Tag: repentance

Advent 1, 2025 Matthew 24:36-44, BE PREPARED!

by Steve Harsh, posted in Advent, Christmas, hope, Lectionary Texts

This message for this first Sunday in Advent in Matthew’s Gospel is also the motto of the Boy Scouts – “Be prepared.” As an Eagle Scout one could assume that it would fit my life style. I wish it did, but in crisis or stressful situations I’m not at my best. When I was about 14 or 15 my Explorer Post took a canoe trip on an old abandoned canal called the Whitewater Canal in southern Indiana. The name was misleading since there was no white water there, but there was one tricky spot in the concrete remains of an old lock.

Because the current got faster as it narrowed into the lock there was a sign telling canoeists to portage around the lock. Portage means to pull over to the bank, get out, and carry your canoe around to the other side of the lock where it’s ok to put back into the water. The problem was that the portage sign was so close to the lock that there was little time, especially for inexperienced paddlers, to exit the water before being sucked into the lock. The portage sign was on a cable stretched across the water and the first reaction to seeing that sign when it was too late to portage was to grab the cable and try to stop. The problem was the person grabbing the cable stopped, but his canoe didn’t.

Some of us who made the canoe trip in the first of two groups had found out the hard way how this worked and had a good laugh as we scrambled to retrieve our runaway canoes. So, rather than being good Scouts and warning our friends in the second group about this hazard we secretly hiked down to the lock while group 2 was getting ready to set off so we could see how many of them ended up in the drink like we had. Some did, of course, and we had a good laugh until we realized that our Scoutmaster in one of the tipped canoes had gone under and not come back up. He was trapped under the current.

It was truly a life and death moment, and I was frozen in fear. I remember yelling for someone to do something, but it felt like my feet were nailed to the ground. Thank God two of my fellow Scouts did act courageously. They jumped the 8 feet from the top of the lock to the water and pulled our sputtering Scoutmaster to safety. They were both honored for their bravery, but I was not prepared to act.

In less dramatic ways I was not prepared to leave home for college and spent an entire quarter terribly homesick. I was not ready for marriage at age 21 or for parenthood 3 years later – but then who is ever really ready for that responsibility. And now in my “golden years” I am certainly not ready for the challenges of aging!

So if it’s that hard to be prepared for “normal” life events that we know are coming, what in the world can we do to be prepared for the coming of the Lord? Matthew says, “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” (24:44). That verse is about the second coming, but Advent is our warning that we need to be prepared not just for the celebration of Christ’s birth but for the big surprise of his dropping in again any time he feels like it.

Sorry, Lord, I don’t like surprises. I don’t even like unexpected changes to my daily routine. And my weird sense of humor suddenly turns to the lyrics from an old song by Eileen Barton:

“If I knew you were comin’ I’d’ve baked a cake, baked a cake, baked a cake

If I knew you were comin’ I’d’ve baked a cake

Howdya do, howdya do, howdya do?

Had you dropped me a letter, I’d a-hired a band, grandest band in the land

Had you dropped me a letter, I’d a-hired a band

And spread the welcome mat for you

Oh, I don’t know where you came from

’cause I don’t know where you’ve been

But it really doesn’t matter

Grab a chair and fill your platter

And dig, dig, dig right in.”

It’s like dating or meeting someone important for the first time. We can put our best foot forward and be on our best behavior when we are prepared. Even I can clean up pretty well when I am forewarned. I can even tidy up the house when I know when my wife is returning from a trip, but “at any hour you do not expect!” That’s not fair.

But timing is not really the issue. God has known when we’ve been naughty or nice long before Santa or security cameras started tracking us. And it’s not rocket science. Being prepared for Christ is like an open book test. The Book has been telling us for 2500 years what God expects to find when he/she drops in unexpectedly. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

That’s pretty straightforward, and yes, much easier said than done. But please notice that last line – humility is the way to grace and mercy. God knows all too well we all flunk at doing justice and loving kindness way more than we like. But as 1 John tells us, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1:9-10). That first part is humility, the second not so much.

And there’s another wonderful summary of being prepared for Christmas or any Christ coming. The whole Bible is a lot of stuff to digest. There’s not just 10 Commandments but hundreds in the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament. So Jesus boiled it all down for us. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

Simple – love God and all your neighbors and yourself! Do that and you will be prepared. I hear you, but, Steve, how can we do that? We’re just fallible human beings after all! So, here’s the secret I’m counting on, and maybe you should too. “But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

Biblical Reflections on Greed and Social Justice: A Note from Amos and Jesus to the U.S. Congress

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

I’m at a loss as to what to say with regard to the Big Hateful Bill the Republicans in Congress just passed by one lousy vote. I don’t understand how those 215 people who voted for this bill to literally take food and healthcare from the most needy Americans and give that money to the most wealthy 1 % of our population can live with themselves.

But since greed and hate have been around as long as humans have I think these these words from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures should speak loud and clear to our 100 Senators who now have the fate of this cruel and ugly bill in their hands.

“Listen to this, you who walk all over the weak,
    you who treat poor people as less than nothing,
Who say, “When’s my next paycheck coming
    so I can go out and live it up?
How long till the weekend
    when I can go out and have a good time?”
Who give little and take much,
    and never do an honest day’s work.
You exploit the poor, using them—
    and then, when they’re used up, you discard them.

God swears against the arrogance of Jacob:
    “I’m keeping track of their every last sin.” (Amos 8, The Message)

Or since so many of you Senators claim to be Christians, how about these words from Jesus himself:

“You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’  Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’  And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:41-46 NRSV)

Lent: Fourth Sunday Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in Gratitude, Lenten devotion, prayer

O God of eternal love, we are here again needing your amazing grace.  We’re half way through our Lenten journey, and to be honest some of us have lost our way.  The distractions of life keep pulling us off track.  There are taxes to do, gardens to prepare, and our houses, offices, and even our lives need a good spring cleaning. 

Spring break isn’t long enough, and quite frankly we often come back from vacations more tired than when we left. Those school assignments or work deadlines are still lurking on our lap tops and in the back of our minds.  Instead of focusing on what you would have us do for others we get turned in on our own fears and doubts about the future—concerns about our own health or the well-being of our loved ones. 

Gracious Holy One, we know you have told us over and over again to put our trust in you and not in things that thieves or natural disasters can take from us.  But we still have to buy expensive food and watch our retirement accounts shrivel up.  Those fears are real, God.  And they make it hard to trust in the future. 

So we’re here seeking hope and assurance.  We need forgiveness for the times we have strayed from the narrow path that leads to salvation and for the times when we self-righteously look down our noses at others who are just as lost as we are.  Speak to us again your words of grace that tell us and show us that we can never wander so far that you can’t find us, for you are with us and your spirit is right within our hearts.

Remind us once more, O Holy One, that you are not the judgmental, angry God many of us grew up learning about, but you are the Good Shepherd, the mother hen, the eagle parents nurturing their young. You love us unconditionally forever.  There’s no fine print, no preexisting conditions in the new covenant we have with you that was signed and sealed in Jesus’ own blood on Calvary’s cross.

So with grateful hearts we the people of your kindom reaffirm our trust and offer again the prayer Christ taught us to pray …

Oligarchy Inaugurated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Long Overdue Apology

by Steve Harsh, posted in memoir, Women's Rights

Is there a statute of limitations on dumb stuff one did way back in high school? I bet the vast majority of us would vote for an amendment to that effect if we had the chance. I am going to a high school reunion this weekend – one with a ridiculously big number attached to it. One of the great things about growing up in the 1960’s is that we didn’t have cell phones and social media to record our dumb stuff for posterity. But that doesn’t mean those embarrassing incidents aren’t tucked away somewhere in the recesses of our memories.

As I was thinking about our upcoming reunion a long-forgotten memory from the spring of my sophomore year popped into my consciousness and has been lurking around in there for several weeks now. And what’s more troubling than the memory is the fact that it never dawned on me for over 60 years how badly I behaved on a spring night in 1962.

I’m talking almost Donald Trump badly. No, I didn’t grab my date by any body part, and I didn’t assault her; but I did treat her very disrespectfully. It is painful even now to relive that night, but here’s the abridged version. I had a date with one of the smartest and nicest girls in my high school class. It was our first date, and you will soon see why it was the last.

I was still not even old enough to drive; so we double-dated with a friend of mine who was a senior. He had been going steady with a freshman girl for some time, and the four of us went to a party together. I’ll call him Bill to protect the innocent. Bill and I were both in a local Boy Scout troop, and I think the party we went to may have been one held by our troop to celebrate something which I do not recall.

So here’s the short and dirty – Bill’s date at some point, for reasons I will never understand, started flirting with me, and I fell for her charms like a ton of bricks. I proceeded to ignore my date for the rest of the evening to talk and flirt with my good friend’s steady girl. I don’t know how many points of the Scout Law I broke that night, but trustworthy, loyal, courteous, and kind certainly went out the window.

I have no memory of how that disastrous date ended. I don’t know why my date or Bill didn’t smack me silly. My only consolation is that my date and Bill ended up dating each other for a long time, much longer than my “relationship” lasted with the flirt. They got a much better deal from that double date than I did. The flirt dropped me a few weeks later in a much more unceremonious way than she did Bill. So, I got my just desserts.

But the most painful part of the memory is that I realized that I repeated similar kinds of disrespectful behavior in several other relationships with women throughout much of my adult life. I’m grateful that I learned to do better in mid-life; just wish it had been sooner rather than later.

But here’s my immediate dilemma. I will likely see the woman who was my date that night at our upcoming reunion. Should I apologize to her after all these years? I hope she has long since forgotten what a jerk I was, but I know I may feel more at peace if I unburden my conscience. What I wonder is if my apologizing is also the right thing to do for her? I welcome advice, especially from my female readers.

Prayer to Heal Our Addiction to Violence!

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

Late tonight (Monday), when I should have been going to bed, I heard about yet another mass shooting in California. Not the one Saturday, but a new one on Monday, at least the fourth in the U.S. in three days. I don’t know what to do with my frustration and anger about this uniquely American problem; so I let my heart pour out to God:

Dear God, as you know the bad news of hate and killing just keeps crashing in on us like a tsunami. Monterrey Park, Baton Rouge, Des Moines, Half Moon Bay-all names added to the shameful litany of American gun violence in just the last 3 days. We humans are violent. We’ve known that since Cain killed Abel, but Cain couldn’t reload and kill dozens of people in a matter of seconds. We are tired of the “guns or people kill people argument.” People with guns kill people, and people with access to weapons of war can kill indiscriminately.

Why, O Lord, do we Americans have more guns than any other nation in the world? Yes, we confess our nation was born in violent revolution, oppression of black humans, and genocide of Native Americans. Gun ownership was carved into our Constitution because Southern slave owners feared their human property would rebel against their cruelty. Give us courage, dear God, to face those harsh truths or we will never stem the red tide of innocent blood that stains our collective soul.

Holy One, the fratricide at Gettysburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Chattanooga didn’t quench the thirst for American violence. And when the gun manufacturers couldn’t sell their deadly wares to the military after the Civil War they cleverly used racism and fear of “others” to market more and more sophisticated weapons to American men eager to prove their manhood and protect their property and loved ones by owning the latest guns.

God, we are so tired of the discomfort that creeps upon us when we are in a crowd of people and begin to look around to see who might be the next gunman! This is no way to live! The gun lobby has purchased the votes of our elected officials so that no common sense gun control legislation can ever see the light of day. In my state and in others people can now carry concealed weapons without a permit! We are regressing instead of addressing our problem.

What will it take, Lord, to bring us to our senses? How many more innocent people will die before we find the courage to put an end to this madness? Why can’t we learn from what other countries have done? American exceptionalism blinds us to the wisdom and experience we need to glean from other cultures and nations!

Lord, we do have a mental health problem, that’s true, but the paranoia, rage, and desperation are more than individual problems. Our whole culture, economy, and system of government is mentally ill and in denial. Wake us up from this nightmare, Holy God. Bring us to our senses so we can stop doing the same thing (nothing) and expecting different results! We obviously don’t have a clue as to how to stop the madness on our own. Bring us humbly to our knees and give us ears to finally hear and obey the voice of the Prince of Peace. In whose holy name we beg for your healing mercy and love. Amen

All Nighter Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in prayer, purpose, self-care, Uncategorized

Hey God, do you ever have trouble sleeping? Oh, if you are omnipresent, I guess you can’t ever sleep can you? Or do you let the angels take over sometimes to give you a break? Yes, I know that anthropomorphic stuff isn’t real, but it’s 1:20 am; and I can’t sleep. I don’t know anyone else who’s awake at this hour that I can talk to; so you’re it. My sleeping pills have let me down. Reading and doing Wordle haven’t worked; and my blasted neuropathy has my feet feeling like they are on fire.

The more I think about my feet the more they hurt. The harder I try to shut my mind off, the louder the racket in my brain seems. At this hour all my aches and pains seem worse, and my list of things I need to get done in the next few days looms like some Sisyphusian boulder daring me to push it up that damn hill again.

I’m actually scared, God. The pain in my feet has never been this bad before. I’ve always been able to manage it with cream, drugs, and/or ice; but tonight/this morning nothing is working, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t handle sleepless nights like I used to when my youth groups did all night lock-ins at the church, or when I pulled all nighters to study for an exam or finish a term paper.

When you wrestled with Jacob all night long I guess he must have had a lot of adrenaline flowing to keep him going that long. That night near the Jabbock river Jacob had even more things on his mind. He was about to face the music of meeting his brother Esau years after he had swindled him out of his birthright and their father’s blessing. Jacob has sent huge amounts of cattle and other gifts across the river to assuage Esau’s anger, but restless Jacob is afraid it is not enough to buy his brother’s forgiveness. This one who has stolen his brother’s blessing is not satisfied with all his ill-gotten gain. What he asks of God to end their marathon wrestling match is a blessing. Will that salve his guilty conscience? Does a divine blessing imply grace and forgiveness?

In a way yes because the blessing God grants to Jacob is a whole new beginning – a new identity in the form of a new name. He is “born again” long before that New Testament term is coined. Jacob no longer is stuck with his birth name which means “heal grabber” because he tried to yank Esau back into their mother’s womb so Jacob could be the first born. His new name/identity is “Israel” which means “one who contends with God.”

I could use a new identity too, holy parent. My physical aches and pains try mightily to label me as a victim of old age, but when I am caught up in that identity I have little to offer you. I am like a fly trying to escape from a spider’s web, turned in on my chronic ailments instead of focusing my energy on all that is right for me and how blessed I already am.

I could do a lot worse for a new name than “one who contends with God,” even if that means walking with a limp. Please help me, eternal Being, to appreciate my gray beard and arthritis as reminders that I have been blessed with decades of life to wrestle with you and your call upon my life. Like Jacob let me know again that you are not far off at the top of some stairway to heaven, but right here in the sweaty ring of life with me even in the wee hours of the night.

Thanks and Amen

When, Lord, when?

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Politics, hope, prayer

Oh Holy One , I am feeling like pharaoh must have felt during the plagues. Fire, floods, Covid, monkeypox, and the stupidity of gun violence and war bombard me constantly from my newsfeed.

As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches once more I remember those pesky words from Jesus that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. That was hard then and still is, oh so very hard.

Never did I imagine back then that I would see the day when political foes in our own country would be the enemies that I struggle to love or even forgive!

I know it’s wrong but I find myself longing for the God of Exodus who drowned the Egyptian‘s in the Red Sea. Or even for the God of Mary who promised us that the rich and powerful will be sent empty away. When, oh Holy One? When will justice roll down like waters? When will we beat our swords into garden tools and never learn war anymore? When, Lord, when?

In the words of one who survived one of the darkest hours of human history, Corrie Ten Boom, “Lord if you want these people forgiven you are going to have to do it because I can’t.“

And yet I give you thanks, Lord, for modern day prophets like Diana Butler Bass, Brian McLaren, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and the dear departed Rachel Held Evans. They give me hope even in the depths of despair about the future of humanity.

And it’s not so much for myself that I pray, Holiest One. It is for those I love the most, my children and grandchildren, that I weep. They will inherit the mess my generation has made.

Please send your miracle-working spirit to renew a right spirit within us, to help us repent of the greed that is destroying our planet and the fabric of our society.

Oh how I hope that it is not too late. And I give thanks that in your eternal, cosmic power it is never too late. Amen

Awe, Mystery, and Disgust Part II

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

I am still processing the act of nature I witnessed in my back yard yesterday when a hawk

decided to drop in and have what I now believe was one of our many wild rabbits for dinner. In fact just looking at this image still gives me chills even though I didn’t witness the actual attack.

When I heard on the news today that this is the 6-month anniversary of the beginning of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine I could not help drawing the comparison to what the hawk in my backyard did to what the hawk in Moscow has been doing to Ukraine for half a year.

It is way to easy to be distracted by all the political foolishness in our own backyards and forget the war crimes and senseless violence the Russians are inflicting on our sisters and brothers in Ukraine. But it is a great disservice to the hawk I saw yesterday at my house to compare it to Putin. The hawk here was doing what hawks do naturally to survive. That’s what raptors do. But there is no natural or just reason for what Putin continues to do to Ukraine.

Cleaning up the remains of my hawk’s dinner was disgusting, but what is happening in Ukraine turns my stomach even more. Are we humans no better than that? Christ have mercy!

Dis-United: Realism vs Aspirations

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

May 2022 will go down in my personal history as one of the most difficult in my life. I have not written a post here for over a month for a number of reasons, including trying to work through my chronic pain to help care for our beautiful 2 acre property. My depression over my failing strength has coupled with despair over humankind’s addiction to violence. From Mariupol to Buffalo to Uvalde bloodshed has colored the news and my Eeyore-like emotional state.

Amidst all the terrible news of current affairs the unmerry month of May has been the scene of schism in the United Methodist Church, my church home for 65 years. That split along with the related political paralysis in our country got me searching for a common thread. There are several, but the one that captured my imagination is the semantic commonality shared by both my country and my church, namely that both share in their names a paradoxical claim to be “united.”

The UMC was founded 54 years ago in 1968 with the merger of two denominations, the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Evangelical United Brethren and is younger than the USA by almost 200 years. Realizing that the word “united” in both cases is more aspirational than descriptive, it still saddens me greatly that in both cases the divisions have widened over their lifespan rather than moved closer to living up to their names.

Case in point: “The United States may have been founded on the idea that all men are created equal, but during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, slaveholding was common among the statesmen who served as president. All told, at least 12 chief executives—over a quarter of all American presidents—enslaved people during their lifetimes. Of these, eight held enslaved people while in office.” (history.com)

The authors of the American experiment in democracy included the damning phrase in our constitution that enslaved persons only counted as 3/5 of a person because those authors were predominantly slave owners. That 3/5 clause was a compromise to “unite” the northern and southern colonies, but at a price we are still paying for today. Systemic racism had already been in existence for over 150 years in those colonies, and the battle over it dominated the country’s politics for 80 years ending in the bloodiest war in our history. But, unlike what most of us were taught in school, that war didn’t solve this existential problem. Systemic racism continued to poison our nation through lynchings, Jim Crowe laws, and outright genocide against Native Americans. That racism may have seemed to go underground for a few years after the successes of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s but reared its ugly head again in the 21st century in the twin evils of birtherism and Trumpism.

It frustrates me greatly that we weren’t taught about this disunited history in school. Our history text books never mentioned the Tulsa massacre of 1921or many other similar atrocities all over the country. We did not learn about the Trail of Tears or Wounded Knee or lynching of black folks for public entertainment sanctioned by the church. Those omissions were not our teachers’ fault. Those ugly parts of our history were so buried and censored that our educators didn’t know either and kept passing those lies along. “United” States? Not even close.

The disunity of the United Methodist denomination is a similarly sad story. I was ordained in 1969 in the first class of ordinands in the infant UMC. Three years later the exclusionary language condemning homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching” was inserted into our Book of Discipline, the rule book governing the UMC, by the first General Conference of the new UMC. And for the next 50 years that culture war has raged, leading to the schism in our denomination.. That Covid-postponed split began to unfold officially on May 1, 2022 with the launching of a new denomination called the Global Methodist Church by those who are opposed to ordination and marriage for LGBTQ people.

So we have these two “united” in name only entities with ever-widening irreconcilable differences. When stuck in that kind of relationship a married couple faces the painful reality that separation and divorce may be the lesser of two evils. Divorce is always messy but sometimes necessary for both parties to survive and flourish. Even Jesus instructed his disciples in Matthew 10:14: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

Are we at that point in either the UMC or USA? For me the answer is yes and maybe. In the case of the UMC I am convinced that a divorce is necessary. For 50 of my 53 years as an ordained pastor in the UMC the debate over LGBTQ equality in the eyes of God has dominated a large part of our corporate life and consumed so much time and energy that could have been used in more important forms of ministry. As one with first-hand experience with marital divorce I can attest to how much emotional energy is consumed by conflict and pretending to be something we are not. There comes a time in some marriages when the most loving decision is to set each other free, and the UMC is at that point.

As for the USA the issues are far more complicated. Our two major political parties are so far apart on most issues there is little common ground upon which to stand. The Gospel of John tells us that we need truth to set us free and we aren’t getting much truth. The Republican Party has descended to fear-mongering and lies to get or maintain power. Too many individuals are so concerned with inflation and losing our own privileged lives to see the bigger picture. Such short-sightedness means we keep kicking the can of climate change and other critical issues down the road and leaving our children and grandchildren with a bleak future. Any modicum of impartiality and non-partisanship in the judiciary at every level has succumbed to political gamesmanship. Any hope for real election reform to undo the damage caused by Citizens United would have to be enacted by the very lawmakers who benefit from existing laws. That seems to be an idealistic pipe dream.

When we can’t even manage a peaceful transition of power in a Presidential election it seems hopeless to think we Americans could engineer any kind of altruistic or amicable divorce.

For real or even semi-unity in either of these cases a healthy dose of conversion to comply more closely to our founding ideals in the Bible or the constitution respectively would be necessary. Unfortunately the only road to conversion is through confession and repentance, and I see little humility needed to make that happen in our church or nation. If we continue to bear the heavy burden of pretending to be something we are not instead of facing the hard truth of our real history we will never have the courage or energy needed to hear the truth.

But here’s the truth that sets us free. We are still loved even in our division and sinfulness. Our creator’s unconditional love is what sets us free to confess our failures and move toward a more perfect union. It’s that simple and yet so hard because it requires a leap of faith. The alternative is to keep widening the chasm of disunity until it is beyond repair.