Guest commentary by Robert McCutcheon I was baptized in 1951 into Pittsburgh’s 6th United Presbyterian Church, now Eastminster; my introduction to the city’s Jewish life was aquatic in a different way. In high school I swam for the old Young Men’s Hebrew Association — the Jewish Y, as it was known.  For a year after college I worked as a lifeguard at the Irene Kaufmann Center, the site of the present Jewish Community Center, where I kept my membership on and off to the present day — when it is now free, thanks to Medicare and my advanced age.  On Saturday, Oct. 27, had I been in Pittsburgh, as I often am, instead of in Elkins, West Virginia, where I now live, on my way to work out at the JCC I would have driven right by Tree of Life Synagogue. I was not the only Gentile on the YMHA’s team, but certainly in a religious minority.  I was warmly welcomed, though (and not because of my swimming prowess, as if I had any).  I learned all about Reformed, Orthodox and Conservative; I … [Read more...]

This season’s festive cards that crush and crowd the mails bear witness to the limits, all those insistent boundaries that ever mark and mar our loving. Time diminishes daily, the distant miles remain the same. Lives we have brushed against and learned to care for now seem too far removed to reach again, remember and renew the days we shared. But still we cherish them, refuse, despite the years, to let them go, and want to let them know that within the promise of the manger child our hope is yet alive, a hope writ large across this flimsy, brightly colored card. – J. Barrie Shepherd … [Read more...]

In January 1828, a bunch of men sitting in a palace in Mexico City signed the “Treaty of Limits,” a document that would set up the bureaucracy used to draw and then redraw the borders based on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and later the Gadsden Purchase. All of this led to an arbitrary line in the sand of the desert near the 31st parallel. Today we know that line as the international border between the United States and Mexico. In October 2018, seven adventurous souls from Hastings, Nebraska. made a trek to the 31st parallel and spent a week studying boundaries, borders, barriers and lines through the lens of their faith and through the stories of people living on both sides. What did we discover? God’s love, manifest through God’s precious children, transcends boundaries, borders, barriers and lines. Our team arrived in Tucson, Arizona, on a Saturday afternoon. Our Presbyterian mission co-worker Mark Adams lovingly greeted us, and we loaded in the van for the two-hour ride … [Read more...]

  Guest commentary by Harry Heintz I don’t know just how I found the writings of Eugene Peterson.  Once I did, it seemed his writings were everywhere.  He was a long-tenured pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Maryland.  Once I started reading Peterson, there was no turning back.  He wrote with deep biblical insight and pastoral authenticity about the spiritual life and the rhythms of pastoring and congregational life. There were no charts or statistics in his books — just penetrating thoughts about long-term obedience to the Lord of the church.  His paraphrase of the Bible, “The Message,” is my favorite paraphrase.  I love its playfulness and depth of insight; I frequently use it in sermons to add shades of meaning to a biblical passage. I like church growth. Seeing a congregation growing in spirit, vision and number of people served, especially new believers, is a good thing.  Some Christians make it something of a cottage industry to condemn churches that grow … [Read more...]