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Last Sunday I was taken out of mothballs, having been asked to preach at a nearby church. The theme of the day’s lectionary texts centered around the contrast between seeing and blindness, how spiritual seeing, in other words, differs from the way the “world” generally sees itself.

The gospel reading from John featured Jesus healing a man blind from birth. The upshot is that the religious leaders, the Pharisees, refuse to believe what is right before their eyes – a man born blind is now able to see.

Near the end of the reading, Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

Continue reading “Get Off My Lawn!”

I’m old enough to remember seeking cover under my desk in elementary school. Apparently, it never occurred to the administrators at the New Lebanon School that in the event of a nuclear detonation our flimsy writing tables just might not fully protect us. But under the desks we went.

It is perhaps hard for those of us living today to imagine, or remember, the fear and anxiety that gripped our world in the 50s and 60s relative to “the bomb.” It was a topic on everyone’s lips.

With the advent of the “space age” and its technological advancements, particularly with respect to weapons delivery systems, the possibility of a “nuclear holocaust” had become real, one with the potential to wipe out tens of millions of people in a matter of moments. Worse still, we appeared to be on a collision course with our mortal enemy, a nuclearized Soviet Union.

Continue reading “Where Have All the Peacemakers Gone?”

The following is a talk I delivered on November 6, 2022 in celebration of the Harwich church’s 275th Anniversary

I am honored, though a bit surprised, to be standing here this morning. Perhaps I should explain. It all started the day my father insulted me. I was maybe 10 years old at the time.

How did he achieve this? He told me I had the perfect personality to be a pastor. It was the last thing I wanted to do. Which is to say I was your typical suburban kid (Greenwich, CT) with fairly typical aspirations, none of which even remotely included ministry.

Worse still, I knew my father was a bit of an authority on the subject. Though not himself a pastor, he was the product of five generations of them on his father’s side. Several of his uncles and great-uncles were pastors also, not to mention his mother’s father being a pastor as well!

Ministry was, in a sense, the family business. Ultimately, it fell to me to get the family back on track. It was a dirty job but, as I often say, somebody had to do it!

Continue reading “Past Pastors’ Talk”

As with most prophets, Jeremiah was not especially popular among his contemporaries. Of course, after his warnings proved true, and with the safe passage of time, we effortlessly assume we’d have agreed with him. But we probably wouldn’t have.

It’s important to note, parenthetically, that the one and only test of a true prophet in ancient Israel was whether his or her prophecies proved accurate. There was no such thing as a genuine prophet whose predictions turned out to be false.

All things considered, we don’t much like prophets. That’s because they say things we don’t want to hear. They are the proverbial skunk at the picnic. And, boy, are they ever negative! Why not lighten up a bit, for God’s sake? Why get all bent out of shape?

The reason is that they’re after the truth. Thus, they reject the convenient lies and comforting half-truths we prefer. They refuse to play to our pet biases, assuring us everything’s just hunky-dory. And they’re not afraid to go against the crowd and its unquenchable thirst for conventional wisdom and soothing clichés.

Prophets seek neither plaudits nor personal affirmation. Just truth.

Continue reading “The Mirage of Immortality”

I have it on good authority that many church-going Christians don’t care for the liturgical season of Lent, which began this year on March 2.

The reason? I think it has to do with Lent’s emphasis on repentance. Yet what is repentance? Isn’t it bad? And isn’t it just a holdover from the church’s unenlightened past?

Well, no, it isn’t. A local pastor years ago, writing in his church’s newsletter, likened Lent’s call for repentance to periodically changing the oil in your car, to remove all the gunk that prevents it from operating at full efficiency. It’s the same for us. To repent serves as a prerequisite to experiencing life at its fullest, and in a godlier way.

Repentance, therefore, is aspirational. It involves giving up something that diminishes life in order to embrace something that enhances it. And don’t we all want that?

Continue reading “Losing Our Souls”

Manicheansim is an ancient Persian religion notable for its belief in strict dualism. The world is divided between the good – the spiritual world of light – and the material world of darkness. Thus, there are only two teams, if you will. One good, the other bad.

O, to be on the side of the good! O, to be on the right team!

When war breaks out, the lines are drawn. Not to sound too much like a Putin puppet, but aren’t there at least two sides to every conflict? After all, wars don’t happen in a vacuum. More to the point, is it in any way possible, amidst the fog of war, to engage in sober analysis? To ask questions? To have doubts? Or does entertaining any of these necessarily suggest callous disregard for the victims of war?

Apparently, the only legitimate stance these days is: Stop thinking and go along with the crowd! Get on the bandwagon! Beat the drums of war! Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!

Continue reading “Manicheanism”

Søren Kierkegaard, the 19^th century Danish philosopher, once characterized a certain personality type as continually “fighting for what has vanished.” Times change, but they stubbornly refuse to let go of the past, spending all their energy trying to recapture that which no longer exists.

In his landmark 1998 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington countered his former Harvard student Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 thesis that the collapse of the Soviet Union had signaled the “end of history.” Communism had lost, the West had won. The whole world would now align with Western values and live happily within a new world order orchestrated and administered by the United States and its Western European allies. Case closed.

Huntington contested this view, outlining a much more sophisticated and nuanced view of geopolitics. While it is true that WWII left much of the world in shambles, economically and culturally, and that America emerged as the ascendant, dominant force, the world since has changed.

Continue reading “Fighting for What Has Vanished?”

For years I’ve argued that Pilate, the Roman governor of ancient Judea, is the prototype of contemporary thought.

During his interrogation of Jesus at trial, the prisoner declares, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my Voice.” In response, Pilate utters these (in)famous words, “What is truth?”

Like Pilate, we tend to blanch at the word “truth.” For one thing, it betrays unwarranted confidence. It’s too definitive, too black and white. It’s not inclusive enough. It might offend. “Your” truth and “my” truth necessarily differ. Besides, to assume such a level of understanding – that objective truth might exist – seems, well, arrogant.

No, we must avoid “epistemic closure,” that intellectual cul-de-sac of closed-mindedness that prevents us from being open to new ideas and new discoveries. Ideologically, it’s like being frozen in amber.

Continue reading “Virtual Reality”

When I was a kid, we often would travel to Pennsylvania during summer vacation. The reason is that my father’s ancestors had immigrated to Philadelphia in 1721, settling eventually near Reading. Generations lived in the area. And though my father was born in New York City and grew up mostly in Philadelphia, his mother’s sisters still lived in Bethlehem.

One of the things I remember most vividly about those trips was the lush green cornfields that seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance. It was quite a change from suburban Connecticut.

But the most extraordinary sight, hands down, had to be the Amish. We’d see them riding along the side of the road in their black horse-drawn buggies, impervious to the rush of traffic which, or so I imagined, zoomed around them with no small amount of annoyance, if not imperiousness.

How strange they looked, the men with long beards, suspenders, and large straw hats and the women in flowing dresses, mostly black, with white embroidered headdresses and matching white aprons tied around front. It seemed like a different planet.

Continue reading “East of Eden (Part II)”

Believe it or not, the photo above depicts not a fictional Hollywood supervillain but the real Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum, which meets, famously, every winter in the tony alpine resort village of Davos, Switzerland.

The gathering draws the world’s richest and most powerful elites – tech oligarchs, billionaires, media titans, celebrities, top corporate executives, heads of state, royalty, high governmental officials, central bankers, and representatives from prominent international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including but not limited to the United Nations and the World Health Organization. The Pope has even been known to get into the act!

The days-long event also clogs up the local airport with carbon-spewing private jets, this despite the WEF’s constant apocalyptic harping about “climate change”!

Continue reading “Creepy”