lab+oratory

The only Christian hospital in Gaza again attacked, this time by fire

2025-08-20T00:00:00-04:00

Donate to the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem.

The Anglican Communion News Service reports on the most recent attack on the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. On August 17, a "local outlaw band" set fire to the hospital, once again risking the hospital's ability to serve the Gazan people, under severe attack in the war that began in October 2023.

The Al Ahli Hospital is the only Christian hospital in Gaza and is operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. The Archbishop of Jerusalem, Rt. Rev. Hosam Naoum, issued this statement:

As the owner and manager of this, the oldest and only Christian hospital in Gaza, the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem condemns these multiple attacks and calls upon all parties to cease from making this sacred place of healing into a battleground, contrary to Articles 18 and 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Moreover, we implore the Occupying Power to fulfill its duty of protecting ours and other medical facilities in Gaza, as mandated under Article 56 of that same treaty.

We would like to thank the heads of the local clans and tribes who, later in the day, paid solidarity visits to the hospital, condemning the above acts. As a similar display of solidarity. we invite Christians and all people of goodwill around the world to pray and advocate on behalf of the courageous staff of our hospital-and, indeed, those of all such institutions in the combat zone that they may continue, without further assaults or disruptions, Christ's compassionate healing ministry in the very homeland in which our Lord himself served during His earthly life.

Read Archbishop Naoum's full statement.

The Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev. Michael Jackson wrote:

Such an attack on a place of sanctuary for those who are ill and injured is an affront to human dignity for everyone who holds with the sacredness of life. We stand in prayerful solidarity with those who work in the hospital and those who seek treatment there. Need and compassion connect us across the world.

Read the archbishop's full statement.

The story was also covered by the Episcopal News Service.

Related to this story, Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian attorney known to the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, urges the development of a new theological vocabulary for the way Christians speak of the Holy Land, its inhabitants and its conflicts. Joining with Rev. Munther Isaac, this call rejects traditional evangelical and dispensationalist vocabulary that leads to theological bias. Read his post on FOSNA.

Discovery of 178-Year-Old Baptist Antislavery Document Elates Faith Leaders

2025-07-09T00:00:00-04:00

Aishvarya Kavi of the New York Times reports:

The scroll was handwritten in 1847, just two years after Baptists in the United States split, with the Southern congregations breaking off over their Northern counterparts’ condemnation of slavery.

Using forceful language, 116 Baptist ministers in Massachusetts had signed their name to what they called “A Resolution and Protest Against Slavery,” condemning the system as “entirely repugnant.”

...

At the height of slavery in the South, the Baptist ministers declared, “Under these circumstances we can no longer be silent.” Slavery, they said, was “an outrage upon the rights and happiness of our fellow men, for which there is no valid justification or apology.”

Read it on the New York Times website here.

Gov. Ayotte reneged on promise to meet with faith leaders

2025-06-27T00:00:00-04:00

While I wasn't credited in the article, my colleagues Revs. Allison Palm and Jon Hopkins were. This was a statement that we worked on together. Governor Ayotte repeatedly rejected our ask for a meeting with her about the state budget. She gave us her word that she would meet with us during her campaign but couldn't find time for us when the moment required it.

Read it on the Union Leader website here.

WE ARE leaders in the Granite State Organizing Project’s statewide Faith Leader Caucus. Faith leaders from across the state have been coming together to share our moral concerns with elected leaders since 2020, when we met with all the declared candidates for president here in New Hampshire.

In 2024, we came together again to host faith-based conversations with all four candidates for governor. In all of these meetings, we shared concerns about issues such as affordable housing, Medicaid and health care, and public education.

All the candidates, including now Gov. Kelley Ayotte, promised that if elected that they would stay in open communication with the Faith Leaders, meeting with us to discuss the issues that impact the people we serve.

Since the election, clergy and lay leaders from different faith traditions have repeatedly asked to meet with Gov. Ayotte in order to discuss concerns we have with the proposed state budget. Our group tried repeatedly to schedule the promised meeting with Gov. Ayotte, with no response. Finally, members of the faith community visited the governor’s office on May 8 and May 14 to deliver a written request for this meeting. On May 30, Chief of Staff Chris Connelly informed us that Gov. Ayotte will not meet with us.

As leaders of faith communities, we often see the impacts of policy decisions and budgets on our communities firsthand. Our people are already struggling with the costs of health care, child care and the lack of affordable housing for seniors, retirees, hourly workers and young families.

The state budget is a moral document, how government chooses to allocate funding shows its priorities. When the focus is to cut funding that tears at the social fabric of communities, then the government disregards the welfare of its constituents.

As it stands today, the proposed budget does not fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Without the ability to access this funding, developers will not be able to build the housing we need.

The proposed budget will also require working people earning between $15,000 to $21,000 per year to pay up to 5% of their income on health care premiums. For people trying to survive at this low income, any increase in costs will require a Hobson’s choice between food and shelter or health care.

We hear over and over from elected officials that faith communities can fill the gap when there are cuts to services such as food and shelter. The truth is that we are not equipped to fill in the gaps, and we are not a substitute for social services. By making such statements our elected officials are refusing to take on the responsibility for the needs of our state’s most vulnerable.

Gov. Ayotte said she would be a governor for all of New Hampshire and all the people, but her refusal to discuss the moral implications of the state budget with faith leaders proves that she is a governor for only some of the people.

Evangelism Toolkit

2025-05-14T19:17:49-04:00

Back in 2011, the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire had an Evangelism Toolkit for churches to use. This toolkit came in two parts:

Come and See: a membership growth program based on a postcard campaign and personal invitations to "come and see" your church for a specially-designed Sunday
Koinonia: an eight-week class to form new members in the basics of Christian believing and to integrate them into your church's ministries.

The model for both is rooted in the Holy Spirit. It is clear that it is the job of church members to invite friends to church. It is not the job of church members to make that person into a believer or to join the church. That job belongs to the Holy Spirit and the believer's job is to make an invitation and then to pray.

Unfortunately, only the Come and See materials are still accessible. The Koinonia curriculum may be on a backup disk but is not easily found. Nevertheless, here is the link to the first part of the Evangelism Toolkit:

Download the Come and See manual.

This model was in use around 2011, when Bishop Gene Robinson was the bishop of New Hampshire. At the time, I was the chair of his Evangelism Commission and this was a model we developed. At the time, portions of it were supported with an annual Evangelism Institute training program. Diocesan grants were also available for participating churches to cover the costs.

Since Bishop Robinson's episcopate, this model is no longer in use and the training and grants are discontinued. The model is showing its age in its reliance on bulk mailed postcards and being too early for mass adoption of social media.

With it falling into disuse, the files disappeared from the internet and were only available through the Internet Archive. My hope is to preserve this work here for others to use as they see fit. Possibly, this old work may form the basis for a model updated for 2025 and beyond.

Sermon on Revelation 7:9-17

2025-05-11T10:00:00-04:00

I. Why come to church? Why take time to come here and worship God together? Couldn’t we experience God at home or on a hike? After all, God is everywhere and in those places too.

Maybe you came for the breakfast, but Sawyer’s has breakfast, too. Maybe you came for the coffee later, but Flight Cafe has coffee and they don’t brew Maxwell House. Maybe you come for the supportive community, but you can build caring relationships at the Y or a yoga studio. Maybe you came for the sermon or the spiritual formation, but I’m humble enough to know that there’s better preachers and teacher on YouTube.

See, if that’s all that happens at church, then it’s nothing we have a monopoly on. All of it we might be able to find it better (or maybe at least as good) somewhere else. No, there is something that happens here that can’t happen anywhere else. There are things we need that Swayer’s and Flight and the YMCA, as good as they are, cannot give us. There are things that happen here that can change us and change the world in a way that nothing else can.

There’s lots of reasons to come to church. You have your own reason for being here this morning, but for now we will work on one reason together. And we’ll get started with one of today’s Bible readings from Revelation and also a hymn in the hymnal, number 24.

It’s a hymn for the evening, so we don’t sing it much on Sunday morning, but is starts like this:

The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

II. The hymn goes on to talk about the world turning from daylight to night and then from dark back to day. The poetry asks for our imagination, so that we can picture in our minds the round earth, either in the sun or the shade.

It’s eight o’clock now for our worship service, but we know that the other side of the globe, it is dark and night. You only need a little imagination to think that in one hour, it’s going be time for eight o’clock church in the Central Time Zone. Later, it’ll be time for eight o’clock church in California, when you are well into your afternoon. And when we were in bed in the middle of the night, people in Jerusalem, Rome and London each took their turns to worship. And so the hymn goes on:

We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping While earth rolls onward into light, Through all the world her watch is keeping, And never rests by day or night.

As o’er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.

And so the whole world gets it’s time to worship. While some of us get the rest we need, others are praying. And while we pray, we let other people get the rest they need. Whenever we are kept awake at night, we know there’s someone on the other side of the world praying. And when we each in our own turn take our part, we know that someone, somewhere on this earth is in an act of worship and God’s praise goes on at every moment.

So, that’s kind of cool, right? That’s one reason we come to church on a Sunday morning, because we are simply taking our part to chime in with the worship that happens all around the globe, as the Bible says, “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”

III. It’s a beautiful poetic image for us who exist in time and space. But we can do better, because as Christians, we know there are things in the universe is not limited by time and space. That’s what this reading from Revelation 7 is showing us here. In this season of Easter, we have several readings from Revelation, where the figure of John gets called by a voice up into heaven where he gets a guided tour of what heaven is like.

Sometimes I think we don’t talk enough about what heaven is like but we should since we will all be spending eternity there, we might want to know about it now.

So what does John see when he gets there? He sees a great multitude of people, robed in white and holding victory branches, singing and worshiping God. He sees angels and elder and four weird “living creatures,” also singing and worshiping. He sees the object of their worship: the Lamb, Jesus himself, on the throne.

And what happens in heaven is detached from time. It’s hard for our brains to capture just what it’s like for there only to be a “here” without really being a “there” or “now” without there really being a “earlier” or “later.” But as it is, there are no time zones in heaven so you never have to ask the question “When I call mom later today, what time is it in California?” And, thank God, if there’s no time zones, then there can be no jetlag there.

But for our time of worship, we get to join ourselves with the cosmic worship that is going on in heaven in eternity. Every Sunday when we pray the Great Thanksgiving prayer we have words something like, “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who for ever sing this hymn,” Holy, holy, holy… (BCP, p. 362)

When we come to church, when we come to worship, we do something that we cannot find anywhere else: ourselves, creatures living in spacetime, elevated right up into eternity itself with the angels and saints who are always there.

IV. But there’s more in John’s guided tour of heaven and that’s good because for some people, knowing that heaven is an eternal worship service is great news and, for other people, that sounds not so great. So here’s a few other things that we know will be in heaven and that we are praying for every time we say, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We should know what we are asking for, right?

John shows us: diversity! It’s essential to have “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” It’s essential that they keep their languages and their cultures. God loves the rich diversity of the human race so much it will last forever in heaven. Maybe that’s one thing we pray for when we say, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

John shows us the worship of the Lamb! The center of worship is the meek and vulnerable Jesus, the crucified and resurrected one. The world down here might worship power and wealth, but not up there. Maybe that’s one thing we pray for when we say, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

John shows us the martyrs who endured “the great ordeal,” those who suffered unjustly at the hands of powerful kings. Now they are at the center, close to the throne, and there’s no mention of any of those earthly kings for here there is a higher authority.

John shows us God’s “shelter” and protection. Up in heaven, there is no more hunger like we see down here. As much as I love our Goffstown Network Food Pantry, there will be no more need for it in heaven. There will be no more striking sun and scorching heat, so the climate change activists won’t have much to do, because there’s apparently no global warming in heaven. Maybe that’s one thing we pray for when we say, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

John shows us at last that there are no tears in heaven. Whatever it is that’s causing those tears will be made whole. Whatever it is that’s keeping us up at night will no longer be allowed to cause us worry and anxiety. This is thought in the final verse of that hymn:

So be it, Lord! Thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands and grows forever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.

What a vision of what heaven is like! What a vision for what we pray for “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

V. And that is what this hour of worship connects us to, when we come to sing “Holy, holy, holy” and get lifted up into it all just for one hour. And a vision like that, a ralm where all the diversity of humanity is honored, where the weak and vulnerable are at the center and not the rich and powerful, where there is no more hunger, where there are no more tears...that is a vision that can change you just to see it, it can change you just to imagine it. It’s a vision that I don’t think we can truly find anywhere else and that’s why we need this time because it might just change you and if it changes you, then it might just change the world.

Watch the video here.

A Prayer for May Day 2025

2025-05-01T19:22:34-04:00

I offered this closing prayer at today's May Day rally in Concord, based on the Lord's prayer. See coverage of the event on InDepthNH.

Good and gracious God,
deliver us from the evil
of rejecting the divine image in which we are created
of rejecting that dignity, value and infinite worth you alone give us.
We confess that we instead begged for our dignity and our rights
from the powerful and the privileged,
who are a poor imitation of you, God.
deliver us from the evil
of the shallow materialism
that tells us the lie that if someone else gets what they need,
then I'm not getting what I need.
We confess we let this lie divide us,
and gave pretext to hate one another,
and, being divided, let ourselves be cheated of our power.
deliver us from the evil
of the abuse and distortion of our great diverse religious traditions,
the distortion that tells the lie
that some work is shameful,
that poverty is a moral choice,
and that some human beings are illegal.
We confess we need your help to honor our religious founders
who are often themselves workers and immigrants:
Moses, the shepherd of Midian under Jethro,
Jesus, the carpenter of Galilee under Joseph the Worker,
Mohammed, the merchant under his uncle Abu Taalib.
to show us how true faith honors all workers, all immigrants
and all the poor and vulnerable.
Teach us again the lesson that our nation struggles to learn:
teach us the lesson of Moses,
who knew that begging from Pharaoah could not bring freedom
but, with your help, bringing the people together was the way.
Teach us again the lesson from Jesus,
who knew that hate could never end Caesar's indomitable power,
so he traveled through the villages of Galilee to find the workers and the poor
and united them in a message of love, a force more powerful than Caeser could understand.
Teach us again the lessons of empathy
that prove the lie of cynical, zero-sum thinking,
that tricks us into believing that helping our neighbor is wrong,
Teach us that we might know instead
that when we lift from the bottom, everybody rises.
Teach us again to see each other with spiritual eyes
that see the dignity, value and infinite worth you placed in each of us.
Teach us
that the way of love is the only true power,
that the way of respect can make mighty empires fall,
and can bring about that which we pray for,
a world where your will is done on earth as it is in heaven,
where your will of perfect dignity, on earth as it is in heaven,
where your will of perfect justice, on earth as it is in heaven,
where your will of perfect peace, on earth as it is in heaven,
where your will of perfect love, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Interview on "What is Christian Zionism?"

2025-04-30T18:58:03-04:00

Back in March, Pastor Jon Hopkins and I were interviewed by Jesse Gillis of NH Peace Action about Christian Zionism. We covered a lot of topics, including the history of Christian Zionism and its roots a dispensational eschatology, a theology coming from a specific strand of American fundamentalism. We talked about how Christian Zionism poses as friendly to Jews but is at its root antisemitic and also islamophobic. Finally, I spoke about my contact with Arab Christians living in Palestine had how they also long for a future of safety and self-determination, a desire they share with their Jewish neighbors.

Here is Jesse's own description of our conversation: "Focusing on Christian Zionism, I had an opportunity to interview both pastors on my show on Concord public TV. As the pastors state, this is a distortion of the faith to support imperialism in the Middle East and racism against Arabs, and justify the genocide in Gaza. To want a stop to the genocide, to morally reject the Israeli's governments actions towards Palestinians is not antisemitic. You would not equate criticizing the actions of the United States government with being anti-American."

Watch the video here.

A New Setting for a Hymn by Bonhoeffer

2025-04-25T19:52:43-04:00

On Palm Sunday, we sang a hymn new to our parish. This is "By Gracious Powers" and it is a musical arrangement of a poem by Dietrich Bonhoffer. He wrote this poem in a Nazi prison cell where his resistance cost him his life 80 years ago on April 9, 1945.

This poem reflects his faith struggling with the suffering that he faced and is an example for anyone facing hard times.

Pi Day 2024

2024-03-14T13:59:00-04:00

Happy Pi Day 2024! Here's the video of my project to have a Raspberry Pi calculate Pi and show the digits on a scrolling LED clock display.

Watch the video here:

I used the Spigot algorithm to generate the digits of Pi and here's more about how Spigot works

This was a fun learning project for me. The calculation of Pi was the easy part! This was my first time working with the 7-segment LED display, so I spent lots of time starting at a blank display wondering what was wrong. But I stuck with it and finally understood how common anode electronics work.

There's no other control chips involved. My code directly controls the display, managing the animation on my own. I wrote my code in C using the pigpio library.

Which Side Are You On?

2021-09-09T10:18:02-04:00

The Revised Common Lectionary for Proper 19B assigns the reading Mark 8:27-38, referred to as the Confession of Peter:

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”

See the full reading here.

Both Matthew 16:13 and Mark 8:37 name Caesarea Philippi as the location of Peter's confession. The naming of the place is more than just an establishing shot. The story of the city itself provides a setting that lifts up Peter's confession about Jesus to a radical place.

Amy-Jill Levine notes in The Jewish Annotated New Testament that Caesarea Philippi was "originally Panion after the god Pan, to whom there was an important cult site, was re-founded under Herod's son Philip, who renamed it in honor of the emperor and himself. A major temple, probably dedicated to the emperor, has been discovered nearby" (p. 77).

This is the same Philip the Tetrarch named in Luke 3:1, often read at Christmas. The name Caesarea Philippi is Latin, meaning "Philip's Caesarea." This distinguishes it from Caesarea Maritima, build by Philip's father, Herod the Great, on Israel's Mediterranean coast. Caesarea Maritima, as one might expect from a place named after Caesar, was the seat of Roman control after Judea became a province in 6 AD.

Naming a city after Caesar is clear indicator of loyalty to one's imperial occupiers. Further naming it "Philip's Caesarea" indicated that the Tetrarch wanted to make himself known as a quisling, ready personally to collaborate with the colonial power. After all, he ensured the building of an imperial temple so that Caesar could be literally worshiped.

All of this happened around 14 AD, during the teenage years of Jesus and his followers.

Further, Caesarea Philippi was the seat of power for a tetrarch. The city itself was able to mint coins for the region. By 30 AD, near the time of the Mark 8 story, Philip was bold enough to put his own image on the coins:

*Source: Wikimedia Commons

The coins on one side name "August Caesar" and the other "Philip the Tetrarch." In a first for Jewish rulers, Philip put his personal image on the coin. Of course this would be a scandal to the Jewish people using the coins. Again the image of Caesar and Philip together demonstrates the strength of the pact between colonizer and colonized.

This is the place where Jesus brought up the question of his identity to his followers. Many preachers urge their listeners to identify with Peter in a personal faith statement. Jesus asks, "Who do you (individually) say that I am?" The right answer is that Jesus is the Messiah who saves and redeems. Peter's personal answer should be our personal answer and commitment to Jesus too.

I've preached this myself and won't argue against this use of the passage.

Jesus asks this question in the seat of power of Philip, the imperial quisling anxious to show his Roman bona fides. The disciples are in the city and region passing around coins with Philip's face on them, showing his betrayal of his people, religion and culture. Perhaps Jesus knows that Philip is among those who would lose his soul to gain the world (or at least a tetrarchy).

Jesus asks this question not in the singular, but in the plural, "Who do y'all say that I am?" Aimed at the body of followers, Mark uses the term Messiah or Christ for the first time since 1:1. Coming from Peter and all of Jesus' followers, "You are the Messiah." And not only a Messiah who can save our souls but the Messiah who can save the very real world around them.

In Philip's city of imperial collaboration Jesus' question takes on the tone of the labor union and civil rights song, Which side are you on?

In the words of Ched Myers in Binding the Strong Man:

Peter's answer is far more momentous: it introduces into the story world for the first time the politically loaded term "Messiah" (Christos). Jesus is not simply a great prophet; he is a royal figure who will restore the political fortunes of Israel. The revolution, Peter is saying, is at hand (p. 242).

The question of personal faith in Jesus is an important one but the setting of Caesarea Philippi opens up new dimensions of the radical work of Jesus that can bring salvation not only for the next world but for this one too.

Worship that Harms

2020-05-16T17:07:49-04:00

Today protestors will gather at the NH State House for a Christian service and demand to return to large, in-person worship gatherings in their churches. Churches that closed too slowly or opened too quickly soon showed new COVID cases.

If your worship service is harming people, then God does not want that worship. The Bible, from Torah to Prophets to Gospels to the Apostles, repeats the refrain: if your actions harm the weak (widows, orphans, foreigners, and so on), then God does not want your worship. This goes all the more is the worship gathering itself is harmful to the weakest.

Here it is in Amos 5:21-24 (but you can find it in Isaiah 1, James 1 and plenty of other Bible verses): "I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream."

Tracking COVID-19 with Gnuplot

2020-04-11T08:05:43-04:00

See this on GitHub with data updates!

I've been wanting to visualize how cases of COVID-19 in New Hampshire are progressing. The State of New Hampshire puts out a daily updates with this information, but it's in narrative form and scattered across PDF files uploaded daily.

So, I decided to use Gnuplot to help me visualize what is happening. I created the text file below with the data from the daily updates, which I gather manually. Each line contains the date in MM/DD/YYYY form, the current number of reported cases and the number of new cases reported. These values are tab-separated.

# covid.dat - COVID-19 statistics in New Hampshire
# Source: https://www.nh.gov/covid19/news/updates.htm

# Date      Cases   Change
3/13/2020   7   0
3/14/2020   7   7
3/15/2020   13  6
3/16/2020   17  4
3/17/2020   26  9
# ...
4/10/2020   885 66

I haven't used Gnuplot much since college, so I had to consult a number of online tutorials to dust off my memory. After a lot of finagling I was able to coax Gnuplot into graphing this data in an attractrive manner.

# covid.plot - gnuplot commands to generate COVID-19 graphs from online data

# Set up output graphic parameters.
set term png
set output "covid.png"

# Set up the graph title, axes labels and graph key.
set title "Number of Persons with COVID-19 in New Hampshire"
set xlabel "Date"
set ylabel "Cases"
set key top left

# Set up the x-axis to show dates.
set xdata time
set format x "%m/%d"

# Tell Gnuplot that we are reading dates in a specific format.
set timefmt "%m/%d/%Y"

# Set up line stylings.
set style line 1 linecolor rgb "red" pointtype 7
set style line 2 linecolor rgb "blue" pointtype 7

# Read data from file and plot into a graph.
plot "covid.dat" using 1:2 with linespoints linestyle 1 title "Total cases", \
     "covid.dat" using 1:3 with linespoints linestyle 2 title "New cases"

This will give me a red line showing the total number of reported cases and a blue line showing the new cases each day. Every evening the State issues its daily report and I manually enter the new data into covid.dat. Finally, I issue the command:

~/src/covid> gnuplot covid.plot

And I get the file covid.png which looks like this:

Maundy Thursday Reflection

2020-04-09T13:52:13-04:00

Picture: Communion service with New England United Methodist Conference, Garden of Gethsemane, February 2020

"Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31).

As many congregations observe Maundy Thursday, remember how many services obey so closely Jesus' instructions at the Last Supper:

First, the act of foot-washing often follows the sermon, taking the place in the service sometimes occupied by reciting a Creed. How notable to replace declaring faith with words to declaring faith with actions! "I by my works will show you my faith" (James 2:18).

Then, the next part of the service might be Holy Communion. How quickly after an act of Christian service do we need the refreshment of grace at Jesus' table! In this era of pandemic, New Hampshire churches are doing extraordinary and miraculous acts of loving service. Let us never forget to return to God to receive the spiritual graces we need to keep that service going: "Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31).

Finally, friends, we need be open to encountering God's grace in new ways. During COVID-19, many of us are prevented from gathering at the Lord's table together to receive what Jesus gave us tonight. United Methodist pastor Rev. Dwight Haynes recounted this story about his experience marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the March 25, 2015 issue of the Concord Monitor:

It was very warm. Without breakfast, some people fainted. I remember getting a sip from a gallon jug of Kool-Aid being passed along. Later, another black neighbor from one of the shacks by the side of the road passed along some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. For me, it was the miracle of sharing re-enacted, an experience of Communion I shall never forget.

Church, Jesus' command to love others as he loves us is weighty. You are doing much right now to show your faith by your works but never neglect to seek the grace of God to keep us going. Even though we cannot now gather at the Lord's table, we can trust that God will provide sufficient grace in surprising ways so that we might continue to "walk and not be faint."

Prayer of St. Richard of Chichester

2020-04-03T10:52:58-04:00

Palm Sunday Reflection

2020-04-02T10:31:59-04:00

Palm tree with dates, Mount of Olives, 2020

In the Gospels, Jesus' followers cut palm branches for his way into Jerusalem. In the Bible, palm branches are associated with the celebration of the Festival of Booths or Sukkot (Lev. 23:40).

But the Festival of Booths is a fall festival, after the palm dates are harvested. The story of Palm Sunday takes place in the spring, at the Passover. To cut branches from the palm tree in the spring means that the tree will die. When the tree dies, there will be no dates to harvest for eating or for market later.

And so the palm tree becomes a symbol of Crucifixion, of life cut short too early. The palm becomes a symbol of sacrifice through its association with the death of Jesus.

The power of the palm tree as a symbol of martyrdom extends into Islam. After last year's New Zealand mosque murders, Imam Mustafa of the Islamic Society of Greater Concord remarked during his Friday sermon: "They may strike us, but like the palm tree, we bend but we do not break. They may strike us and we do not break even though we give up our best fruits."

Remember the symbol of palm: in times of loss and sacrifice, we bend but we do not break. Even though we lose some of our best fruits, we bend but do not break. And this power of this symbol is found in the Cross of Christ whose grace is sufficient and whose power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

Mike Pence on Healing the Land

2020-03-23T21:44:49-04:00

At today's White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, Vice President Mike Pence closed his remarks with the words "heal the land." This phrase has a lot of resonance among charismatic evangelical Christians. I'll explain:

The relevant verse here is 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land" (KJV).

I've heard the phrase "if my people" and "heal their land" a great deal in some Christian circles. The short phrases are a stand-in for the whole verse which calls for humility, prayer and conversion.

Related, on Feb. 26 many mocked Vice President Pence for this photo of the Coronavirus task force at prayer. For some Christian interpretation of 2 Chronicles 7:14, this was a necessary prerequisite for the "healing the land."

This piece by Tony Evans appeared in Franklin Graham's Decision Magazine under the title "If My People." Like many uses of the phrase it prescribes prayer and evangelism to address America's ills. In my experience, the talks and articles that cite the "If my people...heal the land," verse are usually vague and evasive about what America's ills specifically are. Whatever they are, prayer and evangelism is the answer.

My guess is that there is a lot of "dog whistle" involved in that the speaker can refer to "healing the land" without naming ills and the listener is ready to supply them privately from the unspoken agreement.

Usually this dog whistle has a politically conservative valence, but the kind of speech has its liberal versions too. Among progressive Christians you'll hear references to Micah 6:8 and Amos 5:24 as ways to position themselves around humility, justice and the well-being of all.

For me, I'd like to see Vice President Pence's use of this verse lean into the "humility" part of the verse. I'm fine with the prayer and evangelism but the humility to defer to scientific and medical experts certainly has a place in the "healing of the land.

Palindromic Numbers

2020-03-21T17:25:48-04:00

A palindromic number is a number that is the same, backwards and forwards, e.g. 12321. It so happens that for almost all numbers, repeatedly adding a number to its reverse eventually produces a palindromic number. For example:

78 + 87 = 165
165 + 561 = 726
726 + 627 = 1353
1353 + 3531 = 4884

This subject has been interesting as long as we've had computers to calculate all of the repeated addtions. Wolfram MathWorld has a short article about the Palindromic Number Conjecturge. In August of 1985, Creative Computing also published a a short article on palindromic numbers.

I wrote a program to do this repeated addition.. Enter a number into the dialog box and it will start the process of repeated addition until the a palindrome is produced. Note: don't enter the number 196. Do try the number 89, which takes 24 steps.