Today, Tomorrow, and the Next Day

Yet Today, Tomorrow, and the Next Day

Year C, 2nd Sunday of Lent

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27:10-18;
Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

Preached March 17, 2019

St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

The Rev. John C. Forney

The other day over coffee and donuts an old friend brought up some of his recent theological explorations.  I’ll call him Sam to protect the innocent and the confused.  Sam mentioned a number of people he was reading or had looked into.  He found it all very confusing and disturbing.  My take on Sam’s theological inquiry was that it was interesting, and certainly such armchair discussions are a pleasant diversion, but I didn’t find that they got me much of anywhere.  I said that as an Episcopalian (he was one also), I believed that theology should be sacramental if it is worth considering.

You remember what a sacrament is.  It’s the visible sign of an unseen grace, of an unseen mystery.  Any theology worth its salt should manifest in some way that the Power which moves us all should bring about a greater expression of the kingdom of God in the visible world.  It should manifest itself in changed lives, a greater and a more tender mercy. 

Karl Barth did indeed write many volumes of Church Dogmatics.  Ponderous, indeed.  Yet Karl Barth had a ministry within the jail of his city.  To my mind, his outreach to some of society’s most misfortunate validated his theology. 

There’s the story about Karl Barth’s entrance into heaven.  Upon his arrival he notices a huge, a ginormous crowd, awaiting his arrival.  Barth asks if all this hoo-ha is in recognition of his massive theological production.  “Oh no,” the MC says.  “We forgave you that long ago.”  “No,” she said.  “We are here in recognition of the countless hours you spent with the worst of the worst – to honor the sermons you gave Sunday after Sunday, and the comfort you provided over the years to the inmates in Basel Prison.” 

To sum up: What does your theology lead you to do for your sisters and brothers, for our Mother Earth?  If nothing, it’s all worthless fluff.  Even if there are fourteen or fifteen volumes of it.

“Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today, tomorrow and the next day…”  This is what Jesus told his hostile interlocutors.  You go tell that old fox Herod that this is my business.  “Today, tomorrow, and the next day…”

And these words of Jesus must also be our mindset.  “Today, tomorrow, and the next day…”  we must be about the business of what my friend Ed Bacon calls, “Turning the human race into the human family.”  The kindom of God is the business of Christians every day.  It’s about wholeness and restoration.  Irenaeus tells us that the “glory of God is a man, is a woman, is a people fully alive.”  Yes, I’ve expanded his thought here.  But it comports with the meaning.

Note, I said “kindom of God.”  That’s because in the mind of Christ we are all kin to one another. 

Indeed, we are all kin one to another.  That is why the blasé, dismissive attitude of our president towards this week’s killings in New Zealand I find so abhorrent.  The position of the new – maybe it’s not so new after all – white nationalism that we must fear and demonize all those different from ourselves is tearing at the fabric of our nation.  No, Donald Trump did not pull the trigger in a mosque in New Zealand.  A deranged and twisted mind did that.  But as Rabbi Chuck Diamond of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh – you remember, the place of that terrible massacre of innocent Jewish worshippers — insists, “Words matter.”  To Trump’s assertion that he didn’t know enough to comment, again the rabbi counters, “You know enough to know it’s wrong.”

Today, tomorrow and the next day we are called to stand for what is right and to call “wrong” what it is, flat out “wrong.”  Words do matter, Mr. President.

When our president opines in a freewheeling, unscripted moment, “I think Islam hates us.  There’s something, something there… a tremendous hatred of us.  There’s unbelievable hatred of us.” – that is when Christians should have been crying to the heavens, “NO, NO, NO.  This is not America!  This is not who we are as people of faith. This is not what Jesus teaches.”

This president has tapped into a global market for hatred.  A market spawned and fed by the worst of the internet. 

Today, tomorrow and the next day — that is the time for our witness to what we believe in the Jesus movement and what we’re about.

Chris Matthews, good Catholic that he is, brought on his Hardball program Friday those of other faiths to raise a common voice of denunciation.

Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father, the Muslim whose son was killed in Iraq, set the record straight.  “The shooter in his manifesto wrote, ‘Trump is the symbol of a renewed white identity and common purpose.’”  Yes, Mr. President, words do matter.  Your words matter.  Mr. Khan, speaking of Trump’s hateful rhetoric, continued, “How wrong he is.  There are over ten thousand Muslim soldiers serving in the United States Army that have taken the oath to defend the Constitution and this country…How wrong he is…like on every issue.  This is a politically expedient person.  He is a ship without rudder.  That is why we see all these investigations.  My only concern is how would we recover from this hate and division?”  Chris Matthews’ answer was, “Well, we’re talking about it.”

That’s where we all must start.  We must be talking about it.  Today, Tomorrow and the next day.  And whoever that “Fox” may be, whatever powers and principalities that pejorative stands for, we Christians must be in the public square standing for what is right. Otherwise we’ll have lost our saltiness.  Good for nothing but…well, we probably won’t be tramped underfoot, we’ll just be ignored.

Today, tomorrow and the next day, whether it is with a beaten traveler by the side of a road leading from Jerusalem to Jericho or at the shore of a Galilean lake, we are called to be a transformational people. Listen again to St. Paul:

Ever dying, here we are alive. Called nobodies, yet we are ever in the public eye.  Though we have nothing with which to bless ourselves, yet we bless many others with true riches.  Called poor, yet we possess everything worth having.”[1]

Today, tomorrow and the next day, here we are alive, blessing others with true riches.  And so, we begin the conversation.  In church.  In the supermarket checkout line.  And in our legislatures.  Silence is not golden.  Silence is death. 

The day after I had left West Virginia, a company began dismantling the Weirton Steel Mill, about twelve miles up the road from where I had been staying.  Work was proceeding slowly but safely until someone got a “bright idea.”  Now whenever someone on my construction crew got a “bright idea,” I would tell the crew to consider just one question, a question fraught with potential legal and economic implications.  The question?  The question was: “What could possibly go wrong?”

Apparently, no one ever asked that question in Weirton at the worksite, or if it had been asked, no one carefully considered the possible answers.  The “bright idea” was, why don’t we just blow it up?  Right!  Blow up the whole thing! And I’m thinking, “Now, what could possibly go wrong?  Sure, blow it up.  And maybe half the town?”

As a monstrous dust cloud began to subside, it became clear that plenty had gone wrong.  For blocks around, windows were shattered and houses were knocked off their foundations.  Worse yet, this cloud was potentially full of all sort of toxins and asbestos and God only knew what else.  Houses, lawns playgrounds were covered by the soot.  It was something out of 9/11 all over again.

As I scrolled down through some of the comments that followed the online news article itself, what surprised me was the anger directed against those who complained, or sent off air samples to the Feds to be analyzed for the sort of stuff that could kill a person.  Don’t say anything.  It will make our president and our town look bad.  It will get us a bad reputation.  Never mind the children and old people.  Never mind those most vulnerable to any released contaminants.

Today, tomorrow and the next day Christians are called to put health and public safety first over the protection of some idiot with a “bright idea” that may have destroyed several city blocks and ruined the health of hundreds.  Christians are called to raise a ruckus when well-being is at stake.  No matter whose reputation might be damaged.

While you and I are compelled to raise a ruckus, we are, more than that, called to raise hope and possibility.  Healing is always the order of the day.  We’re here to more than just point out the problem.  We’re here to be a solution, or at least part of a solution.  That’s what a whole lot of Christians and other people of faith — and also some of no faith — did in Pomona several weeks ago.  The “Pomona Reawakening Conference” brought many residents of Pomona and several surrounding cities together to think about what “Engaged Compassion” might mean for a city.  Think about our schools, employment, policing, the environment, city services, clean neighborhoods, safety. 

Well, folks did think about such.  And this original conference has grown legs.  My good friend Dick put up with more dysfunction, distraction by shiny objects and the chasing after rabbits to get this thing organized – well, let me just say – this project would have tried the patience of a saint!  Meeting after planning meeting, Dick was lucky if even two or three in any group would have been at the previous planning meeting.  Or any other planning meeting, for that matter!  Yes, today, tomorrow and the next day…Dick kept at it.  And the results, when it all came together at Temple Beth Israel on a cold Saturday morning, were absolutely heartwarming.  Listening to the two keynote speakers – there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  The workshops following lunch propelled action.  And from that beginning has come the continued gathering of a bunch of folks bent on the renewal of that city through the ways of engaged compassion.  The thing has absolutely grown legs.  All key players are now engaged.  This common effort is a joy to behold.

This is the sort of work, today, tomorrow and the next day, that brings blessing to our living.  In it Christ is to be found.  This Lent, today, tomorrow and the next day…let us be in the thick of God’s action for restoration and wholeness.

As I told my younger son who had the idea of “doing something” about opioid addiction in West Virginia, “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into — a most fine, godly mess.”  And that, my friends, is our summons.  To find, or create fine, godly messes that bring true riches and blessing.  Today, tomorrow and the next day.   Amen.

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[1] The New Testament in Modern English, J.B Phillips 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. II Cor. 6:9-10.