Author: harryjheintz

[This is the word I had the privilege of proclaiming at Community of the Savior 0n March30, 2018, Good Friday, based on John 19:30.]

 

The words become more personal, more intense. While Jesus might have been consumed by his own pain and the sheer degradation of the cross, he is thinking of others. At first, at least. He calls for forgiveness for his executors. That list is lengthy: Pilate, Herod, the chief priests, the Roman centurions. “Father, forgive them…” He reaches out to the thief on the cross beside him with the promise of eternal life: “Today you will be with me….” He arranges for the care of his aging mother, her heart breaking at something no mother should ever see happening to her son. “Woman, behold your son…disciple, your mother.”

Crucifixion had been designed by the Roman Empire to be the ultimate deterrent. It was ghastly and barbaric. It was designed to be a long and excruciating death. Crosses were erected next to well-traveled roads, so passersby could see and even interact with the dying. This slow form of execution allowed those being killed to see and hear those gawkers. And sometimes friends and relatives. After hours, the death would usually be due to asphyxiation, as the head could not lift itself.

As the weight of his body is pulling him down to his death, Jesus’ words turn more inward. He cries out in his abandonment to the Father who loves him and who is allowing him to be cut off from the land of the living. “My God, my God….” In perhaps his most poignant word, he confesses his thirst. He who turned the water into wine, he who is the fountain of living water, he who promises that whoever drinks from him will never be thirsty, he becomes thirsty—and he admits it. Yet his most profoundly theological word is yet to be spoken.

Most of these seven words from the cross are short sentences, full thoughts, even scriptural words. Just two of them are, in the Greek language of the New Testament, actually single words. The fifth word, “I thirst.” And the sixth word, “It is finished.”  On Jesus’ lips both were but a single word. There is not much left in his lungs at this point. Each breath is precious, both heavy and fleeting.

This death is no mistake, mind you. It is not due to Pilate’s error. Or Roman cruelty alone. Or Judas’s betrayal. Or Peter’s denial. A higher purpose is at work. An unseen hand is moving the drama of the passion forward. They—the disciples, the crowds, the detractors—could not discern it, but Jesus could and did. Who of them and who of us can possibly understand this? This was not God’s wrath satisfied, but God’s love magnified.

As Jesus hangs from the cruel cross, John records that one most powerful word that Jesus utters just before his dying breath. For us it has become three words, but it was one when articulated from his parched lips. Putting ourselves at the foot of Calvary’s cross, we cannot help but wonder what he means. Is he finally giving in to the immense pain? Throwing in the towel of serving others? Is he a misguided zealot whose noble cause has finally been dealt its deathblow? Is he telling his disciples to pack it in and head back to their fishing nets? Is he conceding to his enemies that he is backed into a corner and has no more moves to make? Is he the victim of his own story: the bold teachings, the colorful parables, the signs and wonders, the palm waving crowds, and now he cannot do the final miracle? Is he conceding defeat? Is this grand and great adventure finished? Done, in a last burst of failure?

Tetelestai. That’s the actual word. Perfect tense. That means completed action with continuing effect. Done once for all, but with continuing ramifications right to this day. Finished. Completed. Accomplished. Modern translators of the Bible have broken much ground, but few have been willing to tinker with the classic, “It is finished.” Tetelestai. “Finished.” It means finished in the sense of fulfilled. Mission accomplished. Assignment completed. Promise kept. Goods delivered.
Standing at the foot of that cross that day, we may have recognized the word. For this is not an admission of defeat. It is the victor’s cry. It is the word we would hear from the lips of the marathon runner, having worked and trained for all those endless months of intense discipline, when finally, after 26 grueling miles, she crosses the finish line. Finished! Race completed. Tired? Yes. Exhausted? Without question. Defeated? No. Victorious! The runner manages a shout: Tetelestai. Race finished.
It is the word we might hear from a ship’s captain after a long journey at sea. After weeks of preparation—selecting a crew, getting the ship sea worthy, purchasing the supplies and provisions, then weathering storm, wind, and salt—the ship returns to port, battered but still sea worthy. Entering the calmness of the bay and seeing friends and family eagerly awaiting the crew, the captain boldly shouts: Tetelestai. Journey completed. The work done. Vision fulfilled. Mission accomplished. Assignment honored. Promise kept. In his agony, in his weakness, in his death, Jesus is not defeated. Death is. Hell is. Satan is. Death does not have the final word. It never does and never will. Jesus does: Tetelestai.

We see him in his suffering. We ponder his passion. Slowly, we appreciate his atoning work. All creation witnesses it. Even the heavens are weeping. The sun hides its face. The earth quakes. The disciples tremble and run. Weeping women keep watch. In the eye of the storm, Jesus shouts, Tetelestai. Journey completed. Work done. Vision fulfilled. Mission accomplished. Assignment honored. Promise kept. Done. To the glory of God. For the redemption of the world. Finished!

 

 

 

 

 

A Funeral

When I heard that Congressman John Lewis of Georgia would be one of the guest speakers, I decided to go to the funeral service for Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, who died a week ago at age 88. John Lewis is an American hero from the civil rights movement of the 1960s and was elected to serve in the house of representatives the same year Louise Slaughter was. Having lived in Louise’s district (everyone called her Louise) for just four years, I didn’t know just how distinguished her congressional career was. But I knew about John Lewis and even if he only spoke five minutes, I considered it an honor to see and hear him in person.

 

The service was in the Kodak Hall of Eastman School of Music in downtown Rochester, where we go to wonderful concerts. About 2300 people were present. They included a former president of the United States, a former secretary of state, a former speaker of the house of representatives, two busloads of representatives from congress, some senators, and many statewide political leaders. It is not often that one is in a room, albeit a very large one, with such an array of people in high levels of governmental service.

 

While I had read the obituaries about Louise’s career, it was another matter to hear from national leaders and her own children and grandchildren about her. She really was a coal miner’s daughter, from Harlan County, Kentucky. She was the first woman from her family to go to college (her father made sure that all his children did). She graduated with a degree in microbiology. She and her husband eventually moved to the greater Rochester area and in 1986, with the odds stacked against her, she ran for congress and won. She served in that seat until her death.

 

The service started with us singing “Blessed Assurance,” and ended with us singing “I’ll Fly Away.” A favorite poem of hers from Ralph Waldo Emerson summed up her legacy:

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

 

March for Our Lives

Last Saturday over 800 marches for our lives occurred in every one of our 50 states and in cities around the world. I went to the rally and march in Rochester NY. Alongside me were my older daughter and first son-by-marriage—and about 5,000 others of all generations and races. The rally featured mainly young speakers that have experienced the loss of siblings to gun violence. And the mother of a young man shot to death outside the Boys and Girls Club of Rochester a few years ago. The lead organizer was an 18-year-old high school senior. I take hope.

 

Several hundred miles south of us my older daughter and some of her friends went to the great march and rally in Washington, DC. I watched much of that rally on TV and was moved, at times to tears, by these young people wanting to make our nation safer and saner, better and brighter. These young people are giving me a huge boost of hope in these too violent times in our country and our world.

 

I wonder if any members of congress watched this stirring event. I am pretty sure the president didn’t, as he was golfing in Palm Beach, Florida. If our national leaders weren’t watching and listening, they missed profound moments of grief for those killed by gun violence and equally profound visions for what our nation can be. I know the political journey to a better day will be long and met by much opposition, but I believe a better day is coming. It may take more than one election cycle. The great movements for human rights rarely move smoothly or swiftly. But they ever move us into a brighter day.

 

The Hunchback

Starting last Wednesday afternoon, I saw four performances of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” the musical based on the Victor Hugo novel, at Gates-Chili High School. Why four times? My grandson played the hunchback, with excellence. Notable on this weekend, the story deals with how the Church and government, brought together in Claude Frollo (brilliantly played by our friend Jordan Klotz), looked down at the outcasts of Paris; the gypsies and the physically challenged. In my mind those gypsies and outcasts in 19^th century Paris represent the millions of immigrants and refugees of our world today, yearning to be free and live in peace. Several of the songs are haunting in their evocative power: Esmeralda the gypsy praying, “God, Help the Outcasts,” and Quasimodo seeing “Heaven’s Light” in the midst of the spiritual darkness.

 

Palms

Not lost in all this drama was that Sunday of amazing drama, when Jesus rode a young donkey into Jerusalem. I love preaching on Palm Sunday, but I didn’t get to yesterday. Not exactly, anyway. I taught a wonderful group of adults for a full hour about Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and what it meant then and means for us now. Fair to say, in that hour of teaching I also did some preaching. Such a day, such a narrative, demands proclamation.

 

I write this on Monday of Holy Week. This is the most liturgically significant and powerful week of the entire year. Confession: I miss being a pastor at Brunswick Church this week more than any other. Some years we had 12-13 worship services in the eight days from Palms to resurrection. Was I tired after the final Easter service? Yes, but good tired. It was deeply satisfying to walk through that week in something of its fullness, with Jesus and many of his disciples.

 

This week will be full for me. I will preach on Tuesday morning at the Community of the Savior’s monthly service for members of the Rochester Psychiatric Center. That is always an honor for me (I get to do it a number of times during the year). Tomorrow I will remind them of the meaning of that dramatic entrance into Jerusalem we marked yesterday. Community of the Savior has evening services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Saturday’s Great Easter vigil (I will be at all three, including foot washing before the Thursday service and proclaiming the word at Friday’s service). If you are in the Rochester area and don’t have a commitment to another church, please join us on any of those evenings (The Community of the Savior website has details.) Easter is far richer when we have honored the passion on Thursday and Friday. Then on Sunday I will have the privilege of preaching at a church currently in pastoral transition, where I am preaching once a month in their interim.

 

It was one dramatic and full weekend. I am grateful. And now, I look to the coming weekend, when we experience the redemptive drama of this Holy Week. Wherever you live and worship, I urge you to do the same.

 

Thousands and thousands of high school students in our country did something amazing a few days ago. On March 14, exactly four weeks after the tragic killings of 17 people, 14 of them high school students, at the Stoneham-Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, there were pro-life marches and rallies across this nation. There was a large demonstration in Washington, D. C. There were similar marches, rallies, and demonstrations in cities large and small across the country. They were uniformly peaceful.

 

Some high school administrations understood this concern and allowed students to walk out of their classes for about 17 minutes, one minute for each person killed on February 14 at the Stoneham-Douglas High School. Some high school administrations did not cooperate and threatened students with detention if they walked out for that purpose and that time. Many students in those schools walked out anyway. I hope those schools have large detention halls.

 

These marches and demonstrations were peaceful and stood in the long American tradition of peaceful public protests for justice and human rights. The First Amendment to the Constitution protects such activities:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

 

These assemblies were truly pro-life. Thousands and thousands of students stood for the protection of human life, especially young human life. Many of them called on the government to pass laws for reasonable and sensible control of guns in private hands, and to make our schools safer, something the majority of Americans support, but which our congress seems unwilling to do.

 

I consider myself pro-life and that includes life after birth, not just before. When there was the annual pro-life rally in Washington D. C. in January 2018, the president (remotely) and vice-president (in person, I believe) spoke to the public protestors. Our highest elected officials commended the peaceful public protestors for their pro-life concerns. If pro-life concern ends with birth, it is empty and hypocritical. If pro-life concern isn’t troubled about the alarming death rate of American citizens by guns every day, including but limited to our schools, then it has a huge blind spot.

 

But on March 14, with thousands of young people gathered near the White House and then the Capitol, the president and vice-president were silent. I wonder why.

 

Fifty years ago, PBS started broadcasting “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” It was the dawning of a new age in children’s TV programming. “Sesame Street,” which dazzled children—and adults—first caught the nation’s attention. Later in the day, more creative children’s programming would include “The Electric Company.” What chance did Fred Rogers and his gentle, folksy, low-tech program have against those stimulating, visual blockbusters?

 

In 1972 I was preparing to be the director of a children’s summer camp. I wrote the staff to be watching “Sesame Street” and “The Electric Company” to get fresh ideas for having cutting edge, stimulating ways of communicating our faith lessons to the children entrusted to us.

 

When I shared this with the camp board, Wendy, a mother and board member, said, include “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. He won’t dazzle them the way those other programs do, but he will speak right to them about kindness and gentleness and their inherent worth.” At that time I had a toddler daughter. Sure enough, when “Sesame Street” came on, she was usually transfixed by it, at least for a while. I would watch her watch it. Later we would turn on Mr. Rogers and watch as he spoke to her. She was too young to catch it all, but she slowed down and usually stayed with Mr. Rogers. And so did I. “Sesame Street” helped her learn her numbers and letters through colorful creatures and hilarious (at least for adults) skits, word plays, and all kind of wonderful methods. It, too, was a neighborhood. But Mr. Rogers helped enforce all that my daughter’s parents wanted to model for her: values like kindness, gentleness, curiosity, empathy, compassion, and a deep sense of her self-wort and uniqueness.

 

Fred Rogers died in 2003, but his manner will never be forgotten by those who knew his neighborhood. It is well known that he was an ordained Presbyterian minister, but he was never preachy or partisan. He let his faith infuse all that he did.

 

Now I hear that a movie is being made about Mr. Rogers, with Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. If that movie communicates a fraction of what Mr. Rogers communicated to generations of children, it will be a fitting tribute to a humble man with a simple, and large, vision: to assure children that they are loved and valued just for who they are. I want to live in a neighborhood, a nation, and a world, that looks more and more like Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.

 

Today Billy Graham died at age 99. That is bringing back many memories.

 

Since hearing Billy Graham preach at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1963, when I was 16, I have had the highest respect for him.  One of the strongest memories of that crusade, and of my teenage years, was the final day, when more people were packed into that venerable old stadium that at any other event in its long history.  I had seen countless athletic contests there (Rams, Trojans, and Bruins football games, and track and field meets featuring the best athletes of the time, and first four years of Dodgers baseball).  Part of being reared in Los Angeles was going to games at the Coliseum.  That late summer day it witnessed something it had never seen before.  Every seat was filled.  Thousands more were sitting on folding chairs on the infield (I expect that fire codes would not allow that today), and yet thousands more listened to loudspeakers outside the stadium.  The Los Angeles Times on September 9, 1963, reported that 134,254 were at that meeting.  When Billy stood to preach, he was clearly moved at the sight.  He said that he asked his wife what he should preach at that closing meeting.  She said, “Preach as if it were your last sermon.”  I remember that comment and I remember watching him enter the stadium, tall and lanky and exuding an “aw shucks” humility, walking across that sacred sod toward the platform set on about the 50-yard line.  I don’t remember the sermon.  I do remember the colossal challenge of having people respond the message and not being able to have them come to that accustomed placed in front of the platform.  I was a senior in high school.  It was a fall of indelible memories.  A few weeks before Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his great “I Have a Dream” speech/sermon on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  A few months later President Kennedy would be assassinated.  Between those seminal events I heard Billy Graham preach in person.

 

When he returned to Madison Square Garden in 1970, after his historic three-month run there in 1957, I took the youth group from First Presbyterian Church of Schenectady NY. He was the same Billy Graham I saw and heard in 1963. I watched those teens watch him as I had watched him when I was a teen.

 

Graham had a significant role in establishing Gordon-Conwell Seminary, where I studied. When he visited the campus, he was known for greeting everyone, especially the support staff. He would go into kitchen to greet everyone from cooks to dishwashers. There was a genuine humility about it.

 

In the late 1980s word came that Billy Graham would hold a crusade for the capital region of New York, in the new Knickerbocker Arena (then called the Pepsi Arena; currently called the Times Union Arena).  I was invited to serve on the local executive committee.  It took me about a second to agree to serve.  The most notable feature of the Capital District Billy Graham Crusade was that Billy was late.  Originally scheduled for April, it was moved to July when Billy underwent emergency surgery just a few weeks before the long-awaited opening night.  Even with a three-month postponement for his recuperation, he was not ready.  So, for the first time in the history of Billy Graham Crusades, a Billy Graham Crusade started without Billy.  Associate evangelist Ralph Bell was assigned to preach the first four nights (of eight).   The plan was that Billy would preach the final four nights.

 

Rachel and I were on the platform that Thursday night (all executive team members have that honor one night).  We were seated in the front row on the left side, next to George Beverly Shea, which had our jaws dropping to the platform floor.  Shaking hands with him was like greeting an old friend, but one we had never met.  By Thursday there was concern that Billy might not come at all.  The crusade was going well, with good attendance each night.  While disappointed about Graham’s absence, we knew not to fix our attention on such things.  The word was being proclaimed each night and people were responding.  We had never thought the capital region would get a Billy Graham Crusade anyway.  And we would go into the history books as the only Billy Graham Crusade ever conducted without Billy Graham.  But Billy had arrived in town and was said to be resting in his hotel room.  He wouldn’t be able to preach Thursday night, which plan B had him doing.  On to plan C.

 

Somewhere in the first half of that night’s meeting, after the opening music, with a beautiful solo by George Beverly Shea, and before Ralph Bell stepped up to preach, a spontaneous ovation slowly built across the arena.  We had no idea why.  Suddenly people were standing and clapping.  We stood and clapped too, without knowing why.  Then I turned and looked over my right shoulder and saw Billy Graham walking very slowly and carefully, with a grin as wide as that platform, not quite as tall or lanky as 27 years before.  He was wearing a blue suit.  He was shaky on his feet.  The next thing I knew he reached out his hand to me, looked me eye to eye, and said, “Hello. I’m Billy Graham.”  I don’t know what I said (if anything), but I’ll never forget that unfeigned sense of humility that emanated from the man who has preached to more people than anyone in history.  He said a few words of welcome, to the crowd and promised, God willing and his strength permitting, that he would preach the last three nights of the crusade.  He blessed Ralph Bell, and slowly left the platform.  I don’t know that anyone there that night will have remembered anything that Ralph Bell said, but he probably got the greatest response of his five nights when he gave the invitation.

 

It was not a firm handshake.  I think it took everything he had to walk without assistance that night.  On our way home Rachel said, “He has Parkinson’s Disease.”   She didn’t suggest it; she declared it.  Since Rachel’s mother had dealt with Parkinson’s ten years at that time (she would die five years later), Rachel had become expert at seeing the early symptoms.  It was long after that crusade that it was finally made public that Graham, indeed, had Parkinson’s disease.

 

Billy Graham was not perfect or flawless, which he would readily admit. While I was troubled at how Graham let Richard Nixon use him for partisan political purposes, I respected that eventually Graham recognized that and apologized and learned from it. The so-called “Graham rule” about avoiding potentially compromising situations involving gender interactions and money guided me as a pastor. For seven decades, Billy Graham’s life, public and private, under the searching spotlight of the media, was never tainted by scandal. Graham crusades were always interracial and ecumenical. In the Albany crusade, the Roman Catholic Diocese was integrally involved. The executive committee was diverse and representative of the greater Church in our region. Serving on it, I made friends from many faith traditions, friendships that extend to this day.

 

I give thanks to God for the ways Billy Graham influenced my life and faith. I give thanks for the ministry of public proclamation of the Good News of Jesus which he discharged faithfully, humbly, and effectively.

 

 

I made a quick trip to Plains GA in February 2017 to hear President Jimmy Carter teach his Sunday school class. That motivated me to think about how I evaluate presidents (and other leaders).

 

As I study presidents, and other leaders, I find myself evaluating them in three categories:

character, vision, and effectiveness. To do this is necessarily subjective. There is no way to do purely objective analyses of these categories. Even when quantifiable numbers can be used, such as in the rate of inflation or unemployment, there are other factors in play, such as what happened in the years immediately before that leader’s tenure and what happened that had nothing to do with the leader. In terms of character we largely rely on what we read about the leaders, since we, except in rare circumstances, did not or do not personally know the leader and have access to his or her inner life. Thus, we do well to read from several sources, making our evaluations on the access and biases those sources had or have. Vision is, perhaps, the area in which it is easiest to make evaluations, though it may be the most subjective. We tend to evaluate a leader’s vision in terms of how it fits with our own sense of vision.

 

Confession: since we have had only men serving at presidents of our country (a situation I hope will change in my lifetime), I mainly will be referring to men. Insofar as I do that, it is my blind spot. American history is filled with outstanding women leaders, such as Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Barbara Jordan, Pat Summit, Dorothy Day, Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Billie Jean King, Oprah Winfrey, Sandra Day O’Connor, Hillary Clinton, Nikki Haley, and Eleanor Roosevelt, naming just a few. Women are leading at high levels of business, medicine, and science as never before. The number of women serving in congress keeps growing. Yet we still have not had a woman serving as president.

 

Second confession: the first president I vividly remember is Kennedy, so my first-hand observations are from Kennedy to Trump.

 

1. Character. This is not just personal morality, though that usually plays in the equation. It has to do with a sense of the integrity of the person, which is how the parts of that person fit together. A good number of our presidents, though I can’t say for certain how many, have had extra marital affairs, some while in office. In Kennedy’s time and before the press didn’t report on these affairs; there was a different code than by Clinton’s time when the press reported widely on his sexual behavior, both before and during his presidency. It would have been interesting, had Kennedy’s life not been tragically cut short, to see if that code would have changed in his presidency, had he been re-elected and served two full terms. I don’t know just when the code changed, but media reporting is different now.

 

That many presidents have had extra martial affairs disappoints me, but it is not the only criterion we have for evaluating character.

 

Among other values, I look for humility, decency, and honesty. Humility doesn’t mean weakness. It can’t be an acted out to show the person’s humility; trying to look humble is the embodiment of pride. Humility is a genuine recognition of one’s human flaws and limitations. President Washington set the model in his farewell address, and then by insisting that he be treated like an ordinary citizen in his post-presidency. President Ford modeled this when he was thrust into office because of Nixon’s resignation. His most memorable statement of it was, “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln’s. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking.”

 

 

Decency is not easy to define in this context. It has to do with interest in the other person, with sympathy for those suffering, with a sense of fairness for all and a commitment to it, especially those for whom life is more difficult and challenging. Decency is about humanity. It was evident when President Obama visited the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston and led the congregation in singing “Amazing Grace.” It was evident when Obama wept with the parents of the 20 young schoolchildren killed in Newtown CT. It was evident when President George W. Bush visited the site where the twin towers stood, the national wound still fresh as smoke billowed from the carnage, and greeted the workers struggling to find the remains of those unaccounted for. It was evident when President Reagan spoke to the nation right after the Challenger tragedy.

 

We never get total honesty from a president. The nature of the office means that the occupant of it cannot tell us everything and sometimes must intentionally mislead us for security and strategic purposes. Still, we look not to be misled by our national leader. We look for a president to speak accurately with the available facts. When President Nixon, under fire for the White House cover-up following the Watergate break-in, said, “your president is not a crook,” it rang hollow. Not long after that he resigned the office in shame, though he was a brilliant political tactician with comprehensive global knowledge. When Trump boasts of the largest audience ever to see a president inaugurated, and refuses to retract the boast when photos make clear his error, his credibility, that is, his believability, is undermined. When, now in his second year as president, he continues this pattern (claiming his first state of the union address had the largest audience in history, when it ranked 9^th of such addresses since 1993), his believability if undermined.

 

It is disheartening to know now that a series of our presidents—including Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—regularly lied to us about our involvement in Vietnam, assuring us over and over that the war was winnable by our troops, when they knew it was not winnable and lied repeatedly as over 50,000 of our armed forces were killed there.

 

1. Vision. In electing presidents, we usually look for the articulation of vision that lines up with our own vision. Vision can too readily be equated with the oratorical skills of the leader. While compelling speaking skills command attention, they alone do not constitute vision and something they mask a lack of vision. A charismatic speaker may end up saying very little of substance and still rally and rouse enthusiastic crowds.

 

In my lifetime I think the two most effective presidential orators were John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and they could hardly be more different in personal style and political philosophy. But both could turn a phrase and make memorable moments. Barack Obama could employ soaring rhetoric in the black preaching tradition, but often came through as more professorial. George W. Bush was known for his imprecise syntax. Lyndon Johnson could put his listeners asleep, even when articulating grand visions.

 

To put things more simply than they really are, Kennedy inspired a new generation to public service, Reagan resonated with middle America in his optimistic vision, Obama may have been at his best in responding to national acts of violence, Bush 43 brought us through the tragedy of 9/11, and Johnson worked with Congress to enact two of the greatest pieces of progressive legislation in our history: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Some of these presidents were great speakers and some were not, but they pressed their visions for our country upon us with some effect.

 

III. Effectiveness. This might seem the easiest of the three categories to measure, but it is far from easy, in part for the cautions I already stated. Numbers and statistics can be made to say almost anything. In the Olympics my favorite events are those not dependent on a panel of judges, though some of those events are among the most beautiful and demanding. In terms of awarding the winning medals I prefer events where the winner is the one who crosses the finish line first or throws the farthest or hits the target most often.

 

When these categories are considered there must be acknowledged that we are not unbiased in most cases. For example, I admire Jimmy Carter so deeply and in so many ways that I am hardly impartial. I want to give him every benefit of the doubt and shade every analysis and interpretation in his favor. On the other hand I did not like Ronald Reagan in the same way and, while I acknowledge some of his accomplishments as being extraordinary, I am not prone to give him the benefit of every doubt and the best shading in every interpretation. That is simply so for all of us. Admitting it will help us to appreciate our blind spots and perhaps appreciate the insights of others observers that see things in different ways than we do.

 

In Lincoln’s presidency, with the unprecedented challenge of a number of states seceding from the union and forming another government even as he was preparing to take office, he held unswervingly to two seemingly irreconcilable commitments: to end of the shameful practice of human slavery in our country once and for all and to keep the union together, including the states in rebellion. Though it took a war of great cost and loss of life, his vision was achieved, even if imperfectly.

 

In my critical grid I award up to five points for each category; hence, the highest rating I can give is 15 points. I give that rating to two leaders readily: President Abraham Lincoln and UCLA men’s basketball coach Johnny Wooden. With time I will have others in that highest rating, but not many. Anyone getting 12-14 points will be doing well. For example, I give Jimmy Carter five points for both character and vision, but just two points for effectiveness (had he been elected to a second term his effectiveness would likely have been higher). I don’t give Reagan as high a rating in character, but I give him the highest rating in effectiveness. I am still pondering how I evaluate his vision. I give JFK a lower rating for character, largely for his reckless sexual behavior, but I give him high marks for vision and for effectiveness, noting how much he accomplished in not quite three years (his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, the development of the Peace Corps, the vision for the Apollo space mission to the moon, and the early stirrings of the civil rights movement resonating with the White House).

 

Whenever I see good leadership, I delight in it, at whatever level of life. How do you evaluate leadership, presidential and otherwise?

 

Yesterday had an unusual occurrence of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday on the same day. That happens maybe once in a normal lifetime. I wrote in my journal in the morning that the first half of the day I would honor Valentine’s Day and the second half I would honor Ash Wednesday. The first half included exchanging cards with my valentine, bringing her (actually us) some sweets, and having lunch at a new restaurant, sitting outdoors overlooking water at low tide, gleaming boats, and an island nature preserve. In the early evening I went to worship and had ashes imposed (not placed, but imposed) on my forehead as I heard those simple words reminding me of my mortality.

 

In between, on a sunny afternoon in the south, there was yet another shooting in a school, a high school in south Florida, a high-ranking high school in a desirable community. By one count this was the 18^th gun related incident in this new year, not even two months old. I wrote in this blog about the 11^th incident in late January, the one that took several lives and left over a dozen wounded in western Kentucky. Yesterday’s incident took at least 17 lives, most of them young, and left 14 others wounded.

 

How do we make sense of such a day? I thought Valentine’s love theme played nicely with the first day of Lent, since Lent is about sacrificial love. Yes, Lent is not about giving up chocolate or dropping a few of those winter pounds. It is about the journey of our Lord to the cross, a journey fraught with suffering, denial, struggle, and ultimately death. Lent calls us to take note of great realities and respond in appropriate ways.

 

I call Ash Wednesday the most honest day of the year, if we can handle its bracing message. We are confronted with our mortality, even as Jesus went to Jerusalem to die. I grew up in a church tradition that ignored Ash Wednesday and Lent. That stuff was for Roman Catholics, we were told. Now I treasure this season, which is so counter to how Americans want life to be, always light and sunny.

 

I didn’t think the preacher last night was very effective. He did too much explaining and not enough describing. But that moment when I squared eyes with him, heard his words about my being from and returning to dust, then marked an ashy cross on my brow—that was sobering. It was not a nice service. If an Ash Wednesday service is nice, it has utterly failed.

 

How will I keep this Lent? I don’t fully know. My slow read (I usually am reading several books during any span of time, moving from a chapter in this one to a chapter in that one, and back; in Lent I pick one book to read more slowly) is book of collected writings of Mother Teresa, “Come Be My Light.” These writings, many of them her journal entries, deal with darkness, coming from a woman who radiated the light of God in dark places.

 

How will I keep this Lent? I am tempted to go out and scream publicly about my nation’s dark agreement with the NRA. Since the slaughter of 20 young school children and six adults caring for them in Newtown CT in Dec. 2012, there have been almost 300 more shootings in our schools, about one a week, every week, for five years and counting. And that doesn’t include mass killings in nightclubs and outdoor concerts. Does anyone think all this carnage is what the Second Amendment was wanting to protect? Does anyone think the Second Amendment was about every American having access to AR-47s? Does anyone think the Second Amendment assured every American of easy access to any and all firearms? Please read the Second Amendment again. The point of amendments to our constitution is that our constitution will need amending from time to time. Three of our top ten mass killings have been in the last half year. And on and on the gunbeat goes.

 

I believe in prayer and I pray, but I am tired of hearing politicians and officers of the law only send their thoughts and prayers in response in gun inflicted violence. Isn’t something more called for from our government in response to the monstrous evil of our daily death toll from guns?

 

It is the second day of Lent. From where I am writing, it is a beautiful, sunny morning. Yesterday’s Valentine sweets are gone. Last evening’s ashes have worn off my forehead. I will soon ride my old one-speed, foot-brake, fat-tire bike on the beach. My wife and I will have lunch with a dear friend. In the afternoon I’ll do some reading. In the evening we will watch the Olympics, with casual reading in hand. My life is blessed in so many ways, beyond reckoning.

 

Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday, and a horrendous act of violence in a school yesterday reminded me that life is a precious gift, best honored and used in loving ways.

 

 

In the late 1950s the Soviets jumped ahead of us in space exploration. Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin became household words before Alan Shepard and John Glenn did. And people were talking about moon shots. We knew rockets would soon go to the moon.

 

In the late 1950s, the winter of 1958 to be exact, the Brooklyn Dodgers moved across the continent to be become the Los Angeles Dodgers. What broke the hearts of the Flatbush faithful made a dream come true for youngsters in Los Angeles like me. Before the 1958 season, the St. Louis Cardinals were the farthest west extension of Major League Baseball. Among my baseball loving friends, we essentially chose to root for one of three teams, the New York teams, each identified by a star centerfielder: “Willie, Mickey, and the Duke” (one of my favorite baseball songs has that title). I cast my lot with the loveable, usually losing the big games, Dodgers and their star, Duke Snider.

 

In 1954 a St. Louis Cardinals player named Wally Moon won the National League rookie of the year honors. He did everything well for five years with the Cardinals, but people weren’t talking about moon shots yet. Then the Dodgers traded to acquire Moon before the 1959 season. Soon people would be talking about moon shots, but in a whole new way.

 

Wally Moon died three days ago as I am writing this on February 12, 2018. As I read his obituary in the New York Times yesterday, a flood of happy memories came over me. Moon shots became a regular feature at Dodgers home games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Not Dodger Stadium; it wasn’t built yet. The Coliseum was a terrible venue for baseball. It was built for the 1932 summer Olympics and hosted the 1984 Olympics and will have a hosting role in the projected 2028 Olympics. It was made for track and field and served well for football, being the home for the Los Angeles Rams, The USC Trojans, and UCLA Bruins. I went to countless track and field meets and football games there in my youth.

 

About all it had going for it as a baseball park was size; it could seat over 90,000 people. Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Dodgers, would need that revenue to build the new baseball showcase called Dodger Stadium. Right center and right fields were cavernous, cutting into left-handed power hitter Duke Snider’s career home run totals. But left field was barely Little League sized; the distance from home plate to the left field foul pole was just 251 feet. That could make some major league popups into homeruns. So the Dodgers erected a 42 feet high stiff screen in left field. It was like the green monster in Fenway Park, but made of netting that could easily be seen through.

 

That brings us to Wally Moon and moon shots. Moon was, like Snider, a left-handed hitter, meaning his power swing naturally went to right field. In the Coliseum what would have been homeruns to right field in every other ballpark were usually just long outs. When Moon was traded to the Dodgers, his Cardinals teammate Stan Musial, once of the greatest hitters of all time, suggested that he develop an inside-out swing that would send his hits to left field with its cozy dimensions and that big net wall. Moon did just that and soon he was hitting high popups that went over the screen into the left field seats. Vin Scully, the legendary Dodgers announcer, was always aware of high culture and pop culture, a poet at his work. As “moon shots” was becoming a common term for those early rocket launches that were catching the world’s attention, Scully began calling Wally Moon’s homeruns to left field moon shots. Of course. In Moon’s first year with the Dodgers, they would win the World Series. And their World Series games in the Coliseum drew the largest crowds ever for World Series games.

 

I was 11-14 years old in the years the Dodgers played in the Coliseum. I would go to games with my dad or friends are often as possible. Our pre-game ritual was clear. We would position ourselves behind the screen in left field for batting practice, gloves on. On a good night, we would get some official major league baseballs before the game began. If the San Francisco Giants were in town, the bitterest of our rivals, we would hope to catch a ball hit by Willie Mays, the greatest player I ever saw in person. But no ball was more treasured than a moon shot. We sometimes took those freshly caught baseballs to the dugout area as batting practice ended to get autographs from our baseball heroes. I got baseballs autographed by Snider, Koufax, Drysdale—and Wally Moon.

 

When Dodger Stadium was built, it instantly became the most beautiful and well-designed ball park in the country. But it would never hold the wonder and mystique of Dodgers baseball in that not-made-for baseball Coliseum, with its ridiculous dimensions and that left field screen.

 

Now Wally Moon is dead. Only Willie Mays of “Willie, Mickey, and the Duke” is still alive. Stan Musial is dead. Vin Scully is finally retired. I am no longer a kid. Spring training for the new baseball season is just a few days away. That will make me a kid again—at least for a while. And today I am thinking of moon shots I saw and baseballs I caught.

[My wife and I are away from home this month, so I am not preaching for six consecutive Sundays. The sermon below is from Luke 7:36-49. I originally preached this at the Stillwater NY United Church in 2013. While we are away, I may post some other sermons from the past.]

 

Some types of people don’t invite other types of people over for dinner. White racists don’t invite blacks. Black racists don’t invite whites. The wealthy are unlikely to invite poor people. We tend, unfortunately, to invite people over for dinner when we would feel comfortable with them and sense, perhaps, that they would be comfortable with us.

 

I find it highly unusual that a Pharisee would invite Jesus over for dinner.  Unless it was to drill him with legalistic questions, perhaps to trap him in some obscure point of law.  Or maybe it was just out of curiosity.  To see this would-be messiah for himself.  To dismiss him as another deluded leader.

 

Whatever his motivations, Simon could not have scripted better what happened.   A woman comes in—uninvited and unwelcomed.  And unnamed. She is unnamed, save to Jesus.  I am pretty sure Simon the Pharisee never bothers to get her name.

 

She, whoever she is—we know that she is a big ticket sinner by the description given her; many think the description suggests that she was a prostitute, though we do not know for sure—she is no coward, no wall-flower, no shrinking violet.  There is a boldness about her.  A forthrightness.  She breaks through all custom and convention, washing Jesus’ feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, and anointing them with precious perfume. To the Pharisee she embodied all that he was not:  a sinner, a woman, and offense to his understanding of God and a social embarrassment by daring to do this in his house.

 

So he reasons to himself—and to him reason was of utmost importance—“If this man were God’s prophet, which I never really thought was the case, he would clearly have known what kind of woman this is—a wretched, damnable sinner—and he wouldn’t have let her touch him with a ten foot pole.  That settles it; he will never be invited to my home for dinner again.”

 

Jesus not only knows who this woman is, he also knows who this man is, this self-righteous religious man.  So he tells a simple little story about forgiveness, all of which leads him to nail the Pharisee that is trying to nail him.   He looks at the woman as he speaks to Simon.  Simon has offered meager hospitality; the woman has showered Jesus with honor. Simon’s welcome is sparing; the woman’s offering lavish.  “Her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown.  But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

 

Count me as one who has been forgiven much.  Place me in the company of that woman; forgiven much and grateful much.  Number me not with one Simon the Pharisee, but with one unnamed sinful woman.  Another woman, this one known by name, Annie Johnson Flint, has written of our absolute need of God’s grace and God’s overflowing supply:

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,

                        When our strength has failed ere the day is half done

            When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,

                        Our father’s full giving has only begun.

His love has no limit, his grace has no measure,

his power no boundary known unto men;

for out of his infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

 

Two stories, both true, one about forgiveness and one about dinner guests.

Maybe its an occupational hazard of being a pastor:  I read obituaries: local, national, and global.  A few years ago, I read the obituary for Elwin Wilson in the New York Times.  I had never heard of Elwin Wilson before, but his story grabbed my attention.

 

Elwin Wilson lived and died in South Carolina.  In the spring of 1961, the group known as the Freedom Riders arrived at the Greyhound bus station in Rock Hill, S.C., as part of their effort to end segregation in the South.  When two Freedom Riders, one black and one white, entered a waiting area at the station that was designated for whites only, they were quickly assaulted by a group of young white men.  One of them was Elwin Wilson.  The Freedom Riders did not fight back and declined to press charges.  One of them, John Lewis, became a prominent civil rights leader, and in 1987 was elected to Congress from Georgia.  He still serves in the House of Representatives and had a speaking role in the inauguration of our Barack Obama, the first black person to become our president.  Wilson said he had an awakening after President Obama took office.

 

Wilson said in an interview in 2009 that a friend had asked him, “If you died right now, do you know where you would go?”  Wilson said, ‘To hell.”  Apparently that got him thinking about what he had done and his need to seek forgiveness.  Wilson called The Rock Hill Herald in 2009 to confess that he was one of the men who had led the bus station beating in 1961.  Only then did Wilson learn that one of his victims had become a member of Congress.  Wilson traveled to Washington and met with Lewis to ask his forgiveness.  Lewis quickly granted his forgiveness.  “He started crying, his son started crying, and I started crying,” Congressman Lewis said.

 

Wilson, who spoke slowly and with a thick drawl, once told CNN: “I never would have thought I could apologize to this many people. I feel like I’m apologizing to the world right now.”  Lewis noted that the apology from Wilson was the first he had received for the violent acts committed against him in the civil rights era — and he said he had never questioned whether to accept it; of course he would.

Those two men have acted out something of the biblical teaching about the radical nature of God’s forgiveness.  When the Bible speaks about forgiveness, it speaks in the most eloquent and profound ways.  Jeremiah says that God will forgive our sins and remember them no more.  Isaiah says that though our sins be like scarlet they shall be white as snow.  Paul says that our sins have been taken from us, erased, eradicated, blotted out, by the work of Jesus.  And Jesus said that those who are forgiven much love much.

When Sarah Smiley’s husband Dustin, a Navy man, was deployed overseas for a year, she discovered that the hardest time each day was dinner time, when she and her three children sat at the table and were painfully aware of the empty chair.   So they decided to fill that empty chair.   Whom should they invite?  They started with the children’s schoolteachers and that went well.  What about the mayor?  The mayor came one evening for dinner.  The Smileys live in Maine and one of the boys was studying American government, so he said, “Let’s invite Senator Susan Collins, who has a home in our town.”  He wrote the invitation to her Washington DC office:  “We are wondering if you would like to come to dinner some time this year.”  In December they got a call from the Capitol.  The senator would be home for the holidays and would go to their home for dinner the first week of January.  Senator Collins arrived a little early.  Sarah didn’t have everything ready, so Collins sat with the kids and their dog while Sarah got dinner on the table.  After dinner table conversation, the senator put a tin of brownies on the table.  For a year they had an amazing array of dinner guests: the police chief, TV personalities, an Olympic gold medal rower, an orchestra conductor, a former governor, and a zookeeper.

When Dustin’s year of deployment came to an end, the family gathered at the airport to welcome their husband and father home.  Oh, and about 50 dinner guests joined them in welcoming home Dustin.  That evening there was a piece of paper on the guest chair:  Reserved for dad.

 

One day a Pharisee named Simon invited Jesus to dinner and you wouldn’t believe who also came to dinner and what she did for Jesus.  And what Jesus taught us about forgiveness.  The other guests began talking behind his back:  “Who does he think he is, forgiving sins?”

 

The NFL season is finally over—in early February. It was a good Super Bowl game, the outcome in question until the final play. The action was fast and furious; the athleticism awesome. Some of the runs and catches were balletic. This Patriots fan salutes the Eagles and the great city of Philadelphia. When it comes to sports curses, this Red Sox fan understands. Fly, Eagles, fly. And here’s hoping the 41-year-old Tom Brady will be just as effective, and his brain doesn’t get scrambled like eggs.

 

The matter of concussions and long-term brain injury (chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or

CTE) is not over with the season finale. Last week the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Emily Kelly, wife of former NFL player Rob Kelly, now suffering from CTE from his football career. Last week Megyn Kelly of NBC interviewed Mike Adamle and his wife, Kim Adamle. Mike suffers from CTE, directly attributed to his hard driving and hard hitting style as a professional football player, following his years as a college football player, following his years in youth and high school football. It is worth reading that column and streaming that interview. A recent lab study over brains of deceased NFL players found that about 99% of those brains had some level of CTE.

 

CTE is not limited to football players. In happens in just about every sport in which there are collisions. It happens to veterans of military combat. It happens in everyday life, but not with the incidence that happens in pro football.

 

The NFL has recognized this and taken some steps. One is to have doctors not employed by the teams on the sidelines of games. Another is to have little tents on the sidelines into which players shaken up by a hard hit are taken for immediate evaluation. If players are medically evaluated as having experienced a concussion, they leave the playing field and are not permitted to re-enter the game. They are not permitted to play again until they have passed the concussion protocol.

 

These are good steps, but more must be taken. I admit that I am a fan of the Patriots, so I watch their games more carefully. In their league championship game on January 21, one of their star receivers, Rob Gronkowski, was hit helmet-to-helmet after catching a pass. It was a ferocious hit, replayed in slow motion before us. Gronkowski left the game in concussion protocol and didn’t return. The player who hit him so powerfully was flagged and his team received a penalty, but he was allowed to continue playing. The Patriots lost one of their key offensive players early in the game, while the offending player kept right on playing. In the Super Bowl, the championship game after the long season, Patriots’ receiver Brandon Cooks was similarly hit helmet-to-helmet after catching a pass. He was stunned by the ferocious hit, left the game for concussion protocol, and never returned. No penalty was called on the offending player and he continued to play the entire game. Meanwhile, for the second game in a row, both with championship implications, the Patriots played most of the game without one of their prime offensive players.

 

I suggest two steps. First, when there are helmet-to-helmet collisions, as described above, the offending player be removed from the game, whether the hit was intentional or not. The incidence of concussions in the NFL is such that more serious penalties are needed than a 15-yard penalty. If a player from one team leaves the game after a ferocious hit, the player making the hit should also leave the game. That is only fair to the competitive nature of the game.

 

Second, the NFL needs to examine the role of the current helmets in causing concussions. Perhaps safer helmets are now available or can be developed. I am convinced the technology exists to make helmets safer. The NFL needs the will to make this happen as soon as possible.

 

I grew up playing football, from Pop Warner through high school. I never experienced a concussion. Recognizing that players are now larger (a 300-pund lineman is small), stronger (weight training has moved from optional to mandatory; teams have weight coaches), and faster (Olympic and world-class sprinters have played and now play in the NFL) than ever before, there must be ways to preserve the integrity of the game while making it safer. Some states are considering banning tackle football for children. Caring parents are already making that decision for their children.

 

I really love the game of football, but not its violence. I love its strategy and its athleticism. I love its drama. I love its traditional rivalries, college and pro. But I wonder if I can continue watching it if its concussion causing violence is not reigned in soon.