He was the chair of the Religion Department at St. Olaf College. Oh yes I forgot one thing. Besides being stubborn and unreasonable he was also Lutheran. Incredibly Lutheran. Actually the place was filled with them (those Lutherans) and that is one reason that they had an absolutely antiquated distribution requirement. You couldn’t graduate without taking three, count them three, religion courses. Find that in a college curriculum today.

I thought it was excessive. Many of my peers did too. I wanted to opt out of at least one of those classes. Harlan Foss stood in my way.

It was my senior year in college. Fancying myself as a non-conformist I had not completed or even started my language requirement which would explain the reason I ended up taking a full year of Norwegian. And I had not completed my religion requirement. They might force me to speak Norwegian but they were not going to force-feed me any more of their religious ideas. It was just a smoke screen for indoctrination. Everyone knew that.

I had a good case, I thought. I had actually taken three religion courses already. Except one of them was The History of Christianity in America. I was an American History major so I had taken that class and the truth was that a person could count this either as a history course in their transcript or a religion course. So it qualified as a religion course. Everyone agree on that. So I thought why couldn’t it count as a course to fulfill my religion requirement even though it was officially credited as a history course. Do you see the logic? It was a religion course! I took it. That makes three religion courses I passed so in my mind I had fulfilled the requirement.

I believed that this simple logic would win out. It made very good sense to me. And with that very good argument I approached Dr. Harlan Foss. I had over estimated his ability to listen to logic. He listened patiently and smiled when I was finished and answered directly and briefly. I think the word was “no.” He didn’t even bother to explain why. It confirmed everything I thought about organized religion, the Lutherans, and people who fancy themselves as Christians. I will not tell you what those beliefs were but I am sure that you can imagine.

So I had no choice. I could not graduate college without one more religion course. I chose The Essentials of Christianity an introductory course maybe I could just glide through without too much pain. Well the course was taught by a man named Charles A. Wilson. Every friend of mine who had taken a course from Charlie had ended up a religion major. “At least that won’t happen to me,” I thought to myself when I signed up. Too late in my college career.

Well that course was the turning point of my life. I was challenged and provoked and encouraged to think, really think in a way that I had not before. And for whatever other reason I was completely taken with Charlie and the subject. I had found my passion and as it turned out to be my life. I didn’t become a religion major. I went to seminary and here I am.

And this is the great irony of my life. It was actually the inflexibility of one Harlan Foss that landed me here. In principal he was all wrong but what he did was exactly right.

His answer was no and at the time I could not have known what that no would lead to. At the time I was just mad at Harlan Foss for his Swedish stubbornness and disgusted with a stupid college that would require three religion courses. But sometimes you can’t see around the corner, sometimes a little faith is more appropriate than demanding your own way.

James and John were young men who wanted and demanded to have their way. It may have been the whole reason that they had gone with Jesus. If Jesus was the revolutionary that some of his actions and statements seem suggest. If James and John expected that a new political order was at hand because Jesus was about to bring it about. (There is no reason to doubt this because this was a wide spread expectation in Israel at the time.) Then siding with Jesus might be the shrewdest move anyone could make. They would be insiders in this new kingdom that Jesus kept talking about. They would be, as Jesus even promised, judges over the twelve tribes of Israel. So it is not at all odd for them to approach Jesus as the lot of them approach Jerusalem and ask if it was really coming to pass and would Jesus really give them the glory and the power that he had promised.

Glory, they want glory, they want to share in this wonderful moment when Jesus shall gain power and they will no longer have to grovel. Who doesn’t want such a thing? Who doesn’t want to be lifted out away from the trials and troubles that they face? Who does not want to better their situation? Who does not want to neatly pack up their troubles and give them away? If they became the powerful their lives would be different.

It is an intoxicating elixir that they long for and it has been sold in almost every culture and every corner of the world. Trouble is that there is no elixir like that, there is nothing in all creation that miraculously delivers people from their troubles, their sufferings, their demons.

Jesus had the reputation of being a miracle worker but miracles may be over rated. If you go through and mark his miracles you will see that yes he cured people, he returned sight to the blind, he healed the lame, he even raised the dead. But the truth is that none of those miracles delivered anyone from the troubles, despairs, and disappointments in the way that James and John are wanting.

Lazarus was raised from the dead but that does not mean that he did not face death again. Blind Bartimeus was given sight but as we all know it takes much more than merely being able to see to build a life of meaning and joy. And just because Jesus gave a lame man the ability to take up his palate and walk it does not mean that the man was now on easy street.

It is what he tells James and John. They want to attain that place where the troubles of the world will simply melt away and everything will then be easy and harmonious. They think that this is what Jesus is offering. They think this is the life Jesus can give and I think they believe this is the life that Jesus lives. Jesus tells them it isn’t what they think. They will share in his life. They will drink from the cup that he will drink. They will be baptized into his baptism. They think this means easy street. But Jesus knows that it is his passion and death that they shall not escape. In some form they will go through it, that is inevitable. As for the rest that is up to them and up to God.

It seems almost cruel what he says to them. Yes suffering will surely come your way. Yes there is death waiting for all of us. And it would be cruel except that Jesus understands more than any human being has ever understood how faith works. And because he holds onto this idea he can say to James and John there are trials ahead, trials you could never even imagine now and not mean it in a cruel way.

Jesus as it turned out believed in a resurrecting God. And that means that God can take this moment, your worst moment, your best moment, the moment of final despair, and infuse it with life. So Jesus understands that God shall care for you always and beyond that there is nothing that shall truly harm anyone. If he didn’t believe that he was being vindictive and cruel with James and John. Yep you will get yours. But I believe he was telling his friends to be of good cheer God is present now and forever and because of that they don’t need the glory, they don’t need easy street, they don’t need to have all the disparate pieces of their lives fall together. They just need God. And God he was quite sure they have in spades from beginning to end.

Now I know my little example about Harlan Foss isn’t about life and death. It isn’t like what Jesus or James or John were facing. I would not be executed for not being Lutheran. But I think it does prove the point Jesus was trying to make. Life may not always seem to be working out. But it is. We have already been given the abundance that we think we lack. To ask for glory on top of it, or to ask for our way, or to ask for easy street is simply to not trust God to work out this moment. It is to not trust the simple goodness that pervades all of this life that God made.