A Note From Pastor Martin's Desk...
July 21, 2026
A Brief Theology of the American Flag
I came across this article and found it appropriate for our nation’s 250th celebration. I have edited it for our space limits.
Let’s start with this: red, white, and blue were (and are) the colors of the British Union Jack, and the earliest American flags had 13 red and white stripes and a Union Jack in the upper left corner, where the stars are today.
But once the American colonists declared independence from that crown, a Union Jack obviously wouldn’t do — and so, as the Revolutionary War raged on, the Continental Congress established the Great Seal of the United States and in the process officially spelled out that, apart from the Union Jack, the new nation’s red, white, and blue colors stood for three ideals: red stood for courage, white stood for integrity, and blue stood for justice. Courage, integrity, and justice; that’s what we’re “pledging allegiance” to when we pledge allegiance to our flag, along with the Republic for which it stands.
But there’s more going on here. Remember, this is the late-eighteenth century, and these “United States of America” were doing something provocative, something new. They were breaking away, striking out in a different direction. Their new flag, they declared, would serve as a sign that the nation being born would be based on ideals — not on ethnicity, bloodline, kingship, or kinship. The government would belong to the people, and the nation would be based on ideals the people prized. Nor would the new nation be based on any particular national origin, clan, or caste. The Union Jack clearly signals England, Scotland, and Ireland, but the American flag does no such thing.
Nor would the new nation be based on any particular religion. Many national European flags featured crosses, including Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and France, among others. The Union Jack has three crosses: St. George’s Cross for England, St. Andrew’s Cross for Scotland, and St. Patrick’s Cross for Ireland. But the American flag? No cross at all. It’s a striking, conspicuous absence. And with all this in mind, it’s clear that so-called “Christian nationalism” isn’t only a theological contradiction in terms — it’s also deeply anti-American, going all the way back to the founding.
Courage, integrity, justice — and no cross. No crescent. No Star of David. No Buddha. No Shiva. Instead, 13 stripes and a constellation of stars representing the community itself. This nation will be built on ideals. We will ground ourselves in them as best we can and strive to live them out. And when we fail, we’ll get up and strive again, and again, and again.
Our flag represents our struggle ever since to live up to those ideals, a struggle that has entered a new chapter today. But whenever we catch sight of the American flag, we can remember that bold, world-changing message: no state religion but freedom of religion (or no religion at all), no particular clan or class but a diverse constellation of origins, and no kings or single ethnic identity but rather a community of equals.
We’re still working on it, and we’ve got a ways to go — but that’s the vision, that’s the goal, there up ahead on the horizon, snapping in the wind: red, white, and blue. (The entire article can be found at saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog)
God bless you all!
Pastor Martin
June 16, 2026
AI, AI, Oh!
AI is pounding down the tracks, a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of promise and perils, and we all have tickets to ride whether we want to or not. AI (why must the abbreviation sound like a scream?) promises to put vast troves of information at our fingertips while simultaneously making our lives clean and shiny. Some voices from the fringes are starting to ask inconvenient questions about whether some sort of oversight might be in order, or whether this was a good idea to begin with. I wouldn’t pay them much thought, we don’t have that much to spare and besides, that train has already left the station. Kazillions of dollars have been invested in data centers, chip development, and PR campaigns, and once the money is on the table the cards are going to get played.
We Homo sapiens (from the Latin homo, “man,” and sapiens, “knowing” or “wise”) have an insatiable appetite for knowledge, but little for wisdom. Knowledge is junk food: no matter how much you consume, it always leaves you hungry for more. Wisdom, on the other hand, is kale: everyone says how good it is for us, but nobody really wants to eat the stuff. Knowledge is the insatiable curiosity that opens Pandora’s box; Wisdom is the smart aleck who stops by later to say “I told you so.”
If there is a way to do something, we Homo sapiens, for better or worse, will find a way to do it: put burning leaves in a tube and smoke it? Sure! Figure out how to make airline seats even narrower? Why not! Pick a fight in the Middle East (again)? What could possibly go wrong? Up until now we have managed to avoid doing irreparable harm. Barely. But as investment firms are so fond of saying, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Eventually we may actually find it profitable to think before acting, to weigh the pros and cons and decide that maybe, just maybe, this is a con job.
It was their hunger for knowledge that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the first place. Having eaten the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they didn’t have the wisdom to know what to do with it. And the rest is history. Perhaps AI will be a blessing. However, given our track record with social media and smart phones, I won’t be holding my breath. Just maybe this would be a good time for us Homo sapiens to trade some knowledge for a bit of wisdom.
God bless you all!
Pastor Martin
March 17, 2026
We Have Met the Enemy, and They are Us
And so we are at war again. In spite of our dismal history in the middle east, surely we will get it right this time, right? It is so easy to get into a war: a decision made, an order given, a trigger pulled, and voila! But getting out of a war … ah, there’s the rub. Of course it’s helpful if the enemy gives up and lays down their arms, like back in the Good-Ol’-Wars. Now the enemy is more like Monty Python’s Black Knight: no matter how many pieces we chop off, they’ll never admit they’re beaten, because the fact is they’re not – not as long as they refuse to say “uncle.” Once again, the avowed purpose (among many currently being run up the flagpole) is to bring peace to the region. Peace through war – it has a certain ring to it. But frankly, I prefer peace through peace, because the other kind never seems to last very long. The losers always seem to come back around looking for a rematch. History is filled with ex-Great Empires who learned this the hard way. There is more than a little irony in that we have started this war during Lent, in which we prepare once again to bear witness to Jesus marching off to battle against evil and death, only he will do so without benefit of bombs and missiles, without army or angels. He goes armed only with his loving determination to embrace all people, even his enemies, even his friends, even the vast majority who couldn’t care less, as members of one family, one tribe, one nation. He won’t win; he doesn’t have a chance in hell – well, actually, that’s the one place he does have a chance. Because having lost in every imaginable way, he will sink down into the darkness to join with all the other losers, there to tip them off to the good news that there is no such thing as winners and losers; there is only us. And once we get that through our thick heads, we too will become winners – all for one and one for all. You see, there are no winners or losers when we are all on the same team, there are no strangers when we are all part of the same family. “Freedom isn’t free,” a slogan often cited as justification for war. But neither is peace. It requires forbearance, self-control, gentleness, kindness, and other stuff St. Paul refers to as “fruits of the Spirit.” And sometimes it requires recognizing that not everything is about winning or losing, dominating or being dominated. Sometimes it requires blood, sweat, and tears. Jesus can teach us a thing or two about that.
God bless you all!
Pastor Martin
February 17, 2026
Beautiful
Ruth and I took advantage of our last snowfall to hike through Dawes in near isolation. The flakes settled on the pinecones and accented the twisted trunks. It revealed hidden nests and blanketed everything in silence. Every few steps my gaze would be drawn to another still-life of branches and snow. And they were all beautiful. I have yet to see a tree grow ill-proportioned or a flower bloom awkwardly. Each leaf unfolds in perfect proportion to its task, each color finds its perfect niche in the woodland palate. Ugliness is not found in nature. What ugliness there is we make ourselves. When our grasp exceeds our need, or we act in ignorance of our interconnectedness with all manner of life, we scar the earth and each other. Nature’s beauty comes from its creator. The Apostle Paul tells us that God’s Spirit, moving through all creation, reveals to us the true nature of God, and it is beautiful. In the same breath, however, Paul says that so too the human spirit reveals our true nature, which is sometimes beautiful, but sometimes twisted and distorted. The beginning of scripture opens on a scene of peace and sufficiency. However, our desire for more corrupts that peace and sets us on an ugly course of destruction and alienation. The end of scripture is a scene of jubilant healing and restoration around the throne of Christ. You and I live between these two scenes, struggling with both the consequences of our oversized appetites, and our longing for that future restoration. Shortly before my father died, he advised us, his progeny, to do three things every day: give thanks, pray, and look for beauty. Today I found this beautiful snow draped landscape, and for this I give thanks. Renewed by such revelation, I pray that I – we – might take one more small step toward that promised restoration where once again we will find our place in God’s beautiful creation.
Bless you all!
Pastor Martin
December 16, 2025
A God for Here and Now
Is Jesus one with the Father, of the same substance as the Father, or subordinate to the Father? Was Jesus made, born, or emanated? Is the trinity co-equal or hierarchical? Is heaven a place or a condition? All contentious debates in the history of the church.
And we are still getting worked up about such hypothetical questions. Is God against gender transition? Is it Okay to pray to Mary? Should everyone be allowed to take communion? Such questions are, to quote Paul Simon, “questions for the angels.” We may learn the answers someday in heaven (will we go to heaven?) but what about now? A God futzing in heaven over the mysteries of the universe doesn’t do us mortals much good. We are flesh and bone pilgrims wandering through a dusty world. We need a god who concerns him/her/it-self with this place and this time.
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus. More importantly, it celebrates the incarnation. God becomes one of us. God is born. God laughs, weeps, hungers and thirsts. God rejoices, grows weary, despairs, suffers, and dies like us. But it is not enough that God becomes human. God becomes human for humans. Jesus feeds those around him who are hungry now; heals those who are sick now, reaches out to the scarred and battered and lonely and despairing, not in some glorious future, but in the cold, confused, and conflicted now. This is not some hypothetical or transcendent god. This is the God of our hear and now. This is the God we need. This is our God.
Merry Christmas to you all!
Pastor Martin
November 28, 2025
My Brother’s Keeper
For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, “You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:10-11) “Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen … Isn’t it to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and homeless into your home, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isaiah 58:67)
Now if your countryman becomes destitute and cannot support himself among you, then you are to help him as you would a foreigner or stranger, so that he can continue to live among you. (Leviticus 25:35) But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? (1 John 3:17)
Clearly, keeping open hearts and open hands towards those in need is a consistent theme in scripture and a core tenant of our faith. It reflects God’s will and God’s love for all people, regardless of circumstance. The homeless population in Newark is growing due to the increasing cost of living and political actions taken that now make it even harder for the poor to afford food, health care, and shelter. For years, Trinity Lutheran on Main Street has been offering a daytime DropIn Center where unsheltered individuals and families can find food, rest, clothing, and companionship, as well as other services provided by partnering organizations. In addition, they offer a Warming Center where the unsheltered can find overnight shelter when the temperature drops to dangerous levels. However, the increased need for these ministries has quickly outstripped their available space. We have an opportunity to partner with Trinity Lutheran in these ministries.
We are in conversation regarding hosting the Drop-In and Warming Centers here at St. Paul’s. Our location and large amount of unused space could provide just what they need to grow along with the increasing need. In early January we will have a vote to determine whether to move ahead with this partnership.
Please contact Pastor Martin, Jerry Young, one of our council members, or one of our members currently volunteering with these ministries with your questions or comments.
God bless you all!
Pastor Martin