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.

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[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!

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[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

Early on in our marriage I learned one thing about my wife.  She could be persistent.  Once she got an idea in her mind, especially an idea concerning one of my chores, I might as well give in.  I knew I would, sooner or later, anyway.  This woman is most persistent.  Okay, somedays I think, “obsessive.”  I know where she got this from — her mother.  Mom lived with us the last nine or ten years of her life.  I got to know her pretty well.  The apple did not fall too far from that tree.

Actually, it’s such women who redeem the planet.  They are the embodiment of Jessie Jackson’s chant, “Keep Hope Alive.  Keep Hope Alive.”

Luke tells of one such woman.  This is a woman who has been wronged by an unjust judge, in fact a bully, and is seeking justice.  At all hours of the day and night she is at his door demanding her due.  After enough sleepless days, he realizes he’d better attend to her complaint if he is to have any peace.  Yeah, I know this man.  I commiserate with him.

In such manner we are enjoined by Jesus to be persistent in prayer.  “Do not lose hope.”

When I was a young, unformed lad, my heart was set on a pocket knife.  Did I mention this to God?   You bet I did.  Days and weeks went by and nothing happened.  When I brought up this need to my parents, I was told that this wasn’t happening. “We’re not sending you armed to school.”

What the persistent women yearned for was not some minor trinket with which to impress her friends.  It was JUSTICE.  When we pray and work for justice, God will meet us on the picket line and in the polling both.  God will work with us to keep hope alive.

Prayer is not some magic manipulation of God or reality.  It is not a panacea for our neglect, indifference or stupidity.  At best, it is a pouring out of the heart of what is upon our heart at the moment.  It’s about what is roiling our soul.  It’s about what keeps one awake at night.  It’s a wrestling match with God.  It is a summons to the Spirit within each of us.  A summons to that Spirit within the collective community.  As my friend Rabbi Beerman was wont to say, “My prayers are my marching feet.”  All our feet.

Call it prayer.  Call it meditation.  Call it reflection.  It is all about the essential inward journey we take to remain human.  It’s about the journey we take to stay connected to others – our common life together — and to creation.  It’s about the source of all life and what makes the day worth getting out of bed.  It’s about putting on our pants one leg at a time and engaging in the existential struggle with God, with Truth.

The small vignette from Genesis of Jacob fleeing for his life, encountering an unknown stranger in the dread of night is a window to our faith vocation.  It is to struggle for preservation, to struggle for a way forward.  To struggle with the God of all hopefulness.

For Jacob it is a struggle which consumes the evening of despair.  In the end is blessing. 

“When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket…he said [to Jacob] ‘Let me go for the day is breaking,’ but Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’  “What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’  Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed’…So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’”

This, like unto another story of holy perseverance in our faith tradition.  A poor, destitute woman, really – a nobody in the eyes of the male deciders – demands her due, struggles with an obtuse, entitled man of power.  In her struggle, she wears him down.  That is the holy struggle of Jacob.  She prevails and obtains blessing.

To God?  Into the wider world?  Once prayer has been launched and set loose, who’s to know the end of it?  Definitely beyond my pay grade.  But I do know my own heart, if I listen closely.  If I attend to my needs and the needs of others, the needs and pain of the world – I find a divine reply.  Sometimes as clear and distinct as my wife’s summons.  If I allow that prayer, that inspiration, that idea to germinate and take root in my heart, it stirs up my gumption.  It grabs hold of my date book and my wallet – my hands, heart and mind.  That I know is the power of prayer.  The courage to change the things I can change and the wisdom of when to stand back.

Without that interior life of prayer and reflection, these days it’s nigh on impossible to keep hope alive.  It takes a village to keep hope alive, or at least a community of care.  All of us is most often smarter and wiser than any one of us.  Jacob did not cross the ford at Jabbok by himself.  He took everybody with him.  All.

The Children of Light are today up against racial hate and misogyny in many forms, whether on the Los Angeles City Council or those here at Claremont attempting to keep Claremont free of “those people.” 

Right now, toxic masculinity is killing the planet.  Thomas Friedman correctly notes that Putin’s war is not only a war against Ukraine and the West, it is a war against the planet.

We only have a decade left to mitigate the worst effects of global warming, and Putin’s war is diverting international attention and resources from this priority.  This is what Friedman writes:

“There was no good time for Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked, idiotic invasion of Ukraine. But this is a uniquely bad time. Because it’s diverting worldwide attention and resources needed to mitigate climate change — during what may be the last decade when we still have a chance to manage the climate extremes that are now unavoidable and avoid those that could become unmanageable.”[1]

Does Putin care?  Not a bit.

But one does not need to go halfway around the world to discover such men.  Right here at home we have Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville on Black people: “They’re pro-crime,” Tuberville said. “They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”[2]

This is not just a dog whistle.  It’s a bullhorn.  And nary a Republican colleague has called him out on this racism.  “I might have chosen other words,” one halting milquetoast mumbles. 

This is what’s destroying America, dragging us down into a cesspool of shame.  No, you don’t have to travel far to encounter such.  We have plenty of our own homegrown piggy guys.

We idolize them.  Is there any other reason such antisemitic idiotic narcissists as Kayne West get such good press and such huge followings? – with his rant about going “Death Con 3 On Jewish People?”  This is America???  Sounds more like a Nazi thug out of the 30s.  Or, maybe it is America — Charlottesville, USA, August 2017?  Appalling and disgusting.[3]

That poor, indigent woman going up against a judge who couldn’t be bothered would have instantly recognized these guys.   All cut from the same cloth of self-centered entitlement.

Folks, that’s why we have unions — so women are not subjected to such atrocious behavior in the workplace.  So, there is redress, justice.

It should be noted that among the staunches opponents to Putin’s ware are several prime ministers of the Nordic countries – all women.  They know what it is to have had to take a bunch of crap from ignorant, sexist men.  And they aren’t going to take it from Putin.

The prime minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas’s speaking for her nation: “When it comes to Putin then, of course he is a war criminal and must be prosecuted for the crimes of aggression he has committed.”[4]

“And you shouldn’t be negotiating with terrorists because it pays off for them.  We will pay a higher price in the long term,” she added.”

When asked about an “offramp” for Putin in Ukraine, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said there’s only one off-ramp for Putin.[5]

“The way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine,” Marin told a reporter on Friday. “That’s the way out of the conflict.”  She bluntly added, “He can leave.”  Whereupon she turned heel and walked off.

She would have understood what that woman supplicant before this judge would have had to contend with.  That is the struggle that engages God.  And will throughout this dark night of war.  Is there blessing to be had?  We’ll see.  Ukrainians are learning what all peoples have learned when emerging from subjugation:  Freedom’s not free.  These brave people continue to keep hope alive through the missiles and the atrocities inflicted upon them.  In the subways singing hymns and other songs, they do indeed keep hope alive.  And also, for the rest of us who join them through the miracle of electronic media.

I close with two women, courageous women who have fortified my hope this week.  One is Cori Bush.  She came to my attention when I saw her on TV camped out on the steps of Congress all night, urging her fellow representatives to address homelessness, addiction and marginalization.  She herself had been homeless at various times in her life.  Probably one of the very few congressional members to know such extreme circumstances.  Her new book, Forerunner, is her life story.  I know now the source of her strength – she is very clear about from where her help comes.  It from the Lord who has taken up residence in her heart.[6]

Get that book.  It’s not an easy read given the trauma Cori has endured over her life.  But as a nurse, a pastor, an activist, and now a congresswoman from Missouri, she has endured.  She inspires all of us to keep hope alive.

The second woman getting the Last Word is Loretta Lynn, award-winning Country Music gem from Appalachia.

Loretta’s songs were stories of heartbreak, betrayal, addiction and poverty.

Long ago as a little guy I’d turn on the old tube radio and listen to these songs.  One night my father came in and when he heard what I was listening to, yelled: “Turn that off.  You don’t want to be a G-D hillbilly, do you!”  This was the West Virginia culture he had rejected.

Much later in life, I developed an appreciation for the stories these songs told – the pathos, the deep longing, the blessing of a culture that tied people together at the deepest levels.

Loretta Lynn endured it all, growing up in a backwoods holler in Tennessee.  Married at the age of fifteen to a sometimes-faithful husband who struggled with alcoholism.  Mother of three of her six children before she was twenty.  Yet she prevailed.  Her people have prevailed.

Her signature song, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” was an earnest prayer which brought hope to millions all across the nation’s airwaves.  Loretta gets The Last Word.

“Well, I was born a coal miner’s daughter
In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler
We were poor but we had love,
That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of
He’d shovel coal to make a poor man’s dollar

“My daddy worked all night in the Van Lear coal mines
All day long in the field a hoin’ corn
Mommy rocked the babies at night
And read the Bible by the coal oil light
And ever’ thing would start all over come break of morn[7]

All we can say for her and for all these persistent, in-your-face women is, “Thanks be to God and Blessed be!”  You have “struggled with God and with humans.”  By the grace of God, You will prevail.  Amen and amen!

---

[1] Thomas Friedman, “Putin’s War is a Crime Against the Planet,” New York Times, September 27, 2022.

[2] Eugene Scott, “Democrats Call Sen. Tuberville’s Comments About Crime and Reparations Racist,” Washington Post, October 11, 2022.

[3] Cole Delbyck, “Kanye West Tweet About Going ‘Death Con 3 On Jewish People’ Removed By Twitter,” HuffPost, October 9, 2022.
⁴ Astha Saxena, “Europe’s new ‘Iron Lady’ Kaja Kallas calls on West to not negotiate with ‘terrorist’ Putin,” Express, October 9, 2022.
⁵ Nick Mordowanec, “Video of Finnish PM Explaining Putin’s ‘Way Out’ of Ukraine Viewed 4M Times,” Newsweek, October 7, 2022.

 

 

[6] Cori Bush, The Forerunner (New York: Knopf, 2022).

[7] Loretta Lynn, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” written and sung by her and various artists, released in 1970.  The song became a number one hit on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart later that year.

October 16, 2022, 19 Pentecost, Proper 24

“Do Not Lose Hope”

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

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-6

Sunday, when I opened the LA Times, right on the lefthand column was my sermon title for today.  It was an article on the Afro-Columbians, living in a remote jungle of that nation.  These people live by subsisting on marginal gold panning.  They are people living in La Toma, a string of small villages in a most remote area of Columbia, populated by former slaves of African descent.

The article featured an activist, Francia Elena Marquez whose aim is to change “the economic model of death to an economic model of life.”  She is the champion of “the nobodies.”[1]

Francia is a single mother, a former live-in maid who escaped the poverty of that situation to become a community activist.  She was awarded a Nobel Prize for her battle against illegal gold mining.

Today she is improbably Columbia’s vice president, elected along with Gustavo Petro, an ex-urban guerilla fighter, the first leftist president of Columbia and its 50 million people.

It was her popularity with the young and with women who put that ticket over the top.  She’s the first person of African heritage to attain such prominence.  Never even held any office before this.  Walls throughout the land were emblazoned with her slogan, “Vivir sabroso” – live life to the fullest.

She and the new president take office in a period when Columbia is recovering from narco-violence, massive inequality and lawlessness.  In a land dominated by the white-mestizo male elite, she has battled sexism, classism, inequality and gender prejudice.

She has weathered death threats, political slander and racist taunts.  Yet she persisted.  She is now an international rock star.  No, she’s not a Communist revolutionary.  But a revolutionary, yes!

Only because of an aunt, did she find the funds for a school uniform, books and tuition to go beyond an elementary education.  Her mother had eleven children and absolutely no money.  Unlike many American children, she knew the sacrifice of another for her education. 

Her primary teacher recalls that Francia Elena was a very serious student, and very much an extravert.  “But I never thought that the Francia Elena who was my student would so quickly become vice president of the Republic of Columbia.”

As a teenager she joined neighbors protesting a plan to divert the Ovejas River to produce even more electricity by a dam that had flooded much of her community’s ancestral lands, a project that devastated traditional fishing grounds the people depended on.

Columbian authorities further awarded mining contracts to multinational corporations without any input from those living in the villages of the area, contrary to Columbian law.  She and her movement initiated lawsuits.  Lo and behold!  They won.  A major victory for the “nobodies.”

The situation got much worse when those same companies employed right-wing paramilitary goons and began killing locals panning for gold on what they considered their lands.  Soon bulldozers and backhoes moved in and began tearing up their beautiful river.

The river was now filling with mercury and cyanide and other toxic chemicals.  The operation led to massive deforestation.  Anyone interfering with this desecration was threatened with death.

It was at that point that Francia Elena recruited eighty black women, attired in their signature head turbans, the March of the Turbans, from over 300 miles away to march against the illegal activities of these companies. 

These women camped on the doorstep of the Interior Ministry until, three weeks later, authorities agreed to evict the illegal miners.  Again, score one for Francia Elena’s “nobodies.”

By then she was a single mother of two and receiving death threats.  For her safety she left for the big city, joining millions of the dispossessed from the land by violence and narco-terrorism, illegal mining and the gangs they employed.  She studied law.

Francia Elena has raised expectations of the “nobodies” all across Colombia, especially little girls.  One young girl in nursing school panning for gold one morning with her husband and three-year-old said, “We have learned a lot from Francia and from our ancestors.” 

If ever there was a contemporary to St. Francis, it is Francia Elena.  St. Francis is the saint of the “nobodies.” 

Listen to her testimony: “I am a part of the struggle against structural racism.”

“Among those women who raise their voices to stop the destruction of rivers, forests and wetlands.  Among those who dream that, one day, all human beings are going to change the economic model of death to an economic model of life.”[2]

She’s accused of inexperience, lack of knowledge.  Baloney!  She knows something the previous government NEVER knew – the people!  Their toil, their poverty, their lack of opportunity.  The same people St. Francis knew.

All of life is tied together in one marvelous, divine, holy web of life.  Besides our Lord, how do we have knowledge of God?  From creation, the creation that Francia Elena continues to fight for. 

The one psalm I learned as a child – remember, I had a terrible memory for this sort of thing – was Psalm 121, the opening. Of course, back then in the King James Version, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills — From whence comes my help?”

Psalm 19 was another one I did remember from Sunday school Bible drills.  “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.  There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

The splendors of nature are a door to the heart of God.  St. Francis knew this.  Brother Sun. Sister Moon – they testify to the goodness of the created order.  Early on I was fascinated by the vast panoply of the heavens.  In our community college I volunteered as the astronomy coach for Professor Bruff, hauling out our school’s telescope every Wednesday evening if there was half a chance of seeing through the dense muck of the Norwalk, California sky.  It was always a bit of a thrill to focus in on Saturn and its rings or Jupiter with its Great Red Spot, which is larger than our planet Earth.

When we lived out in the desert, serving at my first church assignment, most any evening one could look up into the sky and see it lit up with stars beyond imagining.  The desert sky was black as velvet filled with twinkling wonders once you got away from the light pollution of our small town.

I still remember friends — a mother and her three children — driving out to visit us from Los Angeles.  As soon as her van came to a stop, the side door slid open and out popped one of the boys.  He looked up into the night sky and gasped, “Wow, you don’t have much air out here,” as he beheld the majesty of the Milky Way overhead.

St. Francis was not only a champion of the “nobodies,” but of the entire created order.  It’s all connected.  Only later would I learn to more fully appreciate this wonderful saint.

I find I am doubly blessed to serve a parish named in his honor.

You want a picture of God?  Look at those who have a care for the least of these, activists like Francia Elena Marquez.  Look at those who have a care for creation like writer and activist Bill McKibben.  Like my friend Brian Ebersol, whom I would often see along the bike trail with his sack in hand, picking up the trash others had carelessly tossed.  Most any morning I would see him walking out there.  Champions of the “nobodies.”  Champions of creation.

As we bless the animals today, I recall to mind our beloved Skippy, the dog I grew up with.  Dad had gotten him to keep Mom company when he went off to fight in World War II.  She said that she could tie him to my baby carriage parked outside the store when she went in to buy some groceries, and that dog wouldn’t let anyone approach.  That was definitely another era.  Skippy was my champion.

For our animal friends and family, we give thanks, O Lord.  For the beauty of this blue-green earth, we give thanks and for the star-spangled heavens.  To the psalmist and most of all today, St. Francis, that wastrel who renounced all to bring the Church back to life – THANKS BE TO GOD!

Listen to a song inspired by the work of Francia Elena Marquez, sung by two girls in Columbia, Jinller Leany, 12, and Andrea Torres, 15:

I was born Black and my companion is the sun/To the rhythm of the marimba and first the drum/My name is African mixed with Spanish/I am proud of my race and I give thanks to God/Proud of my race and I give thanks to God/Black I was born, and Black I am.[3]

A blessed St. Francis day to us all.  Amen.

---

[1] Patrick J McDonnell, “She’s a Champion of the ‘Nobodies,’” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2022.

[2] Op cit.

[3] Ibid.

October 2, 2022, 17 Pentecost, Proper for St. Francis Feast Day,
Blessing of the Animals

“A Champion of Nobodies”

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

Exodus 22:21-27; Psalm 121; Galatians 6:14-18; Matthew 11:25-30

Recently, I’ve received a number of emails for burial insurance.  Like the plague victim in “Spamalot” about to be carted off to the cemetery, I loudly protest, “I’m not dead yet.  I’m not dead.”

The next day a postcard arrived from Forest Lawn.  I thought about scrawling across the front of it, “I’m not dead yet,” and sticking it in return mail.  Return to sender.

But, as Luke’s passage on the rich man in purple cloth who dines sumptuously while a poor man, Lazarus, at his gate, surviving on scant crumbs from the rich man’s table, clues us in – we get that we all have an expiration date.  No one lives forever.  Though my dad thought that was a real possibility.  In his case, anyway.

Eventually, there comes a summing up.  As Dionne Warwick crooned, “What’s It All About, Alfie?”[1]

What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?
Or are we meant to be kind?[2]

For those at ease in Zion, life slips away, comes to much of nothing if it’s only mindless entertainment and consumption.  Amos promises exile.  Maybe not in a foreign land, but exile from our interior selves.  Exile from any sense of national purpose.  A deadly, soul-killing existence – a different sort of exile.

The pandemic gave us all space to figure this out.  But at ease?  No, few of us are at ease.  For too many, especially our youth, this pandemic has been a soul-killing disaster.

In our forced isolation we have become a nation in despair. 

Teen suicide has reached epidemic proportions.  Medical authorities now call the needless loss of life “deaths of despair.”  We’re talking suicide, drug and alcohol poisoning, and alcoholic liver disease.  They’re rampant.

These deaths are at the highest level in the history of our nation according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the CDC.

This is mainly a scourge of those on the bottom of the economic totem pole – those whose wages and life circumstances have not kept up with ever rising costs.  They are not lazy or shiftless: many are doing two or three jobs and trying to raise a family.

Anne Case, in an interview with Newsweek Magazine, lists some of the factors leading to these “deaths of despair.”  “The pillars that once helped give life meaning—a good job, a stable home life, a voice in the community—have all eroded.”[3]

Just drive down through the main streets of many business districts.  All you see is boarded up storefronts and littered sidewalks.  Livelihoods are emptied out.  The few rehabilitation efforts promised are mired in bureaucratic incompetency and endless lawsuits.

In many households family-time has disappeared.  Just the amount of homework many teens are burdened with is unbelievable.

I read an article in The Atlantic of a father who writes for that publication.  He had become concerned about his sleep-deprived thirteen-year-old daughter who was being transformed into a zombie.  He decided upon an experiment.[4]

He would try her homework schedule for a week.  He figured her time in class was about the same hours he put in at work.  As she started on her homework upon arriving at their house, so would he also do the same homework.

Monday, he opened her algebra book and for some time stared at the problems until he finally remembered what a polynomial was.  He finished the problems in around 45 minutes, then turned to her reading assignment in Angela’s Ashes.  He figured that there was around an hour and a half, maybe two hours of reading here.  But then he had to find several quotable passages and write an essay on one of them.  Another hour or so.  And he hadn’t even gotten to her earth science assignment. 

Opening that book, he came upon the most brain-numbing writing imaginable.  At one point a “chart 3” was referenced.  He flipped through page after page until he found that.  Finishing the reading, he fell asleep around one or two AM.  And this was only Monday.

How is it kids in Finland hardly bring any homework home yet score highest on international tests of math, science and language?  What do these people know that our educational system hasn’t figured out?

His daughter was a fairly bright young thing.  Think about the average student completely overwhelmed by it all.  Dropout time for them!

Indeed, what’s it all about, Alfie?  No wonder we’re raising a stressed-out generation that is escaping through pills and suicide or violent video games.

Recently, we lost a modern prophet if ever there was a one – Barbara Ehrenreich.  As a social scientist she wondered how it was, given the continued relative decline in wages that the working poor survived.

So, she left the hallowed halls of ivy, abandoned academic security, and for a year she took those menial, low-wage jobs that 60 to 70 percent of our citizens toil in, nine to five – and ofttimes many more hours a day.  This is NOT the Dolly Parton glossy movie fantasy.

Ehrenreich cleaned houses, worked as a Walmart sales clerk, waitressing, hotel maid, nursing home aide, scrubbing floors on her hands and knees.[5]

At first, she thought she’d stick out as “other.”  Nothing in common with her workmates, but soon bonded with several as they opened their lives to her.  One of the most pressing problems for those whom she encountered was housing. 

Ehrenreich quickly discovered that if one wanted to live inside, two jobs were essential.  A good number of her workmates were reduced to living in their cars.  Some lived in crowded quarters with three or four other women.  Several lived with boyfriends and one had moved back with his mother.

There was hardly any “free,” personal time.  Barely any for lunch.  She was always hungry towards the end of a shift.  No wonder it’s called “grinding poverty.”

One night the boss caught her grabbing a bowl of clam chowder.  She’d often seen the other women do this.  “No eating,” Stu snaps.  Though there’s not a customer around to see food making contact with a server’s lips.  “No eating!”

Barbara tells her coworker that she’s going to quit, at which point Gail replies that she thinks she’ll follow her to Jerry’s, Ehrenreich’s second job.

Yes, as Dolly Parton belts it out: “Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’/Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin.’”  Drop into bed dead tired and do it all over again in the morning.  What a way to make a livin.’

These are the folks languishing at our gate, the gate of the richest nation on earth – ever.  These are the poor who live in squalor so we might have clean, tidy homes.  These are the people who ruin their health on fast food on the run while we enjoy fine dining, or grab a bite at McDonalds.  These are the women who neglect their families so our children are well cared for.  These are Lazarus’s companions left to rot at the splendid gate of America.

We’re only passing through momentarily.  How do we want to be remembered?  What’s it all about?

How to be remembered?  We could take a cue from Merrick Garland.

The arc of Garland’s life of service is instructive.  Give your life, or at least some part of your spare time, to a greater cause.  It’s not all about us.  As the kids say, “Get over yourself.”  That’s when we begin actually living, not just existing.  That’s when life smiles back.

But I digress.  Back to Merrick Garland.  There’s the sign we see as we enter the forest, heading to Lake Arrowhead.  “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  Yes, it’s Smokey Bear.

Garland in his recent speech welcoming newly naturalized citizens at Ellis Island, would urge us, I imagine, “Only you can prevent Democracy fires.”  There is nothing permanent about our democracy, no long-haul guarantee.

It’s all based on “rule of law.”  Without that, the whole enterprise goes up in flames – one big national Dumpster fire.

Listen to Garland’s wise counsel.  This is what he told those new Americans:

“The Rule of Law means that the law treats each of us alike:  there is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor; or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity or country of origin.”[6] 

“The Rule of Law is not assured.  It is fragile.  It demands constant effort and vigilance.”

Here’s something worth devoting one’s life to.  Or maybe just a few moments in a supermarket checkout line.  Or a letter to the editor. 

America, get over yourselves.  Let’s try a little self-transcendence.  Re-read the book of Amos.  More wise counsel.  In his advanced years, Merrick Garland is definitely NOT taking his ease in Zion.

Madison, warned us that no Constitution could save us from ourselves if we surrendered to ignorance, imbecility, and faction.  In his address to his home state of Virginia, as he advocated for ratification of the proposed Constitution, this is what he told those delegates:[7]

“But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men [and women] of virtue and wisdom.”

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks–no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

Virtue?  There are presently more people in the cult of QAnon than there are Episcopalians or Presbyterians in America!

Virtue?  Look at the craziness of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene!  Consider the duplicity of Governor DeSantis and his theater of the absurd at Martha’s Vineyard, using duped immigrants as political pawns.  Is this what those poor folks fled the corruption and gangs of Venezuela for?  Governor, these are people for God’s sake!

Our Democracy needs an awful lot more perfecting to safeguard the poor huddled at the gates of an extravagantly wealthy America.  Masses of our own citizens yearning to be free of an economic system that grinds them to dust.

A lot of perfecting to do, indeed we need.  Definitely time to re-read the book of Amos.  “Read, mark and inwardly digest.”

As Judge Garland urged us, it’s up to each one as we are given wisdom and opportunity to create a land where all can enjoy its riches and splendor. 

It’s up to each of us to spread the opportunity and joy around.

The other day Jai read to me from the sports section that Maury Wills had died.  With his talent, he surely spread the delight we have in America’s national pastime, baseball.

Wills held the all-time record for base stealing.  As a child I remember watching him in total fascination as he inched away from first base.  Six, then ten, then twelve feet – shifting back and forth from foot to foot, just taunting the pitcher to turn and throw to first. 

The minute that pitcher twitched, Wills would be off like a bolt of lightning headed for second.  The crowd held its collective breath for a second, then went wild.  Moments before the ball arrived for the tag, Wills had slid in on his belly.  SAFE!

With the same delight I watched a video clip of Jim and Verity’s daughter Haden hitting a triple at a recent tournament.

At first the video didn’t show what happened to her after she hit the ball.  Then I saw her far off streaking to second, rounding it then heading toward third.  Yeah, the crowd went wild.

Hayden gives this sport her all.  She puts in the work.  Watching her is a delight!

Might we also give our all to something greater, something outside ourselves.  Something that will free up those huddled at our gates?  Something that will bring joy?  Yes, we need Bread AND Roses, too.

Herein is the beginning of eternity.  A life of blessedness!

What’s it all about, Alfie?  Are we meant to take more than we give?

I think not.  As Alfie’s song questions each, “Do you believe in Love?”  Back to Dionne Warwick:

As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above, Alfie[8]
I know there’s something much more
Something even non-believers can believe in

I believe in love, Alfie
Without true love we just exist, Alfie
Until you find the love you’ve missed, you’re nothing, Alfie

When you walk, let your heart lead the way
And you’ll find love any day, Alfie
Alfie.

So, let’s get to work.  We’re not dead yet.  Amen.

---

[1] Burt Bacharach /Hal David,  Alfie lyrics.

[2] Bert Bacharach, Hal David, “Alfie,” 1966.

[3] Blake Dodge, “What are the So-Called Deaths of Despair?  Experts say They’re on the Rise,” Newsweek, Jan. 14, 2020.  See also, Anne Case, Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

[4] Tom Taro Greenfield, “My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me,” The Atlantic, October 2013.

[5] Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001), 32.

[6] Merrick Garland, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-administers-oath-allegiance-and-delivers, delivered on September 17, 2022.

[7] Madison: Writings, ed. Jack N. Rakove (New York: Library of America, 1999), 398.

[8] Op cit.

September 25, 2022, 16 Pentecost, Proper 21

“Just Get Over Yourself”

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

Amos 6:1a, 4-7; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

It was a late Friday afternoon; this was to be Joe’s last day at First Federal Bank in the town of Outback.  Joe was beside himself.  He’d just been given notice “his services were no longer needed.”  Fired – in short.

Okay, he wasn’t the sharpest teller on the line.  His drawer rarely balanced out at the end of the day.  He held the record for just rushing through the doors at the last moment each morning, right before the first customers had arrived.  He’d been admonished for his tardiness several times a week.  His attire barely passed the dress code, rumpled shirt, stained tie and all.  Not the image of sartorial splendor.  The Steve Bannon attire with a haircut by whoever did Boris Johnson’s.  You get the picture.

He’d been warned time and again.  Finally, the branch manager had just had it.

This distraught teller panics, pulls out a gun and demands that each of the other tellers fill an empty sack with as many bills as they have in their trays.

As the dishonest teller flees the bank, waving his gun about, he meets several of his cronies out on the sidewalk.  In haste he begins distributing the contents of his sack to them.  All in the hopes that if he is caught, some of these friends might feel ingratiated to him and put him up when he’s out of prison.

As he’s just finishing passing out the ill-gotten loot, the bank manager erupts from the door.  Seeing what is taking place, the manager now praises this teller for his ingenuity and shrewdness.  For “the art of the deal,” if you will.  For taking care of business.

Do we buy this story?  Can’t make this stuff up?

Well, listen to the story Jesus tells.  In what way is it any different?  A crooked manager has been caught out by the owner of the estate.  He scurries about, asking each debtor to jigger his note, reducing what was originally owed the master.  On discovering this deceit, the owner smiles and praises this dishonest manager who has now cheated him twice: “And the master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly…”

Most scholars believe that this is the point at which Jesus’ parable originally ended.  The add-on maxims and such on wealth and the “children of this age” are Luke’s attempts to make this story palatable to moral sensibilities.  He didn’t quite know what to make of it any more than us moderns.

Indeed, this is a most difficult saying.  Are we to believe that Jesus actually encourages, praises such dishonesty?

We’d be crying, “throw the book to be thrown at him”.  Where is Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice when we need them?  Should this grift go unpunished?  Is there no indictment?  “Lock him up.  Lock him up.  Lock him up,” would be the chant.

The beauty of Jesus’ parables is that they admit a number of interpretations.  They are polyvalent — capable of a multitude of images, interpretations and meanings – and have always been, down through the ages.

One of the reasons for the shrewdness of the “Children of Darkness” is that they are totally unapologetic in their cynicism, in their grift.  It’s all about them, nobody else counts.  Might makes right.

Maybe Jesus praises their authenticity as scoundrels.  They are grifters and make no bones about it.  They know how to take care of business.  They are the practitioners of “Realpolitik.”

It’s Stalin’s boast when Winston Churchill brought up the possibility of the Pope’s involvement in the Teheran Conference, “How many divisions does the Pope have.”  That realism will always trump naïve religious idealism in the councils of this world.

As Martin Luther King and the leaders of the 50s and 60s Civil Rights movement learned, if one is to depend on “soul force,” you’d best get it mobilized and know the right moment to deploy it.  Rosa Parks did not decide to refuse to vacate her bus seat for a white just on a spur of the moment whim.  Her protest was well planned in advance.  Malice of forethought.  And the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott was launched off that effort.

Reinhold Niebuhr drew on this story when he penned his book, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.  Why is it that the Children of Light so often end up with the short end of the stick?  They are too often oblivious to their own mixed motives, thus too hesitant.  “We’re too nice,” as my friend Vern would often say.

So, what to make of this disturbing parable?  Here’s my take.  In the cause of human solidarity, act boldly.  Or as Luther said, “Sin boldly – but believe in the grace of God all the more.”  And keep your wits about you. 

Here’s a story on how this all worked out for our prison chaplain Chris Hoke — a lay visitor to the incarcerated and agricultural workers in the Pacific Northwest.  A very improbable journey of daring, suspense, danger and, well… you judge for yourself.

Part of his ministry has been in the migrant labor camps, providing whatever support he could with his limited Spanish and resources.  Chris had been working for sometime with Tierra Nueva, his job being to visit and accompany migrant families to appointments and such.

In part, this is the mission statement of Tierra Nueva, Chris’s employer:

“People marginalized due to race, social class, language, lifestyle, or legal status often reach the conclusion that God is against them and that they are not welcome in the Church. And mainstream church members find few opportunities to encounter people at the margins. Bridging that chasm not only elevates those on the outside, but it can also transform those inside the Church”.[1]

Chris introduces us to two laborers from one field cabin, Arnulfo and his friend Magdeleno.  Both men had met a couple of years ago in the asparagus fields near Stockton and decided to stick together.

Arnulfo left his family in Michoacan, Magdaleno had left Puebla as a single man.  He spoke Zapoteco and a smidgen of Spanish.  “They belonged to no one.  All season they had only each other.”[2]

It’s the end of the season with cold rain settling in, it was time to be on the move.  Arnulfo and Magdaleno had no car.  They wanted to fly – not down to the San Joaquin Valley in California, but to New Jersey where some friends had carpentry work for them.  They had to fly, as traveling by bus was considered too risky due to all the ICE agents who stalked the Greyhound stations.

AND… the two of them would look less suspicious if traveling with a tall, white U.S. citizen.  At this point Arnulfo pulled back the corner of his mattress to extract a wad of cash, which he folded and put it into Chris’s hand.

Well, part of his duties at Tierra Nuevo was to accompany workers to appointments and such… but to New Jersey?

They would use the money to also buy Chris a round trip ticket as well so they could more easily move through the airport with some degree of confidence.  It took Chris some fifteen minutes to understand the plan due to Arnulfo’s rapid-fire Spanish.  He had to repeat himself several times.  Finally, Chris got it.  He was to turn this wad of cash into three tickets to New York. 

“If I’d know how to say “Hell yes!” in Spanish, I would have.”  This would definitely be a stretch to the duty of “accompany.”

A week before the flight Chris sat in that small cabin on one of the mattresses and pulled out the boarding passes from his coat pocket.  And a receipt with the exact change left over.  He wanted to make it clear he was a pastor, not a coyote, a paid smuggler.

It began to dawn on Chris that he could get in real trouble here.  It was one thing visiting jails and labor camps, quite another “aiding and abetting the movement of undocumented immigrants across the U.S. interior.”  And it wasn’t just him.  He’d persuaded his fiancée Rachel to come along.  Being half Panamanian, she would make the group of them look less suspicious.  Besides, she’d always wanted to see New York. 

On further reflection, he wondered what on earth was he thinking, putting her at risk as well.

Inside the airport, security lines moved slowly as our small group of travelers approached the podium.  The TSA agent leaned forward, passing a blue light over Chris’s and Rachel’s boarding documents.  On the other side of the scanner, they waited for their two companions.

The agent scrutinized the identification papers of Arnulfo and Magdaleno, paused a moment and motioned over two other TSA agents.  After a few comments to Arnulfo, he said to the two men, “These IDs have no expiration date,” which he then repeated to Chris.

Chris had called the airport ahead of time and was told that these Mexican national identity cards would be no problem.  “Every ID,” the agent snapped, “must have an expiration date.”  Mexican identity, apparently, does not expire.

“I’m going to have to ask you four to step into this line over here,” motioned the agent.  We were trapped.  Caught.

“Yes, I thought to myself. Yes, I’m a failure.  A bad coyote.  A bad pastor.  Mission failed.”[3]

Chris’s thoughts racing through his mind, contemplated the future.  Arnulfo and Magdaleno would not be going to friends tonight.  They would spend the day answering questions and filling out papers.  And headed for a deportation hearing.  No friendly skies.   No complementary Cokes or pretzels.

After being directed to pass through the scanners, the four were escorted to an enclosed area and told to wait.  And they waited and waited, but no one came. 

As they stared at each other, Chris said, “Vamos” — let’s go.  They sidled out into the main concourse.  They heard no shouts behind them.  And their gate was soon right in front of them.

Flashing red letters proclaimed, “FLIGHT DELAYED.  Estimated time one hour.”

What to do?  Chris could think only of disaster.  As they waited, huddled together on a small padded bench, Rachel had a better idea.  She broke out a sandwich and divided it into four pieces.  Arnulfo suggested a reading from the scriptures.  Chris flipped through the pages of the Santa Biblia while expecting at any moment someone in a uniform to appear around the corner.

He found in Acts the story of Peter’s imprisonment.  Chris asked Magdeleno to read.  He read of Peter’s captivity in chains and guards watching him in the night … of how angels wake Peter and he slips through four layers of security as the guards slept close by.  “Get up quick!  “Put on your coat and follow me,” the angel urges.

By the end of the story, the announcement came over the speakers, it was time to board.  As they stood in line for their boarding documents to be scanned, Chris noticed one important thing missing from Arnulfo’s and Magdaleno’s passes:  the initials of the agent who would have checked them through.

He quickly took both passes and a pen and scratched on them their authority for departure – JC.

“Enjoy your flight,” the attendant chirped as she scanned the four through.

Now, for the last six years, when December winter cold comes to the Northwest, Chris and his now wife Rachel, can expect a call from Arnulfo, who is now back with his family in the home he saved for and built in Michoacan, Mexico.  He also sends Magdeleno’s greetings.

He congratulates Chris and Rachel on their recent marriage.  As soft snow settles over the landscape, Christmas is coming.

That’s how, through a bit of grace, hutzpah, and savvy – that’s sometimes how we children of The Way make a “way out of no way.”  And through the guidance of the Spirit, it shall be sufficient.  Heart pounding, but sufficient.  Taking care of business.  Amen.

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[1] https://www.tierra-nueva.org/peoples-seminary

[2] Chris Hoke, Wanted (New York: Harper One, 2015), 56-73.

[3] Ibid, 65.

September 18, 2022, 15 Pentecost, Proper 20

“Taking Care of Business”

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

Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13