These letters from Pastor Harry and church leaders explore the challenges we face as people of faith in a complicated and fearful world, not unlike the world that Paul faced, and not unlike the world that Dr. King faced down.
These letters are distributed to the congregation via our email newsletter. To sign up for our eNews, contact our Office Manager.
February 22, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
The forgiveness of sins.
Who would have thought this one small phrase could be traced back to the earliest books of the Bible, found in the narratives of cultures ancient and now, and has perpetually occupied the souls and pews of Christians in Sunday worship and in prayer? It has and still does.
Before I go any further let me state plainly and simply we all need forgiveness. We’ve all done things our moms would disapprove of. We’ve all been awakened in the middle of the night with an image of something that makes us cringe. Forgiveness is powerful and its pursuit is worthy, without question.
The most common term for sin in the Hebrew Scriptures is hattah meaning, “to miss the mark,” and I fear we are doing just that in our understanding of what sin and forgiveness is. We might assume it is all about individual sin. It is not. It’s path is much broader and more complicated.
The Catholics have expanded our understanding with the phrase social sin, on how we treat one another with our economic system, lifestyle, and the perpetuation of poverty. Yet power and control have too often cast their shadow to dominate people, from Temple animal sacrifices which put wealth into the coffers of the religious establishment to the Catholic Church’s system of indulgences which kept people under control unless they paid to be forgiven.
Forgiveness of sins at its worst exploits people. It was big business in the Bible and in our history, and it’s in full swing today. Every time we label someone as “other,” as someone who needs to change to meet the standards of the powerful, who are told there is something wrong with them or they aren’t getting in line, we run up against it.
In Mark 2:1-12, our story this Sunday, Jesus is teaching in the home of his friend Simon Peter and so many people came to be set free from their “sins” that the front door became a barrier. They had been told they were sinful, and looked upon as such, and only the priests could make them whole. One such man, who literally couldn’t move, was carried there by his four friends and brought down through the roof.
What an image! The Greek translation is “unroof the roof,” of undoing that which constrained them, a roof that provided shelter but also now a barrier. Unroof, Mark writes. Tear through a barrier, the friends thought. Break the hold that prevents us all from breaking through to Jesus. This is not a roofing story but a forgiveness of sins story.
It’s a story of being paralyzed and constrained, a definition of sin, to being set free and unbound, the definition of forgiveness. That’s what Jesus offered, for free. He healed and set free all the people, the poor and the sick, and the powerful and connected were livid.
Sadly, and cruelly, many today are “paralyzed,” laid off, “bound up,” and taken away not because of any “sin” they committed but because our society is in full swing with social sin and the sin of power.
I see the roof. Now I have to figure out how to get to Jesus, and how Jesus can get to us and set us free.
Grace and peace,
Harry
Recent Letters
February 15, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
What crisis was it today?
Every night after my brothers and I were in bed, mom and dad would sit in the kitchen and ask that very question. The country was coming apart at the seams, and so was Pasadena. The Vietnam war was at its brutal worst, the civil rights movement was splintering following the assassination of Dr. King, Robert Kennedy was killed just a few miles from us, controversy around Angela Davis was driving people from the Presbyterian Church, Pasadena was roiled by racial strife, smog filled the San Gabriel valley,,,
February 8, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
John Buchanan died this week. Father of Diane, father-in-law to Rick, friend to many, leader in the Church. So much more.
For twenty-seven years he was senior pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, one of the flagship churches of the Presbyterian Church (USA), 6,000 members strong when he retired. A “light in the city” was its tagline, and it really was. More than just the city of Chicago, Fourth Pres and John’s light shone across the country and throughout our denomination.
February 1, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
There is some confusion of late (2,000 years or so) of what it means to be Christian.
Let’s start with the basics, and a familiar adage: “When Jesus told us to love our enemies he didn’t mean for us to kill them.” Or hurt, berate, belittle, threaten, oppress, frighten, or imprison them.
When Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ” he meant it and we should stop making edits or excuses.
Our culture has trouble with the “other.” Jesus didn’t.
January 25, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
The Hidden Gospel.
This is the title of a book by Neil Douglas-Klotz which looks at the familiar words of Jesus, not in English or Greek but in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Words and themes jump out at the reader which they might otherwise remain hidden in our familiar translations, words like unity, breath, holiness, light, wisdom, diversity, soul, completeness, and love. This was Jesus’ vocabulary.
We know it as the Gospel and it showed up this week. …
January 18, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
Been to the Mountaintop.
Yes, when I was five. It was my first time being up so high and looking down, something small town Ohio did not offer. But a trip to California changed that in the summer of 1964 when Dad began his doctoral program at San Francisco Seminary. One evening at dusk my family and I drove up to Mt. Tamalpais when the sun was dropping behind the Pacific.
We looked south upon the flickering lights of San Francisco. I was mesmerized. …
January 11, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
Six stone jars filled with water.
I am jarred by the news of the fires in Los Angeles. My old home and church are on the line between an evacuation order and a warning. It might depend on the way the wind is blowing on whether or not my old home and neighborhood is spared or will remain only in my memories. An old friend who sang at my installation service in 2012 told me a few hours ago that he has never been more terrified as he looks out from his front yard in Encino to a raging fire 1 ½ miles away.
January 4, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
“Love the person in front of you.”
Jimmy Carter accompanied a Hispanic pastor friend on a pastoral visit years ago and as they were walking down the sidewalk, Carter asked his friend how he did it, so moved was he by what he just experienced. It’s simple, the pastor said, “love the person in front of you.”
Is there a better phrase for the Christian life? Are there better words to describe what Jesus did in his ministry? Might these words accompany us in the new year?
December 28, 2024
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
The Star stopped.
In the long history of the world this has never happened, until chapter 2 in Matthew’s gospel mentions it not once but twice. I had never seen the once and certainly not the twice.
So what is going on here? Some ideas…
December 21, 2024
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
Well, so that is that.
These words are tucked in the middle of a poem by British-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973) written in the early days of World War II. They refer to the day after Christmas and how we get right back to our lives and leave Christmas behind and Baby Jesus still in the manger. The poem continues.
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him [Christ] away . . .