When I was in sixth grade, I became a Boy Scout.  That was a bit of a difficulty as they had a fee to be paid and my dad wasn’t interested in anything if it wasn’t free.  Mom prevailed.

I was put in a patrol with other newbies and, though our leader was an older boy in junior high, his leadership skills were sadly lacking.  As we approached the date for the big jamboree, a week-long camp for all the Scout packs in Southern California at Camp Pendleton, every planning meeting of our patrol dissolved into aimless horsing around.  We were supposed to come up with a menu for all our food for our patrol.  It’s a wonder we had much of anything when the day of departure arrived.

We had a couple of boys totally committed to finding snakes to capture.  Gather firewood for the evening meal?  No, they were off hunting snakes.  Helping with cooking?  No, they were off hunting snakes.  Policing up the trash, no.  Yeah, you got it…

We discovered one morning, since we had not had much of any dinner, and no one had started the campfire, and the snake boys had raided the food container in the middle of the night and eaten the breakfast sausage raw, we had only some raw potatoes to gnaw on.  This camping experience was going downhill fast.

Some of you know that I don’t do too well in the heat and sun.  Well, at our Sunday worship service, out in the blazing sun, I got sunstroke and passed out. 

To top it off, on the way home, later that morning, the Marines had set up a display of tanks and other assorted military equipment for us.  We were far too young to realize that this was all a ruse to glamorize military culture and entice us into enlisting fifteen years down the road.  Yeah, “Good Morning Vietnam!”

Crawling through tanks, and armored personnel carriers, looking at all the neat rifles and machine guns, my attention deficit disorder had completely kicked in and I didn’t realize that the rest of our troop had already headed back to the cars.  Until I began looking for my buddy, Dan, and couldn’t find him anywhere.  Until I couldn’t find anybody else from our troop.  Panic!  They had all left me.  I was totally lost.  My heart raced and my mind fogged over as I ran all over the exhibit looking for anyone I knew.   Nobody!  I was utterly on my own.

In our passage from John, the writer narrates Jesus’ attempt to prepare his followers for his absence, when he will leave them. 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.  And you know the way to the place where I am going.  Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?’”

Can you imagine the panic in Thomas’s voice?  The despair in the hearts of those hearing this farewell?  Lost, every bit as much as I was lost that morning at that Camp Pendleton exhibit. 

Lost every bit as much as our nation has been, one ruinous and disastrous military intervention after another.  As lost as our common political life has been in partisan division over the past half century.

Yet the gospel writer assures, “’I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

This need not be a narrow sectarian understanding of divine reality; for what is the “way” of Jesus?  It is compassion.  It is humility.  It is justice for all.  It is daring risk to go beyond the confines of race and class, to understand at a deep, heart level – we are all one.  All loved and precious in the sight of the One who is All and is in All – the heartbeat of the cosmos.

The Risen Christ is the power of life let loose in the world.  It is that power dwelling in Jesus that could not be contained by death – let loose to embolden and guide – to restore and renew.  Now, so diffused throughout our long history of some two thousand years, most do not recognize its influence or power.  Yet, it is the very same Life Force, animating receptive hearts and minds.

As on that dusty road to a small nowhere village, Emmaus, Christ comes again and again in guises we seldom recognize – where bread is broken, where justice is served, where the lost are found – even we who so often vainly struggle to see the way ahead — and who seek the faith and courage to venture forth.  Sometimes only one day at a time.

You don’t know where the Christ has gone?  As of old on that road he is so often beside you, though you do not recognize him.  And just as often it’s a her.  It is the one who comes bearing the gift of reconciliation, the gift of a second chance, the gift of encouragement, the gift of sustenance, the gift of justice.  It is the one who binds up wounds, both old and fresh.  It is the one who through service sustains the common good.

Those twelve men and women on the jury that heard the case of the Proud Boys this month were Christ to the nation.  It was their judgment that upheld the rule of law that this nation might be preserved.  Seditious conspiracy is not to be tolerated.  Cannot abide!  Though they will have insult heaped upon opprobrium, death threats and be shunned by old friends – they persevered for a greater good.  They will have born the Cross for this republic.

Harriett Tubman and Sojourner Truth have been Christ to fugitive slaves, following the Drinking Gourd on that golden railroad to freedom in the North.  As “conductors” they liberated hundreds from our worst of evils.

The other day, as I was picking up my refurbished computer, I missed the curb.  In an instant I was sprawled face down on the sidewalk.  After a few moments to assess my condition and determine that nothing was broken and that I wasn’t bleeding to death, I looked around.  Nobody was in sight.  I began to wonder how I was going to get back up.

As I sat pondering my fate, an elderly black fellow approached peddling through the parking lot on a bike.  As he pulled up even with me, he called out, “Mister, do you need some help?”  I told him that help would be much appreciated.

He dismounted his bike and put down the kickstand.  As he reached out to me with a weathered and callused hand, and then a second towards my outstretched arms, I recognized Christ in my time of need.  As I steadied myself and thanked him, he was already off on his way.  Vanished from my sight.  In that instance I was doubly blessed by the kindness of that stranger on my own Emmaus journey.

“Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Open your eyes; open your heart – the way is illuminated every day.  Christ comes to us as one unknown – as you also are summoned to do the same. 

As I pulled into the Chevron station last week, picking up an Amazon package at the locker, there was a man in tattered, filthy jeans laying on the ground tinkering with a ratty old motor scooter.  He had several parts and assorted screws and bolts lying about him.  As I passed, he called out, “Could you give me a boost,” holding out two jumper cables. 

My first thought was, maybe the next guy will do this.  I’m really in a hurry.  I passed, trying to ignore him.  As I got back in my van, as loud, as if I had heard the actual words, “WHY NOT?”  I realized the Spirit prompting – “Pay it forward.”  I pulled over to him and raised the hood.  Hooked the cables to my battery and his scooter started up on the third try.  Only took a brief moment.  God sends these opportunities daily to be a blessing – so easy to ignore, to pass by.  I was already ashamed that it took so long to get the hint.  Instead of delay, I received a blessing.

“Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Just open your eyes, your heart.  You’ll be blest to discover where Christ has gone – right in your midst.  I guarantee it!  Easter Resurrection. By the way, our assistant scout master Bill finally appeared in that sprawling exhibit of military hardware looking for me.  Another blessed and welcome vision of Christ in my midst.  All is lost.  All is found.  Daily we’re shown the way back to our Eternal Home.   Amen.

May 7, 2023, Easter 5

“Lord, We Do Not Know Where You are Going”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16;
1 Peter 2:2-10; Gospel: John 14:1-14

We all remember the “good old days” differently.  I can still see in my mind’s eye my mother pulling into the Richfield gas station in her ’48 Buick Roadmaster convertible.  We’d hardly have arrived under the awning only to be swarmed by attendants in snappy uniforms.  Windows washed – check.  All of them!  Tank filled up – check.  Tire pressures – check.  Oil – check.  And the gas only cost around 25 cents per gallon.  A different world.  Oh, did I mention that they had a couple of competent mechanics on duty.

George Packer in his article on the changes in our nation, “Is America Over?”[1] in Foreign Affairs takes a critical look at this transformation.  He notes that “back then” the country functioned pretty well – if you were male, white and middle class or more affluent. 

Our institutions worked.  Through political compromise we came to workable solutions.  Again, for the vast middle.  There was a sense of shared future.  He writes, “In 1968, it might have been economically feasible and perfectly legal for an executive to award himself a multimillion dollar bonus while shedding 40 percent of his work force and requiring the survivors to take annual furloughs without pay.  BUT no executive would have wanted the shame and outrage that would have followed…”[2]

“These days,” he continues, “it’s hard to open a newspaper without reading stories about grotesque overcompensation.”  Yes, these days, in the words of the fictional Gordon Gekko, “Greed is good.”[3]

But “the times they are a-changin.” As the author LP Hartley put it in his book, The Go Between, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

When we open the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, what we read of the first Christian community now seems quaint and completely unrealistic, given our individualistic American culture.”

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.  All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”[4]

This, to the modern, mostly secular ear, sounds more like a Jim Jones cult.  Something out of David Koresh’s Waco compound.  Sure doesn’t look like your contemporary Episcopal, Presbyterian or United Methodist congregation.

I remember my dad’s outrage when he heard from his neighbor down the street, who was Catholic, that their priest had come by with a slip of paper telling the family how much they would be expected to give for their new sanctuary that was on the drawing board.  “How dare they!” he exclaimed one night at the dinner table.  No, siree, my money’s my money; I’ll give what I want.  Or nothing at all.

Many today who claim the name Christian have not given their church treasurer any indication of this affiliation.

When I look at the religious landscape today for our shrinking mainline churches, the times definitely have changed.  That past of which the writer of Acts speaks is definitely a foreign country.

Even the past here in America is almost unrecognizable.  There were no iPhones, no internet, no huge flat screen TVs, no microwave ovens.  We may not have had any of the conveniences we now take for granted.  What did kids do before TikTok?   But then we had a mostly functional society – t least on the surface – if you were white and male.

Our churches were full.  But as our presiding bishop has noted, they were full in the South and that didn’t change a thing to address the horror of lynchings and Jim Crow.

Today, it would be easy to retreat into our own private worlds of the Shopping Network, Bingo events, 24-hour news-all-the-time, or mindless sitcoms.  That’s what my mom did in her latter years.  After she died, I couldn’t believe all the clothes in her closet she had bought but never worn.  She seemed to have given up on a life that might be of some use to others.

But in nooks and crannies I come across faith communities yet making a visible witness to their beliefs.  I see Christians who walk the talk in ways big and small.

I think of a dear older woman in my parish in Claremont, Phyllis.  It’s people like her that are the living flesh and blood of Christ let loose in the world.  I had talked her into being on our endowment committee.  As she became unable to drive, I would pick her up for our committee meetings. 

One night when I came to get her, she told me an amazing Gospel story.  She related that she had not seen her Iranian neighbor a couple doors down for quite a while after 9/11.  She would usually greet her when she saw her out in her yard watering the flowers.  They would exchange brief greetings.  But now, for several weeks, she was missing.

Finally, Phyllis became concerned enough that she did something she had never done before.  She walked down to her neighbor’s house and knocked on the door.  Nothing, so Phyllis rang the bell.

Phyllis waited and waited.  When she was about to turn around and leave, the door opened just a crack.  Phyllis could see only a bit of a face and one eye.  Phyllis told the women that she had become worried about her.  She hadn’t seen her out in her yard for several weeks.

Finally, the neighbor said that she was so ashamed of what “they” had done, crashing that plane, and how they killed all those people in New York – she thought that the Americans would blame her.  She was afraid to come out of her house.

Without missing a beat, Phyllis, responded, “Oh, honey, why don’t you come over right now to my house and we’ll have something to eat.”  And they did.

Phyllis, in her tender moment of compassion will not change the world.  Nor will most of us in the mercies we extend.  But she allowed a neighbor of another faith to experience a greater Love they both had in common.  And her story lifted up all who shared in it. 

Our institutional churches may be on the rocks, but as long as there are Christians like Phyllis, the gospel message is in good hands.  Phyllis was our version of the Good Shepherd.  And I so loved her charming English accent.

In ways big and small, Phyllis invested herself in her church family.  There’s an old saying “Look at someone’s checkbook, and you can tell what matters to them.”  — or look at their Master Card statement.  Phyllis gave the “widow’s mite” in so many ways.  She was family!

With such bold witness, “day by day” the Lord will add to the number of those finding new life in the Jesus Movement.  They, in their living gave testimony to what they saw and spoke of what they knew.  The church has been defined as “one beggar simply telling another where bread is to be found.”  Even in our secular age, that will continue to be a necessary obligation if our society is to continue.

The one blessing to be found in our day of declining churches is the commitment of those who remain, especially our women.  Like the women of all ages, you are the ones who keep it all together.  We have a small, but hardy (and hearty) band at St. Francis, and the love there is palpable.  As Lynn is wont to say, “We’re all in this together.”

In our liberated age, we also have men at St. Francis who pitch right in with kitchen duties – at home in the kitchen as ever their mothers were.  Equal opportunity.  I feel it every Sunday.  Those left are those of us right here, and we are the ones Christ is counting on.  Here, we testify to what we see, week in and week out.

The notion of stereotyped roles is over and the world is better for it.  Our dear church is better for it.  I knew one of those “irregularly ordained” priests, Diane Tickle in Alaska.  She was in the second contingent of woman ordinands.  She was a force of nature, bringing liberation to our often too stodgy church.  She would counter sexist male clergy and others with the argument: “If a woman was fit to bear Our Lord’s body at birth, if she was fit to receive his body at the foot of the cross — THEN, she’s fit to bear his body at the altar.

The past of white supremacy and male privilege seems more and more like a foreign country.  The community of faith, as in that first community of Acts, is discovering new ways of sharing our riches in common.  And that means leadership and opportunity to serve.  And the church is more glorious for it.

As I grew up in Long Beach, I remember going downtown and seeing men lying around on one of the back streets.  When I asked my parents about what I was seeing, the scene was dismissed with the comment, “Oh, that’s skid row.  They’re just a bunch of bums.”  And when I didn’t get my homework done, it was, “Do you want to end up being a bum (or hobo) on skid row?”  They were just a bunch of drunks.

We had no understanding then of how they had come to this miserable state.  Certainly, no compassion.  They were “weak” specimens of humanity.  No hope for them.

Those pictures in my mind have been a part of my motivation in working with the addicted.  And that past, the past of accusation and blame now seems, thankfully, a very strange country.

This week, our dear Faith passed along an email of just one more success story on the road to recovery.  She’s one of our wholehearted supporters of House of Hope – San Bernardino.

This piece was from a group called “Strides in Recovery.”  They advocate the activity of running as an essential component of any recovery program.  One thing the addicted desperately need is to get those healthy endorphins let loose in their brains.  They are the source of that natural runner’s high which is the best and only sane replacement for the artificial high from a bottle or a “hit” off some drug.  Great for the heart, also.

When nine-year-old José was brought to the United States, like many kids he found it hard to fit in.  With both parents struggling just to put a roof over his head and food on the table, he was often alone.

Like many lonely kids in our cities, he was recruited into a gang, and there found a “family” of sorts – a place to fit in.  At fourteen, he was drinking and getting high.  That was his new life.

He was soon estranged from his father.  He refused to respect house rules and left home at the age of sixteen.  Of course, he quickly came to the attention of another parental authority, law enforcement. 

His life became a series of stays in juvenile hall and youth camps.  Such a record was a badge of honor on the outside, especially for new returnees from prison.  The others looked up to them.  José looked up to them.

Homeless, cold, alone and addicted, José remembers thinking, “I don’t care.  If I die, it’s okay.  If I go to prison, even better.”  By 2021, José had burned all his bridges.  His father refused to even see him.  Sleeping on the streets, he was eventually arrested and given a choice.

It was a program or prison.  On his first go-around, Jose flunked recovery.  He thought he could do the program and keep selling dope.  Didn’t work.  Busted again. 

This time his public defender got him into a program, Asian American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP) that strongly emphasized running as an integral part of recovery.  After a false start, José finally got with the program.  He realized he had, in this new gathering, a healthy family of recovery.  

Working the steps and working out, and running – those healthy endorphins began to kick in.  That, and the encouragement of others in recovery, he felt the need to take his running more seriously.  Each week he added more miles to his run.  Now, mid-week he was out there beating feet.  A natural high.

José realized the truth of all runners: “Running showed me I can accomplish anything.  Running is my foundation.”

When running through hillside Anchorage, after the first five or six miles, I know exactly what José felt as I would experience that runner’s high.  I was flying.  Even when I arrived back home exhausted and would stumble in with icicles hanging from my balaclava, it was a good exhaustion.

José found what many of our new, smaller communities of faith are discovering – fellowship through shared gifts.  This is the Easter reality we delight in at St. Francis, that so many of our slimmed down congregations are finding.  It’s through the group of us gathered at the altar to share the bread and wine made holy.  It’s through potlucks.  It’s through programs like “Night Watch” and the AA groups that meet in our buildings – Easter Resurrection happens.

Definitely not your grandmother’s, your grandfather’s church.  That past is a very strange country.  And we are the better for its passing.  As my UCC friends are wont to say, “God is still speaking…”  And we have so much in common to share.   Lead on, O Spirit.  Lead on.  Amen.

---

[1] George Packer, “Is America Over?” Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2011.

[2] Op cit., 30.

[3]In the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko.

[4] Acts 2:42-45.  NRSV.

April 30, 2023, Easter 4

“The Past is a Foreign County”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23;
1 Peter 2:19-25; Gospel: John 10:1-10

When I was sixteen, like many kids my age, I was more than excited to be going in to the DMV, prepped for the written exam and ready to get my learner’s permit.  After I had waited for what seemed an eternity for a window clerk to grade my test, I then went to the vision test.

That’s where things fell apart.  I could read the big capital “E” at the very top, but couldn’t understand why the rest of the chart was so blurry that I couldn’t discern anything else.

The examiner told me I needed glasses.  The way I was now, I’d be a menace on the highway.  I wouldn’t be able to see where I was going, and I’d be flat-out lucky to get there alive.

Needless to say, I left the DMV office pretty dejected.  Hopes dashed.  I was not going to be on the highway to any exciting teenage days, or to anywhere else — anytime soon.

So, I know a little of the dejection a couple of Jesus’ disciples may have felt as they walked a dusty road to an out-of-the-way, nowhere place.

We open Luke’s post-Easter account of a couple of down-at-the-mouth followers of Jesus on the road to a small village, Emmaus.  All their hopes dashed with their teacher having been executed by the state – a most ignominious death.  Most of the followers having fled, returned in mourning to their previous lives. That road to Emmaus is some seven miles – walking on foot, these men must have had quite some while to allow discouragement to set in as they plodded along.  The Risen Christ of Easter morn was already a distant memory.

Today, as our pews have now emptied out three weeks after Easter, many of our people have fled along their own Emmaus Roads with little or no direction as to where they might be headed. 

Lost in their misery, those original travelers hardly take notice when they are joined by a third, a stranger whom they do not recognize.

“And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’  They stood still, looking sad.  Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’  He asked them, ‘What things?’

The disciples recounted for the stranger the events of those last several days of how their teacher, the one they were sure was sent from God to redeem Israel – was put to death on a cross, and all their hopes dashed.  They mourned the fate of their friend Jesus, tortured and crucified by the powers in charge.  And though some women claimed to have seen him alive, these two hadn’t.  Probably just some old women’s tale.

“’Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!’”

He then proceeds to recall from the prophets, beginning with Moses, all that had been said about himself.  But the travelers’ eyes were still not open to his identity.  That is because there is one more thing for them to learn.

When they near their destination, the stranger now has their rapt attention.  As he moves to proceed on his destination, they implore him to stay with them.  As they all sit down to table, he takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it.

Their eyes are now opened and they recognize him for who he truly is – as he vanishes from their sight.  “’Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’”

This is Luke’s answer to the question, how should we, those of us who have not seen the historical Jesus, receive him into our hearts:  by immersing ourselves in the story of our faith journey as reveled in scripture AND in table fellowship around the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup of the New Covenant.  These two experiences for believers will be sufficient.

They will fortify our journey on our Road to Emmaus as we experience the presence of the Risen Christ in fellowship around his table and remember our sacred history as a people and its promise.

Are we on a road that takes us wherever fate and chance might land us?  Or are we a people of destiny, called to live out a sacred vocation of all that we are called to be?

Having flunked my eye test, I felt I was on a road not going much of anywhere.  It wasn’t until I heard my name called as I listened to Dr. King addressing several thousand students in Lincoln, Nebraska, that I began to have a sense of purpose. 

I became aware of a new horizon beckoning – a calling worthy of my interests and abilities.  A destiny greater than myself.  That has made all the difference in the world – opening the windows to my soul, the windows to the world, the windows to a Power greater than myself.

Like those men who knew him not, what a surprise who discovered the sacred in their midst on that dusty road. 

After services at St. Francis, last Sunday and after a nap, Jai and I went to Temple Beth Israel for a program on the Holocaust, Yom HaShoah as it’s known in in Hebrew.

I had always known from family lore that we got the name, “Gross,” when several generations ago one of my maternal grandfather’s forebearers married a Jewish peddler who had come into town in Iowa.  That’s where my mom’s maiden name of Gross came from.  And, when asked by one of my sons if we had “that much” Jewish blood in the family, I responded, “It would have been enough for Hitler.”

As I sat through the evening’s talk by Professor Wendy Lower of Pomona College, as several family members of Holocaust survivors lit candles of remembrance, as we recited responsive readings and listened to a couple musical offerings composed by survivors, I suddenly found myself ambushed by an overwhelming emotional realization, “These are my people.”   Intellectually I had always known this.  Ethically, I could affirm our unity.  But that night came a much deeper realization.  Yes, it would have been enough for Hitler.

It is through this immersion in my faith tradition that has come the profound awareness that we are all one – not only an intellectual understanding, but one deep down in the gut, in the heart.  “Never again,” must also be my pledge.  As Dr. King would proclaim, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Our mutuality I affirm each time we gather around the Lord’s table and ground ourselves in the promise of our ancient writings.  They fortify.  They give perspective.  And they are indeed “Bread for the Journey.”

Had I never received the testimony of Dr. King, I have no idea where fate and chance might have landed me.  Rudderless and adrift.  Endlessly seeking an illusory rainbow’s end.

To paraphrase Robert Frost, I took that road with Christ and his company to Emmaus and “it has made all the difference.”  It has given me the strength and wisdom to say, “Never again. I will remember.”

We have a sign on our front lawn: “Black Lives Matter.”  After the nation watched in horror as the life was indifferently snuffed out of George Floyd, we have come to a new awareness of the terror that has always stalked America.  A violence “as American as Apple Pie.”  Now, no longer inflicted by men in funny sheets and pointy hats, but a terror perpetrated by the very same ones charged with ensuring public safety.  The litany is long:  Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Briana Taylor, Tamir Rice…the list exhausts the memory.  On and on it goes.

That yard sign is a political statement, an ethical statement.  Those whose lives are discounted and cut short by state violence do matter…MUST matter.

That sign in front of our yard is, for sure, a political and ethical statement.  It is now an existential statement in a way I would not have previously understood.  That is because our new daughter-in-law to be this October is African-American.  She’s a beautiful soul, precious in the eyes of God – and in the eyes of our family about to welcome her. 

I now understand the message of my sign with the same emotional impact as I do Dr. Lower’s talk this past evening in her remembrance of the Jewish families that perished at Babi Yar, that killing ravine outside of Kyiv in Ukraine, September 29-30, 1941. 

As a child I became sensitive to the racism in our society when our Black neighbors were flooded out of their home while on vacation.  Our church was a citadel of deafening silence.  This atrocity took place right under our noses and no one said anything.  Not a word from the pulpit…would have been unseemly to mention such in our nice, polite, respectable neighborhood – read white.

Injustice against one is an injustice against all.  Faced with such racial terror, we must answer, “Never again!”  We will remember.

It will possibly be our grandson, our granddaughter who is the future victim of police violence by some hotheaded cop with a chip on his shoulder.  Someone for whom Black lives matter not a wit.

It has been my life’s journey down this Emmaus Road, in the company of Christ and his followers that my soul has been opened to the suffering around, and also to the hope that we can do better.  Must do better.

On my journey I have encountered the Risen Christ in many guises.  And am so much the better for these blessed meetings.

It is the very same journey that has sensitized me to the journeys of those on the road of recovery.  Our nation is drowning under a tidal way of “deaths of despair.”  It has made me aware of the millions in our cities and in rural areas who have no idea where their next meal is coming from, or if they will even have a roof over their heads.

As the evening at Temple Beth Israel closed with a rendition of the music from Schindler’s list performed by a piano/cello duet, silent tears flowed down my cheeks.  It was an exquisite moment of remembering that we are all God’s children – all “tied together in the single garment of destiny.”

One of the unison readings of the evening, which resonated with King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” was a piece based on a text by Rabbi Bernard Rosenberg, “From Silence.”

“For there was a time when silence was a crime.  We think particularly of one night of silence, nearly eighty-four years ago.  Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, the 9^th of November 1938.  Then, all the synagogues in Germany rose up in flame and smoke to the skies.  The churches next to them stood in darkness, and in silence.  The broken shop windows of the Jewish community littered the streets.  Neighbors walked upon the crunching splinters and were silent.  A few prayed.  Some courageously expressed their grief.  But a dark cloud of silence filled the world, a silence still present in too many places today even as images of new horrors confront us daily.”

“When will that silence end?  When will we speak out on behalf of suffering neighbors, populations, nations”

“Not until we affirm that we are all God’s children…”  When will we speak out?   Not until we affirm in word and deed that we truly are all God’s children.  That is our divine destiny.  That must be our Emmaus Road vow — Our Emmaus road of destiny to a land where we can all live together.   Amen.

April 23, 2023, Easter 3

“Destiny or Fate — Your Highway?”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17;
1 Peter 1:17-23; Gospel: Luke 24:13-35

When I worked for NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness, I was sent to, among several places, Seattle, to look at some of the most effective programming being done to address the homeless mentally ill.

Much of this work centered around re-purposed churches and congregations that had become alert to a new calling.  While some still held their traditional Sunday morning services, during midweek these places were alive with a buzz of activity.

One program held at a Lutheran Church was “Night Watch.”  About six o’clock in the evening, the doors opened and a vast assortment of folks begin to stream in.  Volunteers of all sorts as well as neighborhood folks from the surrounding houses and high rises. 

Soon this normally empty church was ringing with laughter and conversation.  Off in the corner one fellow strummed a guitar singing old songs out of the sixties.  In a back room nurse volunteers checked feet for diabetic sores and took blood pressure.  If any medical help was needed they passed out flyers for the nearby free clinic.

Piles of fresh fruit were available along with sack lunches for people to take.  Numerous students from the nearby social work program at the university volunteered as student interns – to get to know the folks who came in the door and to just to be companions for the evening.  Small groups were gathered around various board games.  I sat in on a chess match.

I asked one older fellow — alright, he was about my age – what brought him out at nights for this event — my generation would have called it a “happening.”  He said that he lived alone in one of the high rises, and this was his one chance to be with people.  He came most every night the doors were open.  Some of the younger participants who lived on the street found a meal here and met with friends.

For the elderly congregation that hosted “Night Watch,” this was RESURRECTION.  Their Lutheran faith tradition had discovered vibrant, new life.  You could see it in the faces of these people.

Rummaging around through Christian Century’s “Preaching the Word,” I came across a most marvelous Episcopal priest, Heidi Haverkamp.  This woman is my sort of priest.  I knew it when I read of her award-winning article, “How I learned to love the doctrine of total depravity.”  Total depravity is always a draw for the imagination.  Heidi comes from Chicago, where she received her Masters of Divinity, and has served parishes in the surrounding Illinois area.

Here’s her take on where we are as communities of faith at the beginning of this new century in America. 

We all know the church is in decline across the country.  And not just the mainline expressions of the faith.  Evangelicals, even Mormons, have experienced a falling away of attendance.  At St. Francis the Sunday School has been darkened for years, hardly anyone remembers an infant – or any – baptism.

Without such an acknowledgement of this decline any Easter message of New Life would sound a bit hollow.  As our society becomes increasingly secular, communities of faith are facing the problem of finding new wineskins for new wine.  Where might we be of service to a world that perceives no need for what we offer?  Or at least for the packaging?

Mary’s lingering by the tomb clues us to the potential of an Easter morn.  Don’t cling to the past.  This is where we pick up John’s telling of the Easter events — as the night watch gloom lifts to a brilliant dawn of an early morning watch.

Heidi suggests that the key words of the Risen Christ here are, “do not cling to me.”  He is yet to ascend to God.  She suggests that, in these moments of demise, perhaps the church clings to old forms and ways of being, and is not open to what may be ascending to the Glory of God.

Yes, we dearly love and adore our venerable traditions.  Some would say we cling.  You know the joke:  how many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? There are two answers.  First: “We don’t believe in change.”  Second: “It takes eight. One to climb the ladder and unscrew the bulb and put in its replacement, and seven to form a society to commemorate how wonderful the old bulb was.”

Mary Magdalene, faithfully remains at the empty tomb, agonized at the loss of her Lord.  The others, Peter and another disciple, have left.  Martha has left.  Mary alone remains in her sorrow – a sacred pause – an opening to God.

“Mary’s lingering and grieving over the loss of her teacher and friend—and surely also her uncertainty about her future—is met by the presence of Christ. However, she doesn’t recognize him at first. Christ’s presence among us might not always be obvious. Christ’s invitation to new life is almost always unfamiliar and surprising, even disconcerting. We may overlook or miss Christ among us altogether.” [1]

“But then Jesus calls her by name: “Mary!” And she knows him right away.”[2]

This Easter morn, we so long to hold on to memories of grandeur past – large vested choirs, full Sunday school classrooms, magnificent music (in some venues with full orchestra joining in the hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”) splendidly attired clergy and acolytes, and all the Episcopal hoo-ha we know so well how to put on.  Oh, don’t forget the incense!

But that tomb is mostly empty, only a discarded chasuble and a tattered Book of Common Prayer or two laying on the ground.  Empty, like too many of our congregations.  Let us linger, keep the lights on and the doors open, trusting that the world will at some point rediscover its need of Resurrection Communities.

This early morning, if we are to listen very carefully, if we are to be attentive to nuance and whisper, we just might hear our Lord call out our name.  And like that foretelling of this glorious morning — Lazarus’s call back to life — we might blink our eyes in astonishment to perceive our Lord beckoning us to Resurrection in forms we barely recognize.

He calls out our names – in times of quiet and in times of chaos; in times of stress and in moments of prayer.  Listen for yours in this Easter season of Resurrection.

The overall purpose of John’s gospel is to invite its readers into a Love relationship – with God in Christ, with one another, and, most importantly, with the world.  It’s all about a “for-God-so-Loved-the-World” story.

He beckons to new possibility, new life, new growth.

What paths of holy service is God opening up for you and your community of faith this Eastertide?  Remember that great nineteenth century preacher Philips Brooks’ dictum?

“We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so.  You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.”

And…this is not a “eat your spinach” (or whatever it is you detest) project.  Here’s the Rev. Brooks’ other piece of advice on attitude: “Distrust your religion unless it is cheerful, unless it turns every act and deed to music and exults in attempts to catch the harmony of the new life.”

You’ve seen that iconic picture of John Lewis, and the ranks of civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettis Bridge facing fire hoses and snarling police dogs on Bloody Sunday in 1965.  Though John Lewis was beaten half to death, barely surviving, he held no hate.  If any march ever looked like a journey into the Gates of Hell, this did.  Death and destruction.  The racism of that day was putrefying as any tomb of decay.

Mary Magdalene may not have been there to witness the new birth of democracy in that moment.  She may not have been present to witness to the stone-cold tomb of racial hatred.  She might not have been there lingering, BUT the TV cameras were.  And through them America got a whiff of the sulphureous odor of Hell.  Through them we saw the death of the old order.

And within days, an entire Resurrection army of the Righteous was headed down South, and headed North as well, to say to the perpetrators of violence, to those Night Riders of Skokie and Tulsa and San Bernardino – this is not the America we want for ourselves and our children.  Unacceptable!

We can be, must be, better than this.  Bus after bus of Resurrection followers of the Way of nonviolence headed south.  Along with others — not of Jesus’ flock:  Jews, Buddhists, atheists, none-of-the-above.  All Spirit-inspired; all Spirit-powered.  God’s own.

And in jail cell after jail cell, no mourning.  Freedom songs, gospel songs break out — the infectious melodies and words of purpose and solidarity.

Many, many years later, some of the notables present at that first march, and present-day civil rights advocates commemorate that day in solemnity.  This time, a police escort instead of batons and snarling dogs.  Freedom songs to lift a spirit of solidarity.  Joy in the morning!

Resurrection is always coming – every Sunday, we celebrate it.  Joy in the morning!  You can’t hold it back.

Yes, much remains to be done.  When votes are denied through gerrymandering and voter suppression laws, we need to be out there in force – joyfully peaceful.  It’s to be a family event.  Black and white together as the song says.

When workers are denied the right to workplace representation, when wage slaves are ground to dust, we rise to sing another chorus of “Solidarity Forever.”  Another round of “Which Side Are You On?”  Resurrection in the union hall.

When recovering addicts join hands around a circle, we join in prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  Resurrection at the 12-step meeting.

When our election workers are threatened with death and the civic forums are trashed by MAGA mobs, give me another chorus of “My Country Tis of Thee.”  And for those of us out of the sixties — “This Land is Your Land.” – “From the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters,” let it ring.  Resurrection at the polling booth.

When women are assaulted and discriminated against in the workplace, let’s have another round of “Bread and Roses,” to commemorate the loss of so many women at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in flames and smoke over112 years ago when 146 women lost their lives.  All due to the greed of the owners who had locked all the exits on the upper floors.  Yes, “give us bread, but give us roses too.”  And the vote!  Resurrection for our sisters!

You can’t hold them down – whether in the halls of Congress or in the city council – or at the women’s health care clinic!  Resurrection!

Since my time, there’s been a definite restoration of our democracy.  And miles still to go.  Face it: it’s like housework – never done.

All these, they are moments of national Resurrection.  Death, destruction, privation banished by a Resurrection People with Easter visions in their eyes.  Don’t hold on too tight, “the Spirit blows where it will” – making space.  Look at what happened in Wisconsin this week!  — the death knell of their gerrymandered voting maps.  Democracy restored!  Next stop – Tennessee!

During Covid a quiet has shrouded our night watch in sorrow – but with the dawn, has come a Holy Wind that freshens the morning watch with Possibility.  Calling out your name.

This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our sight.  This Easter we give testimony to what we have seen and what we know. 

Yes, listen very, very carefully; you might just hear your name called out, your summons by the Risen Christ.

As he came to Mary Magdalene in the garden on that Resurrection Morning, he comes to us.  Albert Schweitzer gets the last word on this promise.

“He Comes to Us.”

“He comes to us as one unknown without a name/Without a name, without a name as of old by the lakeside He came to those who knew Him not.  He speaks to us, He speaks to us the same word: Follow me, Follow me! And sets us to the task which He has to fulfill for our time.  He commands and to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts and the sufferings.  They shall pass through in His fellowship, As an ineffable mystery they shall learn in their own experience who He is.”[3]

Happy Easter.  Amen.

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[1] Heidi Haverkamp, “Don’t Hold On,” Christian Century, for April 9, 2023.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jim Strathdee, Albert Schweitzer, “He Comes to Us,” There’s Still Time, Desert Flower Music, 1977.  Altered.

April 9, 2023, Easter Day

“Night Watch”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24;
Colossians 3:1-4; Gospel: John 20:1-18

A New Commandment I give you: “Love one Another.”  Actually, this is an old, old commandment – stretching all the way back to the ethical teachings of Torah.

This week, however, Christians will celebrate the new context for this teaching as we reenact the rituals of Maundy Thursday.  The Eucharist is the sacrament of a self-emptying God, “Love Divine, All Love Excelling” poured out for the rebirth of the world.  We will reenact that ancient ritual of foot-washing, the sacrament of servanthood, as we would be brothers and sisters to all. 

In the context of these rituals, the Love Commandment takes on fresh meaning and urgency.  The outward and visible signs of the unity we seek are needed more than ever in our divided world.

Every time I head off to West Virginia, I have the opportunity to put all this in practice.  You see, my cousin Lindsay is a Trumper from the word go.  And of course, he probably thinks I’m some misguided socialist who would give all our money away to the undeserving and the slackers.  But there’s some mystical bond arising from our two faith expressions that allows us both to put those differences aside.

What we can agree on, and do most fervently affirm, is that the addicted need help, and it is a Christian’s obligation to provide it.  Lindsay and his pastor, C.J., have had our House of Hope team speak before their evangelical, non-denominational congregation — a whole fifteen minutes right at the beginning of each service!  Through their audio/sound system we screened our PowerPoint with “Amazing Grace” playing in the background, the whole enchilada.

We set aside — pour out — our petty differences for the sake of the gospel message, God is Love – in our pledge to join as one in supporting recovery.  For families devastated by drugs and alcohol, such love doesn’t get any more real than that.  God is Love.  And this community gathered in Christ is the sacramental pledge of that reality.

The style of worship of Lindsay’s faith community is not my preference.  I’d prefer any day a good strong verse of “A Mighty Fortress” to their rock band and mega amplified music.  But our work to promote recovery transcends these minor differences.  Yes, when it comes to putting our shoulders to the wheel of recovery, “We are One in the Spirit.”

When I asked Pastor C.J. how might they support House of Hope – Ohio Valley, he said that they usually don’t promote organizations – BUT if we had a client who is destitute, who can’t afford the program, “our congregation will cover those costs for the duration.”  And these people know the pain of addiction.  Their pastor’s son has been in and out of rehab programs.  The last I heard, he’s now going to his meetings and has found a new group of friends in the recovery community to replace his old druggie associates.  One day at a time!  It works if you work the program – and are surrounded by a community of encouragement, accountability and prayer.

Their commitment to recovery IS Love emptied out for the sake of Love.

There’s an African proverb that says if the journey needs to be fast, go alone.  If the journey is far, go together.  The journey of recovery is always far, together is the only way to make it — no matter the number of days one is left allotted.

I thank God that we have had many, many — both in San Bernardino and in the Ohio Valley — who have been companions on our journey to getting House of Hope funded, up and running.  My sense is that we are on the cusp of fullness of time, the fitting season, when the parts all fall into place. 

What sustains is that we’re all traveling this highway of Love together.  And in the Fullness of Time, the Love of the Risen Christ will accomplish through us what we could not possibly do on our own.  “Love one another as I have loved you,” is the Message.  This Love is the New Commandment we act out this Thursday.   Amen.

April 6, 2023, Maundy Thursday

“A New Commandment”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17;
Colossians 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Gospel: John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Some years ago, my friend Jim Manley wrote a song celebrating that original procession into Jerusalem with palms and shouts of joy.  Thinking of the motley crew that Jesus’ followers were, he titled it, “Raggedy Band.”

“The Raggedy Band is marching along/Folks keepin’ rhythm to the beat of the song/That a little boy’s playing on a dime kazoo/Holes in his hands match the holes in his shoes/Leadin’ down the alley with the Raggedy Band/Stretchin’ all the way to the Promised Land.

“BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM ticka ticka…”

This ad hoc parade was a rather haphazard event of misfits and rabble assembled together at a moment’s notice.  The message of Jim’s song is that the very same band now stretches through all time down to our day. 

All one organic stream with that original procession – our varied selves and motives, our assorted backgrounds and races – a motley crew of the weak, the distracted, the resolute, the corrupted, the holy, the polluters, the dedicated — all part of that original procession streaming towards the Holy City.  All drawn by the Irresistible Power of Longing – like a cloud of iron filings inexorably drawn to a magnet.

“BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM ticka ticka…”

Those of the original procession were little knowing of the tragic events to follow later that week.  And like that original crowd, just as fickle.  One moment shouting hosannah, the next, utter betrayal. 

We need to bring this joyous occasion back down to reality, to dispense with much of the “irrational exuberance.”  Keepin’ it real.

You’d think Jesus could have chosen a better class of followers, a more reliable group of comrades, but this parade — our parade — is a very mixed bag.  We’re what he has to work with. 

And down through the centuries, some have been exemplary in their drive to live out that radical ethic of contagious Love.  And, many will provide succor along the journey for the halt, the disinterested and the uninspired.  They will move heaven and earth to make sure as many as possible reach the destination as possible.

For these folks — some might call them saints — the faith journey is not an isolated, singular event.  It’s a “we” project, God drawing all creation to its consummation – all.  That is the divine will – that we leave no one outside Love’s embrace.

In the midst of this procession are those who ensure that all are fed, that all are clothed, that all have a share of the material blessings. 

However, among the mix are some dyspeptic souls who only thrive when everyone else is miserable.  Sort of like one family relative who would march off to her room whistling a happy tune only after she had started a huge family fight.  You know the sort.  Like the representative who gave a big fist pump to the January 6^th insurrectionists as they were heading in to trash our capitol.  Even these, too – all are a part of that raggedy band streaming toward the heart of Christ.

“BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM ticka ticka…”

Here, I’d rather focus on some of those who keep me company on the journey, some who’s truth and compassion encourage one step after the next.  These are those who share stories of difficulty and privation – stories of outrage at greed – stories of despair over senseless cruelty.  They are my contemporaries who give hope, give a prod in the backside, who enlighten with possibility.  Keepin’ it real.

I’m drawn to the story of one young girl growing up in the housing projects, an eleven-year-old named Dasani.  She was named after a bottle of water thought to be so out of reach of her financially strapped mother, that a name like that must be most exquisite – and so was this newborn daughter.[1]

Dasani’s story is told by a most compassionate writer, Andrea Elliott, first time author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 2022 for general nonfiction, about that parade of humanity heading for the dream of “better.”  Dasani lives in a one-room hovel in a homeless shelter with her mother and stepfather, the entire family, ten to the room.  Mold on the walls, the sink leak that keeps some of the children awake at night.  No one dares go to the bathroom down the hallway after dark, so there’s a “piss bucket” in a corner.  She shares a twin mattress on the floor with a sibling.  The room is pretty much wall to wall mattresses.  Piles of unwashed clothes everywhere.  Chaos, in short.

It’s writers like Andrea Elliott who inspire the journey with such stories that are soaked through and through with the humanity of those most of us will never encounter — the least of us.  They’re keepin’ it real.

Yeah, Dasani and our writer Andrea are all a part of that parade drawn to Hope.  “BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM ticka ticka…”

Bernie Sanders, a magnificent Truth-teller, is one who keeps my feet marching in that parade.  More than ever, I’ve been drawn to Bernie Sanders’ insight that there’s indeed enough to go around, enough to feed every single pilgrim in this entourage, enough to educate every child, enough to house and clothe — enough to sustain the journey to a Just Society for each.  He lays this out, chapter and verse, in his new book, It’s Okay to be Angry About Capitalism.[2]

Ironically, it takes a Jew to point out to us Christians that there’s enough for all.  Just like that other Jew, Jesus.

I join him in his rant of wasteful military spending.  On our journey we do NOT need enough firepower to blow up the world a hundred times over.

“Take the military budget.  We currently spend more than $775 billion annually on our military, over half of the discretionary budget of the United States government.  This is more than the next ten countries combined.  Yet, despite the enormous size of its budget, the Pentagon remains the only federal agency not to have successfully completed an independent audit.  Nobody doubts that within that budget there is a massive amount of waste, fraud, unneeded weapons systems and outrageous cost overruns.  We can cut military spending by tens of billions of dollars a year and use those funds to invest in the social needs of our country…”[3]

Just a fraction of that, spent on making the Child Tax Credit available to qualifying families, pulled some 2.9 million children out of poverty.  To extend this would only cost $1.6 trillion, spread out over ten years.  A fraction of the military waste over that period.  Do we REALLY need enough to blow up the planet tens of times over?  I say, let’s consult the head of our palm procession, Drum Major Jesus.  What’s his take?

My friend, Jim, reminds me of the quote, “We love guns more than children.”  But heaven forfend they see a production with actors in drag!

“Washtub drummer beatin’ four to the line/Chopsticks tickin’ on a bottle of wine…”

“BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM…”

Our president sometimes rises to the occasion of full inclusion of all in this holy pilgrimage to a Land of Freedom and Full Personhood.  Catch what he proclaimed this last Friday, March 31^st, to our transgender companions.

“BOOM ticka BOOM ticka”  – YEAH!  In the image of God, you are.

“To everyone celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility, I want you to know that your president sees you — Jill, Kamala, Doug, our entire administration sees you — for who you are: made an image of God and deserving of dignity, respect and support,” Biden said in a video message name-checking the first lady, vice president and second gentleman.[4]

Another who keeps me plodding along, gazing up at the sky on the alert for weird weather is Bill McKibben — and the writers he inspires on all matters Global Warming.  Yes, in the words of Katharine Hayhoe, it’s now “global weirding.”

With the efforts to caution us to the dangers of breathing the air along the way, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have alerted us to those in our midst who would discredit the messengers of the common danger we face.  In their book, Merchants of Doubt, we are alerted to how the basic science, and researchers are discredited and demonized.[5]

I remember sitting in a session of Citizens’ Climate Lobby listening to an Exxon/Mobil spokesman attempting to convince us that they were good environmental citizens, all the while contributing millions to groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council – ALEC – to “greenwash” their business. 

Yes, Exxon and their ALEC buddies are also on this journey with us, writing hundreds of articles to encourage climate denial in popular monthlies like Sports Illustrated, Guns and Ammo, Good Housekeeping – all publications that won’t draw too much attention from real scientists to the crap science they are pushing on their readers – folks who tend not to read many science books.  All to convince us, “Nothing to see here folks, just keep moving.  Move along.”  This Exxon guy claimed to have no knowledge of what their company contributed to.  All a hoax and left-wing lies. 

By the way, did you know ALEC is one of the major originators and perpetrators of laws across the country to restrict voting rights.  That’s right – drop boxes, voting by mail, same day registration are all corrupting our elections.  And to keep voters standing out in the sun in hours-long queues from getting even water or a sandwich.  Compassion may get you jailtime for trying to unduly influence these citizens about to faint in line.  Heaven forfend!  And all brought to you by Exxon/Mobil and ALEC.

We’re a motley assortment of the hopeful, the timid, the prophetic, the corruptible, the compassionate, the deniers – all having fallen far short of the Glory which we seek.  We’re only human – frail vessels for the redemption we seek.

Yet, might there be mercy for even us who drive our polluting autos from freeway to freeway, even for us who refuse to see the Dasanis of our slums.  Even for us who support a government that wastes trillions on death and destruction – all the while neglecting the common good?  Some small mercy, dear Lord?

Yet we wend our way to a God who would embrace all.  A God who would restore and renew.  A God of Easter Promise who still holds out the best hope for each one of us.

In the end, I can even imagine that that turncoat Judas would have found welcome had he thrown himself on the mercy of this God.

Welcome for all.  That is the destination of this Palm Sunday procession – leading all the way to an Easter Promised Land.

“BOOM ticka ticka ticka BOOM ticka ticka…”  Amen.

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[1] Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City (Random House: New York, 2021).

[2] Bernie Sanders, It’s Okay to be Angry About Capitalism (Crown: New York, 2023).

[3] Op. cit., 172.

[4] White House message on Transgender Day of Visibility, March 30, 2023.

[5] Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Bloomsbury Press: New York, 2010), Chapter 6, “The Denial of Global Warming.”

April 2, 2023, Palm Sunday

“A Raggedy Band”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 31:9-16; 2^nd Reading: Philippians 2:5-11; 
Gospel:  Matthew 26:14-17:66 (Passion Narrative)

As the clouds of war and the rise of fascism overtook Europe, the existentialist French philosopher and novelist, Albert Camus, wrote a parable of this geopolitical sickness – The Plague.

The story begins with Dr. Rieux leaving his apartment to feel something squishy under his foot.  A dead rat.  The first victim of the bacillus, Yersinia pestis – the black death – soon to infect much of the town.

The city of Oran, Algiers, the setting of the novel, is soon under quarantine, completely shut off from the rest of the world.  As the population sinks into disease, death and despair, a few people rise to the occasion and exhibit remarkable courage and humanity.  Dr. Rieux and his helpers do what little they can to bring comfort and assistance to the sick and dying.  In others, the plague brings out the worst.

Written during the time when the Nazis had overrun much of Europe, many see it as an allegory of the time of that fascist disease.  More generally it is a parable of courage in extremity, inventiveness in occupation, perseverance in the face of unknown and ill-defined horrors.

Our lesson from John is, likewise a descent from illness to death, the death of one whom Jesus loved dearly – one whom Jesus calls back from the tomb.

In the gospel of John, it is this “sign” that will lead to Jesus’ crucifixion.

We are told numerous times, leading up to this “sign” that Lazarus is ill.  “Sick unto Death,” Kierkegaard phrased the extremity of utter despair – contrary to the assertion in John 11:4 that such was not necessarily Lazarus’s case. 

“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  Martha was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.  So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one whom you love is ill.’”[1]

Yet the statement that Lazarus was ill is repeated three times prior to Jesus arriving at his tomb.  The threefold assertion is to clue us, the reader, that this poor fellow is failing fast.  Not long for this world – the fate of all flesh.  The despair of each caught between realizing their full potential and the mundane absurdities of life that consume our hours and days.  A death of a different sort.

The Jesus this gospel presents, culminating in this dramatic event, is that in him is the same Life as in God.  Light and Life he brings to all.  And so it is with all who believe in him.  Jesus summons us to our full personhood.  To be an authentic self in relation to others and to God.  He is the True Authority, through power and deed – the raising of Lazarus being the ultimate proof.

For some, for the religious bean-counters, this is intolerable.  When told of the happenings in Bethany, they find this deed of Life to be intolerable.

“So, the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do?  This man is performing many signs.  If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’”

Jesus’ summons to us is like unto that of Lazarus, “the dispersed children of God.” Lazarus, come out.”

Sometimes the idleness of days, the waste of self-indulgence, is the stench of death.  Jesus commands that the stone be rolled from our tomb in which we find ourselves. 

In the time of illness, in times of extremity, so often the worst of human impulses is expressed – denial, dissembling, obfuscation, and flat-out lies.

Our Quack-in-Chief proposed all sorts of bogus nostrums in his attempt to mitigate public fears over what was quickly becoming a mismanaged national nightmare.

At one presser he proposed a horse dewormer, Ivermectin.  Another favorite for a few sessions was an anti-malarial medicine, hydroxychloroquine.  When he proposed injecting bleach, the camera cut over to Dr. Birx sitting against the side wall wincing in disbelief.  Such quackery, at a moment when real science should have been the order of the day, when what was called for was truth and transparency, not delusional politics.

The same president, postured late one evening on the White House balcony upon his return from hospital care as some sort of banana republic El Caudillo – all the while coughing out his lungs – in a misguided attempt to convince the nation that his illness was not a “sickness unto death.”  All a hoax.

Indeed, compounding the tragedy of COVID, another sickness unto death is upon us all as the new fentanyl death toll has grown, continues to mount. 

Yet, in the midst of tragedy is the barely audible summons, “Come out.”  There is the command to us the living, “Unbind him.” That unbinding is a call to action – and healthcare workers, addiction and recovery professionals have responded.  Essential workers remained on the job.

That summons to Life begins with the realization that we indeed have a sickness.  We are ill – a national illness.

For months our national government was in denial – just a few cases and it would soon go away.  “It’s going to disappear.  It’s disappearing” — a prediction given just days after the president’s own recovery from COVID.[2]  Truth is the starting point.

Two remarkable women, Laura Martin and Alice Kaplan, share their more recent and true story of surviving another plague – the ongoing global experience of a modern-day pandemic – COVID-19.[3]

Through their scholarship and through Alice’s own experience of having contracted and lived through COVID-19, insight does shine. 

Laura writes in chapter 2 — “Rat Eurydice,” a large rat emerged from its hole and stumbled about then headed for Dr. Rieux.

Camus notes how that first dying rat “pirouetting on the doctor’s landing” falling into a pathetic heap, coughing up blood, resembles the actor on live stage who dies while portraying Orpheus returning from the dark pit of Hell “like a plague rat” in Christopher Gluck’s opera, a play performed over and over each night in Oran by an opera company trapped in quarantine. 

Dr. Rieux’s task was quite simple:  only to write plainly of what the “indifference of the world has thrown at him.”[4] 

“Yet in this pandemic year, the Plague has been tested as a direct chronicle of illness and held its own.  We have all, to some extent, become residents within its chapters.  Many of the novel’s details feel more realistic than your average allegorical gesture…the understandable hypochondria, the heartlessness of the bureaucracy, the emptiness of shelves.”[5]

Yes, we have been ill – a sickness unto death.  The death of millions.

Instead of bluster and denial, in the midst of this illness, the real work of Love would go on, often unacknowledged — unacknowledged as those unnamed volunteers continuing through it all, offering solace to the dying

In the midst of death, the heroic selfless care of those tending the sick and the addicted overdosed is not only Resurrection Hope, but Resurrection Reality. 

As fentanyl and meth fill our hospital wards and mental health clinics, along with the victims of this COVID pandemic, the strain on those working sometimes two shifts a day, interminable hours, is intolerable.  Yet they carry on through the physical and emotional exhaustion.

No pretense here.  No glory.

It is only Love, expressed through letters of gratitude that sustains. The same sacramental Love as incarnated in Jesus, that enables perseverance.  Especially the gratitude expressed by families, who also bear the burden.

This is Resurrection Love, a foretaste of Love Divine, which flows from God to Jesus and to us – the very same.

That’s what the community which produced the Gospel of John wants us to know of Jesus and appropriate.  With Jesus it’s always a “for-God-so-loved-the-world” story.  It is Life Eternal…NOW.  That’s our faith.

The raising of Lazarus is a foretaste of Easter Resurrection, as well as the critical incident leading to Jesus’ death.  So is Gratitude a foretaste.

Appreciation of those who have laid their lives on the line for the rest of us is a hallmark of New Life –“an attitude of gratitude” for these orderlies, doctors and nurses.  That is Life itself — Spirit inspired Life.  These workers are the visible agents of God’s sacramental love.

In the midst of such tragedy, Love does suffice.  Here is some of that Love shown by those who know best the sacrifice of our healthcare workers – their families.  In this Love, we glimpse the Glory of God.

We now catch a foretaste of the glorious Easter morn for which we long — like the touching letters of gratitude from all across the country – letters thanking the nurses, doctors and other hospital staff who have put their lives at risk to care for the ill.  Who drop into bed night after night, dead tired from days of ordeal and mounting death.

One letter from a daughter read, “I am so grateful for the few hours out of the week we were able to be huddled together as the core of the family — all you did to console my fears and assure me that we’re going to get through this.  Thank you for being the amazing mother and nurse that you are.  I love you, your daughter, Tina.”

And another letter to a doctor. “These shields were made with love and appreciation by myself and my children, ages 10 and 8.  We cannot express our care and concern enough for you.  Keeping you in our hearts and prayers.”

These messages, and so many more, are the truth of our Easter longing in these dark days of national sickness.  Can’t you feel a glowing warmth on your face?  Expressions of thanks to our nurses, doctors, grocery store clerks, sanitation workers – all who are the incarnation of God’s message of hope.  They get me through these Lenten days. 

Indeed, a sickness unto death was upon us all as this new drug death toll has mounted, continues to mount.  Yet, in the midst is the barely audible summons, “Come out” — the command to us the living, “Unbind him.”

That unbinding begins with Truth and “an attitude of gratitude.”   Gratitude to those who unbind, who call forth our better selves from tombs of stench, distraction and death.  That’s the story John’s gospel wants to know about Jesus.  Though we be ill, very ill – It’s ever a “for-God-so-loved-the-world” story leading past the gates of Hell to a brilliant Easter morn.   Amen.

---

[1] John 11:1-4. NRSV.

[2] Daniel Wolf, Daniel Day, “’It’s going to Disappear’: A Timeline of Trump’s claims that Covid-19 will vanish,” CNN, October 31, 2020.

[3] Laura Marris, Alice Kaplan, States of Plague: Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).

[4] Ibid, 37.

[5] Op. cit.

March 26, 2023, Lent 5

“Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

1^st Reading:  Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; 2^nd Reading:  Romans 8:6-11; Gospel:  John 11:1-45

When confronted with facts and truth, Rudy Giuliani famously quipped, “Truth is NOT Truth.”  Similarly, Pilate sarcastically responded to Jesus at his trial, “What is truth?”

For some folks, it all depends on how the issue is framed and what’s at stake.  When stationed at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, I quickly discovered that the North DID NOT win the Civil War.  In fact, it wasn’t even called that.  It was the war of “Northern Aggression.”

“What is Truth?”

When confronted at a press conference with inconvenient facts one of the former administration’s spokespersons, Kellyanne Conway, rebutted, “We have alternative facts.”

Indeed, what is Truth?

In our selection from John’s Gospel, we get a story of the healing of a man born blind that devolves into a bizarre tale of many interpretations.  There is no agreement among the characters as to what has happened, let alone what it all means.  What is the truth of the matter?

First the healing.  Jesus encounters a “man blind from birth.”  Now comes the first discussion, initiated by the disciples.  Who sinned, the man or his parents?”  Obviously, he’s an outcast — blind and a beggar.  Definitely not favored by God according to popular theology.  Sin, indeed!  They completely miss the entire point of the episode – the truth of the matter.

Jesus rejects this interpretation of the man’s condition. 

Remember his understanding of the accident where the tower of Siloam collapsed and killed a bunch of people.  “Stuff happens.”  God didn’t cause this.  Deal with it — and so he does. 

Whatever caused it, the fact of the matter is that this accident of birth will enable us to demonstrate God’s healing power.  It is an opportunity for Grace.

The ball’s in our court.  Let’s not blame the victim.  Let’s be of some godly use. That is what is needed now, not a bogus theology lesson.

Jesus proceeds to heal the man.  A free act of grace.  No work requirement on the man’s part needed.  The cure effected through a folk remedy of the time.  The man followed Jesus’ instructions and washed his eyes in the pool of Siloam.  He returned able to see.

Now comes the convoluted discussion among the several parties as to what has actually happened.  What is the truth of this miraculous healing?  The parents aver that this is indeed their son.  Yes, he was born blind, but we have absolutely no idea as to how he can now see.

The neighbors consider that maybe the seeing man only looked like the guy who couldn’t see.  It’s a case of mistaken identity.  People born blind certainly DO NOT see anything.

The religious authorities who believe that the real sinner is Jesus because he has no theological pedigree and they don’t know where he’s from.  This is woke socialism.

And of course, we the readers, know exactly where Jesus is from.  Indeed, he’s from God.  Geographical origin has nothing to do with origins.  The truth of this assertion is his power to bring life, bring wholeness out of brokenness.  To bring life out of death, to bring hope out of despair and ruination.  That’s the tipoff as to where he’s from.

Meanwhile, Jesus is off stage — just as he is for us of the Jesus Movement.  Not to be seen.  When asked, the formerly blind man knows not where he is.  And he knows not how it is that he has come to see.  All he knows “I once was blind but now I see.” 

At the same time those who claim to “know,” in fact know nothing.  Those who have sight do not see.  They refuse to recognize what is right before their eyes – a formerly blind man seeing, who now sees more than they will ever perceive.  Life kindled where before was darkness.  A supreme irony.  The seeing do not see!

Too often, we contemporary religious “authorities” do not see.  We look upon those who are hungry on the streets, who smell bad, whose clothes are dirty and our response is often most unhelpful.  They should get a job.  They should have paid attention in school.  They were brought up by “trailer trash.”  They are addicted.  They have a rap sheet.  They’re babbling incoherently.  They’re “off their meds.”  They needed to, “Just say no.”    Such blame-the-victim judgementalism is proof positive that we also are those who DO NOT SEE.  And that is the Truth of the situation.

Sweep these people under the rug — all convenient excuses for doing nothing.  But, there’s another Truth.  We can use the divine power given us to intervene with healing.  In the midst of death, we can bring forth possibility, life.  The very same power promised in Christ’s name.  We CAN be of some earthly and godly use. That Power IS Truth — God’s Truth.

Let me tell you how some Christians made this grace-filled transition from blaming, shaming and shunning the victims cast off on the side of the road of life.  Let me tell you of God’s Truth and Power one group of Jesus’ followers claimed for the healing of the world.[1]

Clarksburg is a small hamlet tucked away in the hills of West Virginia of some sixteen thousand souls.  Built before the Civil War, some of the prominent congregations that provided spiritual nurture were founded in nineteenth century — Clarksburg Baptist and Christ Episcopal Church.  They promoted a sense of community responsibility.  During the Great Depression Christ Church had taken in many of the children orphaned by disease and hunger.

Now much of that downtown has emptied out only to be filled with hordes of addicts looking to get by anyway they could.  The downtown’s storied past was long over.  The glass industry, built by some of the highest quality river sand, made the plate glass windows for many of the skyscrapers in the nation.  Pittsburgh Plate Glass, among other glass manufacturers, employed hundreds at good-paying, middle-class jobs.

All this wealth built those stately downtown churches.  Churches, that now, were struggling to keep their old buildings heated and in repair.  These congregations had dwindled to just a handful on Sunday mornings.  Mostly, considering the drug plague consuming Clarksburg, they were irrelevant.  Of no consequence, as they shrank into survival mode.  No vibrant outposts of Christ’s life-affirming, resurrection presence here.

The addicts on the adjacent streets, in their doorsteps, were a nuisance at best.  A scourge at worst.  In any case, to be avoided. 

Clarksburg had one famous resident, affectionately known by his patients as “Doc. O.”  This was Dr. Lou Ortenzio who had opened a practice in 1978, one of a couple of new young physicians in the town — was the first to arrive in many years.  Dr. O was soon overwhelmed by the patient load, seeing some forty a day.

He had discovered that the new opioid medicines would quickly solve the many pain issues his patients had.  Opioid prescriptions that the drug sale reps said were completely safe and non-addictive.  Under the press of all the stress, to ease his own pain, Dr. O began using them.  Soon, 20 to 30 pills a day of Vicodin.

Within months, Dr. O was handing out hundreds of scrips for Oxycodone and other opioids.  At the same time Pittsburgh Plate closed, along with another of other businesses.  The town had begun to empty out.  Businesses closed, stores stood boarded up and houses were returned to the banks, mortgages unpaid.

At some point, Dr. O had gotten a good portion of his city of Clarksburg and the surrounding countyside addicted.

Soon estranged from her husband, Dr. O’s wife divorced and moved the children to Pittsburgh.  The feds now on to Dr. O, raided his office and confiscated hundreds of patient records.  In 2005 he was charged with health-care fraud and fraudulent prescribing. He was subsequently sentenced to five years supervised release and 1000 hours of community service and ordered to pay $200,000 in restitution.  His medical license was now gone.

Dr. O found Christ on an examination linoleum floor as a Baptist patient knelt and prayed for him to find release from his habit. He was baptized in Elk Creek.   Dr. O, newly unemployed, began a job gardening, and then as a pizza delivery guy in the evenings.  He later found a job working for the Mission homeless shelter.  As more and more homeless overwhelmed Clarksburg, Lou Ortenzio called some of those old downtown churches to provide help. 

They needed a big push – a very big push.  Many of the new meth addicts had been kicked out of other places for outrageous behavior.  They still smelled and were still dirty.  Undesirable by any name.   These congregations were focused inward and were slowly dying.  Of little godly use to those outside their confined embrace.

As a freezing polar vortex bore down on the unhoused, Christ Episcopal church agreed to open as a temporary shelter.  One of the local community activists, Katie Wolfe-Elton brought thirty air mattresses and organized a group of volunteers to put the shelter together.  On opening night twenty-seven stragglers showed up at the church.  “I’ve never been up close and personal with meth addicts,” Katie mused.  As other workers left that evening, Katie was alone to run the shelter by herself.

A fellow with a purple Mohawk hairdo and tattoos across his face volunteered  to help keep the bathrooms cleaned and was the only one who remained to stay and swab the floors.

He tells that sometime, “sleep deprived and wired…[he] had begun hallucinating.”  Then he passed out in the snow.  As consciousness faded, he noted that it was 9:30 p.m.  When he awoke his battery was almost depleted and it was 4:30 a.m.  He barely managed to dial 911 before passing out again.  Paramedics found him by his phone signal from the tower.  As he passed out he was thinking, “This is where I’m going to die.”

At this lowest of points, here begins his new life.  “The light of God was shone me” and the church family took him in.  Scary as he was.  He says he had put the tattoos on his face to keep people away.

“Now, I opened myself up to everybody…I started practicing humble.  I accepted who everybody was, good or bad.  Forgave them even before they trespassed against me.”

As temperatures continued to plunge, more and more of those stand-offish congregations began to provide shelter.  At Central Christian, the pastor Jeff Hanlon went to the church board and to his surprise they also opened the doors as a shelter.

Instead of throwing people out as temperatures remained below freezing even in the daylight, “a full week passed with volunteers and backpackers cooped together.  They played bingo.  Some refugees babbled and saw visions.  Two volunteers organized karaoke sessions, singing “Amazing Grace,” “Lean on Me” and Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”

A film program was started later on.  One of the homeless was a pianist and   played classical pieces for an hour.

Soon those abandoned downtown churches were alive with Gospel-Life-Saving Grace. 

At some point the fellow wandered into Central Christian church and wanted to speak to the pastor.  Pastor Jeff Hanlin saw this addict with the purple hair, Norman Lowe, he wasn’t sure what he had gotten himself into. 

“They talked and it took awhile, but staring into Norman’s face, Hanlin got past his stench and disturbing facial tattoos and found, behind them a soft-spoken man of surprising tenderness.”

A few few days later Norman went into detox and Pastor Hanlin visited him.  As they sat at the clinic, Norman began to share all he’d lost — “jobs, his children.  He remembered what it was like to play ball with the boy.”(Page 353).

As Norman continued to make progress, Jeff reported to the congregation on his progress.  Many there wrote notes and cards of encouragement.

When it was time for Norman to head back home to Montana, those parishioners sent him off with bags packed with clean clothes and food for the bus trip.

What happened there in Clarksburg?  Like the man born blind, those old, dying churches could only say, we “ once were blind but now we see.” Jesus may have receded into the background, yet is still present in the faith of those older retired members of those, now vibrant downtown churches.

What is the Truth of this miracle at Clarksburg, West Virginia.  There are a hundred answers, all pointing to the power of God.  We speak of what we know.  We testify to the power we have seen.

The Risen Christ is now alive in folks there like Lou Ortenzio and Katie and all the volunteers that now fill those old stately buildings that bear Christ’s name.  This Light continues to shine in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome.  May it shine with some small smidgen of Glory in us who claim Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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[1] Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), 57 ff.  The stories of Clarksburg, WV, in three separate chapters that follow, are from the reporting of the author, who visited the city on numerous occasions over several years.

March 19, 2023, Lent 4

“Truth and Power”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission 1^st Reading:  1 Samuel 16:1-3; Psalm 23;
2^nd Reading:  Ephesians 5:8-14; Gospel: John 9:1-41

Darkness conjures up all sorts of images and memories, especially from childhood.  Like the absolute certainty that there really was a monster, or some creepy thing under my bed that would grab my leg the minute I put a foot on the floor to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  No – I didn’t have a night light.

As the situation became more and more urgent, I began to bargain and calculate in my mind as to how I could leap across the fifteen feet or so from my bed without “it” getting me.  Or how long I could wait.  After what seemed an eternity, when urgency was upon me, I would screw up my courage, jump out of bed and rush to the bathroom.  Turn on the light — Just in time!

Darkness may hold terrors, may provide the cover for secret escapades, may hold surprises and unimagined opportunities.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”  (Probably some women also.) The Shadow knows.  I remember surreptitiously listening in my bed as my mom and aunt would tune in that creepy program most evenings out in the living room.  Then have nightmares.

Darkness and night may be metaphors for hidden deeds one wishes to keep secret.  Unsavory conniving of which your parents would not approve.  And other activities which might transpire with a young love in the darkened “Tunnel of Love” at the pike in Long Beach.  Definitely, another activity unapproved of by parents and adult chaperones.

Darkness.

In our story of Nicodemus, it is under the cover of darkness that he dares approach Jesus.  This opening presents what would seem to be a very bizarre conversation.

Nicodemus is presented by the writer as one of the cultured elites.  He is a ruler of the Jews with a very advanced theological education – well-versed in the intricate details and customs of his religion.

He acknowledges also Jesus’ mission as being from God – “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs apart from God.”

Nicodemus is drawn to Jesus, but, worried about his reputation, perhaps does not want to be seen coming in daytime.  In fact, each one of us approaches Jesus out of our own darkness.  It is our existential human condition.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that in order to see the Kingdom of God, to see the very nature of the divine, one must be born “again” – or from “above.”  The Greek word John uses here, anothern, means both.[1]

Which is to say, you will have absolutely no idea of what Jesus and God are all about when trying to understood by conventional wisdom.  This is an opening to eternal life way beyond religious rules, regulations, creed and dogma.

Jesus speaks in metaphor, alluding to what he is about.  It’s like the obtuse husband who hears the words his wife says but completely misses the emotional message, leaving her feeling unheard.

It’s like a bit from T.S. Eliot on a hike through the hills of England picking blueberries.  “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”  To approach the event from “meaning” would certainly have transformed the experience.  It’s the desire to go deeper – or, in the word from John’s gospel, from “above.”

Nicodemus, being a literalist, misses all this.  Just like some husbands miss the most important part of what their wife is saying – much as I did early on in our marriage, which drove Jai crazy.  I didn’t “understand” her.

Now, I am sure there are some women similarly obtuse, but I can only speak for one man – myself and my experience.

As the discussion progresses further, Nicodemus is further and further from “getting” it.  Dense to the max!

Nicodemus’ understanding Jesus’s teaching to be physically “born again,” is wondering how he might, as a grown man, now climb back into this mother’s womb.  We go from absurdity to absurdity.  He understands nothing. 

Jesus, in exasperation exclaims, “You are a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”

Nicodemus is mired in a most inadequate understanding of his religion.  Like I was when stuck in my fourth-grade Sunday school theology.  He misses the spiritual dimension completely.  That’s because the Spirit is “like the wind.  It blows where it will…you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 

For the rules-bound literalist, Nicodemus, this is way too WOKE.  “Far out, man, far out!”  And he would be correct.  What Jesus is asking here is a matter of the heart.  Get out of your head, Nicodemus!

And, that is why many of our churches are dying.  Folks have lost track at a much different level of what God is all about.  But there’s hope…

As Paul says, “Do not conform yourselves to the world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind; then you will be able to do the will of God.”  That is John’s purpose in presenting the Jesus he does.

One commentator on John’s gospel states that maybe the real prologue to this work is not, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God;” as majestic as that is, and as theological important as it is as a restatement of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created” – there’s another introduction.

Prior to the opening, “In the beginning was the Word,” is the proclamation from the letter of John,[2] “God is Love and those who abide in Love, abide in God and God in them.”  This relationship is the eternal operative principle of creation – Love – the spiritual foundation of the cosmos.  The Gospel of John is all about relationship with God and with one another.  That letter, First John, should be considered the real preface to this gospel.

Love – sometimes so difficult to comprehend.  Like love for country.  When the Former Guy visited Arlington and “blew off” visiting a World War graveyard in France he was reported to have commented to his aide that he didn’t understand why these fallen had even enlisted, let alone why they would they die for such a cause. “What’s in it for them?”  Trump asked when walking among the headstones of the fallen war dead.  They were “suckers.” – all quotes confirmed by his favorite propaganda station, Fox (News).

Like Nicodemus, the Former Guy could not understand anything that is beyond the hard, cold, physical stuff of the world.  It’s a much higher order of existence far beyond his capabilities.  It’s not hard, cold cash.  As he noted, those dead were “hardly paid anything.” 

It’s all about Love.  “For God so loved the world…”  To “believe in Jesus” is to enter into a Love relationship with God, with all creation. 

That is what John alludes to in the understanding of baptism.  It is to be “born of water AND the Spirit.”  One is a free agent of this Spirit, going where called.  But the “water” part indicates a real world, physical aspect.  Real stuff pulled into a new reality by the Spirit.  And, of course water might call to mind the water of the amniotic fluid as well as that used in baptism.

Let me tell how this worked out in one small community of eighteen thousand in Ohio: Portsmouth.  This town on the Ohio River, across from West Virginia had fallen far from the bustling city it had been in the early twentieth century.

A shoelace factory and a couple of shoe manufacturers there produced over ninety percent of all shoelaces in the United States.  They and a steel mill, and all this provided prosperity for all the other businesses and professions.

When they closed up, half the population left, tradesmen and local independent business owners.  Buildings and houses stood vacant.

The story of Portsmouth is also the story of Josh Wood and others like him.  Pain-pill addiction and it’s fallout soon overwhelmed the town, public services, police agencies, health clinics.  “Town governance disintegrated into back-biting and recalls.”[3]

Josh had come to Portsmouth from a small hamlet in northern Ohio, Crooksville.  At thirty-two he had spent much of his life addicted to heroin and methamphetamine.  He’d sold his car to support this habit, and spent most of his time looking for more dope.  Then he was arrested.

He had heard that the town of Portsmouth offered job training to recovering addicts, and asked to be sent there.  “On paper, Portsmouth was the least likely place anyone like Josh Wood would turn to for sobriety.”[4]

On this first night, upon arriving in town Josh went to an AA meeting at All Saints Episcopal Church.  It was unlike any meeting he had ever attended.  Instead of the usual fifteen or so, the room was packed with almost two hundred people – folks standing and sitting along the walls and wherever.  There he found something that gave him encouragement.  He found Life.

A year later, Josh was no longer gaunt, and undernourished, the result of all the years of dope.  He had filled out some.  And he had met Tiffany Robinson, another addict who had requested to be sent to Portsmouth.  Thus began a relationship unlike any either had known while using.  Life was no longer grim and they had fun enjoying each other’s company.

Wood now supervised a small construction crew rehabbing abandoned buildings.  He began to feel part of something.  Purpose was creeping into his life.  He felt a joy he hadn’t experienced for years.

He was part of a crew that installed the first ice skating rink that brought families with kids together – the first public space in Portsmouth since the public pool had closed long ago.

Part of the rejuvenation of Portsmouth was the expansion of Obamacare which for the first time covered addiction treatment.  Over the objections of his own party in the legislature, Governor John Kasich, a Republican, got the state expansion of Medicaid passed.

All the old, abandoned buildings were also a big assist.  “The Counseling Center refurbished and expanded into forty-eight of them.”[5]  Addicts were now flooding into Portsmouth for treatment.

As more and more addicts seeking recovery arrived in Portsmouth, these folks were about as welcome as a plague of locusts.  Many flooding in came for The Counseling Center (TCC).  Soon eleven treatment centers were operating in Portsmouth.  From this work, sober living homes repurposed a number of the stately old run-down mansions in town. 

One local resident, Dale King, had returned from Iraq where his job was to train Iraqis as special forces.  One way to provide physical challenges and build comradery was through strenuous exercise for these trainees.  On his return to Portsmouth, discouraged at the way drugs had devastated his town and leaving a starter job he hated, Dale opened a CrossFit gym.

One of the lawyers for the Counseling Center began paying for workout sessions at the gym.  Soon many that Dale King had known and despised as addicts began to show up “running, squatting, pumping, pulling themselves up.  Finally, he had to learn their names.”[6]   Josh Wood joined this group.  The workouts released his brain’s endorphins.

The incipient economic activity downtown encouraged Dale King to open an apparel line and an all-natural skin line.  In time, King had eighteen people working for him in three companies.

Another returning veteran who had spent time rebuilding Iraq, Tim Wolfe and a partner, began remodeling one of the old downtown buildings into apartments.  He thought this shouldn’t be too hard – here he was not getting shot at while mixing cement.  Since workers were scarce, Wolfe helped those entering sobriety pay the needed fines to reclaim drivers licenses.

Two essentials were needed for employment:  a clean drug test and a driver’s license.  TCC soon opened a center to help addicts pay fines to regain those licenses.  They expanded into medical care. 

Wolfe employed Josh, paid his fines, and set him to work rehabbing the downtown buildings, teaching others the necessary trades.

Wolfe opened a restaurant downtown, the first in years, which attracted people to a downtown that had been empty for years.  Above it he renovated apartments for his workers.

Seeing all the new energy in Portsmouth, Shawnee State University opened a center for entrepreneurial training downtown.  Recovering addicts were one of the two growing sectors in the city – students being the other.

Tiffany and Josh married, Josh starting his own business, “Woody’s Remodeling.”  Tiffany opened her cleaning service called, “Get it Done.”

They and a whole bunch of other recovering addicts saved the day.  These, the “Least of Us” … these have completely restored hope and have breathed life back into Portsmouth.  Imagine that!

This is the Gospel of John’s message — Jesus is about Life.  Eternal Live Now.  Not after one dies.  Fully alive to oneself and others right now!

Josh and Tiffany were part of a collective rewiring of the brain’s reward pathways in Portsmouth, toward enjoying again the dopamine release by what our brains had evolved to prize:  exercise, moving forward, and being with others in public the way townspeople did…”[7]

The dream, the reclaimed lives and restored town – all a version of “water and the Spirit.”  Those who supported recovery, those who dared to begin recovery – all a part of overflowing Love of those abiding in God. 

It took real effort, work, sweat and it took those venturous souls willing to be carried by the wind of the Spirit.  Beyond rules, beyond fears, beyond stunted imagination, beyond caution.  That’s the message of John’s Gospel.  Won’t make any sense at all to the religious bean counters.

And so it has ever been with those born anew from above.  A whole bunch of recovering addicts saved themselves and the town of Portsmouth – leading this darkened, drug-infested place into the Light.  Another resurrection story of “by water and the Spirit.”  Indeed, a For-God-So-Loved-the-World story.  Amen.

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[1] Gail R. O’Day and Susan E, Hylen, John (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 43.

[2] 1 John 4:16.

[3] Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), 376.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Op. cit., 379.

[6] Ibid, 382.

[7] Op cit., 389.

March 5, 2023, Lent 2

“Into the Light”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission

1^st Reading:  Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121;
2^nd Reading:  Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; Gospel:  John 3:1-17

There’s line from the hymn we will sing today, “I will Arise and Go to Jesus,” that is so very true for me.  In part it says, “If you tarry ‘till you’re better, you will never come at all.”

The fact is, we meet God out of our need, not out of our sufficiency.  Out of our extremity we come.  That’s my story.  When my life was going nowhere, caught up in our family’s turmoil, missing class after class – only then did I take up a friend’s offer to attend a campus religious group.  There, at this Wesley Foundation meeting, I caught a glimpse of a loving, forgiving God that challenged my intellect as well as my spiritual distress.  Catching a fulsome vision of what God might intend for me, I kept coming back.

It is out of what is often called “rock bottom” that an addict comes to a recovery group.  If there is enough desire to live, that person might catch a glimpse of an entire new way of life.  But it all begins with the admission, “My name is — fill in the blank — I’m an alcoholic.”  It’s the realization, too often after family has left, after the job is over, after self-respect is on empty, that one’s life is now hopelessly out of control.

This period of Lent is our opportunity to deeply consider what it is that gives life, and to choose for abundance – not in things but in connection to the Author of Life, to one another, to our deepest self.

James Baldwin tells of that afternoon, in his darkened father’s Pentecostal church, where as a young adolescent, he slowly came down the center aisle.  He knelt at the communion rail and there offered himself to Jesus.  As James tells it, the deal was, “Jesus knew all the secrets of my heart and would never let me find them out.”

“But he was a better man than I took him for.”

Lent is our opportunity to discover the inner secrets of our hearts, to accept that, whatever they may be, Jesus calls us into his presence – a Presence overflowing with welcome, with compassion, with forgiveness, with challenge to go deeper.   Much as did that first meeting of Wesley Foundation I attended so long ago as a very lost soul.  Much as the alcoholic finds at a first AA meeting.

We only have one crack at this life; my father and Jack Benny to the contrary, all of us have an expiration date.  We only go around once.

As I was moving down the aisle imposing ashes with the words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return, I came to my young son.  As I repeated those time-worn words, there was an audible gasp.  “No, not me.” 

Yes, even you my dear son.  Even you.  So, fill your days with love.  Fill your days with connection.  Hold tight to those whom you love and those who love you.  Hold tight to this wondrous blue-green creation spinning through the emptiness of space.  Hold on.

Remember the One who brought you to this earthly feast and honor that gift.  Remember the precepts that bring true happiness and joy to you and to others – and your cup will overflow with abundance.

During Lent the journey is renewed, is sustained.  Our deepest longings are laid open before God.  This is church as solace, church as an opportunity to live into the fullness what is intended for each one of us.  This is church as challenge to discover and fulfill your unique vocation – where your talents and deepest desires intersect with the world’s greatest needs.

Take these days, to look deep within, to dare, to reach out, to delight in the splendor of God’s creation. 

I wish for you, my friends, the blessing of a Holy, Renewing Lent.  Amen. 

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:4-18; II Corinthians 5:20b-6-10;
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

“Out of the Depths”

Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
February 22, 2023