Category: Faith Development

Jesus and Stages of Grief

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, Faith Development

As we made our way through the passion story of Holy Week this year it occurred to me that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ last week are an interesting case study in the classic stages of grief proposed by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying.”

The stages do not occur in a linear order but ebb and flow like the phases of the moon, and we always need to remind ourselves that the Gospels are theological works, not historical biography; but given that, it strikes me that we can learn about the universal human experience of grief by studying what the Gospel writers tell us about the final days of Jesus’ earthly life.

Kubler-Ross’ stages include anger and depression which are often two sides of the same emotion – one expressed outwardly and the other turned in upon oneself. Because of that anger is easier to identify and that is true with Jesus also. The cleansing of the temple which is described in all four Gospels is one of the few times we ever see Jesus angry. He sometimes is verbally angry with the Scribes and Pharisees, but when he overturns tables and drives the money changers out of the temple with a whip that is the rare incident where Jesus is obviously and physically very angry.

Another scene which could be motivated by either anger or depression would be one of the “last words” from the cross where Jesus cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Hearing the tone of voice and seeing Jesus’ body language when he uttered these words might help us better understand his mental state at the time, but both Matthew 27 and Mark 15 describe his tone as “crying out with a loud voice,” and that is the best evidence we have.

Depression can certainly not be diagnosed from a few 3rd person accounts of Jesus’ actions, but the three incidents that come to mind when I think about that stage of grief are when Jesus weeps over the death of his friend Lazarus, when he weeps over Jerusalem and says, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.  For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:42-44). And perhaps in all four Gospels where Jesus refuses to answer any questions in his trials before Pilate, Herod, and the Chief Priests. Those incidents however I interpret more as a strong, silent resistance to the unjust power of oppression rather than depression or resignation.

The stage of grief that stymies me when it comes to Jesus is denial. If you readers have ideas about this one I would love to hear them, but for now I cannot think of examples of times where I see Jesus being in denial about his fate. He sets his face toward Jerusalem in spite of the protestations of his disciples. He stages a protest entrance into Jerusalem riding on a humble donkey, and he returns daily to teach and heal in Jerusalem that last week and to celebrate the Passover, all of which seem like acts of faithful determination and not ones of denial in any form.

The stage of bargaining seems to me to only appear in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus says, “If this cup can pass from me, please make it so,” but those words are immediately followed by “But not my will but yours be done,” which move us toward the final stage of acceptance.

It should come as no surprise that examples of acceptance are easier to find with Jesus. When Peter pulls out his sword to resist the soldiers in the garden Jesus sternly tells him to put it away. And then on the cross where it would require the greatest amount of acceptance and courage, at least 4 of the recorded “seven last words” reflect the confidence that only comes with acceptance of death as the final stage of human life.

Those four include Jesus commending his mother into the care of one of his disciples, assuring the repentant thief that he will be with Jesus in paradise that very day, commending his spirit into the hands of God, and finally saying “It is finished.” I suppose one could also make a case that forgiving his executioners is also an act of acceptance, but that amazing act of grace really defies categorization.

Grief is a very complicated emotional process, and the Kubler-Ross stages are one very helpful lens through which to understand it. I find it comforting to find connections between my own experiences of grief and those of the incarnate life of God in Jesus. For me sharing the human condition of these grief stages with Jesus affirms the reality of his humanity and also the hope for achieving some degree of acceptance of my own mortality that he exemplifies for us.

I welcome your comments and insights on any of the above.

Baring All Before God

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith Development, Lenten devotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feeding the Wolves

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, Faith Development

A familiar Native American legend has been on my mind a lot recently. It’s the one about two wolves that reside in each human. One wolf is fear and the other is love. The two wolves are in constant struggle with each other to see which will control our lives. When the elders are asked which wolf wins the inner battle the answer is “The one you feed.”

I am very concerned that the steady diet of fear being fed to us by political candidates from both parties is so pervasive that the wolf of love in all of us is being starved to death. With all the dark money stoking the flames of fear on every form of media it is very tempting to just throw our hands in the air and surrender.

Dr. Brene Brown describes our situation this way: “In times of uncertainty, it is common for leaders to leverage fear and weaponize it to their advantage…If you can keep people afraid and give them an enemy who is responsible for their fear, you can get people to do just about anything.…when we are managing during times of scarcity or deep uncertainty, it is imperative that we embrace the uncertainty…We need to be available to fact-check the stories that team members may be making up, because in scarcity we invent worse-case scenarios.” 

That reminds me of a definition of fear I learned many years ago — FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real. We all need to use our best critical thinking to not feed the fear wolf any false information. There are plenty of factual things to fear without adding bogus dishes to our diet.

The Christian church in many ways has been complicit in spreading the bad news of a fear-based theology. The misunderstanding and mistranslation of the Hebrew word “yirah” as “fear” has been used for centuries to try and literally scare the “hell” out of people, or perhaps scare people out of hell would be a better way to put it.

Fear is not a good long-term motivator of desired behavior. It only works when an external authority figure is present to enforce the threat. But fear is a fairly effective way to produce guilt in people, and that guilt technique has been used to control church members, i.e. keep them coming back to church and paying their dues. I have often said that if people really understood the Good News of grace and God’s unconditional love the church would be out of business.

The word yirah in reference to God is better understood as “awe.” We overuse he word “awesome” these days to describe anything from a sunset to a new dress, and it has lost the power of truly standing in awe of the ultimate mystery of the creative force we call God.

If we can get back to praising that Holy Mystery and the unconditional love fed to us every moment of eternity then the wolf of fear doesn’t stand a chance. That’s the life force described in I John: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” (I John 4:18)

Being nurtured by that kind of love makes it possible for humans to obey the great commandments to love God and to love our neighbors. Without that love, we are vulnerable to unscrupulous salespeople, propagandists, and politicians who use fear-inducing rhetoric and imagery to manipulate others into buying or believing what they are promoting.

Our United Methodist District Superintendent, Rev. Tim Bias, recently wrote about the power of words in his monthly newsletter. In there he shared a wonderful story about what feeding the wolf of love looks like at the micro level of interpersonal relationships. I’ve heard the story several times before, but the end of the story still brought tears of joy to my eyes. I share it here in the hope that it will feed your love wolf with the abundance that begs to be shared with others. If we keep the faith and treat everyone we meet, (yes, even our political foes) the way we want to be treated we will make more difference in the world than we will ever know.

“There was a first-year teacher at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, Minnesota. She said she had 34 students who were all dear to her. But one student stood out. His name was Mark. She said he was one in a million. He was very neat in appearance with a happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful. There was just one thing about Mark: he talked incessantly.

She had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. Every time she corrected him, he responded, “Thank you for correcting me, Teacher.”

She said, “I didn’t know what to make of it at first. But before long, I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.”

One morning her patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often. She said, “I made a first-year teacher mistake. I looked at Mark and said, ‘If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!’”

It wasn’t ten seconds later when one of the students blurted out, “Mark is talking again, Teacher.”  I hadn’t asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it.

I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened my drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark’s desk, tore off two pieces of tape, and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room. As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me. That did it! I started laughing. The class cheered as I walked back to Mark’s desk, removed the tape, and shrugged my shoulders.

His first words were, “Thank you for correcting me, Teacher.”

At the end of the year, Mark went on to fourth grade. The teacher eventually moved on to teach junior-high math. Several years passed. As Mark entered the ninth grade, Mark and the teacher met again.

She said Mark was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to the instruction on the “new math,” he did not talk as much. One Friday, things just didn’t feel right. The class had worked hard on a new concept all week, and the teacher sensed that the students were frowning, frustrated with themselves, and edgy with one another.

To stop the crankiness, she asked the students to put their books away and to take out two sheets of notebook paper. She then asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on their paper, leaving a space between each name. Then she asked them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.

It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment. As the students left the room, each one handed her their papers. Mark said, “Thank you for teaching me today, Teacher. Have a good weekend.”   That Saturday, she wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper and she listed what everyone else had said about that individual.

On Monday, at the beginning of the class, she gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. She listened as the students said things like, “Really? I never knew that meant anything to anyone!”  “I didn’t know others liked me so much.” After a few minutes, the class went back to studying math. No one mentioned those papers in class again.

It was several years later that the teacher learned that Mark had been killed in Vietnam. She had gotten word that Mark’s family wanted her to attend his funeral. At the funeral she watched and listened. One of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her and asked, “Were you Mark’s math teacher?” She nodded. He said, “Mark talked a lot about you.”

After the funeral, most of Mark’s former classmates headed to Chuck’s farmhouse for lunch. The teacher was invited to come by. Mark’s mother and father wanted to speak with her. When she arrived, they met her at her car.

“We want to show you something,” his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. “They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.” Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. She knew what it was without looking at the paper.

Mark’s mother said, “Thank you so much for doing that. As you can see, Mark treasured it.”

Mark’s classmates started to gather around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk at home.”

Chuck’s wife said, “Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album. I have mine too,”

Marilyn said.  “It’s in my diary.” Then Vicki reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. “I carry this with me at all times. I take it out and look at it every time I need encouragement. We all saved our lists.””

[Story adapted an article in The Reader’s Digest written by Sister Helen Mrosla, a Franciscan nun and the teacher in the story. The story first appeared in the Topeka Capitol-Journal in 1998.]

Try this in a small town

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

“When he (Jesus) came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.” (Luke 4:16-17)

All the discussion of country singer Jason Aldean ’s song, “Try That in a Small Town” reminded me of Jesus’ return to preach in the small town where he grew up. I flunked my first sermon in seminary preaching class, but Jesus got a much harsher response to his first message that day in Nazareth. Luke tells us Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah, and that part of his Sabbath was very well received. Verse 11 says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”

But then Jesus goes ahead and interprets the text and tells his audience that the good news he brings to the captives, the blind and the oppressed is not just for them but for all of God’s children with examples of how the prophets Elijah and Elisha went specifically to minister to gentiles in Sidon and Syria instead of to those in Israel. And just like that the crowd does a 180 and turns on him. “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.” (Verse 28). And where the Gospels of Mark and Matthew just have Jesus leaving town at that point, Luke adds these words: “They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” (Vss. 29-30)

I did a lot of research in graduate school on such negative reaction to public speaking and wrote a paper I titled “They Shoot Prophets Don’t They?” I had a personal interest in that topic having come of age in the last turbulence in American history which saw the assassinations of the two Kennedy brothers and Dr. King, all within a five year period. In my research, I became impressed with the work of Lawrence Kohlberg on moral development and the role of cognitive dissonance in persuasive communication. To my great pleasure that very research was mentioned by one of my favorite author’s, Father Richard Rohr, in his book, “Everything Belongs,” which I just happened to be listening to on the very day I started thinking about this topic again. I am humbled and thrilled that Fr. Rohr’s use of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is almost verbatim what I wrote about that research in my Ph.D. dissertation 40 years ago. The application of Kohlberg’s theories about how to effectively communicate with people who have very different moral and ethical values formed the heart of my own theory of preaching which I shared with seminary students in preaching classes over a 20 year period from 1991-2012.

I believe that theory can help us understand and bridge some of the vast divide we are experiencing in our country today. The country song controversy is very illustrative of how volatile and dangerous that divide is and has been throughout American history. I grew up in a small town and can identify with the good, bad, and ugly aspects of what that experience was and still is like. There were many positive aspects to spending the first 20 years of my life in Wapakoneta, Ohio, a small, county-seat town in very rural, very white, and very conservative northwestern Ohio. It was a very safe place where kids were free to roam all over town on our bikes. Everyone knew everyone else; so people looked out for each other’s kids. I am grateful for that age of innocence and the freedom it provided for me to enjoy a carefree childhood and adolescence.

But I am also angry about the flip side of that experience. We didn’t know what we didn’t know about the broader world outside our comfort zone. Our fathers and uncles who were survivors of the Great Depression and/or veterans of World War II certainly knew more than they shared with us about issues of race and political divisions, at least in my family. All I remember being told about why there were no people of color in our town is that “we aren’t prejudiced; those people just don’t choose to live here.” It turns out there was good reason for that. I learned many years later that one of my great uncles was a leader in the local chapter of the KKK, and just this week heard from a high school classmate that for some time there was a sign outside our town that said something to the effect “Get Your Black Ass Out of Town Before Dark.” That’s the ugly kind of small town life Aldean certainly alludes to in his song and accompanying video.

One major factor in the political chasm threatening our democracy is the rural-urban divide Aldean sings about. The life experience of small town and rural people in this country is so different from urban life that it is like living in two different countries. I addressed some of that in my post on July 18, “Culture War Games While the Planet Burns,” but I want to focus here on how to approach that reality in a constructive way. In an oversimplified description, Kohlberg’s theory of moral development I mentioned above is that there are 6 stages of moral development numbered 1-6. Stage 1 is a very self-centered stage we all start out in because that kind of selfishness is necessary for infants to survive. People in stage 1 say what is morally good is whatever is good for me. Stage 6 is the other extreme where morality is defined in a universal way to mean that moral goodness is determined by what is good for everyone and for the whole world/universe. Only people like Jesus, Mohammad, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Dr. King ever come close to stage 6.

Most people, and this is just fact, not judgment, never grow beyond a stage 3 or 4 in moral development, and that’s the problem prophets like Jesus have in small towns like Nazareth. Kohlberg’s research found that when there is a gap of 2 stages or greater in moral development between a speaker and an audience there is a major breakdown in communication. That gap creates so much cognitive dissonance, which is the perception of contradictory information and the mental stress it causes, that we consistency-loving humans will do whatever we can to reduce that stress. That often means simply ignoring the one causing the cognitive dissonance or, as the gap widens, arguing, disparaging or insulting the speaker, and ultimately, if the gap is too great either driving the speaker out of town as happens to Jesus, or in the most tragic situations actually killing him or her, which again finally happens to Jesus on the cross.

The major lesson for us Americans right now is to turn down the heat in our political discourse by bridging the gaps in our cultural, moral, worldviews. Kohlberg concludes that we cannot communicate with each other until the gap between us is one stage of moral development or less. In other words a speaker who is a stage 4 trying to communicate with a stage 2 or 3 person must meet that person where he or she is and communicate respectfully with that person in ways that are not threatening to them. We must find common ground to stand on before we can hope to understand one another. For example, all humans have a basic need for what Abraham Maslow calls psychological and physical security and safety. People in small towns and big cities all share that need, and to understand that we all express that need in different ways goes a long way toward bridging our differences on other values and beliefs. And when our feeling of safety is threatened by people who look, act, and think differently than we do, we need to resist the temptation to attack, blame, ridicule, or judge them. The Golden Rule to treat others as we want to be treated is always a good first step in building a bridge or tearing down a wall that separates us from others.

Unfortunately it seems our human instinct is to do just the opposite when confronted with the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Social media is full of memes these days making fun of small town people and calling each other names instead of trying to understand where others are coming from. We live in very scary times and most of us don’t know how to express that fear. To do so makes us feel vulnerable and cowardly. It’s much easier and more fun to attack those we disagree with, but it only turns up the heat and the fear on both sides.

I had a very simple example of a change of just one word making a huge difference just last week. I try to avoid debates on social media because they are often unproductive and can seem endless in their back and forth nature. I expressed that reluctance to a friend that I felt a need to respond to by saying that I hate “arguing.” Her very helpful response to me was, “This is not an argument, it’s a discussion.” That one shift in perspective moved the conversation from a win-lose situation to a productive exploration of where we could find common ground.

We need more discussion and less arguing, more willingness to meet others where they are in a spirit of understanding. From there we can both learn and grow from each other and help each other move to a higher stage of moral development where we all strive to do what is best for everyone. The alternative is to end up like “The two cats of Kilkenny. Each thought there was one cat too many. So they fought and they fit; they clawed and they bit, until except for their nails and the tips of their tails, instead of two cats there weren’t any.”

Presidents’ Day, Ash Wednesday, and Lent

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, Faith Development

My brain was working overtime on Presidents’ Day Monday.  I just finished Jon Meacham’s excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln, “And There Was Light.”  Ash Wednesday is only two days away, and a Monday book club I am in is reading “Saving Us,” an excellent book on climate change by Katharine Hayhoe.  I think the latter probably explains the song I had running in my head most of Monday morning.  I have always found a lot of meaning in song lyrics, including several from Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals that our choral music department produced many decades ago when I was in high school.  Monday’s song was the title song from “Oklahoma,” or rather one line from that song:  “We know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand.  You’re doing fine Oklahoma, Oklahoma OK.”

Those words got me wondering what a difference it would make if we humans made a simple paradigm shift to believe we belong to the land instead of vice versa?  The whole notion of individuals or corporations owning pieces of the earth was a foreign concept to Native Americans when it was introduced by the European invaders, and given the way we have raped and pillaged the earth and started endless wars over “ownership” of the land it seems the “uncivilized” peoples may have had the better idea.  

The Lincoln story of course deals in great detail about one of those horrible wars fought over expansion of and control over the vast territory that makes up over a third of our current United States geography. The final question that pushed the slave owners to resort to violence was whether the western territories would be settled as slave or free? The best minds of the 19th century, men like Henry Clay and Lincoln could not find a peaceful resolution to that moral and existential question of human equality, and the racism upon which the U.S. Constitution was built still plagues us today. I am reminded of Exodus 20:5 which says, “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.” It has been far longer than three or four generations since Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation. The institution of slavery was made illegal, but the dreadful racism at its core is still visiting iniquity on us. How long will it be until that evil has been exorcised from American hearts?

Much has been written about the spiritual revival going on the last two weeks at Asbury University in Kentucky.  Whether that event is a true revival or just a very long worship service remains to be seen.  Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits” in Matthew 7:16, and my litmus test for the fruits a true revival will bear is succinctly stated in Micah 6:8 where we read,

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
    and to walk humbly with your God?”

Ash Wednesday is but a few hours away as I write these words now, and that day marks the beginning for Christians of a 40 day preparation of our hearts and minds for the celebration of Easter.  Forty days holds great symbolism for those of us in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Great times of testing and reflecting on the meaning of our faith are often identified in Hebrew and Christian Scripture by the number forty.  In the flood story the rain fell for 40 days.  Moses was on Mt. Sinai for 40 days when he received the 10 Commandments.  The Israelites wandered in the wilderness 40 years on their way to the Promised Land.  Jesus was tempted by Satan for 40 days in the wilderness immediately after his baptism.  And it was forty days after Easter when the resurrected Christ ascended to Heaven.  

In our troubled times we dare not cheapen the forty days of Lent by just “giving up” something  we should never have had in the first place.  To make Lent 2023 a significant time of spiritual awakening and renewal of a right spirit within us we need to look deeply into our souls and do an honest inventory of what’s in our spiritual pantry.  Are the fruits of the spirit fresh in my life or are they rotting and moldy from lack of use.  Galatians says, “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  (5:22-23) Those are all wonderful qualities the world desperately needs, but what do they really mean for our lives if they are to be more than pious platitudes?  And what about those two words ‘by contrast” at the beginning of that list? Sometimes we can learn what certain words mean by exploring their antonyms.  So it may be helpful to look at what Galatians has to say about other human qualities that are the opposites of the fruits of the spirit? 

The verses preceding 22 and 23 say, “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. “ (Verses19-21).

What if this Lent we made a commitment to pick one of the fruits of the spirit to focus on for our spiritual growth? Pick just one so as not to be overwhelmed and look for examples in others who embody love, joy, peace, patience, or one of the other gifts. Pick just one. Pray about it and for it. These are gifts, something we receive from God, not something we can just make up our minds to do. And when we fail to live generously, for example, as we most certainly will, don’t give up, but ask for grace and forgiveness and try again.

One of the best ways to learn a new behavior is to model our own actions after someone we admire.  When I was thinking about these intertwined themes of Presidents’ Day and Lent I was reminded of another President who has been in the news this week.  Jimmy Carter has gone into hospice care and is nearing the end of a long and remarkable life.  President Carter was not a very successful president by worldly standards.  He was denied a second term by an economic downturn and the Iranian hostage crisis.  But oh what a mark he has made on the world in the 43 years since he left office.  He and Rosalynn, his wife and partner of 75 years have lived simple lives of service to others, building homes for the poor with their own hands, building peace by applying their Christian values to international crises, being honored with a Nobel Peace Prize, and all the while continuing to live in the same humble home and teaching the Bible in their church and with their lives. 

We would all do well to pick a fruit of the spirit exemplified in the life of the Carters and spend this Lent nurturing and watering that fruit so it can multiply and feed the souls of those around us. 

2023 Words: Practice Gratitude

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, Faith Development, hope, purpose, self-care, spiritual discipline

 I had the privilege again this past Advent to create liturgies for the lighting of each advent candle for our church. When we got to the third Sunday and the candle of joy (12/11/22 post) I asked some of my fellow fans of Dr. Brené Brown to help me find what she has said about joy.  My friend Jean Wright came through with this gem from Dr. Brown: “In our research we found that everyone who showed a deep capacity for joy had one thing in common: They practiced gratitude…A wild heart can beat with gratitude and lean in to pure joy without denying the struggle in the world.  It’s not always easy or comfortable – but what makes joy possible is a front made of love and a back built of courage.” 

There’s an old joke about someone asking how to get to Carnegie Hall. The answer is “practice, practice, practice.”  Well, apparently the way to get to Joy is also, like any other life skill, to practice. Since I am by nature a skeptical, glass half empty kind of person, learning gratitude for me is something that requires lots and lots of practice. Practice is hard.  Playing scales on the piano is work. Practicing on the putting green for hours is not nearly as much fun as hitting the crap out of a ball on the driving range.  But no one will master the piano or lower their golf score without those basic practices.

It is no coincidence that my friend Jean Wright’s daughter, Katy, recently shared her wisdom about gratitude that she learned from podcasts with Kate Bowler and Kelly Corrigan who indirectly address the practice of gratitude by dividing life experiences into two categories, the “happies” and the “crappies.” The trick, of course, is paying at least an equal amount of attention to the former as we do the latter. 

One of my mentors in grad school, Dr. Bill Brown, developed a rhetorical theory that helps with this task. He calls it “attention shifting,” which I will oversimplify here by saying it means intentionally shifting our focus or attention from one thing to another. I was reminded recently of another related skill for keeping things in perspective and practicing gratitude when my wife and I attended a high school production of “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” produced by the excellent Theater Arts Department at Thomas Worthington High School in Worthington, OH. Our great nephew Ryan Buckley has been part of that program for all four of his high school years, and we have enjoyed many plays there; but one scene in this production really resonated with me.

The Kindergarten play is based on the book by the same title by Robert Fulghum. I have read most of Fulghum’s stuff; so this story was familiar, but I must have been ready to hear it again. It’s a little long for a blog post, but I am going to include it here in full because it is so good.

Fulghum writes: “In the summer of 1959, at the Feather River Inn near the town of Blairsden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California.  A resort environment.  And I, just out of college, have a job that combines being the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables.  The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment.  He and I do not get along.  I think he’s a fascist who wants pleasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far.  I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own.

One week the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day.  Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls.  To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our check.  I was outraged.

On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11:00 P.M., and the night auditor had just come on duty.  I went into the kitchen to get a bite to eat and saw notes to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.

That tears it.  I quit!  For lack of a better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman.
I declared that I have had it up to here; that I am going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him.

I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and who does he think he is anyhow and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for God’s sake and the whole hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff to the pigs.  Something like that.  I’m still mad about it.

I raved on this way for twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here.  You get the drift.  My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs, and much profanity.  A call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses.

As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes.  Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman.  He’s got good reason to look sorrowful.  Survivor of Auschwitz.  Three years.  German Jew.  Thin, coughed a lot.  He liked being alone at the night job–gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and, even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to–all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted.  To him, a feast.  More than that, there’s nobody around at night to tell him what to do.  In Auschwitz he dreamed of such a time.  The only person he sees at work is me, the nightly disturber of his dream.  Our shifts overlap for an hour.  And here I am again.  A one-man war party at full cry.

“Fulchum, are you finished?”

“No.  Why?”

Lissen, Fulchum.  Lissen me, lissen me.  You know what’s wrong with you?  It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.”

“So what’s wrong with me?”

“Fulchum, you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire–then you got a problem.  Everything else is inconvenience.  Life is inconvenient.  Life is lumpy.

“Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems.  You will live longer.  And will not annoy people like me so much.  Good night.”

In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.

* * *

Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with a truth so hard.  Years later I heard a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest describe what the moment of enlightenment was like and I knew exactly what he meant.  There in that late-night darkness of the Feather River Inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.

For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks:  “Fulchum.  Problem or inconvenience?”

I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality.  Life is lumpy.  And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump.  One should learn the difference.  Good night, Sig.

As I reflect on the year 2022 it is very easy for me to see the entire year through the lens of the last couple of months which have been rather crappy for me. Following my 76th birthday at the end of October my 77th trip around the sun began with an unexpected hospital stay because of a very serious urinary tract infection. That urinary infection has turned out to be one that is very hard to get rid of and has been bothering me off and on for about seven weeks now. Because of that it has been easy for me to throw a pity party for myself if I forget to keep my focus on the larger scheme of things. This illness is just an inconvenience. Other than the time I spent in the hospital and I a few days after that, I have been able to continue my normal daily activities. Those activities included the aforementioned opportunities to create Advent liturgies for worship in our church. And by sharing those liturgies in my blog, they have also been used by a number of other readers and worship leaders, for which I am grateful.  I even got a bit of a chuckle each week during Advent when I noticed that the number of clicks on my Advent liturgies always seemed to go up about Thursday or Friday. I remember from my days of active pastoral ministry those were the days of the week when I suddenly realized I needed some help with worship resources for the coming Sunday.

I also realized this week that part of the attention shifting/gratitude practice is keeping my focus on the big picture and not just what is immediately in front or behind me. By paying too much attention to my recent illness I had completely forgotten about an amazing therapeutic golf program I became a part of this summer. That program is quite appropriately called “Fore Hope.“ In brief, this program pairs a wonderful volunteer “caddie” with each golfer. These caddies help the golfers with whatever that individual needs, from loading clubs on the golf cart, putting the ball on the tee, hunting for wayward balls, or literally holding the golfer up while he or she swings if there are balance issues. Having the opportunity to be a part of that program has given me a lot of hope and a new lease on life because I have been able to do something that I dearly love, which I thought was gone forever because of my health concerns. It has enabled me to play golf again with my son, and for the first time with two of my grandsons, and to my surprise as an introvert it also made me a part of a whole new community of friends.

I played my last golf with that group in mid-October and could not have written a more satisfying script for that evening. It was chilly, as October evenings are want to be in Ohio, and I almost wimped out and didn’t go; but I am so glad that I did. You see it turned out to be one of those magical times on the golf course when every putt found its way into or very close to the cup. And what is so special about the Fore Hope Golf community is that everybody is a cheerleader. We don’t keep score; so there is no insidious competition, and when any player makes a good shot everyone genuinely affirms that accomplishment.

But here’s the thing—about three weeks later I was flat on my back in the hospital and in the ensuing recovery from that experience, because I did not practice gratitude, I forgot all about the sheer joy I felt sharing those days on the golf course with my new friends. So for me, at least, an important part of the practice of gratitude is paying attention more often to the happies, and not letting the crappies which come along for all of us knock those moments of joy out of my awareness.

Thank You 2022 Readers

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, Faith Development

2022 has certainly been a roller coaster ride in many different ways. Many of the intangibles in life are impossible to quantify. That’s why I am drawn to have some hard, countable things in life, and thanks to WordPress this blog is one of those things. In that regard 2022 has been an incredible success for peacefullyharsh, and I have all of you readers to thank for that.

When I started writing these posts 11 years ago I was thrilled if I had 50 views per month of my posts. In fact it took me 4 years to break the 1000 mark for total views in a year. That was 2014, and now 8 years later 2022 is on track for over 12,200 views, a 20% increase over last year’s previous best record of 10,057. Those views in 2022 came from 103 different countries on six continents. I am so humbled and grateful that our sometimes troublesome technology makes all that possible.

One of my many blessings in 2022 was to discover “The Cottage,” a blog written by theologian Diana Butler Bass. I highly recommend her provocative and inspiring work. For her final post of 2022 Diana listed the posts from “The Cottage” that have attracted the most readership. Her top five are much more profound than mine, but she got me wondering, mostly for my own curiosity, what my top five posts of 2022 were.

So, for what it’s worth, here are the five posts from peacefullyharsh that had the most views in 2022. I’ve included the date each was originally posted in case you want to look any of them up:

1. Schism: Ecclesiastical Divorce, posted September 12

2. Respectful Disagreement, February 12

3. Dis-united: Realism vs Aspirations, May 30

4. Prayer of Lament as War Begins—Again! February 23

5. Things I Never Asked My Father, June 18

Thank you, dear readers, and to you all my wishes and prayers are for a blessed new year of peace, joy, hope and love.

Just Like Us: A Boy with a Lunch, Sermon on John 6:1-15

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith Development, purpose, Sermon

Note: if you would like to watch the recorded version of this sermon it can be found at nwumc.com/live. The sermon starts about 2/3 of the way through the recording.

I don’t often do it but sometimes I sit in the theater and watch the credits roll after a movie ends, partly to figure out who all these young actresses and actors are, but I also get a kick out of how many different kinds of people it takes to make a movie. I get a chuckle out of titles like “grip,” “key grip,” “gaffer,” and “best boy.” I’ve never been curious enough to google those terms before, but I did learn this week that the obviously sexist term “best boy” means the senior electrician, second in the hierarchy to the gaffer, who is the chief electrician. That’s your trivia lesson for today.

The other fun thing about the movie credits, and there is a point here, I promise, are the minor characters who are listed with descriptions like “bartender,” “taxi driver,” or “second police officer.” If they made a movie about our Gospel lesson for today from John there would be a listing for a minor character, “boy with lunch.”

Here’s John’s brief mention of this boy in case you missed it. When Jesus asks, “How shall we feed all these people?”  “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.”  This is all we hear about this boy.  No name.  No explanation about why he has such a strange assortment of food with him.  Who eats five loaves of bread and two fish for lunch?  Maybe he was on his way home from the grocery?  Why does this kid not even appear in any of the other Gospels?  The feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle story that appears in all four Gospels and Mark and Matthew even tell it twice, but none of the others mention this boy and his food.  

We don’t know if he was a boy scout doing his good deed for the day and gave his food up willingly.  Did Andrew smell the fish the boy was trying to hide under his cloak?  Did the boy’s mom or dad have to nudge him to share what he had?   Did the disciples somehow shame him into it?  Did his example inspire others to share their stash of food?  That’s my favorite explanation.  Don’t we all carry an extra breakfast bar or some trail mix with us “just in case?”  Most women I know have a whole assortment of things in their purses. I know my wife, a former Girl Scout, certainly does.  And if this lad’s example inspired others to share what little they had till everyone was fed, isn’t that a miracle itself?

This is not the only time the Gospel writers drop in a reference to a nameless person to pique our interest.  Did you know there’s a streaker in the Gospels?  The Gospel of Mark includes this line right after the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Mark 14:51 says, “A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him,but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.”  And even more curious is the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus in all three synoptic Gospels.  Mark and Matthew even say of her,

“Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” And yet thanks to the patriarchal rulers of the church for centuries she is mostly forgotten.  

I found something very helpful in a book I read recently by Brian McLaren to describe the dilemma about how to interpret Scripture.  McLaren suggests we need to take a literary approach to biblical stories and not a literal one. 

Here’s part of what McLaren says: “The literary approach begins with this assumption: Jesus must have been so extraordinary as to become legendary. The Latin root of the word legendary means read, so the word suggests, ‘This person is so extraordinary that people will read about him or her in the future. ‘The word legendary can also mean fictitious. And many of us feel the tension between extraordinary and fictitious every time we read the gospels. When traditional Christians tell us that we have to take every word, every detail as literal fact, we find that hard to do, as much as we might like to. But that doesn’t mean we must throw out the gospels—and Jesus—entirely.”

I like the way McLaren describes that approach because of the power stories have to affect us holistically – that is, to move us emotionally and ethically, not just rationally or logically. And what’s more, stories are easy to remember and pass along. Remember, none of the Gospels were written until decades after Jesus’ resurrection.  So stories about Jesus passed from person to person were what gave those early Christians the courage to keep the faith in spite of horrible persecution by the Roman Empire. 

And consider this story about the boy with a lunch; there’s nothing logical about giving up my lunch with no promise that I’ll get it back or even more crazy to believe I’ll get more back counting the leftovers.  A literary approach doesn’t make Bible stories less “true.”  Truth with a capital T is more than just cold hard facts.  We feel Truth in our hearts, not just our heads.  A tear in our eye when we hear a special song or witness an act of compassion reminds us that whatever builds the blessed community and makes for peace and justice is True, and anything that destroys community is not the Truth Jesus meant when he said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”  

How many of you are or were Beatles fans?  I have a trivia question for you.  Which Beatles’ song mentions a preacher?  Here’s a hint:  “Father McKenzie, (pause) writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear, No one comes near.”  Ok, that’s a little depressing.  The song is “Eleanor Rigby,” but it’s the refrain of that song that comes to mind when I think of this crowd that comes to Jesus when he and his disciples are trying to find a quiet place for some much needed R&R.  Mark’s account of this story says they were so busy teaching and healing that they didn’t even have time to eat.  So the disciples were hungry too.  And the refrain to Eleanor Rigby speaks to that hunger.  It says “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”

Jesus sees the crowd coming and immediately recognizes their hunger.  It’s not just hunger for pumpernickel and sardines; it’s a deep hunger for the bread of life.  “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”  Neither John nor the Beatles tell us where they come from, but we know to whom they come – the church, and that doesn’t mean this building or The Church for All People, NNEMAP, or the Manna Café; it means the Universal Worldwide Church, the body of Christ that alone can satisfy our deepest hunger.  

But of course we do know where some of the lonely/hungry people come from.  They come from Wright Elementary School, from Abby Church and other neighborhoods right in our zip code, from homeless shelters and from people who are just down on their luck.  They come as refugees from violence in Central America, or from war – Ukrainians and Russians alike.        They are victims of Hurricane Ian and climate refugees from Sub-Saharan Africa.  All the lonely people, where do they all come from? And like the startled disciples we ask, “Where are we to buy food for all these people? We’re having enough trouble just dealing with our own hunger, grief, and loneliness!”

But you know what?  Those lonely people can feed us also.  Our amazing Brown Bag Lunch crew has provided thousands of lunches to families in our neighborhood over the years, but listen to these stories of sharing in return.  Denise Gorden told me of a day she and Doris were invited in to share a snack with an Iraqi family on the brown bag route. “With so little,” she said, “They brought out fruit and other goodies for us to eat. It was very moving.”

And Doris told me that once, “On a very hot day- One second grader on the BBL route saw me getting out of the church van with lunches and ran back inside his apartment and gave me a bottle of water. He said, “Ms. Dorrie- (He calls me Dorrie since it’s easier to pronounce)  looks like you need some help- it’s too hot today, drink some water so you can keep going. On a separate day, during reading buddies- we sat down to read books outside under a large tree in front of their home, and he said, “Ms. Dorrie, here is a bottle of water for you. Since you’re giving food to everyone, why don’t you take some of mine, here are some cookies. Eat with us and then I will read stories to you.” 

Our current sermon series is exploring how the characters in the Bible are “Just Like Us.”  So what can we learn about ourselves from this unnamed boy with a lunch?  How is he just like us?

I remember my first dramatic roles in elementary school.  We did two short plays.  In one I was the star as Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up.  That’s probably why I’ve been so short all my life!  In the second play my only part was from off stage where I was to make bird noise sound effects at the proper time. My prop was a small whistle shaped like a bird.  You filled it with water and blew into it to make chirping sounds.  Nothing to it, right?  Only one problem; before it was time for the birds to chirp I got thirsty and drank the water in the whistle; and those birds never chirped.  Mrs. Kay, our teacher was not pleased.  It turns out that “small” part of making bird noises was just as important as starring as Peter Pan.

To borrow a phrase from Donatos Pizza, every part counts.  Every voice in the choir or bell in the bell choir contributes to the whole musical sound.  The person who sanitizes the Operating Room prior to surgery is just as important as the surgeon or the anesthesiologist.  It’s a team effort.

The nameless boy in John 6 is used by Jesus just as much as Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene.  Most of us are fairly anonymous in the world’s scheme of things.  We are more like the gaffer or the key grip than Lady Gaga or Matthew McConaughey.   To paraphrase Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg, “The world will little note nor long remember what we do here,” but God will; because every one of us counts.  We can all make a difference to someone by simply sharing what we have and who we are.  Notice in this story that Jesus doesn’t ask the boy to give more than he has; that would be very unfair.  Jesus simply asks the boy to share what he has.  After all, we are just giving back to God what God has given us.  It isn’t our stuff anyway.

When we start thinking we own parts of God’s creation we get possessive and worry about losing it or that we don’t have enough.  We live in a scarcity mindset.  But when we live in
God’s abundance and share what God has given us there is enough to feed 5000 people and have enough leftovers to feed the next bunch of hungry people already coming down the road. 

Jesus never asks us to give more than we have, just all that we have, just as he gave his all for us. 

We are all like the boy with his lunch.  We all count – nameless or not, because God knows our name and knows we can all make a huge difference in the world. 

We recently passed the day on the calendar marked Fall Equinox, but we don’t need a calendar to tell us that the hours of daylight we have now are shorter each day and the temperatures are dropping.  Calendars help us count our days, but it is up to us to make our days count.  You don’t have to be a biblical or other kind of heroine or hero.  Notice most of the characters in the Bible are just like us, flawed and fallible human beings who remind us that all of us have what it takes to make a difference in the lives of those around us.

Jesus himself was a poor peasant boy who never traveled more than 200 miles from the tiny village where he was born, and yet his disciples all over the world will feast at his table and remember his call upon our lives on this World Communion Sunday.   As we gather at his table today, pray for God’s guidance to show you how to maximize your witness.  Each of us has a different role to play, but each one is important to the worldwide kin-dom Jesus calls us to help create.  Amen

Preached at Northwest United Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio, October 2, 2022

Wilson!!

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, Faith Development, hope, self-care, Wellness

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” (Genesis 2:18)

The recent pandemic has reinforced our knowledge that it is not good for humans to be alone. Our daughter-in-law is a very strong and self-aware introvert. Several months into the pandemic she joked that even a committed introvert like herself had to admit that she was missing human contact. Far more seriously we know that the hiatus from play dates and school has had serious mental health consequences on many children and youth who are behind in their social development and their ability to communicate in ways that are not mediated by technology.

Yes, it is true that technology has helped bridge the human contact gap in significant ways with virtual learning and digital meeting apps like zoom, but anyone who has spent much time using those tools will tell you that kind of meeting or teaching and learning is just not as good as face to face contact.

I was reminded of a wonderful movie that explored the theme of human loneliness when I found this golf ball in my bag last week. I led a men’s retreat several years ago where we watched the 2000 Tom Hanks film, “Cast Away” and then explored what the movie said about the human experience.

In that movie Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a harried FedEx executive, who is cast away as the lone survivor of a company cargo plane crash in the Pacific. The good news is he survived the crash. The bad news is he is washed ashore on a small deserted island where he is totally and completely alone. He manages to survive for years by creatively making use of a few items in packages that wash ashore from the plane crash.

One of the seemingly most useless items that floats into Noland’s island home is a brand new Wilson volleyball. No net, just the ball, and while beach volleyball is a real sport, it does require more than one person. That ball however soon becomes the most important factor in helping Noland maintain his sanity as multiple attempts to sail off the island in makeshift boats end in disaster and even a suicide attempt fails.

Noland discovers a way to meet the need for “human” contact without internet, cell phone, smoke signals, or even written communication. He turns the Wilson volleyball into Wilson, his friend and companion. He paints a face on the volleyball and regularly talks to Wilson about his plight. In the most poignant scene when Noland finally manages to push and paddle beyond the breakers and put out to sea on a makeshift sailboat, his buddy Wilson is washed overboard by a large wave and slowly drifts further and further away. Noland can only cry plaintively, “Wilson! Wilson!” as his faithful friend disappears from his sight.

Our men’s retreat was held at a church camp, and one of the men found a Wilson volleyball in a closet in the lodge where we were meeting. That ball, of course, became our mascot for the weekend, sitting with us as we discussed the film, coming to meals with us, and sleeping on one of the bunks in the dormitory-style room where we slept.

Now I have my own Wilson Jr. golf ball sitting on my desk to remind me again that it is not good to be alone. (And, it helps our bond that I played some very good golf with my Wilson, and he didn’t desert me like so many balls have by disappearing into the woods or splashing down into a water hazard.). Please understand, as an introvert I still regularly need and enjoy solitude. Zoom does make many things easier or even possible, like book clubs, meetings over distances without time-consuming and expensive travel, and especially regular contacts with distant friends.

But nothing, not even a lovable volleyball, can meet our basic need for human contact. My therapist says touch is the first and most basic form of human communication. Research has shown that infants who receive an adequate amount of loving touch not only thrive, but those who are not held and touched literally die.

We can see this phenomenon in other species, many of whom mate for life. Unfortunately many Americans have lost sight of the need for meaningful human contact. Our myth of rugged individualism has turned far too many of our human interactions into a transactional, self-centered dance of using people for our own profit and benefit.

Our consumer driven economy and our fear of an always uncertain future have convinced too many of us that we can never have enough material wealth to feel secure. Perhaps the silver lining in our current inflationary anxiety is that we will learn like Chuck Noland did to be satisfied and live with what we have. Powerful story telling like “Cast Away” is a way of teaching us those life lessons vicariously so we don’t have to actually be stranded on a desert island or isolated in a pandemic to learn them.

Preacher’s Saturday Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith Development, prayer, Sermon

O God why must you work in such mysterious ways?   Couldn’t you just give me a message straight without so much work?  Your spirit came through again today as always, but couldn’t you have done that two or three days ago!  Why do I have to worry and wrestle with your Word like Jacob to find a 10 minute sermon?  Yes, the process is good for me, but I’m already limping from way too many years of sweating Saturday sermon preparation.  I do believe, Lord, honest I do.  I’ve literally experienced this miraculous process hundreds of times, but I’m old and tired and it’s harder work than it used to be.  Is that because I am afraid that I don’t have many more times to get this right?  Preaching is an awesome and awful privilege.  How can I dare to get up and presume to speak for you?  Yes, I know John Wesley said, “Preach faith till you have it.”  That’s why I’m still at it.  And this time, really “Let the words of my mouth be truly acceptable in your sight,” for I couldn’t do this if you were not my rock and redeemer.  Amen