Favorite Hymns (and how they shape me)

It was my intention to sit down and write yesterday, but getting the HOA 2025 Budget revised, and preparing for our next trip seemed to bog me down.  I really should be spending this morning preparing my sermon for Sunday; I have been invited to preach at the Little Point Sable Church in Shelby, Michigan, but alas, I think I will do this first,

Last week, Nancy and I attended the funeral of a friend’s mother, while that is not a surprising activity, what made it interesting was Mrs. Newcomb had just recently celebrated her 109th birthday.  I have never known anyone who lived as long as her (I do have an aunt who is 103 and another who is 100).  I haven’t seen her since around the time she turned 100, but WOW, 109 years old.  The funeral was well done, and the pastor of her church led the service.  Where this is leading me is to one of the hymns that was played as a part of the service.

There are two hymns, in the United Methodist Hymnal, that stand out to me.  Both of them enlighten my theology and worldview.  The first is: “This is My Song”, sung to the tune Finlandia.  The music, Finlandia was composed by Jean Sibelius.  It is one of those songs that most people recognize, even if they don’t know the words, partly because the song with various words spread throughout the world.  The version we sing, the words were written in 1934 by Lloyd Stone, and 1939 by Georgia Harkness.  I don’t think I need to remind you of what was going on in the world at that time.  These words are a powerful reminder that God is not controlled by any sect or nation.  If you are not familiar with the song, I would suggest this version. This Is my Song (hymn) (8:45 am)

This is my prayer as we move through what is proving to be a violent and unsettled time in our country.  The second hymn is one that was written by Natalie Sleeth in 1986.  But it is a song that I remember even earlier than that.  Natalie was married to Ronald Sleeth, a professor of Homiletics at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.  They were friends of my parents, and I swear that I heard that song before it was published.  I know it made its debut shortly before Ron’s funeral in 1985, it is of course, "Hymn of Promise".

The song has almost a child-like simplicity to it, yet the words; as Natalie wrote, ponder "the ideas of life, death, spring and winter, Good Friday and Easter, and the whole reawakening of the world that happens every spring."  The final verse is the one that tears me up every time, using a phrase from T.S.Eliot "in our end is our beginning," she goes on and reminds us that at the end of the day – God is with us.

I cannot think of two hymns we need to have on our lips every day now.  God is not only the God of the white evangelical church, not the God alone of the USA, God is the God of everyone.  As Jesus reminds us when he shares the “greatest commandment”.  (Luke 10:25f)

An expert in the Law of Moses stood up and asked Jesus a question to see what he would say. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to have eternal life?”

Jesus answered, “What is written in the Scriptures? How do you understand them?”

The man replied, “The Scriptures say, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.’ They also say, ‘Love your neighbors as much as you love yourself.’ ”

Jesus said, “You have given the right answer. If you do this, you will have eternal life.”

But the man wanted to show that he knew what he was talking about. So he asked Jesus, “Who are my neighbors?”

Of course, that is the big question, who are my neighbors?  In Luke, Jesus clearly answers that question as he shares the story of the Good Samaritan.  If you don’t fully understand the subtleties in that story take some time to find out about it.  Then you will know who your neighbor really is.

These are my favorite hymns.  They continue to shape my worldview and the choices I make.  What shapes your worldview and your choices?

Grateful

 Yesterday was one of those remarkable days that reminds one of how important relationships are, and how easy they are to rebuild (but also slip away).  The youth group of my youth — almost 50 years ago, gathered together at Glenview United Methodist Church for a reunion.  For me, it was not a day of pining for the past, but one of seeing possibilities for the future.  In this day and age of fear of what might be coming — yes I am terrified of the possibility of another Trump presidency (if you are not read; the the Project 2025 agenda or the comments of economists of his economic plans) — nor am I excited about Biden — but what excited me yesterday was the possibility of build new relationships with old friends.

I am in a good place in my life (and one that is getting better and better each day).  I am loving retirement, and finding more and more outlets for my time.  I have become a platelet donor – and even though I usually come home and say “I will never do it again,” because sitting still for two+ hours is a real challenge for me — I keep signing up to do it again.  I just gave my fourth donation of the year and plan to do at least that many more (working around travel is a challenge).  I am getting less and less critical of just attending church (my clergy friends would understand) and happy to fill a need when necessary.  We help with the coffee hour at the church we attend once a month and are glad to serve in such a behind the scenes way.  I am getting to read books I want to read (not JUST religious books) and I have read close to 40 already this year.  My youngest daughter got married a little over a week ago, and we now have three wonderful son-in-laws!  And best yet, it seems like our kids like us and enjoy doing things with us.  We will be heading out to Oregon in a few weeks to visit Lindsey and Alex, it is going to be a great trip. 

Best yet, Nancy and I are in the best place we have ever been in.  We love doing things together, enjoy bumping into each other during the day, and love traveling.  I have not always been the best partner (hard when you work 24/7) but I am learning how (slowly).  If you are not familiar with the Jimmy Buffett song “Coast of Carolina” (it is the follow up to “Come Monday”) it has become my (our) song.  After 38 years, I think we are finally hitting our stride – and I am so thankful that Nancy didn’t give up on me (she had plenty of reasons).

This was a long way of saying how thankful I am for yesterday and all the wonderful souls who were there.  Tom & Sue Harmon (wish you could have been there) and Steve and Mary Howland were and continue to be such a huge influence on me and I think I could safely say all of those that gathered.  One of the favorite comments that was made yesterday in a variety of ways and by numerous people was that our time in the youth group was a “magical one”.  My parents always referred to their eight years in Glenview as their Camelot.  I always thought of that in terms of my ministry and the churches I served.  But yesterday, it hit me, they were right – it was a mystical, magical time!  Carl Orr best summed it up when he said, the best thing about us talking about those special years, is that we realize it.  Yep!  We were blessed having that opportunity growing up, and are even more blessed to still be connected by that bond.

While I am worried about the future of our nation (putting more $ in my pocket is not worth it for the destruction of our democracy), I am excited about building these relationships in new ways.  And together, we can weather the storms that come our way.  Thanks Laurie (and Nancy) for encouraging me to write more.

Stewart about 1977

Ramblings of my heart

I don’t post much these days, I am just an old fart who is still trying to learn and even willing to admit that I am wrong.  I just finished Nathaniel Philbrick’s book: “The Last Stand”.  I will be the first to admit, I love learning about my country, even when that history is rather dark and disturbing.  And the white response to the “Indian problem” is beyond dark and disturbing. Last summer, when we were in Michigan we visited a great little museum, that probably sees only a few thousand visitors a year (because who wants to be confronted with our dark history), but like visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (the Holocaust museum), sometimes we need to be kicked firmly in our rear ends so that we can remove our heads and see some of the injustice that has happened in our lifetime.  

This past week was a watershed in USA history.  For the first time a President of the United States was found guilty by a jury of his peers for criminal conduct.  Not just one count but for all 34 charges brought against him.  Throughout his life, he has used intimidation and threats to keep people at bay, and finally justice caught up to him.  What did he do?  He paid off a porn star that he had sex with from telling her story.  There is nothing illegal in paying someone off (even if it might be morally wrong), but he is so cheap that he wanted to claim it as a campaign expense and not take it from his own money.  That is where the crime was committed.  But even before that, he has shamed and ridiculed persons who suffer from disabilities, talked about his sexual adventures, and even been found liable in a civil suit for defamation.

What strikes me is the response of the white evangelical side of the church.  They see this man as a road to power and will do anything to help him achieve power.  Even, I would say, selling their souls to “the devil”.  They are convinced that the end will justify the means, which quite frankly goes against everything in the Christian Faith.  They speak a good game, but their actions suggest otherwise.

I am convinced that being a follower of Jesus has less to do with dogma, and more to do with how we live our lives.  If you follow the Lectionary (the arbitrary setting of scripture readings for each Sunday by the church), you would know that the Gospel for today was Mark 2:23-3:6.  It is the story of Jesus not following the dogma of the Sabbath and instead breaking from tradition to do good.  The point of the story, I believe is, it is not about saying I BELIEVE, rather it is about loving.  And if you know me at all, you know that I am convinced that the core of Jesus teaching is found in the Gospels when Jesus, quoting from the Shema (Deuteronomy 6), slightly but significantly changing it says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.”  And then Jesus explained that all the law and prophets depend on this.  LOVE.

What does it mean to love our neighbors?  Is trickle down economic theory what Jesus was talking about when he said to feed his children?  Was building a wall to keep people out what Jesus wants us to do?  Is paying off a porn star what Jesus would be happy about?

Now before some of you start with your WHAT ABOUTS!  Go ahead, feel free to do that all you want.  If you believe the things I have said are not true — that is on you.  I will have to deal with the candidate that I will choose to vote for.  

This is not who is best for my pocket book.

This is not who will make America the supreme colonial power in the world.

This is who do we love — and who do we choose to not love.

I have not always done it well.  And I still fail today.  But I am trying to become more aware of my blind spots.  That is why I am thankful for the Nathaniel Philbricks, the Robert Jones, the Peter Ens, and so many others who are continually challenging my comfortable and privileged state. 

They only way we can make America great again is when we recognize our dark past, repent our our corporate sins, and truly begin to live the wonderful words our founding fathers proclaimed (even if they didn’t really mean them): “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”  

May we truly understand that all of God’s children (and that is EVERYONE) is loved by God, and God desires us to love each other in return.

What Do You See

 Luke 24:36-48 NRSVUE

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

If there is one consistent theme that presents itself in the stories of Jesus' resurrection is that nobody seems to recognize him.

It starts, of course, at the tomb, and it doesn't matter which Gospel or resurrection story you choose.

My favorite resurrection day story is found in the Gospel of Mark, because it is so brief.  

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome come to the tomb early resurrection morning and find it empty and a young man there.  

And that is it.  

Was the young man Jesus?, 

Is he risen?

We have no idea.

John’s gospel, which we heard from on Easter Sunday and last Sunday, tells us that Mary is convinced she is talking with a gardener, before she realizes it is Jesus.  And the disciples were so moved by meeting Jesus in the locked room that JoAnne shared about last week, that in the next chapter they return back to their boats on the Sea of Galilee and have no idea that it is Jesus that they encounter.

Then of course there is Luke, where the two people are walking along with a stranger on their way to Emmaus and they have no idea that the stranger is actually Jesus.

It was that encounter that the disciples were talking about when our story begins.

Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.

These stories always bothered me — 

How could these disciples who had followed Jesus around during his ministry not have recognized him?

How could they think they were seeing a ghost?

How many of you got the opportunity to experience the eclipse this past Monday?

I remember as a kid building a box to experience an eclipse

And I was pastoring in Indianapolis in 2017 during the last major eclipse — the whole staff was out in the parking lot in awe of God’s creative beauty.

Nancy and I drove down to Indianapolis early Monday morning to spend the afternoon with the house group that we were a part of at Meridian Street UMC and experience the TOTAL eclipse together.

Watching in 2017 was amazing — but experiencing the total eclipse was out of this world.

Especially in the company of friends

Now the drive back was also out of this world — it took about twice as long as normal.

But what struck me were the comments of numerous religious leaders (some of them friends) who were convinced that the eclipse (that are naturally occurring events throughout history and can be precisely predicted in the future) were supernatural manifestations of God giving a warning specifically to the American people.

Too many pastors were calling the eclipse the beginning of the end — or even the rapture.

Well, we are all here, so we obviously were not taken up — I am not sure if that says something about us — but just to be certain I checked with the living saints that I know — and none of them were taken either.

But for the first time in my life — I understand why people trek around the world to experience a total eclipse.

What intrigues about our gospel story is —- what is it that we see?

I believe that it was the late Marcus Borg who said that the resurrection was not a Kodak moment.  Meaning that you could not photograph or videotape it.

That seems somewhat clear enough in our story, when the disciples are convinced that what they are seeing is a ghost.

But also very obvious, when in the story of the walk to Emmaus, the stranger/Jesus simply disappears.

Why is it — that Jesus can be standing right in front of us — and we can’t see him?

It reminds me of one of my favorite phrases that my mother always used to say about losing things in plain sight

If it were a snake (she would say) --- it would have bit you

Too often our lives become:

Too busy

too complicated

so confusing

that it becomes easy to fail to notice all that is going on around you

A dear friend of mine, who is a pastor in Indiana tells a great story about a time when he was spending a semester of college in Germany. This story took place almost 45 years ago.

He had been having a great time --- but he says he remembers becoming very homesick

During the semester he had to have his appendix removed and he spent quite a bit of time in the hospital

He had the opportunity to visit East Germany (for those of you who don't remember --- this was before the wall separating the East and the West existed and Germany was reunified)

That visit made him long for the USA and home

During a break from school his parents decided to come and visit him

His parents flew into Brussels and Mark had to take the train to meet them

He recalls that he got there a couple of hours after their plane was set to land, so he went directly to the hotel they were staying at to meet them

When he arrived at the hotel he found that they had yet to check in, so he left a note with the front desk that he was going to go across the street to a little cafe and have some breakfast and that they should come and join him when they arrived.

As he turned to head to the cafe --- he saw his mother and father walking into the hotel

Mark says that he dropped what he was doing and ran over and embraced his dad

His dad, so startled by the experience called out:

"Please let go of me --- I am just a tourist --- I just arrived"

His dad failed to recognize who it was that was embracing him

I know --- you are all telling me that story is ridiculous --- that it would never happen --- BUT IT DID

If you remember our Easter Gospel story is virtually identical

Mary Magdalene has come to the tomb early on that first Easter

She finds that the stone which had blocked the tomb had been rolled away

While standing there perplexed she meets a man at the tomb who asks her

"Woman, why are you crying?  Whom do you seek?"

Mary was certain that it was the gardener and so she asks him what has happened to the body of Jesus --- for she wanted to go and prepare the body for burial

Mary FAILED TO RECOGNIZE that the person she was talking to was actually Jesus

But that NEVER happens — and yet the resurrection stories are filled with times where Jesus' disciples FAILED to recognize him.

And even with the life changing resurrection stories we have — we find the disciples in the Gospels all going back to what they used to do — fishing 

Do you think you would recognize Jesus if he came alongside you today?

How would you know it was him?

One year when I was working with the confirmation class, I asked that question, and I loved their answers

They were of course all over the place

But my favorite of all time has to be when one of the students replied:

"That's easy, I would recognize him because his clothes would be old and he’d look funny."

But seriously --- how would you recognize Jesus today?

Frederick Buechner in his book The Magnificent Defeat writes about finding Jesus when we fail to recognize him:

. . . it is precisely at such times as this that Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but . . . at supper time, or walking along a road. This is the element that all the stories about Christ's return to life have in common: Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see somebody standing there—someone she thought at first was the gardener; all the disciples except Thomas hiding out in a locked house, and then his coming and standing in the midst; and later, when Thomas was there, his coming again and standing in the midst; Peter taking his boat back after a night at sea, and there on the shore, near a little fire of coals, a familiar figure asking, "Children, have you any fish?"; the two men at Emmaus who knew him in the breaking of the bread. He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks. . . . The sacred moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes, or listen with more than our ears, reveal only . . . the gardener

Somehow we have to open our inner eyes

The eyes that touch our heart

so that we will not just see a stranger, not just see a simple gardener

But so that we might see Jesus

I asked this question — HOW DO WE SEE JESUS TODAY — on my facebook page and the answers that people gave were telling:

Nature — spring flowers — hiking in the mountains

People’s kindness — toward a sister being cared for in a healthcare center

In people who are living with courage to make the world a better place — to bring God’s justice and equality

In a child or grandchild’s budding faith

During World War II a Christian woman in Germany did all that she could do to help save the Jews from persecution (and often death)

Because of her efforts she was arrested by the Nazis and found herself sent off to a concentration camp.

While in the camp she begged the guards to let her hold an Easter service for the other Christians in the camp.

After a great deal of debate she was finally allowed to hold a service --- but was told that it could only last 5 minutes

They spent the five minutes singing hymns and reading the Easter story --- and when the five minutes were over --- the guard came and whisked the prisoners off to their cells

She too was thrown back into her cell --- and the door was slammed behind her

As she lay on her cot in the bare cell --- there was a noise at the window and a guard passed an Easter lily into her cell.

Jesus was real and present in that moment

HOW DO YOU SEE JESUS?

Where do you see Jesus?

Do you miss him, or do you find him in the little things?

One of the things that I am convinced of --- is that Easter was not a one and done experience.

Nor is it just a once a year celebration

Easter is WHENEVER we encounter Jesus.

at the tomb

walking along the road

at the grocery store

at work

in the midst of our family

One of the places that I see Jesus is in the rite of Baptism and the eucharist

I invite you to Open your eyes and see Jesus all around you

In the beauty of creation

And in each other

As many of you know — I have a profound love for “The Holy Lands”

My heart breaks for my Palestinian brothers and sisters who are living in an extreme crisis

My heart breaks for my Israeli brothers and sisters who are seeking peace while their government seeks war

My heart breaks for all people who think guns and bombs are the answers to our problems

Nancy and I were supposed to go back to Israel this past January — obviously we didn’t.

But one of the places I saw Jesus was in the Royal Plaza and Caesar hotels

It was easy to see Jesus in the eyes of the pilgrims we met

The place that startled me was seeing Jesus in the Palestinian and Israeli workers.

These Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers showed me Jesus every day in the ways that they cared for those pilgrims, and in the ways that they helped me to be a better helper.  

They took me under their wings and loved on me!

THAT WAS JESUS!

Where do you see Jesus?

If you are not sure — open your eyes --- for Jesus is all around you

And if you do see Jesus --- don't keep Jesus to yourself --- share Jesus with as many as you can

Not through words

Through love

The good news --- as we journey through life --- is that the story of Jesus is NEVER ENDING

Easter is everyday

Jesus is always with us --- if we will just open our eyes and embrace his love