Woolman Redux

June 28, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

“There is a reciprocal nature to how you treat other people,” writes New Testament scholar Cleophus J. LaRue. “What you do for others you will see it again in your own life.” 

We call it Karma. 

A high school football quarterback swaggers with the confidence that he is a superstar on campus. In just a few years, he's getting a bit of as gut, his lowly job bores him to tears, his marriage is falling apart, and former classmates have forgotten him.

Karma.

A high school prom queen exults in her beauty and tends to be a mean girl to her friends. Years later her beauty has faded, her belly has sagged, and the plain girls she used to torment hide their smiles when they see her at class reunions.

Karma. 

“This admonition also applies to those who are involved in the work of the Lord, LaRue continues. “One finds this observance in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament it is ‘Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm’ (Psalm 105:15). In the New Testament it is found in Galatians 6:7: ‘Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.’”

In the three brief verses in Matthew 10:40-42, Jesus endows the disciples with remarkable and often frightening authority: the power to forgive sins, execute miracles, and speak on behalf of the Creator of the Universe.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (Matthew 40:40)

“The language here is ambassadorial,” notes Professor LaRue. “To receive the ambassador or apostle is to receive the potentate that sent him; to reject the ambassador is to reject the one that sent him. The word ‘welcome’ refers practically to the willingness to offer support and shelter to those who represent Jesus.”

It’s an awesome thing to be Christ’s ambassador, especially in parts of the world where religion is waning or used to gird political power. Not everyone wants to hear Jesus’s commandments to love one another, to proclaim comfort and release to captives, to free the oppressed, to forgive debts, to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God (Luke 4, Micah 6). Many will not recognize these ambassadors as Jesus’ envoys and will accuse them of being “snowflakes,” weak, left leaning, and politically ambitious.

It takes a very special person to be an ambassador for Christ. 

“These verses in Matthew 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.”

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

As we prepare ourselves for this ambassadorial role, it might be good to meditate on the lives of many who took up this mantle of 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 lepers on a remote compound on Molokai island.

We might think of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Medgar Evers, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who gave their lives to speak God’s truth to self-aggrandizing power.

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 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 don’t know 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.

Woolman could walk into raucous New Jersey pubs, 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 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 convinced 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, may God raise up heirs to his loving, peaceful spirit, eccentric, yellowing jacket and all, to speak wisdom and God’s love to our bitterly divided land. 

Fear Itself

June 21, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

When was the last time you were scared out of your wits?

And how helpful would it have been if some well-meaning person had told you, “Fear not?”

The problem with fear is that it’s a very subjective emotion and not everyone is afraid of the same thing. Some people are afraid of flying but others say the bumpier the air the more they like it. Some people are afraid of thunderstorms while others stand in awe of these spectacular spectacles of nature. Some are afraid of heights. Others climb mountains.

And if you happen to be afraid, even if your fear is illogical or silly, it won’t help if someone tells you to chill. To fear not.

Years ago our family went on the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios in Orlando. 

We were seated side-by-side and when the lights went out the seats began to shudder and tilt. As we began to pick up speed we could feel the wind in our faces, and we descended into what appeared to be a dark pit. Prehistoric creatures appeared menacingly on the edge of the precipice, and to my horror I realized we were falling into the gaping mouth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Behind me I could hear Katie shouting, “I don’t want to be eaten by a dinosaur” and I couldn’t have agreed more. At the last minute we diverted from the monster’s jaws but we continued our horrifying ride through the vestiges of time. When we finally stopped, the chairs stopped swaying, the wind stopped blowing, and the lights came on.

Rarely have I been so scared. As we got up to leave I angrily reminded everyone how much I hate roller coasters. 

Martha smiled and said, “This wasn’t a roller coaster.”

She added, “The seats were just vibrating, not moving forward. Didn’t you notice the Exit sign beside you never moved?”

Well, I did not notice, and neither did Katie. Both of us were completely convinced by the mediated illusion of flight. It was a psychological deception in our heads, and Katie and I were seized with great fear.

Fear can be incapacitating, and not just in the artificial thrills of amusement parks. 

We all face it: the fear of a looming big decision, the fear of financial ruin, the fear of a serious illness, fear for the safety of our children and loved ones, even – for many – the fear of making a speech. Fear is a basic human response that has been evolving in our collective psyches since our ancestors lived in caves. Fear is a survival mechanism, a universal impulse that keeps us safe from danger. Fear is a human trait that we should respect, and we should never taunt or yell “cowardly custard” at anyone who is afraid.

All of us know what it is to be afraid.

Remember in the days immediately following nine-eleven, we stopped what we were doing watched fearfully every time an airplane passed overhead?

That was a very fearful time for all of us, and it opened our mediated imaginations to terrible fears. Remember the rumor that “thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey” when the towers went down? It was not true, and a week after the terror attacks President George W. Bush condemned the rise of Islamophobia among certain groups:

“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world,” the President said. “Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace.  And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race—out of every race …Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow (Muslim) citizens to take out their anger don’t represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.”

That was a good use of the Bully Pulpit, and I sometimes wish we could hear those truths more often from our leaders in the corridors of power.

God’s love is sufficient to overcome anything we fear. 

As a Christian who, as Luther put it, is simultaneously a sinner and saint, I am aware that my fear may make me indifferent to God’s love. It is my fear that forces my silence when a paranoid fear of the “other” compels the building of walls to prevent immigrants from crossing our national border, or detaining thousands of asylum seekers in detention camps, often separating parents from their children, because we are afraid to let people who are not like us mingle safely among us. 

Throughout our land today, thousands of people have been afraid to leave their homes, to get into their cars, to go to work, to go to the store, to go to church. To those who cheer the calls for “Mass Deportation,” the targeted people are the “others” who don’t fit in with the rest of us. And not just persons of color. My therapist is an empathic middle-aged white lady born in Ireland and she fears she may be arrested every time she visits Immigrations to complete her application for U.S. citizenship.

But for those of us who have experienced God’s infinite love, we know that these frightened people who worry about their future are our neighbors we are commanded to love. Even if our love for these neighbors will get us into trouble with the civil authorities.

Professor Danny Zacharias, a biblical scholar in Canada, in today’s reading , “Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples not to be afraid. Though they will face threats, they should not fear those who can harm the body but cannot touch the soul. Instead, they are to trust in God’s care, knowing that even the hairs on their heads are counted.”

Reading this as an Indigenous man, Zacharias continues, “I cannot help but also think of Indigenous communities throughout much of the world, but especially here on Turtle Island (North America). The church has perpetuated much harm among my people, the First Nations of Canada. Christian theology demonized our culture. Christian teachings like the Doctrine of Discovery bolstered colonial conquest and dehumanization. Christian churches helped to run Indian Residential and Boarding schools, which sought to kill the Indian in the child. It should not be hard for people to understand why there is sometimes such outright hatred toward the Christian church within Indigenous communities.”

In Canada as elsewhere in the world, seeking justice for marginalized people is often unpopular – and dangerous. In our country we have a long list of human rights leaders who overcame their fear and paid the ultimate price. Medgar Evers. Martin Luther King, Jr. And in another context, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran scholar who gave his life speaking truth to the Third Reich. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, ‘The cross is laid on every Christian.’ Said differently, the cross cannot be bypassed on the road to discipleship, and we can’t serve Jesus if we succumb to fear.

The New Testament offers many examples of Christians who faced the consequences of discipleship.

One of my favorites was Deacon Stephen, a convert who was so zealous to win people to Jesus that he wouldn’t stop pressing his message even when it began to enrage his listeners. (Acts 6)

Sticking to one’s message takes courage.

Years ago, when I was a young magazine editor, I began receiving scores of angry letters from readers who thought the magazine was devoting too much space to social issues and too little to spiritual issues. I mentioned this to George Cornell, religion editor of the Associated Press, and asked him how he handled angry letters. George stroked his chin and said, in his Oklahoma drawl, “I tell ’em, ‘You may be right.’”

Perhaps it would have been safer for Stephen and for Dietrich Bonhoeffer to take this approach with their critics. But instead they angered them even more with arguments so smart that they knew they could not refute them. 

For most of us, and for many pastors in many traditions, the cost may not be so high.

But here’s the thing: if there is no cost at all, it is not serving Jesus.

Throughout my forty years as a reporter, editor, layperson, and guilty bystander in church circles, I’ve observed many disciples who paid large and small prices for their discipleship.

I've known more than one pastor fired from his or her congregation for taking pastoral or diaconal stands they believed to be right:

For preaching against what they believed to be this nation’s immoral war in Vietnam;

For removing the U.S. flag from the church sanctuary on the grounds that God is the God of all nations and all peoples;

For participating in Civil Rights marches;

For presiding over the marriage vows of same-sex couples;

For preaching against the ownership of powerful assault rifles.

For accompanying their undocumented neighbors to immigration hearings.

I’ve known married women pastors who have been dismissed from their congregations for getting pregnant, or for requesting a one-month leave to recuperate from a mastectomy. 

Today, in our hypertense environment, the moral questions we face cause many of us to ask whether we dare risk the cost of discipleship. Do we dare declare unequivocally:

That war and violence are always sin;

That Black Lives Matter; 

That Islam is a religion of peace;

That no person is illegal;

That no religious views should be forced upon anyone;

That everyone is entitled to express their sexuality in their own way without social prejudice or government imposition. 

That God is love;

And the greatest commandment is always to love one another as we love ourselves.

 “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me,” Jesus reminds us

“This is a tough pill to swallow, especially in the modern day when comfort, convenience, and safety are so highly prized. And the final verse offers a paradox: ‘Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it,’” Zacharias concludes.

“This teaching calls believers to release their grip on self-preservation and embrace the deeper life found in Christ. We will find abundance in life if we take up the life of Christ. True life is found not in accumulation or personal achievement but in living in right relationship with Creator, with community, and with creation. Jesus’s words invite his followers into this reality—where life is defined not by status or security but by faithfulness to God’s call.”

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.