Tag: Faith and Values

Renaming the YMCA?

by Steve Harsh, posted in hope, Wellness

One of the few benefits I’ve found of being old is a feature that comes with many Medicare Advantage plans. Silver Sneakers is a program that pays for access to many gyms and exercise facilities as part of one’s health insurance after the age of 65. Insurance companies benefit because people who exercise are healthier and have fewer claims for medical bills from their insurance. And, of course, having access to places to work out benefits senior citizens.

My wife and I have enjoyed Silver Sneakers since we went on Medicare 12 years ago. We are fortunate that with Silver Sneakers we can use 4 different YMCA’s and another gym that are all within 15 miles of our home, and we often decide which one to use depending on what errands or other trips we need to make on a given day. We’ve even been able to use our Silver Sneakers membership to workout when we are traveling.

Having said that I want to give a shout out to my favorite place to workout. My go to exercise since I had back surgery two years ago has been to swim, and my favorite pool is at one of our local Y’s in the nearby suburb of Hilliard, Ohio. It has become my favorite because of very friendly staff who call me by name and make me feel very welcome whenever I walk in. I also like the temperature of the water in their pool, about 82 degrees. But there’s something else I have come to appreciate very much about our Y, and that is the diversity of the staff and those who use that facility.

On any given day at the Y I see several people of different ethnicities. There are Asian Americans, African Americans, Muslim women in hijabs and some in berkas, either working at the front desk or often using the pool by themselves or with their children. The first time I saw two of these women get in the pool fully clothed in berkas and hijabs I must admit I was a bit taken aback. But it has become a common sight now. Recently a new sign was put up by the deep end of the pool warning of the danger for those who can’t yet swim. What struck me about that sign is that it is written in four different languages.

During the recent holiday season I was also pleased to notice that in addition to a Christmas tree in the lobby area there was a Menorah on the counter where members check in. I like the diversity and inclusive message all those things communicate. But here’s the irony in all that. YMCA originally stood for “Young Men’s Christian Association,” but it has obviously outgrown that name. Many of us who workout there are certainly not young, more than half I see are not men, and as I’ve demonstrated above the membership at our Y is certainly much broader than “Christian.”

I’m not proposing a name change. I happen to enjoy singing the YMCA song. I just find the diversity there a bit of good news in a world that needs all of the positivity we can get. So my hat is off to the Hilliard Y and all who help create the hospitality and inclusivity it represents.

It’s fun to play at the YMCA!

Practice Gratitude, Part 2

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, purpose, self-care, spiritual discipline

[Note: This post was written on January 2 but not posted until January 4. It will make more sense with that timeline in mind.] My year of practicing gratitude literally began with a tough challenge. For almost all of my adult years the new year has begun with watching the iconic ball drop in Time Square. Thanks to my own and our cultural addiction with football, 2023 was different. Along with a group of friends I watched a different ball drop this year—a ball that will linger in Ohio State fans’ memories as “wide left.” 2023 was literally just a few seconds old when what would have been a game winning field goal over #1 Georgia sailed like a wounded duck far left of the goal post.

That was almost 36 hours ago, but today as I read several articles about the game in today’s Columbus Dispatch I relived that moment and the frustration of a controversial call that dramatically affected the outcome of the game. I should not have subjected myself to that memory, but I was unable to let it go.

For me, that is a prime example of my biggest obstacle to practicing gratitude. I mentioned one of my mentors, Dr. Bill Brown, and his rhetorical theory called attention shifting in my last post, and this is exhibit A for 2023. In the larger scheme of problems on the world stage or even in my personal life the outcome of a silly game should not be my prime focus. The Peach Bowl is over and done. My dwelling on a terrible call by the refs does not deserve the amount of my attention I am choosing to spend on it. And it is a choice. I can shift my attention to a whole host of things that deserve my attention so much more if I choose to do so. [Remember, I wrote this a few hours before the near fatal football injury to Damar Hamlin, but that tragedy underscores in spades that all football games and other athletics must be kept in proper perspective.]

Notice I did not say that this is a simple or easy shift to make. The local media, my friends, and my social media are full of conversations about the Ohio State game. It is not easy to shift my attention away from all that chatter, but it can be done. I can choose to not read about the game. I can literally switch the tv channel when discussion of that game comes on. Unfortunately I don’t have a remote that can switch the channels in my brain when I think about that loss or my own aches and pains, or other negative and depressing problems in our world. But attention switching is a skill that I can learn if I choose to do so. And making practicing gratitude my priority for 2023 is step 1 in that process

Existential Equinox

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, purpose, self-care

“So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” Psalms 90:12

(365 x 76) + 19 = x? One of the blessings/curses of autumn means that the anniversary of my birth is once again on the horizon. That means if I make it another six weeks I will have logged 27,259 days on planet earth!!!! Yes I know that isn’t what the Psalm means by “counting” my days, but it is a very daunting number that raises the question, “what difference have I made in the world in all those days?” And for me it means it recent years asking the other uncomfortable question – how many more days do I have left? Wouldn’t life be easier if we knew the answer to that, or would it? For the next logical question is what do I want to do with whatever that unknown number is?

I do most of my calendaring on my phone these days, but I still like a paper calendar on my desk to get a wider angle lens on my schedule. I also mark the days of the month off on a wall calendar above my desk, not so much to mark time as to make it easier to see at a glance what day it is.

That is kind of redundant since my watch also shows the day of the week and the date. But with all those reminders I still forgot a PT appointment this morning until it was almost too late to get there. A friend of mine who has a four year old said her daughter has underwear with the day of the week on them, and she uses those to keep track of which days she has pre-school. I think something like that might be useful for retirees!

I mentioned to my therapist recently that turning the page on the calendar gives me a sense of pause now that it didn’t do in my younger years. Having surpassed the 70 year life span mentioned in Psalms 90:10 several years ago the still small voice of mortality keeps reminding me with each passing month or season that numbering my remaining days now takes much smaller numbers than it used to.

When I told my counselor about those feelings he said, “So changing the calendar is existential for you?” I hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms, but I guess it is. And the arrival of fall is especially so when we drop 30 plus degrees in one Ohio day! The fall season is full of mortality reminders as plants wither and leaves fall with the temperature. And more so for me since I also have the aforementioned October birthday just waiting to add another notch to my solar orbits odometer.

They say age is just a number – an ever larger number! I have the feeling the Psalmist knew it takes more than just adding years and decades to get a wise heart. It takes wisdom not just to mark off 24-hour cycles each day but to live each day we are given to make those days count.

Human Doings

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, purpose, self-care

I don’t remember where I first heard this piece of wisdom, but it surfaced from my memory bank today as I was mowing our lawn. The sage advice comes from that philosopher known to my generation as “Old Blue Eyes.” No, you don’t have to Google that, I’ll tell those of you too young to know, it’s Frank Sinatra. One of Sinatra’s many hit song was “Strangers in the Night,” and that song has a profound refrain that goes “do be do be do.”

That nonsense phrase truly became profound for me when someone pointed out to me that if you take the “be’s” out of that phrase all you have left is “do do.”

We all make “to do” lists, and there are even apps that will help you organize your to do list(s), and I’m guessing most of us have more than one. I’ve tried multiple ways to keep, organize, and prioritize my personal and professional tasks over the years, and if anyone tells you that retirement means you can throw your to do lists away, don’t believe them.

Most of you know I’m older than dirt; so I don’t have to worry about dating myself when I reminisce how years ago all the United Methodist pastors I knew organized their lives in a small pocket sized calendar. It came in the mail every year from our denominational publishing house, and it was free; so few of us ever questioned its efficacy. My only complaint about it was that since it also had pages in the black that served as an address book all of that information had to be updated and re-entered into the new little black book every January.

Somewhere along the line I let my human doings multiply, and I had to learn to write smaller to fit each day into a tiny space, and of course because life is full of surprises, to never write anything in ink. So when it was introduced I became an early adopter of the Palm Pilot, remember those? They were basically a digital calendar and address book that replaced paper calendars and Rolodexes in one handy gadget that didn’t have to be replaced or updated every year. And of course the Palm Pilot was soon replaced by iPhones and Androids that could do all those things and serve as a phone too, and eventually took over our lives by adding internet access.

Sorry to get distracted going down memory lane. My initial point was to reflect on being and doing. We all have to do lists regardless of how we record them, but who has a “to be” list? My reflections on that question emerged because I am home alone this week while my wife is visiting family in Texas. I had grandiose plans for the week: to organize my office that resembles the aftermath of a natural disaster, to clear out and donate clothes I no longer need, and even to sort through several drawers in my desk and bathroom which should say “Enter at Your Own Risk!”

Oh, and my to list for this week also included the simple task of assembling a new exercise bike that is still in a million pieces in my basement. I am now more than half way through the week, and not one of those major projects is even started and somehow my to do list is even longer than it was on Sunday. And I have been busy all week – going to doctor appointments, running errands, swimming at the Y to maintain what little physical fitness I have left, and oh yes, dealing with the aftermath of a car accident I had about a month ago.

I may deal with the latter issue in another blog, but suffice it to say for now that I have been somewhat overwhelmed with the complexities of filing insurance claims, arranging rental cars and other transportation, while still trying to keep up with my daily activities as much as possible.

Another big item on my “to do” list for this week was to do some writing. I’ve had multiple ideas for blog posts in the last three weeks but have not had or taken the time to pursue them. So today while mowing the lawn (which should not still be growing in October, right?) I made an executive decision to just stop, put the to do list on hold, and see what emerges if I start trying to capture a somewhat chaotic collection of thoughts and feelings in writing.

What I’ve been reminded of in doing that is how difficult, if not impossible, it is to flip a switch from being a human doing governed by the almighty to do list to reflecting on being itself. I believe the reason for that is that digging into our inner lives is 1) hard because we aren’t used to going there, and 2) scary because we may not like what we find. And once we look honestly at what meaning or purpose our lives really have we can’t unknow it. That toothpaste will not go back into the tube no matter how hard we try to put it there.

What I know for sure from trying to write this after a busy day of doing is that awareness of my being needs to inform all of my doing. If I try to separate the two I am too tired from doing to really give any meaningful attention to my inner/spiritual being.

Swimming for My Life

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, prayer

This post is either a little late for memorial day or a little early for Father’s Day or maybe both. As part of my rehab from back surgery last fall I have been spending a lot of time in the YMCA pool. I am not a good swimmer, but I have greatly increased my stamina over the last two months. I am swimming because it is low impact and about the only kind of aerobic exercise I can do because of my back.

While swimming I’ve had an unexpected revelation of admiration for my father who died a little over three years ago at the age of 96. Dad was a bomber pilot in World War II. Because our relationship was always rather strained there are lots of questions now that I wish I had asked my dad, among those are questions about his military service. I don’t know if he would have wanted to talk about a very traumatic experience he had in the war or not, and now I will never know.

I know he only made a few actual bombing runs because he got to Europe near the end of the war. I wish I had asked him about those, but because I grew up in the Vietnam war era I have always been a little anti-militaristic. The one biggest event that happened to my dad which I wish I could talk to him about occurred when he was co-pilot on a B-17 that was bringing him and 16 others back to the states after the war.

My sisters and I discovered after Dad died that he had written an article about this event for the newsletter at the retirement community where he lived for the final 28 years of his life. He titled his article “The Big Splash” because the B-17 those men were on developed engine trouble shortly after leaving the Azores in the North Atlantic Ocean and had to “ditch,” which is pilot speak for crash landing in water.

They ditched at midnight in a heavy fog, which caused them to hit the water too fast, breaking the plane in two. My dad was unconscious for a bit but was revived by the pilot and able to escape the sinking plane. Unfortunately most of his crew mates were not so fortunate, and by the time they were rescued only 4 survived the crash and 12 hours in the cold water.

Dad wrote that he thought part of the reason their rescue was delayed might have been because the radio man, in the pressure of the moment, sent the wrong coordinates for their location when the May Day signal went out.

What we do know for sure is that my dad and his buddies spent 12 long hours in the dark in cold water where sharks were known to roam. I did not remember all that while swimming in the comfortable 84-degree water at the Y, but when I did my amazement at what that experience must have been like truly inspired me. I remember telling myself, “OK, Steve, if Dad could do this for 12 hours, you can certainly do it for 30 minutes.” And I have reminded myself of that frequently ever since when I get tired in the pool or inhale at the wrong time. It’s those times I ask Dad and my Abba Father to help me finish my swim.

I don’t know if my dad and those guys had life jackets on or were in life rafts. I doubt if they had time to deploy the latter, and I know from first-hand experience that having a life jacket on while out of control in a strong current is still quite unsettling. (See my post, “When Oceans Rise,” May 9, 2019 for that story).

These recollections have not only helped keep me swimming when I needed motivation, they have also helped me understand and appreciate who my dad was as a result of that experience. I know there was no treatment for PTSD in 1945, and I wish I had been more aware of that and given my dad the credit he deserved for coping as well as he did for his remaining 70 plus years of life. I was much too judgmental of his rigid and legalistic coping skills, and I hope he can forgive me for that.

My dad was not religious growing up, and I know this big splash story was a baptism of sorts (and a baptism of fire) for him which made him a Christian; and that meant being a part of the larger Christian family began for me immediately when I was born 15 months after Dad’s near-death ordeal.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing there was a lot of praying during that long night in 1945; prayers that no sharks would be attracted by the blood in the water; prayers for the men who died from exposure before the rescuers arrived, and lots of bargaining with God and promises to change if they could be spared.

My prayers while swimming in the pool under the watchful eye of a lifeguard are pretty trivial by comparison. Mostly my prayers take the form of remembering biblical stories about Jesus napping in the boat during a storm and then calming the sea (Mark 4:35-40), or Jesus walking on the water and Peter’s short-lived attempt to do the same (Matthew 14: 25-32).

So, when you need a faith booster, be it in actual water or in the metaphorical oceans we call life, draw strength from the biblical or personal stories that inspire you to just keep swimming. That kind of faith is described so well in these words from the praise song “When Oceans Rise” by Jake R. Sanderson:

“You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown
Where feet may fail
And there I find You in the mystery
In oceans deep
My faith will stand

And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours
You are mine

Your grace abounds in deepest waters
Your sovereign hand
Will be my guide
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me
You’ve never failed
And You won’t start now

So I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise, my soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior.”

As Tempus Fugits

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, Faith Development, purpose, Self-Help, Uncategorized

I started writing this piece on May 29, and the fact that it took me a week to get back to it is exactly what it’s about. Each month when the calendar says we are near the end of another month my sense of urgency/panic about where time goes and how fast the circle of life is spinning comes around again like Haley’s Comet, only much more frequently. Aging certainly changes one’s perspective on time. I remember clearly being impatient with the plodding of the clock when I couldn’t wait to be 16 and able to drive. The summer I was 15 I was only a few months away from that magical age of freedom and responsibility that comes with a driver’s license.

That summer of 1962 was worse because I was one of the youngest in my class at school. My birthday is in October, but way back then one could start kindergarten at age 4 if your 5th birthday came by the end of the calendar year. That age difference didn’t matter for me at age 4 or even 14, but when all my classmates and friends were driving months before I could the age discrepancy seemed like an unbridgeable chasm.

I also had my first serious romance that summer. That was exciting. But the fact that Marcia lived 5 miles out in the country not so much. I was in great physical shape that summer because I rode my one-speed Schwinn out to see her about once a week; but that was the extent of the advantage of my long-distance romance. While my friends were dating and cruising through town on a Friday night I was dependent on my dad to drive me and Marcia to and from the local movie theater.

I do remember one of my very best one-liners from that summer. One night after I had walked her to the door I returned to the car and on the way home my father asked if I had kissed her. When I proudly said “yes” he, perhaps reliving his youth vicariously through me, asked “where.” And without missing a beat I replied, “On the front porch.” I don’t think he ever pried into my love life again!

I took two years of Latin in high school, and one of the few things I remember from that dead language is “Tempus Fugit” which means “time flies.” I know the earth has been rotating at the same speed for millions of years, and each day contains the same 24 hours give or take a few milliseconds. In more poetic form that means “525,600 minutes, how do you measure a year in a life?” according to the lyrics of “Seasons of Love” from the musical “Rent.”

But no matter what kind of arbitrary numbers we create to mark the passing of time we all know that sometimes tempus does fugit at supersonic speeds and other times it flat out crawls. When a four year-old is waiting out the last few days before Christmas it is not the same time for the child or parents as it is for two lovers away from all other responsibilities luxuriating in the mystery of real intimacy, even though by clock time they are the same.

I used to love amusement park rides that spin at high g-force speeds. There was one called the “Tilt-a-Whirl” and another where the floor dropped away when the ride got up enough speed that centrifugal force plastered the riders to the wall. I don’t remember the name but it was essentially a human centrifuge. I don’t do thrill rides anymore, partly because real life is scary enough, but also because I am feeling like my life is spinning too fast already for me to keep up with it.

Just for fun I took the number above from “Rent” and multiplied it by my age. I didn’t add in extra minutes for leap years, but the number is plenty big enough already. I have lived or at least existed in this life for something over 1,314,000 minutes! I’m sorry I did that calculation. (Note: a friend just checked my math and corrected this number. It’s really 38,106,000!). No wonder my body feels like its warranty has long since expired! But that important question from “Rent” seems more important each day. How do you measure a year in a life or 40 years or 72.5? We humans seem to have a propensity for wanting numerical values on such things.

In Academia there’s a constant tension between quantitative and qualitative research. That distinction shows up currently in the overemphasis on test scores in primary and secondary education and in the priority given to STEM schools (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Those skills are obviously important in our postmodern world where employment and most of life depends on technology. Case in point: the friend who corrected my math above is an engineer. But if the STEM curriculum is overemphasized at the expense of education in the humanities where critical life skills are learned about social sciences, human history, interpersonal skills, the arts, and cross-cultural competencies just to name a few, we do so at our own peril.

Human beings are more than human doings. We are more than complex human computers that can be upgraded solely through a mechanistic and quantitative approach to the relationships between minds, bodies, individuals, societies and eco-systems. We are spiritual beings made for each other, to be in community, and there are no mathematical formulas for how to do that.

The answer “Rent” gives to how to measure a life may be simplistic but is nevertheless true on a fully human and spiritual level. The “Seasons of Love” song concludes as the title suggests by asking “how about love?” and concludes with the refrain “Remember the love, give love, spray love, measure your life in love.”

At 38,000,000 plus minutes and counting I am still trying to more fully and abundantly learn how to “give love, spray love. Measure your life in love.” Sounds a lot like Jesus doesn’t it? The only quantitative thing about Jesus’ teaching is that he summed up the whole Judeo-Christian philosophy in three short phrases: “Love God, love your neighbor and love yourself.”

Pastoral Prayer July 1

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, prayer

O God of reckless love, we your children come again to drink of your life-giving spirit. We are worn down by the heat and the steady drumbeat of conflict and division in our world. Speak words of life to us in your still small voice. Renew in us the vision you have given us of a world where liberty and justice for all are realities and not just ideals. As you inspired our ancestors to risk their very lives for that dream of freedom, let our celebration of independence be a time of renewal for all who follow him who is the truth that sets us free.

Let the spectacle of fireworks not only fill us with oohs and ahs in their moment of brilliance, but let them reverberate in our hearts to energize us to be the change we want to see; to be agents of compassion and civility in our daily relationships; to build bridges over partisan divides; to brighten our little corner of the world with random acts of kindness.

As we ring the bells of freedom let us also hammer out justice all over our land. We pray for families that are divided by strife, by politics, by geographic or emotional distance. We pray for military families separated by service to our country; for health care workers, first responders, and others for whom July 4th is just another work day. We pray for the families shattered by the shooting in Annapolis and for those broken by terminal illness, dementia, addiction or grief.

Yes, we’re here, loving God, hungry for love, for good news, for community; for all those things Jesus represents for us; for the things we find in bread and cup; in every child touched by Vacation Bible School; in every brown bag lunch packed and delivered with loving hands; in every smile and hug we share with those here today. We praise and thank you for the many signs of love you give us and pray for ears and eyes to recognize those signs even in a broken world. We dare to live as Easter people with resurrection in our hearts because of the one who taught us to pray……

Like a Fatherless Child

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

To paraphrase an old spiritual, “Sometimes I feel like a fatherless child.” Today is my first father’s day as an orphan. My dad died 4 months ago, and I didn’t expect to feel the loss today as much as I do. My dad and I were not very close, and his last few years were not conducive to meaningful conversation. Fortunately I made a concerted effort in recent years to forgive him for the things I resented about his parenting; and we were on good terms before he died. But there is still emptiness in my heart today. He’s not where I can visit with him or call him and that hurts.

If I feel that loneliness as a 71 year-old reasonably stable adult, I can’t imagine what the immigrant kids being held by our government away from their parents in a strange country and place they’ve never seen before are feeling. It breaks my heart, and so does the legalistic mindset that says, “You do the crime, you do the time.” Yes, at times that strategy is necessary, but these kids are innocent. They didn’t come here on their own. Many are here because their parents in desperation risked arrest to flee for their lives from danger in their home countries. They threw themselves on the mercy of our country much as immigrants have done for centuries, only this time the quality of mercy has been strained to the breaking point.

The legalistic response from the current administration and especially from (I hate to admit) my fellow United Methodist Jeff Sessions reminds me of the Scribes and Pharisees who wanted to throw the book at Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath. Yes, Jesus broke the law because he knew compassion and human decency trump the law at times. You don’t tell a person begging for healing, “Sorry, not on the Sabbath.” As Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.”

So what do we do now? Christians across the country and world have raised a hue and cry of righteous indignation, but so far the Republican President and Congress have been unmoved. Such desperate times call for desperate action. The damage being done to these children cannot go on. So here’s my suggestion to the Democratic leadership in Congress. Pay the ransom. Give the president what he wants. Pay for the stupid wall. The billions of dollars are a huge price to pay, but how do you put a price on the well-being of all the Dreamers and other children being held hostage? Pay the ransom for the sake of the fatherless and motherless kids. And then take the reins of government back in November or in 2020 and pull the funding for the worthless wall. It’s getting perilously late to save our democracy, but if a new birth of compassion is restored by the plight of these children it may be worth it.

New Year’s Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, Faith Development, prayer, purpose

O eternal God, as we prepare to turn the calendar from one year to the next we pray in the words of the psalmist that you will teach us to number our days so we may gain hearts of wisdom. Help us learn from the mistakes we have made in the past so we can lead better lives in the future. Forgive us for the times we have disobeyed your will so we can live free from the burden of regret and guilt.

Help us to forgive those who have wronged us either on purpose or accidentally so we can live free from anger or feelings of being a victim.

As we pray for all those in need this day – those forced to live or work in frigid conditions, those enslaved by addictions, those suffering from illness, grief or chronic pain, help us find ways to comfort and empower them.
The New Year is a wonderful time to reflect on the past, to review our life goals and find the true purpose you have for us. Like Simeon and Anna, we pray that we can be faithful in worship and so focused on seeking your will that when our days are over we will be satisfied. Help us renew our vows of allegiance to you and your kingdom so that walking with you is not just a new year’s resolution or an item on our bucket list. Give us courage to make our faith and service to you the all-encompassing purpose of our lives, not just at Christmas but every day of the year.

Remind us again that to be followers of Christ means to devote our lives to making disciples; to witnessing to the Gospel by the way we live our lives. We are not here to accumulate wealth or possessions. We are here to do justice, love mercy and to walk humbly with you, O God. Our prayer is to do that with all of our being – at home, at school, at work or wherever we are – to share the peace and joy of Christmas with all the world. The Christmas story doesn’t end today or on Epiphany – it continues whenever we as the modern supporting cast live into the wonder and mystery of your love.

We ask these things in the name of Emmanuel, God with us, as we offer the prayer he taught us to pray.

Commit to Adulthood: Jesus and Sexual Misconduct, Exodus 20: 14, Matthew 5: 27-30

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

As one celebrity or public figure after another has joined the long list of those accused of sexual misconduct I have wrestled with how to comment in a meaningful way. I’m still working on that, but I remembered a sermon I preached several years ago that seems even more relevant today than it was then. I hope it adds something to this conversation. The sermon was part of a series on the 10 Commandments, “Stone Tablets in a Wireless World,” at Northwest UMC, Columbus, OH in the summer of 2014.

“You Shall Not Commit Adultery.” Some of you are thinking, “Finally, we’ve gotten to a commandment I haven’t broken.” And some of you carry a heavy burden of guilt or anger at yourself or someone else who has failed to live up to commandment number 7. I have good news and bad news for us all because this commandment is about much more for all of us than sexual fidelity.

I got an email two months ago asking me if I was available to preach one part of a series called “Stone Tablets in a Wireless World.” I love to preach and my calendar was open; so I said sure. Lesson learned – before making a commitment be sure you fully understand what you are committing to do.

I didn’t bother to ask which commandment since it was several weeks away. Fast forward to mid-June when the series began. I got out my calendar and started counting the Sundays until August 3 and arrived at the conclusion that I would be preaching on number 8,”You Shall Not Steal.” When I emailed our pastor to confirm that conclusion, her reply was a classic. She said, “No, we will be skipping one Sunday in July to do a mission report. I have you scheduled for adultery on August 3.”

I assured my wife she had nothing to fear – I might be scheduled for adultery on August 3 but after preaching three times in one morning, the only attraction a bed would have for me is a nap.

Everyone chuckles when I tell them I’m preaching on Adultery, but this is serious business. As with the sixth commandment, this one is short and very unambiguous. “You shall not commit adultery.” And, as with “You shall not murder,” Jesus ups the ante in the Sermon on the Mount with one of those things we just wish he hadn’t said when he gets to adultery.

Matthew 5:27: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
And then it gets worse —
“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.” Wow! If we enforced that one literally we’d have a world full of blind folks with no hands!

A young boy in Sunday school was asked to recite the 10 commandments. When he got to number 7, he said, “Thou shall not commit adulthood.” Part of the problem with obedience or lack thereof when it comes to the commandments is a refusal to commit adulthood. We are all a bit like Peter Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up.
St. Paul’s beautiful words about love in I Corinthians 13 are by far the most quoted scripture at weddings, and that chapter includes the line, “When I became an adult I put away childish things.” Faithful maturity means committing adulthood, but that commitment has to be renewed on a daily or sometimes hourly basis, as Paul himself points out in Romans 7: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Anybody relate to that if you’ve ever resolved to go on a diet or start an exercise program?

The two scriptures we read today make it sound so simple. Just don’t do it, and Jesus says the way to not do it is to not even think about it. Would Jesus say that if he lived in our wireless world? We’ve heard a lot recently about a “sexualized culture” in the OSU marching band. Big surprise! We live in a hyper-sexualized culture that uses sex to sell everything from Pontiacs to popsicles. Early Christian monks hid in monasteries to avoid worldly and sexual temptation, but there is nowhere to hide from the realities of human sexuality in a wireless world.
And the cast of characters in the Hebrew Scriptures, where the commandments reside, don’t help much. Sister Joan Chittister in her book, The Ten Commandments: Laws of the Heart, starts her discussion of adultery this way. “The problem with this commandment is that no one in the Hebrew Scriptures seems to keep it.” Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Jacob married both Leah and her sister Rachel, David knocked off one of his generals, Uriah, to try and cover up his affair with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. When Abram and Sarai were too impatient to wait on God’s promised son, they took matters into their own hands and Abram took Sarai’s servant Hagar, and she became the mother of his first son.

Yes, that’s ancient history, but to understand why we must take this commandment seriously today we have to make some sense of this seemingly blatant contradiction between what the scriptures say and the behavior of our spiritual ancestors. To oversimplify, at least part of the answer is that the biblical narrative is set in a sexist, patriarchal world where women were property. Having lots of wives and children were signs of prosperity and a future for society. There were no DNA tests to determine paternity and the lineage of one’s offspring determined inheritance; so the sexual faithfulness of a woman was critical to the whole socio-economic structure of the society. This commandment for Moses and Solomon was not about adultery as we know it but about respecting the property of others.

Marriage in biblical times was not based on ‘love’ as we think of it. The great musical “Fiddler on the Roof” makes that point in a humorous but very profound way. As Tevye’s and Golde’s daughters repeatedly challenge the sexist ways of their culture, loveable old Tevye begins to evaluate those traditions as well. In one memorable scene he surprises his wife of 25 years with this question: “Golde, do you love me?” And her response is classic. She says, “Do I what?”

So how do we understand and apply this commandment against adultery in our very different wireless world? The key is that it is all about commitment. Even though marriage in Jacob and Leah and Rachel’s day was totally different than ours, the common denominator is commitment to a set of responsibilities and obligations to each other which have to be taken seriously and kept to insure family and cultural stability.

An anonymous author has defined commitment this way: “Commitment is staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left.” Commitment is especially important in our transient world that moves at warp speed. We are a people deeply in need of stability. Extended families are over-extended or non-existent. When I grew up all of my grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins lived within a 20 mile radius. My mother didn’t need a cell phone to keep track of me. If I got in trouble she heard about it from her mom or one of her sisters before I got home!

Not so today when families are spread out all over the country. The village it takes to raise kids is gone. The support system for caring for the elderly at a time when the number of people in their 80’s and 90’s is growing exponentially is history, and the pressure all that puts on the nuclear family can cause a nuclear meltdown.
Those we love need the assurance that we take our commitments to them very seriously no matter what happens. Not because God says so or someone else said so. We have to be faithful to our commitments because we said so.

Marriage is a prime example of commitment because the promises we make are so huge. The words are so familiar they flow off the tongues of starry-eyed brides and grooms too easily. To love another person for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness in health, till death do us part. This is not a 5 year or 50000 mile guarantee. You don’t become a free agent when the contract expires. It’s for keeps.

I saw these words spray painted on a freeway overpass a few years ago: “John loves so and so forever.” I don’t know the name of the beloved because it had been painted over. Apparently “forever” turned out to be longer than John expected. And forever has gotten longer. When the average life expectancy was 40 or 50 till death do us part was a lot shorter than it is today. Caring for someone in sickness and health requires a whole lot more commitment when a spouse suffering from dementia no longer knows your name or is dying by inches from ALS or cancer.

“Commitment is staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left.” Even on days when you don’t like each other very much. Love is not a feeling you fall into and out of. Love is a choice, a commitment. Is it humanly possible to love like that always? No. That kind of unconditional love is from God and we are merely promising to imitate it. God doesn’t say “I will love you if you do this or don’t do that. God says I love you period.” That’s commitment, and it’s what faithfulness in marriage or any relationship requires.

So what happens when we fail to live up to that high standard? When we break our promises and commitments or are even tempted to? Do we pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands? Or go on a long guilt trip to nowhere?
No, there’s another adultery story in chapter 8 of John’s gospel that shows us a better way.

“The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

Have you ever wondered what Jesus wrote on the ground during that confrontation? No one knows of course. No one had a cell phone to take a picture of it. But from what Jesus has said to me on the numerous occasions when I’ve flunked the commitment test, I think he simply wrote one word, and that word is “Grace.” Grace for the woman. Grace for her self-righteous accusers, And Amazing Grace for you and me if we admit our sin and recommit to God’s way of faithful love.