Category: Christian Discipleship

The Trump-Musk Coup: A Call to Action for Democracy

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Government Reform

“I don’t ever want to lose sight of how short my time is here. I don’t ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance at least within the lifespan of the resistors, almost always fails…” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy”)

Spoiler alert: this post may seem unfocused and fragmented because by design the Trump-Musk coup is throwing so much chaos at us all at once that it is nearly impossible to stay focused or to know how to resist. Like Will Rogers said, “I am not a member of any organized political party — I am a Democrat.” So we have once more underestimated the depth of organization and evil of the Trump led GOP – Gutless Obsolete Party.

My only hope for democracy’s survival is that the better-late-than-never legal challenges to the Musk led destruction of our government will save at least part of our constitutional democracy. I am still searching for what I personally can do to resist. I write here still believing the pen is mightier than the sword, but knowing full well that Trump’s racist, hateful sharpie with which he signs a daily barrage of unconstitutional executive orders carries more weight than my meager words.

I hate what the Musk/Trump duo is doing even as I pity both of them for the total lack of any compassion or human kindness in them. I do pray for them because they both must have led horrible lives of empty searching for love and affirmation to be so void of any empathy for their fellow human beings.

But what bothers me much, much more is the response or lack thereof by the Republican members of Congress to this obvious attack on our democracy. The January 6 insurrection failed by violent means to overthrow our government; so Trump spent the last four years planning a bloodless coup that has moved with astonishing speed in just three weeks. And the tragedy is that it would only take four of the 53 Republicans in the US Senate to have the guts to put their precious seats of power on the line to stop the parade of dangerous, incompetent cabinet appointees from being handed the keys to power. That has not happened because we are told they are afraid of being primaried and losing their seats.

The irony of course is that by failing to do their constitutional duty to provide checks and balances on an unbalanced President they are handing over any power they have. The precious jobs they sell their souls for are empty and meaningless, and if they think this coup will stop before eviscerating the role of Congress completely they simply are not paying attention.

Former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was interviewed last week on 60 minutes by Leslie Stahl who asked some hard ball questions. She reminded McConnell (1) of his brave speech after the January 6 insurrection when he said Trump was unfit to ever serve as President again and (2) that he soon changed his tune to say that if Trump was the Republican nominee he would support him. When Stahl asked him why he changed McConnell’s lame excuse was “Because I’m a Republican.”

No, Mitch, first and foremost you are an American who took an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, and you and your cowardly colleagues should be impeached for failing to keep that promise. McConnell gets an extra helping of my ire because of his conspiracy with Trump to stack as many of the federal courts, from the Supremes on down, with equally spineless yes people who have granted Trump immunity and enabled him to avoid any real repercussions for his many crimes.

And it is all so unnecessary. If McConnell had shown courageous leadership after January 6 Trump would have been impeached and prevented from ever doing any further damage to our democracy. So the Gutless Obsolete Party is getting what they deserve, but at the expense of all Americans and millions of people around the world who will literally die because of the selfish, transactional motives of Trump and his acolytes who are cutting off critical life-saving aid to impoverished people all over the world.

If we were truly a Christian nation we would know that we help other people because they need help, not for whatever they might be able to do for us in return. The Good Samaritan didn’t stop to ask what was in it for him if he helped the man in the ditch. He did it because he could, and it was the right thing to do. We must demand nothing less from ourselves as the richest nation in the world.

Oligarchy Inaugurated

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Government Reform

January 20, 2025 was a day of extreme highs and lows for me and for many of my friends. It is a day that may go down in history as the day the American experiment in democracy died. As of yesterday we are living in an oligarchy, and whether we the people can survive it hangs very much in the balance. It will depend on how much courage enough people can muster to fight for their freedom before it is too late. Our democracy is on life support, and only the citizens of this country can determine if it will live or die.

For millions of Americans January 20 was also a unique and special day in the world of sports. The first ever 12-team College Football Playoffs culminated that evening with a championship game between two historic football power house teams, Notre Dame and Ohio State. Being a life-long Ohio State fan it was a special treat for our local team to play in that game, and for 3.5 hours it was a riveting and welcome distraction from the threat unfolding in Washington D.C.

After enjoying the post-game victory celebration for Ohio State for about an hour I made the foolish mistake of checking my phone for the news before going to bed. Needless to say reading about the plethora of executive orders signed yesterday by our new Supreme Leader quickly put a damper on my spirit. It wasn’t unexpected, and I should have known better; but it was a reminder that a much more important contest is being waged than a football game. It was time to come back to reality.

Ironically yesterday was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the contrast between his dream for America and the Trump oligarchy could not be starker. One is a dream of justice for all described in the amazing founding documents of our nation 248 years ago. King’s dream is also grounded in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures which describe all people as being created in the image of God. King gave his life as Jesus did proclaiming a Gospel of love and non-violence.

 But the Trump oligarchy is one founded on capitalistic selfishness and greed. It is based on the exclusive doctrine of racism and white supremacy where strangers and neighbors in our midst live in fear of imprisonment and deportation. It is a message of imperialism and American exceptionalism where might makes right. President Trump’s promise of a new Golden Age is a barely disguised reference to the Gilded Age of robber barons which will take us back 100 years,  undoing the hard won progress on women’s rights, unionization, minimum wages, civil rights, global cooperation, the climate crisis, and humane working conditions. We have to look no further than Putin’s Russia to see what the nightmare of oligarchy brings.

Jesus directly warned us in the Sermon on the Mount that we cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24), and the proof that we worship the latter in this country was blatantly obvious as the richest men in the world were given the seats of highest honor at Trump’s inauguration. Today I am overwhelmed with feelings of anger, fear, and depression. I feel helpless to know how to combat the evil on full display in the White House. But tomorrow or one day in the future I will find a way to join the 50% of my fellow Americans who did not vote for oligarchy and together with God’s help we will find a way to turn this nightmare into a brighter, stronger, and more just democracy than ever before. I may not live to see that day, but in God’s due time I do believe that “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

Jimmy Carter, Servant Leader Par Excellence

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, spiritual discipline

I came of age politically in the bloody year of 1968, a year of political assassinations and a violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Hubert Humphrey, badly weakened by those events and the increasingly unpopular Viet Nam War, lost that year’s Presidential election to Richard Nixon, who won a landslide re-election over George McGovern four years later. I was 0-2 in presidential election votes.

Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace by the Watergate scandal just two years later in 1974, setting the stage for a little-known Georgia governor/peanut farmer to launch an unlikely presidential campaign in 1975. Elected by a razor slim margin in 1976, that 39th U.S. President was Jimmy Carter who died recently at the age of 100.

I have great admiration for this President who was one of the most honest and compassionate to ever serve as our Commander in Chief. His record of human rights promotion and tireless work for peace and justice while in office and for forty years afterward is an example of faith-based servant leadership that few have achieved; but all of us should emulate if we want our badly broken world to survive the current political, economic, and ecological crises facing us.

Much more eloquent tributes than mine have poured in from all over the world since President Carter’s death, but I have a personal memory in addition to all of his remarkable accomplishments. Jimmy Carter was the first presidential candidate I ever voted for who actually won the election. In fact in my first six presidential election cycles Jimmy Carter was my only winner.

In retrospect Carter was too honest and kind to survive in the dog-eat-dog world of Washington politics. So he will not go down in history as a very successful President in spite of remarkable legislative accomplishments, significant civil rights and women’s rights actions, and the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

I had forgotten that the two things that doomed Carter’s re-election in 1980, the Arab oil embargo and the hostage take over of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, were done in retaliation for Carter’s peacemaking efforts and his compassionate welcome of the former Shah of Iran to the U.S. for medical treatment.

There was also some underhanded dealing by Carter’s Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, who struck a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election. As I said before, Carter was too honest and kind for political infighting.

As I have listened and read about President Carter in the last week I have been humbled by his faith-based commitment to a life of service in spite of illness and advancing age. He created a new vision of what it means to continue to serve humanity after “retirement” from public service.

He and Rosalyn did more for humanity after the age of 90 than most of us ever accomplish in a lifetime. At the age of 78 I personally have trouble making it through one day at a time, and yet as a cancer surviving octogenarian Jimmy and Rosalyn circled the globe building houses, curing diseases, and promoting democracy.

And in his spare time Carter taught Sunday School for decades and wrote 30 books! How he managed that much writing given his schedule is way beyond me. I self-published one small book 13 years ago and haven’t had the discipline or energy to attempt another one since.

As a pastor I also have great admiration for Carter’s prophetic witness about human rights for women and LGBTQA+ people. He humbly credits his mother Lillian for his inclusive attitude toward all people, and they were both way ahead of their time. Carter was such a man of principle that he left his life-long membership in the Southern Baptist Convention over his denomination’s discrimination against women pastors and leaders.

If anyone has ever deserved to hear the words, “Well done, you good and faithful servant,” it is James Earl Carter, Jr., humble peanut farmer, 39th President, and exemplary servant leader. As I begin 2025 one of my goals is to in some small way live a life worthy of Jimmy Carter’s example.

Sports Parables for Advent

by Steve Harsh, posted in Advent, Christian Discipleship, peacemaking

One of my very few good memories from my Little League baseball days ironically occurred when I was batting against the very best pitcher in our league. Jim was a great athlete. He went on to star in football, basketball, and baseball in our local high school and then went on to pitch for Ohio State University in college.

 I, on the other hand, was the epitome of the 90 pound weakling. I love sports and played them all in neighborhood pickup games, but I was severely overmatched when it came to organized baseball. So, when I stepped into the batter’s box that day against this hard throwing lefty everyone, including Jim, my coaches, and me, knew that I had zero chance of getting the bat around fast enough to hit Jim’s fastball.

 The only things I had going for me were that I was a good bunter, and a had good baseball mind, even at age 10. I don’t remember if the idea came to me while watching Jim pitch from our bench or in the on deck circle, but somewhere prior to stepping up to bat I noticed that when Jim’s follow through when he released the ball was carrying him toward the 3rd base side of the infield. So I concluded that if I could bunt the ball to the first base side it would be harder for him to field it.

Our bunt sign was a tug on his ear by our first base coach, and I was thrilled to see him flash me that sign. My plan worked to perfection. I was able to lay down a good bunt up the first base line, far enough that neither the catcher nor the pitcher could get to it in time and short enough that the first baseman couldn’t either. I don’t remember if I was able to advance from first that day, and I’m sure Jim got me out every other time I faced him unless I drew a walk because of my small strike zone. But on that one day my David was successful over Jim’s Goliath by using my head when my braun was far from up to the task.

A current example of that principle occurred just two weeks ago. Unless you are a Sr. citizen like me and a long-time college football fan the name Wayne Woodrow “Woody” Hayes may not mean much to you. But in Columbus, Ohio you only have to use the nickname “Woody’ and everyone knows of whom you speak. Woody was the longest tenured head football coach of Ohio State University football from 1951-1978, amassing 13 Big 10 championships and 5 national titles.

College football was, granted, a different game in many, many ways back then, but the biggest difference on the field was that the running game was much more important than today’s emphasis on passing. So Woody was famous for his offensive philosophy dubbed “4 yards and a cloud of dust.” He also liked to say that “when you pass two things can happen, and two of them are bad.”

I have a non-football point here, so bear with me, please. About two weeks ago Ohio State suffered a huge upset at the hands of bitter rival the University of Michigan. These OSU Buckeyes have one of the best passing offenses in the nation and used it to score their only touchdown of the game quite easily just before half time to tie the score at 10-10. Buckeye Nation breathed a huge sigh of relief thinking the Offensive Coordinator had awakened from his post-Thanksgiving slumber. But then in the second half the Bucks reverted to a Woody offense repeatedly running the ball into the center of Michigan’s defensive line, the strongest part of their line, even when it gained very little.

The end result was a scoreless second half for OSU and a stunning 13-10 upset loss to an unranked, five-loss team we were favored to beat by 20 points. There are no shortage of Sunday and Monday morning quarterbacks in Columbus, but I hit upon an Advent-related theory to what happened in the “Shoe,” (the nickname for OSU’s horseshoe shaped stadium).

So here goes: OSU has been accused, after losing three straight games to Michigan, of being “soft.” So my theory is that the OSU players and especially the coaches had two goals on November 30. One was to win the game, but I think the second goal may have taken precedence over winning; and that goal was to prove how “tough” they are. And the way to do that is to prove you can run the ball successfully against the highly ranked Michigan defensive line.

And so we kept doing that over and over, even when it was quite obvious to us “expert” fans that it wasn’t working. Sometimes, OSU coaches, playing smarter is better than brute force. I think the play calling, and football in general, is a. prime example of toxic masculinity. But here’s the Advent connection. John the Baptist was a wild man, tough enough to live in the wilderness and eat wild honey and locusts, but even he knew his kind of strength wasn’t the most important. John said, “… the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals.” (Matthew 3:11) John didn’t understand Jesus’ power, but he came to prepare the way for one who was the real Messiah, the one who was able to reject all of Satan’s temptations of worldly power, who taught us to turn the other cheek, to pray for, to love, and even forgive our enemies!

Author Joseph Nye Jr. didn’t reference Jesus’ kind of power in his 1990 book, “Soft Power,” but the parallels are significant. Nye’s work argued that post-Cold War we need a different approach to international relations than the “Hard Power” of military strength and war. Soft Power relies on things like diplomacy, negotiation, compromise, and collaboration.

In similar words Jesus came in the tradition of Isaiah, Micah, and other Hebrew prophets who proclaimed peace that beats swords into plowshares, and treating aliens in your midst like everyone else. He knew real power is as Psalms 20:7 says, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

This all explains why Jesus was born in a barn and not in a palace; why he picked fishermen and tax collectors for his disciples and not temple or political leaders; why he washed feet at the Last Supper; and why he told Peter to put away his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane before going peacefully with his captors to the cross. Jesus knew where the real power lay, even at age 12 when he chose to be in God’s house teaching the elders rather than listening to their version of power.

Jesus knew that those expecting a warrior king, including the Zealots and some of his disciples, were wrong and he resisted their urging to take up the sword and drive the hated, oppressing Romans out.  Can you image what a debacle that would have been to put Jesus’ rag tag band up against the Roman legions?  Jesus knew better.

Unfortunately 2000 years later we are still not as smart as Jesus was at age 12. As a pre-teen Jesus knew no one wins in the game of war. Violence of any kind only begets more violence and perpetuates the cycle of revenge and retribution.

My prayer is that for Advent and Christmas 2024 is that we will let this child lead us and that his true message of peace on earth for all people will penetrate deeply into our notion that wealth, worldly power, and toxic toughness have never worked and never will. Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

The Demise of Empathy

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, climate change, Faith and Politics, Government Reform, Uncategorized

“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Jesus, The Beatitudes, Matthew 5:4

Of all the things I am sad about from the recent election, one of the most is my realization that a lack of empathy is largely responsible for the huge chasm dividing one half of this nation from the other.

That should have been obvious to me months, if not years, ago. A President-elect who mocks disabled Americans, who calls a decorated POW a loser, who denigrates gold star families and WWII dead, who calls insurrectionists “patriots,”and who threatens revenge on his political opponents and mass deportation to struggling immigrants is certainly no poster child for empathy.

Full disclosure, empathy or the lack thereof cuts both ways. I cannot bemoan the lack of empathy among others without confessing my own antipathy for those who voted for Trump and his fellow MAGAmaniacs.

That said, I have experienced the lack of empathy on a very personal level as I have tried to cope with my own anxiety and depression about the election outcomes. And by the way, the recent clown car arrivals at Mar-a-Lago containing new cabinet nominees has only deepened my concerns over the future of our nation and world.

To those who have mocked the grief and mourning of those like me who are genuinely fearful about the future, I would says this: Feelings are not debatable. They just are. So when I say I feel like I’m living thru a bad SNL, skit you can’t argue me out of that feeling. It is how I feel and no argument is going to change that.

Even if my Trumpian friends make some good points that we can agree on about the current state of our nation, we continue to disagree on who is to blame for the immigration, health care, economic, and a host of other problems.

While the MAGA crowd holds the government responsible for our societal problems, I argue that big business is to blame for most of our woes. not the government. And that unregulated capitalism will be a total disaster for the only planet we have.

Some justify Trump’s cabinet selection of “successful” business people makes sense because the government is one big business. I disagree strongly that our government is a business. The purpose of a business is to make profit for its owners and stakeholders. That is not the purpose of our democratic government, which is to defend and protect the rights and welfare of our citizens.

Those are two very different purposes. From our history we know that the business leaders/“robber barons” are the very folks who drove us into a worldwide depression in the 1920’s. Unregulated capitalism always favors profit over people. Those same geniuses of business also began the destruction of our planet with the greed fostered by the Industrial Revolution.

Most Titans of business lack empathy for the very people who earn their profits from them, and that same lack of empathy is on full display in the dystopian version of the GOP Trump has and is creating. We dems are so anxious and depressed because we’ve seen this movie before, and it didn’t end well.

And yes, anxiety and depression are also emotions which just are and cannot be argued away. They require empathy for as log as necessary and not argument. I’m sorry some people are frustrated with the prolonged mourning of those who lost the election by a slim popular vote margin, and I hope the MAGA crowd’s optimism about the future holds some truth.

Only time will tell, but my values in life require me to oppose and resist evil and injustice where I see it; and I see it in every policy, threat, and cabinet pick Trump has made so far.

Why I Vote the Way I Do

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

Recently I got into a friendly political argument with a friend who helps keep me honest when I get carried away and tune out my better angel. She, my friend, asked me to give her reasons to support my political views, and below is what I wrote to her after a few days of wrestling with that challenge.

“I want to respond to a question you raised a few days ago about reasons to support my political positions. I’ve been giving that a lot of thought, and here’s what I’ve decided.

First, I grew up in a very conservative, Republican family and community in deep red NW Ohio. I don’t think I ever met a Democrat until I left home for college at age 20. I was exposed to a whole new world view at Ohio State and then in seminary, and that broader, more liberal world view made much more sense to me than what I grew up with.

I was converted by that exposure to a new way of thinking and became convinced that the Democratic Party, even with all it’s flaws, is much closer to my theological beliefs about the Kingdom of God than the Republican Party. The Democratic Party as I was coming of age supported Civil Rights and women’s rights, and continues to stand for more programs that help the poor and marginalized members of society than the GOP. Those are the people I believe Jesus calls us to care most about.

The differences between the two parties are more clearly visible now than ever before. I find it hopeless to argue over campaign promises or to fact check either party because they all exaggerate and lie to make their points.

The bottom line is that I vote democratic because those candidates in general are more in harmony with the values I try to live by shaped by the life and teachings of Jesus. I hope that makes sense, and I do thank you for pushing me to think more deeply about these issues and for helping me realize when I’ve screwed up when you call me out. Peace and grace, my friend.”

And the best part of this story? My friend replied with a beautiful emoji shower of hearts.

Faith: Alive or Dead?

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith Development, Lectionary Texts

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? 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.” James 2:14-17

The epistle lesson for this coming Sunday is the familiar “Faith without works is dead” passage from James 2. How often when I pass by a person begging for money on the street do I feel guilty and worry that my faith is dead or dying? Thanks, James. There must be more value to these verses than humbling me if I am dwelling in a glass house of self-righteousness.

But maybe that’s all these verses need to do. Causing you or me to stop and look in the mirror is really quite an important thing for a spiritual encounter to do. To pause from our busy lives for a bit of self-examination is much more helpful than the far more common way this passage is used, namely to put others down by pointing out the hypocrisy of their holier-than-thou rhetoric and lack of empathy or meaningful service to meet the real needs of their neighbors.

One of the bishops I served under had a memorable way of keeping us clergy humble. He was fond of saying that things always worked out well when he was appointing clergy to serve in the churches under his supervision. He said the numbers always came out even because there “are always as many perfect churches as there are perfect pastors.”

James employs a similar tactic earlier in chapter 2. In verses 8-10 we find these words: “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you do well. But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.”

Does that mean God doesn’t grade on the curve? That nothing but a perfect score is good enough to live up to God’s standards? No, who could ever stand before such a God? Such a God would never send a Messiah to save us from ourselves. Such a Messiah would never welcome lepers, tax collectors, and all manner of societal outcasts into God’s beloved community.

James is simply warning us that our faith journey is a marathon, not a sprint. James is alerting us to the danger of thinking we’ve got it all figured out or that our work is ever done. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a long way to go to love my enemies or to turn the other cheek. This side of heaven there will always be more neighbors to love, more poor who are with us always. God’s love is eternal and so are the tasks of discipleship for those who have decided to follow Jesus.

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.

I Don’t Care Who Started It…

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

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Jesus (Matthew 5:38-39)

I wish my mother were still alive, for a lot of reasons. Right now as I survey the current mess in the Middle East I wish she were here so she could sit down with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Supreme Ruler of Iran and talk some sense into them.

My mom only had a high school education, but she had more practical wisdom than most of the “leaders” of the world when it came to resolving conflict. I think a lot of her wisdom came from growing up with 5 younger brothers.

I didn’t appreciate her wisdom as a kid; so I hope wherever she is she can hear my belated praise for the way she dealt with conflicts between me and my two younger sisters. Invariably when two or all three of us got into a squabble she would intervene and one or more of us would say, “She started it!” Or “he started it,” and Mom would just shake her head and say, “I don’t care who started it; I just want to know who’s going to end it.”

When it comes to the centuries-old animosity between Israel and her neighbors there is no way to determine who really started it because it’s been going on forever with first one side and then the other retaliating for some offense by the other.

And that’s where those troublesome verses from the Sermon on the Mount about turning the other cheek come into play. No one can take that advice literally and give it any practical consideration, but that isn’t the point of what Jesus was saying. He was saying “I don’t care who started this, but what matters is who has the courage to stop it?”

Violence begets more and often worse violence. It is a vicious cycle that only stops when someone says “enough” and refuses to retaliate.

In the current crisis the stakes could hardly be higher. I am not justifying the strike Israel made on the Iranian embassy in Syria nor the massive attack Iran launched in response on Saturday night. If allowed to continue to escalate this affair could engulf all of us in World War III, and no one wants that. Or do they?

The scariest part of this scenario is that there are millions of misguided and biblically illiterate “Christians” who are indeed rooting for this mess to turn into Armageddon. They falsely believe such a cosmic battle between good and evil will usher in the second coming of Christ and solve all the problems we humans are unwilling to solve for ourselves.

President Biden has come under criticism for urging Israel to exercise restraint, i.e. to stop or slow down the cycle of violence and destruction by refusing to retaliate. I believe Biden’s calming influence, while it likely will go unheeded, is exactly what this delicate situation calls for.

I shudder to think where the world would be this very day if someone with a purely transactional mentality like Donald Trump were sitting in the Oval Office just now. Trump is on record as saying during the 2016 campaign that his favorite Bible verse is “And eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Unfortunately his biblical education must have stopped in Leviticus which Jesus clearly turns upside down in the Sermon on the Mount.

Is turning the other cheek or stopping the cycle of retaliation hopelessly naive? Maybe, but it sure beats the heck out of the endless, vicious cycle of violence.