Category: Lectionary Texts

From Suffering to Hope, Romans 5:1-11

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Lectionary Texts, Lenten devotion, Sermon

Paul tells us that suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope.  Even though this winter has been mild I figure having lived through 77 Ohio winters; I should be one of the most hopeful characters in captivity.

Suffering is not my favorite thing about being a Christian. In fact, if we were to do a top 10 list of my favorite things about being a Christian, suffering wouldn’t even be on it.   I really identify with the Disciple Peter who argues with Jesus in Mark 8 when Peter tries to talk Jesus out of his need to suffer and die, remember what Jesus says to him – “Get behind me Satan, you re on the side of men not of God?”  Pretty harsh reply from Jesus, don’t you think.  But if we look more carefully at that story Jesus goes on to say, “take up your cross and follow me…”    you see, following requires that we line up behind the leader.  Remember those days in elementary school when you lined up to go everywhere, and this leader that we profess to follow, whose name we claim as Christians, makes it clear over and over again that cross bearing is part of what we have signed on for at our baptism. 

For Christians, suffering goes with the territory, unless we want to give up the reward for genuine suffering, which is eternal life here and forever.  In Romans 8, Paul says, “We suffer with Christ so that we may be glorified with him.”  But we still wish it wasn’t so, don’t we?  When I first heard a story about a Good Friday cross walk several years ago when the faithful from several churches gathered in Dublin, Ohio for their walk and realized they had no cross with which to walk, I said, “That’ll preach!”  Wouldn’t we love to have Easter without the suffering and pain of Good Friday and the Garden of Gethsemane? –the betrayal and denial that break Jesus’ heart long before the executioners break his body? 

I would.  I am not a fan of the” no pain no gain” school of exercise or theology.  If there is an easier way to get in shape than sweating and having sore muscles, I’m all over it.  And if someone can find an easy path to salvation, I’ll be the tour guide.  But, oops, there’s that nasty verse in the Sermon on the Mount, Mt. 7:13-14  that says the wide easy freeway leads to destruction, and that’s the one without the cross, the one most people choose, because it looks easier and lots more fun in the short run.  But when it comes to matters of faith, don’t we want to focus on goals and consequences for eternity, not just for today?

There are different kinds of suffering, and some are easier to explain or to deal with than others.  First, and easiest in some ways, is the kind of suffering we bring upon ourselves.   Kanye West and Will Smith come to mind as two of this year’s nominees in that category.  Or anyone who was injured trying to take a selfie in a dangerous place?  You can think of other nominees, less famous ones, perhaps, and if we’re honest we could all be on that list at one time or another. 

The difference for most of us is that we aren’t celebrities.  Our screw ups usually don’t show up on channel 10 news or in big bold tabloid headlines for the world to read in the checkout line at Kroger’s.  But that doesn’t mean they are any less painful or hard to live with.    Mistakes have consequences, which mean they usually hurt us and/or other people, and hurting is a form of suffering.  We all make bad choices, it goes with our free will that none of us want to give up.   We make bad choices that impact our health; we drive when we are distracted by electronic gadgets or when our judgment isn’t 100%; we say things in anger that we regret; we break promises to people we love.  We give into worldly pressure to succeed or cut corners, knowing we’re violating our own values, and we may get away with it for awhile, or think we have; but sooner or later, our chickens come home to roost and we suffer.

 That kind of suffering is very painful and hard to deal with, in part because we know there’s no one else to blame but ourselves, but at least self-inflicted suffering makes some sense.  We can understand where it comes from and why.

The second type of suffering makes less sense to me.  It’s been 12 years now, but I still remember the heart-wrenching and horrifying images of the Tsunami in Japan in 2011.   Innocent, helpless people, thousands of them, minding their own business one minute who were suddenly swept up in what looked like science fiction movie about the end of the world the next.  Or name any mass shooting or the inhumane brutality of Putin’s now year old war on Ukraine.  Suffering type number 2 is the kind caused by natural disasters or criminal attacks or lung cancer in someone who has never smoked a cigarette; the kind for which there is no justification or satisfying explanation.  Innocent children who are physically or emotionally or sexually abused.  Faithful spouses who are cheated on, taken advantage of and left with nothing to sustain life.  You get the picture. 

This is a good place to clarify what suffering isn’t.  Shortly after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the governor of Tokyo made a public pronouncement that he believed this disaster was divine retribution on the people of Japan for their greed.  This gentleman is a follower of the Shinto religion, and I have no knowledge whatsoever of what Shinto theology is or believes.  I do know there are those tempted in most religions to resort to blaming God for things when we can’t figure any other way to justify or explain why bad things happen.  Christianity is not exempt from such bad theology, and I remember there were Christian preachers who claimed that hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast in 2005 because of the sin and wickedness of the Big Easy. 

Please understand, I’m not saying actions don’t have consequences or that sin doesn’t cause suffering – those things are built into the natural order of things.  But that does not mean that the loving God I know and worship would kick people when they are down by saying “Gotcha” or “Take that, sinner” over the broken and shattered ruins of a devastated life or city or nation.  When we need God’s comfort and strength and presence the very most, in times of tragedy and loss and despair, would God choose that time to teach us a lesson?  NO, that is the time that Emmanuel, God with us, carries us and comforts us.  When we suffer God is close enough to us to taste the salt of our tears.

Now, I know you can find plenty of places in the Bible where we are told that God punishes sinners with plagues and boils and hell fire and damnation, and we need to deal with that problem head on.   Even in our text for today Paul says we need to be saved from the wrath of God.   The Bible was written over centuries by lots of different authors who were trying to answer the hardest questions and mysteries of life.  Those who experienced God in their suffering as punitive and judgmental wrote about that experience, and almost all of them did so without the benefit of knowing Jesus Christ, who is the best revelation possible for the loving, forgiving, grace-full God we have come to know and love through Jesus.

We need to remind ourselves that the Jews who wrote their Bible, which we call the Old Testament, also knew the loving, merciful side of God, too.  That compassionate part of God’s nature had just not come into clear focus for them as it did in the incarnation of God in Jesus’ human form.  We sometimes forget that most of our great images of God, like the good shepherd of Psalm 23, or God as a mother hen gathering her chicks about her all come from the Hebrew Scriptures.  The essence of Jesus’ teaching, for example the Great Commandments to love God with all one’s heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself are straight from the book of Deuteronomy. 

Paul tells us that suffering produces endurance, character and hope.  We can see how these first two kinds of suffering can build endurance and maybe character, but what about hope?  We need a third kind of suffering to build Hope, and that is what followers of Jesus do when we voluntarily take on suffering as an act of sacrificial compassion.  The reason Christians embrace and even boast about suffering, as Paul describes it, is that com-passion is essential to the Christian faith, and the word “compassion” comes from two Greek words that mean to suffer with.  Compassion is the kind of love Jesus came to teach and live.  Compassion is the love we feel for neighbors and enemies we don’t even know, simply because we share a common human condition.  Compassion is what we feel for the people of Ukraine because we identify and empathize with them and share their suffering as fellow members of the human family.  God doesn’t have grandchildren – just children – so our fellow human beings are not cousins once or twice removed, but are all our siblings – brothers and sisters together with Christ.

Compassion is a key to God’s very nature.  Why else would God allow Jesus to suffer and die for us while we are yet sinners?   When John tells us that God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus – that’s compassion and empathy to the max.    God becomes one of us in human form to share our existence, including our suffering.

The cross of Jesus is often misunderstood as a necessary sacrifice or punishment for the sins of the world, but when we experience the cross of Christ as an act of compassion and sacrificial love it is much easier to embrace and to imitate in our own lives.  The suffering of the cross for Jesus is an example writ large about how a person of faith handles suffering.  Jesus doesn’t repay evil for evil; he doesn’t lash out in violent anger when he is suffering. He continues to live life in harmony with the will of God, bearing the ultimate suffering in love, compassion and forgiveness – staying true to the way of love which is the essence of life and of God.  How can we follow Christ’s example and take on the suffering of life with character and hope?  Paul says, “Hope does not disappoint us [even in the worst of times] because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  We can’t do it, but God living in us can.

The cross is both a symbol of suffering and hope, because if Jesus’ life ended on Good Friday, suffering would be the final fate of human kind.  Death would define our existence.  But hold the phone; we know the rest of this story.  “Suffering produces endurance and character and hope, and hope does not disappoint.”  For those who don’t give up and leave the ball game when the score looks hopeless, there is good news.  We’ll experience that in its fullness in a few weeks on Easter morning, but for those of us fortunate to be post-resurrection people we already know that suffering and death are not the final chapter in our story.  Thanks to God’s ultimate, victorious will, we can endure suffering and even embrace it because we know it builds our character and makes us people of hope with Easter in our eyes. 

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING and Transfiguration

by Steve Harsh, posted in Lectionary Texts, Lenten devotion, purpose, Transfiguration

Two mountain-top experiences in Judeo-Christian Scripture are highlighted in the texts for February 19, the last Sunday before Lent, aka Transfiguration Sunday. Because of that latter designation I have usually focused on the Gospel lesson when preaching on that Sunday.  As Matthew’s Gospel puts it, “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.”  This year I also noticed the text from Exodus 24 involves being led by God to a time of solitude by climbing a mountain in response to a divine call.

The closest I’ve come to mountain climbing in recent years has been to walk up a paved path to an observation tower on Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains. At 6643 feet, Clingmans’s Dome is the highest point in the Smokies, but in full disclosure, as with most tourists visiting there, I only hiked the final half mile which is a gain of 332 feet in elevation. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is a fairly steep climb that requires some effort; even though it would never be confused with scaling Mt. Everest. The question these two texts raise for me as we approach the season of Lent again his year is “How much effort am I willing to make in order to put myself in God’s presence?”

Moses responds to God’s call and scales Mt. Sinai, which at 7497 feet is just a bit higher than Clingman’s Dome. Exodus does not give any details on how hard that climb was for Moses, but I am struck by two things it does say. First, after Moses climbs the mountain he has to wait 6 days before God appears. I get really frustrated if I have to wait 30 minutes in a doctor’s waiting room. So what does that faithful, patient waiting tell us clock-driven Americans about what it takes to experience the Holy?

Isaiah tells us that “Those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength,” but that text doesn’t say how long that wait will be. It may just mean that we have to surrender our own agendas if we want to be fully in God’s presence. The final sentence in the Exodus text says Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. We know that’s Bible speak for a very long time. In other words we don’t measure our time with God in chronos or clock time. Those mountain top experiences can only be described in Kairos time, which means in God’s good time and as long as it takes.

On a clear day you can see for 100 miles from Clingman’s Dome, but Moses got no such photo op on Mt. Sinai; and that’s the second detail that got my attention from the Exodus account.  It says, “Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud.”  Moses is totally enveloped by God’s Holy presence.  There’s no multi-tasking if we want to feel God’s manifestation.  We have to be fully committed and open to whatever God is calling us to do and become.

I get a lot of inspiration from music lyrics, and the song that I’m hearing as I ponder these biblical stories is “Climb Every Mountain” from “The Sound of Music” by Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein.  The lyrics to that song say,

“Climb every mountain,

Search high and low,

Follow every byway,

Every path you know.

Climb every mountain,

Ford every stream,

Follow every rainbow,

‘Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need

All the love you can give,

Every day of your life

For as long as you live.”

If you remember the story this song is sung by the Mother Superior to a young Maria who is wrestling with her vocation, her call from God which seems to be pulling her away from the religious life in the convent to a totally different purpose.  To surrender to God may take us in very surprising directions, but whatever that path is it will require struggle and effort, not just one mountain-top experience.  The song says climb every mountain, search high and low, and follow every rainbow to pursue a dream that requires “all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live.”  Every mountain. All the love.  Every day. As long as you live.  God doesn’t ask more of us than we can give, just all we have.

Lent is a great time to ponder such things.  Jesus translates that all-in commitment to “Let the dead bury the dead.” “ Leave your nets.” “Take up your cross and follow me.” We need mountain-top experiences to refuel and renew our souls, but we don’t live on the mountain top.  Moses had to come back down to his golden calf worshipping flock.  Jesus and the disciples had to come back down the mountain and set their faces toward Jerusalem.  We need solitude and close encounters with God to empower us, but we live in the lonesome valley of dry bones and the shadow death. 

Spend time alone with God this Lent, as much time as it takes, and wrestle with whatever is on your heart about what God requires of you in this time and place. 

February 11, 2023

“Beloved Knows No Zip Code” Luke 3:15-22

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Lectionary Texts, Sermon

Here we are, nine days into a new year.  We’ve changed the numbers on the calendar, but things look the same as year one and two of what one young child calls the Pandamnic.  We’re still wearing masks, the Omicron numbers are scary high.   New Year’s used to be more a time of out with the old and in with the new, but 2022 feels a lot like the movie Groundhog Day, like we’re stuck in a very deep rut.

You may have seen the cartoon of a baby talking on a cell phone about her baptism.  She says, “I tell you this guy in a dress tried to drown me, and my family didn’t do anything but stand around and take pictures!”  I saw another one where Jesus is complaining to John the Baptist that he was trying to drown him.  John replies, “Sorry, if you wanted to be sprinkled you should have gone to John the Methodist.”

How many of you were baptized as infants or as a small child?  For that many of us at least we have no conscious memory of that important event that was a major force in shaping our faith journey.  That’s one reason this Sunday after Epiphany is called the Baptism of the Lord; so we can all reflect on the promises that we made or were made for us at our baptism. 

One of the best things about studying the Scriptures to prepare to preach or doing Bible study is noticing things we’ve not seen before in familiar stories.  All of us are somewhat guilty of making what a friend of mine calls Gospel Stew.  We take the different accounts of Jesus’ life and mix them all up together into one almost Bible narrative.  But each of the Gospels is a unique testimony by its author, and it’s important to take time to focus on each one to see what treasures we can find when we do just that.

For example the account of Jesus’ baptism in the Gospel of Luke we read today has one big difference from the other three Gospels.  Did you notice it?  Listen again to these words from verses 19-21: “…because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison. [pause]  Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized…”

In the three other accounts in the Gospels John plays a much more central role in baptizing Jesus.  John’s role is implied here, but Luke seems to make a point of getting John out of the spotlight in prison before Jesus hears the heavenly voice proclaiming his belovedness. 

Luke gives John a lot of time on stage prior to this, but now it’s time for a new beginning for putting away the old wine skins that can’t contain the Gospel of Grace that God has come in Jesus came to proclaim.  Now, it’s a new year and time to clean out the old to make room in our hearts for the incarnation of God’s spirit.  The Holy Spirit comes not just in Jesus, but in all of us who have been claimed as God’s beloved. 

When I was teaching a preaching class at the Methodist Theological School in Delaware one of my students, Mike Doak, dug into this text and did a really creative look at this story from the perspective of John the Baptist who is cooling his heels in jail when Jesus emerges as the Messiah John has been proclaiming. 

My student imagined what it might look like if John the Baptist wrote us a Letter from the Jerusalem Jail: 

“Stunned… I tell you I was stunned as these events unfolded.  You could have heard a single drop of rain fall at that moment, in the midst of that gathering.  As for me, one touch of a feather would have keeled me over.  Where was the winnower, fork in hand, striding onto the threshing floor?  What of the fire, the unquenchable fire, into which the chaff was to be cast?  Was there no axe to be laid to the root?  We expected a Messiah, a ruler grown from the tree of David would Lord it over Israel with a strong hand and a mighty arm.  Why were there no trumpets to announce the coming king; why did thunder not clap as heavens rent open? What manner of king is coroneted with a dove in place of a crown?  If I may appropriate a few of your own symbols, I preached Rambo but behold Gandhi.  I expected God’s unparalleled judgment yet beheld God’s unparalleled grace.  I preached unquenchable fire, but witnessed unquenchable hope.  Self-doubt overtook me as days passed into weeks in the solitude of my prison cell.  Though I had thrived in the wilderness all my grown life, I was then never so alone.  How was it that one called “forerunner” could become “forlorn.” 

John has been the star of the show.  Huge crowds have come to hear him preach.  Some people even think he might be the Messiah himself. That’s pretty heady stuff.  But Luke makes it clear John is the forerunner, the warm up act, not the featured attraction.  It’s time for a changing of the guard. 

Have you ever resented someone who made the team while you got cut?  Or some whippersnapper got the promotion you thought you deserved?  Or becoming a big sister or brother and all of sudden not getting attention from Mom and Dad or your grandparents who only have eyes for this new little stranger who has invaded your home?  If so we can understand how John might have felt.

John says he is preparing the way for Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t turn out to be the Messiah John and most of the Jews were expecting.  John was a hell fire and brimstone preacher, a little on the wild and crazy side.  He preached a Gospel of repentance based on fear of God’s wrath.  He expected the bad dudes to get their comeuppance and the chaff of society to be burned and the sooner the better.  We all have our own list of who those bad dudes and dudesses are don’t we!

But John didn’t find in Jesus what he hoped for and expected.  This most unlikely carpenter’s son is named God’s beloved son, the one with whom God is well pleased.  Baptism is all about new beginnings, but John’s new beginning is a stark reminder that God is the boss and we aren’t.  No matter how much we want to pass judgment on people we think are sinners, that’s not our job.  Our job is to be messengers of repentance and hope, the good news of new beginnings, and leave the judgment to God. 

Baptism is still a sacrament of new beginnings, even in yet another Covid year.  But it’s important to see baptism as a beginning and not the end of a journey.  Baptized children are preparatory members and it’s the job of all of us– parents, teachers, grandparents, fellow church members – to be their village and help prepare them for full membership and claiming their belovedness for themselves.  Now don’t go guilt tripping yourselves about your shortcomings or failures as parents because your kids or grandkids haven’t turned out as you hoped they would.  Imagine how Elizabeth and Zechariah felt about this miracle child of theirs living in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey!  Our job as role models for the younger generation is to show them they are beloved even if they are covered in tattoos and have green hair.  The rest is up to them and God. 

I want to pause here to acknowledge everyone involved in the amazing children’s ministry here at Northwest.  I’ve been part of 8 different congregations in my life and the amazing job Doris Ing and all her servant leaders do with our kids here is by far and away the best I’ve ever seen.  Our children get a balanced spiritual diet of hearing the stories of the Bible, and then they practice those values by living them out working in the children’s garden alongside adults and a whole host of other service projects that teach them to treat all of God’s children as the beloved people they are.

Those kids grow up before our eyes oh so fast.  Diana and I have been part of the Northwest family for almost 8 years now, and I am amazed when I see children who were toddlers back in 2014 who are now singing in the children’s choir, and teaching us elders what love in action looks like.  They grow in wisdom and stature like Jesus to help deliver brown bag lunches and go on youth mission trips.  One of my favorite projects in recent months came out of the concern from youth in our confirmation class about climate change.  They’ve helped us implement new recycling opportunities and designed these wonderful reusable cups so we can stop adding to the problems Styrofoam cups cause for mother earth.  And best of all they put on these cups words that remind us whenever we drink from it that “Love Has No Zip Code.”

I already knew in my head how unjust our society is based on which zip code you happen to be born into.  But I really learned about that in a heartfelt way when I was working at Ohio State several years back.  I was helping facilitate a partnership between OSU and Columbus City Schools.  Many of us at OSU volunteered to be tutors and my school was Medary, one of the  elementaries in the University District.  At the same time my grandkids were in elementary school in the Olentangy School District.  I loved working with the kids at Medary, but it hurt my heart when I would go from there to visit the Olentangy schools on grandparent’s day or other occasions.  The differences between the new school buildings and the resources available to my grandchildren were like visiting another planet.

I am grateful for the amazing experiences my grandkids have had at Olentangy, but very troubled that the urban kids are not getting the same benefits.

I’m using Olentangy as an example, but we know the same stark differences apply to Dublin and Hilliard and other suburban schools.  The way we fund education via property tax, i.e. by zip code, is inherently unjust.  That system has resulted in the resegregation of our schools and perpetuated and widened the gap between the privileged and the marginalized.  And those disparities have only been multiplied by Covid. 

Climate change and education are just two of many injustices we are called to address.  None of us can make a big difference in any or all of them, but we can start by asking God how we can make a difference wherever we are. Luke describes the baptism of Jesus in 2 verses and then devotes 12 verses to the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness that immediately follows.  This warns us that we are all tempted forever as Jesus was to cave in to the seduction of worldly comfort and power, but because we are followers of Christ we can say no to Satan’s clever sales pitches.  

I don’t know about you, but when we baptize cute babies up here I don’t pay much attention to the words of the baptism ritual.  I’m just oohing and aahing over a precious beloved child of God.  Babies are such a miracle that they melt our hearts.  But there are important words in the ritual that we all need to hear.  As a congregation we promise to help raise those children in the faith; so we shouldn’t just sign on for that important job like we click agree without reading all the fine print on a new app. 

Listen to what one of those vows asks us to agree to:  “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”  That’s a heavy promise, and it comes before the next promise where we are asked: “Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior and put your whole trust in his grace…?” We can’t renounce and resist the forces of evil on our own.  We can only do that through the power of the Holy Spirit descending on us and declaring we are God’s beloved children.   

The last line of the baptismal vow says we “promise to serve him as our Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?”  Brothers and sisters, all means all.  Just as we can’t choose our relatives, even the crazy uncles and the weird cousins, we can’t exclude anyone from the body of Christ.  I know how hard that is.  The partisan paralysis in our government that has made this pandemic last so much longer than it needed to and taken so many beloved family members and friends from us makes me furious.  But the Gospel message is that even those I vehemently disagree with about vaccines and masks, yes, even those people are God’s beloved children.

Baptism means we all belong to a great and mysterious God who created this vast universe long before any humans ever set foot on this tiny planet.  God created us, male and female, and declared us good and blessed from day one.  And no matter how badly we or anyone else screw things up, our blessedness doesn’t expire. 

In one of those special God incidents, I got a wonderful idea for how we can all practice our baptismal vows and celebrate our blessedness every day.  It came just yesterday in a daily devotion I get from Father Richard Rohr, and it suggests this simple practice.

The exercise goes like this; looking, really looking lovingly, not staring or seeing any flaws, look at yourself in a mirror or at another person, and as you breathe in and out pray silently these words:

Breathe in:      I see you with love

Breathe out:   gifted, cherished.

Breathe in:     Grateful

Breathe out:   for who you are.  [Repeat this with congregation, looking at another or imagining someone]

And here’s the best part–Father Rohr goes on to say,

“We can also bring this practice out into the world. How often do we really see another person beneath their role, under our expectations? What if we paused at the grocery store and for a moment brought eyes of love to the stock clerk or the cashier. They don’t have to know what you’re doing. You don’t have to stare, just take in their image, then close your eyes for a moment, breathe, and bathe them with love. Pause and see the other person as beloved and beautiful as they indeed truly are.”

My beloved sisters and brothers, this is a day of new beginnings because God’s “Belovedness Knows No Zip Code.”  Amen

Preached at Northwest UMC, Columbus, OH, January 9, 2022

Recorded from Livestream @  https://youtu.be/bLS32pkXHAU

Unbound: Lazarus was, are we?

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, Christian Discipleship, Faith Development, Lectionary Texts, Uncategorized

What do tennis, hiking, golf, biking, jogging, working on a ladder, and skiing all have in common? They are all things I have had to give up in the last 10 years due to the aging process. I was talking to a friend my age who has given up even more things than I, and when I described my emotional state as “feeling empty” and not having anything to fill the space left by all I’ve lost. The words were barely out of my mouth when my friend said, “That’s exactly how I feel!” Like all of my friends, we have often joked in years past about old people always complaining about their aches and pains all the time, but more and more as we navigate our 70’s we find ourselves doing exactly the same thing.

I remember about 12 years ago asking an “older” gentleman what he was doing in retirement. Without missing a beat he said, “Going to doctor appointments and funerals.” I thought that was funny back then, but I’m not laughing anymore. When I told my friend that I was seeing a counselor about my feelings of emptiness and depression his response surprised me. After asking if the therapy was helping he said, “Thanks for sharing that. I always thought you had it all together. But knowing you are feeling the same things that I am makes me feel not so alone.” That wasn’t a “misery loves company” response; that was the blessing of letting down our armor and being vulnerable.

I’m not patting myself on the back, mind you. I have been good friends with this man for over 50 years. We have gotten together for golf and/or lunch monthly for decades until old age took our clubs away. Now like many oldsters we just go to Bob Evans. We’ve developed a trust over the years, but the fact that he still thought I “had it all together” means I’m either a better actor than I thought or I’ve been much less honest with him than I wish I had. I’m hoping this recent conversation will help us stay on a more vulnerable level going forward.

Here’s the good news. In addition to my therapist I am also working with a spiritual adviser, and when I shared this story with him he reminded me that until we empty ourselves of all the busyness and activities that keep our minds off our pain God can’t fill us up with anything else. A light bulb went on for me when he said that because when you hear truth it illumines things around and within you. He helped me realize that instead of resenting the emptiness I am feeling I can choose to embrace it as a gift from God. That doesn’t mean the UPS is going to arrive at my doorstep with God’s gifts anytime soon, and no that’s not because of a supply chain issue. Spiritual growth takes time and a willingness to sit with pain or emptiness awhile.

The Hebrews were in the wilderness for 40 years, not because it takes that long to travel from Egypt to Israel or because Moses refused to ask for directions. Even Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness wrestling with Satan because deep spiritual growth takes time to mature and ripen. The advice to “be still and know I am God” may sound really simple, but it’s not just a matter of shutting up for a few minutes so God can speak. It means prioritizing time for prayer and silence, and not the kind of prayer where we just tell God what we want or need.

Jacob wrestled with God all night long and was changed forever by that experience. Moses and Elijah both had to go up to Mt. Sinai/Horeb to hear God’s still small voice. I confess I am not good at silence. Even when writing these posts I frequently have a ball game on TV or music on some device. I know I write so much better when I am in a quiet place as I am while I write this, but like Paul I often fail to do the things I want to do and don’t practice what I preach.

The Gospel lesson for All Saints day this year is from John 11, the familiar story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. There are many rich veins of truth to mine in that story, but two stand out for me just now. This chapter contains what every kid in Sunday School loves to memorize, namely the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” This is one of several times in the Gospel narratives that we see Jesus vulnerable and allowing his humanity to show through. Like us he grieves over a loss, even though we and he all know he’s going to restore Lazarus to life.

The second verse in that lesson that grabbed my attention this year was the last one where Lazarus emerges from the tomb all bound up like a mummy. He’s alive but not really. His movement and sight and vision are all hampered by his grave clothes???, and Jesus says, “Unbind him and let him go.”

What are the things that bind you and me and keep us from living abundantly in the reign of God? Are we so stuck in our old ways that as Martha so indelicately puts it in the King James Version, “He stinketh,”. My wife sells a very good air purifier that kills germs and removes odors, even in cars or houses that have been skunked. But even those machines will not remove the kind of stench that comes from us who are spiritually dead and don’t know it.

My prayer is for God to unbind me from the anger, fear and regret that I feel for all the things I’ve lost in this stage of my life. Unbind me, Holy one. Roll away the stone that keeps me trapped in a pity party for my past. Unbind me and let me embrace what is and what will be if I trust you to lead me.

What’s your prayer for new life?

Spiritual Surrender: The Only Way Out

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, Faith Development, Lectionary Texts, spiritual discipline

Hard to believe I’ve been blogging here for 10 years, and when I look back to my very first post I am a bit shocked to see it was about bringing our troops home from Afghanistan. I also originally did posts based on biblical texts from the Revised Common Lectionary; so today I decided to revisit that practice, and when I looked up the texts for August 22 I find God’s spirit moving again in mysterious ways. Several of these texts speak to the centuries old issues at work in the seemingly intractable conflicts in the Middle East.

The passage from Joshua 24 addresses Israel’s transactional “right” to occupy the land of their ancestors if they remain faithful to their covenant with Yahweh. Verses 15-18 say, “Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

Verses like that last verse one always trouble me—“…the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land.” Would a just God of the whole universe choose sides and violently force the occupants of a piece of God’s creation out of the land they have called home for centuries? Would a just God rationalize such an eviction just because Joshua says God told us we can have this “Promised Land” even though we’ve been living in Egypt for 400 some years? That is not a rhetorical question because the fact that Israel and her neighbors are still killing each other over that piece of real estate makes this an urgent contemporary issue.

Preachers can challenge and deepen their own faith and that of their congregations by wrestling with such challenging issues. Some of us fear that exposing contradictions in the Bible will destroy faith, but that is not true. I love the quote in one of Frederick Beuchner’s books that says, “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.” We don’t usually come to Scripture or worship because our faith is totally secure. All of us, preachers perhaps most of all, come thirsting for authentic encounters with God, and if what preachers are serving fails to meet that need folks will stop at McD’s on the way home for junk food. I cast my lot with the theologians who realize that certainty is the enemy of faith, not doubt. To ignore contradictions within holy texts in hopes that no one will notice is a fool’s bargain. Because real faith at its core always contains some mystery and is therefore a holy riddle inviting us into dialogue with the text and with God.

For example, another of the lectionary texts for August 22 is from I Kings 8 which describes part of Solomon’s dedication of the first temple in Jerusalem many years after Joshua led the conquest of the Promised Land. Beginning at verse 24 we find these words: “Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive. Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm–when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.”

“Do according to all that the foreigner calls to you; so that all peoples of the earth may know you name….” What an about face from thanking God for killing off the Amorites! And what a great way to examine the evolution of faith over time as God inspires women and men in all generations with the wisdom of Solomon. God’s concern for the foreigner/alien/sojourner is of course interspersed throughout the Hebrew texts along side more nationalistic sentiments because we know the path to faith is not the wide comfortable one but the narrow mountain road with numerous switchbacks and challenges that require our devotion and honest intellectual curiosity.

One of my biggest regrets about my preaching career is that I have not always been brave enough to wrestle in corporate worship with the challenges of biblical interpretation. It has been poor stewardship on my part to withhold from my parishioners and others the marvelous gifts of historical-criticism and narrative criticism I was given in my seminary education.

When I taught homiletics I encouraged my students to focus on just one text per sermon and refrain whenever possible from trying to preach on two or more selections from the lectionary. But there are exceptions to every rule, and this set of texts interact so well with each other that it is at least worth exploring how they inform or expand each other. For me the epistle text from Ephesians 6 also speaks to me as both a preacher and a citizen of our broken world.

The familiar passage about “putting on the whole armor of God” is an excellent metaphor for those preparing to speak for God in these difficult days of pandemic and domestic and international conflict. But “armor” can be a two-edged sword (to mix metaphors?). Remember how David refused to put armor on when he confronted Goliath because it hampered his ability to use the shepherd’s tools at his disposal? ( 1 Samuel 17). It is rather like Brene Brown’s analogy I heard recently in one of her podcasts where she characterized getting defensive when we feel vulnerable as “armoring up.”

Those “weapons” described in Ephesians are also metaphors and not meant to for us to go out as “Christian soldiers marching as to war…” as one of my my childhood (but no longer) favorite hymns puts it. I invite you to instead focus on the qualities of discipleship described in Ephesians instead of literalizing the military memes. As the author of Ephesians 6 says, “… in the strength of God’s power put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.”

In these days when lies, mis-information, and “alternative facts” bombard our ears and senses without ceasing I would argue that we need none of these parts of “armor” more urgently than “the belt of truth.” It is no accident that it is the first item listed for it is the truth that will set us free. But we know that truth can also make us feel very vulnerable and uncomfortable. We cannot question Joshua’s conquest of the Amorites, or the imposition of the nation of Israel on the Palestinians after World War II without also seeing in the mirror American genocide of indigenous people who lived on our “promised land” for centuries before Columbus sailed the oceans blue. No matter how much we divert our eyes we must eventually face the fact that our choices and actions as individuals and nation states have long-lasting consequences.

When I was in high school I excelled at history/social studies because I was blessed with a good memory that could regurgitate historical dates on demand. But it was not until I took a world history class in college that I had the first ah ha moment and began to connect the dots between one historical event and others that followed. For me my first revelation that the harsh treatment the allies imposed on the conquered Germans in the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was used by Hitler to inflame German nationalism and racism by blaming the dire economic plight of the Great Depression on their European enemies. A huge part of that Nazi response was to unify their base by scapegoating Jews and anyone else who was different from the pure Aryan race. Tragically that strategy resulted in the deaths of 6 million Jews and thousands of others in dozens of extermination centers. And the next link in the chain of events was an attempt at repentance by the allies who far too long pretended the Holocaust wasn’t happening. That act of penance was to create a new/old homeland for the Jews in Israel, which in turn displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the viscous cycle rages on with 9/11, Desert Storm, killing of Osama Ben Laden, oil wars, Hezbola, the Taliban, etc. etc.

The gut wrenching headlines from Afghanistan right now defy any human resolution of the impact of brutal violence as city after city falls to the Taliban. It like all wars before it yet another gruesome illustration that peace can NEVER come through instruments of death. Violence ALWAYS escalates into more and more violence. The good news is that only when we reach the ultimate limit of our human wisdom can we surrender our fear, pride, ego and arrogance and call upon the cosmic power of the one we call God.

O Eternal Being, we have been told that your “Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26). This is one of those moments, O God. We confess our weakness. Intercede for us and bridge our foolish human divisions. Let all of us children of Abraham come together in weakness, trusting you as the only way, truth and life. Let believers, atheist, agnostics and all of your troubled children put down our weapons and raise our hands in unconditional surrender so your will and not ours will emerge from a world of chaos and death. Amen

Note: I would welcome comments and reactions. If you preach on one or more of these texts give me some feedback on how helpful or unhelpful this was. Thanks

God’s Quid pro Quo: Isaiah 58:1-12

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

“Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” Sounds like a political promise to a nation with crumbling infrastructure doesn’t it? Well, it’s really addressed to a nation with a crumbling moral infrastructure, but either scenario is relevant to the U.S. 2500 years after those words were written by the prophet known as Third Isaiah (Chapters 55-66 of the biblical book of Isaiah).

I went there because Isaiah 58:1-12 is one this week’s lectionary texts that many churches use for preaching and themes for worship. I’m not preaching this Sunday, but was wondering what I might say from the pulpit on this week of political history. I did preach the Sunday Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, the Sunday after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace in 1974, after the Challenger explosion, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Other than proving how old I am, those kinds of moments in time illustrate the opportunities for reflection when we stand at the intersection of human history and biblical.

As I write these words the acquittal of President Trump has not been officially confirmed, but if I were a betting man I’d feel safe wagering that it will come to pass before this Sabbath. So what else does this text from Isaiah have to say to us? Chapter 58 lets us know immediately that this is no warm and fuzzy passage. Verse 1 says, “Shout out, and do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.” Isaiah then proceeds to scold his people for false worship and self-righteousness: “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice? Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” (Vss. 3-4)

Fast forwarding to today Isaiah would say something like this to us: “Claiming to be a ‘Christian Nation’ or putting ‘under God’ in your pledge doesn’t make you my people. If your faith is in huge defense budgets while you provide lousy health care, unequal education and inadequate food for the poor, you are no more than a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. If you deny your sins of racism and betray your constitutional duties to protect your own personal power and influence, your acts of worship and your prayers mean nothing to God. Put your money and your actions where your lofty values of liberty and justice for all should lead you. Your faith without works is as dead as the authors of your Constitution and the martyrs for true faith.”

Yes, I took some prophetic license and mixed in some Corinthians and James there, but they seem to fit Isaiah’s theme as Chapter 58 continues. You may be wondering if you’re still with me how Isaiah gets through these words of judgement to the verse I began with which is verse 12 of chapter 58, “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in”?

Glad you asked. The answer is in the middle verses of this text (vss. 6-11) which are a heavenly quid pro quo:

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

(Editorial aside: If you do this, then…)

The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”

If you’re thinking “that sounds like Jesus,” you’d be right. Jesus modeled his ministry and life on the Hebrew prophets because he knew they spoke the truth about the inseparable intersection between faith and justice. Read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 and Jesus’ first sermon in Luke 4 where he quotes directly from Isaiah,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

That same Holy Spirit anoints us all for days such as these to be “repairers of the breach and restorers of streets to live in.”

GOD’S CHOSEN SERVANT, SERMON ON ISAIAH 42:1-9

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Lectionary Texts, Sermon, spiritual discipline

Today, the Sunday after Epiphany, is the Sunday in the church year when we celebrate the “Baptism of the Lord.” Matthew, Mark and Luke all report in identical words that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River and that when Jesus came up from the water “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

That Scripture tells us who the Messiah is, and the Isaiah Scripture we read today is one of Servant Songs in Isaiah that describe what kind of Messiah this beloved Son of God will be. Listen again to what these words from Isaiah say:

I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
2 He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
3 a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
4 He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;

In case we might miss the point this text tells us three times that “he will bring forth justice.” I’ll come back to that later, but I want us also to notice that this Servant Song not only emphasizes the Messianic purpose of justice; it also makes it very clear how justice will be accomplished, and that is in a peaceful, non-violent manner. God’s servant is gentle – does not shout or lift up her voice; does not quench a dimly burning wick or break a bruised reed.

More than ever in the nuclear age we need to remember that the ways of Christ are non-violent and peaceful.

I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that said “Another United Methodist for Peace and Justice.” My son asked me about that slogan one day. To him it seemed contradictory to talk about peace and justice together because like many people his concept of justice was one of punishment and retribution, as in giving people their just desserts. But that is not the biblical meaning of “justice.” In biblical terms justice means wholeness, equality and fairness for all, and when we understand it that way we realize that peace and justice are not contradictory terms at all, but in fact unless there is justice for all there can be no true peace.

Here’s a case in point about what an unending cycle of retribution and revenge produces. The Treaty of Versailles ending WWI was signed 100 years ago last summer. That treaty, over the strong objections of President Woodrow Wilson, extracted harsh and unjust punishment on Germany, and just twenty years later Hitler used the German resentment of that punitive treaty to plunge the world in WWII.

I remember learning that in a college history class, but what I learned recently is that in those same treaty negotiations France also refused to give Viet Nam its freedom, which led to the communist take over there and eventually to our own involvement in the Viet Nam War. And if that’s not enough, that same treaty also carved up the Middle East into countries doomed to failure because people who hated each other like the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites were forced into impossible situations like the new country of Iraq. I don’t have to tell you how that worked out!

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord” doesn’t mean God is vengeful. It means we humans shouldn’t play God and dish out our idea of “justice” because that’s way above our pay grade. Jesus repealed the Old Testament law of “an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” in the Sermon on the Mount because he knew such misguided justice only creates a world of blind, toothless people. We can and must do a better job of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

I must confess this has been a hard week for me. In addition to the all the bad news bombarding us from Australia, Puerto Rico and the Middle East I have had to deal with personal grief over the death of a friend who died suddenly last Friday and concern for our 11 year-old great niece who had open heart surgery yesterday. Such times as these make preachers dig deeper to find good news to proclaim, and when that happens there is no better source of comfort and strength than to return to the very basic Truth of the Christian Gospel found in the Sacrament of Baptism.

When my son was 7 or 8 we were attending one of my daughter’s piano recitals in a church that had a baptistery for immersion up in the chancel. As curious children are want to do my son was exploring the sanctuary after the recital, and after his reconnaissance mission he came running back to me excitedly and said, “Dad, they’ve got a Jacuzzi up there!”
How different our versions of baptism are today from Jesus’ immersion in the muddy Jordan. We sprinkle a few drops of water or use a heated pool are. We have watered down (pun intended) the significance and the way we do baptism so much that we have forgotten what baptism teaches us about the cost of discipleship.

I can’t remember the source, but I’ll never forget this story about a Roman Catholic Church in Latin America. A young couple presents their infant to the priest for baptism and the Padre submerges the child in the baptismal water and says, “I kill you in the name of Jesus.” An American visitor witnessing this sacrament is aghast, and then the priest lifts the child above his head and proclaims, “And I resurrect you in the name of the living Christ!” That illustrates the total transformation of true baptism. We literally die to our sinful human nature and are resurrected as new beings in Christ. In other words, we are saved from sin and death, but that’s just step one. What we are saved FOR is to be agents of love as citizens of God’s kingdom here on earth.

One of the things I like best about being retired is that it’s so much easier to really worship sitting out there. When I’m leading worship I am busy thinking about what comes next in the service, is my microphone turned off during the hymns so I don’t frighten anyone with my lousy singing; did someone remember to put water in the font, are my sermon pages in the right order?

I experienced real worship one Sunday recently during a service of baptism. The familiar liturgy that I’ve led many times was used, but I heard it like I suddenly had ears to hear. It was the part of the Baptismal Covenant that asks the parents or sponsors of a child or an adult being baptized, “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

Let me repeat that. “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

So much power is packed into that short sentence! My first thought about it went to the phrase “resist evil, injustice and oppression.” There is so much evil, injustice and oppression filling my news feed that I want to just say “stop the world I want to get off!” Cancer and dementia and addiction attacking good, innocent people. Refugee families being ripped apart; political contributors being rewarded with government offices they are not qualified to fill, and protections for God’s creation being discarded for greedy short-sighted goals. I look at my young grandchildren and wonder what kind of a world we are leaving for them? It wearies my soul.

Your list of evil and injustice may be very different than mine, but the responsibility of Christians to resist evil in the name of God is the same for all of us. The Christian responsibility I just read is not from a service of ordination or consecration for someone dedicating her life to full-time Christian service. This challenge and empowerment are for all of us at our baptism. This is a bold affirmation of the priesthood of all believers, and it makes me wonder how many Christians would agree to be baptized if we took those words to heart?

Babies often don’t take too kindly to baptism water being poured or sprinkled on their heads. A cartoon circulated on Facebook awhile back showed a baby talking on a phone to someone and saying, “You wouldn’t believe it. This guy in a dress was trying to drown me, and my family just stood around taking pictures!” I remember one baptism where a young child resisted the chilly water by pulling away from the pastor and wailing for all to hear, and I commented “Maybe he understands the significance of baptism better than we do.”

Resisting evil and injustice can be dangerous work, and the coward in me tends to see the baptismal font as half full when I focus on the heavy responsibility those words carry. But then I read the first part of the vow again and I see the meaning of those words in a whole new light. The sentence begins, “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you….” Working for justice is not a burden to endure; it is a talent to be embraced, a gift of freedom and power to be accepted. God is not asking us to do the impossible all alone but is gifting us with the unstoppable power of the Holy Spirit to do the work God calls all of us to do.

I am reminded of Jeremiah’s call from God when he was just a child. To paraphrase Jeremiah’s response – he says, “Not me, Lord. I’m just a little kid. Nobody will listen to a teen-ager?” And God said, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to go alone. I’ve got your back. I’ll tell you what to say.”

By its very nature, baptism is not an isolated anointing. It is a sacrament of inclusion in the Body of Christ. It is a celebration of the power of community. No one gets baptized alone. The whole congregation promises to be the village that raises a child or a newborn Christian of any age. Baptism is a statement to the world that together we who have heard the call of Christ can and will support and encourage each other. We will celebrate the freedom and power to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever form they present themselves, even when that means admitting we are part of the injustice.
The Hebrew prophet who wrote this part of Isaiah knew that way back then. Listen to the second part of our text for today:

I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
7 to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
9 See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.

Those words are addressed collectively to the nation of Israel by their creator and sustainer. They are God’s chosen people – not chosen for privilege like a Jacuzzi baptism, but to be God’s servants to open blind eyes, release those who are captives to sin and death, to be a light to the nations. And as followers of Christ we are the New Israel called to that same mission and purpose. Born of water and spirit we are all God’s beloved children given power and freedom by the one who makes all things new to be God’s chosen servants in the world.

This Sunday when we remember the baptism of Jesus is a perfect time to reaffirm our own initiation into the Body of Christ. I know many of you, like me, were baptized as infants or children and don’t actually remember the occasion of your own baptism. I know some of you may not have been baptized yet, and that’s ok because water doesn’t make us children of God. We are all born that way. Water used in baptism is just a symbol of the cleansing and renewing power of the Holy Spirit to make us new creatures as followers of Christ. That commitment to Christ is something we all need to recommit ourselves to on a regular basis because it is not easy to follow the narrow path of discipleship, especially in trying times like these.

So I invite you to reaffirm your commitment to be a faithful follower of Christ by responding to these questions as you are led by the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: Through the Sacrament of Baptism we are initiated into Christ’s holy Church. We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit. All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.

Through the reaffirmation of our faith we renew the covenant declared at our baptism,
acknowledge what God is doing for us, and affirm our commitment to Christ’s holy Church.
On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
I do.

Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression
in whatever forms they present themselves?
I do.

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace,
and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened
to people of all ages, nations, and races?
I do.

According to the grace given to you, will you remain faithful members of Christ’s holy Church and serve as Christ’s representatives in the world?
I will.

THANKSGIVING OVER THE WATER

The Holy Spirit work within you, that having been born through water and the Spirit,
you may live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Messiah Vision, Advent Sermon on Matthew 11:2-11

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Lectionary Texts, Sermon

When I told my wife, Diana, that I was preaching on this text she correctly pointed out to me that this story seems strangely out of place for the 3rd Sunday of Advent. We’re still 10 days from the birth of Jesus and the lectionary text for today jumps 30 years ahead where John the Baptist is in prison. It seems chronologically out of whack, but if we take off our historical/literal glasses and dig into John’s important question we find it is very relevant for us in this Advent season 2000 years later.

The text tells us “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”” Why would John be asking that question? He of all people should know who Jesus is. He is the one who baptized Jesus in the Jordan River, and in that story all 3 synoptic Gospels report that after the baptism “a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” That seems pretty convincing to me and not something John would have forgotten.

So why is John asking, “Are you the one?” Let’s back up a minute to the first part of that verse. It says, “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing…” That’s what prompts the question. John is confused as many were in Jesus’ day because Jesus wasn’t acting like the Messiah they were hoping for.

Did you ever get a Christmas gift that wasn’t what you expected or were hoping for? Kids are pretty good at showing their disappointment when they tear into a package they think contains the new X-box from Santa and find instead underwear and socks.
That kind of disappointment is at work in John’s question: “Are you the one or should we wait for another?” Jesus didn’t fulfill the Christmas wish list the oppressed Jews were hoping for. They wanted a political/military liberator and they got a suffering servant. They were hoping for Rambo and God sent Gandhi instead. They wanted a Messiah who would take to the streets and give the hated Romans their just desserts. Instead they got Jesus who ate dessert with tax collectors and sinners.

Let’s remind ourselves again of the situation and the audience Matthew was writing to. Mathew’s Gospel was written 40-50 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, which puts it sometime after the year 70 C.E. That is a very significant date for the Jewish Christians, rather like 9/11 for us, because we know that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. The temple was God’s residence in their midst and now it had been reduced to a pile of rubble. That had to be a time when the Jews and their hopes for deliverance by the Messiah hit rock bottom. They were feeling like John, imprisoned and questioning their faith. So John’s question from his prison cell awaiting execution reflects the doubts of his readers, the Jews and new Christ followers sitting in the devastation of their city and their hope.

Are you the one, Jesus? Why haven’t you delivered us? It’s the question disciples of Christ have asked in every generation when suffering and despair threaten to drown our faith. Who is this Jesus, and why is there still so much injustice and suffering in our world?

The rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice came out when I was a senior in seminary, and I was drawn to the way it asked that same question about Jesus. The title song of that musical has Judas asking,
“Jesus Christ Superstar, Do you think you’re what they say you are?”

I talked one of my theology professors into letting me do an independent study on the theology of “Jesus Christ Superstar”. He was not a fan of rock music and very reluctant at first but finally agreed. I remember in particular one conversation we had about the scene in the musical where Jesus finally loses his cool and turns over the money changers’ tables in the temple and drives them out with a whip.

I was young and full of righteous indignation then. Now I’m old but still full of it. In 1970 I was idealistic and very impatient with the social injustices of war, racism and sexism – sound familiar? At any rate I was drawn to this angry Jesus upsetting the apple cart in the temple, but Professor Hopper cautioned me to put that incident in the context of Jesus’ total ministry. Yes, Jesus got angry a couple of times. He was human after all. But those incidents of anger are very rare and atypical of the patient, kind, compassionate and forgiving healer that Jesus was.

And that’s why John the Baptist is questioning Jesus’ Messiahship. Jesus isn’t doing things the way John would have done them. Pastor Chris reminded us last week what a wild man John was. He was a man of action, calling out the sins of the big shots of his day. He followed the examples of Amos and Micah and the other Hebrew prophets who were hell fire and brimstone preachers warning God’s people of the wrath to come if they didn’t repent of their sinful ways.

But Jesus broke the mold of the angry prophet and replaced it with the Messiah
who hangs out with the outcasts of society, who is the good shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep instead of blaming it for wandering off. Instead of heaping guilt on the oppressed he offers forgiveness and grace to prodigal daughters and sons like you and me.

So this question is exactly what we should be asking as we prepare for Christmas. Who are you Jesus? What kind of Messiah are you really? If we don’t understand the nature of God’s incarnation in our world, if we’re looking for the wrong kind of Messiah we will miss out on the greatest gift any of us can hope for.

My heart has always been touched by a song much older than “Jesus Christ Superstar” that poses the same question. It was written during the Great Depression, another time of great suffering in our country. Robert MacGimsey was a white composer, but he wrote this song in the style of an American slave song. The version I grew up with was recorded by Mahalia Jackson, but it continues to be recorded today by other artists because it raises an important warning that we’ll miss Jesus again if he’s not what we expect. The song says,

“Sweet little Jesus boy
They made you be born in a manger
Sweet little holy child
We didn’t know who you were.
Didn’t know you’d come to save us Lord
To take our sins away
Our eyes were blind, we could not see
We didn’t know who you were.”

Do we know Jesus today? Would we recognize him if he or she appeared to us in the checkout line at Kroger’s or at the food pantry? Do we treat the telemarketer or an ungrateful child as we would treat Jesus? Do we take time to pray and ask ourselves if the Jesus we want for Christmas is the one God sends to upset our values and call into question our way of life?

I had cataract surgery on both of my eyes this fall. I can now see much better than before because the old clouded lenses have been replaced by new ones. Someone has joked that we will all see 2020 come January. But the real question is will we have Messiah vision? Will you join me in praying for new spiritual lenses so we can see clearly who Jesus is and what he expects of us as his followers?

Yes, Jesus is the one! And we don’t have to wait for another because God’s Emmanuel is with us here and now every step of the way. We just need Messiah Vision so we don’t miss out on his Kingdom because of preconceived notions of what that kingdom should look like. Amen

Put in Our Place, a sermon on Psalm:19:1-4a, Mark 8:27-34

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

Author E.B. White once said “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” Our two Scriptures for today suggest that choice is not an either/or but a both/and. They tell us in fact that we can’t do one without the other.

Diana and I were in Colorado this summer for a family wedding. Our nephew acted as social director for the group before and after the wedding and one activity was a trip to a small observatory to do some star gazing. We were at 8000 feet so the air was clear (and cold), and we discovered that they have a lot more stars in Colorado than Ohio!

As we got amazing views through the telescopes of Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons we learned some mind-blowing facts from the astronomers about how many billions of stars there are in the universe. They told us that our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter, a distance I can’t even imagine. But then they said that the observable universe is estimated to contain 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies. At one point our nephew said to me, “I’m feeling really small.”

I’m guessing that kind of awe is what our psalmist was feeling we she or he wrote, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.” This author was having one of those mountain top experiences where we can’t help but savor the universe. Without any words the majesty and power of our creator goes forth and is proclaimed even to those who use different words or symbols to try and describe the sense of wonder and our own smallness in the infinity of God’s universe. In a different but similar way powerful storms like Hurricane Florence and Super Typhoon Mangkhut can also make us realize how powerless we humans really are in the universal scheme of things.

The mystery of creation shows us things in proper perspective and puts us in our place as a very tiny part of creation. And yet as small and insignificant as we feel the creator of the universe so loves every part of creation, including humankind, that God came to our little planet in human form to show us how to savor and save ourselves and the world.

The truth that Jesus lived it is that mountain top experiences are wonderful and necessary, regular worship and prayer feed our souls, but our daily lives still play out in the messy valleys where we know all too much pain and suffering. The trick is to remember to savor God’s majesty and power even when we can’t see or hear the heavens telling the glory of God. When the stuff of life hits the proverbial fan, then more than ever we need to be put in our place so we can keep life in perspective.

To be put in our place is to know who we are and whose we are. That’s the point of Jesus’ question to the disciples in our Gospel lesson for today. The familiar words in Mark 8 that followers of Jesus must take up their cross are so well-known to us that we may not take them seriously. In truth aren’t we more like Peter in this text who makes it clear he’s not really into the cross thing for himself or for Jesus. Mark says when Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed… Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”

Most of us have a natural aversion to suffering; it’s just that Peter is bold enough to put those feelings into words. Peter’s response to Jesus’ teaching about his coming death and then Jesus’ reaction to Peter helps explain one of the curious things about Mark’s Gospel. Bible scholars call it the “Messianic Secret” because in Mark Jesus is continually telling people not to tell anyone who he is.

Doesn’t that seem curious? If Jesus is out to save the world, wouldn’t you think He’d want as much positive press as he can get? Maybe he just needed a better PR department? But the strength of Jesus’ angry response to Peter helps us understand the Messianic Secret in Mark’s Gospel.

Jesus doesn’t want the disciples spouting off yet because they still don’t really understand who he is. They know the right words to describe him; he’s the Messiah, but like students who just know how to feedback what the teachers want to hear on a test, the disciples don’t really get it. They aren’t ready for the final exam because the kind of Messiah they want Jesus to be is very different from the suffering servant Jesus came to be. The disciples are looking for a military savior like Rambo and they got Gandhi instead.

This Gospel story reminds me of Robert Frost’s great poem about the two roads that “diverged in a yellow wood.” Peter and the guys want to take the wide, easy road, the familiar popular path of least resistance. And Jesus has chosen the road less traveled. And this is not like the famous quote from Yogi Berra, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” This is a real choice. We can’t have it both ways, and the result is misunderstanding, conflict, anger, and some very harsh words. Yes, even within Jesus’ closest band of followers there is conflict. That should not surprise us, but it does. We often naively expect Christians to be immune to disagreement and conflict. But we aren’t.

When Bishop Judy Craig retired several years ago one of her colleagues described her as having a lover’s quarrel with the church, and I like that description. When I used to do pre-marital counseling and a couple would tell me they never argue all kinds of red flags went up for me. In any significant relationship where important matters are at stake there is bound to be disagreement and conflict. After all if two people are exactly alike and agree on everything, one of them is redundant.

And when we’re dealing with ultimate concerns and God stuff, it gets even harder because none of us have the final answers about God. The mystery of God is so vast and incomprehensible that one person said that talking about God is like trying to bite a wall. That’s why the Psalmist says, “There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

But we mortals still have to use our imperfect words to express our ideas and feelings; so conflict is inevitable. We know Jesus got angry—at the money changers in the temple, at the Pharisees, he called them a brood of vipers at one point, and in this text for today he is obviously angry at Peter. Anger and conflict are not bad things if they are handled in loving and respectful ways, but we can’t do that if we deny the feelings or go away mad.

The bottom line is that like Peter we don’t want to suffer. Buddhists have a basic law that says “Life is suffering.” That’s not a popular platform to run on, as Jesus found out with Peter. Oh, we like crosses, the little gold ones we can wear around our necks or on our lapels, but when it comes to big heavy ones with lots of splinters, we’re willing to let Jesus carry that one for us. That’s why the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is so popular. We let Jesus suffer for us and we reap the benefits. But when Jesus says we have to take up our own crosses too, we are tempted like Peter to argue or at least rationalize. “I’d like to help Jesus, but I just started a new job, I just got married, I have to take care of my aging parents, or I have a new baby to take care of.”

Jesus shows no patience with Peter, in fact he does a very un-Jesus like thing. Peter rebukes Jesus, and does Jesus turn the other cheek? Nope. He rebukes Peter right back. He does to Peter what Peter has done to him. That’s not the way the golden rule works is it? Jesus snaps at Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” That’s worse than an Ohio State fan calling someone a Wolverine!

But let’s look closer at what’s going on here between Jesus and Peter. We know Jesus doesn’t see Peter as an enemy because he tells Peter to get behind him. You want your enemies where you can keep an eye on them, not behind your back. Remember this is the same disciple that Jesus elsewhere says is the rock upon which he will build his church. Peter is the first great post-Pentecost evangelist. The Roman Catholics consider Peter the first Bishop of Rome and first Pope. And legend has it that this Peter who rebukes Jesus and refuses to take up his own cross is the same man who when he faces his own crucifixion years later does so with such courage and humility that he asks to be crucified upside down because he feels unworthy to be crucified as Jesus was.

So Peter is not Jesus’ enemy. This is a lover’s quarrel. And notice another thing about getting “behind” someone. Think about that phrase. When we say we’re getting behind someone we use that phrase to describe supporting that person, to have their back. Could it be that when Jesus says, “Get behind me” he is simply asking Peter for his support?

We know that choosing the road to Calvary was not an easy one for Jesus-it wouldn’t be for anyone. That last night in the Garden of Gethsemane we know Jesus prayed hard for God to deliver him from that horrible death. The temptation to chicken out must have been great; so to have one of your best friends add fuel to that fire and encourage Jesus to take easy way out would only add to the difficulty of staying the course.

All of these things may have been at work in this heated conversation, Jesus struggling with his future and asking for support in keeping this difficult commitment to God. But it seems to me there is another dynamic going on here too. Jesus sees this as a teachable moment. In the very next verse after the “Get behind me Satan” line, Jesus talks about what it takes to be one of his followers. Verse 34 says, “He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The central question for us is what does it mean to follow someone? I was leading a group of 6 or 7 cars home from a youth retreat one time at Camp Wesley near Bellefontaine. We headed out from camp on a Sunday afternoon in a big caravan. We took a county road out to state route 68, and I turned north. That would have been fine except we needed to turn south to get back to route 33 and head home. I realized my mistake immediately and looked with horror in my rearview mirror to see that every one of the other six cars had followed me. No one seemed to be thinking for themselves. I don’t know if we qualified for a world record U turn, but when I made one a mile or so down the road, all of my followers did the same.

There are two things about being a follower – 1) you have to be behind someone to follow them, not out front leading your own parade. And 2) it pays to follow someone who knows where he or she is going.

The real point of this Gospel text is that Jesus still needs followers to carry on his work. Rather than putting Peter down Jesus is putting Peter in his place, which is behind the leader so he can follow. Remember the children’s game Follow the Leader? For that game to work everyone has to get behind the leader and do what she/he does. Peter goes on to become a great leader in his own right, but he is not yet ready for that role, and Jesus knows that. Jesus knows he will not be around long to lead the church; so he is preparing followers to carry on.

Good leaders teach by example, not by dictating and laying down the law. That heavy-handed style robs students or followers of learning to be responsible decision makers. I know because I grew up in a law and order household. When my parents said “Jump!” I said “How high?” And for 12 or 14 years that was great. Being obedient kept me out of lots of trouble and gave me protection from peer pressure. I could always blame my parents for not letting me do things I either didn’t want to do or knew were a bad idea. But when I turned 16 and went off on my own in a car and did not have mommy or daddy there to make decisions for me I was lost and unprepared to take responsibility for myself.

Jesus is a never failing compass that won’t leave us lost and unprepared. His example of love and justice is the North Star to guide Christians in every ethical decision. His example is what informs us when we ask “What would Jesus do?” But that’s only the first question and the easy one. We know what Jesus does and would do. The more important question is “what will I do?”

Which road will I choose? The one near the cross or the other one? The hymn by that name says “Jesus keep me near the cross till my raptured soul shall find rest beyond the river.” Rest, oh yes rest sounds good to the tired and re-tired doesn’t it? So much better than taking up a cross, but what is that “Beyond the river” stuff? That sounds too much like buying the farm to me, but is it about life after death or life after birth? When Jesus says we must “lose our lives in order to save them” don’t’ take that too literally. He means we have to surrender our will, our great desire to call the shots and lead instead of follow. Followers of Christ need to say and really mean, “Not my will but your will be done.” The transforming river in that hymn is the river of baptism where we die to our sin and are reborn as followers of Jesus.

How our lives go, how we deal with conflict and change depends on whose will we choose to follow. Jesus’ path looks harder in the short run, but it’s the only road home. Are we willing to surrender our wills and let Jesus put us in our place, or do we want to lead our own little parade down the wide, smooth path of least resistance – the one Jesus warns us leads to destruction?

The decision to follow Jesus is one we have to make over and over again because we all continually take detours and try to go our own way. But here’s the good news—there is no where we can go that God can’t lead us back home if we choose to follow. The Holy Spirit is our spiritual GPS that keeps recalculating as many times as we get off track.

So when the burdens of life seem too heavy, let’s take time to look to the heavens and be inspired by the mystery and power of creation. We may feel small, but God isn’t. The heavens proclaim and declare the glory of God, and that’s our job too as followers of Jesus.

Robert Frost says, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and the choice makes all the difference.” To choose wisely we need to be put in our place – right behind Jesus.

Preached at Northwest UMC, Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 2018

Wilderness Times: When Only God Knows! Ezekiel 37:1-14

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

I just recently figured out the answer to a problem that I know befuddles many of us Ohioans, namely why well-trained meteorologists are so often wrong about our weather forecasts. I’ve decided it’s not climate change, nor is it crazy Ohio where we have three or four seasons in a 48 hour period. It’s because the weather people are all too young! With the exception of Jim Gynal and Ben Gelber all of our local forecasters are young people. Yes, they have Doppler radar and other fancy tools but what they don’t have are old bones and joints that reliably tell us seniors when the weather’s changing.

I bet you’re wondering what weather forecasting has to do with our text for today! The connection is that both are about old bones. The difference is that in Ezekiel’s vision the bones he saw were no longer predicting or doing anything. Ezekiel walks among this valley of dry bones and makes it very clear that these bones are very dry and have been dead a long time.

Here’s the context for this most familiar of Ezekiel’s visions. He is relating this vision to the people of Judah about 600 years before Christ. Ezekiel is a priest who along with the ruling classes of Judah is a political prisoner in Babylon. Geographically Babylon was located where modern day Baghdad sits today in Iraq. Then and now it was and is a hot, dry wilderness.

Our nephew Michael spent time in that part of the world a few years ago. He was stationed in Kuwait next door to Iraq when he was in the Air Force. Michael was a mechanic at the time and told us about a day that was about 105 degrees when he was working on a plane and forgot where he was. He reached down and picked up a wrench that was lying in the desert sun and immediately burned his hand.

Living in that heat came to mind when I was thinking about Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. Remember the Exiles were mostly people of Israel’s upper class, not used to these harsh living conditions. The Interpreter’s Bible describes the Babylonian exile this way: “The Israelites exchanged their hilly homeland and pleasant climate of Jerusalem for the flat and hot Babylonia lowlands…and forced manual labor.”

I’m sure the Babylonia Chamber of Commerce advertised to visitors that their climate was a “dry heat.” I’ve never been in Iraq or Babylon, but I’ve been in Phoenix in mid-summer; and I don’t care how dry the heat is, anything above 100 degrees is just too darn hot.

We’ve been thinking about “Wilderness Time” in this Lenten Sermon Series because whether it’s a voluntary retreat from daily living to draw closer to God or the wilderness is forced upon us by life’s circumstances, solitary time with ourselves and God is good for our souls – but only if we embrace it.

As many of you know our family has been doing some wilderness time this last month. My father died on February 12 and due to family schedule complications we set his memorial service and burial for this past weekend. Little did we know then that on March 1st Diana’s mother would go into a rapid decline and pass away on March 5th. These were not unexpected life events. My dad was 96 and Diana’s mom, Mary, was 100, but getting a double whammy of mortality definitely put us into the wilderness. We celebrated both of their lives last weekend, and Ezekiel’s image of dry bones seemed all too real in those cold, windy cemeteries.

Wilderness time is often hard to embrace. The exiles were none too happy to be carted off to Babylon, not just because they were uprooted from their homes and familiar surroundings, they were also yanked up by their theological roots. The foundations of their faith were supported by four basic pillars: 1) God’s blessings were assured them as God’s chosen people; 2) the land God had given to their ancestors would be protected forever; 3) the throne of David and his descendants would continue forever; and 4) the Temple at Jerusalem was the only suitable place for proper worship of their God.

When the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 597 BC the Israelites theological scoreboard suddenly read 0-4. Their beloved temple was in ruins, and the foundations of their faith were not only shaken they were pulverized. So what can we learn today from this ancient history? Aren’t we a lot like these Israelites? As it was for them it’s quite natural to want our faith to be comforting “Good News,” that’s even what the word “Gospel” means. So like the Israelites we are tempted by the same prosperity gospel that promises worldly comforts as rewards to God’s chosen people. Like Ezekiel’s contemporaries we sometimes forget that God chooses us not to be privileged but to be servants to others. We’d like Easter morning without Good Friday, but let’s not forget that much of the Bible describes a lot of bad news and how people like us respond to being in the wilderness.

Psalm130 was written in one of those wilderness times. It begins “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!” That Psalm is known by the title “De Profundis” which in Latin means “out of the depths.” I woke up one day last summer in one of those wrong-side-of-the-bed moods and thought of De Profundis to describe my mood. I wrote in my journal that day “De Profundis is Latin for “O crap, I have to get up and face another day of aches and pains and bad news!” Am I the only one who has days like that? I saw a cartoon awhile back that describes me all too often. It said “Sometimes I wake up grumpy, and other times I let him sleep.”

When I first started thinking about this dry bones text I pictured it in terms of personal or individual wilderness times that come to all of us. And then when Diana’s mom died that introspective kind of wilderness seemed even more real. But then I reread Ezekiel’s words and I realized what he’s talking about is a lot bigger than personal grief or loss. Verse 11 says, “Then God said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’” God says this valley of dusty, dry, lifeless bones is a metaphor for “the whole house of Israel.” A whole people, a whole nation is dead to God and hopeless, completely cut off. They’ve been in exile a long time; the buzzards and other wild life have picked their bones clean.

I’ve been trying to think of some contemporary situation to compare the Exile to. The heart-breaking pictures we see on the news today of the devastation and ruins of Syria are the closest image I can think of to understand how hopeless the exiles must have been feeling.

But as pitiful as this image of dry bones is Ezekiel is not sympathetic to Israel’s plight. This vision from Chapter 37, believe it or not, is from the “good news” section of the book of Ezekiel. He spends the first 32 chapters of this book passing judgment on his own people for their failure to obey God’s will. He warns them that bad things will happen if they continue to break their covenant relationship with God. The Israelites remember clearly God’s part of the bargain made with Moses, to give them a homeland, to make them and their descendants prosperous. But in their comfort and prosperity they have conveniently forgotten their half of the covenant – namely to live obediently, justly and humbly before God. Their leaders have become greedy oppressors who according to Amos “sell the poor for a pair of shoes.” Things have gotten so corrupt and unjust for the common people of Israel that at one point Ezekiel even declares that his people have out sinned Sodom. That is not a record you want to break!

In chapter 6 Ezekiel describes in gory detail the consequences of such unfaithful living: “Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense stands shall be broken; and I will throw down your slain in front of your idols. 5 I will lay the corpses of the people of Israel in front of their idols; and I will scatter your bones around your altars. ….7 The slain shall fall in your midst; then you shall know that I am the Lord. (Chapter 6)
That phrase “you shall know that I am the Lord” is a refrain that recurs in Ezekiel. Verse 14 of our text for today says, “You shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” That doesn’t mean God intervenes to punish us, but God wants the consequences of our bad choices to help us see that there’s only one God, and we’re not it!

I doubt that I need to draw the parallels between Israel and the current state of affairs in our country and other parts of the world where the ways of God have been trampled in the dust by the idolatry of living in a secular and materialistic society. It is all too easy to despair, to lose hope.

When we are searching for an elusive answer to one of life’s tough problems friends may ask us, “What are you going to do?” And a common reply is “God only knows!” meaning we don’t have a clue. In his vision Ezekiel hears God ask him one of those tough questions. As he is walking around in this valley full of dry bones God says, “Mortal, can these bones live?” and Ezekiel answered, “O Lord God, you know.”

What do we do when we are in one of those situations where only God knows the answer to what we should do? When we suddenly lose a job or a loved one; when our world seems to be collapsing around us? And it seems God isn’t readily available to share whatever it is that only God knows! Or sometimes we’re too stubborn or proud to pray for God’s guidance. We might not like what we hear!

Put yourself in Ezekiel’s place. How would you answer God’s question, “Can these bones live?” Or look at the homeless, hopeless refugee children in Syria, or the suffering caused by gun violence in our own country. Why do we have so much more gun violence than other developed countries? What are we going to do to stop consuming violence in video games and entertainment? How can we help people suffering from mental illness, or those who are bullied? How are we supposed to love the bully and heal whatever wounds he is suffering that cause violent behavior? How do we provide support systems and ways to deal with pain and depression so people don’t get hooked on opioids or other drugs? Can our badly divided nation live again and achieve the high ideals of our democracy? God only knows!

And yet that hopeless cry of despair is actually the beginning of hope for a whole nation of dry bones. When we look at a hopeless situation through our own mortal eyes we see no way dead bones can live again. When I held the urn of my father’s ashes in the cemetery last weekend I knew there was no way those ashes could live again, at least not in the form we knew as my dad. But those ashes can provide nourishment for what grows in God’s good earth.

Likewise out of tragic death at the Parkland High School massacre has emerged a new generation who are taking their civic responsibility to a whole new level. Whether you agree with their methods and goals or not you have to applaud their determination to make a difference. New life can arise out of death. I saw that at both of our family funerals last week where new life was in abundance in the joyful, energetic laughter and play of young great grandchildren. May we have eyes of faith to see signs of life even in the midst of death.

Remember the dry bones story is a vision Ezekiel is having. It is one of four visions in Ezekiel. And it’s the only one of the four that does not begin with a date identifying when Ezekiel had the vision. Elie Weisel, a survivor of the valley of dry bones known as the Holocaust, commented that the reason this vision has no date is that every generation needs to see it and experience it for themselves. Dry bones are a timeless description of the human condition.

And that’s the key – the valley of dry bones is a human condition seen through finite, mortal eyes. But Ezekiel was a priest. He of all people should have known the answer to God’s question, “Mortal can these bones live?” When we began this Lenten season on Ash Wednesday many Christians received the mark of ashes on our foreheads with the words from Genesis, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Those words are not some morbid reminder that we are all going to die. We say them to help us remember that in the very beginning of God creates human life by forming us from dust and breathing life into us. Can these bones live? Of course they can live if God chooses to breathe his Holy Spirit on them.

And that’s exactly what happens in the rest of the vision. “Then God said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as God commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

The Hebrew word for breath is ruah which is also the word for spirit, the holy breath of the one with whom all things are possible. When seen through mortal eyes this is a dead, dry bone. But when the Holy Spirit helps us lift our eyes to catch a vision through God’s eyes hopelessness turns to rejoicing and death becomes resurrection. Seeing life and death through God’s eyes helps us confess our sinful nature honestly and brings us to our knees. And it’s from there we can see new beginnings that God alone can see.

And so as people with a vision of Easter in our eyes wilderness times call us to renew our covenant with God–because it is in the wilderness that we remember who we are and whose we are.
Can these bones live again? – You can bet your life on it!