Month: June 2024

Dueling Psalms, 130-19

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

Note: As I said in my “Breaking Silence” post yesterday I decided to go to the lectionary to look for some inspiration about the depressing state the world is in right now, and as usual the Word is there if we choose to look. One of the texts for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary is Psalm 130, a never-failing, classic writing on coping with difficult situations. I found this post on that Psalm from 2017 which still seems quite relevant, and so I share it first before turning to another great text from Mark 5, the healing of Jairus’ daughter, which is the Gospel lesson in this Sunday’s lectionary.

No, that 130-19 is not a lopsided NBA finals basketball score! It’s the score of my attitude adjustment a few days ago when I awoke in one of those woe-is-me moods and thought of the lament known as De Profundis in Psalm 130. That’s Latin for “O crap I have to face another day of aches and pains and bad news!”

My arthritis was nagging at me, my chronic back trouble was moving up the pain scale, and the news was full of more terrorist attacks and hate crimes. Reading the newspaper over my morning coffee used to be one of my favorite times of the day. I still do it out of a sense of duty to be an informed citizen, but it has become an increasingly depressing task.

Psalm 130 begins “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!” As tensions between our nation and others mount, as our president foolishly believes his own nationalistic rhetoric that we can shrug off our responsibility for climate change and go it alone, as fears of terror attacks increase, and partisan politics paralyze any attempt to address critical domestic and international issues responsibly, I often wonder if God or anyone is listening to the voice of my supplications.

Later that same morning I went out to work in our lawn and gardens still down in the depths. We are blessed to live on a beautiful property decorated with my wife’s gardening handiwork, a pond, trees and flowers. But the beauty requires hard work, especially this time of year when the grass and the weeds are being very fruitful and multiplying. It’s the work that prompts me at times to say that “yard work” is made up of two four-letter words.

But the birds were in good humor that morning and serenaded me as I went forth to mow the lawn. And then I looked up at the blue sky dotted with huge languishing cotton ball clouds pictured above, a sight not seen nearly often enough in central Ohio, and my heart shifted gears from Psalm 130 to 19: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4).

In basketball 19 doesn’t beat 130, but in the game of faithful living it does. God’s presence is all around us no matter how far down in the depths we are feeling. We just have to look for it with all our senses. No, the skies are not always breathtakingly beautiful, but the loving God of all creation is always surrounding us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Even the author of De Profundis knew that while in the depths, and Psalm 130 ends with this statement of faith and hope: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.”

It is necessary to cry out for help, to admit our helplessness to cope with the slings and arrows of life. It is also necessary to wait patiently and hopefully because the arc of moral justice bends ever so slowly. But we are also called to take action to collaborate in our own healing, and that’s exactly what Jairus and the woman with the 12-year flow of blood do in the Gospel lesson for this week.

Their story in Mark 5:21-43 describes two people in the depths of despair. Jairus, a powerful leader of the synagogue is helpless to save his gravely ill daughter and seeks Jesus out and humbles himself by kneeling at Jesus’ feet, begging for healing for his little girl. But as often happens in ministry, Jesus is interrupted right in the middle of this crisis by a person from the other end of the socio-economic spectrum.

A woman who is unclean because she has had a flow of blood for 12 years is also desperate. So much so that she risks coming out in public seeking healing because a multitude of doctors have only made her worse. She humbles herself in a different way, only wanting to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment; and immediately she feels her body healed.

Jesus, of course, feels power go out from him and seeks the woman out – not to scold or condemn her, but to praise her for her faith which has healed her.

But alas, news comes that Jairus’ daughter has died while Jesus was busy healing the woman. When Jesus assures Jairus that his daughter is not really dead the crowd laughs at him. That happens to people who dare to believe in God’s power in spite of evidence that evil and suffering have prevailed.

And Jesus goes to Jairus’ home, tells the little girl to get up, and when she does he instructs those there to give the girl something to eat. Just another day’s work for Jesus because he believes and heals those who dare to believe with him and through him.

Like Jairus and the woman we often have much suffering and fear we need to be healed of. These texts make it clear the formula for healing is to admit the mess we’re in, cry out for help, wait patiently for deliverance, and when Jesus’ is in the neighborhood (which is always) take action to find him so faith can make us whole too.

Breaking Silence

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, Lectionary Texts

For multiple reasons I have been AWOL when it comes to new posts on here in the last few months. The reasons for that are complicated: multiple health issues which have caused a loss of energy to do anything that is not absolutely necessary to just maintain our home; normal slowing down of being 77.5 years old; a sense of hopelessness and depression over those personal losses; a painful family conflict that has been going on for months; and finally just being overwhelmed by the scope of the socio-political issues hanging over everything else.

As one who preached regularly from 1969-2018, a time which included some pretty trying days – civil rights, Aids and LGBT persecution, Viet Nam War protests, Watergate, and the arms race of the Reagan years, Iran Contra, 911, U. S. Attacks on Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Clinton impeachment trial, the epidemic of mass shootings in schools and other public places, and the divisiveness of the Trump brand of politics – I find myself reflecting on how I preached the Gospel in a relevant and authentic way that addressed current social realities that we all have to navigate.

That task was informed and made more urgent by my PhD research on narrative rhetoric and moral and faith development, as well as 20 years of teaching preaching classes to seminary students as a part-time Adjunct Professor. The basic ingredient of the way I was taught to preach and how I taught is grounding sermons on biblical texts, normally by choosing a text from the four texts for each Sunday listed in The Revised Common Lectionary. That lectionary is a three year cycle of texts chosen to correspond with the liturgical seasons of the church year. My reflection on my current silence also reminded me that I started this blog in 2011 to offer reflections on lectionary texts for the weeks coming up in the church calendar. So, as often happens, I am circling back to my roots and will see what wisdom for our current season of life might emerge from studying the lectionary texts for the next week or two.

The timing seems right to do this as I am recovering from some surgery and have extra time to write. Stay tuned.

Pastoral Prayer, June 9, 2024

by Steve Harsh, posted in prayer

O Holy God, our Emmanuel.  Here we are in June, about as far from Christmas as we can get; so it seems a good time to remind ourselves that you sent Jesus to us, not just at Christmas, but forever as Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” Sometimes when we need you most, God, we forget you are with us always – on the mountaintops and in the valley of the shadow, when the pain is so bad we don’t think we can stand it anymore, there you are at our bedside.

When we are afraid the storms of life are going to drown us, there you are napping in the back of the boat waking to tell us “Peace, be still; I’ve got this.”  When our legs are so tired we can’t go another step, you carry us.  When it feels like the world is going to hell in a handbasket, you’re right there in the basket with us.

The Psalmist says there is no place in all creation we can flee from your presence.  You’re up there with the astronauts in the Space Station showing off your breathtaking creation.  And if we visit Mars or other planets, you’ll be waiting there for us, too. Even when things are going great and we’re tempted to think we don’t need you, you wait patiently in the wings like a mother hen ready to take care of her chicks.

Forgive us, Holy One, when we forget you are our constant companion and friend.  Life is hard at times.  That’s why we need times of worship and prayer to feel the peace that surpasses anything else life can offer.  How can we thank you, Lord?  We certainly don’t deserve your unconditional love and grace!  We just pray that you will speak to each one of us right now and assure us that whatever cares or concerns are on our hearts just now we do not have to deal with them alone. 

And so we praise you for your presence.  We ask that you show us how to be that same presence with others.    And we thank you most for sending the one called Emmanuel to show us how to live and how to conquer even death itself.  And so we pray together the prayer he taught us to pray. 

O Holy God, our Emmanuel.  Here we are in June, about as far from Christmas as we can get; so it seems a good time to remind ourselves that you sent Jesus to us, not just at Christmas, but forever as Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” Sometimes when we need you most, God, we forget you are with us always – on the mountaintops and in the valley of the shadow, when the pain is so bad we don’t think we can stand it anymore, there you are at our bedside.

When we are afraid the storms of life are going to drown us, there you are napping in the back of the boat waking to tell us “Peace, be still; I’ve got this.”  When our legs are so tired we can’t go another step, you carry us.  When it feels like the world is going to hell in a handbasket, you’re right there in the basket with us.

The Psalmist says there is no place in all creation we can flee from your presence.  You’re up there with the astronauts in the Space Station showing off your breathtaking creation.  And if we visit Mars or other planets, you’ll be waiting there for us, too. Even when things are going great and we’re tempted to think we don’t need you, you wait patiently in the wings like a mother hen ready to take care of her chicks.

Forgive us, Holy One, when we forget you are our constant companion and friend.  Life is hard at times.  That’s why we need times of worship and prayer to feel the peace that surpasses anything else life can offer.  How can we thank you, Lord?  We certainly don’t deserve your unconditional love and grace!  We just pray that you will speak to each one of us right now and assure us that whatever cares or concerns are on our hearts just now we do not have to deal with them alone. 

And so we praise you for your presence.  We ask that you show us how to be that same presence with others.    And we thank you most for sending the one called Emmanuel to show us how to live and how to conquer even death itself.  And so we pray together the prayer he taught us to pray. 

Northwest United Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio