Out of the fifties, I beg your pardon of an old man’s trip down a musical memory lane – on the hit parade years ago was a most infectious song: Baubles, Bangles, Bright Shiny Beads.  Those old enough will remember:

“Baubles, bangles, all those bright, shiny beads
Sparkles, spangles, your heart will sing, singa-linga
Wearin’ baubles, bangles, and beads
You’ll, you’ll glitter and gleam so
You’re gonna make somebody dream so…”

Sung by the Kirby Stone Four, this single made its way onto the top Hot 100 in 1958. 

Initial attraction helps, but baubles, bangles, sparkles and spangles isn’t much of a guarantee for choosing a lifetime soul mate.  What counts is the inner sparkle.  The spangles of a vibrant soul.

One of the commercials for on-line senior dating shows a well-preserved, perfectly coifed older woman saying that she wouldn’t even know where to begin to start dating again at her age.  The announcer says, just go to our service, open it up and start looking.  Then shown in the ad, the woman is looking through pictures of handsome older men. 

Crazy.  Let’s see…the first two could be child molesters, then an ax murderer…maybe the next three are deadbeats and finally an income tax dodger.  Or maybe a war criminal.  It’s like my friend who was on her third husband or boyfriend.  I asked where did you meet these guys.  “In a bar,” she replied.  Hmmmm…something wrong with the selection process here, ya think?

Today we celebrate some spiritual baubles and bright shiny beads.  At least that is how, upon the mountain several of Jesus’ followers glimpsed him.  Dazzling, sparkling, Christ of the Bright Shining Mount of Transfiguration.

Most commentary focuses on Jesus and his appearance in that episode, but one writer suggests that the focus might better be held on those accompanying him.  It may be that the critical transformation is in them, their luminosity.

Irenaeus writes, “The glory of God is a man, a woman, fully alive.”

Let’s consider that this life changing moment which takes place in Jesus’ companions might be what is critical.  What they perceived of the Risen Christ is inserted back into the story by the gospel writers.  This written by those who themselves had been transfigured.

And what had they perceived?  In Jesus, the presence of the totality of God’s revelation was at hand – God’s will for all creation.  This is what Moses and Elijah were all about – the embodiment of Torah-Truth.  In this bright shining moment, the power of both Torah and Gospel are present. 

“Same Truth, More Light,” just as last Sunday.

That is the divine will for all creation, that we become fully alive, fully available to one another, fully available to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst. Fully in harmony with our place in the cosmos.

One of my friends thinks all this is too hopeful.  Too illusory.  It’s delusional — that too often, we preachers are living in an unrealistic fantasy world of the “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”  Preaching a gospel of fluff.  And if it’s about being a glass-half-full person, then I plead “guilty.”

But from the witness of Christ through scripture and the blessing of the community of faith, from time to time, in moments, we do catch a glimpse of Holy Delight, Utmost Fulfillment.  Love Incarnate.

One of my favorite authors, John Updike in his series of novels about Harry Angstrom, nicknamed “Rabbit,” follows his rise from late adolescence to become a modestly successful, respectable suburban businessman in the fifties.  Though Rabbit has all the amenities and outward signs of success, he is most alone.  In his emotional isolation, he is granted only a few moments of complete satisfaction, moments he might identify as a glimpse of the Holy:

For Rabbit, it is a perfect golf shot right down the fairway, the soft, round curve of a woman’s bottom, a successful business deal inked and signed. 

These moments of sheer delight, of perfection, when we’re fully alive, when we inwardly sparkle, are indeed fleeting, but somehow make it all worthwhile.

You know them, a lover’s lingering embrace, the smell of Jai’s meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy – (actually, we make it together).  The satisfaction of having made another’s day brighter, of working with dedicated team members on a project not one of us could have possibly done alone; a hymn that stirs the soul; the joy of giving to a cause at the moment of need.

And if you doubt the importance of those soft curves and that lingering embrace, go back and re-read the Song of Songs.  It’s the one your Sunday School teacher might have skipped over, the one that might be up for being banned in some school libraries.

Various, fleeting glimpses of God’s Goodness, moments of vibrant Life – Life Abundant, if you will.

Recently, I saw a film that especially speaks to those of us who are getting on in years, especially us men who too often have lived rigidly prescribed, structured and baren unemotional lives.

The main character, Mr. Rodney Williams, played by Bill Nighy – definitely an award-winning performance — is a mid-level functionary in the government bureaucracy of the City of London.  He is most unapproachable.  Those who work under him are terrified of what his disposition might be on any given morning.

One afternoon, he is told by his doctor that his tests have come back and the news is not good.  The cancer has spread and he has maybe six or nine months left to live at the most.

He is found that night sitting alone in the darkened living room by his son and daughter-in-law as they return from their work.  As they prepare to rush upstairs and busy themselves with dinner and reading the paper, he hesitantly asks, “Could you sit awhile.”  Of course, they can’t.  They never have.

They are too busy, leaving the old man alone in the dark, most alone, as he relives various pivotal moments in his mind.  His wife is long since deceased, he really has no friendships at work or anywhere else to speak of.

Dinner that evening is an emotional disaster, everyone walking on eggshells – completely disconnected from one another.

Eventually, he is able to share his diagnosis with one young woman who had worked at a desk adjacent to his, Miss Margaret Harris, played by Aimee Lou Wood.  She has moved on to another job but he has looked her up.  Enter also three women have been imploring his Office of Parks forever to turn an old abandoned trash-strewn parcel of land in their neighborhood into a park.

Mr. Williams becomes alive, maybe for the first time in his life, opening up emotionally to this young woman and also taking on the cause of this neighborhood park.  He is now a man with a mission.

Go, see that film.  And take lots of Kleenex with you and someone who cares for you.

This is a Gift of Life that is celebrated in this film.  It is a perfect moment of spiritual renewal, of godly joy and deep pathos.  This is the sparkle and bright shiny that radiated from Jesus, that radiated from all his followers infected with Transfiguration.

Too optimistic?  Delusional?  Unrealistic?  I think not!  It doesn’t mean that there is not tragedy.  It does not mean that we do not suffer the evil of these days. 

Yet in the midst of it all, we are granted fleeting glimpses of the Holy, available from time to time if we’re fortunate to behold them.  If we’re paying attention.

It’s hearing the first cry of your newborn child.  It’s that a life partner said, “YES.”  It’s those Northern Lights flashing across the sky on a frigid winter night in Alaska.  It’s unexpected flowers.  The radiance of a smile.  The greeting of an old friend.  It’s that “you passed your Greek exam – by the skin of your teeth, Forney.”

In an instant, all is Transfigured – Jesus and we, the Church, however slowly.  To our surprise, we find ourselves standing on Holy Ground.  The message itself is Holy Luminosity.  All is changed.  Most of all, we ourselves.

What’s the alternative?  I’ll tell you what’s the alternative. It’s no future.  To live without hope, we end up like Jim Jones and his People’s Temple followers out in the jungle of Guyana drinking the Kool-Aid – a nihilistic, embittered end of self-destruction.  Hell.

We can end up as zombies worshipping the so-called free market as wage slaves – in a winner-take-all dead-end future.  Yes, the Former Guy was right about one thing, the system is “rigged.”  If your parents were poor, chances are overwhelming that you, too, will die in poverty.  Or die a “death of despair” – addiction, alcoholic liver failure or suicide.  At a relatively young age.  The youngest I buried was only nineteen years old.  That rat-race existence will suck your soul out of your being if you let it.  That’s what alcohol did to him.

Dante in his epic poem, The Inferno, describes the furthest reaches of Hell not as a place of flames but as a frozen, baren wasteland — a place where all souls, in icy rigidity are utterly cut off from one another.  Utterly alone.  That’s the Hell of NOT living.

Go see the movie.  By the way, the Laemmle Theater needs your support if you live near Claremont.  The bling will be in your soul.  That’s the “fully alive” God intends.

This Transfiguration Sunday, the gift awaiting all are those inner bright shiny beads.  Beats the Hell out of “despondent” and “down in the dumps.”

As we live connected to others, to our deepest selves, to our Maker, we become the ones who glitter and gleam so.  As we live for others, we’re the bright shiny beads.  We, surrounded in the splendor of those fully alive, are the Glory of God.  True and Transfigured.

With the approach of Ash Wednesday, let us prepare to enter a Holy Lent.  A time of reflection and renewal.  And go see the movie, “Living!”  And take a moment to “sit awhile” with someone who needs you.  Amen.

February 19, 2023, Epiphany Last
Transfiguration Sunday

“Bright Shiny Beads”

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

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 2; Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

There’s the story of a police officer coming upon a somewhat inebriated man crawling around on his hands and knees late at night.  As the man continues searching for something under a street corner lamppost, the officer asks him what he might be hunting for, as the fellow continues to feel around the sidewalk.  “I seem to have lost my keys,” the man responds.  “And this is where you might have lost them?” the officer inquires.  “No,” responds the man.  “But this is where the light is.”

In dark times, how desperately we seek the light.  We seek for any sign of hope to be illuminated – any wisdom.  That is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered the nation in the thirties when massive unemployment held the nation in its grip.  Fear of destitution and hunger was palpable.

More often that darkness is more personal, existential – like the day a letter arrived at my house that began, “Greetings.”

Within weeks my comfortable life had been uprooted and I was thrown in with a bunch of strangers in a drafty and poorly maintained barracks somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana.  The lavatory was a mess with most of the toilets not working or overflowing.  

After doing my business there, I arrived back to my bunk to discover most of my stuff had been stolen by my upstanding bunkmates.  Watch, wallet, changes – all gone.  About the only thing left besides my underwear and some other clothes was my Bible.  This was the copy of J.B. Phillips “New Testament” our campus ministry Wesley Foundation had given me before departing.  About the only thing of value left!

Despondent, I wandered over to the nearby Post Exchange, PX, for short.  I was going to drown my dejection in a big bottle of Coke and some doughnuts or whatever.

To make matters worse, I had just begun dating a wonderful woman I had met at a church conference in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I was in love.  Her bouncy walk, this cute petite blond, her shy smile – well, you get the picture.

So I come in through the front door, and what do I hear?  Andy Williams crooning “Can’t Get Used to Loosing You.”  Instantly, I was a mess.  I quickly left so no one would notice that I had dissolved in tears.  No Coke.  No doughnuts.

Back on my bunk, I opened J.B. Phillips translation to a favorite passage from II Corinthians 6.

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

That passage, in an instant, restored my soul.  Here in my darkest moment was light.  I had no idea as to how this might work out, but here seemed to be a bright ray of hope and encouragement.

This is where the light was — and from that group back home who I knew carried me in their hearts, held me in prayer.  Here was more light.

And finally, from a blizzard of letters that arrived from that wonderful woman came enough light for me to make it through the two years of my stint with the U.S. Army. 

And now I’m married to that woman, no longer blond.  We did have a talk about truth in advertising after marriage when it was revealed that I had actually married a brunette.  Oh well, I guess I also was not quite as advertised either.  Over the years, we’ve made accommodations, and some things just weren’t that important.

But I digress.  While the future remained uncertain and hidden behind a glass darkly, I was waking to this bright light of Gospel hope.  I knew for certain that whatever befell me in the days and weeks to come, I would carry on.

More light. 

I discovered that when Christopher was accepted at Yale, that the school’s motto was similar to that of Harvard’s, which is “Veritas” – Truth.  The Yale sweatshirt proclaims, “Lux et veritas” — with the snarky comment, “Same truth, more light.”

When I was finally discharged, the United Methodist pastor who had married us, told us that he wanted us to come work at his church as a couple, to be sort of the dorm parents for the women college students who lived next to the church and ran the tutorial programs.  That facility had previously been a boarding house for young Swedish girls from the old country until they got jobs or found husbands – the church having originally been the Swedish Methodist Church. 

That neighborhood in the early nineteen hundreds had been heavily Scandinavian and Finnish.  Now all those young women from the Old Country had either found husbands, moved to rest homes or were no longer among the living.

Jai and I were soon immersed in the civil rights struggles and antiwar movement of the sixties.  For the first time I was living in a community not majority white.  It was an education.  Fortunately, that pastor, Terry, was the best mentor I could have hoped for.  Every Sunday, his sermons rang with the call for social justice.  They shed light on the despair in our neighborhood. Our small church spearheaded building over one million dollars of low-income housing there.  We drove kids to museums and the beach in two old ratty VW buses.  Every afternoon we had a tutoring program for the younger ones.  Another United Methodist pastor, Alex, helped people find jobs through the Downtown Service Bureau that he ran at First Church.  That church also lots more light in our neighborhood.

One week Pastor Terry told everyone to keep the coming Saturday free.  We were all driving to Delano to meet the founder of a farmworker’s movement, Cesar Chavez. 

Light was flooding into my being, and maybe in some measure I was gaining a little bit of luminosity myself.

Within just weeks of that trip, Jai and I had boycott organizers from Delano living with us.  This was the time of the Safeway Grape Boycott.  When I headed to the grocery store, it wasn’t with a list from Jai, but a picket sign.

Same Gospel Truth.  More Light!

Another aphorism of Abraham Lincoln comes to mine: “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”  We were about building the New Jerusalem, right there in the barrio of Los Angeles.

Another couple in the church organized the construction of a “vest-pocket park.”  For quite a few Saturdays Toni and Larry with a group of neighbors and local gang members cleared three empty lots of trash and weeds.  Our councilman Tom Bradley found the funds for swings, a merry-go-round, benches and landscaping and other amenities.

Lots of light for the mothers who could now bring their kids there to play where they could watch them.  As for the gangs, they made sure nobody-but-nobody messed with that park.

Out of all this activism, a neighborhood council of residents was formed, Pico-Union Neighborhood Council.  Every evening at our headquarters on Venice Boulevard ESL classes were in session.  In the afternoon, activities for the children.  Out of that building residents helped design our low-income, section 8 housing for the neighborhood along with six or seven interns from UCLA.  And in the room in the back, off the alley, our English architect, Jon Mutlow seemed to always be tinkering on an old MG that was perpetually in a state of descompuesto, various parts strewn about the floor.

When the church really is the church, we are Light.  We are Salt.  We illuminate it all.  We season it all.

Recently, my friend Lydia Lopez passed into immortality.  All during this time she had been one of the sparkplugs across town in Lincoln Heights at Epiphany Episcopal Church.

Out of the basement of that church La Raza Newspaper was assembled and printed, the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War was born.

She was a major figure of that incredible time of Hispanic activism in East Los Angeles.  Out of that parish came many of the Latino and Latina leaders in Los Angeles political life.

Lydia was the first person of Mexican-American descent to serve on a grand jury in Los Angeles.  It was her activism that resulted in there being Metro stations in the communities of East Los Angeles.  Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta often made the Church of the Epiphany their base of operations when in L.A.

Recently, when every Friday I would drive Lydia into our interfaith peace group on Wilshire, it was like having a living history lesson in my car.  Afterward, when we had time, it was off to Home Boys Café that Fr. Greg Boyle had begun, Phiippe’s or El Cholo.

Her infectious laugh and telling of those stories were the brilliant light of truth and solidarity.  In her, La Causa shown brilliantly.  She radiated Light.  Lydia, ¡Presente!

And so here we are, all a bit more decrepit.  The church in many places is in tatters.  Some have fallen by the wayside; we only remember their names.  Yet their luminosity continues to brighten the way forward.

Through the power of a good example, light brings even more luminosity.  Each of us in Christ is a splinter of that Light – of the same Light brought into being through that primordial first command, “Let there be Light.”

It’s what drives and lightens the way for those working on House of Hope.  It is what brightens the room when a shut-in is visited.  It is the radiance of a smile that greets a new visitor. 

That luminosity is the Love Light we share at St. Francis.  And wherever — we’re going to let it shine.  Folks, YOU are the Light of the World. I have it on good authority.   Amen

---

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

February 5, 2023, 5 Epiphany

“Your Luminosity”

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

Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 112:1-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-12; Matthew 5:13-20

One of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln is, “People are about as happy as they decide to be.”  Unless there is some mental illness or great tragedy, most people, left to their own devices, will volunteer for “happy.”

But there’s a subset of folks with whom life and others have dealt badly.  They wake up miserable and go to bed miserable.

Like our neighbor when I was a small boy growing up in Compton.  Back when I was in the first and second grades, when we boys would be roller-skating out on the sidewalk on our block, she’d come out and turn on the sprinklers and yell at us.  A wonderful and uplifting next door neighbor, indeed.  Enough to ruin your entire day.

She seemed to hate everyone.  Her husband had left, she made her teenage son sleep out in the garage.  I won’t add any sexist, piggy male commentary as to why he may have left.  My lips are sealed, sort of.

One of my favorite cities is San Francisco.  Did I ever mention that if you pay your church pledge, say your prayers and don’t fool around on your significant other, when you die, that’s where you go?

Anyway, a news blurb from that city of the Golden Gate caught my attention this week.  A shopkeeper of an art gallery was arrested for hosing down a homeless woman sleeping on the sidewalk outside his business.  The same look of disinterested distain on his face as officer Derek Chauvin had as he knelt on George Floyd’s neck.  Assault and battery.  Just out of sheer cussedness, and exasperation, I suppose.

Didn’t his mother, didn’t his father, teach him any better than this?  I suppose not.

Yes, I know that they are, like most urban centers, overwhelmed by destitute folks, the mentally ill and drug-addicted.  I confess to being dismayed having to walk around people camped out on the street as I make my way to a favorite bookstore or restaurant.

But as my mom always said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”  Such disorder does unsettle the spirit.  But is cussedness the answer? 

Left to our own devices and anger, that’s too often where we can end up.  Out there on the sidewalk of life along with Mrs. Blocker turning on the sprinklers and yelling at passersby, hosing down the homeless.

There is a better way.   It’s engaged compassion.  It begins with the simple words, “Blessed are…”

As the Deuteronomist proclaimed, “I set before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse.  Choose life…”[1]  As Lincoln said…our choice.  Same as the sign to our church preschool: “Misery is optional.”

Genuine communities of faith are about thriving, about a more excellent way, a way that scripture calls, “Eternal Life.”   It’s there for the taking, set before us day after day.  Grace upon grace.

Eternal Life is not something one might enter into at death.  Such understanding is completely unscriptural.  Eternal Life is a quality of life that Christ offers now.  It is sheer blessedness.  Brim full and overflowing.  The first followers of Jesus experienced this infectious quality as highly contagious.  They got it from Jesus.  More contagious than measles.  They transmitted it to one another.  First the twelve and then others. 

Even those “persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” theirs is everything that matters.   Ask John Lewis.  Ask Rosa Parks.  Ask Dr. King.  These are they who entered into Eternal Life long before they were dead.  These are the sort that bring life to all they do. 

“Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called children of God.”  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” 

The Beatitudes are not some sort of checklist for the religiously compulsive.  They reflect a quality of life that emanates from those who have accepted Jesus’ offer of blessing, who daily strive to walk that talk.  It just oozes out of the pores of their being.

These ARE the merciful.  These ARE the ones who open their hearts to the poor, the hungry, the addicted and those in prison.  They are living Beatitudes.  They reek of compassion, of a yearning for justice.

The narcissist will never understand these people.

When the Former Guy visited the cemeteries of the WW II fallen in France, and at Arlington, he wondered why they would have made that ultimate sacrifice, ‘What’s in it for them?” he mused to the aide accompanying him.  In his book they were “suckers.” 

Probably, also those German farmers who got caught hiding Jews during Hitler’s bloody reign.  “What’s in it for them?”  They were shot, or worse.  Our neighbor, Mrs. Blocker, would have found such unabashed generosity abhorrent.  Also, the Former Guy.

I find that I become close to this quality of life – Life Abundant – when I am willing to be vulnerable to the “Least of These.”  When I allow them into my heart.  Indeed, we ignore and dismiss the marginalized to the peril of our souls.  Something essential in us dies…way before death claims us in the end.

Out of such vulnerability comes a life of Shalom – a wish for wholeness and wellbeing for all around, no exceptions, for the entire creation…Life Eternal. 

Recently, as my friend’s wife has passed from life to death, I’ve become acutely aware of the gift of comfort our hospice nurses and health staff bring to the terminally ill.  I remember what a godsend they were to my family when my mother-in-law, who lived with us the last eight or so years of her life, was in her final days

I’m thinking of the health staff who care for the addicted.  Sam Quinones, in his latest book on the opioid crisis, The Least of Us:  True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, relates the story of one young addicted mother.[2] 

Starla had overdosed on fentanyl while walking the streets.  When her boyfriend/pimp finally noticed that she very sick, he, out of fear, had waited several hours to call 911.[3]

Now she was in the hospital, seriously brain damaged, and several months pregnant.  The nurses at Sacred Heart, who cared for her, brought flowers to her room, curtains, a radio so she could listen to music.  When an attendant would come in to bathe her, often, all she could do was to follow that person with her eyes.[4]

No family or friends visited.  The last few days of that winter, Starla had walked the streets barefooted in the snow and ice.  When her mother Maude did finally show up, she was aghast at the appearance of her daughter, “Her feet looked like she had walked them off of her.”[5]

As Starla’s tummy grew with the developing baby inside, nurses took turns sitting by her bedside.   Day after day.  As one nurse exclaimed to the author, “I’ve been a nurse for forty-two years in maternity, and I had never taken care of a patient like this.”[6]

On January 18, 2013 Starla gave birth by C-section, several weeks prematurely, to a daughter who “came into the world with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and affected by the drugs the staff gave her mother to prevent clotting.”

The nursing staff and hospital chaplain “cried in awe of the child and mother who tossed and turned but could not speak.  ‘It was like our family survived and had a baby,’ Ellen Stanly, the morning supervisor, cried.”

The work didn’t stop there.  By then the ward was now filled with other addicted mothers and newborns.

I’ve known some of these nurses, the work schedules are inhuman.  Their gift of caring is drawn from a deep spiritual well.  These people are living Beatitudes.

Philips Brooks, that great Episcopal preacher of the eighteen hundreds somewhere said of such spirituality, “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.”  That is the story of this nursing staff.

Through prayer, deep desire and the touch of God, we gently, slowly, live into this Spirit.

When I made known my last wishes to friends and family, people asked, “Have you written this stuff down?”  “Does Jai know?”

Our future daughter-in-law sent back the most loving response.  While she wished that she and Christopher wouldn’t have to refer to this request anytime soon, she did tell me that I had three things to do first — tasks I could not possibly accomplish alone — before I departed:

1. Marry her and Christopher.
2. Attend Christopher’s PhD graduation at Yale.
3. Be available for some grandkids to be crawling around on my lap.

Love that woman.  Alexis is certainly a living Beatitude.  Christopher did most fine in discovering her.  Wedding date: October 7 of this year.

I also have two addiction treatment facilities to begin – definitely operations which no one person could conceivably accomplish solely.  I pray Phillips Brooks is right – that my being will grow into and through the Spirit of this work.

This is the spirituality of the Beatitudes.  It’s not a check list for the religiously compulsive.  Not a way of earning one’s way into heaven – or San Francisco, for that matter.

This is the spirituality that grounds those nurses at Sacred Heart – sustains those hospice nurses who attended my mother-in-law and the staff of our health center at Pilgrim Place. 

Let us pray that this very same Spirit touches us daily.  A free gift, available to all – even Mrs. Blocker and the Former Guy.  “Blessed are those who…”

Amen

---

[1] Deuteronomy 30, RSV.

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

3 op cit., 75.

 

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 76.

January 29, 2023, 4 Epiphany

“Eternal Life or Sheer Cussedness: You Choose”

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

Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-3; Matthew 5:1-12

As we finished watching Washington Week on a Friday night, we flipped the channel to catch another recorded program and found ourselves in the middle of the fourteenth failing ballot of Kevin McCarthy’s quixotic journey to the speakership of the House of Representatives.

Glued to the screen we sat through a failed motion to adjourn and I remember commenting that these folks couldn’t even organize a bathroom break, and they’re going to run the country!?

The next thing, the camera zooms to McCarthy rushing to the podium waving a red card.  Now someone’s going to change their vote.  Within short order, having failed to adjourn, the House proceeded to a fifteenth vote.  The holdouts, the Never Kevin folks, having had their demands met, had agreed to vote present, allowing the speaker to finally be elected with 215 votes.  He was sworn in and in turn swore in en masse the rest of the body.

We had a government – of sorts.

I wondered what sort of reign this speaker might exercise given the extreme demands the Never Keven cabal had exacted from him to bring their support, or at least their acquiescence.  Would anything get done in this 218^th Congress?

What sort of acolytes would Speaker McCarthy be choosing to head committees?  How many months would this tribe exhaust in investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop?  Impeaching Dr. Fauci?  Yeah, I know he’s retired…they know.  Doesn’t matter.  The COVID-19 vaccine was all a nefarious plot of some sort.  That’s why we have to investigate, investigate, and impeach!  And while we’re at it, let’s get those awful FBI thugs on the hotseat, too.  And the 87,000 IRS agents who will be beating down your doors at three in the morning.  Will we descend into the madness of Marjorie Taylor Green and the QAnon Crazies?

OR…OR…

I was not much of a Reagan fan, but at least his conservativism had a smile.  His was not the politics of resentment and vengeance.  He found places of compromise to get things done.

The stark contrast to the melee on the floor of Congress was the gathering of Mitch McConnell and President Biden, along with the governors of Ohio and Kentucky and some other leaders of those states – all to celebrate an accomplishment for the American people.

The bridge over the Ohio River that spans the two states has needed replacement for many years.  Obama tried to get the funding and failed.  Now, after many years, this deteriorated span was going to be addressed.  There were smiles, complements and handshakes to go all around.  This photo op was the classic win-win situation.   Out of the cesspool of our hyper-partisan politics, everyone came up smelling like a rose.

Over the politics of darkness, the light of cooperation and mutual interest broke through the dark clouds of bitter partisanship. 

There were many points where I took strenuous issue with Reaganism.  His abandonment of the mentally ill in California was despicable.  When it came to the “least of these,” one pundit asserted, “The spirit of Marie Antoinette infuses the administration of Ronald Reagan.”[1]

In spite of this, Reagan was progressive on immigration.  He believed that immigrants made the nation stronger.  He chose them to become Americans.  He bristled at the idea of a border wall.  “You don’t build a nine-foot fence along the border between two friendly nations.”  An earlier draft contained his thought, “We cannot erect a Berlin Wall across our southern border…We are talking here not just about statistics but human beings, families, and hopes and dreams for a better life.”[2]

This was the spirit that infused that meeting between President Biden and Mitch McConnell at the Brent Spence Bridge across the Ohio River.

Jesus was the messenger of Possibility and Flourishing – ever God’s will for humankind.  This is a “we” operation.  He needed a team, those who would commit to following him on the Way to a New Creation.

“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen.  And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’  Immediately they left their net and followed him.  As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John…”

He called the twelve and then called others – saints alive — and now he’s calling you and me.

Yes, it was Reagan’s disastrous foreign policy in the Central American countries which have brought about the massive flood of refugees, yet as blindly naive as Reagan was to the results of his policies, there was a spark of decency that allowed him to see these refugees as simple human beings, their hopes and dreams.

That is our mission as Jesus’ disciples.  And none of us are in his class — we all bring our blind spots and sins of omission.  I bring these up because, we are cut of no different cloth than those politicians we disparage.  The main difference, they are often in positions where they can do far more damage than we mortals. We do share the same humanity.  The same instincts for good and the same blind failings.  Yet in God, all shall be blessed.  Even my old nemesis, Tricky Dick.

Jesus calls them, calls us, to a vision as old as the prophets of yore, to the promise of Isaiah.  All “living in a land of deep darkness, arise.  Your light has come.  You have seen a great light; on you it has shined.”

We are only here for a brief period.  The gift of grace is the Light of Christ we shine unto those around, including oneself.  The Light they offer to us.

Last Sunday evening we gave thanks for a great bearer of this same Light, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  He walked the talk.  This is the sort of disciple Christ raises up.

And you and me, to boot.  Cut from the same cloth of frail humanity.

Death, more than anything focuses both mind and spirit.  Brings to the forefront my need, our need, for this Light

Lately, I’ve been spending time with a good friend whose wife is in hospice.  That, and finishing a novel about an incredible priest facing death among the people she has served, I find myself a bit weepy.  But it’s a good weepy.  It’s real.

We will gather in a little bit this morning to acknowledge the gift of life and joy a cherished wife, Blanca, brought to her family.  In her way, she walked the talk.

This circle is given to the precious moment of sharing cherished memories of her time among us.  A time to give thanks to the Author of all life who has brought us to this time and place.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  Beats the hell out of watching old sit-coms or moping around in the darkness by oneself.

The blessing of discipleship is the blessing of community.  Whatever life dishes out, we don’t have to endure alone and in silence.  We have a community in Christ to share it all.  And be sustained.  This is the bread of life that is offered every Sunday at Christ’s altar.  This is the cup of blessing – it is to be in a community of blessing.

As imperfect as our politicians are, as we are, there are divine moments of flourishing.  Joe and Mitch were at that bridge the other day because of something they received along their faith journey.  That same spark enabled Reagan to see the humanity of those destitute at our southern border.

It enables us to look across a prayer circle and see the precious humanity in each one at this altar.

“Sent them out to witness, two by two,” and now sends us out to testify to the goodness we have known in his company.  Two by two.  It’s real.  Believe me.  Amen.

---

[1] Nicole Hemmer, Partisans: The Conservaive Revolutinaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s (New York: Basic Books, 2022), 39.

[2] Op cit., 37.

January 22, 2023, The Epiphany

“Jesus Called the 12 and then Called Others”

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

Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1, 5-13; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23

Quite some years ago I attended Mills College, studying in their department of education to get teaching credentials for both elementary and secondary education in Alaska and California.

On the first week of classes the school held a matriculation ceremony welcoming in the new freshman class.  At that time Mills was still a woman’s college for their undergraduate offerings.  What struck me was the close ties of many graduates who returned for this ceremony.  Women had assembled from classes going back to the 1930s – but not many.

I still get their alum magazine, which this month featured stories of students who had met their spouses while at Mills.

The first story of Michael and Katja warmed my heart.  Michael was working on a masters of fine arts and Katya spied him across the tables at the Olin Library.  This was in 2001.

Michael describes what he calls “a shock of recognition.”

“It was like a flash of lightning that blinds you.  I had this real feeling that we had met before.  I was a little shy, so it took a while to kind of warm up.  But I think the time that I decided to talk to Katya was when I started to notice that she was sort of waiting at the fountain for me!”

Katya corrects her husband, “Lingering,” with a smile.

“I remember feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh, something is happening…In that moment, the stakes just felt a lot higher because I just felt this sense of potential.  I just felt like Michael was really different than anyone else I had met.”

That began a romance of nineteen years…still going strong.

Most of us have known those feelings, that bond.  Many of us are still living that delight, though some of the fire may have subsided and we’re comfortable old married folks.  For some unrequited love may be now felt as a residual tragedy or irretrievable loss.

The fact still remains – we’re made for one another. 

At Epiphany we celebrate a love letter from God.  That’s what the Star of Revelation is all about.  Just as Katya realized, “Something is happening.”

Our younger son met Alexis online.  We are so overjoyed that they both realized after several dates, “Something is happening.”  And now a wedding is scheduled for October 7^th of this year…and we delight in the joy they find in one another.  Something is happening indeed!

It all started with a Big Bang when, in the twinkling of the Divine Eye, everything came into being: “The stars and planets in their courses.”  Dandelions and lady bugs, lizards and dinosaurs.  Not all at once, but like any true romance, gradually unfolding — A huge bit something happening.

And finally, you and me.

That is what the Feast of Epiphany is all about – SOMETHING IS HAPPENING in that simple manger far away.  And happening still today.

That is the love story of the Divine Lover and the Creation.  The will is to flourish in the same way Michael and Katja have flourished, the way couples and communities have flourished down through the ages.

That is the never-ending Love Story, unfolding on the first pages of Genesis.  To each of us comes the call, “Arise, shine; for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”

Yes, it’s not all roses.  This world yet knows much darkness.  But as John Ford Coley, croons, “Love is the Answer.”

Not a sentimental love, though the fireworks are a help.  I’m talking of love that goes out of its way to boost flourishing – even when you DON’T feel like it.

It’s the love that takes you outside of your comfort zone.  It’s what leads you to do that minor errand, simply because you know it will make the other person happy.

It’s the love for your country that leads you to walk precinct for a candidate you believe will do a good job.  To walk for several hours even though you could be curled up on the couch with a good novel.  Even when the joints ache and the back is sore and the street lights have already turned on.

It was that lightning attraction of a miraculous star that led those three travelers to their heart’s delight.

And what gifts might we bring?

I’m reminded of all those who down through the years have been keepers of the flame of faith.  The unheralded matriarchs of our communities of faith who kept the doors open when hope was scarce and funds were even scarcer.

I think of Mrs. Nellie Hughes, wife of our pastor, who when I was a child led children’s church every Sunday …who tried to instill in us obstreperous boys some sense of decency and decorum…who tried to present a living faith through story and song that would last our whole life long. 

The fact that I still fondly remember her and her gentle admonitions, her stories and smile, says she had succeeded far beyond what she might have imagined.  She was God’s love letter, and in her presence, something was happening.

That’s what the Star of Revelation is all about – Love is the Answer, and Something’s Happening.

When I was at All Saints Church in Pasadena, one of our clergy was a priest from South Africa.  As a white woman, Wilma might have easily said goodbye forever to that tormented land.

Since its first President Nelson Mandela left office, South Africa has been racked by unemployment, crime, and corruption.  Wilma chose to return.  As a white Afrikaner, she is aware she had little leverage to do much to be of help.  But what she could do, she would.  That’s the Wilma of generous heart that we all loved at All Saints.  I still miss the lilt of her English accent when remember her.

In the sermon she preached on her farewell Sunday, Wilma mentioned a website dedicated to those white Afrikaners who have committed to remain and do whatever they can to heal the dysfunction of their great nation.  The site’s hashtag is: #ImStaying  You can find it also on Facebook.

Here is the story of one of the faithful, generous souls who have screwed up their fortitude and have pledged their lot with their fellow countrymen and women.  It is the story of one white South Afrikaner woman who’s staying put.  These beautiful citizens of that fabled country brightly reflect glimmers of the Christ Star.  And what they reveal is hope for the planet – the hope of some simple, decent humanity.

This woman’s journey is the sacramental presence of God’s love – that divine “Something’s Happening” story.

Here is one post on #ImStaying that is right out of God’s never-ending Love Story.

The narrator says that on her drive home one day, she saw a man on crutches lugging a suitcase on wheels.  Crossing a bridge, he was struggling mightily as he finally got to the other side.  He was tired and obviously ill.  She told her kids that she was going to stop and help him. 

She rolled down the window and asked the man if she could give him a lift somewhere.  His distorted face indicated to her that he was in some real difficulty.  He seemed somewhat confused.  He handed her a piece of paper saying he was deaf and dumb.  She began to speak very slowly and offered him a lift to where he needed to go.  He wrote on his paper, on a board he pulled from his backpack, his destination.  She had her son get out of the car and help with his bags.  Then she had the man sit next to her with his crutches.

As she drove along, the man kept writing messages to say thank you on his board, and she used the little sign language she knew to say that it was her pleasure.  She stopped along the way and got him something to drink and withdrew some money at her bank. 

When they got to the taxi station that was his destination, her son carried his suitcase to the cab.  As he left, she had tears streaming down her face.  She handed him a 400 Rand note in South African money, and hoped he would make it home safely.

She later told her kids that there was no way that many people would help a man like this, walking with crutches, with a distorted grimace on his face.  Speaking to her children as much to us, she continues:

People need help!  We can only do what we can with what we’ve got.  I’m just happy that being kind costs nothing and we have the potential to do so much good. 

I know that [they] will remember that day in particular for the rest of their lives and I hope it will encourage them to be good to other people.  We need to role model this behavior for our kids.[1]

The mother concluded that she again had tears in her eyes as she typed up her story.  She thanked #ImStaying for all the positive posts on the site, concluding with the prayer, “May God bless Africa.”

As my friend Jim Strathdee has so marvelously turned a Howard Thurman poem to song!

When the song of the angels is stilled.
When the star in the sky is gone.
When the kings and the shepherds have found their way home.
The work of Christmas is begun!

O Star of Brilliant Revelation, revealing our work.  The work of all the little people, the nobodies, the “least of these” – in whom Christ continues to daily preform the most astounding miracles.   We’re Staying.  Something’s Happening – a Love Story.  Let it ever be so, even here at little St. Francis.  Amen.

---

[1] Anonymous, #imstaying.

January 8, 2023, The Epiphany

“A Love Story”

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

Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

Here, in part is what President Zelenskyy told us:

“We’ll celebrate Christmas. Celebrate Christmas and, even if there is no electricity, the light of our faith in ourselves will not be put out. If Russian — if Russian missiles attack us, we’ll do our best to protect ourselves. If they attack us with Iranian drones and our people will have to go to bomb shelters on Christmas Eve, Ukrainians will still sit down at the holiday table and cheer up each other. And we don’t, don’t have to know everyone’s wish, as we know that all of us, millions of Ukrainians, wish the same: Victory. Only victory.”[1]

It was an electrifying moment.

Only a short few months ago, we all looked on Ukraine as a hopeless cause.  Another instance of a brave people losing a struggle against overwhelming odds against a ruthless foe.  Sad, but inevitable.  The way of the world.

It is into this world that a small child lay in a cradle, huddled against bitter cold.  Shepherds keeping watch, alerted to the impending mystery, gather themselves together.  And set out to see what new ray of hope shines in the darkness of another autocrat’s darkness. 

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

And isn’t that the yearning of each of us, to see some ray of hope, to see a sliver of light in our darkened world?

That is what all the decorations are about.  That is what the gathering of friends and family is about.  “Let us go see this thing which the Lord has made known to us.”

As the old year closes, our nation closes a chapter on one of the most sordid episodes of our history.  It’s not the first time we have had a brush with autocracy.  The first came in the 1930’s when a radical Catholic priest incited millions across the airwaves to accept the fascist alternative.  Fr. Coughlin and others were deep into a plot, fomented and financed by agents of Hitler, to overthrow our democracy.  Check out Rachel Maddow’s podcast, Ultra.  A book and film are in the works.

With the report of the January 6^th Committee in our hands, we have the documentation of just how close we came this time to suffering a coup to overthrow our democracy.  This modern-day Herod was willing to do just about anything to retain the power of the presidency.  Even to the murder of police officers.

“Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me,” was the Former Guy’s ask of former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.[2]  When it became clear that Rosen would not go along with this cockamamie idea, the Former Guy planned to fire him and install a toady, Jeffrey Clark, who would do his bidding. 

But democracy’s light, brilliant as that Star of Epiphany, cut through the darkness of this nefarious plot.  Virtually all top employees threatened to resign en masse should that happen. 

“Let us go see this thing” that has preserved our democracy and rule of law.  If not all, at least some of the time almost nine hundred pages — or at least take time to read the summary, or catch pieces of it on your nightly news.  Read it.  Scan it.   It’s bipartisan.  It’s shocking.  It’s on the mark.  This witness to the truth, to the values of self-rule is surely the Lord’s doing. 

“Let us go to [our local newsstand] and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”  For all those who have given witness to these events, we will return to our homes and factories “glorifying and praising God for all [we] have seen…”

Yes, the events leading up to that moment were dastardly.  Pardons were sought for the many malefactors in Congress who had aided and abetted the plot.  Yet, the vision of free and fair elections prevailed.  The line held.

Christmas light does shine in the darkness yet in 2022, reaching far into 2023 and beyond.

This light shines upon Adnan Syed, recently released from prison after serving 23 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.  The DNA evidence proved his innocence.  The prosecutor, upon uncovering new evidence, proclaimed his innocence.  And numerous others have worked long and hard since 2014 to assert his innocence.

He walked out of the courtroom on September 14^th a free man, restored to his family.  This December he was hired by Georgetown University as a program associate for the university’s Prisons and Justice Initiative.  Now, 41, Adnan begins a life of hope.   December’s Christmas goodness indeed!

“To go from prison to being a Georgetown student and then to actually be on campus on a pathway to work for Georgetown at the Prisons and Justice Initiative, it’s a full circle moment,” Syed said in the university’s announcement. “PJI [Prisons and Justice Initiative] changed my life. It changed my family’s life. Hopefully I can have the same kind of impact on others.”[3]

It’s only one man you may say.  That’s true.  But as George Regas would always remind us, “Keep your eyes on the prize but celebrate the incremental victories along the way.”

See this thing that the Lord has done.  The light of that man will only grow in luminosity. 

Let us see the work this freed man can now do, turning the lessons of his tragic past into inspiration and perseverance to free others.  Let us see this thing the Lord has done and rejoice.

It is this Christmas goodness, this Christmas hope which drew those shepherds to that rude manger in Bethlehem.  Christmas serendipity for all who attend to the angels’ annunciation.

By the way, Bethlehem translates as “House of Bread.”  That is the announcement of the angels on high, that is the promise of Christmas goodness.  The real and true Wonder Bread offered to all.

In a recent op ed piece, Peter Wehner reminds us of the truth of our faith, something we have always known deep down – the bedrock of Christianity is not moral purity, true doctrine or right ritual – it is about relation.  Jesus commanded, “Love one another as I have loved you.”[4]  That is the lodestone.

When Christianity is stripped of love, it “becomes a religion characterized by hard edges and judgmentalism, by brittleness and moral arrogance, by mercilessness and gracelessness.  Those who claim to be followers of Jesus but behave in this way become not his friends but his enemies.”[5]

At the manger we are invited into a relationship.  That’s what babies are all about.  That is why Christianity is not so much taught as caught.  We’ve all know people whose faith bubbles up in joy and service.  They have upheld us in times of grief and doubt, in times of despair and when forlorn.  They are the bread of life, baked freshly from the House of Bread.

As those Wise Visitors following that Star of Brilliance left their gifts, we too offer the best we have at the manger.

Today as in yesteryear, that original nativity brilliance yet breaks through in the lives of all who have fallen in love with the small Christ Child.  As that child has come to maturity in the lives of grown believers, their works of mercy and justice give testimony to its goodness in our day.

We too would exclaim, “Gloria in Excelsis – Peace on Earth to All of Good Will.”  Amen.  And, P.S., Happy New Year!

---

[1] Full Transcript of Zelensky’s Speech Before Congress, New York Times, December 22, 2022.

[2] Kevin Breuninger, “Jan. 6^th Hearing: “Trump told DOJ officials, “Just Say it was Corrupt and Leave the Rest to me,” CNBC live blog tracking Thursday’s hearing of the House Jan. 6 select committee, June 23, 2022.

[3] Brian Witte, “Adnan Syed hired by Georgetown’s prison reform initiative,” AP, December 23, 2022.

[4] John 15.

[5] Peter Wehner, “Jesus Loved Friendship,” New York Times, December 24, 2022.

January 1, 2023, Christmas 2

“Let us Go See This Thing”

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

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21

Long, long ago – in the dark ages of junior high – one lesson was firmly implanted in my mind by our P.E. coach, Mr. Jorgensen.  This was the time when the seventh-grade boys would be taken aside for sex education.

We were fortunate to live in a reasonably progressive town, Long Beach, California, where such things could be dealt with on a rational basis.

So, one morning to titters and some surreptitious giggles, a few elbow jabs to the ribs of a nearby friend, we boys were assembled in the weight room of the gym.  Of course, all us guys were already experts on the subject – we thought.  All sorts of salacious tidbits had been passed around the playground and on the playing fields.  But interest was piqued to the max.  Now we were going to get the real low-down

Mr. Jorgenson was a no-nonsense coach.  He literally once threw a screw-up boy out of our history class – without first opening the door.  We could tell by the look on his face and stern demeanor, that this was more serious an occasion than we expected.  More serious than his usual about sportsmanship.

After introducing the subject and what we would be covering, Mr. Jorgenson asked one boy, a kid named Joe, a very pointed question: “Joe, how many sperm does it take to make a baby? – Joe, how many?”

There had been rumor that Joe might have gotten a girl in trouble, and this was the confirmation.  What Joe did not comprehend was that he, also, was in deep trouble. They both were.

As Jesse Jackson would admonish kids from the hood, “Babies have no business making babies.”  What girl, what boy, is mature enough to bring a baby into adulthood.  Not a one! 

Definitely not our classmate Joe.  To him, this baby was just an unfortunate occurrence that really didn’t concern him all that much.  A throw-away kid.  Joe was not prepared In the slightest to care for a pet dog, let alone a child.  Joe was a complete screw-up.  Totally incapable of taking responsibility.

This was, indeed, a most memorable sex education class as we boys sat there in stunned silence — Serious stuff!  Way beyond smirks, playground wisdom and tales.  I’m sure none of us ever forgot that afternoon session on the gym floor.

I sometimes wonder that ever happened to that little tyke.  My fondest prayer is that he or she was put up for adoption and taken in by some responsible family.  By adults!

Today we read in Matthew’s gospel of another Joe, Joseph if you will.  Like our junior high Joe, he is to discover the shocking news – he’s going to be a father. 

Even if you’re married and forty, I can tell you that this is most disconcerting news.  Yes, we were hoping for a baby.  But when the reality of a flesh-and-blood child dawned on me, I was overcome with doubts.  “Am I ready to be a father?  Will I be a good enough parent?  A supportive enough husband?”  This is scary business.  I’m not ready.  Even having had courses in early childhood education, I instantly forgot everything.  I wasn’t ready.

Imagine Joseph in a small village with loose tongues and fingers wagging.  He must have been beside himself.  Did he have the courage to still be seeing Mary?  Was he up to being emotional support for her?  No, he was shaking in his sandals.  He’d gone all soggy like a wet meringue. 

“Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”

I’m sure he was about to get out of Dodge quietly before the scandal became the talk of the entire village.  This brief announcement of Matthew gives us absolutely no hint of the mental anguish of both parties to this announcement.  We can only guess.

“But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

Now we don’t know with any certainty the nature of this holy message.  Was it conscience, character, upbringing, a listening to the inner Spirit? …but in any case, Joseph does not bug out on Mary.  He stays and raises Jesus to adulthood.  Perhaps even taught him the carpentry trade.

Joseph is the sacrament of God’s steadfastness.  He was faithful to the task at hand.  He and Mary were in this together.  Faithful as God is faithful.

Quite a departure from our first Joe, who as far as any of us knew, never saw the girl again.  That episode only turned out the be the first of Joe’s many troubles – another story to be told.

Mary’s Joseph turned out to be a righteous man, a stand-up guy.  Faithful for the long haul, though he soon drops out of the pages of scripture.  He remains the paradigm of God’s faithfulness.  For that reason, the Roman church celebrates a feast day for the Holy Family.

Last Sunday we focused on a stand-up woman – Mary.  Today we’ll focus on a stand-up guy – and all the stand-up guys God sends each and every day. 

This week, December 14, ten years ago, the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school mass shooting, was featured on news programs all across the county. 

Senator Chris Murphy of Massachusetts, another stand-up guy, spoke on where we are as a nation.  He, like St. Joseph, has not forsaken his call of leadership on the issues of military weapons of mass destruction in our communities.

Senator Murphy through an insightful op ed piece speaks to the mental health issues that are producing such tragedy in our communities.  In spite of all the electronic connections, we are producing a generation sucked into the dark hole of loneliness and despair.  We now have an epidemic of suicides.

Chris writes, ”Growing up, my identity was strongly connected to the town I lived in, Wethersfield, Connecticut, and the “localness” of my daily experience reinforced that identity. For instance, I fondly remember my local grocer, who slipped me a free slice of American cheese every time I visited the deli counter with my grandparents.”  That local grocer is now gone, replaced by a Walmart, Sam’s Club, and Amazon.  Not much human contact needed at all.

“Loneliness is driving people to dark, dangerous places, and those young, white men carrying tiki torches are only the tip of a giant iceberg of isolated, angry people whose search for meaning might lead them to a seething antisemitic or racist mob.”

Senator Murphy is willing to issue a stand-up clarion call – a warning on what we are doing to ourselves in service to the almighty dollar, not to mention the worship  of a gun culture.  The cheapest goods at those big box stores, are now costing us plenty – our loss of connection to each other.  The glue that holds society together.

More than Senator Murphy, how many other stand-up men have stood by their families and community of Sandy Hook to bear witness to the sorrow of their loss?  God’s gift of solidarity to us all.

One husband writes: “My wife, Mary Sherlach, was the school psychologist at Sandy Hook Elementary School…It has never surprised me that she died while confronting the shooter in the front hallway.”  It takes real courage to relive those tragic moments – to bear witness to one’s own grief, lest the rest of us forget.

Like Joseph, this man did not bug out, but has become a part of “The Sandy Hook Promise.”  Like Joseph, this man is staying put, right where God has planted him.  He is a token of God’s faithfulness, God’s solidarity with us.

Another stand-up guy is Lawrence O’Donnell with his promotion of school desks for children in Malawi.  It’s the K.I.N.D Fund, Kids in Need of Desks.  Every year during this season he has school children expressing their thanks to the American people for promoting their education.  The K.I.N.D. fund, in cooperation with UNICEF, has these last few years been promoting girls’ high school tuition.  Because high school education is not provided by the state in this impoverished nation, girls graduate at half the rate of boys. 

One of those young high school girls I featured in a sermon a couple of years ago, Joyce Chisale, recited her moving poem, “Little by Little.”  Joyce is now fulfilling her dream, attending her first year in medical school.  Lawrence O’Donnell and his team have made this possible for Joyce and many other girls like her in Malawi – with the dollars sent in by a lot of us.  In highlighting girls like Joyce, Lawrence is certainly a stand-up guy living out the Catholic social teachings of his faith.  A token of God’s faithful promise.

Adam Kinzinger is another guy, cut of the same cloth.  Like Liz Cheney, he has chosen country over party – sacrificing any hope of a future political career.  His willingness as a Republican to serve on the January 6^th Committee has greatly benefited our nation.  He has spoken truth to the insurrectionists and seditionists in his own party.  He, like Rep. Cheney, must be accompanied by armed security agents at all times.

This last week he spoke the bottom-line truth of that fateful day, January 6^th.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said Wednesday that former President Trump is “absolutely guilty” of a crime surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“I think he’s guilty of a crime. I mean, look, he knew what he did. We’ve made that clear. He knew what was happening prior to January 6th. He pressured the Justice Department officials to say, ‘Hey, just say the election was stolen and leave the rest to me.’ And then the Republicans all need to put the stamp of approval on it,” Kinzinger told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.”[1]

He did not walk away from his country in its hour of need.  He did not walk away from the truth.  He did not walk away from decency.  He is to be counted among the righteous.  A token of God’s steadfastness, keeping the faith.

We should also include Dr. Anthony Fauci in this honor roll.  He has steadfastly stood by our nation as we have endured one of the greatest medical challenges in our lifetime.  And for his efforts, he has been vilified and received death threats.  He also needs an armed guard to carry on his duties.  As he retires after many long years of service, no words can express the gratitude we own him for his service.  Dr. Fauci, you are indeed a stand-up guy.  It would have been easy to just walk away under the deluge of the scurrilous attacks on your integrity — but you have stood firm, a token of God’s steadfastness and solidarity.

This year as we come ever closer to that manger of promise, let us remember and give thanks for faithful Joseph, standing with Mary in spite of her ostracism, in spite of the threats of Herod.  And for all the stand-up guys who have followed in his footsteps.  Who have changed diapers, comforted tears, held their families close – and stood with our nation in her hour of need.

Inspired by, and grateful to paraphrase Joyce Chisale’s poem, “Little by Little.” Little by little we follow that star-lit path to a humble manger bed.
Little by little might that Holy Child takes up residence in our hearts.
Little by little, might our lives be tokens of solidarity and steadfastness
  with the destitute
  with those who thirst for an education
  with those seeking shelter and a hot meal
  with those who work for a more just world
Little by little might that Christ Child be born anew in us.  Little by little.  Amen.

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[1] Julia Mueller, “Kinzinger says Trump ‘absolutely guilty’ of crimes ahead of Jan. 6,” The Hill, December 14, 2022.

December 18, 2022, Advent 4

“A Stand-up Guy”

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

Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1: 18-25

The first church I served right out of seminary was actually two.  It was part of a two-point charge served when I was under the United Methodist system.  Both were in the Upper Mojave Desert, about twenty-five miles apart on Highway 395 — Inyokern and Randsburg, a stone’s throw from Death Valley.

One of my new acquaintances out there inquired early on, “Forney, what did you do to the bishop to get sent out here?”  Another friend in Temple City announced my appointment from the pulpit one Sunday in church we had been attending, “John’s finally found out where his appointment is going to be:  Unicorn and Rancid.”

The smallest church of the two, Randsburg United Methodist, had only four members left and my job was to collect a bequest given to the church, then close the place up.  This bequest had been tied up in court due to the sloth of the attorney handling it – he finally ended up being disbarred, but that’s another story.  Well, this thing dragged out and out.  Soon we had far more than four members.  Now, the problem was, the water had been shut off several months before I had arrived.  I couldn’t imagine anything more depressing than a hot, dusty church with no water – no water, in the middle of a scorching summer out in the Mojave Desert! 

We absolutely had to get the water turned on again.  Absolutely!

The words of Isaiah are a thirsting for restoration, for a return to the gates of Zion.  That all which is amiss be restored.

Yes, Lord, let the dry land be glad!  Let the desert rejoice and blossom!

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped…the lame shall leap like a dear…for waters shall break forth in the wilderness.”  Lord, let it be!  Yes, turn on your mighty water spigot.

A highway shall be prepared, straight to glory – “It shall be called the Holy Way…no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.  The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing…”  A straight shot glory attack!  That’s what Isaiah’s about.

This vision of return from Babylonian Captivity is one of restoration.  All the folks dancing and singing on that Glory Road home.

In the holy city of Jerusalem God’s people shall live in solidarity with one another.  Open the gates of justice for this homecoming.  “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  The lion shall lie down with the lamb – though the lamb might not get much sleep.

For much of our history, for a lot of our people, America has been a barren desert of sorrow and sighing – as they languished under the slave master’s lash.  Beginning in 1619, we robbed an entire people of any future.  Right from our inception as a nation.  Right through the Jim Crow laws of exclusion. And hooded night riders.

Our present economic system locks the vast majority of our people out of any decent livelihood.  It’s a barren system that saddles young people with tens of thousands of dollars of college debt, especially those from black and brown communities – and those from rural poverty.  And one wonders why our young people have given up on capitalism?  To them it looks to be a parched future of little hope.  No righteousness to be found here.

It’s a ruinous and barren political system that strips workers of the right to any meaning of union representation, as did President Joe Biden and his Democratic congress to our railway workers this past week.

These railroad companies are making billions – the highest profits ever – and their CEOs are among the highest paid in the nation, raking in millions every year – and we can’t even afford a measly seven days of paid sick leave!?  Shame on you!  Get real, people.  Time for our inner Mary.

And, for the most part, the church remains silent in the face of such massive inequality, such gross injustice.

Definitely — time for our Inner Mary!

Not that statue in some churches, not that picture on parish walls of a demure, bashful servile girl in pastel blues.  As harmless as a Cocker Spaniel.  No!  Not that Mary.

I’m talking about a Mary that looks more like Harriet Tubman, Conductor to Freedom on the Underground Railroad — more like Rosie the Riveter — more like Katy Porter with her white board — more like Rosa Parks firmly planted in that bus seat – more like Octavia Butler with visions of our future swirling in her brain — more like Toni Morrison with pen on fire writing Beloved — more like fearless, undaunted Mother Carrie Oval, my predecessor out there in that barren desert of Randsburg and Inyokern who wouldn’t give up in the face of a sexist boycott of her first sermon – all those women of steel and moral purpose who kept on coming.  Women who persist!  Yeah, throw in Elizabeth Warren, Liz Cheney and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  And Mother Jones, to boot!

When Mary is confronted by the Angel Gabriel and given the terrifying news that she will become pregnant – pregnant without her consent, pregnant like so many young girls in Ukraine who are the rape victims of Russian invaders, pregnant like so many young girls in families of poverty with no access to birth control — Mary does not acquiesce quietly.  No demure, little, nice, quiet girl she.

She, as Mike Kinman once put it in a most memorable sermon – Mary takes one step back and says to that intrusive messenger, “If this is the way it’s gonna be…Just hold my beer and watch this!’”

With that, she cuts loose with the Magnificat – she belts out one of the most radical proclamations of social justice in all of scripture.  If I’m part of this plan that I did not ask for, then let ‘er rip.  You’re going to be absolutely astounded at what God’s going to accomplish through this child to be born of my womb.

Yes, indeed.  Hold my beer and watch this!

“His mercy is on them that fear him

      throughout all generations.

“He hath showed strength with his arm;
      he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”

Yeah, I’m talkin’ to, big shots.

“He hath put down the mighty from their seat;

       And hath exalted the humble and meek.”

“He hath filled the hungry with good things,
       and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

You fat cats, your shelf life has expired.  There’s a new sheriff in town.

Privilege and preference, all turned upside down – this is the Lord’s doing and marvelous it is in God’s holy sight.

It’s time this Advent we channel this inner Mary – channel her righteous indignation at injustice, channel her persistence, channel her loyalty to this holy work of God.  Channel her loyalty to the end, even to the foot of that tree of shame and sorrow.

In our Advent study by Jill Duffield, Advent in Plain Sight, uses the metaphor of a gate to open the mysteries and promise of this season.  Through the gate of Advent, we are beckoned to a world transformed.  We are invited to lives of new promise and opportunity.

This last week I had the opportunity to present to the chair of the board of Housing Claremont the Helen Meyers Achievement Award, a recognition of persons and organizations that have made our town of Claremont a better place to live.  This group and their leader Ilsa Lund are channeling their Inner Mary.  Her song lives in them.

Housing Claremont, through its advocacy for permanent supportive housing for the indigent, mentally ill, the homeless, the addicted, is a gate through which we in our city can pass on God’s promise of full inclusion.

Claremont, like many suburban communities in Southern California, has a sordid history of exclusion.  Redlining and restrictive covenants in property deeds were part and parcel of a racist past designed to keep Black people out.  Actually, also Mexican-Americans, Chinese, Japanese – to keep anyone who was not “white bread” out of here.  We were a “sundown community.”  If you’re not white, you’d better be gone by sundown.  If you knew what’s good for you.

Housing Claremont and their chair, Ilsa Lund, has striven mightily to bring Claremont into conformance with our highest Constitutional ideals.  A rule of law and ethic where “All means All.”  Full stop.  End of Story.  Magnificat incarnate!

They have met a wall of opposition in their advocacy of Larkin Place, a development of supportive housing for the “least of these.”  Opposition comes right out of the same mentality that gave us that redlining and those restrictive covenants. 

Yes, the opponents say, we believe in housing for the homeless.  But house them elsewhere.  Yes, “Housing ends Homelessness.”  That’s true, and, by all means, help these people.  But help them someplace else.  Anyplace else, but NOT HERE!

There’s a wonderful spiritual, “Twelve Gates to the City.”  The righteousness of Mary’s Magnificat proclaims the gates open.  Open the gates of opportunity and inclusion, the gates of justice and righteousness to our unhoused neighbors living right here on the streets and in the vacant lots of our city.  Open the gates this Advent!

It has been said that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.  Too often the gates of full inclusion to our churches are shut tight to those we fear.  Pablum is served — not Mary’s Magnificat.  Open wide the Gates to God’s righteous Word this Advent.

Open wide the gate to economic fairness to our railroad employees.  Let go of grievance and privilege.  America is not a zero-sum game where winner takes all.  That’s not the vision.  Open the gates of opportunity this Advent.

Standing outside those gates are the same Three Strange Angels who visited Abraham and Sarah.  Admit them!  Standing at the gate of the soul of this nation is the angel who visited Mary – Admit, admit that Advent Messenger that justice be reborn and righteousness find a manger bed.

As with Mary, the tidings may terrify.  The future may look dark and foreboding.  Though we be uncertain as to what sort of message this might be — at the very gates of our hearts stands blessing. Admit the Holy Messenger.  Admit.

Let the waters of righteousness flow like a mighty stream that the deserts of frozen hearts and closed communities blossom.  And joy shall come to the wilderness.  All the angels in heaven shall gather in concert to proclaim, “JOY to the WORLD!”  — “And to the Fishes of the Deep Blue Sea!”    Oh, and by the way, we finally did get that water back on at that little outpost of the Jesus Movement out there in Randsburg.  Amen.

December 11, 2022, Advent 3
Gaudete Sunday

“Channeling Your Inner Mary”

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

Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:4-9; Canticle 3, BCP[1]; Matthew 11:2-11

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[1] The Book of Common Prayer, according to the use of the Episcopal Church, 1979.

When the boys were little tykes, my morning job was to get them out of bed and make sure they were dressed for school.  I’d come into their room chanting sing-song, “Wakee, wakee,” all the while flipping the light switch on and off.  At first, I’d hear a few grunts and groans, then “Go away.”  As this was an Alaska morning, it would still be pitch dark outside.  I’m positive, the boys probably would have considered it a much more obtrusive, more obnoxious wake-up call had I sung to them.

Once I had the fire going in the wood stove and Jai had breakfast served, attitudes somewhat improved.

We’ve just celebrated Thanksgiving, our national holiday I’ve always considered the lead-in to Advent.  Much of everything comes to a standstill as families and friends plan gatherings all across the nation – good preparation for the hush of Advent.

Jai and I finished making the turkey dressing the other night.  It’s an old family recipe, dating back at least to the time her mother stopped being responsible for this meal and we had to scrounge through several cookbooks and figure out what stuffing we might like.  No oysters.  No giblets.

As we settled into the couch to watch Judy Woodruff anchor the PBS Newshour, the stuffing ready for tomorrow’s feast, I noticed Jai making frequent trips out to the kitchen, snitching bits and pieces of the stuffing we had just labored over.  I told her that I thought I was wondering if I should call her brother in Anaheim and tell him that he’d better come over right now and get a bite there while there was still some left. 

The smell of our sausage-apple stuffing still wafting through the house is my Advent preparation.

Prepare — the call of Advent – Wakee, Wakee.  I’ll light up my purple Advent lights that adorn the eves of our house this Sunday.  I’ll get the UNICEF Christmas cards ordered and get to work on our Christmas letter.

Today the summons from our scripture readings is, “Wake up, for Christ’s sake!”  Yes, for Christ is nigh upon us.

“About that day and hour no one knows…For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.  For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.”[1]

The first Followers of the Way believed that the END was indeed upon them.  Within the lifetime of many still living, Christ would come with all his angels and wrap up history.  The First Sunday of Advent concerns Christ’s return, to be born anew in our hearts.  It is also about our final destination, the summation of all creation – the Final Day.

One of my favorite hymns we sang in Sunday school as a youngster was straight out of this end-time theology, “When the Roll is Called Upon Yonder.”  Even us boys sang it with gusto and true belief that our name would be announced on that Last Day.

That understanding is the theology of Matthew’s gospel.  Stay awake!  You never know! 

By the time Luke writes his gospel, the community of the Jesus Movement has settled in for the long haul.  That is why Luke concludes his gospel with the Book of Acts, the story of the spread of the Jesus Movement.  In little communities of believers then scattered across the Roman Empire.  Luke’s theology is a theology of “the meantime.”  While we’re waiting – to be about Christ’s work.  To be about what makes for community and life abundant. Those are our baptismal orders.

But the idea of an imminent end time is still with our secular folks.  It comes to us in that favorite Christmas song, “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.”  Yeah, just like the end-time rollcall, “Santa’s making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.”  And, you’d better watch out! 

Although, I discovered that “naughty” was usually more fun – until it wasn’t.  Some of our churches still terrify little kids with the most horrendous stories of that Final Day.

My mother would tell me how as a little girl she woke up one night with a start.  Right outside her window was a huge harvest moon.  About that same instant, a freight train had come barreling through town, sounding its mournful whistle.

This was it.  The angel Gabriel is come.  Christ has returned.

She, her heart pounding, her breath rapid, coming in gasps, the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up – she flung herself out of bed and ran shrieking through the dark, “Gabriel’s here.  Wake up.  Wake up.  It’s the END. 

And of course, the whole family indeed did wake up.  And it took some while for them to settle her back down.  That was one of Grandma’s oft told stories.  Being a Christian Scientist, however, she had no truck with such doctrine.

So, how does the end come?  What are its signs, its harbingers?

My evangelical friends were convinced that the forerunner of the End Time was the Antichrist.  The candidate might be Hitler, Pol Pot, or some other heinous malefactor.  I was told by one acquaintance it was the Democrats.  Others – the Republicans.

My mother’s side of the family believed it might be FDR – “He fired your grandfather.”  At that time Grandpa had been the postmaster of their home town, Lodi, California.  Grandpa had been appointed by President Hoover.  Democratic ascendency was the clear sign that the End was near.

We read in our papers of all sorts of imminent catastrophes.  Portents of the End?

PFAS chemicals.  Had you heard of them?  They’re the chemicals produced in making such things as Teflon, and firefighting foam.  They’re in cosmetics, the film that makes rain bounce off your jacket – “better living through chemistry” – until it isn’t.[2]

They re the cause of cancer, pregnancy complications, unhealthy blood lipids.  Definitely, NOT better living.  Even in the most minute doses, this stuff is damaging.  Does the end come when we all poison ourselves to death through these amazing concoctions?

Wakee, wakee. 

We are told that male sperm counts have been decreasing since the 1970s at about 1.6 percent per year.  Since the year 2000 the decline has accelerated to 2.6 per cent per year.[3]  This as a world-wide phenomenon.

The end for the human race?  Is this toxic brew of chemicals the ultimate birth control?  And, folks, it’s not just us.  What about the deer and the antelope out there playing – playing until they’re also extinct?

Wakee, wakee!

Or, maybe we just all shoot ourselves to death in a final OK Corral blaze of gunfire?  In the US we are running more than one mass shooting per week.  This week — Walmart in Virginia, Club Q in Colorado Springs.  Four people were killed at a marijuana farm in Oklahoma on Sunday; a mother and her three children were shot dead in Richmond, Virginia…

Thanksgiving week has seen 22 people killed and 44 injured, all through the barrel of a gun”

Donya Prioleau, a worker at the store, captured the horror and tragedy of the Walmart shooting.

“Somebody’s baby, mom, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparents…whoever did not make it home tonight!  Thanksgiving is a holiday we celebrate with friends and family…there are those who cannot.  I can not unsee what happened in that break room.”[4]

Folks, what else should we expect in a nation awash in a sea of weapons of war, where we’re all armed to the teeth?  What else should we expect with the airwaves flooded with hateful invective and politicians and many churches preaching the same intolerance and hate?

Wakee, wakee!

These are senseless deaths.  Senseless, because we as a society have lost our senses.  Stalin was quoted as remarking, “A million deaths is a statistic, one death is a tragedy.”  Well, the whole thing is a bloody tragedy.  And this is how it ends for too many of us here in America.

These folks at Club Q were just out for a good time in what they thought to be a safe place.  Then the ominous sound of “pop, pop pop,” as bodies began fall to the floor.  Five killed and some twenty-five injured.

The co-owners of this gay nightclub, choking back tears, told reporters that “the people here are family.”  This was their safe space.  Now, no longer.  This was how it ended for those five.  Is this how it ends for any notion of a civil society?

Wakee, wakee.  Don’t ask for whom the hearse comes.  It comes for America – as the mourning bell tolls.

In the meantime…in the meantime.  “Christ has come, Christ is come, Christ will come again.”  This we proclaim at every celebration of the Eucharist.

We cannot stop the tragedy of our days.  That doesn’t mean we sit back and eat bon-bons.

Christ in a paramedic’s jacket is among us.  Christ of the soup-line is present.  Christ in classroom and break room.  Christ in friend, gay or straight, near to comfort.

“Put on the armor of light,” St. Paul urges.  Just as two patrons of Club Q took down and subdued the 22-year-old shooter, your call to be Christ to your neighbor may come at any time.  You know neither the hour nor the day.  In your action, whatever it may be, is your liberation — is your step into the “Eternal Now.”

In the daily scrum of news, Christ is present in a thousand disguises.  Motioning each to join as well, to join in the splendor of these days, our days.  Christ in us and we in Christ.  God’s purpose working itself out to the end of days, the Last Day.

In the meantime?  James Baldwin said it so well in his essay, “Nothing Personal:”

“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; The earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.  The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”[5]

Yes, we have great responsibility to keep hold of each other, to keep hold of this splendorous blue-green planet of ours – for we can also do great damage.

Yet, Christ is our Light.  That Light does not go out – the ultimate Advent LED – still shining brightly as ever it did when that star guided those Three Seekers to a manger bed in Bethlehem.  As brightly as Jacob’s Star rising. Piercing darkness, our darkness, to the end of our days.

Wakee, wakee.  Christ is coming, again and again, playing in a thousand venues.  You know neither the day or the hour.  Yet the time is always now.  Near, and very near.  Wakee, wakee.  Amen.

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[1] Matthew 24:36-39, New Revised Standard Version.

[2] Melba Newsome, Forever Chemicals: Hidden Threats, Science News, November 19, 2022.

[3] “The Decline in Sperm Count,” Focus on Reproduction, the online magazine of ESHRE, the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, November 22, 2022.

[4] Ed Pilkington, “It’s the Guns: Violent Week in a Deadly Year…,” The Guardian, November 23, 2022.

[5] James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket, “Nothing Personal” (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 393.

November 27, 2022, Advent 1

“Wakee, Wakee”

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

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

Remember.  Our faculty of recall is the one characteristic essential to a full humanity.

That is why Alzheimer’s Disease is so devastating.  It robs its victims of what makes life precious and worthwhile.  Literally it takes the joy out of living, erasing precious memories.  Not only is it a tragedy for the afflicted, but for surviving family and friends as well.

But humans are not the only living beings possessing memory.  It seems to be present up and down the tree of life.  All species have some capacity for remembrance.  Even the simplest organisms can learn to navigate primitive avoidance challenges.  They remember.

Anyone possessing a pet knows that higher order animals are smart.  Look how our cats learn to train us human beings.  Get out the leash and our dog knew what was up, as Big B would jump up and down with excitement, tail wagging.

“Ned and Sunny stretch out together on the warm sand. He rests his head on her back, and every so often he might give her an affectionate nudge with his nose. The pair is quiet and, like many long-term couples, they seem perfectly content just to be in each other’s presence.”[1]

What sets them apart from what you might have been assuming is, they’re lizards and they’ve been together for a good number of years, longer than some human couples last.

Shingleback lizards meet to mate with the same partner over many years, one studied couple still making magic over twenty-seven years and going strong.  They remember who loves ‘em.

Remember.

One of the most poignant scenes of Holy Week is a request for remembrance.  When one thief asks another condemned if he might be remembered in paradise.  “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And in that moment, he is enfolded into the blessed memory of the Eternal.

Here we have the Exalted One casting aside all privilege as he is dying in agony, and promising to hold another condemned in memory.  A very strange “King of the Jews” who for us of low account, he sets aside his crown, as the hymn puts it.  Truly, a bitter sweet moment on Calvary’s hill.

Memory and longing are sometimes the only forms of sacramental presence of the love of a lost one left to us.  Through memory all living flesh is bound together in one seamless garment of life – past and present. Through memory hope is renewed.

As we gather around Thanksgiving tables in a few days, moments of joy will come to life as family stories are brought to memory and retold.  Retold to laughter and to tears.

In our family, the remembered story that always brought laughter was an incident in our living room when I was in the second grade.  I had persuaded my mom to help me with this cut-out western village on the back of a Cheerios box.  Each box featured a different structure for the village.  This one was a cabin of some sort.

Mom wouldn’t do it for me, she made me cut it off the back of the box, and she would fold the buildings and put the correct tabs into the appropriate slots.  She began folding and I noticed she wasn’t reading the directions.  “Mother! I scolded.  “You’re not following the directions,” to which she answered, “Only an idiot would need these directions.” 

As she continued to fuss with the building, she finally asked, “Where are those directions?”  To which I haughtily replied, “Mother, you said ‘only an idiot would need these directions.’”

And at virtually every family gathering thereafter we would regale all with a retelling, and mother would laugh as hard as any.

In my mind’s eye I still picture her fussing in frustration with the parts of that paper Cheerios building.  ¡Presente!

We call this Sunday, “Christ the King Sunday”.  In our progressive day, the title seems somehow politically incorrect.   This strange king came with no armament, no hoard of soldiers, not to conquer by force. 

All prerogatives he set aside.  Along the highways he traveled over those days with us – as one of us — he stooped to the lowliest, embraced the sickest, and I suspect, he remembered each from the cross. 

He remembered that lad who shared his picnic lunch that fed hundreds.  He remembered a shamed woman at a Sumerian well.  He remembered the one leprous man healed.  And he remembered the other nine who, in their frail humanity failed to show gratitude.  And held all ten in compassionate memory.  He remembered a desperate old woman who grasped at his garment that she might be healed, and a woman of great faith who returned home to find her daughter healed.

He remembered those of that faithful band of followers who had been with him over that brief span of years.  Those dense guys who never quite got the mission, and that precious woman who would anoint his feet, a foretaste of an anointing for burial.  And that faithful clutch of women who gathered at the foot of his cross in his dying moments.  Probably the last vision of his dimmed eyes before they closed in death.

Remember.

Memory can be painful, damaging.  I definitely remembered after touching the hot stove not to do that again.

The memory of failure and past mistakes, while needing healing, can be instructive.  “Though your sin be as scarlet, I will wash it away.”  It’s about confession and redemption – sometimes a life-long process, making amends and providing reparations.  Without the visible acts of contrition, healing remains elusive.  Remember and forsake thy foolish, destructive ways.  Choose Life!

History is our collective memory.  It’s not about dates and battles, or even the towering figures of the moment.

David W. Blight’s book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, narrates the failure of Reconstruction after that conflict.  As the years progressed, those memories became politicized, North, South, white and Black.[2]

Those wounds remain raw and open, memory selective.  When I was young private, stationed in San Antonio, Texas, I encountered an entirely different memory of our national schism.  Not the Civil War but the War of Northern Aggression.  It was said to be all about states’ rights, not so much about slavery.

Those freedmen and freedwomen of the South had their own counter narrative to the mythology of a “Lost Cause.”  And a precious, healing memory it is.  Hear the story of redemption of starvation and death, the story of liberation at a racetrack in Charleston, South Carolina.

After the fall of Charleston, memory bore an incredible burden.  At a race track, Planters Race Course, hundreds of Union prisoners of war had been held in the most inhumane conditions.  Many died of exposure and disease, having been kept outside in freezing conditions without tents or other shelter.  Over 257 had died.[3]

The dead were just unceremoniously dumped in unmarked graves behind the judges’ stand.

Black Charlestonians who witnessed this brutal treatment, the death and disease, remembered.   After the capture of the city, they organized to honor those who had sacrificed so much for their freedom — those honored dead, who with their blood had procured their rebirth – slaves no longer but now, free American citizens.

On May Day, 1865, they planned the first Decoration Day at the graveyard of those 257 Union dead, labeled the “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

This is the retelling of that of that bittersweet day of remembrance as narrated by a New York Tribune reporter:

“’The ‘First Decoration Day,’ as this event came to be recognized in some cities in the North, involved an estimated ten thousand people, most of them black former slaves.  During April, twenty-eight black men from one of the local churches built a suitable enclosure for the burial ground at the Race Course.”

“At nine o’clock in the morning on May 1, the procession to this special cemetery began as three thousand black schoolchildren (newly enrolled in freedmen’s schools) marched around the Race Course, each with an armload of roses and singing ‘John Brown’s Body.’”

“The children were followed by three hundred black women representing the Patriotic Association, a group organized to distribute clothing and other goods among the freedpeople.  The women carried baskets of flowers, wreaths, and crosses to the burial ground.  The Mutual Aid Society, a benevolent association of black men, next marched in cadence around the track and into the cemetery, followed by crowds of black and white citizens…

“When all had left, the holy mounds, the tops the sides, and spaces between them – were one mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen…and as the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes from them, outside and beyond…there were few eyes among those who knew the meaning of the ceremony that were not dim with tears of joy.’

“While the adults marched around the graves, the children were gathered in a nearby grove where they sang ‘America,’ ‘We’ll Rally around the Flag,’ and ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’”

After the dedication, some thirty orations were given by Union officers and local black ministers.  As picnics were broken out on the grass, “a full brigade of Union infantry, including the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts and the Thirty-fifth and 104^th U.S. Colored troops, marched in double column around the martyrs’ graves.”[4]

Remember.  Days of sacrifice; days of sweet freedom, days of gratitude – all held together in precious memory.

As Jesus from the cross enfolded the condemned, the desperate, the abandoned in loving memory, we celebrate One who casts aside the prerogatives of divinity to stoop in “Servant Leadership” to enfold us in the same gracious remembrance.  Emmanuel, God with us.  God in us and we in God.  A very strange king, indeed, who hangs from the cross.

In precious memory all flesh is bound together in one “seamless garment of destiny.” — an ever-flowing stream of life.  Memory is the sacramental presence of God’s enfolding of all creation unto Godself.  Memory, the stuff of pure unadulterated Grace.  The sacramental presence of all life wrapped up into the heart of God.  You, too, Ned and Sunny.  Blessed be!  

Might it also be that even the most horrific things we do to one another and to creation find redemption in the memory of God?  All restored?  I pray so.

You know the hymn: “And when from death I’m free I’ll sing and joyful be, and through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on, and through eternity I’ll sing on.” – all being folded into the great stream of the Mind of God.  Amen.

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[1] Hannah Tomasy, “Who Knew Reptiles Could be Such Romantics?” New York Times, Science Section, October 28, 2022.

[2] David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001).

[3] Ibid, 69-70.

[4] Ibid, 70.

November 20, 2022, Christ the King Sunday

“Remember”

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

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 46; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43