Category: Faith and Politics

Let Justice and Righteousness Flow

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

Many advocates of church growth argue that politics and controversial social justice issues should be kept out of church pulpits and classrooms because they will produce conflict and drive prospective church members away. The resulting prosperity gospel/cheap grace messages may indeed increase attendance in the short run. Praise services that resemble rock concerts more than worship services entertain attendees and may produce a feeling of spiritual euphoria, but do they also challenge participants to examine their lives, confess their sins, individual and corporate, and deepen their faith in ways that address human need in relevant and effective ways? That seems to me a question the Jesus I know would want us to ask ourselves regularly.

Those who argue that political and social issues don’t belong in church simply have not taken seriously the Hebrew prophets, the liberation history of God’s people from slavery and political oppression, nor Jesus’ own confrontation of the powers and principalities of Rome and the established religious authorities of his day.
A clergy colleague of mine told me recently about his experience at a 50th high school reunion in a wealthy suburban neighborhood. Asked to offer a prayer before the reunion dinner, he took the opportunity to reflect briefly on how much the world had changed since he and his classmates had graduated. Among other things he pointed out that the total population of the world has doubled in the last half century. So far so good, but then as they say he stopped preaching and went to meddling. He said, “That means there are a lot more poor people in the world that we who have been blessed with a good life and good education need to be concerned about.” While some of his classmates appreciated that observation, many others were upset and expressed anger that he had spoiled their celebration by asking them to think about unpleasant things.

I don’t know what my friend said in reply, but here’s what the Hebrew prophet Amos says God would say to them: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24).

The Hebrew word for justice is “mishpat,” a much more inclusive term than what we often mean by our English use of the word “justice.” We have departments of justice, and we talk about justice being served or people getting their just desserts, all of which are about retributive justice or retribution, i.e. getting even for a wrong that has been committed against a person or society. The Judeo-Christian concept of justice, however, is also about distributive justice, meaning a fair and equitable distribution of life’s necessities to all of God’s children. Those necessities include not just material items required for survival, but basic human rights. It is both kinds of justice that human nature at its best strives for in memorable words to live by like “liberty and justice for all” in our U.S. pledge of allegiance and in Jesus’ Golden Rule encouraging us to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” (Matthew 7:12).

Like all important matters, concern for justice requires balance. Many years ago I heard Bishop Peter Storey from South Africa preach a sermon on the need for a balanced approach to theology and how we do church. His advice is even more relevant 30 years later. The image he used that has stuck with me all these years was of a bird with one wing. He said that a church that emphasizes either evangelism or the social gospel to the exclusion of the other is like a bird with one wing that simply goes around in circles.

As main line churches decline in membership at a frightening rate there is understandable concern for the survival of the church. But concern must not be allowed to grow into panic that clouds judgment. Desperate people do desperate things, and far too many desperate churches and church leaders water down the gospel to the point of irrelevance in an ill-advised attempt to survive and “grow.” My mother used to say that the church is only one generation from extinction, and while there is some wisdom to that observation, Amos reminds us that God is more concerned about the quality of our faithfulness to God’s will than the quantity of church members or the size of our church buildings or budgets.

Church growth advocates will argue correctly that the Gospel needs to be proclaimed to the vast numbers of people in our nation and world who have not heard or have not responded to it, but it is the whole Gospel that is needed, not the one-winged bird of either extreme in the theological debate between liberal and conservatives within the church. All of us, regardless of our theological or political convictions need a personal relationship with God that casts out our fears in whatever form they take. That’s the assurance of personal salvation for all eternity offered in Christ’s death and resurrection. It is also the first meaning of the cross and the foundation of Christian faith upon which the rest of the household of faith must be built. But the foundation of a house is not a whole house, just a necessary first step in a much larger process.

Assurance of eternal life is such a powerful promise that the temptation to embrace that gift and stop there on our faith journey is very strong. The desire for heavenly peace alone is the false hope and danger that Amos points out for those who are eagerly awaiting “the day of the Lord.” In a classic “be careful what you wish for” warning, Amos offers these ominous words: “Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake.” (5:18-19).

Why such harsh condemnation? Read the earlier chapters of Amos to understand why Amos believes God has lost all patience with Israel and other nations for their disobedience to God’s will and especially their unjust treatment of the poor. Is Amos exaggerating to get Israel’s attention? Is he like an exasperated parent who loves a wayward child so much and fears for his/her well-being so deeply that emotions overflow?

Context is always critical in Scriptural interpretation. The Hebrew understanding of the nature of God in the 8th century BCE was far more legalistic and judgmental than the God of grace Jesus proclaims 800 years later. But let us not be lulled into a cheap grace sense of complacency by an overreliance on God’s mercy. I am as grateful as anyone that the God revealed in the New Testament grades on a curve, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Gospel makes very serious demands on anyone who wants to follow Jesus.

Amos warning that a just and righteous life is expected of us is not discounted by Jesus in the least. Jesus invites any disciple to “take up a cross and follow me” (Luke 14:27). The cross of the resurrection is also the cross of sacrifice and service on behalf of God’s kingdom and God’s children here and now. (The examples of what this looks like in Jesus’ teachings are too numerous to mention here, but would certainly include the difficult standards of loving one’s enemies (Mt. 5:43, Lk. 6:27), turning the other cheek (Mt. 5:39), forgiving 70 x7 (Mt. 18:22), “what you do to the least of these you do unto me. (Mt. 25:45), and if someone demands your coat, give him your cloak as well (Mt. 5:40).

Righteousness is the other quality demanded by God in Amos 5:24. Righteousness means being in a right relationship with God and all creation. That’s raising the bar very high. In fact none of us gets there. Even Jesus says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God” (Mk. 10:18 & Romans 3:10). So if Jesus can’t even meet that standard, what hope is there for the likes of you and me? Are we asked to do the impossible? That would be an unjust request, and we do not serve an unjust God. It’s also why we all stand in the need of grace. But what it absolutely does not mean is that we throw up our hands and give up. Our own human limitations are not an excuse for ignoring the hard parts of the Gospel but a reminder that we can and must do better than we are doing when justice and righteousness are but a trickle instead of an everflowing stream.

We Americans live in the richest nation in the history of the world and in one where 10% of the people control 75% of wealth. No one but the 10% could possibly consider that just. President Kennedy once said, “When we make peaceful revolution impossible we make violent revolution inevitable.” We are seeing rumblings of such revolution today in the streets of Hong Kong. Students of history know about labor riots inspired by injustice in our own country in the 1890s (Google the Haymarket riot or the Pullman strike, or Coxey’s Army). Our economic history is like a roller coaster of bust and boom cycles because we fail repeatedly to learn the lessons Amos was warning us about 3000 years ago.

Someone smarter than I will have to figure out the economic and political details, but what I do know is that as long as the driving values of our lives are comfort and prosperity and not justice and righteousness, we’d better not be longing for the day of the Lord/judgment day/the second coming.

“How Can We Ever Do That?”

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

I have preached over 800 times in my ministerial career. Of all those sermons, none has stuck in my memory as much as the one I preached on September 23, 2001, 12 days after 9/11. As I was reflecting on that horrible event and the continuing scourge of violence in our world today I decided to revisit that sermon, and I found the words of Jesus that inspired that sermon as relevant and as troubling now as they were 13 years ago. So as I pray for peace for a world seemingly bent on destruction, I share these reflections again. The sermon was preached at Jerome United Methodist Church on the text from Matthew 5:38-48 on loving one’s enemies.

This week was harder for me than last week and not just because I was struggling with what to say here this morning. The suffering and agony of the whole terrorist ordeal became personalized and real for me this week. 3000 victims in the abstract last week were more than my mind could wrap itself around. But as individual stories emerged of real people with real names, victims and families and heroes and heroines, my already bruised and battered heart was broken over and over again.

But from the very first hours of the tragedy my greatest pain and fear was not for the damage and suffering that occurred on September 11, as unbelievably horrible as it was. My greatest pain and fear has been for the inevitable escalation and perpetuation of violence that I knew these horrible acts would generate in retaliation that will inflict more suffering on more innocent people.

A friend of mine told me just after the attacks that he had forgotten how easy it is to be a Christian in times of peace and prosperity. And he is very right. We turn to God and scripture for comfort and reassurance in times of distress, as well we must and should, but some of the most important words of scripture also challenge us and are hard to hear.

And that’s why I have been engaged in a lovers’ quarrel with Jesus for the last 12 days over what to say this morning. I have tried every trick I know to avoid the difficult words we just heard from the Sermon on the Mount–these words that are high on the list of those we wish Jesus hadn’t said, but they would not let me rest. They have forced themselves into my consciousness over and over again, pleading, demanding, and crying out to be proclaimed.

“You have heard it said…” O, have we ever – all the public opinion polls confirm in spades that those who want revenge are legion, and I include myself in those who are angry. Getting even is a natural human reaction, and we’ve all been there many times this month. “You have heard it said, an eye for and a tooth for a tooth.” Sounds like good advice. In fact, at the time those words were written, they were designed to limit revenge; so victims would not demand two eyes for an eye, or a whole mouthful of teeth for a tooth. But as someone has said, if we follow the eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth philosophy to its logical conclusion, we end up with a world full of blind, toothless people, and the cycle of violence and pain continues forever.

“But I say to you…” Look out whenever Jesus starts out with that phrase and brace yourself for a zinger. “But I say to you, love your enemies. If anyone strikes, you on the north tower, turn the south tower as well.” O, Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding! We can’t do that! You can’t be serious. How can we possibly love those responsible for such horrific acts of death and destruction?

But Jesus isn’t alone on this one. I’m not sure to whom this letter was written, but a copy of it was circulating on the internet this week; and it contains a very similar thought from a leader of another of the world’s great religions, the Dalai Lama. He writes, “It may seem presumptuous on my part, but I personally believe we need to think seriously whether a violent action is the right thing to do and in the greater interest of the nation and people in the long run. I believe violence will only increase the cycle of violence. But how do we deal with hatred and anger, which are often the root causes of such senseless violence? This is a very difficult question, especially when it concerns a nation and we have certain fixed conceptions of how to deal with such attacks. I am sure that you will make the right decision. With my prayers and good wishes, the Dalai Lama.”

I couldn’t agree more with this analysis, and I have been pleased to hear more of these sentiments this week than I expected, but practically it’s not all that helpful. Of course violence begets more violence. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. We know that and want to believe peace is an achievable ideal. We’ve seen the failure of wars to end all wars and we want to be faithful Christians and follow the ways of the Prince of Peace. That’s all well and good in the abstract, but the question I want Jesus or the Dalai Lama or somebody smarter than I to answer is, HOW do we love our enemies? How do we love someone who can do to our nation what these terrorists have done?

Jesus says a bit earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” By whom? Not by their enemies or by most of their peers. Peacemakers, cheek turners, are more often called “yellow” and “coward” or “chicken,” but seldom even “children of God.” We would much rather go with Moses on this one wouldn’t we, but are we followers of Moses or Jesus?

It is hard to find silver linings in some clouds, but even in tragedy there are some benefits. We see it in extended families that rally around each other when there is a death of illness. And in a similar fashion, the outpouring of patriotic spirit and resolve in the last two weeks has been amazing. One could certainly argue that this tragedy has created a sense of community that has been sorely lacking in our nation for many years. But Jesus asks us to take that sense of community one giant step further–to include even our enemies in the circle of God’s family.

I had a flashback to Jr. Hi youth fellowship this morning. One of those awkward moments when we were circling up to say the benediction at the end of a meeting, and I found myself next to a girl and was afraid I’d get her cooties if I had to hold her hand. And some wonderful adult counselor saw the problem and stepped in between us to close the circle. That’s just what Jesus does when he asks us to love our enemies. When we can’t bring ourselves to take that hand, Jesus steps in and completes the circle.

This doesn’t mean that justice and order are not necessary for us to be able to live peaceful, secure lives once more. It simply means that our attitudes and methods of seeking justice and peace need to be just and peaceful and loving; so that we do not fall into the trap of perpetuating the very kind of behavior we deplore. The Christian way to the goal of peace and security must be prayer and dialogue, not bombs and bullets. We follow the way of compassion and love and forgiveness. It is not an easy way, but it is necessary. And the best news is that success is guaranteed–guaranteed by the one who walked the talk of that love all the way to the cross to show us once and for all that love is stronger than death, that nothing in all creation, not terrorism or fear or death itself, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Jesus did it. He practiced what he preached. But how can we love our enemies, even while we deplore their horrible deeds?

I certainly don’t have all the answers–not even all the questions; but it seems to me there are two or three things that are necessary for us to have any hope of following Jesus down this path of loving our enemies.

1) We need to understand who are enemies are and who they aren’t so we don’t over-react in fear against all Muslims or all Arabs, or against everyone who looks different and therefore suspicious.

2) We need to study and learn and discuss so we understand better the complicated political and religious realities we are caught up in. We don’t dare oversimplify or stereotype. Afghanistan is not our enemy – it is a nation in ruins from previous wars and conflicts. Neither Bin Laden and the terrorists nor the Taliban are representative of the Afghan people, and they cannot be equated.

Tamim Ansary, a writer and columnist in San Francisco, who is a native of Afghanistan, writes this interesting and chilling portrayal of his homeland:
“The Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators….Some say, why don’t the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer is they’re starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in Afghanistan–a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows. And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is littered with land mines; the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban. We now come to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age. Trouble is, that’s been done. The Soviets took care of it already. New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get the Taliban? Not likely. In today’s Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only they have the means to move around. They’d slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don’t move too fast; they don’t even have wheelchairs. Bombing Kabul would only make common cause with the Taliban –by raping once again the people they’ve already been raping all this time.”

3) Perhaps most important, we must practice forgiveness. Someone has written that forgiveness is the key to happiness. The pursuit of happiness is one of our most cherished American ideals, and forgiveness is what it takes to be free of the burdens of anger and hostility that make happiness very illusive.

One of the young widows of this tragedy was interviewed on ABC this week. Her husband was one of the passengers who apparently resisted the hijackers on the Pennsylvania flight and helped keep the tragedy from being even worse than it was. When Diane Sawyer asked this young widow with two small children and a third on the way if she wanted revenge, without batting an eye she said, “No, I don’t want any Arab women to have to go through what I’m going through.” And then to support her position she quoted the Sunday school song we sang this morning, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight…” If she can forgive when her life has been altered forever, can we do any less?

I’ve always assumed that forgiveness was for those who have wronged me, but I realized in reflecting on this tragedy that forgiveness is a two-way street. Forgiveness needs to be given, but before it can be given it has to be received; and to receive it, we have to confess our own sin and examine our own contributions to misunderstanding, prejudice, and injustice. To assume we are good and they are bad is far too simple and counterproductive and leads us in the direction of a blind toothless world once more.

To understand why anyone has so much hatred toward our nation, we need to get to know these enemies–to understand what we may have done that we need to be forgiven for. And that dialogue can’t take place over the barrel of a gun or under the shadow of a cruise missile.

How can we love these enemies, or anyone who has done us great harm?

My favorite story about that kind of love comes from another period of unspeakable terror and suffering in human society, the Holocaust. After the war, a young Christian woman traveled around Europe proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and love for everyone who would repent and give their life to Christ. Corrie Ten Boom was a death camp survivor. Her entire family had died in the Nazi death gas chambers, and yet she was filled with God’s love and anxious to tell her story. Until one night when she was giving her testimony and looked out into the congregation where she saw a face that made her blood run cold. Sitting there staring at her from the pew was one of the former Nazi concentration camp guards who had helped to execute her family. She could barely finish her talk and hurried toward the side door of the church as soon as she was finished, hoping to avoid any further contact with this awful man.

But he was anxious to talk to her and met her at the door. He extended his hand as he told her that he had repented and become a Christian, but, he added, it was so good to hear someone like her proclaim the unbelievable good news that God’s love was available even to such a terrible sinner as he had been. His hand was there, waiting for Corrie to take it in Christian fellowship. But her hand was paralyzed, frozen at her side for what seemed like an eternity. The silence was awkward, and even though she knew she should shake his hand, she could not. Finally, she said a prayer. She said, “Lord, if you want me to forgive this man, you’re going to have to do it, because I can’t.”

And just then, Corrie said her hand moved of its own accord. She took the former Nazi’s hand and says she felt the most amazing surge of warmth and power pass between them that she had ever felt in her life.

How can we love our enemies? On our own, we can’t. But with God’s help as followers of Jesus Christ, relying on and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, we can, we must, and we will.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory!

THE FAMILY QUILT: SHARING FAITH and PEACE

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

I was inspired again by the quilt making of my daughter and another friend to post this story which is included in my book, Building Peace from the Inside Out.

“One generation shall laud thy works to the next.” Psalms 145:4

“The lame I will make the remnant, and those who were cast off a strong nation.” Micah 4:7

I was teaching a Jr. High Sunday School class one Sunday morning during Lent a few years ago. In one of those rare moments of quiet in such a class, I heard a familiar voice from across the hall say, “we still need a volunteer for the crucifixion.” I was worried because I knew the voice belonged to a Sunday School teacher who could be a bit off the wall sometimes. I wondered what in the world Vince was up to. I couldn’t leave my class unattended, but I worried the whole hour about what was going on in that class. When that Sunday school hour was over, I hurried across the hall to the 4th and 5th grade class, praying that I would not have to explain to some irate parents why their child was hanging on the old rugged cross. Much to my relief, I discovered that the class project for that day was to make a mural of the events of the last week of Jesus’ life. The teacher had not been asking for a volunteer to be crucified, but for someone to paint the crucifixion.

The tendency for peacemakers to end up getting crucified got me to wondering how it is we always seem to find people willing to continue the faith, even at great risks to themselves. My mother used to say that “Christianity is only one generation from extinction.” While I don’t believe that, because I know God will find a way with or without our help to keep God’s reign moving forward, it does give me pause. How do we pass on the word of God from one generation to the next against all kinds of odds that the forces of evil can muster?

The Hebrew Bible has 82 references to the word ‘remnant.” A remnant is a leftover, a scrap, an unlikely item to be of any useful purpose, and yet, time after time, in spite of unbelievable unfaithfulness, God finds a faithful remnant to carry on God’s work – thru flood, pestilence, famine, greed, stupidity, violence, exodus, exile, and dispersion.

That concept of the remnant reminds me of an old family quilt my grandmother seemed to be working on throughout my entire childhood. I don’t remember much about the quilt when I was really young, except Grandma always seemed to have it on her lap working on it while she and the other adults sat around in the living room and “visited.” It always sounded a lot like gossiping to me, but they called it visiting.

When I was 6 or 7, I was at Grandma’s, outside playing with my cousin, Dave, who was a couple years older than I, and the grownups were talking in the living room while Grandma was quilting away. Dave found a garter snake under the woodpile and was chasing me around the barn yard with it. I know they say snakes are more afraid of us than we are of them, but I find that very hard to believe.

Well, after making several laps around the house, my little legs were giving out, and I made a tactical decision to cut through the house to try and get away from Dave, and that darn snake. It wasn’t a bad plan, but as I ran through the living room I accidentally stepped on the corner of the quilt and got some of the mud (or something worse from the barnyard) on the quilt. That was when I learned how important that darn quilt was to my grandma, and to my mother.

A couple of years later, when I was staying overnight at Grandma’s, she was working on the quilt late at night. I knew it was almost my bedtime, and I thought, “hmmm, maybe if I can get Grandma talking about the quilt she’ll let me stay up longer.” So I said to her, “Grandma, why are you sewing all those little scraps of material together? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to go out and buy a piece of new material?”

She got a knowing smile on her face, like she had been asked that question before—or maybe even asked it herself. “Yes, it would be a lot easier, Steve, but then I wouldn’t be able to sew all the memories into the quilt.”

Well, of course, I saw my opening, and immediately asked her about the memories. She put me up on her lap and began to tell me the stories represented in the quilt.

She showed me first a square of tattered muslin. It was from the original family quilt that came over the Alleghenies in a covered wagon when our ancestors first came to Ohio to homestead.

I noticed a piece of material next to the muslin that I recognized. It was from the apron Grandma always wore when she had the whole clan over for Thanksgiving dinner. Just seeing that material made me smell the turkey and dressing cooking. I could almost taste the pumpkin pie and see the homemade noodles spread out to dry on Grandma’s bed.

Next to the muslin there was a yellowed piece of once-white satin, and Grandma ran her hand gently over it. It was a piece of her wedding dress.

And close to the satin was a square of taffeta. She told me it was from the material she made the baptismal gown from that all seven of her children wore when they were baptized.

Down in that part of the quilt there was a faded beige square of cotton. It looked pretty old and was warn almost thread-bare when I touched it. “Oh my, those were exciting days,” she said. She explained to me that when she was young women weren’t allowed to vote, and that wasn”t right. So she and lots of other women marched and carried signs till the men in Washington changed the rules. Even as a young mother with several kids, Grandma found time to be involved in community affairs because it was important. I realized later that my grandma was a feminist before we even had that word. Oh, she let Grandpa think he was in charge, but we all knew she was the glue that held the whole extended family together.

I asked her about a bright blue piece of wool. She got kind of a tired look in her eyes. She told me that my uncle Frank had rheumatic fever when he was a little boy, and he was very, very sick. She sat up with him all night, praying and putting wet compresses on his forehead – hoping he’d be OK. When he got well, the doctor told her that everything should be burned – pajamas, bed clothes, toys, anything he had with him in the bed. She said she burned almost all of it, but she cut out a corner of the blue blanket that was on his bed. She washed it really well several times, and kept it for the family quilt.

Catty-cornered from the blue wool was what looked like a plain white sheet, only it had a hole in it, like maybe for an eye in a ghost costume for Halloween. But when I asked her if that was what it was, she shook her head sadly. She told me when uncle Frank was older she found out he was about to be initiated into the local KKK. Well grandma put a stop to that right now. She told him that in our family we treat all of God’s children like our sisters and brothers, no matter what color their skin or how much money they have.

I spied a khaki colored piece next and asked her if it was from my Boy Scout uniform. A big tear ran down her cheek and she got very far away and quiet. I’d never seen Grandma like that before. She told me, “No, I wish it was. That’s a piece of the uniform your Uncle John was wearing when he was killed in the Battle of the Bulge.”

She was quiet again, and I tried to think of someway to cheer her up. There was a red and white polka-dotted square over on the far side of the quilt; so I asked her about it, hoping it would have a happier story. And it did. I learned for the first time that Grandma used to dress up like a clown for all her kids’ birthday parties, and that polka dot material was from her baggy clown pants.

Close by was a multicolored tie-died piece. Grandma said it was from a shirt my cousin Bob wore to some place called Woodstock. He was our family’s hippie, and when he went to Canada to stay out of Viet Nam, everyone was real upset with him, but not grandma. She missed him like crazy, but she supported his decision to be a conscientious objector and reminded anyone who would listen that Jesus was a pacifist too.

Well, it was really getting late by now. I was even beginning to feel sleepy, and I saw Grandma glance at the clock. But before she could tell me it was way past my bedtime, I asked her one more question. There was a big green and white star right in the middle of the quilt; so I asked her why it was there. She said, “Oh, that star is from the hospital gown your Aunt Ruth wore when she was in the hospital with polio. I prayed so hard that God would let us keep Ruthie. Don’t tell anyone, but she’s always been my favorite. (We all knew that anyway.)

“That polio is the reason she still walks with that terrible limp – but I’d sure rather have her with a limp than not at all. So when God let us keep her, I decided to put that star right in the middle of the quilt to say thank you.”

When Grannie was getting ready to tuck me in for the night I asked her if I could sleep under the quilt. She started to say, “no, it was only for very special occasions….” But then she changed her mind and said she guessed it would be OK. But she’d have to take the pins out first. Which was fine with me. It gave me more time to stay up, and I’ve never had a great desire to be a pin cushion anyway.

Then as she put me to bed, Grandma told me one more story about the quilt. She said during the big blizzard of 1950 she and the kids were home and Grandpa was stranded at the gravel pit where he worked for three days. They ran low on coal and fire wood to keep the stove going, and one of the things they did to keep warm was to huddle up and wrap that old family quilt around them.

I asked her, “Grandma, you’ve been through a lot of hard times. How do you keep going?”

“Oh,” she said, “I don’t know. I just ask God to give me strength to do whatever’s necessary; and so far he’s never let me down.”

I had trouble going to sleep that night. I kept thinking about my uncle John and the war. I don’t know if I was more afraid of having to go to war and getting killed – or of having to kill someone else. But the thought of war really bothered me — still does.

But then, I wondered if it would help if I thought about some of the happy memories in the quilt. And sure enough, the next thing I knew I smelled bacon and eggs on the stove for breakfast.

While we ate our eggs, I asked Grandma, “How long do you think it will take you to finish the quilt?”

“Oh,” she said, “the quilt isn’t something you really ever finish. You just keep patching it up and adding to it, and then you pass it on to someone else.”
[pause]

“And one generation shall laud thy works to another.” (Ps. 145:4) From remnants of insignificant and unknown saints, God weaves together a tapestry of truth that is from everlasting to everlasting. In the face of all odds, faithful peace seekers and peacemakers continue to pass on the good news.

“Tradition: Only Part of the Formula,” Genesis 29:15-28, I Kings 3:5-12

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

One of the all-time classic stories that highlight the lack of male observational powers is the account of Jacob’s wedding night in Genesis 29. Jacob has traveled 500 miles to find the love of his life. He has worked 7 years to earn the hand of his beloved Rachel. 7 years! And yet when his new father-in-law pulls the biggest bait and switch in history on him he doesn’t realize he’s consummating his marriage with the wrong woman until he wakes up with Rachel’s older sister Leah the morning after the wedding.

Jacob is certainly not the only newlywed to ask “what in the world have I done?” the morning after, but this story challenges our ability to suspend our disbelief. I don’t know what weddings were like in Jacob’s day. We learn in the New Testament that Jewish wedding celebrations lasted many days and involved much wine (John 2); so perhaps Jacob was impaired by too much wine. But beyond the practical questions of how this could possibly happen are the important issues the story raises about how we make tough ethical decisions. Jacob obviously has a problem, but so does Laban, his new father-in-law. Laban’s dilemma is his paternal obligation to both of his daughters. The traditions of his culture dictate that the older daughter must be married before the younger (v. 26); and Laban justifies his trickery by appealing to that tradition.

For the last 40 years I have not been able to think about “tradition” without hearing the loveable Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” sing “Tradition!” During that entire marvelous musical Tevye is caught in a tug of war between tradition and his heart. His struggle also involves daughters but is more complicated than Laban’s since three of his daughters challenge the traditions of their family and culture in progressively more radical ways. (Quick synopsis: Tzeitel, the first daughter, challenges the custom of arranged marriage; her sister Hodel falls in love with a revolutionary and moves “far from the home she loves” to Siberia where he is imprisoned; and another daughter, Chava, elopes and is secretly married outside their Jewish faith in a Russian Orthodox Church. For details, rent the movie).

Thinking about the “Fiddler” story side by side with Jacob and Laban’s dilemma exposes the sexism of the Hebrew text. While Genesis focuses on the ethical dilemma from the patriarchal bias of its time, “Fiddler” invites viewers to empathize with the struggles of Tevye, his wife Golde, and their daughters. Genesis pays no attention at all to the plight of Rachel and Leah. They have no voice at all in these life-changing decisions. They are merely pawns, property to be exchanged between Laban and Jacob for the agreed upon price of 7 years of labor per each. (See Gen. 29:27-28 for the details of how Laban and Jacob resolve their conflict by Jacob’s agreement to work an additional 7 years for Laban in exchange for the woman he thought he had married the first time around.) And yes, tradition sanctioned polygamy in those days, in case you’re wondering about Jacob having two wives, and if you read the rest of Jacob’s fascinating story in Genesis you will see that he never gets over his favoritism of Rachel at Leah’s expense.

Tradition! How often do we hear tradition used as the justification for why things are done in a certain way? “We’ve always done it that way.” “We’ve never done it that way before.” Tradition is important. We inherit important life lessons from our culture and our families, from history that enable us to move through life without having to reinvent the wheel every time we are faced with a decision. We Americans don’t have to decide which side of the road to drive on every morning or what a red traffic light means. Most traditions are valuable and useful, but that doesn’t mean all are. Slavery and denial of women’s rights were traditions that humanity in many cultures (including our Judeo-Christian tradition) lived by for centuries, and far too many still do. Why? Because well-entrenched traditions that benefit those in places of power and privilege are not easily changed. Such change usually requires great sacrifice and suffering on the part of brave prophetic persons who dare to ask why we have always done it that way.

John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist denomination developed a very useful paradigm for putting tradition in its proper perspective when it comes to making ethical decisions. Wesley’s quadrilateral, as it is known, lists four sources of input that should be consulted when making such choices: Scripture, Experience, Reason, and Tradition. I like the balanced model Wesley provides because it honors the importance of tradition while realizing that traditions are constructs created by fallible humans and therefore can be found to be in need of correction by the other three legs of the quadrilateral.

Making ethical decisions with fewer than all four components of the quadrilateral is like sitting at a table that has one leg shorter than the others, and therefore wobbles like a teeter totter every time anyone leans on it.
There are many examples of complex ethical dilemmas that we postmodern 21st century citizens of the global village must come to grips with. Traditions that worked in previous generations may no longer be viable when new knowledge provided by reason and experience is factored into the equation. Examples include biomedical decisions, the viability of military force to solve differences in a nuclear age, and attitudes toward people with a different sexual orientation. The latter provides a prime example that is dividing the Christian church and consuming vast amounts of time and energy from a church that should be addressing more pressing issues like poverty and immigration and global climate change.

There is no doubt that a few verses in the Judeo-Christian Scripture condemn homosexuality in no uncertain terms. That is the position of the Christian right that tries to make ethical decisions based on only two legs of the quadrilateral, Scripture and Tradition. But if we add reason and experience to the equation, namely the scientific and medical knowledge gained in recent decades, the solution to that dilemma changes. Where Scripture and Tradition base their ethical judgments about homosexuality on the assumption that sexual preference is a matter of choice, modern reason and knowledge teach us that such critical matters are predetermined by genetic coding. That may not explain why things are the way they are or how we feel about it, but it should change radically how we treat people of a different sexual preference and the kinds of basic human rights they should be afforded.

Tradition without the rest of the quadrilateral is too often treated as if it were written in stone. The U.S. Constitution is a good example. As insightful and inspired as our Constitution is, it is essentially a tradition created by human hands. The authors of that great document realized it needed to include a process for changing as situations and conditions required. That’s why they included a process for amending the constitution based on new insights and reason and experience and created a judicial system charged with interpreting the principles of that foundational document as they are applied to ever-changing situations. The Second Amendment is a case in point. The right to bear arms as a concept written in the days of muzzle loaders and militia obviously needs to be re-evaluated in a time when people carry AK 47’s into department stores and family restaurants.

To interpret laws and wrestle with ethical dilemmas by balancing Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience requires great wisdom. One of the other Hebrew texts in the lectionary for this week speaks directly to how important true wisdom is. In I Kings 3 a very young Solomon has just succeeded his father David to the throne of Israel, and the new King has a dream where God offers to grant him anything he asks for. Anything at all! What would you request if God made you that kind of offer? Health? Wealth? Fame and fortune?

Here’s what Solomon says, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” (3:9).

That’s a great request—like one that a parent would be very proud of if his/her child asked Santa for something for a needy friend instead of more toys or gadgets for herself. And God is an equally proud parent. The Scripture tells us, “It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.” (3:10-12).

As parents, citizens, friends and foes, and especially as leaders of groups and nations wrestling with traditions and cultural situations changing at warp speeds, we all need the Wisdom of Solomon. We feel as overwhelmed as he did taking on the responsibilities of his kingship. And his request is a most relevant prayer for all of us: “Lord, give us understanding minds able to discern between good and evil.”

A Room Called Remember, Deuteronomy 8:1-2, 7-18

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

Note: I’m a little late getting this Memorial Day Message posted, but remembering whose we are and who helped get us where we are is not a seasonal activity.

Remembering is a funny thing isn’t it? I have no trouble remembering who won the 1975 World Series but I constantly forget where I left my glasses 5 minutes ago. I have to put lists in my smart phone to remind me where I’m going and what I’m supposed to buy – but I have to be smart enough to take the phone with me to make that work. I remember laughing a few years ago at an older friend who walked into a meeting and pulled up the calendar on his phone or whatever that thing was that came before smart phones. When I asked him if he was looking up where he was supposed to go next, he said, “No, I’m trying to figure out where I am now.” Not as funny when it happens to me.

One of my favorite authors and theologians, Frederick Buechner, tells of a dream where he was in a hotel room where he experience pleasant memories that gave him a deep sense of peace and joy that he had never experienced elsewhere. As his dream went on, Beuchner said he wandered off to other places and adventures and then returned to the same hotel but was given a different room where he felt uncomfortable, dark and cramped. So he went down to the front desk and told the clerk about the wonderful room he had earlier. He said he would very much like to have that room again, but he had failed to keep track of where it was and didn’t know how to ask for it. The clerk said he knew exactly which room it was and that Beuchner could have it again anytime he wanted it if he would ask for it by name. The name of the room he said was “Remember.”

Memorial Day is a good time to visit the room called remember. When I was a child living in a small town where all my relatives lived and most of my ancestors were buried, we called this holiday Decoration Day – because it was a day to go visit cemeteries and decorate the graves of loved ones with flags and flowers. We’ve lost that tradition for a lot of reasons – families are spread out too much geographically and we’re all busier than ever. But some of our reluctance to visit graveyards is because we don’t want to face our own mortality. Not too many generations ago there were cemeteries next door to most churches, and it’s too bad they’re gone. Walking by a graveyard on your way to worship is a great way to put life into perspective.

I actually like cemeteries – they are peaceful, quiet places, like the room called remember, and like that room, they are important places to visit, but not a place you can homestead – you can’t live there.
Our text from Deuteronomy 8 is a call to remember. The Hebrew people are at a crossroads, a time of great transition, a time of joy as they are about to enter the long, long-awaited promised land after 40 years of wandering and suffering hardships in the wilderness. The verses we read today are part of a long lecture/sermon that Moses gives to his people in preparation for their new life in the Promised Land. He gives them the 10 commandments in chapter 5 and then goes on at great length to remind them and warn them about why they should not only remember God’s commandments but actually keep them, especially in the midst of their new-found prosperity. Moses knew how humans tend to call on God a lot when things are desperate, but when life is good, not so much. He repeats the refrain for emphasis, “Remember the long way the Lord has led you;” Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God;” “Remember the Lord your God.”

Sometimes we don’t visit the room called remember because there are painful memories there too. The old Frank Sinatra song says, “Regrets, I’ve had a few.” I think old blue eyes was using his selective memory if he only had a few regrets. I knew a woman once who lost her adolescent son in a tragic car accident, and one of the ways she dealt with her grief was to keep his room as a shrine – to the point that she refused to change anything about the way the room looked the day he left – even to the point of not picking up the dirty clothes he had left on the floor. This went on for years. Getting stuck in the past is like driving all the time looking in the rear view mirror.

A precocious 8 year old in a Sunday school class was waving her hand eagerly to make a comment after that day’s Bible lesson on the story where Lot’s wife disobeyed the commandment not to look back as they were fleeing from the destruction of Sodom. When the teacher got to the point where Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt he asked little Sally what she wanted to say. She said, “I understand this story.” Not knowing enough to quit while he was ahead, the teacher asked, “And how do you know about this story, Sally.” “Oh, she said, “My dad was driving down the street the other day and he looked back, and he turned into a telephone pole.”

We need times to look back and remember – holidays, anniversaries of significant events, past mistakes and accomplishments – we need times and places, sanctuaries, safe places to remember the history of God’s saving grace, but we can’t dwell in the past.

George Santayana is famous for saying that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We sometimes forget that Memorial Day is not just a holiday to celebrate the beginning of summer, but is a time to honor those who have made great sacrifices to preserve our freedom and in Lincoln’s famous words at Gettysburg, “gave their last full measure of devotion.” For me the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington is one of the most awe-filled, sacred rooms called remember I’ve ever visited. Honoring veterans is more than just remembering with flowers, flags and white crosses, however. It means providing for the emotional and physical needs of those damaged by the ravages of war so we know longer have homeless veterans suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome living on the streets and under bridges. Honoring veterans means learning the lessons of history that teach us that violence and war have rarely ever led to real peace. Honoring our Vets means rededicating ourselves as Christians to be followers of the prince of peace so God’s vision of a time when we can beat our swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks is more than just a vision.

The room called remember is a place for reflection and mid-course corrections. When a space craft is launched toward the moon or Mars or some distant planet just an error of a degree or two can result in missing the destination by thousands of miles or even light years; so mid-course corrections and adjustments have to be made regularly. Remembering who we are and whose we are and adjusting our life goals and directions regularly to keep our purpose in focus is a critical part of discipleship.

One of my mentors gave me some priceless advice several years ago that brings remembering down to the bottom line practical level. He was leading a personal growth workshop and the topic was dealing with regrets and forgiveness so we can move forward. I’m sure you don’t do this, but some of us do – when something goes wrong we want to find someone to blame; or when we succeed we’d like to take all the credit. My mentor said there are only three questions we need to ask to evaluate a situation, no matter how good or bad the outcome may be. The three questions are simply these: “What worked?” “What didn’t?” And “what next?”

Try them out – those three little two-word questions are priceless ways to learn from our past experience, let go of baggage that keeps one stuck in the past, and finding direction for the future. And as well as they work as simple human questions, they work even better as a prayer.

Frederick Beuchner says one of the reasons we don’t visit the room called remember very often is that we are escape artists. We are masters of distraction – turn on the TV, play video games, surf the net or social media on our many electronic devices. We do that sometimes to avoid painful memories. Barbra Streisand sang the theme song from an old movie called “The Way We Were.” The song appropriately is called “Memories,” and part of the lyrics say “What’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget, for it’s the laughter we were after, whenever we remember.” Selective memory is sometimes a useful thing but we may learn more from painful unvarnished truth, and the good news, contrary to what Jack Nicholson says, is that with God’s help we can handle the truth.

Memorial Day is often a time of remembering not just veterans but other loved ones who are no longer with us. Katrina talked last week about finding the Paul in our lives, our mentor, and remembering is a great way to honor those who have helped us get to where we are today. The Hebrews got thru the wilderness to the Promised Land because of God’s guidance but also through the leadership and persistence of Moses and Joshua and I’m sure countless other women and men. Take time this weekend to remember and give thanks for your guides and mentors.
One of the advantages of having lots of years of life experience is that we have more memories to draw upon. Another old song from my memory bank is one by Helen Reddy called “You and Me Against the World.” In part the lyrics say:
“You and me against the world, sometimes it seems like you and me against the world.
And for all the times we’ve cried I always felt that God was on our side. And when one of us is gone, and one of us is left to carry on, then remembering will have to do, our memories alone will get us through.”

That’s part of Moses’ message to the Hebrews and to us – when the going gets tough and the memories are painful, remember that God is on our side and our memories of God’s mercy and the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us will get us through.

There’s was another holiday unique to United Methodists just yesterday– Aldersgate Day. Does that ring any bells from confirmation class? May 24, 1738 – John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, found himself despondent because his enthusiastic gospel message had been rejected by his Anglican church, of which he was a priest. He had made a failed mission trip to America; the love of his life had broken up with him. His faith was at low ebb. His journal entry for that May 24 says, Heavy-hearted, he went to an evening society meeting on Aldersgate Street in London “very unwillingly.” It was there, while someone was reading from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans that he felt that his heart was “strangely warmed.” He describes it as: “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

The room called remember for Christians is full of those kinds of stories about God’s redemptive love. The God who led the Hebrews through the wilderness is the same God who turns Saul into Paul, who redeems the adulterous murderer named David, who blesses Sarah and Deborah, Ruth and Mary. I had a young person in a Bible Study one day who had discovered some of those juicy stories in the Hebrew Scriptures about incest and deceit, polygamy and pomposity – you know the stories you don’t usually hear about in Sunday School. The ones that tell us old Jacob had his 12 sons by 4 different women and was only married to two of them!!! This young woman looked at me rather skeptically and said, “Steve, what are those people doing in the Bible? They aren’t very good people!” I ask myself that question many days when I look in the mirror. It’s like asking why Jesus ate with sinners – because if he didn’t he would always have to eat alone.

Remembering the history of God’s redemption of the flawed, fallible human beings in the scriptures and in church history is good news because it means God’s amazing grace can forgive even us and use us to carry on the work of Christ. The God who led the wilderness wandering Hebrews to the Promised Land is still going before us to show us the way if we remember who we are and whose we are. It may feel some days like “it’s you and me against the world,” but it isn’t. We are never alone. Not in the wilderness or the grave yard. Not on the mountain top or in the valley of despair.

So I invite you to make time this weekend, whatever your plans for this holiday may be, to visit the room called remember. It is a place of peace that passes all human understanding. Give thanks there to the God who has brought you through whatever twists and turns your life has been, through times of hardship and prosperity, joy and pain. Give thanks for those who have gone before us, sacrificed for us, and loved us when we didn’t or couldn’t love ourselves. Draw eternal strength from both the good and painful memories, and then trust the creator and sustainer of us all to lead you onward to create memories and new paths for others to follow.

Memorial Day, 2014, Northwest United Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio

Ends and Means?

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

A few weeks ago I had one of those “did he really say that?” conversations with a clergy colleague. We were discussing a news story about Baptist churches in Kentucky and New York that were advertising they would be giving away door prizes to entice new people to attend their church.

Apparently forgiveness and salvation aren’t reward enough to get some people through the church doors since many churches have tried similar gimmicks. There was a church in Columbus, Ohio a few years ago giving away a car on Easter. Sure beats the coffee mug, cheap pen and refrigerator magnets our church offers as welcome gifts.
What got my attention about the Baptist churches’ promotion was that they were promising to give an AR-15 and other guns to the lucky winners of their door prizes. The church in Troy, NY even went so far as to quote John 14:27 (“…my peace I give to you”) over a picture of a semi-automatic rifle! To make matters worse, the churches in Kentucky were in Paducah – where three students were killed during a school shooting in 1997. Really, you can’t make stuff like this up!

Foolishly assuming that most followers of the Prince of Peace and certainly most pastors would agree that this was a really bad idea, I made a comment to my colleague about how absurd, if not blasphemous, this was. His response blew me away. He said, “Well, we wouldn’t do that in my church, but if that’s what it takes to appeal to the target (Freudian slip?) audience in that community, then it might be OK.” I was too dumbfounded to respond.

When I relayed the conversation to another friend, his immediate reply was, “No it’s not OK. A stripper would attract some people to church too, but that wouldn’t make it right.” Churches that start acting like businesses are in danger of selling their souls along with their “products.” Marketing strategies are fraught with ethical dilemmas in any business, but certainly the church must hold itself to a higher standard than Wall Street or Main Street when it comes to promoting the Gospel. When churches or any institution fall prey to the temptations of growth and institutional preservation as the primary motivation for what we do and say, we are on the slippery slope of believing that any means are justified if they achieve an honorable end.

It is no secret that mainline churches are in trouble. Membership and attendance figures have been in a steep decline for decades, and that reality can convince otherwise good people to compromise their ethical standards and fall into a panic mode of self-preservation. It is an inherent danger to institutional religion. Institutions almost always have a primary value of preserving and maintaining themselves. Institutional leaders have a vested interest in looking successful and maintaining their livelihood that can cloud objectivity. And the more dire the statistics become the greater the danger. Desperate people do desperate things, like giving deadly weapons to people instead of “beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” (Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3)

Yes, these are scary times, and I understand why individuals want to protect themselves and why churches want to keep themselves alive. And I know all motives for what we do are mixed. I’m sure those Baptist churches have a genuine desire to share the gospel along with the guns. Self-preservation is a very basic human motivation, but Christians are called to measure the means we use to achieve our means by the higher standards of the one who said, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24).

“A Borrower and a Lender Be,” A Holy Week Sermon on Matthew 21:1-13

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

Suppose you went out to get in your car at the mall or after church next Sunday or even in your driveway and a couple of strangers were looking it over. When you ask them what they’re doing they say, “Please give us your keys.” I’m guessing the first question you would ask is, “Why?” And when they say, “Because the Lord has need of it,” would you just hand over the keys or would you more likely call the cops?

That’s what the Gospels tell us Jesus did to “borrow” a donkey in preparation for his Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem. We are so familiar with the Holy Week narratives that we often fail to grasp the radical nature of what this story tells us about Jesus and what got him crucified. John Robert McFarland grabbed my attention on this matter in an article in The Christian Century way back in 1990 entitled “Go Steal Me a Donkey.”

This is not Sweet Little Jesus holding lambs and children in his arms. Healing the sick and loving people don’t get you crucified, but challenging the political and economic foundations that society is built upon will get one in a lot of hot water immediately. These verses from Matthew 21 are bookended by donkey stealing and Jesus physically turning over tables in the temple and driving the money changers out because they have claimed what belongs to God for their own purposes. This Jesus is not a wimp. He is one with the courage to challenge anyone and anything that is contrary to God’s wills and to pay the price for his convictions.

Tax day in the US fell within Holy Week this year, and that makes looking at Jesus’ theology of economics even more real. In “Go Steal Me a Donkey” McFarland points out that both socialists and capitalists claim Jesus, but he isn’t either. The former believe in collective ownership of property and the latter in individual ownership. Jesus believes everything belongs to God. In the very next chapter of Matthew (22:15-22) the Pharisees challenge Jesus on the tax issue. They try to trap him with a question about whether it is legal to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus gives a clever politically correct answer. He says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” That sounds like a safe answer, but Jesus’ actions tell us he knows the bottom line on his 1040 for the IRS would be a big fat zero.

Would he get audited? You bet, but he would do it anyway. Why would he do that knowing the trouble it would cause? Because he knows everything belongs to God, including donkeys and upper rooms in which to celebrate the Passover. Jesus borrows what he needs because it all belongs to God. There’s an old adage about borrowing that is so familiar we often think it should be in the Bible. But “neither a borrower nor a lender be” is not biblical. It actually comes from Polonius in “Hamlet,” not Jesus. In fact, what Jesus says about borrowing and lending is a direct contraction of Shakespeare. “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Matt. 5:42). “If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again” (Luke 6:34).

Jesus borrows: a manger for a cradle, boats to teach in, houses to heal in, and a tomb to be buried in. He doesn’t ask for what he needs, he commands. When he borrows his disciples, he says, “Come, follow me, Now!” No time to bury the dead. Do they leave their families and their livelihood in exchange for some promise of great wealth and fame? No, he says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” When he borrows Peter and Andrew from their fishing nets, when James and John leave their father Zebedee in his boat, when Levi leaves the tax office, do you think Jesus plans on returning them? When you borrow a cup of sugar to bake a cake, do take the sugar out of the cake and return it? I hope we don’t return a used Kleenex after we “borrow” it! When Jesus claims us followers and disciples, there’s no turning back. It’s for keeps, because everything, including you and me, belongs to God–always has, always will.

That’s the bad news. What we think is ours isn’t. We are just stewards and caretakers of what belongs to God, and what’s worse is that selfishly trying to cling to what is “ours” will keep us out of the Kingdom of God. That’s why Jesus says it is harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. It’s why Pope Francis is cracking down on Bishops who build multi-million dollar mansions for themselves while millions starve.

But here’s the good news. We can borrow freely from God whatever we need in life. God gives us Jesus as an example of what that ultimate borrowing of things that really matter in life looks like; and Holy Week is the best example ever of how that works. We see it demonstrated throughout Jesus’ ministry, but it is concentrated in those final days of his life between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. We’ve seen it when Jesus is napping in the boat during a storm. His disciples are freaking out, but Jesus is sound asleep because he has borrowed the peace of God. When those same disciples try to talk him into homesteading on the mountain of Transfiguration where it’s safe and comfortable, Jesus borrows the courage from God to set his face toward Jerusalem and the cross; and he never looks back.

When he is confronted with physical violence and arrest in Jerusalem, he borrows the peace of God again not to resist violence with more violence. His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is not for his own safety and comfort, but he borrows integrity and obedience from God as he prays “Not my will but your will be done.” And then on that dark Friday afternoon, the supreme gift of grace is borrowed again when he says, “Father forgive them” to the men who have nailed him to that cruel cross. Jesus doesn’t say, “I forgive you,” and that’s significant. In mortal agony from those wounds, I believe it was humanly impossible for that amazing compassion to come from Jesus himself, just as it is often impossible for us to forgive those who hurt us badly. Jesus couldn’t forgive them, but he knew someone who could–and that he was free to borrow that strength and grace from his God.

We know that source of grace as well, and we are invited to borrow from that eternal God whenever and wherever we want with no interest and no expectation to repay the debt. The borrowing Messiah of Holy Week teaches us that when we are free of possessions that possess us, when we are free of fears and insecurities from the cares of trying to control our own lives, then we are free to live and free to die. Because we know everything belongs to God, including us, now and forever. Holy Week and Easter invite us again to borrow the gift of grace, the gift of new life.

Adapted from a sermon preached at New Life United Methodist Church, Columbus, OH, Palm Sunday 2014.

Life Lessons I Didn’t Learn in Class

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

Overhearing the Gospel is a great title for a book on preaching by Fred Craddock. Craddock argues that an indirect and subtle approach to hearing the difficult truth of the Christian Gospel is often the most effective method of communication. It’s why Jesus relied so heavily on parables to share his truth. Stories have a way of bypassing prejudices and ideology by touching hearers at a deeper level than purely rational arguments can do. Stories personalize concepts and appeal to emotion and morality in a holistic way that is more persuasive than a more direct imperative approach.

That’s why listeners who first heard Jesus urge them to “love their enemies” or “turn the other cheek” probably said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” But when convicted by the truth of the Good Samaritan story, even the lawyer who started out planning to “test” Jesus had to admit the real neighbor in the story was not the religious leaders, as one would expect The surprise hero of that parable is the hated enemy from Samaria who showed compassion on the man who was mugged and left for dead by robbers on the road to Jericho. (See Luke 10:25-37).

I learned some great life lessons via the indirect approach 50 years ago in high school. Blessed with a good memory, I was always a “good” student, which simply means I knew how to play the education game well and regurgitate answers that teachers wanted to hear on tests. But I realized recently that some values I learned in “extra-curricular” activities were far more important than any quadratic equations I solved or verbs I learned to conjugate. The irony is that the lessons I value most from my high school education came from our choral music teacher, Walter Kehres. What makes it ironic is that I cannot and never have been able to carry a tune in a bucket. I am also not very technologically or mechanically gifted; so I don’t remember how I ended up as one of the students asked to run the light board in our school auditorium, but I’m very grateful I did.

As part of the stage crew I had a priceless opportunity to participate in two major musical productions. To explain the value of that experience I need to set some historical context. I attended high school in a small, conservative rural Ohio community from 1960-1964 during a time of great tension and change in American history. My wife and I recently saw the excellent movie, “The Butler,” that is yet another example of the power of narrative. The film covers the history of the Civil Rights Movement from Eisenhower to Obama, and was a painful reminder to me of how isolated and unaware of what was happening in our own country I was in my youth.

That isolation was a function of the culture and ideology that defined my community and my education. For racism to be addressed directly as part of our academic curriculum would have been met with strong opposition from the community. That’s why the indirect approach to controversial issues was necessary and effective. I will never know for sure if addressing social justice issues like racism and multiculturalism even factored into our music director’s decision when he was choosing the shows to be performed each year. I hope it was, but what I do know is that my junior year our big musical production for the year was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s great musical “South Pacific.”

Here’s how Wikipedia describes “South Pacific:” “It centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant’s song, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”.”

Here are the lyrics to that prophetic song:
“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, you’ve got to be taught from year to year, it’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear, you’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a diff’rent shade, you’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, before you are six or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate, You’ve got to be carefully taught!”

Had that message about racism and an inter-racial couple been preached from any pulpit or taught in any classroom in my hometown it would never have been tolerated by anyone, including me. But hearing those words sung dozens of time in rehearsals and performances in the context of a “story” sneaked them past the censors and filters in my head. The words and emotions of that great show are so memorable that 50 years later, I can still sing most of the score to this day (fear not, only in the shower).

I have no idea if that production affected anyone else the way it did me, and the message was so subtle, or I was so obtuse, that I didn’t realize until recently what am impact it had on me, even though I’ve quoted “Carefully Taught” in numerous sermons and classes over the years. In that high school auditorium when I thought I was just running a light board, seeds of tolerance and social justice were planted in my head and heart that slowly began to germinate. That made me open to more direct messages and experiences about racial equality in the very formative years of my formal and informal education that followed.

I don’t know if Walter Kehres, our music director, is still living or not, but wherever he is, I send a very belated thank you from one of the most non-musical students whose life you helped change forever.

Maturing Faith

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

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (I Corinthians 13:11)

Those words of St. Paul came to mind as I was reflecting on changes in my life. I do that a lot these days as I look back on my 67 years of life experience. One particular reflection was sparked by a friend’s post on Facebook about the great hymn, “O Young and Fearless Prophet,” which is one of my favorites. The prophetic words by S. Ralph Harlow are as relevant today, if not more so, than when written in the early days of the great depression (1931). It’s not a popular hymn with most congregations because it hits too close to home when it says things like, “we betray so quickly and leave thee there alone;” or “help us stand unswerving against war’s bloody way, where hate and lust and falsehood hold back Christ’s holy sway.”

And it gets better. Verse three concludes with “forbid false love of country that blinds us to his call, who lifts above the nations the unity of all.” And verse four says, “Stir up in us a protest against our greed for wealth, while others starve and hunger and plead for work and health; where homes with little children cry out for lack of bread, who live their years sore burdened beneath a gloomy dread.” Those are words that would make both the Hebrew prophets and contemporary ones proud.

What’s that have to do with I Corinthians and thinking like a child? You see I never heard about the prophets or the social gospel in the churches where I grew up. My favorite hymn as a child was at the other end of the theological spectrum, “Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war.” It pains me to admit that, but it also gives me a sense of hope that change and conversion are possible. I believe Paul is reflecting on his own amazing conversion in that verse about childish and adult faith.

I know some people would call it back sliding rather than a conversion, but I am constantly amazed and grateful when I remember where I came from and where I am now on my faith journey. My entire high school received propaganda from the John Birch Society, and I had been taught no critical skills to even question the truth of such a hate-filled world view. If you aren’t familiar with the Birchers they were, as a friend of mine describes them, “somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.” Think of them as the Tea Party on steroids. For me, to travel from that place to a more liberal and universal understanding of God and the world, thanks to many mentors, is one of the richest blessings of my life. My former self was fearful like a child, and while I have a long way yet to go in my faith walk, my current trust in a tolerant and merciful God is a more adult faith that I thank God for daily.

What that says to me is that a God who took a childish Christian killer named Saul and transformed him into the greatest missionary the church has ever known can also take a small-town kid like me with a narrow view of the world and of the Gospel and broaden my horizons. A great God who can do that can also bridge the seemingly hopeless divisions between the political and theological factions in our divided nation and world today.

To “put an end to childish things” means to mature in our faith, a life-long task for all of God’s people, individually and collectively. It means growing beyond a self-focused concern for my own personal salvation to a universal faith that demands justice and mercy for all of God’s children, not just people who look and think like me. That’s not a new thing. Deutero Isaiah described it 500 years before Christ when he said, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isa. 49:6)

The Hebrew people loved thinking they were God’s chosen people, and they were; but the prophets and Jesus challenge them and us to re-interpret what it means to be chosen. God’s people are not chosen for special privilege. We are chosen to be God’s servants and messengers of a grown-up Gospel that is inclusive, not exclusive; that cannot rest in material or spiritual comfort as long as there is suffering and injustice for any of God’s creation.

My own faith journey is perhaps best captured by the contrast between the militaristic imagery of my childhood theme song, “Onward Christian Soldiers” and another great hymn, “Lead On, O King Eternal.” The latter by Ernest W. Shurtleff includes these powerful words: “For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums; with deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.”

As we, let’s hope, near the end of the longest war in American history, my prayer is for an adult faith that will ask hard questions about what we have gained in the war on terror and at what cost. To ask such questions is in no way to dishonor the sacrifices made by the men and women who have served in that war. I would argue that the greatest honor we can bestow on those who have suffered and died in the service of our country is to rededicate ourselves to the peaceful ways of Christ. Harlow’s prayer is our prayer today, as the hymn concludes this way: “O young and fearless Prophet, we need thy presence here, amid our pride and glory to see thy face appear; once more to hear thy challenge above our noisy day, again to lead us forward along God’s holy way.” May it be so.

“Sent,” John 20:19-22, Micah 6:8

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

In John 20:21 Jesus says, “As God has sent me, so I send you.” Let me share a couple stories about why and how the church is sent in mission and service. I walked into the church last Friday and smelled the wonderful aroma of 8 large pots of soup being prepared to feed hungry people at the Church for All People in downtown Columbus. Jerome UMC provides those 8 pots of soup and other food every Friday of the year in a ministry called Soup for the Soul. I did some quick math and realized that adds up to about 400 hundred pots of soup each year that serve homeless and hungry people.

The Appalachian Service Project team (ASP) recently spent a weekend in Guyan Valley, W.Va. One of the people ASP served this year was Mary, an 80 year-old retired school employee. Mary lives in a modest modular home, one of the neatest and cleanest the ASP team says they’ve seen in the 10 years they’ve been doing this work. But Mary’s house needed repairs that she couldn’t afford and her son could not do because of health concerns. Mary now has a new roof and porch thanks to ASP, and she was so grateful she cried that this group of total strangers would give of their time and effort to help her. But Mary had a deeper need. She’s lonely, and in the words of one of the missionaries, “would talk all day if we would listen… and we DID.” He summed it up very well when he said, ‘our mission work is not about the work we do, but the feeling that we give people that someone cares. Mary understood that and now we do.”

Two of our church members just came back yesterday from a medical mission trip to Haiti. They were there last fall too and got stranded for a few days by Hurricane Sandy. They told me that turned out to be blessing because in the extra days they were “forced” to be there, they were able to reach people that they otherwise would not have. Including kids who had not eaten in four days, kids with orange hair (not for Halloween, but because that’s what malnutrition does to your hair), and a family living in an open field during that storm. They set up a tent for that family that had no shelter, and while they did that others in the group shared the Gospel through translators. A naked little boy in the family was shaking from the cold, and one of the volunteers took the shirt off her back and gave it to him. They told me, “It was the most touching thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

We don’t have to go to Haiti or Appalachia or even inner city Columbus to serve God’s children. Service opportunities are all around us everyday and are as varied and numerous as the talents represented in this room – to teach, cook, sew, paint, build Habitat homes, make music, extend hospitality to guests new to the church. Whatever your talents are, what is clear from the Scriptures that we as Christians are all called to serve others in some way. In our Scripture lesson today from John, Jesus says, ‘As God has sent me, so I send you.”

As we celebrate the wonderful mission and service the church is already doing, we have to keep asking ourselves where else is God calling us to go. To be sent means movement – it means going somewhere on a mission, with a purpose. Often being sent on an errand or a work assignment or to comfort a sick or grieving friend calls us to move out of our comfort zone and do things we’ve never tried before and would rather not do. The “As God sent me” part of John 20:21 gives me pause. Jesus was sent to the lost, the lonely; he was sent to confront people with their sin and unfaithfulness; he was sent to expose injustice and oppression; and his prophetic witness got him into a lot of hot water with people of power in his day. He was sent to sacrifice his own comfort to serve and save others – and guess what, he needs us to do the same.

Maybe teaching a class of pre-schoolers is out of your comfort zone – or visiting a nursing home – or talking about your faith to a new neighbor who lives in a house that costs a whole lot more than yours. Where is God sending you? The point is, Christian discipleship is much more than a nice warm comfortable relationship with Jesus. Jesus welcomes us into his merciful arms and loves us – but that is not our resting place — then he sends us out to do his work.

So what does the Lord require of you and me? The Hebrew prophet Micah asked that very question. In Micah 6:8 we read, “He has showed you what is good, and what the Lord requires of you is to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” The verses leading up to this verse describe the easy way the Hebrew people wanted to get right with God. They simply wanted to offer animal sacrifices on the altar at the temple and hope that would appease God and get them off the hook for any sin they had committed. Micah says, not so quick folks – God sees through our attempts to use rituals and ceremonies to cover up our lack of righteous living. Worship, rituals and ceremonies are good as far as they go – but they aren’t enough. God is much more concerned about how we live our lives Monday through Saturday than just how we spend Sunday mornings.

We all have a pretty good idea of what mercy is. That word in Micah is also sometimes translated as kindness. So I want to focus on the other two key words in that verse, Justice and Humility. We sometimes use the English word justice to mean punishment, as in “she got her just reward.” We have a department of justice that is about laws and punishment. But the biblical term “mishpat” is much broader than that. That Hebrew word for justice means fairness and righteousness – living in a right relationship with God’s will and making sure others are assured of an equitable and fair life, especially the weak and powerless. The phrase “with liberty and justice for ALL” in our pledge of allegiance reflects that vision of what life should look like for all of God’s children. And where that liberty and justice is lacking, that’s where God sends us to help make it so.

Notice Micah says we are to DO justice. Justice here is not just a noun, but a verb, an action. It’s the same idea expressed in the letter of James when he says, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.” What does doing justice look like? There was a story on NPR last week about a trailer park community in Palo Alto, California looking for justice. These hard-working people live modestly, often working more than one job to provide for their families. Their blessing and curse is that they live near Silicon Valley and developers want to displace all the residents to build luxury condos and apartments. The people in those trailer homes want to stay there because some of the best schools in California are there. Those schools are providing a way for the next generation to improve their lives. But, as the NPR commentator said, “they are confronting the harsh realities of money.“ The average home in that area costs $2 million.

Is it just that those who need the most help to break out of the cycle of poverty have fewer resources to do so? When I compare the urban school I used to tutor in to the wonderful suburban schools my grandchildren attend, it’s like two different worlds. Is that justice, fairness and equality? It’s tempting to say that’s not our problem. We’ve got enough of our own! But it is our problem if we take seriously what the Scriptures tell us God requires of us.

There was once a village on the banks of a river where people would sometimes have to be rescued who had fallen in the river somewhere upstream. As the rescues became more frequent the village built a rescue station and staffed in 24/7 and saved hundreds of lives. They were proud of their work, but one day a young woman said to the village elders, “it’s a good thing to rescue people, but I wonder what is causing people to be in the river so often. Why don’t we go upstream and find out why people are ending up in the river in the first place? Doing justice is not just rescuing the perishing, as important as those acts of mercy are. We are also called to change the systems and conditions that put people at risk for poverty, hunger, discrimination, or any other injustice. And God sends us to the ballot box, to the school board or the legislature, to write letters to the editor–to do justice.

Micah says we are also to “walk humbly with your God” – what does that mean? In a word, it’s the O word. The O word is not one we like to hear, it’s “obedience.” Humble obedience means that when God says “go” we don’t bargain or make excuses; we go where we are sent.

Does that feel overwhelming, a bit scary? It sure does to me. I preach this stuff better than I practice it. Where do we get the strength and courage to go where God is calling us to serve? This passage from John addresses that question. The disciples are afraid and for good reason. They have just seen their beloved leader brutally crucified. John tells us they are hiding from the Jews. Can’t blame them – I would too, but I wonder if they weren’t also hiding from God who wants to send them into that same world that killed Jesus? You’ve heard the advice to never play leap frog with a unicorn? Well it’s also not a good idea to play hide and seek with God. Won’t work. That’s where the phrase “you can run but you can’t hide” probably originated.

John says the doors are locked in that upper room and Jesus comes right into the room anyway. How he did that is an interesting question we could explore, but that’s not really the point. Jesus coming into that locked room means that God breaks through whatever barriers we try to put up – whatever excuses we offer: I’m too old, too young, too poor, too busy, not good enough, too scared. “Sorry,” Jesus says, “it’s your turn now.”

The best Easter sermon I ever heard was by Bishop Dwight Loder, and the phrase I remember from that sermon is this. Bishop Loder said, “Jesus was not resurrected by the church. He was not resurrected for the church. He was resurrected AS the church.” We are the body of Christ, and as such God sends us in mission and service to the least and the lost. We are transformed by the salvation of Christ, but the story doesn’t end there. We are transformed so we can go out and transform the world into a place of justice, mercy and humility.

How in God’s name can we do that? Exactly – we can only do it if we do it in God’s name and with God’s power. And here’s the good news – that power is ready and available for anyone who is willing to accept it and surrender to it.
Do you want peace in your life? We all do – real peace that only God can give, the peace that passes all human understanding. The secret to finding that peace is right here in John 20. The first thing Jesus says to the disciples is “Peace be with you.” He doesn’t send them out looking for peace on E-bay or Craig’s list; he imparts it in their hearts and then sends them out. We don’t find or create that kind of peace; it finds us, in the midst of our doubts, not after all our doubts are resolved.

How does that work? Notice what happens right after Jesus says “As God has sent me, so I send you.” “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them ‘receive the Holy Spirit.’” He breathed life into them just as God breathed life into humankind in the creation story. God’s Holy Spirit empowers before it sends us out to serve.
But here’s the catch – that powerful spirit only comes in surrender. True peace only happens when we are vulnerable enough to get up close and personal with God. You have to get very close to let someone breathe on you. The question is do we want Jesus getting that close? Invading our personal space, meddling with our priorities? That’s scary. But, if we let down our barriers and allow Christ into our hearts we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to humbly and obediently do justice and act mercifully – outside our comfort zones in the world God sends us into. To say with all the saints that have gone before us, “Here I am, Lord, send me!”

[This sermon was preached at Jerome UMC on October 27, 2013]