The Great Muslin Hope

June 14, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. 

Jesus is the very model of a modern mindful minister. 

“(He) went about all the cities and villages,” Matthew reports, “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.” (Mt 9:35)

He is a teacher. He is a healer. Compassionate. Empathetic. Selfless.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Mt 9:36)

This is the point at which Jesus enlists his disciples to be participants in the harvest of souls.

“Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.” (Mt 10:1)

“These verses capture the heart of discipleship,” writes Professor Danny Zacharias of Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia: “responding to the needs of the people, relying on God’s provision, and carrying forth the work of healing and restoration. To do this, Jesus’s disciples need to imitate their Lord. This passage challenges us to see discipleship not as passive belief but as active participation in the work of restoration.”

As an Indigenous reader of this text, Zacharias points out “the confluence of understanding around what it means to be a leader. In many Indigenous cultures, leadership is not about hierarchy (Who am I in charge of?) but about service (Who can I help?). A true leader is one who cares for the people, ensuring their well-being. Much like a Wisdom Keeper or Medicine Man, Jesus responds to the needs of the people, embodying a leadership that is deeply relational and motivated by compassion.”

If we accept the challenge, our first duty is to imitate Jesus, to minister among the “harassed and helpless” with loving compassion.

We might also reflect on more recent exemplars of participatory discipleship.

We might think of Mother Teresa who ministered among the poor and dying of Kolkata, India. 

We might think of Albert Schweitzer, musician, organist, physician, and Lutheran minister, who founded a hospital in Gabon, Africa.

We might think of Father Damien, also known as Damien the Leper, who devoted his life to serving a remote leprosy compound on Molokai island.

I’d like to offer another paradigm of discipleship who has inspired me since college.

John Woolman was an itinerate Quaker mystic who spread his peaceful witness throughout Colonial New Jersey in the mid 18th century. He was born 306 years ago this October.

Woolman became one of my heroes when I was a student at Eastern Baptist College (now Eastern University), in the late sixties. I began classes as a recently discharged veteran of the Air Force but soon began to feel the Vietnam War was a hideous mistake by America’s best and brightest politicians, and an immoral travesty by the presidents who refused to stop it.

I became active in the peace movement and spent hours exploring pacifist ideas with Professor John L. Ruth, a Mennonite minister. One afternoon, John handed me his 18th century copy of John Woolman’s Journal. It was a loan, he said. “I know you’ll treat it gently.”

It was not easy reading because the pages were yellowed, the letter s was stylized f, and I had to train my brain not to read, “purfuit of happineff.” The ancient binding made crinkling sounds when I opened the book. I turned each page with  gentleness and read the journal in one night.

No book I read in college had a greater impact on me. Woolman, committed to Christ’s command to love God and neighbor, swore he would never do harm to any living creature. He begged carriage drivers to treat both their African coachmen and their horses with kindness. He walked in friendship with indigenous peoples in New Jersey. And he was an early abolitionist.

Woolman was eccentric in the extreme. He discovered that the harsh chemicals used to blacken men’s coats were blinding the slaves forced to do the dyeing. He couldn’t convince his fellow Quakers to stop dyeing their clothes a traditional black but he refused to do it himself. He wore a white muslin jacket that became increasingly soiled as traveled around Colonial New Jersey, snow time or mud time.

That is the image of Woolman I have carried in my head since I returned his journal safely to John Ruth’s keeping. He must have cut a comical figure when he arrived in meeting houses and pubs, wrinkled, yellowed, and stained with mud and sweat.

Woolman was a notary public. He steadfastly refused to notarize wills if they included slaves as property. An excerpt from his journal:

A person at some distance lying sick, his brother came to me to write his will. I knew he had slaves, and, asking his brother, was told he intended to leave them as slaves to his children. As writing is a profitable employ, and as offending sober people was disagreeable to my inclination, I was straitened in my mind; but as I looked to the Lord, he inclined my heart to His testimony. I told the man that I believed the practice of continuing slavery to this people was not right, and that I had a scruple in my mind against doing writings of that kind; that though many in our Society kept them as slaves, still I was not easy to be concerned in it, and desired to be excused from going to write the will. I spake to him in the fear of the Lord, and he made no reply to what I said, but went away; he also had some concerns in the practice, and I thought he was displeased with me. In this case I had fresh confirmation that acting contrary to present outward interest, from a motive of divine love and in regard to truth and righteousness, and thereby incurring the resentments of people, opens the way to a treasure better than silver, and to a friendship exceeding the friendship of men.

I will always wonder what it was about Woolman that people found so persuasive. I was used to the contentious debates of the sixties when we tended to shout at persons who disagreed with us, never expecting to convince them. But Woolman spoke with gentle persuasion and people generally saw he was right.

Incredibly, he could walk into a raucous New Jersey pub, preach about the evils of rum, and convince both the pub crowd and the pub owner that he was right. “When men take pleasure in feeling their minds elevated with strong drink,” he wrote in his journal, “and so indulge their appetite as to disorder their understandings, neglect their duty as members of a family or civil society, and cast off all regard to religion, their case is much to be pitied.” It’s a mystery – and perhaps a miracle – that Woolman was not simply thrown out of the pub on his head.

But it seems unlikely anyone laughed because most people quickly figured out that John Woolman was a prophet in their midst. He’s one of the unsung heroes of U.S. history and I wish more people would sing about him.

There are, of course, limitations to Woolman’s style of servant discipleship. Today it would be nearly impossible to avoid products or practices that hurt others. One might boycott a particular company that is harming the environment only to discover there are companies in the same conglomerate that distribute food to hungry children.

Woolman’s style or gentle persuasion might also be a non-starter today. When Gandhi suggested passive resistance was the morally acceptable way of confronting the Third Reich, Churchill said, “Hitler would smash him like a bug.”

When Woolman advocated abolition of slavery or abstinence from liquor he was able to convince many of his contemporaries he was right. This kind of woke activism would have its critics today.

“Depending on our church traditions and the nations we reside in,” Professor Zacharias writes, “gospel work that focuses on healing and justice can be suspect, seen as ‘social justice’ disconnected from the proclamation of the good news. 

“Similarly, some ministries focus their work entirely on the teaching and proclamation of the gospel with very little thought toward justice and healing. Jesus shows us that the work of the compassionate shepherd is holistic and integral; the preaching of the gospel is never separated from the embodied work of the gospel to bring healing and wholeness.”

John Woolman’s approach to discipleship may seem dated now. But three centuries after he passed from the American scene, I’d love to see his loving, peaceful spirit, rumpled yellowing jacket and all, returning to speak wisdom and true discipleship to our bitterly divided country.

Frauds

 

June 7, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

The second Sunday after Pentecost leads us into the very heart of Jesus’s ministry.

The ninth chapter of Matthew has two main themes: the calling of the unlikely, and the power of healing. 

Jesus’ healing miracles in Matthew are among the most moving and dramatic of the gospels. A leader of the Synagogue kneels before him begging him to save his young daughter. A woman with a chronic hemorrhage reaches out to Jesus in faith that she will be cured. Blind men are given sight. Demoniacs are freed from their bondage.

“Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.” (MT 9:35)

At the same time, Jesus reached out to unsavory and dubious people who were shunned by society and invited them to his ministry.

“These passages show us a Christ who moves toward those in need, who upends social expectations, and who embodies mercy in ways that challenge religious structures,” writes Danny Zacharias, a New Testament scholar from Wolfville, Nova Scotia. “The stories of Matthew’s call and Jesus’s healing acts emphasize restorative mercy. This mercy is not simply words, not just words of forgiveness or absolution, but tangible acts of restoration that show what the kingdom of God ought to be like.”e

This is good news for those of us who doubt our worthiness to serve Jesus. Jesus calls us whether we are worthy or not.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (MT 9:9-13)

This statement is a direct challenge to the religious order. The Pharisees emphasize purity and sacrifice, but Jesus reorients the discussion toward mercy, toward healing, and toward relationship. 

But who can blame the Pharisees? Thieving tax collectors? Prostitutes and unabashed sinners? Are these the kind of people who should be hanging with the Lord of Life? 

We don’t think so.

And probably the persons Jesus called didn’t think so either. Matthew would have been keenly aware that people hated him. As a tax collector he was seen as an opportunistic collaborator with the hated Roman government. No doubt Matthew, like most of his devious associates, enriched himself by skimming shekels off the top of his ill-gotten gains. He was, plainly, a parasite and a rat. And he knew it.

So Matthew must have been incredulous when Jesus looked him in the eye and said, “Follow me.” Jesus knew exactly who Matthew was and didn’t hold it against him. Stunned and uncertain, Matthew abandoned his cash box and followed Jesus.

How did Matthew feel about his sudden elevation from louse to disciple? Did he feel out of place? Did he feel unworthy? Did he doubt he could fill the role to which Jesus had called him?

Probably. Over the last two millennia, millions accepted Jesus’ call. And millions doubted they were up to it.

One does not have to be paranoid to feel like an imposter. It happens to the best of us. “I secretly know that I am not good enough an actor to be as successful as I am,” confessed the late David Niven. “All my life I’ve been waiting for someone else to find that out. Someday, someone will tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘I’m sorry, old boy, but you’ve been found out. You must come with us now.’”

This anxiety is not uncommon within the mainstream of the human race. When Paul said all are sinners, he meant all of us are frauds and all of us will eventually be found out. And Paul could not escape the anguish himself. “I know that nothing good dwells within me,” he confessed to the church in Rome (Romans 7:18ff). “I not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

I know the feeling. I was the least athletic member of my family and after I grew up I tried to cover up that fact by compulsively jogging. Granted, jogging is a rather talentless process of picking ‘em up and putting ‘em down, but I hoped the grunting and sweating would obscure the fact that I am athletically inept.

Years ago I liked to jog on the track at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field. One morning I was overtaken by the entire University of Pennsylvania Women’s Cross Country Team. Attempting to impress them, I ran on my toes and strained breathlessly to hold my stomach in. I lost my bearings and collided with a tackling dummy. As I lay on the grass examining my attacker it appeared to be a worn, grass-stained piece of second-hand athletic equipment. But I knew better. It was my own personal stalker saying, “I’m sorry, old boy, but you’ve been found out.”

In literary and musical terms, that allegorical stalker who knows we are frauds is Javert, the ruthless pursuer of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Javert knows there is an open warrant for Valjean, a former prisoner, and he searches for him obsessively. Valjean, who has shed prison rags and has become a wealthy mayor and businessman, knows he’s a fraud. But he knows if Javert sends him back to jail he will not be around to protect his employees or his beloved foster daughter from lives of poverty.

Les Misérables is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg with an English libretto by Herbert Kretzmer. Each production has been distinguished by different musicians, performers, and stage design but they all have two things in common: performances are invariably tear-inducing and they are always sermon inspiring. My eyes overflow each time the chorus sings the words originally penned by Victor Hugo himself: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

Did Javert ever catch up with Valjean Was Valjean thrown back into a drizzly Parisian prison? You know what happened, of course, and if you don’t, Victor Hugo’s thick volume awaits you at your local library. 

Javert is a haunting figure because he reminds us what our lives would be like if God had not intervened. Without the Cross, all of us would be relentlessly pursued by the truth of our sins, and all of us would be condemned.

Happily, there are no Javerts on our tail. God has sent Jesus to seek us out: a tireless pursuer who knows we are frauds and loves us anyway. 

With Javert there is only punishment. With Jesus, there is the promise that our fraudulence will one day be transformed for the sake of the world.

Jesus dines with tax collectors and sinners. His acceptance of those the world considers frauds is a sign of his radical nature. 

“As an Indigenous Christian,” writes Danny Zacharias, “I see resonance with Indigenous spirituality. Indigenous practice often prioritizes relational healing over ritual correctness. Indigenous ceremony is central in Indigenous spirituality, and many ceremonies are open and welcoming to others. While there are protocols around ceremony, they are often not so rigid that relationship is sacrificed. Laughter brings us together and connects us in these moments. Just as Jesus calls Matthew into a new life, Indigenous traditions recognize that love and restoration happen through inclusion, not exclusion. A person is not cast out for past failures but invited to walk a new path.”

No matter who we are or what we have done or how many weaknesses and sins we have accumulated, Jesus will not cast us out.

Instead, as we sit by the road minding our business, the Son of Man comes to us and says, “Follow me.”

Our prayer is that we, like the nasty tax collector, will shake off our surprise.  And follow. May the Triune God give us faith to follow Jesus wherever he leads.

Selah.

Fearsome Threesome

May 31, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

When we baptize a baby or adult, we cite the triune God: “We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

These words are from Matthew 28:19: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

This is why use this triune formula whenever we baptize or pray. Jesus etched the phrase permanently in our ecclesial lexicon. 

We might conclude that the concept of God in three persons was understood and proclaimed by Christians in the earliest days of the church. We might also conclude that the first Christians were routinely using the formulation every time they baptized someone.

But New Testament scholars who get paid to notice such things point out that the Father-Son-Holy Spirit phrase appears nowhere else in the New Testament.

“It’s a reminder that it took time for the church to learn to speak and confess in a trinitarian way, and even longer for a formal declaration of ‘the Trinity’ to emerge,” writes Matt Skinner, professor of New Testament of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, but noting the gradual process cautions us against trying to find too much precision in the New Testament’s ways of relating (or uniting) Jesus to God and to the church’s experience of Holy Spirit power.”

So the early church had to take some time to develop the model of the Trinity to describe God. If we modern Christians have difficulty grasping the Trinity, it’s good to know the early Christians were slow to perfect the idea. It took some figuring out.

When was the last time you had to explain the Trinity to someone?

We’ve heard the sermons. The Trinity is the way we describe the three basic components of our relationship to God: creator, God the redeemer, God the advocate.

For 17 centuries, preachers have been devising ways to explain the Trinity to simple-minded heathens. St. Patrick, with no snakes to drive out of Ireland in the fifth century, is said to have used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity to locals. If so, he didn’t write about it, nor did anyone else until about 1726, so the legend appears to be as false as the analogy is weak.

If shamrocks don’t work, there is the classic cliché about the various roles we play in life. For example, I am a father, I am a son, I am a spouse – three different roles that call for three distinct presentations. Yet these roles do not require a trifurcation into three distinct Persons. The analogy doesn’t really help us understand the nature of the Holy Trinity.  God in three persons? Why not one God with three personalities? That might work if all three personalities were spirit, but one is flesh. One is tempted to ask the question in the form of a haiku (which, I admit, are more fun to write than to read):

Can corporeal
blend incorporeally
as one in the same?

That’s where the concept becomes a conundrum, and because there are no instruments with which to take God’s true measure, the enigma deepens.

The Trinitarian paradigm was formalized in the year 325 of the common era when the newly Christianized Emperor Constantine called the bishops of the church to Nicaea to hash out some common understanding of what all Christians should believe.

I often wonder what it must have been like for the bishops to work under the watchful but not always comprehending eyes of the most powerful autocrat in the world, a military man with no background in theology. We’ve seen throughout history that theological naïfs like Constantine can be dangerous if they think God has called them to special purposes. Did Constantine aver that as soon as the bible was canonized, “It will be my favorite book”? Did the bishops press Constantine to testify about his faith? And did the Emperor respond, “It’s personal, I really don’t want to get into that.”

Be that as it may, when Matthew wrote about the gathering of Jesus and the disciples on the mountain, Constantine was still about 220 years in the future. 

The scene in Matthew 28 is Jesus’ farewell address traditionally called the “Great Commission” because he gave them their marching orders.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Mt 28:18-19)

The word “obey” seems arbitrary and even a bit harsh, and history has shown that some Christian missionaries overdid it when they set out to make disciples. In many cases the missionaries who demanded obedience not to Jesus but to themselves. Columbus converted indigenous peoples of the Americas and demanded their submission as slaves. Missionaries were appalled by the innocent nakedness of Pacific islanders and demanded they cover themselves with itchy European clothing, thus bestowing upon them with the “gift of shame.” Baptist missionaries to Native Americans in North America also demanded their charges dress like whites but also required them to stop speaking their own languages and to give up artifacts of their culture that the missionaries regarded as satanic, including drums.

“If the authority that Matthew 28 talks about is interpreted as an authority to dominate, to reign, to subjugate, then the goal of Christian discipleship is to conquer the world for Christ,” writes New Testament Professor Osvaldo Vena. “This way of understanding the mission of the church reflects a patriarchal and imperialist model that characterized the conquest of America as well as the missionary enterprise of the 19th and 20th centuries.

On the contrary, when Jesus calls upon his disciples to “obey,” he says it in a context that turns obedience from a duty into a sacred opportunity. We are called to obey “everything I have commanded you.”

“Baptizing (disciples) with the Trinitarian formula implies their incorporation into a community that acknowledges and confesses a relational Godhead,” writes Professor Vena. 

What has Jesus commanded us?

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” (John 13:34)

Matthew, in his rendition of the Sermon on the Mount, specifies the ones who have Jesus’ special attention. (Mt 5:3-13)

The poor in spirit.

Those who mourn.

The meek.

The seekers of righteousness.

The merciful.

The poor in heart.

The peacemakers.

The persecuted.

The reviled.

Jesus reached out to all persons during his earthly ministry. He cured the sick. He sought justice for the poor. He welcomed foreigners, thieving tax collectors, prostitutes, Roman officers, even Pharisees, even Judas, into his life. And he loved them all.

The resurrected Jesus, given all authority over heaven and earth by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, calls upon us to make disciples and teach them to obey his teaching:

To love ourselves. To love all people, regardless of their rank or nationality. To seek justice for the persecuted, regardless of their immigration status, sexual orientation, religion, or race. To feed the hungry poor. To rule justly. To make peace. To love your enemy. To nourish and protect children.

In our frightening, chaotic, divided society, it’s hard to imagine that such commands could get any traction. There’s no evidence in media or anywhere online that anyone is really interested in obeying everything Jesus commanded us.

That is certainly an indictment on ourselves and on our church because the commands are coming from the highest authority in the universe: the Triune God.

On Trinity Sunday we remind ourselves that we cannot live without that authority or the love that authority commands.

A poet who calls herself Sharon offers this prayer:

Holy Spirit, Father, Son,
How can I declare your name?
Ever-living three-in-one?

God, besides whom, there is none.
Rock of Waters, fount of flame,
Holy Spirit, Father, Son.

Guarantee of all to come,
Kinsman in our temporal frame,
Ever-living three-on-one.

Advocate, whose love has won,
King, whose crown you rightly claim,
Holy Spirit, Father, Son.

Good and true in all you’ve done,
Age to age you are the same,
Ever-living three-on-one.

Western shores to rising sun,
All will celebrate your fame,
Holy Spirit, Father, Son,
Ever-living three-on-one.

Selah.

How Long is Too Long?

May 17, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. 

Every Sunday we say it together and every day we say it alone: the Lord’s prayer. 

Most of us are able to memorize this austere prayer at a very young age and for some the words are still there when other memories fade.

By contrast, Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is anything but simple. Dr. Cody J. Sanders of Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, this prayer is thick with theological symbols, recapitulating many themes encountered throughout the Fourth Gospel.”  Theologically, many scholars regard this chapter as essential reading. 

Eternal life is a crucial refrain in the chapter. 

“But our contemporary theological notions of what eternal life means,” writes Professor Sanders, “can become unhelpful when overlaid on John’s much richer understanding of the term.”

“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

An Air Force chaplain I worked for a long time ago made these words his credo.

“I feel thrilled every time I read them,” Chaplain Harland Getts often said at Wednesday night bible studies in the chapel at RAF Woodbridge in England.

But the chaplain never attempted to define what Peter was thinking about when he said “eternal life.”

“People come to me,” Billy Graham said in many sermons, “and say, ‘Billy, I don’t want to live forever.’ I tell them, ‘You have no choice. But you do have a choice where you spend forever.’”

Where? And what is eternal life?

Hieronymus Bosch, the 15th century Dutch artist who spent much of his life imagining the afterlife, depicted an upwardly spiraling light as a pathway to heaven for the redeemed.

Bosch’s “Ascent of the Blessed,” painted in 1490, looks a lot like the shaft of light persons describe after near-death experiences. The painting is one of four panels of a larger work entitled Visions of the Hereafter. Other visions are “Terrestrial Paradise,” “Fall of the Damned,” and “Hell.”

None of the visions portray an afterlife you’d want to visit for very long.

Then again, most of our images of heaven and hell are metaphorical.

Perhaps most of us think of eternal life as a permanent extension of the life we have now, but free of pain and the infirmities of age.

But even if we are convinced that our lives are good, could we actually endure them forever?

In Thornton Wilder’s three act play, “Our Town,” we get a chilling glimpse at the quality of our lives in Act III.

As the act begins, we see the village cemetery of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, where the drama has been unfolding. The graves are represented by folding chairs arranged in neat rows. Actors representing the dead sit silently on the chairs.

Emily Webb, the main character of the play, has died in childbirth. A subdued funeral procession escorts her to her chair where she takes her place. There, she is welcomed by her late mother-in-law, Mrs. Gibbs, who tells her it is best to sit quietly and forget about her earthly life.

But Emily is determined to go back, to re-live at least one day of her short, happy life. Ignoring warnings by Mrs. Gibbs and others in the cemetery, Emily chooses one of her happiest days, the day she turned 12.

But the experience is devastating. Emily is at first thrilled to be reunited with her loved ones, but she quickly realizes that the people around her – her mother, her father, her younger brother, the boy next door – are so preoccupied with minutia that they barely notice one another.

Desperately, Emily tries to get her mother to look at her, but her mother is absorbed with other insignificant things.

This is not living, Emily concludes, and she can no longer stand the pain.  Life, she realizes, should be lived intensely “every, every minute.” But the loved ones she re-encounters on her twelfth birthday are scarcely alive. On her way back to the cemetery, Emily asks the Stage Manager if any one is ever able to live life to the fullest.

“No,” the Stage Manager replies. “The saints and poets, maybe – they do some.”

Emily returns to her chair. Her husband, George, kneels in front of the grave and weeps inconsolably, but Emily watches him vacantly, without emotion.

Thornton Wilder forces his audience to face a daunting question: if we don’t live life to the fullest now, why would we want to live it eternally?

The late Tony Campolo, who I knew before he was Tony Campolo – when he was my sociology professor at Eastern University – used to try to define eternal life to pre-lobed evangelical kids who flocked to his classes.

He described it as existential, a word guaranteed to fog the eyes of most freshmen. When one is born again, Tony explained, one experiences God’s presence with an existential energy that never fades. Those special moments accumulate and intensify until they form a chain of ecstatic existence, and in the last microseconds of our physical lives we dwell rapturously and forever in our own existential memories.

As a Central New Yorker with Minnesota roots, I’m not sure I’m wired for the existential ecstasy required for the experience. It’s not that we un-emotive white folks aren’t pleased by the words of eternal life; it’s just that we respond to them differently.

“Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”

Shrug. “Ayuh.”

As Thornton Wilder, who grew up in Maple Bluff, Wis., understood, it takes a lot of concentration to live each moment with an intensity that justifies being alive. We don’t spend a lot of time in each moment. There is always the preceding moment and the following moment to worry about. Now is not around long enough for us to get emotionally involved with it.

The John F. Kennedy library has posted online hundreds of high definition photographs, many of them in living color, of the 35th President. They appear in slow succession as a screen saver on my laptop.

There in uncanny digital detail is a young man at the top of his form and near the end of his life. My favorite is a picture of JFK seated in straight-back chair against the wall of the Oval Office, his arm around a little girl wearing a red dress and leg braces. The President’s bad back would not enable him to pick the child up, so he sat down to greet her. It’s a photo-op of the highest order, but the President is not looking at the camera; he’s looking into the child’s eyes, reflecting her shy smile.

It’s a high quality, perhaps even existential moment, frozen in time. I don’t know what else was on the President’s agenda that day, but this moment strikes me as having a special quality. It could be one of those rare, fleeting moments when the lives of two persons had the intensity Emily Webb missed so much when she re-lived her twelfth birthday.

I like to think it’s a quality moment that both the little girl and the young president would define as an example of life at its best – a reason to look forward to eternal life. But the moment was gone soon enough. The moment may a dimming memory for the girl who, if she lives, would be in her fifties today. I doubt the laconic president ever commented on it.

Theologian Mary Coloe writes that in his prayer, Jesus “reveals God’s love for the world and God’s desire to draw all into God’s own eternity life, which is to participate in the very being of God.” Or, in the words of David Ford, “I have read the whole Gospel as an invitation to enter into a relationship of trusting Jesus, with continuing ‘life in his name’ involving an ongoing drama of desiring, learning, praying, and loving in community, for the sake of God’s love for the world.”

Our lives are full of passing moments that bring pleasure and pain. All of us have memories too unbearable to recall, and we all have had moments of bliss we wanted to preserve forever.

When Peter talked about Jesus’ words of eternal life, he was certainly thinking about the good times.

Peter did, after all, understand the nature and authority of the one who was making eternal life possible. “Lord, to whom can we go?” Peter asked. “You have the words of eternal life.” Then Peter added an important postscript: 

“We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

No one knows the details of all the moments Peter and the other disciples spent with Jesus. No doubt they were not all moments of existential quality. There were moments of pain, moments when they were rained on, moments when the sun blistered their feet, moments when they argued among themselves, even moments when they were frustrated and angry at Jesus. Jesus could, at times, leave them confused and perplexed, so that the disciples complained among themselves, “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?”

All of which suggests that eternal life is not based on existentially intense experiences in the presence of Jesus.

As most Christians have discovered, every day with Jesus is not necessarily sweeter than the day before.

Nor, as Thornton Wilder suggested, is eternal life dependent on the quality of the moments of our lives, requiring is to live “every, every minute” with an intensity that reminds us of life’s value. Those who live that intensely are candles in the wind, flames that flare brightly and all too briefly.

But Peter sensed that Jesus, “the holy one of God,” was not sent to make eternal life difficult to attain, nor was the eternal life of which he spoke a mere extension of the often mundane lives we live on earth.

At the heart of Jesus’ message is God’s love for all God’s creatures, and Jesus made it clear that whatever eternal life held for believers, it was good.

“Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus told his fretful followers, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32).

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:1-2).

Both of these heavenly images are as far-fetched as Pearly Gates, and Jesus knew it.  Like artists and poets and scholars across the centuries, Jesus was trying to build an emotional impression about a state of being no living person can comprehend: not a mere place one goes to sit around forever, but a perfect reunion with the God of love – the God who was, is, and evermore shall be – the God who is the Great I Am and indescribable through the paltry grammatical devices we use to measure the passage of time.

What does all that mean exactly?

Beats me.

Nor will any of us know until it’s our turn to experience what Peter simplistically termed “eternal life.”

But we can be sure of this: eternal life will be measured by its quality, not its quantity.

And Jesus assures us: whatever it looks and feels like, it will be good. Very good.

Love, Sweet Love

[May 10, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.]

As I was reading Jesus’ farewell discourse in John 14, a lilting melody was swirling through my head. 

Lord, we don't need another meadow
There are corn fields and wheat fields enough to grow
There are sunbeams and moonbeams enough to shine
Oh listen Lord, if You want to know

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some, oh, but just for every, every everyone

Love, sweet love.

This is what Jesus is promising his disciples as the time comes to leave them.

Love. 

Not merely the love of country or the love of family.

Not merely the love of a mother for a child. 

Not merely the romantic love between two people.

Jesus is talking about the very love that brings the universe into existence. The love we know as truth. The love we know as God.

Agape love. The highest form of Christian love, defined as unconditional, sacrificial, and volitional love aimed at the highest good of others. It is God’s selfless love for humanity and the core of Christian theology, guiding believers to love God and neighbors, even enemies.

“In John’s Gospel, love originates in God, who demonstrated ultimate love by sending his Son to save the world,” writes Professor Yung Suk Kim of Virginia Union University. 

“This love transcends self-interest, prejudice, and parochialism; it embraces all people and creation. For Jesus, true religion is practical and tangible, expressed through acts of love that mirror God’s own. His commandments, therefore, are not arbitrary rules, but invitations to participate in God’s loving mission.”

I like to reflect that the power behind the Big Bang, the power who formed the stars and planets, the power who set into motion the laws of physics, the power who so meticulously produced the right conditions to beget life, the power who is the ground of all being, the fundamental, creative, and sustaining source of reality: that power is love.

As we sing the beautiful Psalm 66 this morning, we can share in this ancient understanding of the God of Love.

“But truly God has listened; he has heard the words of my prayer. Blessed be God who has not rejected my prayer or removed from me his steadfast love.” (19-20)

God so loved the world that we gave his son to testify to the truth of God’s love. 

 “And I will ask the Father,” Jesus said, “and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” (John 14:15-16)

The writer of First Peter declares that “Christ also suffered for the sins of all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” (I Peter 3:18)

In John’s gospel, “God is truth—the ultimate reality and source of all that exists,” writes Professor Kim. “Jesus, as the incarnate Word, entered the world to bear witness to this truth, revealing God’s character and purpose through his teachings and actions (18:37). 

“He embodied truth in his very being, demonstrating its transformative power in his interactions with others. The Advocate, upon arrival, assumes the critical role of empowering the believing community to faithfully continue this mission of bearing witness to God’s truth, now definitively and fully revealed through Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.”

Be that as it may, as Jesus gathers his disciples to say good-bye, these lofty truths are not foremost in their hearts.

Instead, the disciples are facing the reality that Jesus is about to leave them. They have to wonder: Is he going to abandon them?

It is said that in the hierarchy of things people are afraid of, death is number one. Public speaking is number two. Incapacitating illness is high on the list.

But abandonment is also a common fear. If you are suddenly abandoned by a parent or lover, you may never trust in a relationship again. Young children may begin to panic when Mommy steps outside the house despite reassurances that “I’ll be right back.”

Even pets fear desertion. It is said that if you leave the house, a dog instinctively assumes he’ll never see you again. This may be true. When we close the door behind us our puppers complain with howls of despair.

Jesus is quick to reassure the disciples, “I will not leave you orphaned.” (John 14:18)

“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:19)

"This is a compelling vision of the Christian life, one characterized by living in love, obedience, and constant reliance on the Advocate’s empowering presence,” writes Dr Kim. 

The passage highlights that true love for Jesus is shown by following his commandments, which reflect God's inclusive love for everyone. The Spirit of truth supports and guides believers, enabling them to share this love with the world.

Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is no longer limited by physical embodiment and can be present everywhere. The Holy Spirit, sent as an advocate, enables Jesus to walk alongside us without physical constraints, making his presence accessible at all times.

Throughout church history, when the Spirit has been prioritized, barriers of sexism, classism, and prejudice have fallen. The spirit of truth helps us recognize justice, mercy, and peace, guiding us beyond limitations of ethnicity, gender, class, or personal experience.

“Jesus, is ever present with each and every human being as we walk through this journey of life with the unrestrained guidance and wisdom of the Holy Spirit,” writes Professor Samuel Cruz of Union Theological Seminary in New York.  

“This same spirit would not allow for the exclusion of a woman who was a Samaritan from the blessings of the Kingdom, as the Spirit will not allow for the exclusion of any among us today.”

One might even suggest that those who would restrict the spirit’s power to the male gender are blasphemous.

The Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches do not ordain women to the priesthood. Pope John Paul II affirmed in an apostolic letter that the church has no authority to ordain women. A recent book by a Greek Orthodox priest and an Orthodox woman professor discussed the subject carefully and concluded there were no biblical or theological reasons that women should not be ordained, but it won’t happen. Southern Baptists won’t ordain women because they embrace a Chrisitan nationalist preference for Good Ole Boys.

The historic torpor of these churches throws up heretical roadblocks to the holy spirit because tens of thousands of women attest to their profound calling to be pastors, priests, or bishops. The recent investiture of Dame Sarah Mullally at the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury has raised hopes that it may be time to reopen the discussion of women’s ordination. But when asked about it, Pope Leo XIV simply responded, “It’s church law.” He did, however, look very collegial when he welcomed Her Grace to the Vatican last week.

I would love to hear an interpretation by a pope or patriarch as to why this exclusion could be consistent with the Holy Spirit who excludes no one.

And who resides in each human heart as the closest we will ever be to God’s universal and unconditional love.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some, oh, but just for every, every everyone
Love, sweet love.

Selah.

Good Heavens

May 3, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

If you know you have just a few more days to live, the last thing you want to hear is “don’t let your hearts be troubled.” Fuggetaboudit. Don’t worry. Be happy.

Samuel Johnson’s response was more realistic:  “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

In fact, imminent death is probably all we’ll be able to think about. it’s not the sort of news we can quickly accept and be at peace with. 

According to the model of the five stages of grief, or the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross model, those experiencing sudden grief following an abrupt realization go through five emotions: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally,  acceptance. 

Most people have difficulty imagining what happens after death. We assure ourselves we are going to a “better place,” but what if it’s just – nothing? Mark Twain said, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Fear of death is a very human response. Even Jesus was deeply troubled in spirit as he faced death and asked God if it could be avoided.

But Jesus also trusted God, and he urged his disciples to do likewise.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." (John 14:1-4)

But do we? Do we know the place where he – and we – are going? And what does he mean by “dwelling places”?

What do you imagine that eternal life to be? What is your idea of heaven?

Some time ago I tried my hand at cartooning heaven and it occurred to me that a place made entirely of gold and pearls, somewhat like the refurbished Oval Office, would be fiscally improbable. I drew our two little dogs into the panel and visualized them saying, “When everything is made of gold, gold is worth dog doodoo.” 

What is your concept of heaven?

Jesus’ description of heaven is also translated as  “many mansions,” a concrete enough image. And he promised to prepare a place for us.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great promoters of Christian faith, spent most of his life imagining heaven. He wrote a seven-volume series of children’s books called The Chronicles of Narnia, about a magical fantasy realm that includes a Lion named Aslan, a maned Jesus metaphor who sacrifices himself for others.

My concept of heaven, then and now, is that it will be the place where all our earthly dreams are fulfilled. There, as we bask in God’s glory and walk with Jesus, we will be reunited with loved ones. We will be young and good looking. And we will interact with our eathly heroes.

This latter notion was inspired by the late, great historian Catherine Drinker Bowen, the author of Miracle at Philadelphia, a record of the first constitutional convention.

I interviewed Bowen in 1971 and asked her about Miracle, which is one of my favorite books.

She said she became obsessed with George Washington, who presided over the constitutional convention. Did he speak with an English accent? Did he speak with the aristocratic cadences of a Virginia planter? Did he ever raise his voice? Was he a baritone or tenor? 

“I was crazy to know how that man talked,” Bowen said.

When she died two years later my first thought was, now she knows how that man talked.

I have clung to this rather improbable concept of heaven. I like to think that, on the other side, I will join a press conference with my idol John F. Kennedy and ask him penetrating questions: Did you feel misled by the CIA when you authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion? Do you commiserate with Lee Harvey Oswald in heaven or was your assassination a CIA plot? Do you still hang with Marilyn? How did your father get so rich? And how come we never see him up here?

In Paradiso, written in the early 14th century, Dante imagines heaven as nine spheres corresponding to the nine known planets. The first sphere is earthly paradise and the ninth is the Primum Mobile, the sphere of the angels.

But long before writers and poets put ideas of heaven on paper, humans faced their mortality by imagining the life to come.

Pueblo Indians saw the afterlife as traveling to a new village where they would join friends and relatives who died before them.

In commenting about Pueblo Indian resistance to Christianity, anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons, in her book Pueblo Indian Religion, writes: “The Pueblo idea of life after death as merely a continuation of this life is incompatible with dogmas of hell and heaven. In this life the Spirits do not reward or punish; why should they after death?” 

Buddhists believe in reincarnation, a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. Through karma and eventual enlightenment, they hope to escape samsara and achieve nirvana, an end to suffering. .

Wikipedia reports that In the late 1970s, Kübler-Ross, after interviewing thousands of patients who had died and been resuscitated, became interested in out-of-body experiences, mediumship, spiritualism, and other ways of attempting to contact the dead. 

Kübler-Ross also dealt with the phenomenon of near-death experiences. She was also an advocate for spiritual guides and afterlife, serving on the Advisory Board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) Kübler-Ross reported her interviews with the dying for the first time in her book, On Death and Dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy, and their own families (1969).

Peter Panagore, who I know through gatherings of church communicators, has written two books about his near-death experiences, that is, times he has died, glimpsed heaven, and came back to write about it. 

In his first book, Heaven is Beautiful, How Dying Taught Me That Death is Just the Beginning, Peter describes his death from hypothermia while hiking along the Ice Fields Parkway of Alberta, Canada. As he lay dead he experienced heaven and he found it beautiful.

Peter has had a second near death experience and today he encourages people to calmly face their own death:

“Be prepared to be loved and to be welcomed: you are going Home. Death is only a doorway. When your time comes, as it must, walk through that doorway and love God. Trust God. Believe. That’s all you have to do—simply believe. You can believe in God, because God is Real. This life is simply one bridge in between.”

But here’s the thing: near death experiences are very personal and you can’t take anyone else’s word for it. The heaven Peter Panagore saw may not be the same heaven you or I would see under similar circumstances.

Peter is a preacher, not a scientist, and most scientists are skeptical about near death experiences. They blame them on the brain’s synaptic defense mechanisms when the body begins to die.

So what is your concept of heaven?

John of Patmos had visions of a gleaming crystal city gilded with gold and garnished by living trees and flowing waters.

Jesus talks of a place with many mansions or dwellings.

I imagine a place in which I rejoin an interrupted feast with Jesus and departed loved ones and, if I so wish, interview John F. Kennedy.

As to what heaven actually looks like, I try to be at peace about it. My old boss Bob Edgar, a United Methodist clergyman, six-time congressman, and general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said many Methodists didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about heaven.

“We focus on doing God’s will on earth, proclaiming love, seeking justice, serving the poor,” Bob would say. “We’ll come to heaven soon enough.”

I remembered that when Bob died suddenly ten years ago, a month short of his 60th birthday.

What did he find when he crossed that portal that waits for us all?

We shall find out soon enough.

For now we remember this: God has sent Jesus to conquer death. 

God grant us the grace to accept God’s promises in faith, for the apocalyptic future is bright.

We will be going to the home Jesus has prepared for us.

And whatever it looks like, it will be the most beautiful place we have ever seen.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Who Are The Sheep?

April 26, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

 “Very truly, I tell you.” These are the opening words of John 10 in the New Revised Standard Bible.

But when I read this passage as a boy in the King James Bible, Jesus said, “Verily, verily I say unto thee.”

I thought that was an odd way to talk. Jesus, of course, spoke in Aramaic and these words are cast in Elizabethan or Shakespearean English. But I was fascinated by the way they rolled off the tongue and eventually I put them in a little song.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee
I am the master of the gate
You should approach on bended knee
And don’t be fretful while you wait.  
I am the shepherd, you are the sheep,
And I’ll rejoice when the pen is full
Full of the righteous, faithful meek
‘Cause I’m not in this for the wool.

Martha tells of her experience years ago watching shepherds gather a straying flock of sheep in rural Wales. She said the sheep looked ugly, wooly, and dirty, quite unlike the little white lamby doll she had as a child. I wondered if she got enough to the flock to also notice they smelled bad.

Familiarity with sheep reek is not as common as it used to be but it’s a helpful clue that good shepherding is harder than it looks. 

As with many animals, sheep lose their cuteness a few weeks after birth and very quickly become too heavy to carry on your shoulders. There is no biblical record that Jesus ever did that, nor does it seem likely that walking behind a fetid flock would inspire him to hoist a sheep. The ubiquitous portraits of Jesus with a cute, fluffy lamb around his neck are best viewed with artistic skepticism in air-conditioned vestibules. Do not try it at home.

But the metaphoric relationship of shepherds to sheep is just what we need to understand our relationship to Jesus. And the fact that Jesus lived in an agrarian culture suggests he didn’t compare us to sheep because of our precocious sweetness. There are less agreeable ways in which sheep behavior reminds us of ourselves.

According to the ever popular Sheep 101 website, sheep gather in flocks and have an almost irresistible instinct to follow a leader. In 2006 in eastern Turkey, 400 sheep plunged to their death following a ram attempting to cross a 50-foot deep ravine. That’s a helpful reminder that, when facing a moral decision, one should avoid succumbing to peer pressure. 

Another sheep habit that reminds us of us is the ovine drive to over-consume everything in their path. The ravenous appetite of one flock kept the White House lawn trimmed to overbite level during World War I, when President Wilson devised practical ways to cut grounds keeping costs.

There is a major difference between us and sheep. Unlike us, sheep appear to have little awareness of the vast differences within their species. They have no sense of the “other,” no xenophobia, no classism, no prejudice against black sheep.

This is a good thing because there are more kinds of sheep than any other species, more than a thousand distinct breeds. There are fine wool sheep, long wool sheep, medium wool sheep, carpet wool sheep, hair sheep, fat-tailed sheep, short-tailed sheep, rat-tailed sheep, and no-tailed sheep.

But lest this staggeringly tedious information distract us from the metaphor at hand, let us return to Jesus’ own reference to varieties of sheep:

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10:14-16)

The allegorical reference to the good shepherd is clear, but the rest of the phrase has provoked more argument and conjecture than all the other verses in this chapter.

What did Jesus mean when he said he had other sheep? And who were they? Did Jesus mean followers of other faiths? 

Bible scholars tend to dismiss the notion. More likely, they say, he was referring to his own followers who had reached different conclusions about him. The disciples knew there were other schools of thought about Jesus’ identity. There were also admirers of Jesus who didn’t hang with his entourage but dropped his name anyway:

“John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.’” (Mark 9:38-40)

Other theories about the identity of “other sheep” are denominational chauvinism. Many Christians are sure the other sheep must be everyone who is not us. Catholics had the same thought when they saw Cerularius, Luther, Henry VIII, and Calvin bolt the fold to form their own divergent flocks. When viewed from the perspective of the Vatican, Jesus’ statement can sound like a veiled threat to the others: “I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”

Within the last century, ecumenical partnership agreements have made it less likely that Presbyterians will regard, say, Lutherans or Anglicans as “other sheep.” Even so, there are vast differences in the ecclesial styles and beliefs of Christian churches. Some churches make gonads a condition of ordination, some invoke Jesus’ sacrifice by ingesting grape juice and Wonder bread, some sprinkle, some dunk. It would take a gigabyte of hard drive to track and classify all the “other sheep” out there.

One of the most appealing brands of Christianity is also one of the oldest. The Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church trace their origins to A.D. 52 when the Apostle Thomas came to Kerala. Thomas, popularly known as “the doubter,” reportedly preached to a Jewish enclave that converted to Christianity. 

When it comes to authorities on other sheep, few churches speak with greater credibility than the ancient St. Thomas Christian community in India. India is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism and hosts the world’s largest numbers of Zoroastrians and Baha’is. Christians in India have interacted with other faiths for centuries, and they have accumulated vast stores of wisdom about interfaith relations.

Several years ago I was among a group of ecumenists invited to meet the senior Mar Thoma Metropolitan. He was tall with a long white beard, crinkly eyes, and a gentle smile. He wore a pink frock and probably didn’t know that behind his back church journalists called him “The Pink Panther.” In contrast to his magnificent vestments, his bare, bony feet were festooned with tattered flip-flops.

The Metropolitan spoke softly to us American ecumenists as we balanced tea and biscuits on our laps. He made generous comments about the churches in the United States and the gracious welcome they had given him.

“We come from churches that are so different in so many ways, and yet we are all the same family because we all call on the name of Jesus,” he said soothingly. “And, dear brothers and sisters, when at last we come into his heavenly presence we may find that he is called by many other names as well.”

The metropolitan spoke with such quiet authority that most of us overlooked the radical meaning in his words. Afterwards, on the drive home, we argued about what he meant. What other names is Jesus called?  Was the metropolitan raising the same questions as Tim Rice, lyricist for Jesus Christ Superstar, who lets Judas ask the age-old questions:

Tell me what you think
About your friends at the top.
Now who’d you think besides yourself
Was the pick of the crop?
Buddha was he where it's at?
Is he where you are?
Could Muhammad move a mountain?
Or was that just PR?

These questions will endure as long as we live, and so will the debate about the identity of the “other sheep.”

While we are waiting to discover what, if any, other names Jesus is called, we can take comfort in the fact that we already know the most important answers.

For one, we know Jesus the Good Shepherd is not a rejecter of any sheep, regardless of who we are or what we believe. “I lay down my life for the sheep,” he said. He could have added: “No questions asked.” God sent Jesus to save all us sheep, regardless of whether we agree with each other or even like each other. God doesn’t worry about our differences. God loves us all – Zoroastrians, Muslims, Jains, Lutherans – all of us. And Jesus died for all of us. 

Even so, we still wonder. Was Buddha where it’s at? What is the eternal relationship between Mohammad and Jesus? For Baptists who have for centuries been consigning Buddhists and Muslims to hell, these are awkward questions.

But we can waste a lot of time debating how God plans to save the other sheep, because God is in no hurry to tell us. And those of us who have been saved by our faith in Jesus Christ are not being asked to consider other paths to salvation. 

But we cannot ignore the fact that God loves those who have not chosen our path, not can we disregard Jesus’ instructions to love those sheep as much as we love ourselves.

Presbyterian pastor Dr. Bryon E. Shafer writes “that in my dialogue with persons of a differing faith, I as a Christian encounter insights that bring me to a fuller and more dynamic understanding of God's truth. And indeed I have had such experiences.”

Once we understand that, we can suspend our frustrating debates over the identity of the “other sheep” and focus on the ovine metaphor that assures us God will not rest until all us sheep are safe.

“So Jesus told them this parable: Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulder and rejoices.” (Luke 15:3-5.)

Given the malodorous reality of sheep, the ultimate message must be that God loves all of us more than we can possibly imagine.