All life is webbed, inter-dependent, like the strands of the spider's web in the above picture. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living; we believe that the examined life IS worth living, and that we need to slow down to reflect on its meaning and the events swirling around us.  The rocking chair on the front lawn of Shepherd of the Hill Church in Chaska symbolizes this more reflective life.  

The writing and speaking of Shepherd of the Hill Pastor Gordon Stewart appear on "All Things Considered" (MPR, KNOW 91.1 FM), MinnPost.com, The Chaska Herald and other venues. This page brings you our Pastor's published commentaries.

In the Presbyterian Church our ministers of word and sacrament are expected to speak their minds; they make no claim to speak for, nor do they represent, the views of any one of the church's members or of the church itself.

"The American Oligarchy" on the Senate hearings on financial reform and Wall Street (published 4/29/10) rises out of a core commitment of Presbyterians to the biblical principle "the truth shall set you free" (Gospel of John 8:32). The search for truth and speaking truth in the public square are core values of the Reformed theological tradition Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska represents.  This commentary, like many others, provokes debate, dissent, and thoughtful discussion.  It does not ask that the reader agree; it does ask that we not shrink from the over-riding issues of our time, especially the unexamined, hidden assumptions that keep us polarized and keep us from the truth.  

When Political Rhetoric brings out the worst in us - MPR commentary, March 29, 2010.

Faith, Doubt, and the Fishpond - Chaska Herald, March 25, 2010

The Peanut Gallery - MPR commentery aired on "All Things Considered" March 22, 2010.

Ashes to Ashes, Muscles to Mush - MPR commentary, Feb. 17, 2010)

Release from the Inner Prison - MinnPost.com commentary,(Feb. 12, 2010).

Hammer Strokes Against the Darkness - MPR commentary, January 19, 2010.

The Voice of Abel's Blood - MPR commentary, January 6, 2010.

MAP

Jacob Miller's Amish Rocker MPR Commentary aired on "All Things Considered" following Pennsylvania school shooting Shepherd of the Hill Pastor Gordon Stewart I am not Amish. I really like my car. I like the internet. I have an insurance policy. I like electricity. But I have an Amish rocking chair. I bought the Amish rocker from Jacob Miller, an Amish craftsman in Millersburg, Ohio. We sat on his front porch and rocked awhile. Paid him thirty dollars for the rocker made of maple and hickory by Jacob’s hands. That was 30 years ago. In times like this I still sit and rock. I think about Jacob and the Amish…but mostly, I’m thinking about rest of us. In the aftermath of the school massacre in Pennsylvania, the camera shots of Amish horse-drawn buggies came into our living rooms. While those camera shots drew us closer to the strange world of Amish simplicity – those same camera shots were an invasion of Amish values. The Amish do not use cameras and do not allow themselves to be photographed – to do so, according to Amish values, would be to engage in vanity and pride, the opposites of humility and community. In none of the camera shots did you see an Amish person interviewed on film. Rooted in the radical wing of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation, the Amish live by their own norms. They are a peaceful community. They shun the culture of individualism, war, and greed on the basis of the teachings of Jesus, which they take at face value. “You have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies, but I say to you…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” They also believe that the truth sets us free. And that the ends never justify the means. As I sit in Jacob’s rocking chair, I long for Amish truthfulness in an election campaign where untruth, distortion, and misrepresentation assassinate the character of one’s opponents. Winning is everything. Truth is lying by the roadside on the road to Washington. The Amish values of honesty, unvarnished truth, and - when honesty and truth are violated - confession and forgiveness are like a warm light in the a dark night of the soul and nation. It was this society of simple truth and non-violence that bore such surprising witness to the power of forgiveness as the long line of horses clip-clopped past the home of the man who had killed their children in a one-room schoolhouse. They nodded their heads to the family members who had come outside, also filled with grief because of what their son, their husband, their father had done. They had invited the widow of the killer to join them at the private funeral. And, days later, when the man who had killed their children was also buried, the horses clip-clopped the buggies of 75 of them to his funeral in support of his grieving family. In times like these, I sometimes turn off the television and rock a while in Jacob Miller’s Amish rocking chair. I sit back and give thanks for a more peaceful, humbler, and more honest way to be human.

Imagine MPR Commentary aired on "All Things Considered" following President Obama's speech to the Muslim world. SHPC Pastor Gordon Stewart As President Obama prepared to speak to the Islamic world in Cairo, an old song of John Lennon came to mind: "Imagine ther're no countries.  It isn't hard to do - nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.  Imagine all the peolple living life in peace...." But, as President Obama knows, it's not that simple.  his speech to the Muslim world did not presume to wipe the slate clean of relgiion.  Rather the President stressed the link between religion and movements for peace, social change and self-determination.  He put before us the compelling quesion of interpretation: do our respective interpretations of the traditions of Abraham's children - Muslim, Jew, Christian - advance or destroy relationships among neighbors? In Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Israel, the issue is self-determination.  For much of the Muslim world, the issue is Western Judeo-Christian arrogance, the presumption of cultural, political, and religious superiority.  Like us, they dream of homelands free of outside occupation and control. The collective memory of Western culture includes the Judeo-Christian story of a shepherd boy named David who slew the military giant Goliath with one stone.  When Goliath bellowed for someone to challenge him, he looked bigger than life.  But, little David stepped forward with his sling-shot and slew the giant. We in the West have always seen ourselves as little David.  It comes as a great shock, then, that many in the world now see us as Goliath, and see themselves as little David. It is into this world of different perceptions and global conflict that President Obama dared to speak to the Islamic world in Cairo.  He knows that in their eyes we have stood on top of the hill of military might, shunning diplomacy - that we have shouted across the valley without listening.  He knows that "shock and awe" may win in the short-term but fail in the long-term.  He knows that there will be no peace in the Muslim world or here in the West unless someone dares to break the cycle of hatre and violence perpetuated by the different children of Abraham. John Lennnon's imaginings express the heart's longing for a more peaceful world, but we can't get there by erasing reality - past or present.  What's called for instead is a rekindling of imagination from a common source. In the conflicts between East and West - between Christians, Jews, and Muslims - President Obama is calling all of Abraham's children home - to a moment of promise that got lost along the way after Abraham's death.  When Abraham died, his estranged children gathered to bury him and honor him.  Ishmael (who began the lineage of Islam) and Isaac (who began the lineage of Judaism and then Christianity) put their differences aside to re-claim their family ties as the children of Abraham, who himself, like them, was no saint.  Thank you, Mr. President, for calling us home to that lost moment of promise.  Thank you for letting us imagine again.

Tookie Williams and the Redeemed MPR Commentary aired on “All Things Considered” following the execution of Stanley ("Tookie") Williams SHPC Pastor Gordon Stewart Now that the debate leading to the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams is over, it’s time for a post mortem on the debate itself. Stanley Williams’ attorneys argued for clemency on the grounds that their client was a changed man. Tookie’s books educating children about the folly of gang life were evidence, they argued, of Stanley’s redemption. The State argued that there was no redemption without confession of guilt for the four murders for which he had been sentenced to death. The governor, in the end, agreed with the State. Tookie was not redeemed. Tookie must die. When and why did ‘redemption’ enter our discussion about the morality of the death penalty? And when did final judgments about who is redeemed or not redeemed become a matter for human judgment? Last I knew ‘redemption’ was a theological word, not a legal or political word. But wrapping our arguments in theological language at some point seems to have become the coin of the realm. By arguing over the state of Tookie Williams’ soul, we implicitly stake a claim for the state of our own souls and selves. “We are redeemed. Tookie is not.” We send Tookie on to God; we all get to stay here. We are the only Western democracy that still practices the death penalty. The nation that was to be a city set on a hill – a beacon of light for the world – has become a city that worships its own powers of death, declaring itself unique for its light while using torture and death as the instruments of light and redemption. The argument leading to Stanley Williams execution by lethal injection was the wrong argument from the beginning. It should never have been about whether or not Stanley was a redeemed man who had earned the right to live. It should have been about us and what it does to us to strap him to a table where some stranger would stick the needle into his vein as representative of the redeemed. My religious tradition also ties together religion and politics. Its central figure was executed by a Roman governor because he dared to challenge the ultimate authority of religion and the State. How ironic that any of his followers would salute the governor’s orders instead of echoing the wrenching cry from the old instrument of torture and execution: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Black Water and Michael Jackson Aired July 2 on"All Things Considered"- click here for audio or read below. HOST: The memorial service for pop star Michael Jackson has tentatively been set for Tuesday, July 7. Like many people, commentator Gordon Stewart heard the news last week while driving in the car. It was on the drive home from the black water of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness that I heard the breaking news of Michael Jackson's death. I had spent the week there with a group of family and friends -- sharing the cooking, hanging out, swimming and canoeing in the black waters of Lake One. I drove home with two primary memories. First, I had been fascinated by the black water, whose surface was as clear as any mirror but whose bottom you could not see - a kind of metaphor, I thought, for the mystery and depth of life itself. The other memory was sitting on the large porch by the edge of that black water lake. Five of us who had risen early in the morning sipped coffee and pondered a question from Peter Block's book Community: the Structure of Belonging The question: "What is the crossroads you are faced with at this point in your life?" The two oldest talked about the choice between graceful acceptance or denial of our aging -- and they shared the joy of unexpected sources of creativity. For the 28 year-old and the 31 year-old, the two roads of Frost's poem were diverging in a yellow wood...should they pour their life into a career and being all that they can be...or should they choose the path of a more balanced life, an eight-to-five job allowing more time for hobbies, leisure, friends and family. The last person to share was a 32 year-old diagnosed three years ago with incurable terminal cancer. For her, the crossroads was between hoping and planning for a longer life or planning according to the shorter lifespan that the science projected. That morning on the porch was an intimate look inside the deep places of five people. It was risky. It was thoughtful. Each of us stood before roads that diverged, each road different and yet the spiritual challenge very much the same: to be one's own true self whatever decision we would make, to live as fully as we could between the boundaries of birth and death. Then, on the drive home, came the news that Michael Jackson had died. What happened to him? How did he get so lost? When and how did he lose himself along the way? He never got to be a kid. Was he was looking for himself? Was the performer reflected on the surface of the black water all he could see? And what lay there in the depths of those black waters, the dark places beneath the social mirror? Looking for companionship rather than applause, he would steal away from his gilded compound in the middle of the night hoping to meet some stranger he could talk with, some ordinary Joe, someone just like the starless, ordinary self he had lost long ago on the stage of public applause and looked for in the deafening silence that came over him when he was alone at 4 a.m. As I drove, I thought of Michael -- that wonderful child and young adult we loved - and the words of the psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139). No one will ever know what the deepest and darkest black water was in Michael's life. His death is a great sorrow. I hope he's finally found his peace.

Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska ("SHPC") - Home of First Tuesday Dialogues - is the only Presbyterian Church in Carver County, Minnesota.  In the name of Christ, we seek to honor God's unconditional love for all people with worship, education, bold outreach, and community gatherings that promote the common good and re-create the public square.  SHPC Pastor Gordon Stewart and jazz-gospel-classsical pianist and choir director Momoh Freeman lead us most Sundays. 

Blackwater/Xi: How did it happen that the U.S came to rely on mercenaries? - MinnPost.com, July 3, 2009.

Empathy and the Bench: It's all about the spirit of the Law - MinnPost, June 3, 2009

The Release of the Well of Tears - MPR Commentary aired on "All Things Considered, January, 21, 2009.

Going Out of Our Mind - Chaska Herald, December 19, 2008.

The Gospel and the Chicken Coop - Chaska Herald, March 5, 2009.

Your Gang, My Gang, Our Gang - Chaska Herald, May 7, 2009.

The deeper meaning of a decorated tree - MPR, December 23, 2009. 

Remembering Armistice Day - MPR Commentary aired on "All Things Considered" November 11, 2009

As Copenhagen Conference draws near, mallards offer lesson in shared responsibility - MinnPost, November 9, 2009

Quiet at 4:00 A.M. - aired on "All Things Considered," October 30, 2009.

Old Fears Follow Their Familiar Path - MPR Commentary, September 30, 2009.

How appeals to fear - and misuse of Scripture - dampened a chilidog celebration - MinnPost, October 9, 2009.

 A Sacramental Moment - MPR commentary, August 7, 2009

 A Visit with Mary - Presbyterian Outlook commentary, October 4, 2009.