Spiritual Gifts, Not Spiritual Hierarchy (Reflections on Pentecost 13, Year A 2026)

 

Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

We hear a lot in America today about socialism, communism, and fascism. I’ll bet a lot of folks who sling those words around don’t really know what they mean. Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of American history at Boston College, summarizes fascism as “the belief that some people are better than others.[i]” I’m not about to call our early Christian ancestors “fascists,” but this hierarchical system was exactly what Saint Paul was dealing with when he wrote his great epistle to the Romans.

In the Second Lesson for Pentecost 13 in the Revised Common Lectionary (Romans 12:1-8) Paul is doing what every good pastor struggles to do: hold together a bunch of people with different backgrounds, different opinions, and different personalities who are all trying to navigate a changing culture in a frightening world.

Here’s a little back story. The Gospel of Jesus Christ had reached the city of Rome well before Paul ever got around to visiting the Christian community there. By 56 or 57 CE., however, Paul had become the rock star of the Christian faith. His reputation was preceding him and, even though he was busy trying to get those crazy Corinthians to behave themselves, the Christians in Rome were just as anxious to see or hear from him as he was to see them. The best Paul could do was write them a long letter which he sent to them courtesy of a lady named Phoebe, a deacon from the nearby port town of Cenchreae. Phoebe, apparently, was pretty flush with cash and could afford to support Paul and travel around the Mediterranean world delivering his mail. Paul wanted to address the Roman Christians’ concerns, let them know he was planning a visit, get them to kick in a few bucks to help out the starving church back in Jerusalem,[ii] and support his further missionary efforts in Spain (a trip he was never able to make)[iii].

Back around 49 CE Emperor Claudius decided he didn’t like Jews, so he kicked them out of Rome. This meant that Jewish Christians also had to leave town. When Claudius died, the Jews moved back, only to find that the church was now run by a new group of primarily Gentile Christians. It’s the old story—a clash between the Old Guard and those young whippersnappers who think they know it all. This is what Paul was facing in the church at Rome.

Paul urged the Romans to look with the eyes of Christ and not to be conformed to the ways of the age. After all, the way of Roman society was always to divide people into social classes. If you lived in that society, you knew there were Patricians and Plebians—the rich folks and the not-so-rich folks—with some minor sub-categories in each group. Paul urged Christians not to model the church on those kinds of worldly distinctions, but to look at one another with the eyes of Christ.

If you read through the Pauline epistles, you’ll see Paul making this same argument again and again. He reminds the Galatians that being Jewish doesn’t make you a better Christian (and you don’t need to be circumcised!)[iv]. He dresses down the Corinthians for humiliating the less affluent members of the church by leaving them out of the Lord’s Supper[v]. His aim is always to turn the nascent Christians away from worldly values and love one another in fraternal community. His request to the mostly Gentile Christians of Rome to send aid to the mostly Jewish Christians of Jerusalem is not just a humanitarian effort but an attempt to reconcile two factions within the Christian movement.

The Gospel Paul preaches is one which humbles the exalted and exalts the humble. If you’re in Christ, there’s no one better than you and no one worse. My work as an ordained pastor does not make me a superior Christian. I don’t deserve to be treated with any more respect than the next person, and the next person should be treated with no less respect than that with which I am treated.

God doesn’t assign us positions of status. What God does assign are spiritual gifts. Each of us has something to offer for the good of the rest of us. Martin Luther taught that every Christian is in some way a priest. That is, each of us has the ability to pray and make intercession for others, and any work we do for the good of society is Godly work. In this passage Paul mentions three gifts which I find of note.

Prophecy is not about predicting the future. Any of us could be a prophet by taking a firm grasp on the obvious and declaring that, should things go on as they are, there will be a predictable end. When you mom warned you to look both ways on a busy street, she was being a prophet. Prophets don’t predict what will happen, they warn us about what may happen.

Paul marries sincerity to generosity. There are right reasons to give, and not-so-right reasons. If you make a huge donation to get your name on some wall, that’s not charity. It’s commerce. If you give out of guilt or obligation, that’s coercion. If, however, you give because you truly believe your gift makes a positive impact, that’s a blessing.

Finally, Paul tells us the gift of compassion is cheerfulness. This sounds a little counterintuitive. After all, when you’re dealing with a serious emotional issue, you don’t want to be around someone who is grinning like they’re a toke over the line and cracking jokes. Neither do you want someone whose pessimism or anger or judgmental nature mirrors your won at that moment. You need someone whose true joy in the Lord is so deep in their heart that they can cry their eyes out with you but not leave you hopeless.

To sum it all up? It’s just about living every day seeking the way of Christ.

My mind can always use some renewing, so please leave me a comment if you wish. Thanks for reading, my friend, and thanks for being part of the Church.

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[i] I don’t actually have a source for this quote, but if you ask Dr. Richardson, she’ll tell you she said it.

[ii] Jerusalem got hit with a nasty famine around 44-48 CE.

[iii] See Romans 15:22-33.

[iv][iv] See Galatians 2:11-21

[v] See 1 Corinthians 11:17-22

Of Hearts and Pharisees (Reflections on Pentecost 12, Year A 2026)

 

“But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and that is what defiles.” (Matthew 15:18)

Just what’s up with the Pharisees? These uber-religious guys are always the villains in our Gospel story, and Jesus gives them a royal smack-down in the lesson we have in the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 12, A this year (Matthew 15:10-28). Back at the top of chapter 15 of Matthew’s Gospel, the Pharisees are getting their shorts bunched up because Jesus’ disciples have eaten without ritually washing their hands. This has got to make you ask: Don’t these guys have something better to do than complain about other people’s luncheon hygiene? Why are they freaking out about something which isn’t going to matter five minutes from now and will be forgotten by tomorrow? How petty can these dudes get?

I’ve always had something of a soft spot for the Pharisees myself. After all, they are the ancestors of modern rabbinic Judaism, and that should count for something. As annoying as they are to Jesus, we should consider they really were very pious people who were just doing their best to live up to the Law of Moses. Unfortunately, they had their heads stuck so far up into the details of the law that they had lost sight of its purpose. In a way, I feel sorry for them. They had a lot of prestige in their day, but they still weren’t the party in power[i]. They could take pride in being the descendants of Abraham and relish tales of the glory days when King David kicked butts and took names or when King Solomon’s reputation was the envy of the ancient world. In this story, however, they were a minor party in a tiny, defeated, and occupied country where they didn’t control the religious or governmental establishment, and the guys who did were themselves puppets of a foreign dictator in Rome. For all their legalistic piety and knowledge, I’ll bet it had to suck to be a Pharisee.

I think circumstances explain a lot about Jesus’ critics. They’d been told about their glorious past, but their present was far from glorious. When you don’t have much control over the stuff in your life, you become a psycho fanatic about the piddly stuff you can control. That explains why Grandpa goes berserk whenever someone messes with the thermostat. He used to be the guy who brought home the bacon, could fix anything that needed repairing, and gave detailed driving directions to anywhere you needed to go. Now he’s using a walker, wearing Depends, and has been made to surrender his car keys; nevertheless, he will—by God!—control that thermostat. The Pharisees are the same way. They may not control much, but they can still be smugly judgmental about people who are less pious or holy than they are.

Jesus needed to set these guys straight. The dinky rules the Pharisees were so upset about—like what or how you ate—doesn’t matter to God. What always matters is what is in the heart. Jesus even scolds them in front of the crowd for their lack of insight. He reminds his own disciples—and us, too—that contempt for others is a defilement.

All of this seems a little odd when verses 10-20 are juxtaposed with verses 21-28. When the Canaanite lady with a demonically possessed daughter comes to Jesus begging for help, he first ignores her and then calls her a dog. I don’t know about you, but this seems a little contemptuous to me, especially if you consider that, in the world of the text, dogs didn’t enjoy quite the level of favor they have in our modern society.[ii] I’m always a bit puzzled by this. Did this woman’s response to Jesus’ calling her a dog actually change the Lord’s mind, or did Jesus purposely insult her just so he could demonstrate to the disciples that even a foreigner was capable of compassionate insight? I like to thank it was the latter.

As a parish pastor, I often find myself confronted by people begging for mercy and compassion. If a member of my congregation—a sheep of my flock—is in need, there isn’t a whole lot I wouldn’t do if it’s in my power to do it. But, when the local mendicants come knocking at the church door, I turn into a Pharisee, or—like the disciples in the story—I want to send them away because they’re often really annoying. There have been a small number of homeless folks who’ve been buzzing around Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia for the last few years. One I know has a drug problem and others are just emotionally immature folks who either can’t or don’t want to advocate for themselves. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but they bug the crap out of me.

When I get judgmental like this, I have to take a step back and recognize the Pharisee in me. The contempt in my heart is what defiles me. It doesn’t matter if these unfortunate folks are in a situation of their own making. I don’t have any control over that. I do, however, have control over what’s in my heart and how I treat them. I am called to treat them with the same love and regard Jesus showed to the Canaanite woman. My little church does not have the financial resources to get these folks off the street, but I can fill their gas tank, show them how to use the internet to find cheap lodging, let them use the church’s address for the delivery of their SNAP card, or give them a bottle of cold water on a hot day. It may be only a crumb, but it’s something.

We all have a little of the Pharisee in us, and we’re all called to keep a watch on our hearts.

Thank you for visiting me again this week. Don’t be shy about leaving a comment. I always like to know what you think. God bless!

  

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[i] That would be the Sadducees. They were the “money class” and had lots of influence in the Temple.

[ii] I am personally quite fond of dogs. In fact, if my wife’s 9-year-old female shih tzu were magically transformed into a human child, I couldn’t love her any more or spoil her any less than I do now.

"Courage!" (Reflections on Pentecost 11, Year A 2026)

But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” (Matthew 9: 27)

Imagine this: You and the family take a summer vacation in Wildwood. It’s really hot, so you go down to the beach, spread your blanket, and cool off from the sticky humidity by wading into the cool Atlantic swell. The water is blue like the sky. It feels fresh and invigorating against your skin. You wade out a little further until you’re up to your armpits. You’re having a lovely time splashing around and listening to the seagulls when—suddenly—the gentle whitecaps start to turn a dirty brown and a force like a giant vacuum cleaner sucks you right off your feet and begins to pull you away from the shore. You flail around and try to dogpaddle your way back to land, but the current keeps pulling you further away. You’re getting knocked around like a rubber duck and a big wave deposits a salty gulp of water right down your throat. You cough and choke. Your strength starts to give out. You’re in a rip current. What do you do?

One thing’s for sure. If you panic, you’ll die.

In Israel’s scriptures, the sea was often a symbol of chaos. Even an inland water like the Sea of Galilee could be unpredictable, changing in minutes from a glassy calm to a violent, destructive monster causing panic even for experienced sailors.

The community to whom Matthew wrote our Gospel lesson for Pentecost 11, Year A (Matthew 14:22-33) knew its share of chaos. This nascent family of believers must’ve been considered radically dangerous. They’d turned their backs on a hierarchical social structure that ordered the society in which they lived. They ignored purity laws for the sake of inclusion. They refused to submit to an empire’s idolatry. Their reward for this was persecution and abandonment. They lived with constant uncertainty, and uncertainty is scary. After all, don’t we all fear the unknown?

We’re living with a heavy dose of the unknown at the moment, aren’t we? Just look at the nightly TV news. Floods destroy neighborhoods or entire towns. Tornados and hurricanes ravage communities. Wildfires burn out of control and destroy thousands of acres. In a single evening’s weather report, we experience all the frightening chaos Elijah experienced on Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:9-18). We might even experience the horrible silence the prophet experienced at the mouth of the cave—the soul-crushing experience of failure and solitude.

At such chaotic moments, we call out for God. Like Peter, we cry, “Lord, save me!”

How does Jesus respond? He says to us, “Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.” The words “take heart” are, in Greek, one word: tharseite. It’s the imperative form of the noun tharseo, which translates as “Courage!” Then Jesus says, “It is I.” The Greek here is ego eimi, literally “I am,” the divine name for God. Courage, he says. God is.

As you thrash around in the tormenting clutches of the rip current, you might see the still-blue sky above you and remember God is. God who made the sky and the awful, unpredictable sea has also made you. In the midst of the swirling confusion, you stop struggling against the current. You swim to the side. You relax your frenzied limbs and wave to the lifeguard who is coming to your rescue. “Courage,” he calls to you. “Don’t be afraid.” You float for a while and follow his directions when he comes near. Now you feel safe.

From Matthew’s day to our own the Church has always lived with uncertainty. This is not a problem because rarely do any of us gain wisdom from circumstances which aren’t chaotic, uncertain, or in some way a crisis.

I recently heard a podcast about the decline of mainline Protestant denominations in the U.S. The podcaster opined that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has been steadily losing members while the conservative Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has remained stable because the ELCA has embraced progressive cultural ideas while the LCMS has remained steadfast and traditional in its doctrines. When the ELCA takes down the barriers which have estranged liberally minded people from the organized church, such people do not suddenly stampede into our pews. Conservatives leave the church, but progressive don’t join. Perhaps the cultural liberals feel they can respect the LGBTQ+ community, support gender equality, and champion reproductive freedom without having to get up on a Sunday morning.

I respect those folks for their social conscience, but I think they’re missing out on what we have. We have the words of life which inspire us every week. We have a community which becomes a family. We have the traditions of the faith with which we mark the seasons of the year, which give us a sense of belonging, and which bring us comfort and order in the face of a rapidly changing world. Most of all, we have Jesus. He is our rescuer, our guide to Godly life, our model of sacrificial love, our constant reminder that we are loved and valued, and—most important of all—our never-failing hope of resurrection.

“Courage,” he says. “I am here. Do not be afraid.” May his presence be with you to give you courage this week and always.

The Lord Will Provide (Reflections on Pentecost 10, Year A 2026)

 

“Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.” (Matthew 14:19)

We at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia are extremely fortunate to number among our parishioners the Reverend Natt Pour. Pastor Natt (as we call him) is an ordained pastor from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Liberia. You might think that an immigrant coming from such an impoverished and frequently war-scarred nation might carry with him a certain aspect of melancholy, but, quite to the contrary, Pastor Natt is perennially cheerful and optimistic. That’s why we love him. There always seems to be just a little more sunshine in the room when this joyful and frequently picturesquely appareled cleric is around.

Some months back Pastor Natt made a request of the congregation for donations of old or obsolete computer equipment which could be used by the school kids at his home congregation in Africa. Bob, another parishioner with a similarly cherubic disposition, was in contact with an IT guy who had veritable bonanza of old computers, laptops, and tablets he was anxious to be rid of. When Bob dropped off this treasure trove of technology, I had to ask Pastor Natt how he would get the money to ship all this equipment to Liberia. Natt just gave me one of his iridescent smiles and said, “The Lord will provide.”

The Lord will provide, as Abraham told Isaac on Mt. Moriah[i]. That’s certainly been true in my life, even though I constantly find myself doubting the providence. I remember when I graduated from seminary—lo those many years ago—I had a Master of Divinity degree and no church to pastor.

Even those who have been Lutherans since their infant baptism may not be aware of the complexity of the ordination process for our clergy. A seminary degree does not immediately make one a pastor. There is an entire bureaucratic process to undergo. Strangely, this process moves rather swiftly until one gets to the most crucial point—the call of a congregation. You see, in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America one is not a pastor until a congregation says one is. This is where the process slows down to the speed of an arthritic tortoise. A congregation is an entirely volunteer organization, and it takes its good, sweet time about making decisions. Upon my graduation I had put aside about three months’ worth of savings. It would be six months before I drew a real paycheck.

You’ll note I did not starve. I don’t know how my meagre savings stretched to cover rent and food and utilities for an extra three months, but somehow, they did. The Lord provided. This is just one of the many times in my life when penury licked its lips in my direction but failed to swallow me.

In 2022 the church’s treasurer and I counted the beans and concluded that, should the congregation’s expenses and income follow their current trajectory, Faith Lutheran would be closing her doors for good by the following Easter. Four years later we’re still up and running. The Lord has provided.

All four of our Gospel witnesses include the story the RCL gives us for Pentecost 10, Year A (Matthew 14:13-21). The wonderful miracle story of the loaves and fish should be a reminder to us of God’s desire to see all of us get our daily bread. This is a tale of God’s abundance amidst our human fear of scarcity. I think it’s darn Christian of the disciples to care about the hunger of the crowd (v. 15), but more significant is Jesus’ reaction to the situation. He tells the crowd to sit down. Then he says a blessing over the food he has. He doesn’t lament a potential shortfall. He gives thanks for the goodness which God provided, and he trusts that it will be sufficient.

We can be grateful, or we can be fretful, but we cannot be both simultaneously. When we say grace, we are in grace. Our acknowledgment of God’s goodness doesn’t leave a lot of room for our anxiety. When scarcity exists, it's because of our lack of sharing. It's not because of God's lack of providing.

If we put this story in context, we should notice it comes right after the beheading of John the Baptist. In verse 13 Matthew tells us that Jesus, upon learning of John’s decapitation, wanted to go and be by himself for a while. Can you blame the guy? Even if you’re the only begotten Son of God the violent death of someone you love has to take something out of you. If you’ve ever been through a bereavement or some other emotionally draining experience, you’ll know how the Savior was feeling. Some things in life just suck all the emotional energy out of you like a plague of mosquitos with the munchies. But Jesus isn’t given a chance to grieve in this story. A bunch of folks with sick relatives and no awareness of personal boundaries come chasing after him. You’d think he was well within his rights to tell them to shove off and give him some space. But no. Jesus’ tank of compassion hadn’t hit “E.” The Lord provided. Even when we think we’ve got nothing left, when someone has drained the last ounce of our patience and endurance, when life is suffocating us and we can’t breathe, God’s Holy Spirit can still give us the guidance, the love, and the energy we need to get to the other side of our grief, frustration, despair, and weariness. The Lord provides.

A final thought: Who are we in this story? Who are you? Are you one of the hungry multitude or one of the disciples, worried that you don’t have what it takes to fulfill Jesus’ direction to care for the others? Jesus tells his followers, “You give them something to eat.” Would he give us this command if he didn’t think we had enough?

Thanks for stopping by this week. Give thanks to the Lord in all things and leave me a comment if you wish.

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[i] Gen. 22:14

RIP Lindsey Graham (Reflections on Pentecost 8, Year A 2026)

 

“Let both of them grow together until the harvest…” (Matthew 13: 29a)

The South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham passed away last week and the media has been full of tributes to the senator’s storied career. You may have divined that the late senator and I might not have been in agreement on some issues; nevertheless, the reminiscences of his senate colleagues seem to suggest that—politics aside—old Lindsey was a pretty good dude. Republicans and Democrats alike testify that he was mostly friendly and apparently blessed with a tremendous sense of humor which made him great company. I certainly admire the fact that he served in the United States Air Force, and after tragically losing his parents at a very young age, he took charge of his little sister and raised her himself. That’s pretty impressive and certainly worthy of praise. We all have our opinions and we don’t all get along all the time, but rarely do we encounter anyone who is 100% saint or 100% jerk. We’re all a mixture of wheat and weeds.

As a pastor who does a lot of neighborhood funerals, I’m always amazed when I pray over the remains of talented, intelligent, sweet, caring, sensitive people are also alcoholics or drug addicts or who have taken their own lives. Why is it that those who have been blessed by God with so many gifts also cause the ones who love them so much pain?

Shakespeare famously wrote, “The evil that man do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones[i],” but, in my experience, the opposite has been true. It seems people are far more forgiving, far more ready to give the benefit of the doubt, far more willing to cling to the virtuous wheat of our lives and cast the uncomfortable weeds into the fire.

I think that’s the takeaway from the Gospel Lesson for Pentecost 8, Year A in the RCL (Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43). If we take this reading on its face, we may superficially summarize it as “Someday there will be a Day of Judgment and good people like me will go to Heaven, and bad people will go to Hell.” I think we need to dig a little deeper into the text. Smart Bible scholar guys think Matthew, our Gospel writer (whoever he was), was writing to a community of early Christians who were living under some real nasty persecution[ii]. Some members of the community might’ve felt the pressure to abandon this Christianity stuff and accommodate themselves to the local culture. You know. They chose to go along to get along. You can’t really blame them, can you? I mean, if someone told you to abandon your faith or lose your life or go to jail or get fired from your job, what do you think you’d do? We all think we’d choose martyrdom, but if it came right down to it…?

Scholarly dudes[iii] point out the parable of the wheat and the weeds appears in Matthew and also in the gnostic gospel of Thomas. Thomas, which may be an older source, doesn’t include any explanation, so we wouldn’t be blamed if we guessed that Matthew made up the gloss in verses 36-43 to speak to his own community. You can imagine the burning question this nascent church had about its members. “If someone denies the faith, do they go to Hell? If that coward turned his back on our community, should we ever let him back in? Are there people in our church we can’t trust?”

Matthew uses the parable of the wheat and the weeds to remind his folks that there will always be good folks and not so good folks living together, but it’s not our place to say who is worthy and who isn’t. Any crusade to root out the slimeballs from the devout is only going to ruin the community. Playing ecclesiastic gestapo is the surest way to destroy a church.

I don’t think the parable need be only about the community of believers. The wheat field could relate to our own lives. Each of us has good and bad growing side-by-side. We know Luther’s doctrine of simul justus et peccator—simultaneously righteous and sinner. Even Luther himself had his own emotional weeds growing among the wheat of his intellect and compassion. He was a gifted teacher and theologian who deeply cared for the souls of his people. He could be extravagantly generous and at the same time short-tempered, caustic, stubborn, and obnoxious when people didn’t see things his way.

The parable encourages us to be a little more charitable in our judgments, but it also offers us the promise that a day will come when God will erase every flaw sown by our sinful nature. Someday our guilt will be absolved, our sin forgotten, and our defects burned away. Every cause of shame and everything we hate about ourselves will no longer burden us. It will all be forgiven when we enter into the Father’s glory.

I may not have agreed with Lindsey Graham’s politics, but when the day comes when I meet him, I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.

Peace be with you, my friend. Please come and see me again.

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[i] That’s in Julius Caesar Act 3 sc. 2 for you Shakespeare geeks.

[ii] See Griffith-Jones, Robin, The Four Witnesses (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2000).

[iii] I’m relying here on one of my favorite “go-to” sources: Funk, Robt. W. et al, The Five Gospels (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1993).

Who Will Say What Needs to be Said?

 What follows is not a reflection on the Bible or a sermon. It's just something which has been on my mind, and I needed to say it. 

When I was a kid, we said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in school. We followed the Pledge with the singing of a patriotic song like “God Bless America” or “America the Beautiful,” and we all knew the words by heart. I read Captain America comic books and watched Combat and The Rat Patrol on TV. I was proud of the way Americans—my own father included—had fought victoriously against the evils of fascism. I believed that the Americans fighting in Vietnam were battling for a virtuous cause against the forces of oppression. I saw public service announcements urging us to donate to Radio Free Europe or join the Peace Corp so the benefits of American democracy could be shared with everyone all around the globe. Our nation was on a moral mission, and it meant something to be an American. Something noble. We were the Good Guys.

Never, in those innocent days, would I have imagined America would be the aggressor. I believed we’d live up to our moral responsibility to openly oppose totalitarian regimes, to uphold international law, and to be an open hand of mercy to smaller nations struggling out of the swamps of poverty. Never could I imagine that my country—whose ideals I’d been taught in school—would sow economic chaos around the world, show a callous and depraved indifference to human suffering by cutting off life-saving food and medical aid, cozy up to ruthless dictators, abandon our friends in their time of need, insult allies who’d come to our own aid, murder foreign nationals on the high seas without proof of their committing any crime, invade the territory of a sovereign nation and overturn its government, and start a war without first being attacked. Never could I imagine the United States would change from being the defender of democracy to the world’s bully.

But here we are. My question is: Where will we go from here? A time will come, whether it be by an impeachment and removal or simply by the expiration of his term of office, when Donald Trump will be no more. What will the United States do then? As a Christian clergyman I believe absolution requires contrition. Will the next American president have the moral courage to apologize to the world for the damage we have done?

I say “we,” because I believe our nation bears a collective guilt which can’t simply be blamed on one man. After the shameful attack on the U.S. Capital on January 6, 2021—an attack instigated by the defeated president himself—it should have been unmistakably clear to anyone with eyes that there was no depth of perfidy to which Trump was unwilling to sink in order to retain power, continue to profit off his office, and perpetuate his self-delusion that he was qualified to govern this nation. We saw in that moment who he was and what he was capable of doing, and yet we returned him to office four years later. Since then, many of the representatives we have elected have become his myrmidons and have done virtually nothing to halt his rapine and criminality.

I believe America owes the people of the world an apology. If we are unwilling to take responsibility for what our government has done and is doing, we will never regain our standing in the community of nations. Who will be the leader who is willing to make confession and ask for absolution? Will our next president be willing to admit defeat in our conflict with Iran? Will he or she apologize to the families of the service members we’ve lost and to the people of Iran for the civilian deaths caused by this illegal and unnecessary conflict? Will America be willing to face the International Court of Justice and abide by penalties imposed? Could our next president stand before the United Nations General Assembly and ask the world’s forgiveness, understanding that we have lost the trust of other nations and that we must earn our way back into their fellowship? Can we admit that we have forfeited our position of leadership in the free world, and that we must commit to humble cooperation if we wish to regain it?

Or will we simply jut out our chin and pretend the people of the world have not seen what we know they saw?

Who is that man or woman willing to do the unpleasant and distasteful task of acknowledging our errors and seeking reconciliation? Who will have the integrity to call our land to repentance? Doubtless the president who is willing to speak the embarrassing truth will invite vitriolic condemnation. He or she will be accused of hating America or even of treason. Such sincere humility may be political poison, but I believe it will be one of the greatest acts of statesmanship in modern times—and an absolute necessity.

Keep Seeding (Reflections on Pentecost 7, Year A 2026)

 

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

    it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose

    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)

Can I just say that I’ve found lawn care to be one of the most anxiety-producing responsibilities of home ownership? I have been locked in mortal combat with spotted spurge, dandelions, mushrooms, and a plethora of diabolical vegetation answering to the description of “weeds.” I constantly face the conundrum of watering. When to water? How much to water? Is my irrigation sensor working? 

Last fall the Bride and I sowed some grass seed on our lawn. Heat or fungus or some insidious blight or other turned the fecund green of our lawns to a sickly brown, requiring us to shell out about nine hundred bucks to have seed scattered and sown in hope of reviving the lawn to something approaching health. Wouldn’t you know it? Just as the seeds were starting to sprout, the landscaping company that services our development sent some bovine-brained Gen-Zee on an ATV to treat all our lawns with weedkiller. This wannabe Evel Knievel did a doughnut on our front lawn and tore up a good patch of recently seeded grass.

Recently, as I did my morning chore of pulling up the mushrooms which are sucking the nutrients away from my poor lawn, I asked myself, “Why? Why don’t I run up the white flag and surrender? Why don’t I just let this lawn go and do its own thing? Why can’t I let what will grow grow and what will die die? Who says I should try to control nature?”

The answer, of course, is my HOA. They want everyone’s lawn to look like the eighteenth green at Augusta, and they send you an intimidating letter if your lawn doesn’t measure up. So I guess I’ll be scattering more seed this year. But that’s okay. I’ve come to a place of peace with this. All I can do is scatter the seed. It’s God who gives the growth.

I love Jesus’ parable of the sower which we hear again as the Gospel lesson for Pentecost 7, Year A (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23) because it’s really a tale of hope. The “seed” is a metaphor for God’s word, and Jesus assumes that some of this seed is going to take root. It’s a mistake to dwell on the seed that doesn’t seem to be germinating when every seed has the potential for growth.

Saint Paul taught us that faith comes from what is heard.[i] No one hears the Word unless we proclaim it. If we’re to cast ourselves in this parable, we’re the sower of the seed. We can scatter the seed through public proclamation, but we also scatter it through our actions and our demeanor. When we do works of charity, when we show patience and forbearance, when we forgive, we are sowers of the seed. We sow when we are advocates for justice for the poor and marginalized, when we are neighbors, and when we show welcome and inclusion. I would hazard to guess that for everyone who is drawn on a Sunday morning to hear more of God’s Word there was a person in the past whose kindness or empathy or sense of internal peace was a seed of inspiration. Can you think of anyone who embodied the Word of God in your life? I can.

The Word of God is a word of love and forgiveness and healing. In the words and works of Jesus we learn and are called to love, patience, acceptance, compassion, mercy, sacrifice, and faith in eternal life. God’s Word is God’s work. When that seed takes root in our hearts, we can’t help but spread it around.

I’ve joked that we at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia have been growing our Christian Education program back from seed. After the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic our Sunday School pretty much vanished. But then, God decided to send us some infants and toddlers and a few primary grade kids. They’re too little to start reading the Bible on their own, let alone tackle the theological intricacies of the Augsburg Confession or even Luther’s Catechism. Nevertheless, our heroic Sunday School teachers—two Gen-Zees who were baptized and brought up in our congregation—are doing their best to plant the seeds of faith by involving these tykes in our Sunday liturgy. Do the kids have a sense of the sacred? Not so much yet. But they’re learning that they are welcome in church, and church is a safe and fun place to be.

Yes, I have also lamented that many of my former confirmands have shot out the door of the church right after affirming their baptism like someone was giving away Taylor Swift tickets. But some of them have stuck around. Some of them have even returned from time to time. My job is to sow the seed. I can’t force it to grow. When I do funerals for unchurched folks, I always try to explain a little about our faith. I also hand out the church’s business card to the bereaved. Do they ever come through our doors on a Sunday morning? Once in a great while someone does. But, I think, I may have just planted a seed of faith in some of the ones who don’t. That’s up to God. My job—our job—is to keep on spreading the seed.

Yes, I will probably have to reseed my lawn again this fall. My HOA will insist, so surrender is not an option. It’s not an option for Christians, either. God doesn’t give up. Neither should we. There may be a seed lying dormant under the soil, waiting to sprout in God’s good time.

I hope I’ve spread some good seed to you this week. Please come and see me again.

 

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[i] Romans 10:17