“For we know, brothers and sisters, beloved by God, that God has chosen you." The emphasis here is on "you." What a father or parent figure says, counts. And the children respond to what the father says.

In today's letter to the people of Thessalonica, Paul is seeking to encourage them in their trials and tribulations. This first letter to the Thessalonians is one of Paul's most affirming, encouraging letters.

According to Luke in the Book of Acts, Paul had started a small congregation there including Jews and non-Jews alike. Certainly, Paul was wondering if the church could withstand the outside influence. Paul's concern grew out of the newness of the congregation. So, here Paul is affirming the people in the best way he knows how.

In another letter he had written, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" 

Here, Paul is even more direct. It is not in the form of a question. It is a statement of fact. It is a statement of truth. God has chosen you. YOU. You, yourself. And, we the congregation.

We are reminded in John's Gospel that we have been chosen. "You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit” What an affirmation to be chosen by Jesus...to be chosen by God.

Some, I know, don't believe that affirmation. "God can't be talking about me."

Perhaps it's from the lack of affirmation that has occurred in other times and places. I know how it is.

When I was in seminary, I was an intern in a Presbyterian church in East Orange. The seminary asked for quarterly evaluations from the pastor. When I read mine, I saw that every category was marked “very good" or “excellent." I suggested that this didn't describe me, but his response was, "You know, Chris, not everyone sees you as you see yourself.” 

I have come to discover how true that was. Certainly, God sees us differently than we see ourselves.  It all comes together when we realize that God has chosen us, collectively, and personally. It is the acceptance of Christ's personal love.

A psychologist has said that for every really negative statement to a child it requires fifty affirmations to overcome it. Mavbe that is why Jesus has told us over and over again that he loves us so much. Maybe that is why Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,'

"God has chosen you.

My response: November 3, 2023

Dear Dad,

Recently I was introduced to a United Methodist pastor from NJ.  When he heard my last name, he asked if I was your daughter. I smiled and said yes. He shared that you had influenced his ministry when he was a new pastor. 

He had been uncomfortable with including a nationalist message in church when the 4th of July fell on a Sunday. Instead, he chose to take that Sunday off and worship at the church where you were serving. He appreciated how you prioritized the Gospel of Jesus while respecting the need some people felt to fly the US flag. I was touched that he remembered your impact so clearly and that he shared it with me. And I know that you would have appreciated that affirmation of your ministry. 

I treasure these kinds of interactions that offer new experiences with who you were and are. 

Your life continues to make a difference and every day I encounter some reminder of you.  Wednesday was All Saints Day. SophiAna’s class made kites in honor of a saint they each were remembering. SophiAna chose you, “Pop Pop.” It still breaks my heart that you died just a few years before your great-granddaughters were born. But what a beautiful affirmation of your life that you came to her mind as someone to honor on this sacred day. 

I am grateful that I grew up in a household where you valued my siblings and me as being of sacred worth. We believed it when we sang, “Jesus loves me this I know . . .” 

Mr. Rogers declared daily from our television set: “I like you just the way you are.”

My earliest memories are carefree and joy-filled. You never belittled us and often told us you were proud - sometimes for no specific reason at all. When I learned to ride a bike, got a good grade in school, overcame a fear - you always were there to tell me I had done well no matter how big or small the accomplishment. 

Looking back, I realize that despite your best efforts, family dynamics and other situations interrupted the verbal and spiritual messages you tried to instill in me. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that I started to internalize the blessed assurance of who I am as a child of God. And I consciously came to appreciate the blessing it is to be your daughter, even as I did what I could to raise Cassie to be confident and self-assured. And she passes this message to her own children. 

From the time SophiAna and Symphony were babies, Cassie spoke a litany of daily affirmations to them. She establishes: 

You are a child of God.
You are a blessing. 
You are a champion
You are a leader. 
You are kind. 
You are unique
You can do anything you put your mind to. 
You are a Creator 
You are courageous 
You are brave

Words have power. 

When I preached on the Lillies of the Field and declared to the congregation, that as a member of God’s kin-dom, God’s family, “You are enough,” there was a visceral and audible reaction from them. I was reminded that we all crave that reminder. And I was grateful to share this assurance with my congregation, especially with those who rarely hear that message. 

So when I picked up your sermon this week, and read your words, “You are enough” it spoke to me as a recurring theme in recent days. And Dad, I hope that as you preached it in 2002, the words spoke to you as well. 

When you recalled your supervising pastor’s declaration that others saw you differently than you saw yourself it seemed to help you recognize that God also saw you differently than you saw yourself. I am grateful that people in your life shared that truth with you just as I am grateful for those who shared that truth with me. I’m so thankful that God chose us to be family and continues to strengthen our bond through faith and love.

Dad, your life as a father and grandfather, your life as a pastor, friend, husband, your life as a peace activist, your life as a child of God

Your life was enough . . . 
even though your death came too soon . . . 
these echoes of you are an affirmation of your faithfulness.

You closed your sermon with these words:

For all the difficult times we may have been through, we need the unconditional love of God. God's love is at the very core of our being. We were born with it.

Nobody can take it away. So, let us carry that word with us today, "For we know, brothers and sisters, beloved by God, that God has chosen you.

A 100 Word Reflection of Affirmation:
Thank you for your labor of love
And for your work of faith. 
You are beloved and chosen
By the one who created you. 

The power of your words 
Can ignite and affirm the Christ light in others.
Inspired by the Holy Spirit,
Declare truth
That embodies joy and extends welcome. 

Share this example of discipleship with others.
Model courageous and steadfast hope.
Reinforce the goodness in others so that it replicates 
And pours into the world. 

God's love is at the very core of your being.
You were born with it.
Nobody can take it away.
You are enough. 

My dad died in 2012 and I inherited a box of his sermons. In 2021 I began unboxing them and having new conversations with him. Read more about this project:

As I approached this sermon for All Saints’ Sunday I began to feel the paradox of this kind of day. As we celebrate the lives of those departed, we are aware of the loss of those whom we have loved.

Perhaps this year is a little more difficult for me as I am not preaching in the abstract. My mother died earlier this year so this celebration of all the saints has become a day of personal feeling for me. 

What I like about this day of celebration though is that is allows us to think of our loved ones death in a very spiritual way. Listen to John as he writes in his first letter.

“See what God has given us, that we should be called children of God.”
“And that is what we are!!”
“We are God’s children now . . . “
“. . . we will be like Christ. . . 
. . . and all who have this hope purify themselves as Christ is pure.

We grieve. But, we celebrate.
We grieve. But, we celebrate.

We celebrate the lives of those whom we have touched. We celebrate the lives of those who touched us, but who now touch us from their spiritual bodies. 

However life has been, and admittedly life may not have always been so great with the other . . .  However life has been, we know that those whom we have loved are in a better place. 

This place is described in the Book of Revelation as a place where John saw “. . . . a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, from all tribes and all peoples and languages, standing before the throne (of God) and before the Lamb (Jesus Christ).”

We are a privileged people. We march in a grand processional. We march with all the saints of all times and all places. We march with people of all tribes and cultures toward the eternal place promised to us in the heavens. We march with those whom we have loved but see no more.

Today is one of those days that seems to speak to us so powerfully.

The beatitudes take on special meaning today.
It is very real for us that those who hungered no longer hunger.
It is very real for us that those who were thirsty no longer thirst.
It is very real for us that those who mourned weep no more.

And, again from revelation, “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Indeed, these speak not only of our loved ones who have died, but for us who are living as we remember them. We are children of God. Those whom we have loved are also children of God, but they have gone home from their labors. They have found everlasting rest.

Melissa’s Response: June 16, 2021

Dear Dad,

Cassie and I read your All Saints Day sermon as part of your funeral. I still remember the heaviness and grief as we read the complex words of hope that you had proclaimed just months after Gramma died. 

The Gospel declares that we are all beloved children of God. And the reality is that for better or worse, we are also children of those who raised us. 

I think about Gramma a lot, especially recently. Perhaps it’s because I am now a grandmother. I’ve always been fascinated by her background, growing up in Yokohama’s British consulate. Her father died when she was less than a year old. He was only 29 but I she never shared with me how that impacted her life or what it was like for her mother to raise her as a single parent. She wasn’t religious but somehow you and Aunt Margee both grew into committed followers of Jesus. Gramma was so proud of you and your ministry. 

As little kids, when my sister and I stayed with Gramma, we woke up to a metal tv tray next to our beds with a child’s tea set on it. We played with her make up samples and dressed up with her clip on earrings and beads, mimicking her British accent and sipping water from our tea cups. When she was still working at the pharmaceutical company, she let us help ourselves to office supplies and took us to the company cafeteria (where she pocketed sugar packets).  Rummaging in her purse, I would often find a slightly lint-covered Velamint candy at the bottom to wipe off and pop in my mouth. 

Gramma loved introducing us to her friends. As we got older and she didn’t know quite what to get us, she put cash in appropriately sized boxes with a note: This is clothes. This is music. This is a book. 

In our teen years, Gramma invited me and a girlfriend to stay with her for two weeks. What a brave woman! She took us to whatever movie we wanted to see. I still cringe with appreciation that she took me to see Purple Rain. I was only 13 and the movie was rated R. Gramma kept trying to get me to go buy some popcorn but I wasn’t going to miss a minute of Prince.

We loved our dinners out, clothes shopping excursions, theatre nights, and browsing in the used bookstore at the bottom of her hill. Back at her house we made elaborate mocktails with ginger-ale while we watched hours of MTV since we didn’t have cable or soda at home. 

Later when I was a young unmarried teenage mom, Gramma embraced me and welcomed my daughter. And she never made me feel like she was disappointed or ashamed of me. Or that she loved me or Cassie any less. 

It wasn’t until I was older that I realized she struggled with a sense of self worth. She was hospitalized with depression, battled addiction to alcohol and pills, had an extramarital affair for years with a married man, and (courageously) left Grandpa and lived by herself in retirement. 

Certainly her challenges impacted you as her son in ways that I will never know. But I also wonder if it was in fighting some of her own demons and insecurity that the cracks in her humanity allowed her to create that safe space for me as her grandchild. 

There is a sense of wanting to protect her and her memory. But in grieving loss and celebrating life we acknowledge the fullness of our loved ones’ experiences. The totality of who she was is part of who you were and what makes me who I am today. And as much as I miss you and her, there is celebration for the love you lived and the peace you have found in death, reconciled with our creator. 

We grieve. But, we celebrate.

You preached on that All Saints Sunday:

I think we sometimes think of communion as just a ritual. But it is more than that. Through Holy Communion, we join together with the saints in our lives in a very real way. As they sit around the table of Christ, so too, do we. - It is a table of communion.  This means that we commune with them through the love of Jesus Christ who rose back into life.

This one is the same as the one who lives in that place of everlasting life with our family, friends, and neighbors who are no longer with us. It is a wonderful time of spirit engaging spirit.

A 100 Word Reflection in Memory of my Grandmother: 

“Blessed are the children of single parents, for theirs is the family of God. 
“Blessed are those experiencing depression, for they will know joy.
"Blessed are those with cracks, for they will be broken open and healed. 
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for love, for they will be divinely embraced
“Blessed are those who don’t recognize their sacred worth, for they reflect the image of God.
“Blessed are the elders who welcome rebellious teens, for they will be called children of God.
“Rejoice and be glad. 
Spirit engages spirit. 
Your life is celebrated 
for the love you lived. 

My dad died in 2012 and I inherited a box of his sermons. In 2021 I began unboxing them and having new conversations with him. Read more about this project:

You know, a vacation is a marvelous thing. It is a time of rest. It is a time of relaxation. It is time to explore a new place.

For me, it was a time of wonder as I realized the vastness of the universe. The ocean that is so big, one cannot see the end of Stars in the sky, too numerous to count. Zillions of particles of sand, shifting constantly into new configurations. 

And, most importantly, spending a week of solid time with my family. All five of us were there. It is not something I often get to experience. I remembered once again how precious they are to me. They are not ones to be taken for granted.

I came home from vacation feeling content and relaxed.

At the beginning of the week, I read the lessons for today. My bubble was broken. These are some of the most difficult words in the Bible. These words were first spoken in Jesus' day. We do not know exactly what form they took. However, we do read the statement as a non-compromising demand.

Jesus was saying that if he was to be taken seriously, then it demanded all one had to offer. Jesus needs no disciples with reluctant commitment. Remember, also, that Luke is writing this down for his own church. There were those in his church who were weary of well-doing. They were tired of waiting for what they envisioned as the coming realm of God. Some were ready to throw in the towel. It kind of sounds like us, sometimes, doesn't it? Weary, tired, ready to throw in the towel.

Luke's church was having trouble with half-heartedness and back-sliding. And whether we are lay or clergy, we know that we too, fall short of the ideal expressed through this passage. Still, even as the words of Jesus stand in judgment of us, so also they hold the ideal up before us. 

Jesus makes it clear that the true disciple places the Christian life above the needs of families and friends. Even as we talk about family values, Christ challenges us to let no one, not even family prevent us from following God's way.

There was a luke-warmness in the church of Luke's time. There is a lukewarmness in our time, too. That is a problem for us.

When I was in North Carolina, I discovered that when the wind blew from the west, the water was warm. Somedays, it was almost tepid. We would go out and float on rubber rafts. We would ride the swells. We would relax in the water and do nothing. 

However, when the wind comes from the east, the water is colder. We had to move around to keep from getting too cold. Yet, that was invigorating. There was a desire to ride the boogie boards over the wave tops. It felt great to swim around: There was activity and we felt full of life.

I think for the Church today, the wind is coming from the west. It is like we are in a bathtub (well, not just one bathtub), we are in bathtubs that are nice and warm and relaxing, even soothing. But, we are not getting as much done as Jesus would want. Jesus is calling us today to get out of the tub. He is reminding us that we are not in control.

We only need to look at Bosnia to see that.

Or the hurricanes that are so devastating.

Or the starving in the world, and even in our own country.

Jesus calls us to take control through him. The realm of God is at and, we are told. Perhaps we have trouble seeing it because of the lukewarmness of our discipleship. We are given grace (unconditional love) from God. It is freely given, but it is not free. There is a cost attached to loving God and having Jesus as our savior. God's love comes at the costly price of discipleship.

Melissa’s Response: June 20, 2024

Dear Dad,

I love that our family vacation was part of your sermon. You were always adamant that a true vacation had to be a minimum of two weeks. Otherwise, it would take until Wednesday to unwind and by Thursday you were already thinking about gearing up to get home. In 1995, I was a year and half out of college and could only take one week’s vacation off from work. I flew down to join you and the rest of the family in the Outer Banks for your second week. No doubt, the hour and a half drive each way to the airport in the middle of your vacation annoyed you, and I probably didn’t express appropriate gratitude. But thank you for making it a priority and convincing me to take a week to be with the family.

Cassie was almost 8, Ben was entering his last year of high school. TJ was still living at home with you and working on her college degree. We were each entering various life stages and you were the glue that held us together as a family. I looked forward to our family vacation getaways all summer. 

Wherever we were, vacation was more or less the same (except of course when we had to evacuate for a hurricane! And even more memorable was the time we decided to ride it out because “we are on vacation.”  But most of our family getaways included sleeping in, spending our mornings at the beach, going back to the house for lunch, and returning to the beach for the remainder of the day. Sometimes we would go to Jockey’s Ridge and fly a kite or visit one of the lighthouses and climb to the top.  In the evening, you cooked dinner except for the last night of vacation when we ate at Awful Arthur’s because they gave us a coupon. We immersed ourselves in reading! When I look through my photos of you, there is a steady stream of Dad in a beach chair with a book.

Vacations were the only time we played games. We played Uno, Skipbo, Scategories, and 500 Rummy. Vacations were also the only time we had junk food like chips, cookies, cold cuts, and soda. To this day, when I have a Little Debbie’s oatmeal creme cookie, it tastes like vacation (my granddaughters hear about it every time we eat one as part of our beach lunch!).

We rented movies and gathered around the TV, usually indulging in an action movie. There was no “unplugging” needed since smart phones and social media were not there to distract us. The only interruptions were books, tv, and occasional sibling squabbles. As a teenager, I was restless to do more. I did figure out how to get to a nearby pay phone to use my calling card and call my boyfriend and some of my friends. It was so expensive!

You taught me the importance of rest and renewal which prioritizes family over work. When I was a young adult and felt like I needed to wait to make plans, concerned my work schedule would be too busy, you wisely instructed, “Carve out the time months before, put it on the calendar, and make a deposit.” 

Chris laughs at me because I usually have the next vacation plan in place before we leave the current one. In every job I have had, I am one of the few people who consistently uses every vacation and personal day available to me. When I am in working mode, I am all in and it truly is a gift to have a strategy in place to take a break with time apart from the day-to-day responsibilities.  

I’m in the middle of a four-month sabbatical and writing this poolside at a Creator’s Haven Artist Retreat. During my sabbatical, I’ve been reading a lot about spiritual practices. One of my favorites is by Tricia Hersey called “Rest is Resistance.” She frames rest as a justice issue. 

Powers and principalities trap people in a constant grind in order to survive. The gift of sabbath rest from God fills us with what we need to thrive. The church can create new realities by freeing others to rest and connect with family and community networks. To do this, we must create systemic change that honors the entire family of God.

The focus of your sermon is to avoid allowing so-called family values to take precedence over discipleship. It’s so easy to get comfortable, complacent, and even resigned to the state of God’s creation. You describe it as the warm bathtub - a lukewarm church. The church becomes a social club where people go to see their friends, run their personal projects under the guise of “ministry,” and then leave the building, living in a way that has minimal resemblance to Jesus. Meanwhile, the world yearns for redemption. 

I wonder if it’s not just about getting out of the comfortable bath and facing the rip currents, but also being a force that joins God to “trouble the water.”

The language of family values at the time of your sermon was political code for centering white upper-middle-class male comfort. In our compassion and rage fatigue, we risk losing sight of God and the partnership required for kin-dom work.

Jesus took naps. And God rested on the Sabbath. Part of my discipleship strives to take that commandment seriously. When I remove myself, even for an hour or two from society’s pressure cooker that demands production, I can better experience spiritual movement and gain new perspectives about what’s important. When I intentionally connect with family rather than just coexisting, we strengthen one another with unconditional love. When I set aside time for rest, I equip myself to face a broken world with tools like hope and gratitude.

Family vacations with you paused for many years after that summer of 1995 but Cassie and I still found our way to the beach for at least a week every summer. In 2009, 2010, and 2011, you brought us all together again for vacations on Chincoteague Island. 

Our family had grown to include your soon to be son in law, daughter in law and her daughter, and three more granddaughters with another on the way. We picked up the family rhythms from years before. Chris and I took Ben’s twins on the Tilt-a-whirl for their first time and I couldn’t stop laughing. The kids made s’mores and Chris and Ben grilled dinner. Margee loved playing Uno with us every night. We spent hours at the beach. On our last vacation in 2011, we had no idea that you would die less than a year later. What treasured memories you created for us.

In April, Cassie, Joe, Symphony, and SophiAna joined Chris and me for a week at the beach in Costa Rica. It was a different kind of vacation than our Outer Banks memories, but your statement from this sermon in 1995 resonates with me, “All of us were there. It is not something I often get to experience. I remembered once again how precious they are to me. They are not ones to be taken for granted.” 

You close your sermon saying:

Let us listen to Christ’s word for us. Let us feel the eternal presence of his love as we struggle to live out our Christian lives. 

Family Vacations - Trouble the Water

100 word meditation inspired by Luke 14:25-34 in conversation with my dad

Grace is free but not cheap.
Step out of your comfort zone.
Cultivate relationships with sacred siblings.

The daily grind of an unjust economic system is exhausting. 
It’s not what Jesus means by “pick up your cross.”

Trouble the water:
Engage in restful activity;
Connect with the creator;
Delight in quality moments 
	with kin-dom soulmates.

Stay salty.
Confront powers and principalities;
Resist oppressive legislation;
Speak truth to power. 
Love God and neighbor.

Make time to dwell in the calm surf.
Strengthen your spirit. 
When you are called,
courageously follow Christ into the riptide;
Pull drowning vision bearers into liberation.

My dad died in 2012 and I inherited a box of his sermons. In 2021 I began unboxing them and having new conversations with him. Read more about this project:

Life is like a journey. Indeed, we often talk about the journey of life. Within life's journey, there are different roads that we travel. Perhaps the most important of these is our spiritual journey. On the spiritual journey, things happen to give us a fuller sense of where we are and where we are going.

These events are revelations or epiphanies. Epiphany. It is a funny sounding word. Its most simple definition is an act of revelation. An epiphany is an enlightening or astonishing disclosure. I have had a few in my life. There is one that comes particularly to mind this morning.

In 1979, I felt God's call into the ordained ministry. That in itself was powerful enough. However, circumstances did not allow this part of my journey to proceed on my timetable. The plan was for me to enter Drew Theological School in 1980. That summer and fall was a very difficult time. 

In August, the attempt at adopting a child failed. Christa had been in our home 7 months. Giving her up was not easy.

I still owned a Carvel store. The man who was to be my manager decided that he could not handle that role. He told me this on the weekend before I was supposed to move. So I shut down plans for that year.

Three weeks later, my father was put into the hospital. He was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. The tumor could not be removed. The prognosis was that he had 3 to 9 months to live. That fall was filled with darkness and despair.

Every weekend I would travel the 200 miles each way from my home to the hospital. Often, we would bring the children. On one particularly dreary day, we were traveling back from the hospital. We had come over the Bear Mountain Bridge, going through Bear Mountain Park. It was raining. It was dreary. It was getting dark. When suddenly, the clouds cracked open. Sunlight poured through. Two deer were standing quietly in the meadow. A rainbow was in the sky.

It was an epiphany.

I stopped the car. It was a spiritual moment. I knew that it would not be repeated, but that it would last forever.  And it has. In that epiphany, God was saying that no matter what happened, everything would be alright.

It so happened that a miracle occurred. The tumor disappeared. Thirteen years later my father is still alive and well. Soon to celebrate his 86th birthday.

Epiphanies are rare. They are likely to show up anywhere. God can show forth in the most unexpected of places, like a meadow.

Or a manger.

For the Wise Men, the Epiphany showed up in a dirty stable. For the Wise Men it was the experience of a lifetime. And perhaps for us, too.

T. S. Eliot captures what it must have been like for the Magi in his poem "Journey of the Magi."

In the poem, the last living Wise Man reports to Matthew what the trip was really like. It is not quite the picture that we get on our Christmas cards. It is rather a picture of doubt, struggle, loss, and despair. The journey was a risk. At the epiphany, each of them knew that life could never be the same. Each of them realized that what they knew in the old life had passed away. Epiphanies are like that. They signal both a birth and a death.

For me, that meadow Epiphany reminded me that God is in charge and that Christ is present. And when Christ is present in our lives, the old must pass away. Things change. Like the magi of Eliot's poem, we can be "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.”

Epiphany reminds us once again of the glory of the Christ and the promise of the child who becomes the man of the cross. Our own lives represent a journey (of sorts) to the manger. It goes on to the cross. And then on to the empty tomb. It is through this journey that light, wisdom, understanding, love, are truly appropriated as a gift from God.

Melissa’s Response: June 22, 2024

Dear Dad,

In my fourth year of seminary, I realized that it was going to be nearly impossible to take the number of classes I needed to finish that year unless I quit my job – which financially was not an option. It felt like life, including your illness and death in 2012, had disrupted my journey. 

On what was supposed to be my graduation weekend in 2014, I instead went on a church retreat. That Saturday morning, I sat on the porch, mindful that most of my classmates were reaching their goals that morning. I prayed for understanding about what I was supposed to be doing with this extra year. I felt SO READY to be a pastor.  Why would I need to wait? It felt unfair and not in line with what I believed God wanted me to do.

As I sat on the porch reflecting and discerning – not without a few tears - I saw a butterfly on the deck. It was still but not sick – it just sat there.  I found peace with the reality that while transformation had happened, it was not yet time to fly. When I mentioned it to some friends later that day, one noted that perhaps the flower that the butterfly was intended for was still preparing itself. 

In your words, “It was a spiritual moment. I knew that it would not be repeated, but that it would last forever. And it has.”

Shortly after that retreat, my district superintendent reached out to me to see if I was available to lead a church whose pastor had gone on medical leave. That September, I began my first appointment in Croton-on-Hudson, while continuing my work at Global Ministries, and wrapping up seminary. It was an exhausting year, but it landed me in a place that fit for the next four years. It was a helpful reminder to me not to get so stuck in “my” expectation of how God’s promises will work out. I experienced Spirit movement offering me an Epiphany of assuredness to navigate the roadblocks. 

Since I was only nine years old, my memories of the time you reflect on from 1980 are a bit muddled. I vaguely remember the different situations individually, but was not aware that those crises all happened one after the other like that. I can’t imagine what that was like emotionally and physically for you and Mom while also caring for TJ, Ben, and me as well as your business. 

The season with Christa is especially painful. I was excited to have an older sister. But I had no concept of the trauma that she had experienced coming to our family as a 13 year old who had been abused by her mother. Our household became chaotic. 

We never knew when things would erupt because Christa lied, stole, or otherwise got in trouble. When we said goodbye to her, there was a sense of relief in our family - like a cloud had been lifted. Still, while I know you and Mom faced an impossible dilemma, I wonder what impact the “rejection” had on Christa as well as the insecurity it might have instilled in my sister and brother who were adopted. 

On the heels of that agonizing year, we spent our weekends going on long drives and hours at the hospital visiting Grandpa when we thought he was dying - though he actually lived to be 91! When everything felt so heavy on one of our trips home, you pulled the car over. We saw two deer in the meadow and a rainbow in the sky. It was a shared experience by the five of us in the car. 

You mention it was a spiritual moment for you when you felt God assuring you “no matter what happened, everything would be all right.” 

Dad, you said those same words to me the last time you spoke with me. And while, yes, life is all right and even wonderful in many ways, a piece of me is missing without you here. 

There are countless moments on this journey that take strange and painful turns. Thankfully there are also the bright spots, when I trust God to lead me. Sometimes I realize I must stay focused on the star even when it is through the lens of the cross. 

You preached about the journey of the magi on Epiphany Sunday in 1994. These wise ones were looking for Christ. They had a map but then adjusted their expectations and shifted their understanding of where God was sending them.  

You close your sermon:

Our own lives represent a journey (of sorts) to the manger. It goes on to the cross. And then on to the empty tomb. It is through this journey that light, wisdom, understanding, love, are truly appropriated as a gift from God . . . Let us rise. Let us shine. For our light has come. And the glory of our Chris has risen upon us. 

100 Word Meditation on Kairos
Inspired by Mathew 2:1-12 In Conversation with my Dad
(The word Kairos is a Greek word meaning “opportunity,” or “fitting time.”)

You set out on the journey,
	faithful to God’s call.
Unexpected tragedy
	creates sharp curves in the road. 
Tired and weary, you struggle 
	through tears and frustration.

Divine promise shows up right on time:
Deer stand in a meadow,
Colors arch across the sky,
Butterflies bear witness to your readiness,
A bright star illuminates the way 
	through the lens of the cross. 

Change is inevitable.
Be alive to pain and balanced by joy.
Trust once-in-a-lifetime epiphanies
	that last forever.
Everything’s gonna be all right.

Holiness sets the guiding pace.
Arise. Shine.
We’ll get there in God’s Kairos. 

My dad died in 2012 and I inherited a box of his sermons. In 2021 I began unboxing them and having new conversations with him. Read more about this project:

Gloria Gonzales, a woman who lives in W. New York, NJ, tells this story.

"You grow up fast in Spanish Harlem, especially if your parents are supers of the building.

You see a lot...FBI agents looking for tenants… welfare workers lurking in the alley trying to catch a father “visiting"... the bill collectors posing as relatives.

There are also the good times... for example, the open-house parties every Friday night, especially the night that Jose was to come home from three years in the Marines. Every family had contributed a home-cooked dish and a dollar for the beer and soda. Neighbors began decorating the apartment with crepe paper and balloons the night before. Someone was dispatched to the local funeral parlor to borrow some chairs. 

The day of the party, relatives arrived from the Bronx and from as far away as San Juan. Papo, Jose's cousin, and I were posted on the stoop as lookouts. A taxi arrived and deposited its passenger. Papo and I paid scant attention to the tall brunette in the off-the-shoulder blouse and billowing skirt.

It wasn't until she screamed our names and swept us off the ground in a crushing hug that we realized that the perfumed woman was Jose! In a daze, we lugged her suitcase up two flights of stairs. Our eyes were fixed on Jose's ankles, strapped into stiletto heels, as he took the stairs two at a time, urging us to hurry. With the music of Tito Puente in the background, Jose threw the door open and announced, "I am home!"

"It's me! Jose. The person has not changed. Only the outside. You are my family; I love every one of you. If you want me to go, I will go and not be angry. But, if you find it in your heart to love Josefina, I would love to stay."

No one spoke. Everyone stared. Those who didn't speak English waited for the whispered translation. Even the outside city noises seemed to halt abruptly. I stood in the hallway. I still held the suitcase. I dared not to enter. After what seemed like hours--but could only have been moments-- his mother stumbled forward and said to her son, "Are you hungry?” I was eleven. It was the best party I ever went to.”

I know that to some this is an offensive story. That is one of the points of telling it. For the original parable was offensive to the people who first heard it. "The father took back his son who ate with pigs?” It had shock value. It was radical. Radical is not a word that we like to associate with our religion. Jesus was a radical. Contrast the behavior of Jesus and that of his critics. Tax collectors and sinners in that time were not just misunderstood friendly folk. They were considered to be the worst of the worst of that society. Tax collectors collaborated with the enemy. They over-taxed their own people. Sinners were so designated because their offenses had gotten them thrown out of the synagogue. The feeling about Jesus was that "birds of a feather flock together.” Jesus made the story so radical so that we would listen.

Sure, the son could have come home to bread and water. Yes, the father could have given him sackcloth to wear. Ashes instead of jewelry. Kneeling instead of dancing. Who in the church would have attended the party as originally described? Indeed, which of us would have stayed at Josefina's home-coming party?

The problem with parables, of course, is that we consider ourselves to be one of the insiders. We relate to the older brother, perhaps. Possibly we could relate to the father. But, we don't easily associate ourselves with the prodigal son. For these stories are not necessarily about repentance. Though, for sure, there are times when repentance is appropriate, even necessary.

But, ultimately these stories are about love. Unconditional love. They are stories about God caring for us as we are. That Was the story in the father's house, That was the joy in Josefina's homecoming. The stories could have had tragically different endings. But, they didn't.

There was joy. One commentator says that "joy" is the key word in the parable. He asks, "Will you share in the true joy of the prodigal’ return? If not, why not?

If you were able to feel the joy of a shepherd finding a lost sheep… Or if you are able to feel the joy of a woman finding a lost coin, why are you unable to feel the joy of the father? Do you get more excited about animals and money than about people? Who are you in relation to God and humans in light of your absence of joy? Why are you not able to participate in the divine necessity to rejoice?” 

Melissa’s Response: June 14, 2024

Dear Dad,

Near the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, my phone rang and I saw an alert “Kyra’s cell phone calling.” This young teenager is someone who I have adored since birth. So I was delighted to pick up the phone and we chatted about our life under stay-at-home orders. Then came the news, “Well Aunt Melissa, the reason I am calling is because I wanted to let you know I am a dude and my name is Caden.” 

We talked a bit about what steps he was taking to live into his authentic self with new clothes and an awesome new hair cut, making sure his teachers know his pronouns. Central to living into his authentic gender identity was his name. “As soon as I heard it, it was my name and every time I hear someone call me that name or use my correct pronouns, I get a thrill.”

He expressed a sense of liberation and opening up with each new person he told. And while he was not raised in a faith community, he commented that whenever he sees a church with the rainbow flag he feels affirmed.

I am grateful to serve a congregation that flies a rainbow flag in front of the church and for decades has been committed to walking “Hand in hand, gay and straight . . . celebrating love in its infinite variety. . . ” In November, we joined other Park Slope churches to host a Trans Voices for Transformation conversation.  A panel of Christians from the trans community shared their faith experiences. It is a joy to experience broadened expressions that too often have been excluded from the church. 

Dad, I wonder how your conservative suburban congregation received Josefina’s story in 1995. Could they relate? While there was beginning to be more openness about being gay or lesbian in that era, and drag performances were beginning to be less hidden, I don’t remember that we often spoke about people being trans. 

The 21st-century acceptance of nonbinary and trans folks among Gen Z seems to be creating a culture of liberation. Unfortunately, this openness is responded to with backlash as conservative society doubles down with harmful legislation.

So often our families or other circumstances guide us to believe certain things about ourselves and others. Expectations, societal pressure, the media, and advertising affect and distort our understanding of who God is calling us to be. Dad, you never wavered and because of that, my theology was shaped to trust a God who created each person in their wonderful and fabulous image. Even when you and Mom separated and later divorced, her coming out was not a negative part of that equation. She took me to Pride parades from the time I was 12 and I never questioned same-sex relationships because they had always been integrated into my understanding of what love looks like. Cassie and her kids have been attending Pride celebrations since they were babies. When SophiAna was three and experienced her first Drag Story Hour, her only shock was that a “grown-up could do a cartwheel!”

When I returned to the church in my early 30s, it was important to me to be part of a reconciling congregation. I found myself in a welcoming and affirming United Methodist Church and later began working for a United Methodist agency. Fourteen years ago this week, I heard my call to ministry as I sat in the top row of the bleachers during a United Methodist ordination service. I felt my spirit would split if I did not respond to God’s call. Tears sprang to my eyes as in that moment, I understood not just the injustice, but the cruelty of blocking someone’s ordination based on gender or sexuality. For most of my life, the United Methodist denomination explicitly discriminated against LGBTQ children of God.

In 2012, two years before my ordination, I thought full inclusion might never happen. I watched the proceedings of the General Conference unveil the deep decay of a broken denomination. General Conference closed the same week that you died and I remember thinking, “I just watched my dad die and now I am watching my church die.”

But over the past decade, with a lot of work, pain, and backroom deals, the most recent General Conference was different.  Last month, the United Methodist Church removed the discriminatory language from the Book of Discipline. Local churches are free to be reconciling and fully inclusive. I am overjoyed, even as I am mindful of the scars on too many bodies, minds, and spirits.

In your story, Josefina comes home, not just to family, but to the full understanding of who they are. I imagine the beloved community joyfully embracing all God created by responding with dancing, music, sparkle, whole heart, and reunion. Like the prodigal son, United Methodists are finally moving in a way that leads to our own homecoming reunion as we live out who God is calling us to be. 

You closed your sermon with these words:

In this time . . . we prepare for the time of rejoicing. We look more closely at ourselves to see where we might grow more in the spirit of God's love. We look to the day of resurrection as one of hope and joy.

And we are reminded that God loves us... and we are called upon to love.

100 Word Sermon:

Inspired by Luke 15:1-32 in conversation with my dad

Nothing can separate you 
	from the enduring love of our Heavenly Parent.

You are free to wander
	trusting that when you look back
	with the slightest yearning for wholeness,
	divine compassion will beckon you. 

In your humanity, 
	don’t allow institutions to distort your identity 
	as a child of a radical God.

Resist internalizing the bitter response of others. 
They do not understand their privilege
	and do not see your sacred worth.

Grace abounds.
Receive the embrace.
Embody the fullness 
	of who you are created to be. 

You felt lost.
You are found.
The angels rejoice
The family celebrates.
Welcome home!

My dad died in 2012 and I inherited a box of his sermons. In 2021 I began unboxing them and having new conversations with him. Read more about this project:

Just a little over two weeks ago we remembered the tragedy and violence that occurred in our nation at the hands of terrorists. Over a year's time, the passion of anger had begun turning into the solemnity of peace and prayer. Most of the gatherings I saw brought people together to remember, to pray, and to weep. Weeping is the proper response when one is in grief or in pain. Some of those prayers were for peace, not for revenge. And we still weep.

Certainly weeping is not new to human culture.

I would be surprised if Eve (and even perhaps Adam) did not weep when Abel was killed. Psalm 137 tells us, "by the rivers of Babylon---there we sat down and wept when we remember Zion."

And then there is Jesus. We know of his tears of grief when he heard of the death of Lazarus. And we remember on the day we call Palm Sunday, the words of Jesus.

As he saw the city and got closer, he wept. "If you even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes."

It was not the first nor the last time that people wept over Jerusalem. 
Three thousand years ago David captured Jerusalem from the Canaanites. In 586 B.C. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon captured the city and hauled the people off. "By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept. " Jerusalem was almost destroyed by the Syrians in 168 BC. And, then, of course there was the Roman occupation in Jesus' time. And finally the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. The land was divided after World War II.

The history of Jerusalem is to attack or invade. It is in defensive mode or ready for war. And so, the Psalmist reminds us to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem." May "peace be within your walls and security in your towers."

"Peace be within you."

The Bible is filled with war and violence. The violence in the Bible is not an approval for what is happening in our world today. It is just the opposite. The Bible calls for peace. It calls for Shalom, God's peace that passes understanding.

We know that Shalom is more than just lack of war. Still, the end of war would be a start.  We know that war does not bring peace. Certainly our endeavor in Vietnam did not work. In the long run the Invasion of Iraq was about oil and not about freedom.

Israel tries to put down the Palestinians, but only raises the need for the Palestinians to defend and fight back. We tend to forget that the present Intifada began when Ariel Sharon took an armed march across the Temple Mount and declared Israel’s eternal sovereignty over this holy ground. This is a place that is holy for three major faiths, Christian, Muslim, and Jew.

Still, leaders of governments will be able to persuade the people that the cause is right. We know that wars are often fought for reasons other than what the people are told. And who suffers most? The women and children, of course.

We tend to forget or make excuses for dropping the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima. We do not freely acknowledge that most of the 100,000 maimed and killed were students and women.

Who can recall the firebombing of Dresden when another 100,000 women and children were burned to death in their shelters and homes?

Who can recall the number of innocent women and children who were killed or massacred in Vietnam?

And those in Palestine and Israel who suffer the hands of war. 

Well we are sorry for the deaths of innocents in Afghanistan. But we do not acknowledge the loss of as many as 500,000 children's and women's lives because of sanctions imposed after the first Gulf war. As we prepare for war again we do not think of the loss of innocent lives. No, war is not healthy for children and other living beings. They are merely casualties of war. Or they are collateral damage. Not really human beings.

So, now we are poised to go to war with Iraq.

Surely, Jesus weeps.

Is he standing on the sidelines cheering and yelling for victory? That is not the Jesus we know and worship.

Jesus wept.

Melissa Response: May 9, 2024

Dear Dad -

In early November, I came across this sermon about peace and put it aside. It felt too soon. Just weeks before, Hamas orchestrated a brutal, horrific terrorist attack throughout Israel, killing more than 1,000 people and taking hundreds of innocent civilians hostage. Even as I knew that all hell would be unleashed in Gaza, it felt important to sit with the evil of what Hamas had done without conflating it with the injustice against the Palestinian people. The Jewish people have fought for survival since Biblical times and more recently carry the generational trauma of the holocaust and ongoing antisemitism. There must be a safe land for Jewish people to thrive.

In tension with this, since Oct 7, the Israeli military has responded with disproportionate power - slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza in this unholy war. They have taken countless hostages and called them “prisoners” without due process. “No, war is not healthy for children and other living beings. They are merely casualties of war. Or they are collateral damage.” The conflict did not begin with the brutality of the Hamas attacks. While there is no justification for the attacks on October, 7, As you point out, the injustice against Palestinians has been perpetuated for decades.

Just a few months after you died in 2012, I had the opportunity to travel to Israel and Palestine for the opening of the Methodist office in Jerusalem. I had never been to the Holy Land before, and centuries of hostility were evident everywhere. Not only the Jewish and Muslim conflict but even the Christian church itself is divided in how different denominations claim areas of the sacred sites. 

I stood with Palestinians who work outside of Bethlehem as we lined up in a cage at 4 am to endure the long process of checking IDs and going through metal detectors. Faulty equipment or workers taking breaks without assigning someone to take their place often hold up the line. Standing with the people as they went through this degrading experience was something I will never forget. It was at the Bethlehem checkpoint, I think, the city of his birth, that Jesus would weep today . . . 

I was encouraged by the Jewish people who find ways to monitor and engage with the people on the other side of the so-called security process and who realize the oppression and suffering that the system causes the Palestinian people. 

With every Palestinian act of resistance and uprising, Israel grows more fearful and causes more suffering.  And US tax dollars are funding the Israeli government’s retaliation. Students across this country are rising up to demand a change. And instead of listening to their requests for divestment, the powers and principalities are responding by militarizing the police to stop them by force. 

 “As Jesus came near the city, he wept over it.” 

Your sermon on peace was preached just one year after the 9/11 attacks. I wonder what the reaction was from your colleagues in questioning the US invasion of Afghanistan and impending war with Iraq. Did they feel it was too soon?

In 2001, I wasn’t a churchgoer but the Sunday after 9/11, I needed to be in church. The pastor asked us to envision with our eyes closed,  a love source filling the spaces where violence had happened that week . . . And then to imagine that love spreading out,  with a spirit of peace and calm moving from person to person, strengthening mind, body, and spirit . . . moving from New York City, across the United States, crossing every border to touch every person across the world.

After the shock of that day, witnessing the towers on fire before they fell, and for weeks seeing the smoke on my daily commute to and from work in NYC, I resisted the drumbeat of war. There didn’t seem to be a peace movement rallying against going to war in Afghanistan. Cassie and I finally came across a local Food Not Bombs chapter led by some young people in the community. Every Sunday for the next year, we prepared food that local merchants would have otherwise thrown away. We gathered at a local park and shared it with our neighbors in Hoboken. It felt like if we couldn’t actively stop the war in Afghanistan, at least we could create some moments of solidarity and meet a need in our community. That war lasted from 2001-2021!

Dad, you talk about the endless lack of peace in Jerusalem. I can’t help but think the same in the US. This country started with a genocide against Native Americans and on the backs of people who were stolen from Africa. Our destructive aggression causes suffering to other nations and bleeds into the streets of our cities and towns with gun violence. And then we ask ourselves as we did after 9/11, “why do they hate us?” Jesus might say,  "If you even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes."

My whole life, you taught me the ways that lead to peace. As a little girl, my bedroom was decorated with curtains and sheets depicting Picasso’s “Bouquet of Peace.” Images of the Vietnam War were an ever-present backdrop on the news that gave me nightmares. I didn’t understand that the fighting was far away. The terror that was happening to other children filled my psyche with sadness and dread that woke me up screaming and crying in the middle of the night. One of my earliest memories is of you coming into my room after I had a violent dream. You assured me that I was safe and that we would move if signs of war threatened us.

So much of my childhood was impacted by the threat of war and our response through the peace movement. Mom tells me that she took me to my first demonstration when I was only 6 weeks old taking over a building on the Cornell campus. When we were school-aged, my sister and I would create protest signs and march around our playroom chanting “No Nukes!" From marching on Washington to writing letters to the president to watching movies in our youth group like “War Games” and “The Day After,” the idea that life could end with a push of a button was always in my consciousness. 

You taught me that even when it feels overwhelming, even when we recognize that wars have always been fought, through our tears, we can be voices for peace. We can be agents of shalom. And not only can we, but as Christians, this is our mandate. 

You closed your sermon with these words:

We pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Will peace be within us as the Psalmist prays? Perhaps someday.  Peace is certainly not within us now but the promise is this, as the risen Christ told the disciples and thus tells us in Luke 24: Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

A 100-word sermon on
”the things that lead to peace”

inspired by Psalm 122 & Luke 19:41-44 in conversation with my Dad

How many families will you kill to capture one terrorist?
Is an Israeli child worth more than a Palestinian one? 
Jesus weeps for every sacred life slain. 

You know the things that lead to lasting shalom. 
Instead, greed, power, and fear corrupt the slow, heart work.
Empire convinces us “they” are the enemy.
Blood stains the souls of each of us who is complicit.

Pray for God’s deep salaam.
Divest from violence and oppression.
Speak truth to power. 

The conflict is not new. 
Learn from the past. 
Recognize the divine in everyone. 
Declare with your actions “Peace be with you.”

Learn more about this project:

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY DAD

I have a collection of T-shirts.

They aren't anything that I deliberately set out to (acquire ) but many of them mark moments in time. One struck my fancy as I was thinking about this morning's sermon.

Do vou remember that time? It was May of 1986.

The Hands Across America idea had been growing for months. It was an optimistic endeavor to say the least. Linking hands from one side of this great country of ours to the other.

There was something about it, though, that pleased my Christian sensibilities. Thousands upon thousands would join in a line that would extend across the United states of America. Many would say it was foolish. Others would say that it would not accomplish anything.

But. I can tell you, from my point of view, it was a sight and feeling that I would never forget As I stood in the line and looked to the righ-and left, there were people as far as I could see. Tears of joy and satisfaction came to my eyes.

For a moment in time, the people of this country were engaged in a common cause that was so very positive.

Across this country, people of every race and creed were joined hand-in-hand.

It was a show of compassion and love. . . 

In the letter to the Ephesians, the author says

in verse 14.

"For Christ is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing walls of hostility. ...and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.”

This is a phrase that spoke to me as I meditated on the morning's reading. All through the Hebrew scriptures there is reference to God's inclusiveness. It is very clear that exclusions practiced by many are not God-made at all. It's just that along the way we got the message a little mixed up.  It was true for the early Christian Church, also.

People were making up all kinds of excuses to keep people out Of the life of Christian faith. Paul did his best to break down the barriers that were arising in the early Christian world.

But, time marched on. The walls that were broken down soon sprang up in another way and another place. And, sad to say, the walls still are around us today.

The obvious come to mind like the Berlin Wall. 

Some are invisible.
Racial barriers.
Sexist barriers.
Yes, walls are terrible things.
They give a not very subtle message.

God calls us to be the ground swell under the walls that create hostility.
Jesus removed fences between humans. . . 
He brought to us a religion founded on love.
How do we think of the person of color, ?
Or the person with a handicapping condition?
Or the rich person?
Or the poor person?
Or the homeless person?
Or the alcoholic?
Or the drug addict?
How do we feel about someone who is gay or lesbian?
Or a person who has AIDS? Or the Elderly? Or the younger folks?

Our answer will determine how far we have to go to break down the walls of hostility that have been created in the name of Jesus Christ.

Walls can be seen in a positive light, though, if they are understood correctly.

The line or wall of people in the "Hands Across America" event is one example.

Melissa Response: June 25, 2023

Dear Dad -

I was just finishing my first year of high school in Union City, NJ where you were appointed to your first pastoral appointment. The whole family participated in Hands Across America and we were assigned to a spot in Kearny, NJ - coincidentally just a few steps away from the United Methodist Church where you would receive your second appointment a couple of years later and where you preached this sermon.

Like you, I was struck by the concept that we could embody a connection with a more than 3,000 mile human chain for Hands Across America. 

Indeed,  “For a moment in time, the people of this country were engaged in a common cause that was so very positive.”

Before cell phones, social media, and streaming services, there was this moment in time when 6 million people from across the country came together to create a human bridge of awareness about the famine in Ethiopia and other places in Africa. 

Years later, in 2017, I joined the Women’s March in NYC. I wasn't originally planning to march. The idea of dealing with the chaos in NYC seemed like a huge pain. But Cassie convinced me I would regret if I didn’t join the growing chain of people who were marching in more than 600 cities around the world.  It felt incredible to have such sister power concentrated not just in one city but around the world. 

For a moment in time, the people of this country and other countries were engaged in a common cause that was so very . . . well maybe positive isn’t the right word . . . . but committed to being a visible sign of resistance.

The reality was that while millions of people took part in it, the US has become more divided than ever. The Women’s March took place the day after the presidential inauguration and over the next four years, irreparable damage was done in this country. 

Within weeks, the US borders were significantly restricted, keeping families separated and barring some of the world’s most vulnerable people from entering. The new president promised to expand a wall along the US/Mexico border, literally dividing people from each other.

By the end of May 2020 in the early months of the COVID-19 Pandemic, a White police officer murdered a Black man named George Floyd. Once again many of us hit the streets which were filled with people rising up in a chain of humanity demanding justice. We shouted George Floy’s name along with names like Amaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor who had also been victims of modern-day lynchings.

For a moment in time, many people of this country were engaged in a common cause that was painfully necessary to confront how systems of whiteness have created walls of injustice for hundreds of years in the US. Some of us who benefit from white privilege began to understand our own complicity in new ways.  We examined how to build bridges to healing and reconciliation, recognizing the deep need for reparations. 

I witnessed signs of hope as people in the United States began to focus on how Confederate flags and monuments perpetuate racism that continues to be part of this nation’s fabric. Taking down the confederate flag and statues from statehouses and other public places does not end racism but each removes another brick that keeps this nation from recognizing that black lives matter. 

Dad, As I look back over your sermons going back to the early 1980s, you illuminated the movements like “Hands Across America” that could build a bridge to something better even as you confronted unjust systems through a lens of faith. 

You name some of the walls that existed at the time of your sermon including the Berlin Wall that came down the following year. 

When I visited Palestine in 2012, I was alarmed by the so-called security wall that surrounds the Palestinian territories.  Wherever you go in the region, there is this insidious structure snaking through the land. Walking around Bethlehem feels like being in an open air prison. The huge wall surrounds the city and access points to different neighborhoods can be locked down at any time. The wall is just one barrier that prevents reconciliation and healing between Israelis and Palestinians. 

Dad, in so many ways, your life of activism taught me how to be part of dismantling walls of separation and building bridges of conversation, solidarity, and hope. The Palestinian side of the separation wall has prophetic messages graffitied on them. One of the messages that has stuck with me is “now that you have seen, you are responsible.”

Perhaps one of those responsibilities is to mark the times in history when bridges of humanity create moments that cannot be ignored or forgotten. When we reach out and take another person’s hand in solidarity. 

In the fall of 2011, Occupy Wall Street, led by young people, rekindled your passion for social justice. We visited Zuccotti Park several times together, including on your 66^th birthday. Among other actions, we offered communion to the occupiers. Particularly at the beginning of the movement, Occupy Wall Street offered a vision of what was possible when people live communally, share provisions donated by supporters, create safe spaces for women, and non-violently work together for economic justice.

And now we see these inclusive signs of love and compassion are emerging from the upcoming generation. This morning I was so proud to see an article about my 16-year-old gay transgender honorary nephew. At Caden’s request, for the first time, his town raised the Pride flag in front of Borough Hall earlier this week. For a moment in time, the people of Fanwood, NJ were engaged in a common cause that was so very positive.

These actions are not the final move. They each represent a moment in time that removes a brick in the dividing wall and is a sign of commitment to begin to build up something new. These moments are links in a human chain that reminds us that we are all connected.

You closed your sermon with these words:

Our task, as Christians, is to see that (the church is) seen as a place that embodies the love, compassion, and inclusiveness of Jesus Christ.

That can only come from the people who make up the church.

As we work together, and grow together . . . somehow, by the grace of God, the walls will come down and all will bask in the sunlight of God's love.

A 100 word sermon
inspired by Ephesians 2:11-22 in conversation with my Dad

Empire constructs dividing walls
Turning us against each other.

Separation, 
othering, 
hostility,
Are tools that disrupt sacred connections. 

Illusions keep us from engaging in solidarity
Barbed wire tears at the very fabric of our souls. 

Brick by brick . . . 
Dismantle the barriers
That interrupt the covenants of promise. 

Hand in hand . . . 
Tear down symbols of white supremacy.
Replace them with beloved community.

Shoulder to shoulder  
Christ’s hands work through ours and
Repair what humanity has broken

Moment by Moment
Spiritual kin-dom builders
Create bridges that lead to Divine dwelling places
Where all will bask in the sunlight of God’s love. 

Learn more about this project:

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY DAD

Introduction to Conversions with my Dad

Chris Hinnen’s Sermon Jan 16, 1994

The call.
God calls.
We respond.
. . . 

Time and again in scripture the word that is God does not always speak to us loudly. Sometimes we need to lie back and simply listen.
Where do we find God? 
How does God find us?  . . . 

My journey towards Christ and the ordained ministry came about through the silence of God.
Many of you have heard the story. 
I was a non-practicing Christian who was an agnostic.

In the silence of a meadow,
Surrounded by trees,
On the top of a hill,
In a commune,
In Ithaca, NY,
God found me in the serenity of a moment.
The majesty of god’s creation screamed at me in sheer silence, “I made this.”

In another time, in another place, I was called forward on the journey.
The church was chaotic.
People were praying everywhere.
And crying.
Surrounding me, though, was a transcendent silence.
A peace that could only be called the peace that passes all understanding.
The peace of Christ.
The calm radiated off the image of the face of Christ that had mysteriously appeared on the altar cloth. 
Jesus Christ was to be the center of my life from then on.

A third time that God called to me was to the ordained ministry.
Again, I was in a church. 
It was St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Ithaca.
In the midst of that sermon one could have heard a pin drop on the red carpet.
It was one of those moments that occurs only rarely in preaching.
God was speaking to me through this man’s life story.
In the tranquility of that instant in time, I heard.
Be still. 

In the story of Samuel, we hear very simply how it is that we may still hear the voice of God . . . Eli’s advice to lie down is a way of saying, “Let go. Let God.” Lying down allowed Samuel to surrender to a force bigger than he. It was a way of saying to Samuel, and to us, “Trust the Sprit.” . . . 

Melissa Response: Feb 2, 2022

Dear Dad,

For most of my life you encouraged me to slow down. “Why do you always have do be doing something?” You asked me. Contemplation has never been my gift and to be honest, your seeming lack of a sense of urgency sometimes frustrated me. 

At the same time, I recognize that while you operated from a more chill posture, your stillness allowed you to listen and respond to God and God’s people. 

Where do we find God? 
How does God find us?  . . . 
A path of faith formation grew out of your agnosticism. 
This Spiritual not religious hippy family

A little girl playing in the grass aware of divine love all around me
The commune with friends named Forever, Love-Light, and Freedom
Transcendental Meditation - a family committed to 20 minutes of silence twice a day. 
A sensation of complete lightness and peace - which when I asked, Mom explained to me was called “bliss.” 
As a flower child In Ithaca, NY,
God found me in the serenity of many moments in time.
Life became more oriented around Christianity after the trip to Pennsylvania where Jesus’ face appeared to you and others on the altar cloth. 

I felt safe at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church 
with it’s stained glass images of Jesus, 
angels painted over the choir loft, 
the organ music and hymns filling the space. 
You and Mom presented me with the “Children’s Living Bible” on the day of my baptism. Fragile paper and the tiny print that was so different from my other books. 
There was a shift in our household as Jesus Christ found space in our home. 

You went to seminary and were ordained for ministry, 
But resisted pressuring me to be a “pastor’s kid.” 
My high school friends didn’t go to church. 
Sunday mornings became a chance to sleep in.
I drifted away from being part of a faith community. 

Spiritually parched. 
A young single mom, 
caring for Cassie 
going to college and working to exhaustion to pay the bills 
(but never all in the same month). 
My faith stagnated. 
But the door was always open 
even when I only visited your church on Christmas and Easter.
Way too tired to sit still.
Way too busy to hear God for 15 years.

Life changes and sometimes we are forced to stop. 
In that pause, we might find ourselves pulled forward in the journey. 
Your sister died and I yearned for the blessed assurance that I had sensed in Aunt Margee.
I began working at a Christian school and took a leap of faith by accepting a deep pay cut.  (You convinced me I would have enough money if I did what I felt called to do.) 
Cassie and I found ourselves at Washington Square United Methodist Church which later became the Church of the Village.
The intimate setting,
transfiguration sermon
warm congregation,
unique sacred jazz.
In that space, I found a peace that could only be called the peace that passes all understanding.
The peace of Christ.
Jesus Christ was to be the center of my life from then on.

Six years later God called me into ordained ministry.
Spiritual healing after tragic loss.
Praying with people in their vulnerability;
Feeling God’s love pour through me and into others. 
I wrote in my journal. 
“I am feeling the tug and understanding when people say they are called. It is time for stillness and to focus on what God is asking of me” 
In the tranquility of that instant in time, I heard.
Be still. 

We celebrated my 39th birthday, 
And you joyfully hugged me when I shared the news 
You traveled 2 hours to hear me preach my first sermon and affirmed the words that I had declared.
I treasure our conversations while I discovered the depth of scripture and explored theology as a seminarian. 

And when at last I was ordained,
while you had already physically left us,
I felt your hands on my head as the bishop declared “Melissa, take authority as an elder to preach the Word of God, to administer the Holy Sacraments and to order the life of the Church.”

You wrote: 

In these days, the vision of God seems to be rare. But, it is not absent. God’s presence is with us continually in this world. If we let go, if we listen, God will speak to each of us. The question is, “how will we respond?”

100-Word Sermon - Where do we find God

Inspired by 1 Samuel 3:1-10 in conversation with my dad

Visions are not widespread. 
God is not well known.
Where do we find God? 
How does God find us?

The world swirls with suffering.
Spiritually parched. 

Shhhhh . . .
Pause . . .  
Listen . . . 
God still speaks - 
Through vessels of creation, 
In paintings and poems, life stories and quiet stillness. 

Within relationships and testimony
Joy bubbles up alongside pain. 

The soul gradually realigns itself 
A lifelong process
Guided by the Divine 

Where do we find God? 
How does God find us?  

In sacred moments of serenity.
In the tranquility of an instant. 

The vision is rare but it is not absent. 
How will you respond? 

On Labor Day, Ann, and I and the children went on a picnic. It was a simple affair--Kentucky fried chicken and a couple of six packs of soda.

When we got to the park, we noticed a young child crying. He had become separated from his parents. When he saw his mother. The tears stopped instantly. A look of joy came over his face. The same was true for his mother. Lost and found . . . 

Whenever I go to the post office, I take our dog "Challen" with me. One day I was not holding her leash tightly and it slipped from my hand. She rushed out into traffic. As I got more frantic, so did she. Finally in a soft, loving voice I called, "Come here, girl. It’s O.K.” And she did.

Luke 15 contains the very essence of God's love for us. 

A sheep is lost and then found.

A valuable coin is lost and then found

A young impetuous son leaves home, to return to a forgiving, not judging parent. This is how our God operates.

The three parables of Jesus tell the love of God in the simplest, most powerful of terms. They are stories that we can relate to. They are a part of our own lives even now in the 20th century. In our worst moments of failure, we think in terms of judgement and punishment. We fear those things, even more than the danger of our lostness. So we continue to run, not realizing that our God is forgiving, loving, gentle, and just.

My friend Adria died last week of pneumocystis pneumonia. It is one of those opportunistic diseases that assault people with AIDS. Yes, she had AIDS. I met her about a year ago when I started working with people with AIDS. She was a former drug user, back when nobody even knew what AIDS was. But the disease caught up with her, even after she had been clean for many years.

She was a beautiful woman, not so much in physical beauty. It was in her tenderness, her warmth, her willingness to help others even in the face of the disease that would destroy her. . . 

When she was diagnosed with the disease, God’s love for her showed through. She was able to take the disease and transform her life with it.

She became a truly spiritual person. Earthy to be sure but essentially spiritual. She was turning back to God, back to Jesus. The Good Shepherd sought her and she responded. God used her to help others. And now she's home.

Melissa Hinnen’s response
June 21, 2022

Dear Dad,

What originally caught my eye about this particular message when I was scanning through the treasure chest of your sermons was the mention of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the opening. 

Just this week, Chris and I brought our oldest granddaughter and 3 of Ben’s girls to Prospect Park and packed a picnic. I don’t usually buy chicken, but I remembered how much I enjoyed the treat of KFC as a child and bought some Fresh Direct fried chicken to pack for the girls to eat (it was not nearly as good!). 

Your sermon in September 1986 marks such an ordinary moment in time for our family. We had been in Union City just over a year and we all were settling into your first church appointment. I had just entered my sophomore year of high school and was making a new set of friends. You and mom were still married. Cassie had not yet been conceived. In reading this, even your story about the family dog, it is remarkable how unremarkable our lives were when so much of what I remember of that era was tumultuous. Who could have known the wave of changes that would transform our family over the next year?

It’s so easy to take the before times for granted when you don’t realize the ordinary times are about to end and big changes are coming. The days before 9/11, before Covid, before divorce.

The days before your fall, three-month illness, and then untimely death on April 27, 2012. Days so ordinary that I felt completely unprepared for the catastrophic impact. 

Yet somehow the ordinary can become extra-ordinary as those moments get woven into today’s story.  As I tell your granddaughters and great-granddaughters how we used to bring fried chicken to the park on our family picnics when I was growing up. In introducing them to Star Wars, I tell them that we once had a dog named Obi which leads me to share how later, when I was in high school, we had a dog named Challen. 

Within your sermon, there is a closer look at the unsung remarkable stories of beauty and kindness even as a virus relentlessly caused pain and suffering, isolation and fear. 

I was a pre-teen when the epidemic began as “gay cancer” and the mainstream media was not covering the disease yet. I’m thankful that you and Mom were part of the early struggle to care for people with AIDS, de-stigmatize the disease, and ask for the government and the church to respond with help rather than with indifference.

Though we had no connection, Ryan White and I were the same age, and as he battled for the right to go to school the stigma and fear began to permeate my high school and shaped our coming of age. While I spoke out occasionally to correct misinformation (like the school nurse who told my class that we should not rule out the potential that kissing could spread the virus), I didn’t have the courage to share that we regularly had people like Adria in our home who had AIDS or were HIV positive. 

You and mom responded with friendship when many in society only rejected people with AIDS. It was an important lesson to me about keeping a strong moral compass especially when rhetoric created an environment that diminished the humanity in others. What an extraordinary model of Christian discipleship you set for us. And yet, in your telling of your friendship with Adria, it is the transformation in her life that you hold up as the model of following Christ. 

While much of that time was clouded by the self-absorption that comes with being a teenager, certainly the seeds were planted so that as I grew older, I had a sense of the roles that kindness and righteous anger play in creating a better world. You and Mom taught me that situations don’t define people and that everyone is beloved by our creator who yearns for us to be in full relationship with God and with one another. No matter what I did or didn’t do, you and God loved me unconditionally. And you challenged me to pay that love forward. 

You closed your sermon saying:
Even as we are lost, waiting for God to find us in our lostness, we are also the found. As such, we can share God's grace with others. For we are ambassadors of Christ to all of God's children. We have the choice of going with Jesus on the difficult perilous task of finding the lost or we can sit around here in the relative safety of the fold. It is our choice.

A 100 Word Sermon in Conversation with my Dad
Inspired by Luke 15: Lost and Found in Ordinary Time

Do we appreciate the moment before the crash?
contentment before a coin goes missing,
assurance before a sheep runs away,
fullness of family before a loved one takes off,
Ordinary time before everything changes?

Then, just when it feels like the end of the world
God - widow, shepherd, parent . . . 
Welcomes you to redeem what’s lost - 
Because you are of sacred value
And worth more than the worst thing you’ve done.

Traveling the hard road back to wholeness
Landing on both feet but in a different place, 
Your story becomes a beacon to others.  
Lost and found, grace leads us home. 

The image from the birthday picnic isn’t the one Dad references but is from several years earlier. I believe it’s from one of my birthday parties at Stewart Park in Ithaca, NY (1978). From Left to Right: Aunt Margee (Dad’s sister) holding my brother, Ben; Dad; Mom; school friends; my sister, TJ; and me. The photo from Prospect Park is from June 17, 2022. My granddaughter, SophiAna is next to me and three of my nieces are in the background. Margee Liz is the oldest and was born a few months after my Aunt Margee died.

Learn more about this project:

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY DAD

Introduction to Conversions with my Dad

Let’s face it. 

Being a father is not easy.

Granted, being a mother is not easy either, but this being Father’s Day I will stick with the experience with which I am most familiar.

In general, fathers have a reputation for not being there for their children. In many cases this is physically true. The father is just not there. For many other fathers there is an emotional distance that, once it is recognized, can be overcome. Still, that process is not easy. 

For those fathers in my generation and older, separation came very early in the the child’s life. I remember it well. When my daughter Melissa was born, I was sitting in a little waiting room. I smoked, pacing… yes, pacing. What else is one to do at 4am waiting for your life to change irreversibly? There was a phone on the table. It rang. Melissa was born! She lay at her mother’s breast even as we spoke. I was in a room down the hall and far away.

I was not to be at the birth of TJ or Benjamin either. That was a choice made as both Ben and TJ are adopted. Still I was there when we picked up TJ at JFK… And when we went to the social workers office and took Ben home.

Distance. 

Emotional mileage is not an easy thing to gauge. One can really only look back and see where one has been. What has the landscape looked like. Alas! Undoubtedly a wrong turn or two or two hundred has taken place. All parenting,  motherhood and fatherhood, is a process of trial and error. Ultimately, all a father can do is to see where his children have turned out. If he has been present at all then some of the responsibility lies with him. 

Being a father with a father still living is too in an interesting place. I can look at my children and see how they turned out (or are in the process of turning out). 

I look at my 90 year old father, learning more of his history as he gets older. In a life of frail human relationships it is a wonder that any of us turned out as well as we did.

I have been thinking that all of this related to Paul’s message for us today. He says that we walk by faith and not by sight. In many ways, that is true in the process of being a father. He goes on to say that from now on, we regard no one from a human point of view. So whether our fathers were absent in body, whether they were absent in spirit or emotion, we have a way of reconciling that in our Christian lives. In us, everything old has passed away. In us, through Christ, everything has become new. 

No human relationship is perfect. So in those place where our relationship with our fathers was/is very good, there is room to show more love. There is room to move, to improve what is there. As we grow in our Christness, our capacity for closing emotional distances increases. What was far may become closer. What is near can become closer still. 

In Christian life, the birth/adoption of a child is (hopefully) a joy. Relationship outside the womb for father and mother can only begin at that moment. We honor that holiness at baptism. Here we are reminded of a pattens love for a child. Here we feel the connecting power of love that our parent God has for God’s children. Here the greatest possibility for future intimacy, imitating the love of Jesus Christ, takes place. 

Melissa Hinnen Response 2/22/21

Dear Dad,

Recently I have found myself repeating the mantra, “I am doing the best I can.” I recognize that in the midst of pandemic my best doesn’t match what it was a a year ago. I feel fragile. I feel inadequate to the magnitude of the impact of this crisis. And while I am not a perfectionist, I can see the cracks where the results are less than excellent. 

But I am doing the best I can! I am walking by faith and trusting in the Spirit to guide me through day by day. As the crisis unfolds, even as I am alive to moments of pain and fear, I am also alive to moments of love, joy, and peace. I trust that we have an opportunity for new creation, a new way of life in a post-COVID world. 

As I read your Father’s Day message, I recognize a similar fragility in parenting.

You mention being in the waiting room when I was born and how your life was about to be changed. When my own water broke, 33 years ago, beginning the labor process, I remember having a sudden no-turning-back understanding of the choice I had made. You brought me to the hospital and waited for the 12 hours I was in labor. As soon as Cassie was born, you came into the birthing room and held her. 

While you always kept a clear boundary - you were Cassie’s grandfather, not her father, you still maintained a fathering presence for her in a way that her own father did not. As a teenage single mom, I am grateful for your support and the ways that you gave me a safety net as I grew into motherhood. 

Looking back, I recognize that I always felt inadequate to the responsibility. I have to wonder, does any parent feel confident that we will raise a kind, productive human being without causing them irreparable harm through our imperfect parenting? 

We walk by faith, not by sight leaning into the lessons learned from our parents. Doing the best we can just as they did the best they could. 

As I now watch in awe as my daughter raises her daughters, my role has changed. Our relationship has changed. Where once my job was to raise a responsible adult, I now get to be Cassie’s friend. And I feel reassured in my competency as her mother when Cassie turns to me for parental advice. 

The bonus is that I get to indulge in the joys of being Mima to SophiAna and Symphony. You would love them, Dad and I know they would adore you. It is a special privilege to share stories and photos of you with them. You continue to be a presence in our lives. 

Reading your words as I begin this project, I am thankful for this treasure chest you left behind and the chance to continue to strengthen my relationship with you. 

You wrote:

“No human relationship is perfect. So (even) in those places where our relationship with our fathers was/is very good, there is room to show more love. There is room to move, to improve what is there. As we grow in our Christness, our capacity for closing emotional distances increases. What was far may become closer. What is near can become closer still.” 

A 100 Word Sermon In conversation with my Dad
We Walk By Faith Inspired by 2 Corinthians 5:6-10

We walk by faith
Feeling inadequate
Doing the best we can.

We walk by faith
Guided by the wisdom of our ancestors
Led by Christ’s love.

We walk by faith
Baby steps:
Tentative,
Vulnerable,
Fragile.

We walk by faith
Leaps and bounds:
Confident,
Protected,
Strong.

We walk by faith
Acknowledging we’re shaped by imperfect people;
Working to forgive.

We walk by faith
Mourning what has passed away;
Embracing the possibilities of new creation.

We walk by faith 
Each movement forward is an act of courage;
Learning to live as wounded healers

Walking by faith
Constantly becoming
	ancestors to future generations. 

Learn more about this project:

My dad, Chris Hinnen, was a second-career United Methodist pastor who was ordained in 1987 when I was in high school. And so I missed out on much of the evolution of his preaching. He served in appointed ministry for 12 years and because of depression after his second wife died from cancer, he retired early. When I shared my call to ministry with him in 2010, he was overjoyed and enthusiastically embraced me. I am grateful that he was there to hear me preach for the first time when I was still in seminary. 

My dad barely survived a fall in January, 2012. At the time I thought he had survived so that he could live another 30 years. But as it turned out, he was with us for only three more months – and I am so incredibly thankful for that small gift. In the time that we thought he was recovering, I spent hours with him each week – we had lots of deep talks about life and theology. 

A couple of weeks before he died, I was crying and felt completely overwhelmed. He hugged me tight and assured me everything would be okay. Throughout my life, my dad taught me that while things don’t always turn out the way we think we want them to, we have the emotional and spiritual resilience to find our way through them. That lesson was with me even as he died.  Standing by his bedside, the words that Julian of Norwich received from God came into my mind, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” 

Many times over these years, I ached for my dad’s gentle presence, especially at  milestone events - the birth of my granddaughters, my wedding and ordination, holidays and celebrations. I know he would have been alongside me in the movement for Black Lives and the voter registration actions in recent years just as we joined in ministry and witness during Occupy Wall Street months before he died. 

He would have loved staying with us and going to the beach near our home in Long Branch, sitting by fire when we lived in Croton, and exploring Brooklyn now that we are in Park Slope. So much has happened in this decade that he would have been a part of.  He was a steady and consistent person in my life for more than 40 years and even since his death, in so many ways I have sensed his presence and heard his voice.

When my siblings and I were going through my dad’s belongings shortly after he died, I came across a box of his sermons which have become something I treasure. We incorporated one of the sermons from an All Saints Sunday service into the celebration of his life. Beyond that, I don’t spend a lot of time with these sacred writings because of the emotional labor involved.

In the fall (2020), I took a New York Theological Seminary “Urban Leadership Seminar” with Bishop Alfred Johnson for continuing education. Our guest lecturer, Dr. Wanda Lundy, encouraged us to be aware of the gifts of our ancestors. How do their voices and lives shape our ministry? How do they continue to speak to us?

I thought of that treasure box, tucked away in my home office cabinet and realized it is time to have some new conversations with my father.  Bishop Johnson was my “sending” pastor and mentor and previously had served as my father’s bishop so it is fitting that it is in his class that this project began to take shape. 

The initial task of sorting them into some kind of order takes longer than you might think. Too often I want to just absorb his words and take comfort in his presence through the page. 

Through his sermons, proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ, my dad also shared some of his life struggles and experiences he had with our family. He spoke clearly and unapologetically about social justice concerns including racism, war, poverty, and sexism. His theology was one of love and grace. 

What will it feel like to enter into conversations about family events, memories, personal stories of faith? What new insights will I gain about who he was, who I am, and how God’s love is at work in the world?

This photo was taken in the mid-70s when I was 3 years old. It reminds me of how my dad always lifted me up. My dad cared for me, encouraged me, and made sure I would have the resources to attend college even as a teenage, single mom. I don’t remember him missing a birthday party or family celebration for my daughter or me. He was just consistently there for me for my whole life. I never had to wonder if he would be available to me – he always was there unconditionally.

As a “hippie” and later a pastor, he was a gentle force for peaceful justice. On his last birthday, Dec 4, 2011, we spent the day at Occupy Wall Street with Occupy Faith. While I know my dad shaped me in so many ways – my values, my passion for social justice, my faith – I think about the ways I wish I could be more like him. Less judgmental, more laid back, less confrontational. He was a tremendously good man who even in his times of loneliness and depression reached out to those people who were important to him and affirmed us with his love and his patience. This essay and photo appeared in the Dec 27, 2012 issue of  The New York Times Magazine “The Lives We Loved."