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.
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March 22, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
When I think about it, I am a bit amused and somewhat surprised.
I never imagined in my early years that I would ever give a sermon, let alone keep giving them for forty-one years! By my rough calculation I have given 1,600 sermons and logged around 13,000 hours preparing them.
I cringe thinking about my first sermons and still cringe when I can’t figure out a way to make scripture come alive and grab hold of us and take us to a new address. That’s on me, not scripture. It has plenty of power and resources to change lives.
And it is still relevant today, surprisingly so. I look to the prophets because they have been here before. I look to Jesus because he dealt with oppression and a cruel and callous ruling class. I look to the ordinary folks caught up in extraordinary times. A preacher’s role is to lift up scripture so you can see it and experience it and then want it to walk with you out of the sanctuary and into your life and into our world.
I thought I was doing OK with all this until a presbytery meeting held at my Ohio church on Saturday, March 4, 2000. I remember the date because that was the day my (preaching) life changed. A storyteller named Dennis Dewey told us to get rid of our manuscripts and throw away our notes . . . now . . . and tell the story. People listen to stories. Our ears perk up and our memories and imaginations go into high gear.
Convinced, I walked to the pulpit the next day with nothing in my hands. It was like jumping out of an airplane hoping the parachute would open (the thought of which terrifies me, by the way!). I remember I couldn’t remember everything I had prepared. I stumbled around a bit and tried to look calm as if I’d done this a thousand times. But I did it once, and then the next week, and the next month and the next year all the way to my sermon last Sunday. I never looked back.
Somewhere along the way I decided to get away from behind pulpit because it became a barrier between me and the congregation. I found I could tell stories better this way, aligned with those gospel stories which were always breaking down walls separating people from God and one another. Some have suggested that I am just winging it, as if I didn’t take the proper time to prepare. I can assure you that I am scribbling notes and living with the scripture all week long. It wakes me up at night with something else to tell me. I keep to an outline in my head that I learned from Frank Thomas, preaching professor at McCormick Seminary in my Doctor of Ministry program thirty-five years ago, who taught us the Black preaching style. I do not profess to have the skills to preach in such a style and marvel at those who do.
I honestly don’t know how what I say each week gets to you. Often in shaking hands after worship people will tell me how much they liked this or that, or not, and I am thinking to myself that I never said that. But they heard it. I wonder if the Holy Spirit is helping out a bit. Lord knows we all need the help.
So, in the end, I still find myself a bit amused and somewhat surprised. Not with giving sermons anymore but how the Gospel can grab hold of us and take us on a marvelous journey of mystery, hope, peace, and joy.
May it be so. Even after 1,600 attempts. May it be so.
Grace and peace,
Harry
Recent Letters
March 15, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
Here I am, Lord.
Have you ever said this? I know we sing the hymn a few times a year with this refrain, but have you ever thought more about what it means?
Be careful if you do. Ask a prophet, any of them, and you’ll learn that a call from God is not all sunbeams on a golden field or fluffy clouds spelling out your name. (Where did we ever get that idea?) Instead, God’s call comes in times of spiritual desolation, religious corruption, political danger, and social upheaval.
March 8, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
Jesus wept.
If you want to impress your friends with reciting Bible verses this is the one. It is easy to memorize, yes, but that’s where easy ends. Jesus weeps and it’s hard to watch. The fully divine don’t weep, do they? But the fully human do, I know, those who feel deeply the plight of the human spirit trying to survive in a world turned upside down and sideways.
March 1, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
Do I sacrifice my corn dog and let my coke splash to the ground?
Let me back up. It must be told that after all the games I have watched in stadiums across the country, I am yet to catch a foul ball at a major league baseball game.
I came oh-so-close twice. The first when I was twelve and came down with a fever the Sunday I was to go to a Dodger game with my friend and his parents and they gave my ticket to their uncle who sat in my seat. I get a call that afternoon saying that the uncle caught a foul ball! Came right to him, my friend told me. Right to my seat.
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. …
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. …