We Must Cry Out

As our 250^th birthday approaches we are seduced into an orgy of nostalgia and kitsch.  The banality of the recent cage fight on the White House lawn being the least of what’s to come.

In preparation for the events around the 4^th of July, the racists at 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. in D.C. have released an 85-page document rewriting black history.  How “white” of them.[1]

In this sanitized version, “slavery” and “slave” each only appear once.  “Racism” not at all.  These folks have long failed to reckon with America’s divided history.  The journey down nostalgia lane ignores the sordid legacy of slavery and Jim Crow – only one of America’s original sins.

As we celebrate Juneteenth, the date the proclamation of freedom belatedly reached those held in bondage in Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865. 

The Juneteenth celebration marks the delayed arrival of the proclamation of freedom from slavery for those held on bondage when Federal agents arrived in Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865, after local officials failed to share word of the national end of slavery.

Despite Emancipation, America yet remains mired in this tragic history that blighted the lives of millions – and continues to do so. 

Point!  Secretary of Defense (War?) Hegseth has twice summarily stripped promotion rolls of black and women senior officers simply because of race and sex.  Twice — with no explanation to Congress or the American public.

Point!  With the efforts to eliminate programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), this racist administration has corrupted our civil service, our military, our universities. They blatantly don’t want to include half my family in the dream.  Not back to the separate water fountains of the old Jim Crow era, but back to a not-so-subtle newer version of exclusion.  Just as covert and pernicious as it was under President Wilson when the KKK virtually ran the Democratic Party.

Point!  Growing up in a privileged white family, I remained oblivious to much of this history through my teen years and into young adulthood.  Oh, there were a few instances when the curtain was pulled back on this ugly underbelly of our history.

I remember the Mexican American boy in my third-grade class in Compton, California.  The only person of color in our class.  My parents gave me explicit instructions not to play with him.  He was dirty.  He would give us a disease.  He was not nice.  End of story.  I don’t think he had many friends in our class because I suspect other white parents gave their children the same message.

What puzzled me was the disparity of what I was learning in my Sunday school class taught by my mom and what my family was teaching.  This attitude did not comport with the song we sang about Jesus loving all the little children.

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red, brown, yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children
Of the world

This double mindedness of our history on race is a grotesque distortion of the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the guarantees enshrined in the Constitution (as revised by the 14^th, 15^th, 16^th and 19^th amendments).  The oppression of people of color came into full view when I was in junior high.

A Black dentist and his family had moved into our neighborhood.  While they were on vacation our “nice” white Christian neighbors ran a hose into the second story of their house and turned on the water.  When they returned a couple weeks later, the house was virtually destroyed, and most of everything in it.  What the water didn’t ruin, the mold did.

And my church uttered not a peep.  That began my estrangement from my faith, my class, my family.  Finally reaching a peak during the Vietnam War when my father and I did not speak to each other for almost 8 years.

Jeremiah, in the face of national corruption and faithlessness, is assaulted by the Word of Justice implanted in his heart.  He cannot resist it.  Fire in his bones.

“O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed, you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.”

Given this unpopular prophecy to deliver, he has become a pariah.

“I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me.  For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, “Violence and destruction.”

And in these fraught times of societal breakdown and chaos we must cry out.  While we mint new trillionaires and scads of new billionaires leaving us common folk in the dust – we must cry out!  Only the apostate will remain silent.

You might say we’re sometimes impolite.  We violate the norms of decorum.  I say, there is no longer any decorum when voting rights of the poor and minorities are fed wholesale into the woodchipper.  Politeness does a disservice to the Word of God, to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  What we presently are doing to “the least of these” is most impolite.

Now the disaster that daily befalls our nation is not just a matter of corrupt politics.  With the inclusion of a wonderful, new addition of an African-American daughter-in-law and a brand-new biracial grandson Luther it’s existential.  No longer an abstract concept of fairness and equity, but a matter of survival, belonging and thriving.

And as it’s said in West Virginia, you mess with one of us and you’re messing with all of us.  “All of us,” with the enlargement of my family, has taken on a whole new meaning.  Yeah, Trump, you and your GOP apologists — you’re messing with all of us now.

Like I felt upon hearing of what had happened to our Black neighbors down the street in my early teens, a smoldering fire had begun burning in my bones.

We need clergy enticed and assaulted by this burning Word in their bones.  Lay folks also virulently infected with this living Word – for in it is our salvation.  In it is the open door to any sort of life worth living – our only alternative to being just a dumb, senseless part on the Darwinian food chain.

And sometimes such impolite outbursts are pure Grace.  They open the door to God’s Justice and Peace.  Even open the door to repentance.

I remember my friend Charlie Clark, the pastor of a Lutheran church in Temple City when I ran my ecumenical fair-housing project.

When it came to Tough Grace, Charlie was extraordinary.

Pastor Clark used to fulminate against those in his church who had no vision.  “Do not quench the Spirit,” he would demand, voice raised.  That church had had five pastors in six years before he had arrived. 

There was a reason he was well into his seventh year when I knew him.  He had no tolerance for cynical nay-sayers, the faithless who had no vision.  “Do not quench the Spirit.”  He gave as good as he got for Gospel Righteousness’s sake.

I’m still not sure how he kept from being fired, but under his leadership that congregation was a part of our fair housing effort, Project Understanding – though many there absolutely refused to understand that “Good Neighbors Come in All Colors.”  God’s demand for Justice was shut up in Charlie’s bones, and he would not be quiet.

I still remember his secretary telling me of one Sunday, when Pastor Clark was putting out our Project Understanding newsletter in the literature rack.  One of the nay-sayers of stunted charity passed through the narthex and noticed this: “Pastor, how long do we have to have this crap in our church?” he whined.

Charlie wheeled about on him, bellowing, “Don’t ever let me hear you call the Gospel of Jesus Christ CRAP!”  And his contract was renewed for another year.  Truly, like Jeremiah, he had committed his cause to the Lord.

Such indomitable strength of character lies as a possibility within each one of us.  This Torah decency and sense of justice is shut up in all of us, but that we only excavate our souls to discover it.  We each hold the possibility of having the decency and courage to follow its lead.

It’s not just about my immediate family anymore.  This malignant administration is messing with all of America.  All of us!

Yet, through persistence.  Gentle and otherwise, the Word of God finds a way where there was no way.  That’s our doing.

The other day at our “beer summit” at Back Abbey my friend told me this story of his family and the growth to Gospel Inclusion.

Dick’s father was a rock-ribbed conservative Presbyterian in Palo Alto.  When it came to his church, he was a stalwart participating member.  But his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was somewhat limited when it came to what he saw as his personal prerogatives.

Case in point.  A California ballot proposition to repeal our fair housing laws, the Rumsfield Fair Housing Act, was on the ballot one year.  Dick and his father were on opposite sides of the issue.  Vociferously so.  They argued back and forth.  “I don’t want the government telling me what to do with MY property,” was the father’s objection.  Even on the way to the voting location the disagreement raged.

After each had cast his ballot and they were back in the car, there was absolute silence as they began the drive back home.  Finally, Dick’s father spoke.  “I just couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t vote for repeal.”

No, the government hadn’t told him what to do with his property.  The guidance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ did.  Through the persistence and witness of his son.  Now that’s pure, unadulterated Grace in action.  Such Grace is our only hope.  Only such Tough and Gentle Grace can overcome our divisive history of race, class and partisan politics as we approach our 250^th birthday.  It is our final and only hope.

Time to scrap the impulse to mesmerizing nostalgia for the “good ol’ days” because, in reality, they weren’t so good for many of us.  Time for a reality check.

It’s the witness of courageous Republicans who are true conservatives upholding our Constitution and the ethic of the Declaration.  Time for Republicans that value their soul more than their ephemeral jobs.  Time for upholding the notion that in America we all have of right to be self-determining and enjoy the benefits of the nation we have created.  Republicans who are willing to fight for “All means All.”

It’s the witness of Democrats who refuse to continue their acquiescence to the unconstitutional illegality of this administration.  Who will stand up to the worst of the worst of their self-serving policies.  Democrats who will welcome into the discussion and join with those on the other side of the aisle of good will.

It’s the witness of average citizens who will be out in the streets all across this republic for the largest “No Kings” demonstration in history.  It’s those willing to risk malicious prosecution as conspirators for demonstrating against ICE raids and their cesspool detention centers.

It’s about us of the Jesus Movement boldly proclaiming in word and deed the Gospel Goodness we hold dear – ALL MEANS ALL!  This Grace will indeed lead us home.

We must cry out.

Time for Tough Grace, Costly Grace.  Time for telling it like it is.  Only in such boldness is our hope, is the wide-open door to eternity to be entered.   As I’m wont to say, “that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”  Because it’s grounded in the much larger story of God’s love for all of us.  Full of Grace and full of Glory.  Amen.

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[1] Nathalie Baptiste, “Trump is Completely Rewriting Black History – With Devastating Consequences,” Huffpost, June 18, 2026.

June 21, 2026 – Pentecost 4, Proper 7

“We Must Cry Out”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Jeremiah 20:7-13; Psalm 69:8-11, 18-20;

Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39