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

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

“What is Truth?”

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

Indeed, what is Truth?

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

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

Jesus rejects this interpretation of the man’s condition. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 19, 2023, Lent 4

“Truth and Power”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darkness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2] 1 John 4:16.

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

[4] Ibid.

[5] Op. cit., 379.

[6] Ibid, 382.

[7] Op cit., 389.

March 5, 2023, Lent 2

“Into the Light”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ash Wednesday

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

“Out of the Depths”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 19, 2023, Epiphany Last
Transfiguration Sunday

“Bright Shiny Beads”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More light. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same Gospel Truth.  More Light!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

February 5, 2023, 5 Epiphany

“Your Luminosity”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The narcissist will never understand these people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philips Brooks, that great Episcopal preacher of the eighteen hundreds somewhere said of such spirituality, “We never become truly spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so.  You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided.”  That is the story of this nursing staff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen

---

[1] Deuteronomy 30, RSV.

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

3 op cit., 75.

 

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 76.

January 29, 2023, 4 Epiphany

“Eternal Life or Sheer Cussedness: You Choose”

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

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

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

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

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

We had a government – of sorts.

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

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

OR…OR…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

[2] Op cit., 37.

January 22, 2023, The Epiphany

“Jesus Called the 12 and then Called Others”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And finally, you and me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what gifts might we bring?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

[1] Anonymous, #imstaying.

January 8, 2023, The Epiphany

“A Love Story”

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

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

Here, in part is what President Zelenskyy told us:

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

It was an electrifying moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

[4] John 15.

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

January 1, 2023, Christmas 2

“Let us Go See This Thing”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 18, 2022, Advent 4

“A Stand-up Guy”

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

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