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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May 24, 2025
Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:
Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!
The drinking fountain at the end of the hall.
That’s what I dreamed about when I was six. I had come down with some mysterious illness with a high fever and I couldn’t drink or keep anything down and it went on for weeks and weeks. I had to stay home from school. Doctors didn’t know what to do. All I wanted to do was to drink cold water coming from the drinking fountain at church next door. It was tall and gray with the name “Oasis” on it. I needed a footstool to reach it.
The drinking fountain was at the far end of the hall, past my dad’s office and Sunday school classrooms where I first learned about Jesus and sang hokey pokey songs like “You put your right foot in, you take your right foot out . . . then you shake it all about . . . that’s what it’s all about!” What it was all about was I was thirsty and dreamed of drinking again from the fountain. It was the only one anywhere that had cool water.
We never found out what my illness was, but eventually I got better and I returned to school and life went on. Through the years I would visit my old hometown of Wooster and find myself going to the church and heading down the hall to see if the fountain was still there. Each time I would have this memory wash over me, take over me, with the feeling of thirst again, of a long ago trauma now ended. Each time seeing the fountain I would be reminded that I was OK now, no longer thirsty, relieved, better.
On my last trip a few years ago the hall was in disarray and the fountain was behind closed dark wooden doors as if the end of the hallway was now a closet. But the fountain, my fountain, the one in my dreams was still there. I was well still.
Not so for Peter. In our story this Sunday in John 21:15-25 it wasn’t a fountain he saw but a charcoal fire. His reaction was far different than mine. My trauma had ended and the fountain was confirmation of that. Peter’s trauma was as real and flickering as the charcoal fire before him.
Do you know the story? Jesus had prepared breakfast on the beach for Peter and the other disciples who had fished all night long and caught nothing. The story doesn’t show even a slight hesitation as Peter approached the shore, a recognition not noticed by others, a squinting of his eyes as his mind latched onto the scene that has been tailing him for the last few days ever since he denied Jesus three times in the courtyard. Around a charcoal fire in the courtyard while Jesus was being interrogated up above. Here it was again.
The others may not have seen Peter’s trauma, often we don’t know what is behind people’s eyes and lodged in their body, but Jesus did. This has been a story of trauma all along, from those final hours with Jesus to his crucifixion to the guilt and shame of the male disciples because they fled Jesus when he needed them most.
What did Jesus do? He asked Peter three times if he loved him. Peter said yes. Yes. Yes! Each yes making up for each no in the courtyard. Each yes erasing the trauma of his denials. What do we do? Keep images of hope, healing, reconciliation, justice, and compassion ever before us. O, may we keep them alive today. This is our job right now.
This is the final chapter of John and the final verses of all four gospels. Here Jesus reminds the disciples, including us, that trauma cannot keep pace with the extravagant, abundant, healing love of God, an antidote to all that the world throws at us, standing up to every empire then to now, countering casual cruelty and hot charcoal fires with breakfasts on the beach and life-giving-back reconciliation.
Hopefully we all have our own stories and experiences of God’s love but to me it has always been the cool water from a gray drinking fountain at the end of the hall.
Grace and peace,
Harry