Category Archives: Uncategorized

Negotiating the Shadow

April 21, 2026UncategorizedBible, faith, god, jesus, psalm-23revolsen

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Prayer of the Day: O God our shepherd, you know your sheep by name and lead us to safety through the valleys of death. Guide us by your voice, that we may walk in certainty and security to the joyous feast prepared in your house, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4. (NRSV)

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (RSV).

I much prefer the old Revised Standard Version (RSV) here because this is one instance in which it gets the sense of the text far better than the otherwise reliable New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). The Hebrew word used for “the shadow of death” is צַלְמָוֶת which means “death shadow,” “darkest shadow,” “deep shadow,” all of which serve as metaphors of death. Although the term can also be used to express the terror of death or “the terrors of darkness,” translating the term simply as a momentary passage through a dark valley, as does the NRSV, robs the poem of its potency. Some of my colleagues have told me they feel this translation is necessary because the psalm has too frequently been associated with funerals and death while the psalmist is chiefly concerned with the Shepherd’s leadership through the perils of hunger, thirst and the threat of enemies in this life. They make a valid point. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that the interpreters’ translation is motivated primarily by such concerns. Whether consciously or not, I think the translators were influenced by their modernist aversion to addressing death.

As I look back on my seminary education and subsequent continuing theological and pastoral training, it seems that most of the resources for ministry to the dying picked up at the eleventh hour. That is to say, death was addressed only when it was knocking at the door so loudly that it could no longer be ignored. Like the rest of American culture, the church has typically bought into the denial mentality. Or, as a fellow pastor, now with the saints in light, once said half jokingly, “I’m not in denial of death, but I got to admit that I’m procrastinating like hell!” I think that sums up our culture’s treatment of the subject.

Aging in America is not perceived as a memento mori, but portrayed as the “golden years,” “the second act,” the ‘next stage of the journey’ into…what is mostly left unsaid. We spend billions on lotions, creams and cosmetic surgery to erase wrinkles, grey hairs and other tell tale signs of old age. The realities of physical and mental decline are shouted down by the stories we keep telling each other about octogenarians who run marathons and one hundred year old business owners, as though this could be our future as well if only we could stick to a healthy diet, exercise rigorously enough and maintain a positive attitude. But, soon or late, the grim reaper catches up with us. When death can no longer be denied, it is euphemized with terms like “passing on.” Instead of funerals, we have “celebrations of life.” It seems we cannot even bring ourselves to say the “d” word.[1]

It was not always that way. In medieval Europe death was woven into the fabric of everyday life. Days were marked by the death dates of numerous saints. One had to pass through cemeteries memorializing generations of the departed to reach the entrance of the local church. Inside, the worshiper was greeted with the glow of numerous candles lit to memorialize the recently departed. Outside, the black plague hung like cloud over western Europe ready to rain death upon any town at any time. People died at home, which for common folk consisted of one or two rooms. They spent their final hours in the midst of children playing on the floor as the chores of everyday living continued around them. I am not suggesting that death was easy, pain free or less terrifying in those bygone days. But it was experienced as an ever present reality shaping the way people understood and lived their lives. More significantly, it influenced the shape of their faith. To a very large degree, life was understood as a preparation for death. Prayers were frequently made for a “good death,” one met with sins confessed and absolved, quarrels reconciled and amens made to all those one had wronged. People genuinely believed that “even in life, we are in the midst of death.” Moreover, death was not viewed as final. Beyond the grave lay judgment and the hope of eternal life. [2]

As a parish pastor, I have had the benefit of a front row seat to a great many deaths. Though death takes as many forms as there are people, there are some common threads. Many people to whom I have ministered during their last days remain in denial toward the end. They steadfastly refused even to discuss hospice care, funeral arrangements or final farewells to family members and friends. They were alternatively hyper optimistic, impatient or angry from one day to the next. Some descended into deep depression, isolating themselves from every attempt of anyone to comfort or care for them. These perspectives become particularly toxic when reinforced by the cultural expectation that death is to be resisted at all costs. Obituaries commonly report that an individual died after a lengthy “battle” with…whatever the last illness was. Persons diagnosed with terminal conditions are encouraged to “be a fighter.” Too often, people who desperately need permission to let go and rest in peace are scolded for “giving up.” To stop fighting and accept death is somehow a betrayal of our collective struggle against the limits of our existence.

There were, however, a few I have known who ended their days with a clear recognition that their lives were drawing to a close. While acknowledging the pain of letting go relationships to dear ones, the frustration that goes with leaving behind unfinished tasks and unmet goals, they expressed deep gratitude for the lives they were privileged to have had, their friends and family and the achievements that marked their lives. Often, they rejected medical treatments that might conceivably have extended their lives for a brief period choosing instead to spend their last days in conversation, prayer and fellowship with those nearest and dearest to them.

There is one characteristic shared by those few in the latter group. Each of them held a firm belief in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. I hasten to add that I am not suggesting one cannot die with grace, dignity and a sense of satisfaction in the absence of such faith. But within the limited scope of my own experience, I have found it to be a common denominator. I should also add that the faith sustaining these folks was not the sort found in a fox hole. Individuals I have known who have died in faith have lived in it throughout their lives. They have long recognized the good pastures and still waters that have sustained them day to day are gifts of the Good Shepherd. The Shepherd has accompanied them in their darkest hours, restoring their souls and strengthening their hope. They have known the Shepherd’s presence with them in times of danger and in the face of malice. They have known the Shepherd’s “goodness and mercy” all the days of their lives and so trust the Shepherd to accompany them on their last journey on this planet, even through it leads through the “valley of the shadow of death.”

My colleagues were right in pointing out that the twenty-third psalm is chiefly about God’s care, protection and leadership throughout one’s life. But the Good Shepherd’s leadership, protection and companionship do not end there. That is why I find the NRSV rendering of the twenty-third psalm lacking. Jesus can say, “[m]y sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” John 10:27-28. I believe that robust faith in Jesus’ promise that God’s love is stronger than death and does not end at the grave gives one the courage to speak freely and truthfully about death, to accept thankfully a life that is abundant as well as limited and to enter one’s final days with hope and expectation.

Here are two poems by Dylan Thomas and George Herbert respectively. They represent two quite different, but common human reactions to death.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Source: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1957). Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914 –1953) was a Welsh poet and writer. He was born in Swansea in 1914, leaving school in 1932 to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post. Thomas produced some 200 poems between1931 and 1935. He came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found earning a living as a writer difficult. Thus, Thomas began augmenting his meager income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940s brought him wider attention with the public. He was frequently featured by the BBC as a voice of the literary scene. Thomas travelled to the United States in the 1950s. There his readings brought him a degree of fame. Unfortunately he fell into erratic behavior and drinking that wreaked havoc on his health. During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill, fell into a coma and died. You can read more about Dylan Thomas and sample more of his poems at the Poetry Foundation website.

Death

Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,

Nothing but bones,

The sad effect of sadder groans:

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

For we considered thee as at some six

Or ten years hence,

After the loss of life and sense,

Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.

We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;

Where we did find

The shells of fledge souls left behind,

Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.

But since our Savior’s death did put some blood

Into thy face,

Thou art grown fair and full of grace,

Much in request, much sought for as a good.

For we do now behold thee gay and glad,

As at Doomsday;

When souls shall wear their new array,

And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust

Half that we have

Unto an honest faithful grave;

Making our pillows either down, or dust.

Source: This poem is in the public domain. George Herbert (1593 –1633) was a Welsh-born poet, orator, and priest of the Church of England. He was born into a wealthy family and raised in England. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge where he went with the intention of becoming a priest. Instead, he became the University’s Public Orator. His skill attracted the attention of King James I through whose patronage he entered the Parliament of England. There he served for about a year. Following the death of King James I, Herbert gave up his secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England. He spent the rest of his life as the rector of a small parish in Salisbury. You can read more about George Herbert and sample more of his poems at the Poetry Foundation website.

[1] When I was an intern minister at a church in Brooklyn, I went to visit an elderly woman hospitalized at a local facility. When I reached her room, the bed was empty. So I asked one of the floor nurses where I could find her. “Oh,” she replied, “she expired.” Thinking that she must have suffered a serious but not lethal medical incident, I asked, “so is she in the ICU?” The nurse looked a little confused, then went on to say, “she passed on.” That I understood. Though I will admit that I was being a tad dense, nonetheless, it struck me as odd then and still does that a medical professional in a hospital who deals regularly with sickness and death could be so reluctant to speak of it directly. I am not sure whether the nurse was uncomfortable with speaking directly of death or whether she thought I might be made uncomfortable with such directness.

[2] Admittedly, medieval culture’s awareness of death sometimes went to extremes. Moreover, the hope of eternal life was often overshadowed by the fear of eternal punishment, a fear that the medieval church and its patrons exploited ruthlessly. Even so, I think it’s outlook far superior to our own culture of denial.

To My White Evangelical Friends-Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?

April 18, 2026Uncategorizedantichrist, Bible, christianity, god, jesusrevolsen

My Dear White Evangelical Friends:

Let me start by saying that I read the Bible differently than you do. I don’t believe the Bible contains any cryptic information about when the world will end. I do not believe that God will abandon the world God loves to a cataclysmic “tribulation” under the reign of the devil incarnated as a world leader termed the “beast” or “antichrist.” Neither do I believe that a selective few whose Christian belief is just right will be raptured to heaven before all of this takes place. Consequently, I do not believe that Donald Trump is the antichrist. However, if I did read the Bible the way you do, I might very likely come to a different conclusion. Moreover, if like 80% of you, I supported and voted for Donald Trump in the last election, I would also be very concerned about the state of my soul.

Remember how in July of 2024 Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt while speaking at an open-air campaign rally in Pennsylvania? Remember the iconic pictures of Trump following the event, blood dripping from the side of his head, his fist in the air and the talking heads telling us that this event would define the upcoming election? Remember all your religious leaders, including Rev. Franklin Graham, crowing at Trump’s inauguration that God had miraculously spared him from death so that he could again lead our nation?

Well, check out Revelation 13 where John of Patmos describes the “beast” you call antichrist. ^“And I saw a beast rising out of the sea….One of its heads seemed to have received a death blow, but its fatal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast. They worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” Revelation 13:1-4. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

It is said of this “beast” or “lawless one” in St. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, that “[h]e opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.” II Thessalonians 2:4. Donald Trump has insisted that he has no need of law because his own “sense of morality” is the only thing he needs to guide him. Lately, he has portrayed himself on social media as a king, the pope and most recently as none other than Jesus Christ. Isn’t that exactly what the antichrist is expected to do?

Finally, Donald Trump is attempting to end birthright citizenship and, through the SAVE Act, require documentation to exercise the right to vote. Similar requirements are being proposed for entitlement to benefits and other rights of citizenship. This seems like it might be a little cumbersome, though it could be made a great deal more efficient if qualified voters could simply be marked with, say, an identifying tattoo on the forehead or the right hand? Check out Revelation 13:16-17. “[The beast] causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be given a brand on the right hand or the forehead,so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the brand, that is, the name of the beast or the number for its name.” Ridiculous, you say. Well, we all thought the idea of ending birthright citizenship in the face of clear constitutional authority to the contrary was ridiculous. Now it is before the Supreme Court. A lot of what Donald Trump has done used to be unthinkable.

Again, I do not read the Bible the way you do. If I did, however, I would be down on my knees begging God to forgive me for helping put the antichrist on the throne. I would be frantically trying to “get right” with God now in order to make the cut for the rapture, which could be any day now. And while you are praying about that, you might ask yourself what the hell is so wrong with your religion that it led you to support the antichrist? You might ask yourself whether, after all these years, you have gotten something very wrong about God’s priorities. Maybe God is not an anal compulsive morality cop that cares more about his precious rules than the people created in his image. Maybe God cares less about who loves who in what way than he cares that they love, period. Maybe God cares less about preserving the right to erect images of the holy family in public parks than he does about the rights of the the real people getting arrested for sleeping there because they have nowhere else to go. Maybe Jesus was not kidding when he said that the two greatest commandments, the commandments on which all the law and the prophets depend, the commandments that override every other law, rule and commandment, are to love God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind and with all the strength and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Maybe the God you have been worshiping is no God at all. Maybe the Christ you have been following is an idol.

No, I do not believe that Donald Trump is the antichrist. But I know that he is an admitted and adjudicated sexual predator, a compulsive liar, a rude, vulgar, corrupt, violent and obscene man. If your Christian faith is what led you to support him, your faith is messed up big time and in serious need of an overhaul.

Life in Exile

April 14, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Prayer of the Day: O God, your Son makes himself known to all his disciples in the breaking of bread. Open the eyes of our faith, that we may see him in his redeeming work, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“To the exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood” I Peter 1:1-2.

The New Testament writers frequently employ the narratives of “exile,” nomadic existence and marginalization in the life of Israel as metaphors for the church’s life in the time between Jesus’ resurrection and his return to reign over a renewed creation. The role call of saints in the Letter to the Hebrews comes to mind. See Hebrews 11. The author says concerning the heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures that they “suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:36-38. Jesus warns his disciples in John’s gospel that “[b]ecause you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 15:19. Paul reminds the church at Phillipi that “our citizenshipis in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Philippians 3:20.

Nevertheless, though not being “of” the world, disciples of Jesus are very much “in” the world and have been for the last two millennia. Consequently, the church is confronted in every generation with the same question: what does it mean for us to live in the world as “resident aliens”? How do we live and engage with the dominant culture? What is our duty with regard to the governments under which we live? What principles guide our commercial dealings with the rest of the world?

Pastor and theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr addressed this issue in his seminal book, Christ and Culture, Niebuhr, H. Richard (c. 1975 by Harper & Row). Niebuhr identifies three ways in which theologians and church communities have approached the relationship between the Body of Christ and the world. 1) discipleship as life in opposition to culture (Christ against culture);

2) discipleship lived in agreement with culture (Christ of culture; and 3) a combination that incorporates insights from both of these two views (Christ above culture). The first of these takes the view that loyalty to Christ and the church entails a rejection of culture and society. The second views Jesus as the fulfiller of society’s hopes and aspirations. He is the supreme teacher directing human culture to the attainment of wisdom, morality, and peace. In the third and more nuanced view, Christian discipleship is lived in dialogue with the world, sometimes working in and through societal structures seeing their improvement, sometimes challenging those structures and even calling for their abolition or replacement and sometimes seeking to convert them such that they serve the aims of God’s promised reign.

It should be noted that Niebuhr recognizes the artificialities of his categories. Monastic communities, though living in ways quite contrary to the ways of the rest of the world, have provided numerous services and contributions to society. So, too, many communities believing in the perfection of humanity through culture did so by forming utopian societies they hoped would inspire the rest of the world to emulate. There is, of course, no clear lines of demarcation between the third category and the prior two. Moreover, Niebuhr recognizes a degree of legitimacy in all these approaches and advises his readers against adopting any single view to the exclusion of all others. He warns us that no one single approach constitutes “the answer” for all times and places.

I think the same diversity exists within the New Testament. Both the epistles of Peter and Paul urge Christians to pray for “those in authority.” Though these authorities had names like Nero and Caligula, they were nonetheless instruments God employed to maintain a degree of order in the world, however imperfect and corrupt it might be. In the Book of Acts, Paul appeals to the justice of Rome to adjudicate the claims made against him by the religious leaders in Jerusalem. On the other hand, in the Book of Revelation Saint John of Patmos portrays the Roman empire as a “beast,” and instrument employed by the devil to oppress the saints and operate as the “destroyer of the earth.” So far from praying for the emperor, John prays for and rejoices in the empires’ downfall. He sees underneath its wealth, prosperity and power the ugly specters of slavery, oppression and violence. Following Jesus demands nothing short of faithful witness to God’s reign of justice, reconciliation and peace over against the tyranny of Rome.

Like H. Richard Niebuhr, I do not believe we are compelled to decide between Paul and John of Patmos. The circumstances of the church in Greece and Syria were different from those experienced by the churches of Asia Minor in John’s time. In both cases, however, the church was a marginal presence. Paul’s congregations lived uneasily under the shadow of an empire that was always potentially hostile to them, but largely indifferent. John’s churches experienced the full force of Rome’s cruelty and oppression. Saint Paul faced an empire to which he could appeal on grounds of a shared belief in justice and due process. Saint John dealt with an empire posing an existential threat not only to the church, but to humanity in general. For Paul, Rome was an instrument, however flawed, of justice and good order. For John, it was a ravenous beast. We can therefore say that both apostles preached faithfully to their churches within their unique respective contexts.

Both Paul and John of Patmos understood their churches to be “exiles,” a community of sojourners whose ultimate loyalty belonged to a kingdom that remains hidden. Still, they lived within the borders and under the jurisdiction of cities, towns and localities that were all finally subject to Rome. The communities in which they lived rightly expected the believers to participate in the common life, bear their share of the burden pursuing the common good and respect the cultural behavioral standards of law, courtesy and civility. The church was never intended to be a world unto itself. Nevertheless, at the end of the day the disciples were given to understand that they had but one Lord and their ultimate allegiance belonged solely to the reign of God he proclaimed. No decree of any nation or ruler is above Jesus’ command to love God with all the heart with all the soul, with all the mind and with all the strength and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Thus, when the demands of the empire diverged from the commands of Jesus, the disciples were required to “obey God rather than any human authority.” Acts 5:29.

Jesus’ resurrection represents the repudiation of imperial overreach. Rome exercised its law to convict Jesus and its godlike power to execute Jesus. God reversed Rome’s verdict. That ruling liberates disciples of Jesus to live in and serve the world God made and aims to redeem while remaining free from the overreaching delusions of godhood held by the principalities and powers that would enslave it. It is, as Martin Luther once said, “to be a perfectly free lord of all” while at the same time being “a perfectly dutiful servant of all.”

To be an exile is to live with the pain of absence while knowing the joy of an anticipated homecoming. It is to be at home away from home.

Here is a poem by Emma Lazarus about exiles being fully and freely themselves in a foreign land.

In Exile

“Since that day till now our life is one unbroken paradise. We live a true brotherly life. Every evening after supper we take a seat under the mighty oak and sing our songs.”Extract from a letter of a Russian refugee in Texas.

Twilight is here, soft breezes bow the grass,

Day’s sounds of various toil break slowly off.

The yoke-freed oxen low, the patient ass

Dips his dry nostril in the cool, deep trough.

Up from the prairie the tanned herdsmen pass

With frothy pails, guiding with voices rough

Their udder-lightened kine. Fresh smells of earth,

The rich, black furrows of the glebe send forth.

After the Southern day of heavy toil,

How good to lie, with limbs relaxed, brows bare

To evening’s fan, and watch the smoke-wreaths coil

Up from one’s pipe-stem through the rayless air.

So deem these unused tillers of the soil,

Who stretched beneath the shadowing oak tree, stare

Peacefully on the star-unfolding skies,

And name their life unbroken paradise.

The hounded stag that has escaped the pack,

And pants at ease within a thick-leaved dell;

The unimprisoned bird that finds the track

Through sun-bathed space, to where his fellows dwell;

The martyr, granted respite from the rack,

The death-doomed victim pardoned from his cell,—

Such only know the joy these exiles gain,—

Life’s sharpest rapture is surcease of pain.

Strange faces theirs, wherethrough the Orient sun

Gleams from the eyes and glows athwart the skin.

Grave lines of studious thought and purpose run

From curl-crowned forehead to dark-bearded chin.

And over all the seal is stamped thereon

Of anguish branded by a world of sin,

In fire and blood through ages on their name,

Their seal of glory and the Gentiles’ shame.

Freedom to love the law that Moses brought,

To sing the songs of David, and to think

The thoughts Gabirol to Spinoza taught,

Freedom to dig the common earth, to drink

The universal air—for this they sought

Refuge o’er wave and continent, to link

Egypt with Texas in their mystic chain,

And truth’s perpetual lamp forbid to wane.

Hark! through the quiet evening air, their song

Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain.

They sing the conquest of the spirit strong,

The soul that wrests the victory from pain;

The noble joys of manhood that belong

To comrades and to brothers. In their strain

Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one hears,

And the broad prairie melts in mist of tears.

Source: Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (2002). Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) is most famous for the words inscribed on the Statute of Liberty from her poem, The New Colossus:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Lazarus was one of the first successful and publicly recognized Jewish American authors. She was born in New York City to a wealthy family. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Lazarus was moved by the fierce persecution of her people in Russia, a frequent topic of her writings, as well as their struggles to assimilate into American culture. You can sample more of Emma Lazarus’ poetry and read more about her at the Poetry Foundation website.

Easter: God’s “Yes” to Today

April 7, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and eternal God, the strength of those who believe and the hope of those who doubt, may we, who have not seen, have faith in you and receive the fullness of Christ’s blessing, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’” John 20:21.

“A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” John 20:26.

Eight days after the disciples had been empowered with the Holy Spirit and commissioned to go out and declare the good of Jesus’ resurrection and God’s limitless love and forgiveness for the world, we find them still hiding behind locked doors. If Jesus didn’t actually say it to the disciples, I can’t help wondering whether he was thinking, “And what part of the word ‘send’ do you people not understand?” It does not get any better after this. Rather than following Jesus’ command, given now for the second time, to go out into the world with the good news, the disciples retreat to Galilee and return to their old lives and their previous occupation, namely, fishing. Once again, the risen Christ must confront them and lead them away from their boats and their nets out into the mission for which they were called.

The church has always resisted the notion that it is “sent,” that it is a nomadic people rather than a settled community, a movement into the future rather than an institution devoted to preserving the past, a living organism rather than a static organization. It is telling, I think, that we frequently refer to our places of worship as “sanctuaries,” safe places in which we can seek refuge from the world. It is as though, like the disciples, we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, his victory over death and the defeat of the forces of evil in the cross from behind doors bolted fast against the world that so desperately needs to hear this good news. I have to wonder whether the risen Christ might also be saying to us on this first Sunday after Easter, “So, friends, what are you all still doing here?”

There are some hopeful signs on the horizon suggesting that the church might finally be getting the message. Recently the board of directors for Luther Seminary, the school from which I received my M.Div., voted unanimously to divest from its current physical campus in Saint Paul in order to shift to a more nimble model of theological education and pastoral formation. To that end, the seminary is seeking a new facility in the Twin Cities area that meets the needs of its educational mission while enabling it to continue on for the foreseeable future in both a faithful and sustainable manner. It should be pointed out that this was not a move of desperation born of financial crisis. The seminary is currently well endowed. The decision to move out of its current facility was based on the recognition that the world to which we are called to minister presents challenges the seminary is unable to meet effectively through its current campus setting.

I must admit that I was initially saddened by this news. The Luther Seminary campus in St. Paul has served my church for over one hundred and twenty years. I remember the first time I set eyes on Bochman Hall’s majestic Corinthian pillars from the end of its walkway marked with a stone Celtic cross. (Pictured above). Every time I passed through the doors of the massive library in Gullixon Hall, I was overcome with a sense of awe. Here in this one place were housed the products of great minds, souls and examples of sainthood. The musty scent of ancient volumes from the stacks stretching over six stories was a constant reminder that my little life, a mere nanosecond in the communion of saints, gains a holy significance through my incorporation into that great community embracing the whole planet and extending throughout all time and space. It saddens me to think that Luther Seminary’s ancient lecture halls where so much profound teaching, so many lively discussions and such deep learning took place will soon be silent and empty.

That said, I think the board of directors made the right call. As those who follow me know, I have expressed many times my concerns about the future of seminary education such as its prohibitive cost, the shape of its curriculum and the threat to genuine community posed by resort to virtual teaching. I do not have ready answers to these concerns, but I am convinced that locking ourselves into the comfortable places and patterns of the past is not the solution to any of these challenges. We need to raise up a generation of pastoral leaders that is diverse, theologically educated and spiritually well formed. Moreover, we need to do that without burdening our graduates with crushing educational debt. In order to meet that challenge, Luther Seminary must step outside the safety, security and comfort of its historic campus, its educational traditions and its established spiritual practices.

We should not be too hard on the disciples. The dangers they feared were very real. The same imperial powers that crucified Jesus were still at work in the world. The leaders who arrested Jesus and turned him over to Pilate for execution surely would not hesitate to do the same to any one of his disciples. Keeping out of sight and behind locked doors was not unreasonable. On the contrary, it was probably the safest course of action. But Jesus does not call upon his disciples to play it safe. They are sent, as was Jesus, to announce the gentle, just and peaceful reign of God to a hostile world. Where Jesus is, on the margins, identifying with the victims of empire and, not merely speaking but “being” truth to power, there his disciples must be also. John 12:26.

So let us not be seduced by the siren song of “againism,” whether it be the call to make America great “again” or to make the church great “again.” Let us not be deceived into believing that there was once a “golden age” somewhere in the past and that getting back to that “old time religion,” returning to “traditional values” or going back to our “Lutheran confessional roots” is going to redeem us. Today is the day the Lord has made. Psalm 118:24. It is not for us to turn up our nose at it and pine for some other bygone day. Unbelief fears the future and lives today fixated on the rearview mirror. Faith rejoices in today and looks hopefully and imaginatively toward the future.

John’s gospel ends with the disciples finally venturing out from behind locked doors, leaving their fish nets and boats behind and following Jesus into the new life he promised. It begs for a sequel, and I believe one is written in the witness of each generation of believers. See John 21:24-25. In every generation, there is the choice to write a new chapter or vainly attempt to relive the prior one. I believe Jesus is calling us to step out of our sanctuaries, stop clinging for dear life to our institutions and leave behind the ivy covered palaces of learning belonging to a world that no longer exists. Where will that bring us and what will we find there? “Never mind,” says Jesus. “Follow me.” John 21:20-23.

Here is the poem by Walt Whitman constituting a clarion call to step outside and onto the open road. I believe we hear an echo of Jesus’ beckoning call in the final stanza,

“[I] give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?”

Song of the Open Road
1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,

The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!

You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.

4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.

5
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass;)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free to mine?

8
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.)

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

10
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.

Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,
No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)

11
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.

12
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habituès of many distant countries, habituès of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

14
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm’d,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.

15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Source: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman, (c. 1959 by Miller, James E., Jr., pub. by Houghton Mifflin Company). No poet captures the essence of what is genuinely American quite as comprehensively as Walt Whitman. Born 1819 in Huntington, Long Island, Whitman worked alternately as a journalist, government clerk and as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. He traveled widely throughout the United States giving expression to his zeal for democracy, nature, love and friendship. Though admired by such contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, it was not until after his death in 1892 that he received wide acclaim in the United States. You can read more about Walt Whitman and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Resurrection Radicalism

March 31, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, jesus, resurrectionrevolsen

RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD

Prayer of the Day God of mercy, we no longer look for Jesus among the dead, for he is alive and has become the Lord of life. Increase in our minds and hearts the risen life we share with Christ, and help us to grow as your people toward the fullness of eternal life with you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality,but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousnessis acceptable to him.’” Acts 10:34-35.

“In a wide variety of global contexts, populist political movements pose serious challenges to churches and theology. Churches are called to reflect more deeply on their public role in view of populist exclusionary policies. In a situation where populist movements misappropriate Christian rhetoric to justify their aspirations, churches cannot remain silent, but need to resist exclusionary strategies.” Eva Harasta and Simone Sinn, INTRODUCTION, Resisting Exclusion Global Theological Responses to Populism,(LWF Studies, 2010/01) p. 11.

The above photograph was taken by yours truly at the Hosios Loukas-Byzantine Monastery Distomo in Greece. It depicts the Resurrection of Jesus which, in the thought of the Eastern Church (and St. Paul), is intimately linked to our own. For this reason, the risen Christ is seen taking the hand of Adam. Eve, who is just behind him, clings to the clothing of her husband. We are given to understand that, behind Eve, stands all of humanity. Jesus does not rise alone. He leads with him the whole human family from the grave to resurrection life. As Saint Peter points out, “God shows no partiality,but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousnessis acceptable to him.” This fresco, replicated in numerous sanctuaries and frequently engraved on Orthodox icons speaks eloquently to the God who loved the cosmos enough to send the Son, not to condemn the world but to save it.

This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection. The tone is one of joy and this is right. How else can we approach the titanic reversal of death itself? Yet to understand this miracle rightly, it is necessary to be clear about what is actually miraculous. Nobody in the first century doubted that God, or a god as the case may be, would be capable of raising someone from death. And if that were all there were to the Resurrection, it made little difference then and makes even less now. The miracle of the Resurrection does not lie in the assertion that God raised Jesus from death. The real miracle is that God raised Jesus from death. That is what makes the Resurrection truly radical. God raised the one who refused the temptation to employ coercive force in the service of God’s reign; the one who practiced radical hospitality, welcoming people living at the margins including the sick, the foreigner, the poor and the outcast; the one who recognized no humanly drawn barriers between peoples but died to draw all people to himself. John 12:32. The life Jesus lived that drew him into conflict with power, wealth, empire and oppressive religion ending in his execution God vindicates by raising Jesus from death. Any god who favors exclusively any nation, class, race, clan or religious group is not God.

This is why Harasta and Sinn remind us that “[i]n a situation where populist movements misappropriate Christian rhetoric to justify their aspirations, churches cannot remain silent…” This is why we must be clear and insistent that the God who raised Jesus from death is not the one engraved upon our coins, the one invoked to “bless America,” the one who “protects our war against Iran,” the one who sanctifies the graves of our fallen soldiers. The God who raised Jesus from death is not the vengeful deity imagined by much white evangelical religion who throws a wrathful fit over what people do or do not do in the bedroom, but is altogether indifferent to Iranian school girls killed by American tomahawk missiles or millions losing their health insurance and food stamps to finance tax breaks for the wealthy. The God who raised Jesus from death is not about to rapture a few million privileged souls off to heaven while leaving the world for which the Son died in the hands of the devil and to the fate of some great tribulation. The Resurrection and the reign of God is not for the privileged few. It is for all the descendants of Adam and Eve.

The good news of Easter is that the reign of God Jesus gave his life proclaiming is the future. That, however, does not sound like good news for those of us who have benefited from the status quo and want to keep it in place at all costs. Easter does not sound like good news for those of us accustomed to wealth and privilege. Easter does not seem like good news to those of us who feel threatened by people who look different, speak differently and worship differently than we do. The future does not belong to wall builders. If you have a problem with open borders, you have a problem with Jesus. If you have a problem with Jesus, you are on the wrong side of history.

As I have said before, sometimes the good news has to be heard as bad news before it can be received as the good news it truly is. Many of us need to be made aware that our privilege is actually a lethal addiction. Many of us need to recognize that the walls we build to protect ourselves are really imprisoning us. Many of us must learn that Jesus is appealing to us through our neighbors-even the ones we deem our enemies. Many of us must be liberated from the twisted, distorted and altogether too small and limited images of God arising from nationalistic ideologies before we can finally recognize the beauty and richness of the God whose love for us is stronger than death. Many of us need the blinding light of the Resurrection to chase the darkness out of our lives and open our eyes to the new reality of God’s reign that respects no humanly established border, favors no nation, race or class, turns away no person seeking mercy, forgiveness and welcome.

Here is a poem by Miller Williams that speaks of hope that struggles to see through the veil of failure, doubt and cynicism. It is a hope akin to that ignited by Jesus’ Resurrection.

Of History and Hope

We have memorized America,

how it was born and who we have been and where.

In ceremonies and silence we say the words,

telling the stories, singing the old songs.

We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

The great and all the anonymous dead are there.

We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.

The rich taste of it is on our tongues.

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?

The disenfranchised dead want to know.

We mean to be the people we meant to be,

to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how

except in the minds of those who will call it Now?

The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?

With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—

and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together

cannot become one people falling apart.

Who dreamed for every child an even chance

cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.

Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head

cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.

Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child

cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.

We know what we have done and what we have said,

and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,

believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—

just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

All this in the hands of children, eyes already set

on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet—

but looking through their eyes, we can see

what our long gift to them may come to be.

If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

Source: Some Jazz A While: Collected Poems, (c. 1999 by Miller Williams; pub. by University of Illinois Press). Miller Williams (1930-2015) was an American Poet, editor, critic, and translator born in Hoxie, Arkansas to a Methodist pastor. He was honored as the country’s third inaugural poet, reading the above poem at the start of former President Bill Clinton’s second term. Williams earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from Arkansas State University and an Masters in zoology from the University of Arkansas. He taught college science for many years before securing a job in the English department at LSU with the support of his friend, the noted author, Flannery O’Connor. Williams has written, translated, or edited over thirty books, including a dozen poetry collections. You can read more about Miller Williams and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Beware of the Influencers

March 23, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

PALM/PASSION SUNDAY

“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Matthew 21:9.

^“Pilate said to them, ‘Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them said, ‘Let him be crucified!’Then he asked, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified!’” Matthew 27:22-23.

In all the gospels, the “crowd” or “the people” constitute a unique character. The crowds flock from all over Palestine and beyond to hear Jesus’ teachings and to be healed of their ailments, though their understanding of his preaching and mission is limited. The religious leaders in Jerusalem fear the crowd. They know the crowd holds Jesus in high esteem and that the reign of God Jesus proclaims challenges the imperial power of Rome. They are also painfully aware that the position of privilege and power they hold depends on their placating Rome. Thus, the religious elite find themselves in an untenable situation. Arrest Jesus and risk a riot that would certainly bring down a military response from Rome; or ignore Jesus’ messianic mission which is clearly on a collision course with Rome. Either way, a conflict with Rome appears inevitable. The only solution: undermine the crowd’s attraction to Jesus.

Crowds are notoriously capricious. Their memories are short and their loyalties fleeting. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s villain. Crowds can be carried away by lofty rhetoric. They are easily seduced by charlatans who promise easy solutions to complex problems. Crowds are vulnerable to extremists who put the face of minorities, foreigners and other disfavored groups on all their fears and convince them they are being persecuted, victimized and dispossessed. A crowd has a mind and a spirit distinct from and bigger than any of its members. Its malignant will overwhelms one’s instincts of decency, compassion and civility. People will commit and applaud unspeakable acts of violence and brutality when part of a mob that they would never think of doing or condoning individually. Skilled rhetorical manipulators know how to awaken our deepest fears, prejudices and hatreds. They know how to exploit these dark angels of our nature to inspire paranoia, knowing that when we are afraid, uncertain and confused we can easily be driven to destructive and violent action. We can be made to forget who we are, the relationships that bind us together as a community and the values we hold dear. A mob has no memory, no vision and no thought process. It does not move deliberately. It is driven by the energy of its blind malice. Other than the crucifixion of Jesus, there is no better example of that phenomenon than the Republican insurrection of January 6, 2021.

The gospels do not tell us exactly how the religious leaders in Jerusalem “persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed.” But we have contemporary examples of “influencers,” with large followings. The late Charlie Kirk comes to mind. Joe Rogan’s “manosphere” is another example as is Charlamagne the god. Taylor Swift exercises a powerful influence over her millions of fans as have other superstars over the decades. Influencers can affect the way we dress, the slang we use, the cars we drive (or wish we could drive), the music to which we listen, our politics, morality and spending habits. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having influence, nor is there anything sinister about being influenced. I do not know where I would be today without the teachers, pastors, authors, poets and artists who have influenced me over the years.

Still, I believe it is critical to recognize and acknowledge that we are, in fact, being influenced. It is also important that we ask ourselves frequently, “by what or by whom am I being influenced?” This inquiry is increasingly important in this age of social media which, in addition to making vast amounts of important news and information easily available, also constitutes a swamp of misinformation, unfounded conspiracy theories and hateful ideologies. The rise of AI makes it possible to distort and even fabricate pictures, videos and works of art such that it is becoming ever more difficult to determine what is real. We are open to mass manipulation and misdirection like never before. History has taught us that such manipulative power can drive a crowd of otherwise law abiding people to heinous acts of violence such as lynchings, rioting and genocide. The gospels teach us that mass manipulation led to the crucifixion of God’s Son.

During these last days of our Lenten pilgrimage I believe we would do well to consider the forces influencing us and to ask ourselves who or what is shaping our hearts and minds. What or who is demanding our attention? How are we being entertained? From where are we getting our news and information and what effect is all of this having on the way we think about our world, about our neighbors and about our God?

Here is a poem by Carl Sanburg speaking to the fickleness and capriciousness of the mob as well as its vulnerability to manipulation. The poem also expresses the hope that the mob might finally gain a soul and become a people governed by the lessons history has to teach.

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Source: Creative Commons. Carl Sandburg (1878 – July 22, 1967) was a Swedish-American poet, biographer, journalist and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Sandburg is widely regarded as a major figure in contemporary literature. At the age of thirteen Sandburg left school and began driving a milk wagon. Throughout his early years, he worked as a porter at the Union Hotel barbershop in Galesburg, Illinois, a bricklayer, a farm laborer in Kansas, a hotel servant in Denver, Colorado and a coal-heaver in Omaha. Sandburg began his writing career as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News. Later he wrote poetry, history, biographies, novels, children’s literature and film reviews. He also collected and edited books of ballads and folklore. He spent most of his life in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan before moving to North Carolina. You can find out more about Carl Sandburg and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

The Life of the World to Come?

March 17, 2026UncategorizedBible, faith, god, jesus, resurrectionrevolsen

FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, your Son came into the world to free us all from sin and death. Breathe upon us the power of your Spirit, that we may be raised to new life in Christ and serve you in righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” Ezekiel 37:5.

Scholarly consensus is that Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones foretells not a general resurrection of the dead, but the restoration of the nation of Israel following the end of its exile in Babylon. That is probably so. But I am not convinced that exhausts the meaning and interpretation of this powerful text. Biblical narratives, oracles, parables, prayers and poems have always pointed beyond themselves and their immediate context. That is why they continue to engage us centuries later. Like a snowball rolling down hill, the Bible gathers meaning and its texts deepen and expand through interpretation and application to ever changing circumstances as it rolls through time convicting, inspiring and comforting faith communities as it goes. It is fair to say, I believe, that Ezekiel’s vision turned out to be bigger than he imagined. That would not have surprised or displeased Ezekiel. He knew, as all true prophets know, that the words he spoke were not his own. They were God’s Words animated by God’s Spirit. As such, they have a life of their own. They have power to stimulate the imaginations of their hearers in every age and to and open their eyes to new realities. That is, after all, the whole point of prophecy.

Ezekiel’s vision, therefore, is properly understood and preached as a Resurrection text. But wait! Aren’t we still deep in the season of Lent? Aren’t we jumping the gun, preaching the resurrection of the dead more than a week before Good Friday? For better or worse, the texts leave us little choice. Even as Jesus approaches Jerusalem where we know he will meet arrest, condemnation and crucifixion, he raises Lazarus from death. Ironically, the raising of Lazarus turns out to be both the reason for Jesus’ triumphal reception at Jerusalem and the event that finally convinces Caiaphas and the religious leaders of Judea that Jesus must be put to death. At least that is John the Evangelist’s take. Death and Resurrection are inseparably woven together. In our lesson from the Letter to the Church at Rome, Paul points out that death to sin is the flip side of sharing in Christ’s Resurrection. The line of demarcation between life and death is not as clear and absolute as we are prone to assume.

The lessons for this Sunday illustrate the difficulty of preaching the Resurrection-which we are called to do even-and perhaps especially-during the Sundays in Lent. As I have noted before, the temptation here is to say either too much or too little. We moderns are prone to preach Jesus’ resurrection as a metaphor for something else, such as liberation from economic oppression, a well ordered democratic government, world peace-you name it. One of the characters in John Updike’s first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, illustrates this approach. Updike’s story takes place in a state run home for the destitute elderly overseen by prefect Stephen Conner. Conner is a product of the New Deal. He believes in the inevitability of human progress through social evolution and the perfection of governmental institutions. Conner becomes engaged in a conversation among the residents about the afterlife. He shares his vision of “heaven on earth” formed in a future society where illness is overcome by advanced medicine; pollution eliminated through harnessing atomic power; and oppression defeated through the spread of democracy. Mrs. Mortis, one of the residents, asks him whether this heaven on earth will come soon enough for her to see it. Conner responds: “Not personally perhaps. But for your children, your grandchildren.”

“But not for ourselves?”

“No.” The word hung huge in the living room, the “o” a hole that let in the cold of the void.

“Well, then,” Mrs. Mortis spryly said, “to hell with it.” Updike, John, The Poorhouse Fair, (c. 1958 by John Updike, pub. by Random House).

I tend to share Mrs. Mortis’ sentiments. If the unsatisfied longings of billions for justice, peace, freedom and love never find fulfillment in God’s future, then for too many that future will have been a cruel hoax. Moreover, it is next to impossible for me to share Mr. Conner’s blithe optimism and his belief in the inevitable march of human progress under the shadow of a world slipping into fascism. His demythologized resurrection seems no less improbable than the real thing.

In the end, I do not believe our difficulty speaking about the Resurrection has anything to do with our inability to square it with modern science. Modern science has lost much of its enlightenment certainty in the face of ongoing discoveries and new theories undermining what we once believed were immutable laws. Increasingly, the questions posed by modern science are sounding ever more like those poets, novelists, philosophers and theologians have been asking for centuries. I believe our biggest problem with the mystery of Resurrection is that, well, it is a mystery. Even Jesus could speak of it only in parables. In a very real sense, when we say we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come, we do not know what we are talking about. A mystery can never be explained. If it could, it would no longer be a mystery. Its inexplicability in rational terms does not make it any less real, however. Mysteries are a very real part of our existence. But they can be apprehended only through the medium of graphic art, poetry, fiction, mythology and storytelling-and then only in small part. Contemplating mysteries always leaves us with more questions than answers. I believe that we modern Christians, schooled as we have been to equate reality with what can be proven empirically in the sterility of the laboratory, must re-learn the ancient art of living comfortably alongside mystery.

There are many imponderables when it comes to contemplating the mysteries of Resurrection and eternal life. What does it mean to live in God’s eternal now? Will there still be equations to be worked out, new discoveries to be made and growth in maturity and understanding? It is hard to imagine life worth living in the absence of such challenges. It seems obvious, too, that we need to change substantially if we are to live harmoniously under God’s just and gentle reign. Eternity will be anything but heavenly if we bring into it the grudges, animosities, prejudices, resentments and blood feuds that are so much a part of this life and so much a part of ourselves. Yet I wonder how it is possible to extract the experiences of pain, grief, loss and anger from our lives without uprooting the wisdom, patience and triumphs that come with facing these challenges which makes us who we are. Must we be so radically changed as to be unrecognizable to our present selves? Will our relationships with loved ones be somehow preserved, complicated as they are with selfishness, jealousy, envy and resentment? Will questions like these matter or even make sense in the life of the world to come?

Preaching ought not to attempt resolving these issues-as if that were even possible. Instead, preachers need to emphasize that the reign of God is not wholly a future state, but that it is breaking into our world even now. The world to come is woven together out of the fabric made from our common life together, our faithful witness to God’s reign in our preaching, teaching and works of justice, mercy and compassion. Eternal life is not merely a matter of duration. To live eternally is to live in faith, hope and love-the three things Saint Paul reminds us are eternal. I Corinthians 13:13. Every second lived within the parameters of these virtues is a measure of eternal life. All time lived outside of them is tragically wasted. In sum, precisely because we believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life of the World to Come, the way we live in the here and now is critically important.

Philosopher and teacher Alfred North Whitehead has been a powerful influence in my thinking over the years, providing me with valuable conceptual tools for interpreting the Scriptures. The following passage, which I know I have quoted before, has been enormously comforting to me and helpful in thinking about the Life of the World to Come.

“The wisdom of [God’s] subjective aim prehends every actuality for what it can be in such a perfected system-its sufferings, its sorrows, its failures, its triumphs, its immediacies of joy-woven by rightness of feeling into the harmony of universal feeling, which is always immediate, always many, always one, always with novel advance, moving onward and never perishing. The revolts of destructive evil, purely self-regarding, are dismissed into their triviality of merely individual facts; and yet the good they did achieve in individual joy, in individual sorrow, in the introduction of needed contrast, is yet saved by its relation to the completed whole. The image-and it is but an image-the image under which this operative growth of God’s nature is best conceived, is that of a tender care that nothing be lost.

“The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage.” Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality (c. 1979 by The Free Press) p. 346.

The message latent within Ezekiel’s vision is that, in the end, God will bring to completion in a future of breathtaking harmony what God began with the words, “Let there be.” Jesus assures us that we will be included in that future. That is not all that I would like to know about the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come. But it is enough.

Here is a poem by Sister Maris Stella that bears a striking resemblance to Ezekiel’s vision.

RESURRECTION

from the deep sea wrack

from the green light under the sea

from the coral caves men will come back

on mountain tops where

dropped from the air

or hurled

against the world

their bones grow cold

among the old

rock-frost above the tree-line

they will rise up with the divine

breath breathed into them again

as on the first of men

Adam, newly conceived of clay

on the sixth day

God breathed

even somewhere Adam will rise

opening again his eyes

on the world to find

nothing much changed but of a mind

that he was blind before

Abel, first-slain

having lain

longer in earth than any other man

and Eve with the look of the new Eve

upon her but still Eve

they will rise up having known

the terrible trumpets blown

would cry: this is the doom

this is the crack of doom

who will record the innumerable horde

in hope to see

what publican will mount into a tree

what wind

what weather what bird

will shout unheard

against the sound

of whole tribes and families growing up out of the ground

what earth does every spring

is only a hint of the thing.

Source: Poetry (April 1943). Sister Maris Stella (1899–1987) was born Alice Gustava Smith in Alton, Iowa, in 1899. During her junior year in high school she moved to St. Paul, Minnesota to attend Derham Hall High School. Smith graduated from Derham Hall in 1918. Two years later she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph and took the name Sister Maris Stella. In 1924 she received her undergraduate degree from the College of St. Catherine with majors in English and music. She traveled to England thereafter where she earned her master’s degree in English at the University of Oxford. In 1939, Sister Maris Stella published her first volume of poetry, Here Only a Dove. During the 1940s she continued to write poetry for magazines. You can read more about Sister Maris Stella in the Minnesota Historical Society website.

Learning to See with the Heart

March 9, 2026UncategorizedBible, faith, god, jesus, johnrevolsen

FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT

Prayer of the Day: Bend your ear to our prayers, Lord Christ, and come among us. By your gracious life and death for us, bring light into the darkness of our hearts, and anoint us with your Spirit, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” John 9:41.

According to Jesus, there is more to blindness than simply lack of sight. In fact, even a person born blind is capable of sight, while those with perfectly sound eyes can be utterly blind. The disciples were blind to the humanity of the man Jesus encounters in our gospel lesson, a man who managed against the odds to survive without sight in a world without a safety net for the disabled. To the disciples, this man was an abstraction, a theological riddle to be solved with sophistic arguments. Surely a good and gracious God cannot be responsible for such a dreadful circumstance as congenital blindness. “So what do you think, Jesus,” the disciples ask. “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” The disciples saw the man born blind with their perfectly sound eyes, but not with their hearts.

This kind of thinking is not unusual. Although we enlightened moderns are not inclined to attribute the misfortunes of others to divine wrath, we are often quick to attribute their suffering to some mistake, misstep or bad judgment on their part. In fact, there is a tendency to take perverse satisfaction in pointing out how easily the tragedies of others could have been avoided. “What was he thinking of, going into a neighborhood like that in the dark of night?” “What did she expect was going to happen, going to a frat party in that skimpy outfit?” “If he had thought for a single minute before answering that text, he would have recognized it as a scam.” I expect there is more than just meanness at work here. It is, after all, comforting to believe that we live in a universe where wise, good and prudent conduct is always rewarded and foolish, wicked and careless behavior punished. Such belief allows us to indulge in the delusion that we are safe from injury, tragedy and untimely death-if only we practice good sense and a modicum of decency. It blinds us to the reality that our world actually is one in which bombs incinerate teenage girls whose only crime was coming to school; tornados rip through towns leveling indiscriminately both churches and brothels; terminal cancer, starvation and violence afflict innocent children while vicious war criminals live into their nineties and die in peace.

Living in the light, as Jesus calls us to do, forces us to see things to which we might rather remain blind. Witness president Trump’s recent failed attempt to remove from President’s House in Philadelphia an exhibit that honored the lives of the nine people held there who were enslaved by President George Washington. Desperate to maintain the false mythology of a pure and virtuous America and its white founders, many among us would simply erase from our history the terrible legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and ideological racism. We prefer living in the darkness of comforting lies rather than in the harsh light of truth.

There is a price to be paid, however, for such willful blindness. The real world, with all its unpredictable catastrophes, random tragedies and undeserved suffering affords those with eyes to see it opportunities to “work the works of [God] who sent [Jesus].” John 9:4. But for those who choose to remain in the false security afforded by what Jesus calls “darkness,” such opportunities remain forever out of reach. Blindness of willful complacency blunts the capacity for empathy and compassion, thereby deforming our humanity and preventing us from seeing with our hearts. This, not a mere infraction of some moral or religious code, is the biblical understanding of sin. Sin, according to Jesus, is the dangerous habit of willful blindness. It is a refusal to see what makes one uncomfortable, what challenges what one thinks one knows, what invites one into a larger understanding of what it means to be fully human. Jesus does not bother entertaining the disciples’ theoretical questions about the cause of the man’s blindness. Instead, he acts with compassion. He opens the blind man’s eyes and, in so doing, opens the spiritual eyes of his disciples. Unlike the disciples, Jesus sees the man born blind with his heart.

I have had to have my eyes opened numerous times throughout my life. I have had to learn over and over again to see not merely with my eyes, but with my heart. Through my wife’s debilitating injuries, I have come to a new realization of how thoroughly our society excludes persons with mobility challenges from full participation in our common life. Though it has been twenty-six years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, numerous barriers to restaurants, doctors offices, municipal buildings, places of worship, museums, beaches and public parks remain, preventing or making it difficult and dangerous for persons with mobility challenges to access essential services as well as recreational resources-which they support with their taxes as much as the rest of us. In traveling with Sesle on the slow, difficult road of recovery and adaptation, I have learned to see public buildings of all kinds in a new way. I see now the barriers, obstacles and obstructions that make a mockery of signs reading “welcome.” I am also increasingly mindful of others experiencing difficulty with these barriers and opportunities for offering assistance. That to which I was once blind, I can now see.

What will it take to open our eyes? What difference would it make if we could see the Iranian school girls killed by our bombs, not as inevitable “collateral damage,” but as the daughters of dads who beamed with pride as they watched them recite their prayers, moms who dressed them, brushed their hair and sent them off to school with no clue they would never see them again. What difference would it make if enough of us saw the 350,000 Haitian refugees the Trump administration is desperately seeking to deport, not as a mere number, but as parents seeking the same safe environment we seek for our children, young people longing for the opportunity to get a basic education, families who wish only to live free from the scourge of gang violence? What difference would it make if we could see all people with our hearts through the eyes of Jesus?

Here is a poem by Howard Nemerov speaking to the willful blindness against which Jesus warns us and from which he would liberate us.

The Murder of William Remington[1]

It is true, that even in the best-run state

Such things will happen; it is true,

What’s done is done. The law, whereby we hate

Our hatred, sees no fire in the flue

But by the smoke, and not for thought alone

It punishes, but for the thing that’s done.

And yet there is the horror of the fact,

Though we knew not the man. To die in jail,

To be beaten to death, to know the act

Of personal fury before the eyes can fail

And the man die against the cold last wall

Of the lonely world—and neither is that all:

There is the terror too of each man’s thought,

That knows not, but must quietly suspect

His neighbor, friend, or self of being taught

To take an attitude merely correct;

Being frightened of his own cold image in

The glass of government, and his own sin,

Frightened lest senate house and prison wall

Be quarried of one stone, lest righteous and high

Look faintly smiling down and seem to call

A crime the welcome chance of liberty,

And any man an outlaw who aggrieves

The patriotism of a pair of thieves.

Source: The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (c. 1977 by Howard Nemerov, pub. by The University of Chicago Press). Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) was an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. He also won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize. Nemerov was raised in New York City where he attended the Society for Ethical Culture’s Fieldston School. He later commenced studies at Harvard University where he earned his BA. During World War II he served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force as well as the United State Air Force. He was honorably discharged with the rank of Lieutenant and thereafter returned to New York to resume his writing career. Nemerov began teaching, first at Hamilton College and subsequently at Bennington College and Brandeis University. He ended his teaching career at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was elevated to Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence from 1969 until his death in 1991. Nemerov’s poems demonstrated a consistent emphasis on thought, the process of thinking and on ideas themselves. Nonetheless, his work always displayed the full range of human emotion and experience. You can find out more about Howard Nemerov and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

[1] William Walter Remington (1917–1954) was an American economist who was employed in various United States government positions. His career was interrupted by accusations of communist espionage made by Elizabeth Bentley, a Soviet spy and defector. Remington was tried twice and convicted twice. The first conviction was set aside on legal grounds, but the second conviction on two counts of perjury was upheld. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison. In November 1954, he was murdered in his cell by fellow inmates at Lewisburg Prison.

The Power of Weakness

March 3, 2026UncategorizedBible, christianity, faith, god, jesusrevolsen

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

Prayer of the Day: Merciful God, the fountain of living water, you quench our thirst and wash away our sin. Give us this water always. Bring us to drink from the well that flows with the beauty of your truth through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

In this Sunday’s gospel reading we find Jesus slumped against the façade of Jacob’s well, famished, exhausted and thirsty. The journey through hostile Samaritan territory from Galilee to Judea did not afford much in the way of comforts. The Samaritan villages along the way could hardly be expected to offer hospitality or even staples such as food and water to a band of Jewish travelers. It seems the disciples had to go some distance out of their way to get food-perhaps a detour into a more friendly Jewish enclave? In any event, Jesus was evidently too worn out to accompany them.

We are not accustomed to thinking of Jesus as weak, vulnerable and at the mercy of strangers. But that is the way the woman from Samaria found him. I can imagine the smirk on her face as she answered Jesus call for a drink, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” I can hear her thinking to herself or perhaps even saying, “guess you must be pretty thirsty mister high and mighty rabbi to beg a filthy Samaritan woman for a drink.” She must have been amused to hear Jesus offer her living water. “Well isn’t that just like one of you holier than thou Jews. Think you’re the one in control? Think you hold all the cards? Well guess what? I’m the one with the bucket. If anyone here is going to get water, it’s going to come from my bucket.”

Jesus then tells her to call her husband only to be told that she has none. Then, Jesus reveals that he knows her better than she thinks anyone could. It is here that I think the preaching of this story goes off the rails. Too often, the fact that the woman has been married five times and is now living with a man who is not her husband draws moral disapproval from us moderns. We assume that she is a floozie, a loose woman, an adulteress with a torrid sexual history. But that is hardly likely. In the first century, divorce was the sole prerogative of men and, as evidenced by Jesus’ dealings with religious authorities elsewhere in the gospels, there were some who believed that it was “lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause.” Matthew 19:3. The Samaritan woman might have been divorced due to a health condition that made her sexually undesirable. She might have been unable to conceive and bear children and thus incapable of continuing the family line. Or perhaps she was, like the luckless woman described by Jesus’ opponents in the dispute over the resurrection, passed through a succession of brothers, all of whom predeceased her. Mark 12:18-23. Whatever the case may have been it is obvious that this woman has known repeated rejection and her failure to remarry marks her as “damaged goods.” In spite of all this, which is somehow known to Jesus, Jesus is genuinely interested in her. The woman, for her part, is beginning to take an interest in this strange Jewish rabbi.

Now the woman poses a question to Jesus: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” So, which is it? It was hardly an idle question. The subject had been a matter of fierce dispute ever since the northern Israelite tribes broke away from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to become the Northern Kingdom of Israel a millennium ago. Perhaps she was expecting a lengthy dissertation on why the temple in Jerusalem is the only legitimate place of worship and that the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim was an idolatrous sham. What she got was a startling admission on Jesus’ part that neither the Temple in Jerusalem nor the Jewish nation hold a monopoly on genuine worship. “The hour is coming and is now here,” says Jesus, “when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.” Did this Jew just say that Samaritans, too, can be genuine worshipers of God? The thought is almost too big to get one’s head around. “I know that Messiah is coming,” says the woman. It seems she wants to be done with this conversation. “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” To this, Jesus replies, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

At this point, the disciples return and wonder why Jesus is speaking with a woman of Samaria and what he could possibly want with her. The woman takes her leave at this point. Significantly, I think, she leaves her bucket behind, thereby enabling Jesus to access the water from Jacob’s well, a small act of compassion toward the one she so recently deemed a de facto enemy. Moreover, she invites the people of her village to come and see this remarkable teacher who saw her, knew her and expressed a passionate interest in her. The Samaritans come out in force to meet Jesus, inviting him and his disciples to stay with them. Jesus “remains” with them for a full two days.

The Greek word “meno” meaning “to remain” is a significant one in John’s gospel. John the Baptizer announces that Jesus was known to him by the witness of the Holy Spirit that both descended and “remained” upon Jesus. John 1:32. In his final words to his disciples, Jesus urged his disciples to “abide in me as I abide in you.” John 15:4. Here the English word “abide” is but another translation of the Greek word, “meno.” Thus, you could translate the verse as “remain in me as I remain in you.” As God loves God’s beloved Son, so the Son loves us and invites us to “abide” or “remain” in God’s love. John 15:9. In Sunday’s gospel, the love of God that stubbornly abides in Jesus penetrates the heart of a women that ought to have been an enemy. The inroads made into her heart opened up a crack in the wall of historic enmity between Jew and Samaritan, allowing the living waters of reconciliation and healing to flow freely and bring new life.

There is an old saying, the source of which I have not been able to ascertain, that “an enemy is a person whose story you have not heard.” Saint Paul reminds us that our “struggle is not against 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.” Ephesians 6:12. The weapons we are given to resist them are truthful speech, righteous integrity, the way of peace, prayer and the good news of God’s redemptive intent for our world. Ephesians 6:14-18. We wage peace rather than war, forgiveness rather than retribution, prayer rather than threats. We know that those who display aggressiveness, utter threats and commit violence do so from profound hurt, desperate fear and deep seated insecurity. Loving one’s neighbor (which includes the enemy) as oneself requires that one get inside the other’s skin, try to see the world through their eyes and understand the journey that led them to where they are. Such love requires one to look past whatever harm the other has done, whatever hateful views the other might express and whatever threat they may appear to present in order to touch with a healing hand the places where they are hurting. As Jesus demonstrates, such love requires one to become vulnerable, helpless and open to the other.

As again Saint Paul reminds us, this way of Jesus appears as folly to those who believe that strength consists in raw coercive power. I Corinthians 1:18-25. But we are witnessing today the tragic consequences of employing raw coercive power to achieve justice and peace throughout the middle east. Violence does not end violence. It only begets more violence spiraling out of control and drawing ever more victims into its vortex of death and destruction. Today, as has always been the case, Jesus’ way is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus and his way of the cross are the only way out of our self destructive path. It is not for nothing the Samaritan villagers recognized in Jesus “the savior of the world.”

Here is a brief poetic fragment by Edwin Markham that illustrates in one broad stroke the way of Jesus as it appears in our gospel lesson for this coming Sunday.

He drew a circle that shut me out –

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in.

Source: This poem is in the public domain. Edwin Markham (1852—1940) was born in Oregon City, Oregon and was the youngest of 10 children. At the age of four and following his parent’s divorce, he moved with his mother to Lagoon Valley in Solano County, California. Markham attended San Jose Normal School (now San Jose State University) graduating in 1872. Markham’s most famous poem, “The Man with the Hoe,” which accented laborers’ hardships, was first presented at a public poetry reading in 1898. His main inspiration was a French painting of the same name (in French, L’homme à la houe) by Jean-François Millet. Markham’s poem was published and achieved instant popularity. Throughout Markham’s life, many readers viewed him as an important voice in American poetry, a position signified by honors such as his election in 1908 to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. You can read more about Edwin Markham and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

An Open Letter to My Fellow Christians in Uniform

February 28, 2026Uncategorizedhistory, iran, Israel, middle-east, politicsrevolsen

Dear Siblings in Christ:

I am appealing to you in the name of the Prince of Peace to make a bold witness to peace. You have been schooled, I know, to recognize that Christians may in good conscience participate in wars deemed just. The current attack by the United States on the nation of Iran is not just under any of the criteria established as necessary by the church to justify engagement in military conflict. The requirement of satisfying each of these criteria prior to the grave decision to use lethal military power has been recognized by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin and continues to govern the church’s thinking today. As people of faith and as soldiers sworn to defend your nation, resistance to this murderous abuse of military power against Iran is critical.

Let me explain more about what I mean by “just war criteria.” In the first place, a just war can only be declared by a “competent authority.” The attack on Iran took place without any legal declaration of war by the United States Congress. It was launched by the unilateral decision of President Trump without any congressional approval or even consultation.

In the second place, lethal military action must never be undertaken unless there is a reasonable “probability of success.” The president has given no indication as to what the goal of this war is, much less any estimation of its probable success. We know from prior experience, however, the consequences of invading another country under the pretext of its having “weapons of mass destruction” and seeking to effect “regime change.” We have seen this movie before. It does not end well. The case has not been made that the attack on Iran will produce a different result or a more just, safe and prosperous world.

In the third place, the case must be made that resort to military action is the last possible resort. Because negotiations were ongoing during this sudden and unprovoked attack, it is impossible to accept any claim that it was a last resort.

Finally, a just war must be fought for a just cause. Of course, every nation always believes that its aggression is justified. However, the rationalization for war from a Christian perspective can never be solely for recapturing things or land taken or for punishing people who have done wrong. The most recent formal statement of the just war tradition given by the U.S. Catholic Conference in 1993 states that force may only be used to repel aggression or to intervene to prevent an imminent and massive violation of basic human rights of whole populations. That is clearly not the rationale for the attack on Iran. The intent is, as was the case in the attack against Iraq decades ago, to address unfounded claims that the enemy possesses weapons of mass destruction and that the government in Iran must be replaced by one amendable to the national interests of the United States and its allies. These aims clearly do not constitute “just cause.”

I am appealing to you because you are powerful. You have agency. You are not merely cogs in the murderous machinery of a corrupt and violent regime. You know that military discipline and ethics amount to more than “just following orders.” I know that you took an oath to defend your country against all enemies foreign and domestic. The way for you to fulfill that oath today is to lay down your arms and refuse to fight. Your duty is to reject and publicly condemn the illegal abuse of military power by our president. That is the only way to stand up for the rule of law. That is the only way to defend the constitutional rights of Americans here at home and to end the needless loss of human life abroad. I know I am asking you to put your reputation, your career and even your freedom on the line. Yet because you have promised to put your very life on the line in defense of your country, I do not hesitate to call upon you to make these lesser sacrifices.

More importantly, you are followers of Jesus, the man who refused to resort to the sword in his defense. For you, the decision to engage in military action always carries with it the fearful knowledge that the persons whose lives are lost in the conflict are people for whom Jesus died. If military action is ever to be justified, it must be carefully, thoughtfully and fully evaluated under the strict criteria I have just discussed. Resort to war under anything less is simply mass murder. In the name of Jesus, I am calling upon you to take a stand for the defense of your country, to take a stand for the rule of law and to take a stand for peace.

Praying for you at this most difficult time in your lives and careers,

Rev. Peter A. Olsen (retired)

Peter's Outer Cape Portico

A place where prophets, apostles and poets meet in the lessons for each Sunday of the church year

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Negotiating the Shadow

To My White Evangelical Friends-Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?

Life in Exile

Easter: God’s “Yes” to Today

Resurrection Radicalism

Beware of the Influencers

The Life of the World to Come?

Learning to See with the Heart

The Power of Weakness

An Open Letter to My Fellow Christians in Uniform

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: