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August 4, 2025 | Leave a Comment

Stiff-neckedness

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about stiff necks. And not because I have a stiff neck. No, I recently spent time in a room, facing some stiff-necked people. It was not fun.

This is a post about stiff-neckedness.

The dictionary defines stiff-necked as “haughty or stubborn.” But the Bible gives the word a lot more nuance. In fact, the word comes from the Old Testament. It’s qāšê, pronounced “kawsheh,” and it can mean hard, cruel, severe, obstinate, difficult, severe, or rough. 

We readers of the Old Testament most associate it with the Israelites who, having been released from slavery, followed Moses into the wilderness to the promised land. They’d been delivered out of Egypt and carried through the waters to safety from Pharaoh’s armies. You’d think they have been grateful and happy, but instead they only got impatient waiting for Moses to receive the tablets. Off came the jewelry to be molded into an idol shaped like a calf, and God saw it all unfold. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how kawsheh they are’” (Exodus 32:9).

Haughty, yes, because they thought they’d found a better solution than God. Stubborn, yes, but a blind kind of stubborn. 

But there was more.

They were hard. They couldn’t allow the possibility that they might have been wrong. Cruel. There was cruelty in the ways they treated each other and Moses, disrespectfully, meanly. And severe. They had judged both Moses and God without understanding. Obstinant, yes, of course. Difficult and severe and rough. They were all these things because they had forgotten God, failed to trust God, and flung themselves at the mercy of false gods that were going to let them down.

It’s easy now to look back in judgment of the Israelites at this moment. The problem is that the same word kawsheh is used again to describe some far more sympathetic people.

Take the woman Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. She was desperate for a child. She took her despair to the Lord, weeping and pouring out her petitions before Him with such passion that she lost her voice. Only her lips moved. Eli the priest took her for drunk. “But Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply kawsheh; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord’” (1 Samuel 1:15). 

Here, in this verse, kawshew meant sorrowful. It turns out that there’s sadness lurking behind stiff-neckedness too.

Ain’t that the truth? Behind all that hardness, cruelty, severity, and obstinacy lurks sadness–

Things didn’t work out the way I wanted. I did my best. Things still fell apart. Maybe if I deny it. Maybe if I refuse to look, it will all go away. Just make it go away. 

Kawsheh shows up again in another unlikely place. A king Jeroboam fears losing his son. He sends his wife to a prophet Ahijah. She tiptoes to his room, afraid of what he will tell her. 

“But when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet as she came in at the door, he said, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam; why do you pretend to be another? For I am charged with kawsheh tidings for you” (1 Kings 14:6).

The message Ahijah delivers is kawsheh indeed. The boy would die. Jeroboam would father no more sons, because he had turned away from the same God who had granted him that throne in the first place. 

It turns out that there’s some fear behind stiff-neckedness too.

Don’t tell me I helped make it happen? Did my own decisions lead me to this place? Do I have the strength to admit what I did wrong? No, so make the truth tellers leave. Just make it go away.

But the only way out of stiff-neckedness is truth telling and repentance. It’s facing our sadness and fear, our pride and wrong actions, with strength and courage, compassion and love.

And all those stiff-necked people–the Israelites, Hannah, Jeroboam and his wife–God didn’t give up on them. He stayed faithful. In the fullness of time, He even sent His son for the stiff-necked people who came after them.

Stiff necks don’t have to stay stiff.

Courage, Humility, Old Testament, Repentance Tagged: courage, fear, sadness, stiff-neckedness


May 22, 2025 | Leave a Comment

A not-so-empty nest

Truth: My husband and I had grown fond of our empty nest. 

Update: It’s not so empty anymore.

For the past three days and the next six weeks, both adult kids are back home in their childhood bedrooms. Our daughter’s bedroom had become my cozy office, and my son’s room had become my husband’s dedicated music cave. My office is now in the corner of the family room, and the music cave is a wall of the master bedroom. 

Oh, how I love my kids. I’m simply not accustomed to living with them as adults–adults with their own tastes and habits, their own schedules and priorities. I’ve made it my goal not to complain, but rather to enjoy these weeks as (likely) our last opportunity to live together as a family. Easier said than done.

What will it take to live together well? Communication, communication, and more communication, yes. Healthy boundaries, yes. Clearly articulated expectations, yes. 

And what might matter the most? Humility. 

My personal study found me this week in Philippians 2. The Christ hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 describes how Jesus made Himself nothing, having a mindset of humility in His becoming human for our sakes. The passage is often cited for its christological declarations, but Paul didn’t include it as teaching for teaching’s sake. The Christ hymn and its call for humility are included to inspire unity. 

Those first verses of the chapter lay it out:

…make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others (Philippians 2:2-4).

Harmony is essential for Christian community, and humility is the basis for the harmony. Acting with humility (2:3) is the key to the health of the church in Philippi and my old farmhouse too. 

The Christ hymn is the source of seemingly endless academic debate about verb and verb forms (see commentary on verse 7 alone), but what everyone agrees upon is Jesus’ motivation. It was a choice. That’s what matters. Christ’s humility was not pre-programmed at his incarnation, nor compelled by the Father. It was a decision of love.

“But contrary to what one might expect, the true nature of God is not to grasp or get or selfishly to hold on to things for personal advantage but to give them up for the enrichment of all” (Robert H. Stein, Luke, New American Commentary 24 [Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing, 1992],132).

Humility is no idle virtue or end in itself. It’s the grease in the gears. It makes possible other virtues of joy, peace, and kindness “for the enrichment of all.”

What will I give up “for the enrichment of all” my family in these next six weeks? A little quiet? A little tidiness? A whole lot of groceries? Yes, but these are absolutely nothing that aren’t worth the gift of getting acquainted with the people they have become since leaving home.

Last night, with my husband staying late at school for an awards night, my daughter cooked our dinner. The three of us ate dinner outside and lingered, with long respites of silence as we just got accustomed to being together again. My son did the dishes, and we took the dog for a walk.  It was good.

The nest will be empty again before I know it. I might even miss these weeks when they’re finished. 

Family, Humility, Love Tagged: adult kids, Christ hymn, empty nest, humility


April 14, 2025 | Leave a Comment

Heading into Holy Week. Together.

Our town’s Ministerial Association has shrunk. Many of the churches in it have shrunk. So the crowds at our Friday-night Lenten worship services have shrunk too. People usually show up to their own church when hosting, but otherwise I can pretty much predict who will be there: the small huddle ofNazarenes, the little crowd of Methodists, rarely anyone (a little embarrassingly) from my own church. I can’t quite figure that out. We may have doctrinal differences with the Catholics, for instance, but they’re the loveliest of people. Oh well.

Speaking of the Catholics, the final service before Holy Week is always at their place, and it’s always the Stations of the Cross. For the last several years, it’s been Deacon Doug leading us. Every year I overcome my Protestant uncertainty–do I really have to kneel?–and follow along. On this Friday before Good Friday, it’s become my entry into Holy Week.

The Catholic Daughters handed out the prayer guides this year, while the bell ringers warmed up. They played “Near the Cross.” I whispered along.

“In the cross, in the cross; Be my glory ever. Till my raptured soul shall find, Rest beyond the river.”

I changed the lyrics in my head, though. (I am the person who sang, “Later on, we’ll perspire as we dream by the fire,” in the second verse of “Winter Wonderland” for years.)

So, “To the cross,” I whispered Friday night, “to the cross. Be my glory ever. Till my restless soul shall find, Rest beyond the river.”

We’re headed to the cross, after all. And my soul often feels restless. Someday I’ll be raptured, but not yet. First I’ve got a class to teach and three sermons to write, so the rapturing can wait for now. Restless fits me better.

We’re headed to the cross, and there I was headed to it with my Baptist and Nazarene and Methodist and Pentecostal brothers and sisters, as it should be.

I was reminded, sitting there, of reading I’d done recently in postliberal theology (big words, sorry) and a theologian by the name of George Lindbeck in particular, who believed that our best response to Christianity’s waning hold on the ethics and imagination of society is to dig into our unique identity.We’ve got to speak our language. We’ve got to love our rituals.

But it’s not enough to do this living and speaking and loving as Presbyterians apart from Baptists apart from Catholics apart from Pentecostals. We’ve got to speak as one, just as much as we can, or our witness to and in this society gets even weaker.* In other words, occasions like a small town Lenten soup supper is a chance to say well and proudly that we’re all in this together. All of us.

And that could not be more important than this week as we’re heading into when we tell the strangest of stories about a man who was God who gave up his human life and rose again to remain God-with-us forever. 

“Because by Your cross, you have redeemed the world,” we repeated fourteen times, once at each Station. 

Those are special words for a special week, and we’re not speaking them alone.

At the end of the service, we concluded with the 15th Station of the Cross: the resurrection. Deacon Doug acknowledged it was unusual but appropriate since the 15th Station includes the reciting of the Apostles Creed, or “the creed we all share,” as he put it. He’s right. Sure, I mumbled “small case ‘c’” to myself when I affirmed my faith in the holy catholic church, but the faith that unites us–minus that difference in capitalization–is far greater than anything that divides us.

The prayer books that my husband and I received on Friday night were photocopies of the printed prayer books that some others held. The problem with our photocopied prayerbooks was that the copy machine cut off about an inch of text on every right hand page.

But the great thing was–Catholics and Protestants alike–we all did a pretty good job filling in the blanks. We know Jesus, and we know His story. The words came easy. I think George Lindbeck would have been proud. And maybe Jesus too.

To the cross, friends, to the cross, with our restless souls. Let us go.

*”George Lindbeck: Theology and the Eclessial People of Witness,” in The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006], 57-100.

Jesus Christ, Lent, Small town Tagged: Ecumenism, Holy Week, Jesus


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This is the day that
the Lord has made;
let us rejoice
and be glad in it.

– Psalm 118:24
Rev. Dr. MJ Romano

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