing is hidden, who sees us in all our human frailty and fallibility and laughs