Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! I missed this one. When I first began as Pastor/Head of Staff at my previous church in Cleveland way back in 1995 I preached a four-sermon series on models for the church.  I suggested that the church could be a Center for Wellbeing, a School of the Spirit, a Circle of Stories, and a Welcoming Home.  We made banners for each one and began to pattern our ministry around these themes. I should have added A House of Prayer.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! We pray the answer every Sunday. If you ever want to know, or anyone ever asks you to define Christianity, or what churches do, or who we are as followers of Jesus, recite the Lord’s Prayer.  It has everything we need to know.  And it may surprise you. With the help of scholar Obery M. Hendricks and his book, The Politics of Jesus, here goes...

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! “So who is going to preach?” This question lingered in my Honda Accord for several exits as we headed down Interstate 71 from Wooster, Ohio, to Cow Creek, Kentucky.  There were three of us in the car that fall Friday in 1980:  Jim, now a retired cardiologist, Jenny, who married me twenty years later, and me.  All seniors in college, we had volunteered to lead worship for Joe Powlas, long-time pastor, missionary, and friend who would be away that weekend from this tiny hamlet in the hollers. So we drew straws, and I literally came up with the short stick. Yikes. ...

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! When I was four, I was told I couldn’t play in the church anymore. Actually, that’s not quite true but it sure seemed like it.  The pronouncement came by way of a note I was not yet old enough to read.  My friend and I found it on the shelf in a basement closet of the Presbyterian church in Wooster, Ohio, the same shelf that we had been happily making into our secret hiding place.  Oh, we were having such fun!  Crawling up there was half the joy, and decorating it was almost as good, filling it with all kinds of knick-knacks from home.  My dad was pastor, we lived in the manse next door, and the lines between home and church were happily blurred.  Until the note.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! It’s impossible until it isn’t. This phrase keeps hanging around in my mind and apparently doesn’t want to leave. I heard it a few days ago from Father John Dear at Ghost Ranch as he addressed the seventy-two gun violence prevention activists who gathered there. He kept us captivated by his adventures of nonviolence across the world. My, does John have stories! He talked of all the great movements which started from the ground up, movements such as labor, suffragettes, civil rights, women, LGBTQ, and so on, and each one was thought to be impossible. Until it wasn’t.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom. We sing this Taizé song as we file from the Agape Center to the courtyard.  It is now night.  We have come from across the country to Ghost Ranch to discuss gun violence and its prevention.  It is the first gathering of its kind.  The first for people from faith communities to meet one another, to lament and learn, and plan and dream of a day when no one is killed by gun violence anymore.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! I babbled.  Couldn’t form the words.  And after I put the phone down, I screamed. It was 1987.  A few weeks earlier I had been in a coma for three days, a consequence of the leukemia I was fighting.  When I woke up, I couldn’t speak, literally.  It came back soon enough but it left lasting scars in my mind, voice, and soul.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places, Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ! There were five good reasons I didn’t go to Princeton. Joel Skinner was the sixth. Princeton was recruiting me as a catcher and the baseball program flew me out one weekend my senior year. On the last morning of my visit, I had breakfast with the head coach who told me he was also recruiting a catcher from California named Joel Skinner whose dad played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and later coached there.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places, Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ! America has a color problem. So do I.  I was told I was “color blind” in kindergarten.  One day we were given a white paper with the outline of three squirrels and told to color them in.  Squirrels?!  I love squirrels!  They were everywhere in Wooster, and all different colors!  So, I looked through my Crayola box and found the crayon I wanted and colored away.  I was proud of my work, kept within the lines and everything, but when Mrs. Garvin walked by my desk she looked down and shook her head.  “Harry, there are no green squirrels.  Here’s another paper, start over.”