Any number of quotes come to mind as we move towards All Saints Day, Halloween, and perhaps the most consequential election in a lifetime.  All in the midst of the scourge of the greatest pandemic since the so-called Spanish Influenza of 1917-18.

While the White House declared that the virus has been defeated, that we have “turned the corner,” I’m remembering the favorite quips of my grandpa, “He’s gone round the bend.”  “Mission Accomplished?” — when we’re spiking new infections at the rate of over 90,000 last Thursday?   One sixth of these will end up needing hospitalization.   I don’t think so.  The cruel trick’s on us.  And no treat.

One survivor of COVID-19 writes of her recent recovery.  Heather Sellers, in The Sun, a literary magazine of essays, poetry, journaling and personal biography, narrates the onslaught of her infection:[1]

“March 28, 2020:  This Afternoon, for the first time in what feels like a long time but has only been a week, I step outside my Florida home and into my garden, a small shady space ringed by a high wood fence.  I’m hidden from the world.  Barefoot in my damp nightgown, I walk slowly across the pavers.  One step, one breath.  I have one hand on my throat.  I’m not sure why, but somehow this feels absolutely necessary.

“The virus is hidden inside of me.  I feel its force and power.  My body aches.  Cold knots snarl in my calves and my thighs; my back feels frozen; shivers ripple up my arms.  By the time I reach the birdbath, I’m sweating in the soft breeze.

“I close my eyes.  The hardest part is taking the next breath.  I must breathe very, very slowly, in a very specific way.

“Breathing has become like remaining steady on a balance beam over a dark pit.

“I’m stunned to find I cannot take another step.  I don’t have the breath.

Thus, begins Heather’s nightmare odyssey through her infection.  A month later she closes her journal, expressing gratitude in her trailing convalescence for the small gifts she does have – electricity, fresh water, cotton sheets, a car, a bottle of Tylenol, a washing machine. 

‘I can’t see the virus, but feel its seeds in me.  I can’t see my faith, but feel its seeds in me, too.

We Christians in the Episcopal tradition have tended to give the book of Revelation short shrift.  It’s phantasmagorical imagery, looking like something out of a Halloween apocalypse, is too bizarre.  It’s like a scene out of “Ghostbusters.”  The symbols and metaphors are too distant from our time to be comprehended by us moderns.

But this is not a book of doom and destruction, though some churches use it as did Tim LaHaye to express their most twisted, distorted versions of the faith.  Projecting the anxieties of their damaged souls onto the message of the life-affirming Jesus Movement, they do great harm.

Revelation, more than anything, is a message of hope.  Hope for those who have endured great tribulation.  The saints are those of the entire community of faith who have persisted in the face of enormous evil.  These are they who stand in solidarity with one another, with all humanity, and with the natural world, to be the harbingers of a new, “Beloved Community.”   The saints are those who have confessed the name of Jesus through deeds big and small.  Acts of justice and mercy, knitting up the Church one halting stitch at a time.

“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.”[2]

Today we celebrate the Saints of God, known and mostly known to God alone.  These saints are the entire company of the faithful, and not-so-faithful, who look to Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  The exemplar and head of the Jesus Movement.  The chief Cornerstone of the “Blessed Community.” 

We “little saints” – “we feebly struggle, they in glory shine; yet all are one in thee, for all are thine…” Revelation is a book of hope for those of us who strive to sometimes do the right thing.  And trust the results to God.

In bearing witness, Heather Sellers is one in my compendium of that Blessed Company, one who inspires and fortifies the soul.  She is a member of the Hallelujah Chorus boldly making her confession of faith.

One of my Facebook friends, looking with despair at the long lines of voters being suppressed by indifference and massive incompetence posted, “Jesus help us. Or someone help us. I don’t care.”  To which I responded, “Jesus has already given us the power and the grace to help ourselves.  We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.” 

Let me tell you about some of us others we’ve been waiting for.

In hours at bedsides and in sweeping floors, way beyond human endurance, in countless unselfish acts, unacknowledged saints confess the name of Jesus.  Around the bedsides of the dying, they gather, as around the throne of God.  Though their white lab coats and PPEs be stained with blood, they are spotless in the reckoning of all that is Holy.

Clasping the hand of the dying at the moment of death, nurses, orderlies and doctors fill in for missing family members not allowed to be present.  The hand of that nurse, that doctor, that janitor – is indeed the Hand of God.

As even one patient is wheeled down the hallway to go home – surrounded by cheering staff lining both sides of their exit – that is the best Hallelujah Chorus ever.  These “indispensable” workers have left nothing on the field.

Accompanying  Heather are countless nurses, doctors, therapists and “essential workers” to tend the victims of this pandemic in overloaded hospitals across the land.  These acts of solidarity, big and small are witness to the ethic of the Jesus Movement.  These are the Saints of God we celebrate this day.

Mopping up filthy hospital floors and cleaning soiled linens, saints at work.  Those who assist the navigation of mountains of paperwork – saints indeed.  And those who prepare the dead for burial, they are counted among that holy assemblage.

This pandemic has brought out the worst, and also the best of who we are.  This virus has dipped deep into ancient fears and concocted a toxic brew of the most bizarre conspiracy theories and magical thinking.  It has brought out denial and complacency.   We are not learning to “live with it, we are dying from it.”

But it has also brought out sacrifice and humility.

A favorite hymn[3] reminds us that the saints of God are just folks like you and me.  You can see them at tea (read coffee, and over a beer).  You can see them on trains or at sea.  These days, you will find them on ICU wards and stocking shelves in grocery stores.  They will be at computer screens teaching by Zoom.  And they will be at home learning third grade history on the internet.  They will be delivering the mail and answering calls at church offices.

Matthew’s “Beatitudes” is a window into the souls of these saints.  We’re talking humility, patience, kindness, endurance, sacrifice.  If ever there were cardinal virtues, we know those who show forth these in abundance.  In ways big and small these gifts abound in the saints of God.

One man of such virtue is a politician.  A politician!  And a Muslim, to boot. Imagine that!

I tell you the story of Qasim Rashid, a Democrat (Alert! This is NOT intended as a partisan story) running for Congress in Stafford Virginia.  He writes of a recent outdoor campaign event with about 30 supporters:[4]

“Today, Trump supporters crashed our event.

“With a large RASHID FOR CONGRESS sign behind me, it wasn’t long before Trump supporters began driving by, honking, and waving their flags.

“Soon a few Trump supporters showed up on foot, waving their flags. Perhaps it was an attempt to interrupt or intimidate, or, just to exercise their free speech. After all we respect the First Amendment. In any case, I had a decision to make. Do I ignore them or do I tell them to leave?

“I decided neither. Instead, I called them over.

“I had the mic and called out, “Hey y’all, you don’t have to stand over there waving that flag. You can come join us. Our events are open to all. We’re expanding our tent, not closing it down.”

“To their credit, they came and joined our group and listened in.

“What’s your name?” I asked one of the gentlemen. “Chad,” he responded.

“The Q/A continued with our supporters. Eventually, Chad asked about the Supreme Court and the claim that Democrats want to ‘Pack the Court.’

Qasim explained his view that, if they were to have an honest conversation about “packed” – that hundreds of appointees submitted by President Obama had been held up for no reason whatsoever; then, after the 2016 election, replacements were rushed through blindly by the new administration by a compliant Senate.

“You can’t accuse Democrats of a hypothetical event that never happened while ignoring the actual court packing done by Republicans.”

“Chad, the Trump supporter, was silent and finally responded, “Yeah, I agree that’s hypocritical.”

“I gave Chad credit for being honest and calling out the GOP hypocrisy and responded to Chad, ‘Thank you. Here’s the truth. I’m running as a Democrat because I believe the Democratic platform is more aligned with justice. But if you’re looking for me to say that Democrats can do no wrong, and Republicans can do no right, then you’ve found the wrong guy because I don’t believe that. I’m committed to upholding justice as the supreme standard. You have my word.’

“Chad responded, “I can agree with that.”

“The tone changed from one of hostility and distrust to one of recognizing that we as Americans truly want the same things—justice and fairness. Soon after Chad left the gathering on his own, but not before sharing with our host that he walked in viewing us as the enemy, and left realizing we actually have a lot in common in wanting to uplift our nation.

“But it’s what happened after all this that truly left me in awe.

“As the event ended, at least 5 of the (Trump) attendees walked up to me and shared that they’re life-long Republicans who have never voted Democrat before, and have always voted for my GOP opponent. But now, for the first time in their life they’re voting for a Democrat—Qasim Rashid—for US Congress.

“Why?

“They’re drawn to our campaign that refuses to respond to hate with hate. They’ve seen my opponent’s attacks on my faith and see us responding with compassion and justice.

That could have been any Republican, any Democrat, but regardless of who votes for whom, civility and respect won the day.  E Pluibus Unum.  Out of many kind and respectful conversations, the saints of God shine brightly, Red and Blue.

Neither Chad nor Qasim will forget that day, I suspect.  Yes, there are a few saints, Republican and Democratic, to be found at political rallies. We differ on many issues, but the whole is stronger than the parts.  Let’s work together on what unites us and save the rest for another day.

As we head to perhaps the most contentions election of any recent history, I offer up MLK’s watchword: “It is always the right time to do the right thing.”  Let us remember that this whole election thing ought to be about making the American tent bigger.

And would that we Christians live out the virtues of our faith as well as a Muslim did on that day.

This Sunday, let us celebrate the Saints of God, both living and those having entered into Glory, all across the land.  In ways big and small they confess the name of Jesus.  Yes, there’s a Jesus Mosque in Amaan, Jordan. You can meet them most anywhere.

“And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.”[5]

Now, get out there and VOTE.  And do what you can to bring in the vote. 

Amen

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[1] Heather Sellers, “Just This Breath,” The Sun, June 2020, Issue # 534.

[2] Revelation 7:9-19.  New Revised Standard Version, 1989, Division of Christian Education, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

[3] “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” The Hymnal 1982 (New York, The Church Hymnal Corp., 1985), p. 293

[4] I thank my friend Merrill Ring for passing this story along.

[5] “For all the Saints,” The Hymnal 1982, op.cit., p 287.

November 1, 2020, All Saints Day

“Sometimes We Do the Right Thing”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; I John 3:1-3;
Matthew 5:1-12

I remember my geology teacher at Cal. State. Los Angeles, Dr. Ehlig.  He taught optical mineralogy, a highly abstruse, conceptual subject.  It required the ability to think in three dimensions all at once.  And it was held after the lunch hour in a hot, stuffy classroom.  When several of us had just returned from the Cabin Inn, stuffed with their huge hamburgers and French fries and a Guinness Stout.  And as Dr. Ehlig droned on, it was hell trying to stay awake.

Dr. Ehlig was a tough grader and we knew that given the small size of our class – only about 15 – there would probably only be one “A” awarded, two at best.  As we held the last review class before the mid-term exam, the question amongst us guys, who would get that “A”s?  (No women, there in fact was only one woman student in the entire geology department at that time).

We, for sure, knew it wouldn’t be Bob Stanton.  He didn’t seem to understand much of what was going on.  As we filed out of the room that day at 5:00 p.m., my money was on my friend Ron.

On the following Monday, when the exams were passed back to us, were we in for a surprise!  Who got the “A”?  SHOCK UPON SHOCK!  It was Bob Stanton.

After class, several of us clustered around him, asking how he had done it.  He said that after we had all left that Friday, he went up to Dr. Ehlig and told him of his confusion about the material and the methods.  He said that Dr. Ehlig had said, “Let’s start at the beginning.”  And he did.  He stayed until after 7:30 that evening explaining the principles and methods of optical minerology to Bob from the beginning. 

That, in my book, made Dr. Ehlig the finest professor I had ever had in my college career.  Dr. Ehlig was like that stout old tree in Psalm 1, planted by an ever-flowing stream of water.  The water of righteousness – the righteousness of kindness, and commitment.  The righteousness of devotion to both his subject and to his students. 

I don’t know if all he did prospered, but that semester, Bob sure prospered.  And so did we all when we discovered the quality of the human being who was our professor.

This is what the writer of Leviticus meant in his admonition for the people of faith to be a “Holy People.”  A people devoted to a vision and a reality beyond and within themselves.  Jesus put it correctly in his answer to a lawyer’s trick question.  “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all you mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Two points about the translation of Psalm 1.  Firstly, the rendering of the Hebrew “baruch,” should be “blessed” — as in “Blessed is the one…”  NOT “happy,” as in our leaflet from Church Publishing for this Sunday.  Happiness is an ephemeral state of being having little to do with the blessedness of God.  “Happy” is to the “blessed” as a Twinkie is to hearty oatmeal.  Incidentally, our last president’s first name is derivative of that concept – every child is a blessing.  Including the ones locked up in cages at the border.  Especially them.

Secondly, the Hebrew tsaddiq, frequently translated righteous, can convey a self-aggrandizing, stuffy piety, the appearance of being holy.  My Old Testament professor, Dr. Knierim of blessed memory, insisted that a more accurate word would be “solidarity.”  The tsaddiqi, the plural, are in solidarity with God and with one another.  Their will and actions are in alignment with that of God and the well-being of the community.  Jesus put it: Love of God and love of neighbor.

Dr. Ehlig is surely one of the tsaddiqi.  His teaching prospered, and so did the geology department for his having been on staff.  For those able to stay awake at one o’clock in the afternoon after a monster hamburger and a glass of suds, he was a dedicated teacher.  After class Dr. Ehlig was a fount of wisdom and a refreshing delight and a true friend – though a tough grader.  He was the personification of “blessedness.”  He was one who stood in “solidarity” with his classes.  His devotion to those of us, even the ones who nodded off, was “holy.”

That image from Psalm 1 of a mighty tree standing straight and tall, was captured in the spiritual of the 60s Freedom Summer.  “We shall, we shall not be moved.   We shall, we shall not be moved.  Just like a tree a tree that’s standing by the water, we shall not be moved.”  The tsaddiqi are that unmovable tree. So were those courageous freedom riders.  Those martyrs, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, tortured and shot at close range in Meridian, Mississippi are to be accounted as among the tsaddiqi.  Their sacrifice has been a blessing to every person fighting for the right to vote.  It was the cowards, the racist scoffers, the chaff which the wind blows away who will be remembered only for the evil they did on that dark night.   

An investigation by the FBI and local sheriff authorities would later reveal that members of the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department were all involved in the murders.  Worthless chaff.

America loses track, jumps the rails, when we fall out of solidarity with one another.  David Brooks, in a recent column, “How to Actually Make America Great,” based on a new book by Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, dates the failing of America from the time America was more about “I” than “We.”  Even the frequency of the word “I” in the titles of books published between 1965 to 2008 doubled. [1]

That’s why I tell our House of Hope team, this is a “we” project.  You never begin your report with “I.”  If you believe that “I” is the only one who accomplishes anything, “WE” will never accomplish anything.  And the most important audience for this sermon is myself.  This is a WE project.  Yes, some of us will sleep through the Zoom meetings.  Or miss them entirely.  But, even the lackadaisical, who knows how God might use them, no matter how much they frustrate and annoy the rest.

That is why the redactor of Proverbs can say of a good wife and partner, “She is better than gold, even much fine gold.”  Every sermon, I am blessed to have written, Jai has read through.  She picks up the errors and tells me when I’m not making sense.   When I’ve gone off the rails.  Better she finds this out than you, dear reader.  It’s about “WE.”

But I digress.  Back to Brooks, Putnam and Garrett.  When it comes to our national fragmentation, Putnam and Garett focus on that issue of solidarity.

“The story of the American experiment in the 20^th century is one of a long upswing toward increasing solidarity, followed by a steep downturn into increasing individualism.  From ‘I’ to ‘we’ and back again to ‘I.’” [2]

Is Gordon Gekko right?  Greed is good???  It’s all about MY 401(k)?

If our nation continues to pander to self-interest, to self-justifying racial stereotypes, we will have earned that reward.  We will end as a nation like the “chaff which the wind blows away.”  No matter how many nukes we have.  No matter how the stock market is soaring.

Sometimes, laughter is the best medicine.  The only medicine.

I remember one comic who ridiculed Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and his dissembling about the racism implicit in it.  In a skit portraying Nixon, the comic, mimicking Nixon’s reprise of George Wallace, portrays Nixon as saying, un that droll cadence, “Some believe in instant integration.  Others believe in segregation forever.  But I believe in INSTANT FOREVER.”

 It’s a relief we can laugh at the folly of bigotry, laugh at ourselves as a nation.  The “Saturday Night Live” opening skits have often been my saving event of the week.  And, they’re often an equal opportunity pox on both political houses.  Laughter brings solidarity, when we laugh at ourselves, at pretense and fake piety.

Amy Hunter is an activist out of St. Louis, MO, as well as a diversity and inclusion specialist for Boeing.  Previously, she served as director of diversity and inclusion at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.  Before that, as director of racial justice for the St. Louis YWCA.  She has written of the Black Lives Matter that originated in Fergusson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown.  Amy is surely one of the tsaddiqi in my book.

Amy Hunter in her TED talk lets in on the secret of those who just happen to live in the right zip codes, “lucky” zip codes she calls them.  It was privilege, mostly that got them there — privilege they presently benefit from.  The chances of someone from Watts or East L.A. zip code making it to a Beverly Hills zip code is about 5 in 100, if that.  Forget the “Beverly Hillbillies.”  Doesn’t happen.

How can people of conscience respond in good faith?  Amy presents the idea of “Fictive Kinship.”  It means living in solidarity with those didn’t have the good fortune to be born into these “lucky” zip codes.

Her bottom line is that America will live up to its promise only when it is as important to you that a child living in South Side Chicago or Willowbrook (you insert any underserved community across the nation here) – that it is as important to you that a child attending a crap school in that underserved zip code go to a school every bit as good as the one your child attends in Claremont or Oak Park, Piedmont, Montecito or The View.[3]

Those of us who have access, those of us who don’t have to worry about being followed around by security in a department store will only “Make America Great” when we can treat these folks as our own kin.  Though not biologically related, we need to consider others living in “unlucky zip codes” as precious as our own.  Our niece, our aunt, our brother.  The Constitution is our birth certificate, each one of us.  The Gospel mandate is what binds us together.  If we don’t get that, our faith is hollow and we are but an empty, clanging cymbal.

Only if we get relationship right, only then America will be accounted among the righteous.  We will be like a strong oak planted by that ever-flowing stream of righteousness.

The haters?  Their works will shrivel and perish.  They will come to nothing.  We can vote for that kind of dissolute nation.  We can make that dead-end choice.  Or we can heed Amy Hunter’s wise counsel.

It’s all about LOVE OF GOD and LOVE OF NEIGHBOR.  Pretty much one and the same.  We rise or fall together.  In America there is no “I” that is as important, as powerful as “WE.”

I give Amy the “Last Word.”   What she wants, each of us wants, no matter our zip code or race.  She, in daring to share this, is that strong oak tree planted by the stream of righteousness.  What she does and who she is prospers.  This is her testimony:

“When my son was 12, he walked home less than a mile away from our house. And he saw police officers circling. And he knew he was going to be stopped. He was about five houses away from home. And sure enough, at 12, he got stopped. So he came home to me because he was 12, and he was flustered. And he was asking all these questions about what happened and why it happened. And so he said, you know, Mom, I want to know, like, is it because I’m black? I said, I don’t know, maybe. He said, well, I knew you were home, and I actually thought about running home to you. And I said, whatever you do, don’t run.

“And he looked at me, and he said, Mommy, I just want to know how long will this last. And then I looked at my 12-year-old son, and I said to him, for the rest of your life. I want this to stop. I honestly believe that we are the right people to make a change in this community, to be role models and examples of how to get this right and create the kind of world and reality that we’d like to see, to create a more equitable society where there are no lucky ZIP codes.”[4]

Amy, indeed, gets the “last word.”    It’s truly a Gospel word.  Amen

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[1] David Brooks, “How to Actually Make America Great,” New York Times, Op Ed Section, October 16, 2020.

[2] Op. cit.

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdX8uN6VbUE

[4] Amy Hunter, TED Talk, “Lucky Zip Codes.”    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdX8uN6VbUE

Dear friends in Christ

October 25, 2020, Pentecost 21, Proper 25

The Rev. John C. Forney

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; Psalm 1; I Thessalonians 2:1-8;
Matthew 22:34-46

“We Shall Not Be Moved”

I remember my dad talking about the coal industry of his boyhood home in West Virginia.  And while he grew up in a rather privileged home, he did have a sympathetic heart for miners that virtually had no future in the mines.  Wages were poverty level, the conditions were dangerous and the only future many miners faced was black lung disease and indebtedness to the company store, in a company town that exploited those families at every turn.

When Tennessee Ernie Ford came out with his ballad, “Sixteen Tons” in the fifties it surely resonated with the stories Dad had told us kids.  The company store extorted the families in those company-owned towns unbelievably, he said.

The purpose of his morality tale was not to express sympathy for those consigned to that life of backbreaking labor and poverty, but as a warning, to stress to us the importance of getting an education so we wouldn’t endure the impoverishment his family had avoided.  It meant getting the hell out of there.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to the company store.

Such has been the hardship of the impoverished since time immemorial who are deprived of agency.  Folks ground up by predatory coal companies. Sixteen tons and a short life of misery. It meant poverty, illness, drunkenness and ignorance to my father. I call it the “sixteen tons” mentality of sweatshop and the mine.  It’s work till you’re all used up and then you drop. 

When Jesus is asked about the lawfulness of paying taxes to the imperial state that has its boot on your neck, he slips through a most cleaver trap.  If he answers “no,” he and his followers risk all the might of imperial Rome coming down on their little movement.

If Jesus answers “yes,” he will be complicit with the exploitive, demonic power of Rome.  It will mean giving approval to those tax collectors roaming the land confiscating the livelihoods of those already barely able to feed their families.  Not unlike those presently evicting families in the midst of this economic collapse.  Paying taxes would only be feeding the insatiable greed of rapacious tax collectors.

Back then it was, as now a short life of brutality and deprivation for far too many.  It was Hobbs “war of all against all.”

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to the company store.

It’s the company store or Cesar – one and the same.  Jesus asks for a coin used to pay the taxes.  Whose face is on the coin?  “Cesar’s,” someone answers.  “Then give to Cesar what is Cesar’s, and to God what belongs to God.”

Niebuhr’s insight into human nature was spot on.  He noted that most of us, when left to our own devices, usually do the right thing.  We are compassionate.  If we see a lost child, we attempt comfort and if we see suffering, try to get help.   If a neighbor’s house had burned down or flooded, we will work with others to provide emergency clothing and a place to stay until lodging can be found.  We will give to refurbish the neighborhood baseball field.  That’s just human nature.

These are the duties belonging to God.  Virtually every church would applaud such.   Most of the world’s religions as well.

Niebuhr says that such empathy and compassion tends to break down when it comes to nation states and large organizations – a number of which are actually larger than many entire countries.

From such, we might not expect much compassion or understanding.  AT&T is not going to care if you have lost your job and are being evicted.  In a number of hospitals, you will not be treated without insurance.  Or at least, not treated well.  Even if you are bleeding on the floor, before the emergency room nurse, they’ll send you to the “Accounts” window.

Management will close ranks to protect the institution.  The marginalized will be sacrificed.  Those with no power sold out.  That’s the story of Reconstruction after the Civil War.  Look how the U.S. regarded those butchered in the My Lai Massacre.  Swept under the rug.  And the war criminal Lt. William Calley?  Let off with a wrist slap.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Just move along.  Stuff happens.

On the failings of large organizations, I’m reminded of one priest’s understanding of the sometimes perversity of the institutional Church.  “I’m never disillusioned by the Church because I have no illusions about it.”

My dissertation was a study of clergy who had left the parish ministry over a thirteen-year period back in the seventies.  I remember one former pastor, who still had much anger when relating the story of one church he had just been assigned to.  This, years later.

He reported a call by the conference treasurer demanding to know where the monthly payments were.  What payments?   No one mentioned to him any mortgage payments.  When told the treasurer in no uncertain terms that there was no way the congregation could make these payments, the treasurer told him that if he walked the neighborhood, about one in ten would be Methodist.  He had a vision of his life going down the tubes at a ratio of one to ten.  After a few sleepless nights, he told the treasurer what he could do with that job.  Not the empathy one might hope for from Mother Church…

It’s the same story on COVID-19, the economic devastation of small businesses, and a host of other problems facing our nation.  Twisting slowly in the wind we are.  “Benign neglect,” Nixon counseled back then.  When fifty-seven families own as much as one half the country, don’t expect much sympathy.  You read it right – fifty-seven families!

But every now and then…  EVERY NOW AND THEN!   Someone in power does the right thing.  Somehow, out of nowhere.  Out of the blue.  Someone does the right thing.  A righteous woman, a righteous man rises up.  And we say, “Thanks be to God.”  A leader who’s cause for a “Glory Attack.”

This is why, in Isaiah, the foreign potentate Cyrus is called messiah.  Cyrus is to be the means of freedom for the Israelites from Babylonian captivity. They would return rejoicing.  “Every valley lifted up and every mountain laid low.”  The path of the Lord made straight into freedom.  Every now and then…  Israel took it as divine providence.  Out of Babylonia as out of Egypt.  As, centuries later, following the drinking gourd, escaped slaves boarded the Underground Railroad made their passage to freedom in the North.  Completely done with “Sixteen tons” till you dropped. 

Abraham Lincoln was similarly regarded by the enslaved and the abolitionists in America – Father Abraham.  Every now and then someone in the behemoth of big government does the right thing – the saving thing.  A strong deliverer arises.

In Matthew the question is whether people of faith are required to pay taxes, to cooperate with what was then a despotic reign. 

Whose face is on this coin.  It is the faces of the American people.  Yes, mostly old, dead white guys.  But even now, a bit of light shines.  Susan B. Anthony.  Sacajawea.  And, hopefully, Harriet Tubman.  And more exemplary women to follow.

We can turn around the “sixteen tons” mentality that uses up men and women in sweatshops and the gig economy.  Uses them up and spits them out.

In America, the discussion is more nuanced.  And as we head into perhaps the most contentious election since that of Lincoln before the Civil War, we have Christians of many opinions.  On both sides of the partisan divide.

There is no vigorous King Cyrus liberator figure on the ballot in this 2020 election.  It is America that is on the ballot. 

Jon Mecham is right, this election is for the “soul of America.”  My side believes that.  I’m sure the other side believes that as well.  And we all have our reasons.

So where to, America?  What does it mean when WE are Cesar?  It is our heads on the coin of the realm.

In America, each of us is a citizen with inalienable rights and duties who are to be the strong deliverers. We are anointed, each as a “little Christ” as it were.  To our families, our neighbors, our communities.  Each of us is divinely empowered to leave this nation a little better than when we arrived on the scene.

All of which is to say, that if we look around, we have the opportunity to do more than just pay taxes.  We are called to the joy of having skin in this game called America.

We can march for justice, we can support quality schools in our communities, serve on the school board. 

As St. Augustine said, “Faithfulness in the little things is a big thing.”  Our little things in the coming year will add ot a “big” thing.

But, right now, most of all, vote.  Vote for candidates that are problem solvers.  Vote for candidates who have a lived track record of empathy for the “least of these.”   Vote for candidates who respect the opposition and can work across the aisle.  Vote for those who can see beyond the interests of their own wallet.

It’s “Shinning City on the Hill” time.  Away with the “sixteen tons of number nine coal” until you drop, consumed by black lung disease or polluted water.

It can be “Morning in America” if we work for it.  Whose head on the coin?  All of ours!  WE are morning in America.

Not to vote is a sin.  So, do it!   Amen.

Dear friends in Christ

October 18, 2020, Pentecost 20, Proper 24

The Rev. John C. Forney

Isaiah 45:1-7; Psalm 96:1-13; I Thessalonians1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

“Sixteen Tons of Number Nine Coal”

When families get together, or when we used to get together before COVID-19, it didn’t take long before favorite stories to be shared around the circle. 

In our family, one of the favorites my brother and I regailed the family with was about our mom and the construction of the western village from the back of the Cherios box.  On each box of Cherrios cereal there were one or two houses, maybe a barn, or something like a general store.  You cut these out and followied the directions on which way to fold each portion, or which tab to insert into which slot.  On completion, one had a house, a general store or whatever.  For a quarter and a boxtop or two, one could get a layout for the entire village.

As Mom continued working on one of the structures,  I became increasingly anxious that she was not following the instructions.  Finally, in desperation, worried that she would ruin it, I blurted out, “Mother!  You’re not following the instructions.”  To which she responded, “Only an idiot would need these instructions.”

Within minutes, she began searching around on the floor.  “Where are those instructions?”  I delighted in reminding her, “Mother, you said that only an idiot would need these instrucitons.”  And we’d all have a good laugh.  Then it would be someone elses turn in the barrel.

Family stories are what binds us together and brings to memory the good times.  And sometimes the trying, difficult times.  It broke my heart yesterday to open the paper and see the picture of a forlorn man, downcast, staring at the smoldering ruins of his home.  “We’ve lost everything, he said to the reporter.”   Indeed, it was all gone.  Only the remnants of a fireplace and chimney remained.  Like tens of thousands, he and his family will tell their depressing stories of starting over.  The tarnished trinket found in the ashes, the melted dog dish. the charred mailbox out front.  All that was salvaged.

Scientists and climatologists will tell a more encompassing, less personal story of an erratic climate, drought and spruce bark beetles.  They will piece together the evidence of global warming into stories of coming hardship and disaster for much of the planet.

We tell our stories to bear witness.

When I looked at the editorial pages of the NY Times, there was a picture of a sodden village in Pakistan.[1]  People aimlessly wandered the drenched street where nine inches of monsoon rain had recently fallen.  The highest amount ever for a single day.  Novelist Fatima Bhutto, lays out the ecological and human disaster awaiting her nation as the glaciers in the Himalayas melt and temperatires soar to over 124 degrees F.  With the loss of drinking water for millions, drought and famine stalk the land.  She tells a most sobering story.  And yet many would still deny the reality of her cautionary tale at the highest levels of our government.  Fatima writes her story in sadness and in dread that it may not make a difference.  No hearts will be warmed, no minds changed, no action taken.  Yet, she offers up her story in hope.   To bear witness.  Before it’s too late. 

As humans, all we have left so often are simply our pathetic or sometimes hopeful stories.  Stories that should be warning, or stories capable of inspiring hope and resolve. 

Stories are remembered and told to formulate excuses and lay blame.  To justify myths of superiority and to scapegoat.

Years from now, political commentators will weigh in on those officials who ignored the science and evidence of global warming before their eyes.  Or, on the other hand, belived those stories concocted to give credence to the fake news and the “alternative facts” behind this ginned up, so-called hoax of global warming.   Which story did our generation believe?

By this time the science and any proposed solutions will have become so politicized, so costly, that there will be no hope of consensus.  The truth, as in battle, will have become lost in the “fog of war – partisan warfare.” 

We saw that political combat in vivid and tragic display at the first presidential debate.  What a farce.  And this is our democracy?  God help us all.

The disaster was so discouraging that even I, a political junkie of long standing, couldn’t stay engaged.  The president’s continued interruptions were tiresome.  I, and the millions watching, had never in all our born days seen such a performance.  And Chris Wallace, the moderater, struggled mightily to constrain Mr. Trump and wrest control.  What on earth had we just witnessed?  Joe was also a bit out of order at times, calling the president a “clown.”   Though not without provocation.

Last night we saw a bully on full display who coddled White Supremacists And we saw a decent man who called us to to be our best selves.  A choice between the Proud Boys and their ilk or the legacy of those who fought to preserve freedom on the shores of Iwo Jima.  They are not “suckers” and “losers,” Mr. President.

With elections only weeks away, it remains to be seen how the public will come to a judgement between these two narratives.  However, on November 3^rd we  voters must process this most unusual of campaigns  And make a choice.  It is one for the history books.  And certainly the nail in the coffin of civil discourse.

“And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,” that’s the snippit of a favorite hymn, “For all the Saints,” that’s floating through my mind this morning.

Why is the fight so fierce?  Whoever shapes the narraitve has the power to determine political outcomes.  The story becomes weaponized.  A cudgel with which to bludgeon the opponent.  To claim the moral high ground.  Is it all just about power?

In Matthew we have an old parable from Isaiah used by the church –weaponized to delegitimize the Jewish tradition.  The new community employed this old story to claim the mantle of God’s favor.   According to that story, the Jews through their treatment of the prophets and Jesus had lost claim to Israel’s salvation history. 

Like the wicked tenants (we all know who they are) of the vineyard, through the murder of the owner’s son, they had the vineyard taken away.  The owner of that vineyard will “…put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”  Let those with ears to hear, understand what is being said here.

Looking at the disasterous failings of the church over the subsequent centuries, we have absolutely no claim any superior moral authority.  The Holocaust was the final capstone to our pitiful record of failure.  Jim Crow representing the abject failure of Christians to resemble anything like the Beloved Community.  As Mark Twain frequently reminded Jesus’ followers, “It would be a whole lot easier to believe in the possibility of redemption if the redeemed looked a bit more redeemed.”

Row upon row of empty pews in many of our churches are testimony that the Church has lost it’s mandate.  We might not have killed the son, but we sure have too often killed the people with borerdom. 

For our youth, the church is certainly not where the action is.  Except now and then.  Now and then, like those youth pilgrimages to New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina.  Now and then, like those groups doing House Builds for Habitat for Humanity.  Or lately serving at food bank distributon lines.  Every now and then the gospel bites us in the get-go.  And we get a case of Holy Gumption.  And did I mention marching?  And signing up to help at polling stations so the usual crew of seniors won’t be put at risk of COVID-19?

It is said that it is the victors who write the history.  And that is why the stories of history and the overall narrative arc is so important.

Looking back to the time I taught American history in an Oakland public junior high, the source of my failure to reach many of those students was the inability to weave into my students’personal and family histories the story of our nation.  And to keep it real.  I might as well have been talking about creatures on some far-off planet.  Nothing to do with the “hood.”  Nothing to do with the reality of vicious gang leaders and a drug culture.  Nothing to do with empty shelves in the kitchen, distraught parents and rats skittering across the floor at night.

As stories from the daily papers flood my mind, as the larger story of America and the group of companions that gathered about Jesus intrude, I discover the saving grace as I allow my heart to be touched.  For isn’t that finally the aim of all stories.  It’s about what we bring to them.

Today, my small parish celebrates it’s patronal feast day, St. Francis Day.  The enduring blessing of this favorite saint, the real take-away is that everything is connected.  Joined together in the abiding love of God. 

As I remain in lockdown, Deacon Pat will bless the animals in Franciscan tradition as they and their keepers drive by in the parking lot of the church.  She will sprinkle them and their owners with holy water, enjoining the drivers to “remember your baptism and be thankful.”  She will slip into a back window a suitable treat for a dog or cat and a copy of this sermon.

The larger story we are acting out today is that no matter what hash we make out of it all – personal relationships, our nation or this planet – redemption is at hand.  The only question before us is the one Jesus asked the crippled man at the Pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to be well.” 

Eddie Glaude in his book, “Begin Again,”[2] holds out hope that, deep down, we will claim healing.  That, this late in the day, we might be willing to forsake the foundational lie at the heart of our nation.  That we will come to terms with the “original sin” of America.  The most pernicious lie being that a white life is of more worth than a black life.  This is that perennial “lie” at the root so much hate and distrust.     This is “lie” that has from the beginning poisoned any promise of what America might have been.  So, now to Begin Again.  There is Grace for nations and whole peoples.  Ask Germany.  Ask Japan. Ask South Africa.  America is at a transitional moment.

Healing begins when we acknowledge the falsehood of those tired, old stories concocted to demean others.  Jim Crow.

I found most hopeful a story in the L.A. Times of the Latino and Latina staff at the paper there.  “Revisiting an anti-Latino past,” was written to celebrate the promise of change.[3]  A paper that routinely refered to Mexicans as “greasers,” “wetbacks, “border jumpers” and only employed such as janitors and in other low-level positions, now celebrates them as staff writers, editors, and columnists. 

The Times Latinx writers have won Pulitzers for their work on local L.A. politics and California exposés.  Courage and anger wore down racist barriers.  The ownership of the Times, over the years, had hearts changed.  A new, more inclusive story, told the heritage of this paper and it’s mission to it’s reading public.  And to themselves. 

That is why we celebrate St. Francis today.  His story is paradigmatic of the larger story of God’s love.   It is a more inclusive story.  In Christ Jesus all are invited to God’s bountiful table.  “Whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on the journey of faith, you are invited to this table.”  We in the Church are called to ever renew that story that it take wings in minds young and old.

In Sunday school we used to sing a favorite, “I Love to tell the Story.”  What I learned there was a expansive story of joyful generosity.  A story of changed hearts and minds.  The lost are found.  Enemies reconcilled.  It’s the story of a God reaching deep into us and pulling out the very best.  As persons.  As a nation.  As a world.   Glory abounding!

Tell me the old, old story.  But don’t just tell me.  Make it real.  Make it come alive.  I want to see this Jesus story in action, how it plays out in real life.  How it might play out in my life.

“And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again and arms are strong.  Alleluia, alleluia!”

“The golden evening brightens in the west…”  Yes it does.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Amen.

---

[1] Fatima Bhutto, “Pakistan’s Terrifying Battle with Climate Change,” New York Times, September 29, 2020.

[2] Eddie Glaude, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for our Own (New York: Crown, 2020).

[3] Gustavo Arellano, “Revisiting an Anti-Latino Past,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2020.

Dear friends in Christ

October 4, 2020, Pentecost 18, Proper 22

The Rev. John C. Forney

Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

“Tell Me A Story”

As if there were not enough to worry about with coronavirus, elections, the economy in the tank – now this.  NASA warns us that an asteroid is approaching Earth the day before Election Day, November 2nd.  All the more reason to vote early.  Remember what happened to the dinosaurs.  Okay, it’s only a small one that has only an infinitesimal chance of hitting us.

While this is only a long shot, and while some may yearn for such a scenario as to escape real difficulties – we indeed do have much distressing news to worry about.

Our society is polarized around race, income, opportunity, and politics.  And so much more.  Our common life now could be described as a culture of grievance.  Don’t get me wrong.  There is much to grieve.

The new revelations on Bob Woodward’s reporting are explosive.  All the while we were being told that this pandemic is nothing much more than the “sniffles,” just sort of like the flu.  It is one case coming from China, the “kung flu,” and would soon “magically disappear.”  “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”  Actually, Brownie, it’s NOT a heck of a job.

As we were being told this nonsense, all the while our president knew that he has something much more dangerous on his hands.

National security advisor Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, “This is going to be the toughest thing you face.”   It “will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.”

In Rage,[1] the president is quoted as telling Bob Woodward on February 7^th, “This is more deadly.  This is five per- you know, this is five percent versus one percent, and less than one percent.  You know?  So, this is deadly stuff.”

You remember the pain of the young woman, Kristin Urquiza, who told us of the last agonizing days of her father’s life.  “My father’s only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump — and for that he paid with his life.”  Mark Anthony Urquiza was a healthy 65-year-old man with many more good years ahead of him.

Is there forgiveness for so much pain, so much loss.  There’s no alternative.  Eventually.  The early church knew our failings and the damage we do to one another.  Sometimes, so much pain.  Hear this teaching on forgiveness. 

Upon hearing Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness, Peter approached him with a question.  This was an inquiry based upon the teachings of the Torah – “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  This was the standard proscribed. Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times.”

I’m wondering how many Americans this past week hearing of our government’s duplicity concerning this disease are so ready to forgive.  The wrong done is beyond the pale.  So much pain.  So much pain.

The enormity of the betrayal staggers the conscience.  A number of epidemiologists have said that had the president even acted two weeks earlier – even two weeks, friends – somewhere around sixty thousand lives could have been saved.  This is more than all the Americans that died during the entire Vietnam War, the greatest disaster of my generation. 

Seventy-seven times?  The scale of this failure staggers thought.  And he knew all the while.  Said he didn’t want to panic people.  That’s rich for one who’s entire campaign is based on fear.  Fear that someone who looks like Cory Booker might move into your pristine (read white) suburb.  Fear that hordes of rapists and drug dealers from Mexico will destroy your American Dream.

Forgive seventy-seven times?  The natural man, the natural woman, says, “I don’t think so.”  Yet there is this implacable demand: “Seventy-seven times.”

To back it up, Jesus tells the parable of a man forgiven a great debt by a generous king who receives most distressing news.  The slave recently forgiven an enormous debt is shaking down his fellows for what they owed him.  Seizing one debtor by the throat, the slave demanded, “Pay what you owe.”  This is a debtor who was owed only a fraction of what had been forgiven him by the king.”  Hearing this news, the king was enraged.  He had that slave tortured until he should pay his entire debt — hundreds of thousands of dollars owed the king.  As the slave was led away, the king raged, “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”

So much pain.  Forgiveness seventy-seven times?  Our bruised feelings, our bruised sense of justice murmurs, “I don’t think so.”

As I considered such dilemmas, a couple of things came to my mind.  The first from a Facebook discussant.  If you know me, I can be pretty partisan.  Yeah, ask my wife.  My kids.  In the midst of a heated back and forth series of pretty hot posts, one fellow said, “We’ve all screwed up, haven’t we.  Don’t we set it aside and just move on?”

Well, I know that I sure have.  I’ve harmed my wife and those who’ve trusted me.  If there is no forgiveness, how could I have gone on? 

The same with societies.  Desmond Tutu headed up the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa at the end of Apartheid.  How else could a new society have been constructed out of the most horrific wrongs?  Torture, summary execution, rape – mostly inflected, but not entirely, by the white Afrikaners against the majority black and mixed-race population? 

Had it not been for the willingness of Nelson Mandela to forgive his jailers and reconcile with the white government of Peter Botha, then President, South Africa would have been doomed to a devastating civil war.  Here is a society that managed seventy-five times, even seventy times seventy times!

This last year, Agenda for a Prophetic Faith sponsored a symposium on forgiveness and renewal.   We called it Pomona Reawakening.  Pomona, a suburban community in decline on the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County had a new mayor and several new council members.  After what was years of stagnation and, let’s say “shady politics,” this leadership wished to rejuvenate their city.  To begin again.

Two incredible speakers were the spark.  The first was Mayor Tim himself.  He told the very personal story of how tragedy had struck his family in Pacoima, a bedroom city of Los Angeles.  His younger brother ended up on drugs and had a bad run-in with the police.  This experience tore up Tim’s family and left him with much bitterness towards his brother who had put the family through absolute hell with drugs and violence.  Tim, was able in time to move beyond that tragedy, to reconcile, and now is providing strong leadership to move Pomona forward.  

Azim Khamisa is a father awakened to the news that his only son Tariq had been shot by a 14-year-old gang member, Tony Hicks, over a slice of pizza.  In the bitter days that followed it would have been natural for Azim to have been consumed by anger.  That would have been the end of Khamisa’s life.  Bitterness ending only at the grave. 

But something happened to intervene.  After a number of weeks when bitterness subsided, Azim begin to think, his son was surely a victim as was he.  But in reality, there were two victims.  There was the family of the gang member who had shot his son.  After a while Azim was prompted by all that is Holy and all that is Reconciliation to reach out to the killer’s family.  It was a grandfather. 

That two families not be devastated, the two men, Azim and Ples Felix, Tony’s grandfather and guardian, began meeting.  Azim finally went to visit Tony in jail, serving a 25 to life sentence.[2]

Then Azim looked deeply into Tony’s eyes, he didn’t see a killer.  He say a very wounded human being, pretty much like himself.  Wounded.  Through the efforts of Azim Tony is now out of prison and has a job at the Tariq Khamisa Foundation. 

“Since the beginning of this tragedy, Tony confessed to his crime and has continuously sought to better his life.  He has apologized to the Khamisa family, shares his remorse, and plans to join Mr. Khamisa and his grandfather, Mr. Felix, in their efforts to teach children accountability, compassion, forgiveness, and peacemaking.”[3]

“From prison, Tony has written numerous blogs responding to questions from youth participating in the TKF programs.  He has also earned his GED and is working towards his AA degree in Social Work.  Tony participates in Gang members Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, Toastmasters, and has done rigorous self-inventories to identify his character defects.”[4]

Through the efforts of Azim, Tony is now out of prison and has a job at the Tariq Khamisa Foundation. 

On the foundation’s web site are many stories of forgiveness.  From perusing them, it became clear to me that there’s no automatic formula.  Nothing’s more unrealistic than the teacher demanding of two boys wo had been in a knockdown-dragout fight than to say, “All right, you boys shake hands now and be friends.”  The muttered response of one would be, “See you after school.”

Forgiveness is a spiritual gift as much as anything,  It is born of calmness and a softening of the heart.  It is nothing to be demanded.  It is at best an endeavor by both parties.  It can’t be compelled in the heat of the matter.  Perhaps, later, much later those harmed by the coverup of COVID-19 will be able to let it go.  To “let go and let God.”  But probably not today.

One more story from the Azim’s foundation from the “Forgiveness Project.”  This is the story of two fathers, one Israeli and the other Palestinian.  The conflict that has endured for generations.  I share the story of the Palestinian father.

“I was on my way to the airport when my wife called and told me Smadar was missing. When something like this happens, a cold hand grabs your heart. You rush between friends’ houses and hospitals, then eventually you find yourself in the morgue and you see a sight you’ll never forget for the rest of your life. From that moment you are a new person. Everything is different.

“At first, I was tormented with anger and grief; I wanted revenge, to get even. But we are people – not animals! I asked myself, “Will killing someone else release my pain?” Of course not. It was clear to my wife and me that the blame rests with the occupation. The suicide bomber was a victim just like my daughter, grown crazy out of anger and shame.

I don’t forgive and I don’t forget, but when this happened to my daughter I had t
to ask myself whether I’d contributed in any way.

The answer was that I had – my people had, for ruling, dominating and oppressing three-and-a-half million Palestinians for 35 years. It is a sin and you pay for sins.[5]

Getting back to my Facebook political posts, the other day two of us had sharp disagreement and some harsh words over how our president has handled his responsibilities.  Commenting on my rant about calling our fallen, “losers” and “Suckers,” he responded  that I didn’t know who I was talking to.

In his next post, seconds later, he announced that he was a vet and had twenty years service.  At that moment my heart softened a bit and thanked him for his service, letting him know that I also had served.  Two years as an Army medic. 

Surprise, he also had been an Army medic in Afghanistan. And thanked me as well for my service. 

Then he let me know that the main reason he had voted for Trump was that he was fed up with elite politicians who just talked and had done nothing for people like him.  I said I understood.  That’s why I had supported Bernie. 

We ended in agreement that the politics of this nation are pretty screwed up and agreed to a virtual toast no matter how things turned out on November 3rd, “To the Constitution and to the Declaration of Independence.’  We bid each other, “Good night.”

Whatever happened yesterday, it looks something like forgiveness.  We will not agree on much else, but parted without animosity or bitterness.  I don’t know I’d say “friends,” but certainly “respect” is an appropriate word.

We have all screwed up.  Some of us, royally.

How many times, Lord?  Seventy?  Seventy-seven? 

Forgiveness is a spiritual gift.  Like all such gifts there’s a mystery at the heart of it beyond human understanding.  Such softening of the heart is sheer undeserved grace.

Today, John Donne, sometime priest at St. Paul’s, London,1573-1631 – Fr. John Donne gets the “Last Word.”

Wilt thou forgive that sin, where I begun,
     Which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run,
     and do run still, though still I do deplore?
          When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
               for I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin, for which I won
     others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
     a year or two, but walled in a score?
          When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
               for I have more.

I have a sin of fear that when I’ve spun
     my last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
     shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore.
          And having done that, thou hast done,
               I fear no more.[6]

Amen.

---

[1] Bob Woodward, Rage (New York: Simon Schuster, 2020),  Will be released on September 15, 2020.

[2] https://www.virtuesforlife.com/father-forgives-sons-killer/

[3] https://tkf.org/tony-hicks/

[4] Ibid.

[5] Rami Elhanan, “The Forgiveness Project,” Stories of the Tariq Khamisa Foundation

[6] John Donne, “Wilt Thou Forgive,” 1982 Hymnal (New York, Church Publishing House, 1982), p. 140.

Dear friends in Christ

September 14, 2020, Pentecost 15, Proper 19

The Rev. John C. Forney

Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

“So Much Pain”

When I was a young boy our family would take trips from Compton into Los Angeles.  Driving up Alameda Blvd., as we neared the downtown area the railroad tracks for all the industrial spurs would enter the street and run right up the center of the street. 

For a young child, it was both fascinating and scary.  As a boy who loved trains, it was exciting to see them up close.  It was also scary to see them so up close, right out the car window.  They dwarfed us and the screeching of the wheels on the tracks was frightening. 

I remember seeing these signs with two cross arms on the street where the tracks entered the roadway.  Stop, Look, Listen.  When I asked Dad what this meant, his voice got very serious.  He told me that if we didn’t follow what the sign said, we could be run over by a train.  And if I was ever walking along the sidewalk and came to one of those signs, I should do exactly what it said if I didn’t want to be killed.

Well, you can imagine my dreams the next few nights.  It wasn’t the monster under the bed.  It was standing on the tracks where they crossed the sidewalk staring up at a huge switch engine bearing down on me, the metal wheels screeching on the tracks as it got closer and closer.  All the while I was unable to move.  Frozen in place.  Fortunately, I always seemed to wake up before I was run over and squashed like a bug.

As a young child, other warnings had the same effect:  the skull and cross boned on a bottle, toadstools in the grass – do not eat them.  A common nightmare was of waking to find what seemed like hundreds of these toadstools carpeting my blanket.  Finally, I had to go to the bathroom so badly that I really did wake up to find all the mushrooms gone.  The coast was clear.  Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Warnings are essential to survival. 

The passages appointed for this Sunday are all, in one way or another, about warnings.  Ezekiel has been appointed as a sentinel, to give warning to the people of Israel.  “Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.  If I say to the wicked, “O wicked ones, you shall surely die,” and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your hand.”[1]

The warning is given, not to condemn but to prevent condemnation.  God takes no pleasure in wasted lives and violence.  “…turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?”[2]

That’s exactly why my father told me scary stuff about railroad crossings and poison.  It was that I might have a chance to grow up.  The same reason my mother told me not to run out into the street. 

In the same way Paul warns those in his congregation not to let their living be only dissipation, wasted in debauchery and drunkenness and thieving.  And those given to such he held out an alternative, that of life.  “…you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep…the night is far gone, the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light…”[3]

Warnings come in many forms.

As we grow older, we realize the warnings in scripture are not only that we survive but live lives of purpose.  One woman put it recently, what we require is hearts big enough for someone besides ourselves.”

The season of COVID-19 is a season of much pain and difficulty.  And a warning.

Listen to the pain.  Parents, listen to the pain.  The rate of teen suicide and drug use is worse now than ever.  COVID-19 has accelerated everything and made it much worse.   Addiction rates since this pandemic have increased on average over 40 percent.  Stop. Look. Listen, America.

Many evenings at the conclusion of her PBS Newshour broadcast, Judy Woodruff introduces a montage of those we have lost to this pandemic.  These are our neighbors.  Some, our family.  These exemplary lives cut short were led by those who were infused with the values St. Paul lifts up.  They were persons of purpose because they led lives of sobriety, lives of rectitude, lives of generosity.  These are the whole circle of companions who make life worth living.  There are an enticement to generosity and purpose.

They were not only a blessing to others, but to themselves and to God. 

CNN reported the pain on one man, “We ain’t got nowhere to go,” was the cry from the heart of one devastated man as the constable came to order his eviction.  As Israel Rodriguez, Sr., stood on the sidewalk, holding his infant son, also named Israel, workers dumped their entire worldly possessions out on to the curbside.

This is the excruciating experience now of thousands of families who lived on the margin until COVID-19 came along.  This family faces the brutality of a cold world with but a little over three hundred fifty dollars in their account.  Just this last week in Harris County over two thousand eviction notices were served, double what might be a so called “normal” week.

The vast majority of these families have lived lives of responsibility.  They cared for their children and their neighbors.  They had been reliable workers and a blessing to their employers.   Stop. Look. Listen, America.

If we let these people sink into despair and homelessness, into depression and addiction.  That’s on us.  We can bail out the mega corporations.  The banks and United Airlines.  Are these, the little people – are they not more precious in the grand dream of America?  They “played by the rules” and now we toss them aside like so much litter.  Stop.  Look. Listen, America.  Do you not hear the sobs of their children.  Do you not see the fearful glance from mother to father?

This is an existential warning that cuts to the bone of who we are as a society.  All the while our legislatures are off enjoying their vacations.  Mitch McConnel and his Senate colleagues have over four hundred bills sitting on their desks awaiting action.  But no worry.  No constable, no sheriff is knocking at their doors with eviction papers.

America, these just average Joes and Janes, these people are the heartland of our nation.  Stop. Look. Listen.  Here is blessing before your eyes.  Hear their pain.  Enter into their joy.

As the COVID-19 death toll climbs to two hundred thousand, the cream of our nation is carried to the grave.  At the end of July, the L.A. Times devoted an entire section to the stories of these most average citizens – citizens who in the ordinary lives that they lived were, in fact,  most extraordinary.  They were mothers and academics, food bank volunteers and a nurse who on the side taught CPR classes as a volunteer.

These are citizens who lived their spiritual values.  With their families and neighbors, they walked the walk.  Pastor Alex, on many mornings made his rounds to pick up groceries for the church’s food bank. “His whole life was serving other people.”  That is how his wife Blanca, wanted him remembered.[4]

So many gone.  So many.  These were people who in ways big and small were living blessings of our most gracious God.  They lived the reality of those who had awakened to the dawning of day.  They put on the armor of light.  Every day.

Stop.  Look. Listen.  Hidden blessings are all about.

You know these people.  They are a delight to be around.  They are the ones who staff the volunteer fire department.  They make the PTA work and do the welfare check on their neighbors.

They go out of their way to do a little kindness for their children.  As Elishia and Bobby were walking home from school, they were surprised to look up and see their mother, Patti, pulling up at the curb besides them.  “How would you like to go to Magic Mountain?”  she called from the open window.  Patti had taken the afternoon off from her administrative position at UCLA just to do something special with her children.  Patti was a troop mom for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.  She worked with a foreign student, Lai, from Hong Kong, helping her with English lessons.  Looking back at their friendship, Lai recalled, “She had a heart for everyone.  She and her husband Dan loved long road trips.[5]

So many lost.  So many, and it needn’t have been this way.  America, Stop. Look. Listen.

To friends and family who have lost loved ones who served.  I tell you truly.  They were not losers.  They were not suckers.  They gave their lives for a cause greater than themselves.  Some will not understand because there is no price tag attached to such things as honor and freedom.  The Lady of Liberty cannot be bought with any dollar amount.  She only asks loyalty and duty.  Such things are incomprehensible to one whose heart has no room for any but himself.

If you consider these whom Judy spotlights every evening, friends and neighbors down the street, what you will hear is the beating heart of the Divine.  The beating heart of America.  The Holy is part and parcel of so many of these whom we have lost.  That is St. Paul’s word for us.  That is his message to the Church. “Let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day…”  That will be your delight. Your family and neighbors will rise up and call you blessed.  For you are.

As we become children of purpose, we grow into the full stature of Christ.  A lifetime journey.

For some reason, must be Labor Day weekend, speaking of folks who have sacrificed for our nation, who are doers, folks with godly agency — my mind has been drawn this week to those who organize for a better America.  I was remembering that old union song, “Bread and Roses.”  It gave voice to the women mill workers who stuck in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.  It is a theme song sung at many union events as well as at several women’s colleges.  Made popular by Judy Collins, among others.  It sings the gospel worth of all workers, but especially of all those who toil as “essential workers” to keep life going for those of us privileged to work from home.

Thank you, James Oppenheim, for this rousing union hymn.

The women of Lawrence, MA — you get the “Last Word.”  They marched in gospel “Light.”

Bread and Roses

As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, “Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.”

As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women’s children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.

As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.

— James Oppenheim, 1911.

---

[1] Ezekiel 33:8-9, New RSV, 1989, National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

[2] Ibid, 33:11.

[3] Romans 13:11-14, New KJV.

[4] Isaiah Murtaugh, “Alex Bernard,” a part of “The Pandemic’s Toll: Lies list in California,” Los Angeles Times, July 31,, 2020.

[5] Ibid, Tomas Mier, “Patti Breed-Rabitoy.”

September 6, 2020, Pentecost 14, Proper 18

The Rev. John C. Forney

Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

On Sunday morning I woke up with a racing heart and a sense of dread.  I had just come back to consciousness from a terrible dream – a nightmare, really.

In this dream I was seated in my vestments ready to take the pulpit as a visiting preacher in this huge downtown Presbyterian church.  Reflecting back, it looked like the huge sanctuary of Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles.  When I got to the pulpit, looking over the rows of pews, mostly filled, I realized that I didn’t have my sermon.

I looked around the surface of the pulpit desk but it was nowhere to be seen.  Not even on the floor.  Well, I thought to myself, I ought to be able to remember enough of it to get by.  After all, I had labored over it all week.  But, nothing.  I couldn’t remember what the scripture passage was.  I couldn’t even remember a single story. 

I began with a little patter about how honored I was to have been invited and told a lame joke (the kind my boys say I usually tell), hoping that something might come back to mind as I vamped.  The next thing I knew, there was a woman standing next to me with an offering plate.  This was the signal that I was done.   Yeah, really DONE.  At the same moment, the entire sermon came back to mind.  But it was too late.  Done.  Really Done, as in Toast.

At that moment another thing occurred.  I woke up.

I wonder if it is just Presbyterians that cause so much anxiety.  Starchy Calvinism can mess with the mind.  Or was something deeper going on?

The basic undercurrent of this dream is: Forney, you don’t measure up.  You’re a fraud.  Isn’t that the message we get from so much of society?  You’ve got to measure up.  We’ve got standards and, well…you’re out of your league.

Paul tells the church at Rome that the standards the world beats us over the head with are bogus hogwash.  “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of the world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your heart.”  Then you’ll be in alignment with God, the power that set the planets in their courses and also cares for even the tiny sparrow. 

The world said that, as a teenage boy, if I ever hoped to attract a girlfriend, I needed to have a souped up, chopped and customized Chevy.  Chrome exhaust pipes, metallic paint job with pin striping that gave off a deep throated VAROOOOM when I stomped on it.  I had a hand-me-down 1950 Studebaker.

I never measured up.  The problem with the “standards of this world” is that none of us can ever measure up.  And in just trying to do so, many of us will be ground to dust. Trying to earn your self-worth is futile.  There’s never enough.  You’ll never be good enough.  That’s just how it is with the world’s standards.

The world’s standards are spiritual death.  Sometimes actual, real, dead death.

Look at the COVID-19 wards across the country.  They’re full of so many of society’s discards.

You want to see the flotsam of the standards of this world?  Look at the recent economic indicators.

In the June business section, when the pandemic in the U.S. was just beginning to kick into high gear, I spied an article on bankruptcy.  Many companies, reeling from massive losses were heading to the  courts for relief.

I read that, while bankruptcy is usually devastating for workers and investors, it often works out just fine for CEOs. 

Here is the true skinny on corporate bankruptcy.  Companies get rid of debt; they stiff their investors and get relieved of burdensome union contracts and healthcare obligations to their workers.  They leave their suppliers and subcontractors high and dry.   AND, AND. The CEO’s walk away with full wallets. 

Whiting Petroleum sought protection from the courts, it’s CEO walked away with $6.4 million in bonuses and perks.  In closing 154 stores across the country, J.C. Penny managed to find enough pocket change to pay their outgoing CEO Jill Soltau $4.5 million.  I wonder how all the store clerks and the cleaning crew made out.  The standards of the world work out pretty well for some.

Chesapeake Energy paid out a raft of bonuses to senior employees right before filing for bankruptcy.  The same with Hertz.  These are the standards of the world.[1]  Do not conform yourselves to them.  They are the path of dehumanization and death.

Tuesday the S&P Dow Jones hit record highs.  And more and more wound up living on the streets.  Our friend in Charleston, WV, told me that city parks are overrun with the homeless and drug addicted.  But the top five percent are doing very well, thank you.  One analyst, looking at the disparity can’t believe the numbers, “This market is nuts,” said Howard Silverblatt.[2]  The “standards of this world,” they’re nuts.

This is the judgement of the world.  These standards are death to the aspirations and dreams of many.  Most of us can never measure up to them.  We will never be rich enough, thin enough, educated enough.  Most of us will not have the right car, the right trophy spouse, the right house or the right attitudes.  So, don’t conform yourself to these standards. They are death.

But be transformed.  Inwardly, by a complete change of your mind.

Transformation begins with opening our eyes, opening our hearts and minds to what is really real within ourselves and the world around us.  It begins with a real assessment.  That’s the beginning of the 12-step journey to recovery.  A moral inventory of who you are. 

It’s like the mess I make in the kitchen.  I look at it and ask myself, now why should I expect someone else to clean this up?  Then I hunt for the sponge and soap.  Why would they have more fun doing it than I?

That’s the beginning of the journey of healing for our nation.  Transformation is listening — listening to those we have harmed and neglected.  Like a formerly enslaved woman, Isabella Gibbons, working as a cook at the University of Virginia.  This is the campus designed by Thomas Jefferson, author of those inspiring words in the Declaration of Independence, “all men equal.”

From this woman, who would later by 1867 become a teacher of a Black elementary school, “Can we forget  the crack of the whip, cowhide, whipping-post, the auction block, the handcuffs, the spaniels, the iron collar, the negro-trader tearing the young child from its mother’s breast as a whelp from the lioness?  Have we forgotten that by these horrible cruelties, hundreds of our race have been killed?  No, we have not, or will.”[3]

God begins that inward transformation in the moment we acknowledge our brokenness.  As with an individual, so also with a nation or institution. In acknowledging untold pain and suffering, in acknowledging the black lives taken advantage of and shamefully used, the University of Virginia has embarked on the journey of inward transformation as an institution.  They are listening to the pain echoing down the centuries of broken black bodies and spirits.

Those who never feel the need for contrition, those who never experience the need to apologize – they will not be healed.  They will remain stuck in frozen attitudes.   All joy sucked out of life.

Transformation is real, but painful.  Like my friend Ed Bacon is fond of saying, “The TRUTH will set you free.  But first it will hurt like hell.”  In the fellowship of God’s Beloved Community, none of us has to take that journey alone.  Transformation is about having a heart big enough for others than just oneself, as a security guard said this week of Joe Biden.  Let “God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.”.  It will enlarge your heart.

Transformed by God – these are the healthy, life-giving people.  Folks you want to be around because they bring out the best in you.  They cheer you on rather than drag you down.  Don Thomas is one of those people. 

I recently received an e-mail from my friend Dr. Don Thomas who works in Malawi providing medical services and raising funds for schools and community organization.  He’s as old as I and yet still makes it back and forth from Pasadena to Africa. 

He shares the most marvelous, life-affirming stories of a village and it’s people.  One young African woman, Ida Puliwa, the founder of Othakarhaka Foundation, was the first female from her village to graduate college.  Her transformed soul has transformed her village.[4]

Even with COVID-19 shutting the school in her village, Ida has organized the older girls to tutor the younger students so their progress is not lost.  “The girls are fulfilling their commitment to “pass on the kindness”, carrying forth Ida’s unique, original goal for Othakarhaka.  Each village volunteer of every age gives of their time each week to ‘pass on the kindness.’”

My friend, Fr. Doug, had a dream one night – no not about forgetting his sermon.  This night visitation was surely an encounter with the divine.  The voice he heard said, “Go help my people in Africa.”  Over the years, he has done that indeed.  He even roped me into the effort.

His work funded through United Charity Endowment for Africa, has developed clean drinking water projects in coastal villages of Ghana and in the interior rain forest at the St. Anselm’s Anglican cathedral at Sunyani.  He, as of late has worked with Ghanaians to rescue young boys sold into slavery for the fishing industry.  Upon rescue the boys are provided social services and education.

From Doug’s transformed heart and mind has come transformation for many others.  That’s how it is with Spirit Transformation.  Can’t help itself. 

This work is the spiritual fruit of one whose life is evidence of inward transformation.  Out of it flows, peace, patience, kindness, forbearance, freedom, sobriety, generosity – all the rest of it.

The world doesn’t understand such.  By the standards of the powerful, such is “weakness, foolishness.”   Such things are beneath them.  The world shouts back, “Loser!”

“But let God transform you, inwardly by a complete change of your mind.  Then you will be able to do the will of God.”  And that will be your delight.

Mother Teresa’s poem, “Anyway,” makes it all so clear – what gives life and what reeks of death.  Her poem speaks to the depth of the transformed heart and mind.  And the freedom of being inner directed  “Let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.”

Mother Teresa’s Anyway Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Sister gets the “Last Word.”   Amen.

---

[1] Peter Eavis, “Bankruptcy?  For the C.E.O.s, It’s a Bonus,” New York Times, Business Section, June 24, 2020.

[2] Matt Phillips, “’This Market is Nuts’: Stocks Defy a Recession,” New York Times, August 19, 2020

[3] Quoted in Holland Cotter, “Where ‘Horrible Cruelties’ Can No Longer Hide,” New York Times, August 17, 2020.

[4] https://www.idemandaccess.org/

August 23, 2020, Pentecost 12, Proper 16

The Rev. John C. Forney

Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

“Do Not Conform – Be Transformed”

We moved to a new neighborhood when I was in my second year of high school.  Now, I must confess that pretty much all through junior high and into my first year of high school, school was a social disaster.  And an academic disaster.  But moving to Lakewood didn’t help matters one bit.

Exclusion was no more apparent than when lunch hour rolled around.  I took my lunch and over by the walkway was a group of tables at the edge of one wing of classrooms where the popular kids ate.  There were the football players and their girlfriends.  The cheerleaders and some popular band kids – an inner circle of popularity all ate there.  To think that any of us mere mortals might sit at one of those tables was to risk abject scorn.  This was the Cool Kids table.  They had the right clothes, the right cars, the right girlfriends and boyfriends.  I was definitely not in the class of the “Cool Kids,” nor were any of the few friends I had.  We sort of hung around on the edges of school.  We definitely did not have the “right stuff.”

I’m not sure when I first heard the story of the unwanted Canaanite woman.  But I had no difficulty in identifying with her.  Matthew tells of this woman who begins following Jesus and his disciples on the road in the district of Tyre and Sidon.  Definitely, the people of this district were outsiders, certainly “not cool.” These outsiders were excluded from the God’s Covenant with the House of Israel.  She implores Jesus for her daughter’s sake.  “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

It’s like that stray dog which began following me home from school one day.  No matter how much I tried to shoo it away into a vacant lot, it wouldn’t leave.   It would back up a few feet and again resume following me as soon as I took a few steps. 

That’s how Jesus and his little band regarded this woman.  The disciples kept urging Jesus to shoo her away.  She was not their kind.  They refused to recognize her humanity.  She was a nuisance, a pest.

She was like that telemarketing phone call.  The caller first asks your name and how are you like they’re juiced on six cups of coffee. Before you can get a word in edgewise, this marketing monster is off on their sales pitch.  Just a big bother and waste of time.  I’m thinking, “If I really needed this as much as you say, I would have already purchased it.”  Get out of here!  Most often, only rudeness will get them get them out of your hair. 

“Send her away,” the disciples urge, keeping her all the time at arm’s length.  She smells.  She talks funny.  They had no time for this ragged, unkempt woman.  “Send her away.”  She definitely does not belong at the Cool Kids table.

But she persists. 

I remember another woman who more recently persisted.  When Elizabeth Warren insisted on interjecting a letter from Coretta Scott King into the proceedings on the Senate floor, Mitch McConnell would have none of it.  In explaining the Senate’s censure of her on the floor, “She was warned.  It was explained to her.  Nevertheless, she persisted.”  Another “Nasty Woman” not knowing her place.  And this ragged woman yelling and carrying on about her daughter does not know her place.

Finally, Jesus, exasperated, wheels on the woman right there in the middle of the road and explains it to her.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But again, she persists, “Lord help me.”  Finally, he snaps, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

For most women, for most of us who do not belong at the “Cool Kids” table, the matter would have been dropped.  Embarrassed and dejected, we would have retreated into silence and slunk away. 

That is what happens to too many of those marginalized in our society.  These were the immigrants and foreigners then living in Israel in Jesus’ day.  Presently, these are the families seeking asylum from drug gangs in Mexico and Central America – fleeing ruthless dictators in Honduras and Guatemala (tyrants we quietly prop up with American dollars and troops).  These are the children yanked from their parents and locked in cages at our southern border.  They’re just a nuisance.  So what if they all get COVID-19 and die.  Not our responsibility.  No sign here about the “huddled masses,” or “tempest-tossed.”  “GO AWAY,” the sign reads. 

Not many years ago, that is what the “Chinese Exclusion Act was about – what the restrictive covenants in property deeds were about, what “red-lining” was about.  You don’t belong here at the Cool Kids table.

Recently, in the Science section of the Times, I read how much more subtly we communicate the same message in so-called “polite” society.  It was about the not-so-subtle indignities that minorities in science and medicine daily endure, especially women of color.

The new term for such pernicious and not-so-subtle putdowns is “micro-aggressions.”  These are comments, many unthinking, which communicate to another that they don’t belong.  They are not welcome at the Cool Kids table – any more than was that desperate woman.  She was not suitable material for the Jesus Movement.

Oh yes, we sing “In Christ there is no East of West, in him no North or South.”  But c’mon.  That’s nice in theory. But not when a black dentist moves in down the street as happened in my neighborhood when I was a kid. 

Definitely not cool.  So not cool that some of their neighbors gave that family the message loud and clear when the ran a garden hose through their second-floor window and set it to running while the family was on vacation. That song’s a nice sentiment, but not when property values are at stake.

This is the exclusion that especially women of color face in medicine.  Dr. Onyeka Otugo shares of her experiences when training in emergency medicine in Chicago and Detroit.  As she would enter a patient’s room, the comment was sometimes, “When is the doctor coming in?”  This after she had already introduced herself as a doctor.   None of her white male colleagues ever had to face such indignity. 

Patients would let her know where the trash was so she could take it out, or that the sink needed attending to.  These “put downs” were often “subtle, stunning, often automatic, and non-vocalized exchanges.”  Dr. Chester Pierce, a psychiatrist refers to them as “micro aggressions.”  Not “micro” because of their corrosive impact on the other, but because of their routine frequency. 

Many doctors of color, especially women though, report the high frequency of such derogatory comments.  Or having been addressed as “sweetie” or “honey.”[1]  Even by their male colleagues on the hospital staff.

I can understand the racism behind such behavior.  If you grew up in a largely white society as I did, You may have never encountered any professionals who were not white.  I remember the first time I took our oldest to Kaiser to have his asthma checked out.  We had sat in a small office sometime before the doctor finally appeared. 

When Dr. Pham entered, I had to check my racial stereotypes right there and then.  I wondered, “What kind of training did this doctor from Cambodia have?”  Is he licensed?  Would he be as qualified as another, as a real doctor – read “white” doctor?  As this thought raced through my head, a sense of shame filled me.  Of course, he’s qualified.  He’s had to pass the same exams that all doctors pass – again, read “white” doctors.  Kaiser wouldn’t have hired him otherwise.  Now I’m thinking, “Forney, you jerk.  Get a grip.”

Of course, Dr. Pham was excellent.  He thoroughly explained where our son was with his asthma and which course of treatment would be best.  His manner with Jonathan was kind and thoughtful.  He explained to him in language he could understand what was happening and how they were going to make him well.

Right then and there, I received a master class in race relations.  I left the doctor’s office with some new insights about myself and how easily I, an educated, “enlightened” white liberal, could pigeonhole and dismiss that man.  Dismiss him as Other. I consoled myself with the thought that, at least, I didn’t think he was the janitor!

Dr. Sheryl Heron, a black professor of emergency medicine at Emory, says that these microaggressions can take a terrible toll.  “After the twelve-thousandth time, it starts to impede your ability to be successful…”[2]  The burn-out rate among emergency medical personnel is already extraordinarily high without this crap.  Self-doubt eats at one’s sense of worth and one’s sense of vocation.

Back to the region around Tyre and Sidon.  After having been told that one doesn’t take the children’s food and fling it to the dogs, we pick up the story.  And, yes, we know the term for a female dog – that is what he called her indirectly.  That’s the sort of word that gets your mouth washed out with soap.  So, let’s pick up the story.

This Syro-Phoenician woman — this most original of “nasty women” — had the hutzpah to retort, “Even the dogs gather up the scraps from under the master’s table.”  EVEN THE DOGS!  Say what?

Silence.  Crickets.  More silence.  Shuffling of feet in the dust.

Instantaneously, in a heartbeat, Jesus’ heart grew one size larger. “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And there was healing.  Not only for the daughter but for Jesus and all those around.  Healing reaching down through the ages, in hearts of all touched by the retelling of that exchange.  Surely, on that day another was welcomed into that marvelous, Spirit-filled band, the Jesus Movement. 

Nothing is set in stone.  Even the most hardened hearts can be softened like butter in the microwave. 

I realize that, not all those considered unfit for the Cool Kids table, will be able to speak up for themselves as did this bedraggled women Jesus encountered.  So many have been beat down for so long that all persistence has wrung out of them.  It is up to those of privilege, especially white male privilege, to hold wide the doors of inclusion, of success.  It’s always about a “hand up.”

That’s what we, the Church, are called to be.  A glorious welcome home party. 

I can still remember that cartoon in one of our Anglican magazines depicting folks exiting a church after the service.  One snooty woman with blue hair piled high on her head, dressed in furs and bling, indignantly demanded of the priest as she glared at the church sign board proclaiming “Decade of Evangelism.”  “What is this Decade of Evangelism?” she demanded with haughty distain. “I thought everyone who was supposed to be an Episcopalian already was one!”

What is evangelism?  It’s simply the good news that there’s a place for all at the Cool Kids Table — for, in the end, it is the Lord’s table.  That’s what we proclaim each and every Sunday.  At least back in the old days when we were still able to gather in person for worship.

In Christ we are still learning what it means that all are invited to the Cool Kids table.  And such a feast that is spread.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.

That is the message of the House of Hope.  In God’s Kindom there are do-overs.  Redemption is our business, God willing.  ALL means ALL.  We may lose the patience,  We may lack the strength to persist.  But God doesn’t!

O Lord, give us, your Church, a heart many sizes larger than it would have had if left to our own devices.  Make of us a joyful welcome party for all to the Cool Kids table.  For all are TOTALLY COOL in your sight.  Amen.

---

[1] Emma Goldbert, “It can Cause You to Shrink,” New York Times, Science Section, August 11, 2020

[2] Ibid.

August 16, 2020, Pentecost 11

The Rev. John C. Forney

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

“The Cool Kids’ Table”

As July rolls into August, high seas and ferocious winds threaten to swamp the Ship of State.  Huge surges of new waves of coronavirus inundate hospital emergency rooms.  This week one of our own at St. Francis has been hospitalized with COVID-19 (she is slowly recuperating).  Nationally, we are experiencing over one thousand deaths daily.  California, Florida and Arizona have surpassed previous records for their daily death rates.

Then comes the presidential retweet promoting a doctor who claims that wearing face masks is of no help, hydroxychloroquine is a potential cure for COVID’19, AND gynecological problems are the result of sex with demons and witches in dreams — oh, did I mention that she asserts there’s a medicine in the works that incorporates alien DNA?  This is about as wackadoodle crazy as it can get.  The republic is sinking in ignorance and folly.  What’s worse, whole bunches of people believe this nonsense.

Is it any wonder that much of Europe has contained the virus while in America it continues to surge out of control?  We are floundering. It’s time for an SOS.

The account from Matthew of Jesus on the storm-tossed sea brings perspective.  In the images from this story, the church drew guidance for the turbulent age in which it came into being.  This was an era of tyrants, privation and disease.

In this account, Jesus’ disciples are headed for the opposite shore of the Sea of Galilee.  This lake was notorious for the fearsome storms that could arise at a moment’s notice.  Evening came – we all know that fearsome things and enlightening spiritual moments always happen at night.  So, don’t you know it.  Their little boat is soon battered by towering waves.  They are far from land and the wind is against them.  If that were not terrifying in itself, they see a spectral form coming towards them.  “It’s a ghost,” they shriek.  But as the apparition becomes clearer, they recognize their teacher, Jesus, walking over the waves.  Impetuous Peter is beside himself.  “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  And so, Jesus obliged, giving the command.  But as Peter stepped out of the boar, he looked down and noticed the fearsome sea, the howling wind.  And he began to sink.  His courage shrank and he began to go under.  Peter, is an original Lone Ranger.  He’s the American ethic – I’ll do this myself.  Don’t need your help, thank you. 

Now we can understand Churchill’s not-so-gentle chiding to Americans when the country was faced with the onslaught of Hitler’s Wehrmacht in the late 30s.  “Americans always do the right thing.  After they’ve tried everything else.”  Same with Peter.  At last, in desperation, he calls out to the one who is their Rock, “Lord, save me!”

As the tempestuous sea of COVID-19, a pandemic out of control – an economy in collapse – and our citizens trust in their government in the basement.  With systemic racism and age-old racial disparities in housing, education and in our economic life, threatening national unity, we cry out in despair.  Chaos is winning. Fear seizes hearts and minds.

We blame our health professionals.  Recently, state and county health epidemiologists and doctors have been assaulted by mobs of the irrational and fearful.  For many, the stress has led to resignations.  We would rather trust our luck to politicians who preach happy talk and willful ignorance.  Yeah, if you’d rather trust some pol who’s got no more than a mail-order M.D. from the School of his own Imagining – if you’d rather trust your children to this abysmal ignorance than a Dr. Fauci, or your accredited county health official – well, good luck with that.  No wonder the daily death rate in the U.S. is averaging over one thousand per day, while the daily death rate in places like Germany and Taiwan is zero!  So many are sore afraid that they vent their anger on those who might lead us out of this thicket.

Our stormy heritage of racial intolerance has come back to confront the brutality of our society with the unassailable demand for justice.  Reports on systemic racism and misconduct in our nation’s police departments come as huge waves crashing down upon our frail race relations.  Trust evaporates.

The Los Angeles Times reports the costs of misdeeds by secret gangs of sheriff’s deputies.  They have cost the County of Los Angeles twenty-one million dollars over the past ten years alone.

These rogue bands go by such names as “Vikings,” “Regulators, “3000 Boys” and “The Banditos,” operating with impunity for decades.  In the County Jail sheriff guards forced inmates into the most brutal fights.  On the streets law abiding citizens are abused and humiliated.  Tell me what part of “protect and serve” these outrages cover. The ocean of criminality here seems without limit.

Out of the brutality of a fatal shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, comes the national moment of reckoning – #blacklives matter.  With the loss of so many, it’s enough to cause one to lose heart.  But it is the agonizing eight minutes and forty-six seconds of slow death of George Floyd we all witnessed, live and in vivid color, that galvanizes a nation.  Finally, white folks experience some of the same reality that our citizens of color have endured for generations.  White America is finally WOKE.  At least, enough are.  Many of us begin to experience in our gut the waves of injustice that crash over too many of our precious brothers and sisters of color.  Finally!  Some of white America are being pulled under with them.  Trayvon Martin is now our son, our brother.   Breonna Taylor is now our daughter, our sister.

“Say the names,” the sign demanded.  “Say the names.’’  George Floyd is only one of the latest.  Breonna Taylor.  Atatiana Jefferson.  Freddie Gray.  And the list goes on.  And on.  Far too many gone. 

We make the theological connection.  These heretofore unknown faces are the very face of the Christ in our midst.  We behold the wounds, know the anguish.  Until George Floyd was family to us, we just didn’t get it.

Something indeed has changed in America.  Something fundamental.  You catch sight of it out in the streets all across this nation.  What I see is the sacramental presence of Christ in these young and old, black, brown and white together.  Right up from Torah ethics personified in the prophets – Isaiah, Amos, Hosea. 

Running straight as an arrow right to and through the heart of Jesus of Nazareth was this one and same Spirit.  It was embodied in the One who bent down to include a small child.  And it rose up in righteous anger, lambasting the holier-than-thou crowd with stones in their hands and murder in their eyes as they encircled a cowering woman.  This is the same spiritual heritage flowing through Peter and Paul, through the Reformers Luther and Wesley, and, in our later day resting on the shoulders of those who integrated lunch counters and joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.  It tenderly cradled our brother Martin as that shot rang out and he slumped to the floor of that balcony of the Lorraine Hotel amidst shrieks of horror. 

This very, this one and same Lord was in the midst of those who on Bloody Sunday crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge with our brother John Lewis, our sister Diane Nash — with all those unnamed souls who fell beneath the nightstick and bled that day.  This weeping Spirit stood watch as James Lawson and others simply asking for service at a Woolworths lunch counter suffered the indignities of racial slurs and the blows of fists – their food dumped over their heads.  This heritage of martyrs and prophets, gentle servants, mothers, students and glorious trouble makers – this is our Rock.  These are the vanguard, the sacramental courage, that summons us forth from our storm-tossed bark.  “Fear not,” they cry.

Amidst the tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets, we recognize this Christ in the faces of those who stand for the ones who can no longer stand for themselves.  There is our Lord, crossing the storm-tossed, the blood-soaked story of this nation.  Right up to our time.  These are the ones who now surround us a great cloud of witnesses.  The “balcony people” who cheer us on.

They now call us to venture forth from our tiny boat, to step out like Peter.  If we but keep our eyes on this true and steady vision, this Gospel Truth, we find that we walk.  If we but steady our gaze on our companions in the struggle, we perceive not a ghost in the swirling chaos, but the very Rock of Salvation, the Lord of all Creation.  We are steadied.  Though the wind howl and the waves breach ancient certainties, we find strength.  We persist and we persevere.  We hear that far off voice which whispers in the lull of din and strife, “Be still and know that I am God.” 

Closer to home, I rejoice even in this time of pestilence and upheaval my shipmates on another voyage, the voyage of hope for those addicted.  We are the ones who, God willing, will bring birth to a House of Hope.

In these days of August, we approach some critical funding benchmarks for the House of Hope, both in the Ohio Valley and in San Bernardino.  Our hopes are high.  May our small craft be guided safely to the shores of full funding of this vision.  I sense the Spirit of Christ in my companions on this mutual journey.  No, there aren’t crashing waves or shrieking winds.  That’s not what I fear.  It’s the tedium of one Zoom meeting after another.  It’s tired eyes that glaze over, perusing an endless stream of forms and attached instructions.  It’s chasing down one lead after another.  It’s the distraction of a hundred and one other things.  It’s the mild depression that creeps up unawares when others don’t see our vision, don’t catch the dream. 

I used to think that the biggest obstacle to the mission of the church was our culture of disbelief.  Perhaps ambivalence, or possibly the L.A. Dodgers losing streak.  No, none of these.  We would not succumb to any of this.  No, It’s death by mimeograph machine. It’s the mind-numbing daily routine of stuff that kills the dream, dilutes the vision.  That’s what I felt running off the Sunday bulletin when the mimeograph machine just chewed up the last five or six of them.  Now it’s people who don’t return phone calls.  It’s trying to spy out the few important e-mails among the hundreds that came in during day.  In the midst of all this, true saints are found.

Yet our little band of House of Hope visionaries, through disappointment and tedium – we make that one more call.  We earnestly pitch another potential funder.  We write that letter and scan that grant application.  We pump up our joy as we explain to one more shopper in the checkout line at Stater Brothers what we are about.  All the while, knowing that the dream is sound and that God is faithful.

This is the divine presence.  It is sacramental in the flesh of the faces and voices of those who labor with us.  It is redemptive in their laughter and encouragement.  It is the substance of Hope in those who answer, “How can I help?”

There’s an old Sunday school song I sang with those gathered in a circle when we actually had children in the church. “With Christ in the Boat We can Smile at the Storm.”  Now, as those young people have grown to adults, I’m sure that they’ve found that it’s a bit more complicated than that delightful song.  Life is messy.  Yet, the message still holds.  With a Centering Presence, with a Rock to cling to – we do endure.  We claim the blessing as surely as did Jacob who wrestled with God in the desert waste.  “Hearts are brave again and arms are strong.”

I used to poo-poo what I considered simplistic, feel-good environmental actions.  Like changing lightbulbs or turning down the heat.  I derisively called it eco-pietism.  Actions that made us feel good, but were negligible when compared to the frightening scale of global warming. 

Then someone wised me up.  They explained that such small, symbolic actions often lead to real commitment.  That lightbulb changed is transformed to involvement in significant, sustained climate action.  It mutates into political action to actually make a difference.  One ends up starting a new chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby (yeah, Google it).

Maybe such is the case with discipleship.  St. Augustine put it this way: “Faithfulness in the little things is a big thing.”  Kindness counts.  Make your bed. Respect is key.  It all can draw one into something far deeper.  Draw you into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble – John Lewis sort of trouble.  Every parent knows the truth of example. 

Start small, if necessary.

Tip your server.  Return your shopping cart.  Pick up a piece of trash.  Hold the door for the person behind you.  Let someone into your lane. Talk about “we” instead of “I.”  Small acts can have a ripple effect.  That’s how change begins.

If you’re fortunate, you may find your heart opened to the ache of the world, to the hope of the world.  The waves won’t seem so high or the wind so strong.  You might possibly find yourself on the threshold of life eternal as you meet One coming towards you out of the tempest.   Blessing beyond measure.  

Now…could I get another chorus of “With Christ in the Boat?”

Amen

August 9, 2020, Pentecost 10

The Rev. John C. Forney

Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

“Demon Seed and Alien DNA”

 I must be doing something wrong.  But I am perplexed as to what it could be.  This spring, as last spring, I went to my garden and scattered some seeds.  Sweet Alyssum, Nasturtium, California Poppy.  And what came up?  Nothing.  Just like last year.  Even with lots of rain.

We scattered packets of seeds of California Poppies around the statue of St. Francis at church.  And what came up?  Nothing.  Just like last year. Even with lots of rain.

Actually, there might have been a few new sweet alyssum plants among the leftovers from previous seasons.  Hard to tell. Lots of weeds, but that was last week’s parable.

Needless to say, I’ve become a bit skeptical when it comes to biblical stories about seeds.  Even that fabled mustard seed.  No birds are going to nest in anything I’ve planted.  Oh, there was one exception.  One year I was so late in purchasing a Christmas tree that I had to settle for a small living tree in a pot.  The boys never let me live that down.

After Christmas, I took it outside and planted it in the place where before had been a plum tree.  It had died and the yards-men came, cut it down, and hauled away the stump.  So, I figured that our little pine would be a suitable replacement.  That tree is now over fifteen feet high.  Yes, there are birds in its branches.

That little tiny tree five years ago I so lovingly planted, I wouldn’t have given you a nickel for its chances.  Surely the lawnmower guys or something else would have gotten it.  This luxurious pine tree by the garage is my substitute mustard seed.        And nasturtium seed. And poppy seed. And alyssum seed.

“Another parable Jesus put before the crowds, saying “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his fields; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”[1]   

This week we have witnessed a beautiful flowering of the Tree of Liberty in the life of Representative John Lewis.  Several years ago, he had written a graphic novel March, in three volumes covering the civil rights struggle he so deeply was involved in.

To watch that historic footage of the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday when John was almost killed by rampaging sheriff deputies is still heart wrenching.  Regardless of how many times I view it. 

Marchers were trampled by mounted horsemen.  They were bloodied by deputies’ batons.  They were arrested.  Most anyone else would have quit after such a rout. But not John Lewis.  Not the women and men who led that contingent of marchers.  They were not quitters.  For them, the promises of this nation were on the line.  This was existential survival for them.

“We do not k now how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”  These are the sighs and groans of those left injured on the side of the road that horrific morning.[2]

After the TV footage hit the 6:00 o’clock news and phones began ringing at the White House and in newsrooms across the country.  And a call went out across America.  Come march with us.  Stand with us.  President Johnson had told those leaders that he didn’t have the power to get the necessary civil rights legislation passed.  Martin Luther and Jessie Jackson said that they would “just have to get him that power.”  That led to the March to Montgomery. King, Jackson and Lewis decided they would have to drop the problem of white racism right on Governor George Wallace’s doorstep at the capitol.

Pastors, nuns, rabbis, priests – Christians, lay and ordained, came to heed the call.  Johnson realized he would have to send federal troops to protect the marchers.  The nation had been outraged by the brutality of the response by sheriffs.  As a result of those heroic marchers, Johnson now had the power.

Mighty seeds and marvelous stories have been passed down to us out of those struggles.  Another story, this a sports story is for you fans of the Clippers.

In the Sports section of the Sunday paper there was an item on the Clippers coach, Doc Rivers.  Coach Rivers told of a campaign trip with Andrew Young and John Lewis.  At the time Young was running for governor of Georgia.  Doc was then playing for the Atlanta Hawks. 

On this campaign trip, Andrew had given a speech at an all-white congregation.  Afterwards, as the party was boarding the plane for home, Andrew asked how they had thought speech went. 

It was a great speech.  The crowd went wild.  Andrew asked Doc, “And I jokingly said, ‘Well, Mr. Young, I thought the speech was great, but I don’t think you’re gonna get one vote from that church.’ And everybody started laughing.

“And John Lewis, he says, ‘Well, we’re not trying to get all of them.  We’re just trying to get one at a time.  And, eventually, it will be all of them.’  I thought that was just one powerful statement.”

John Lewis knew that politics was a game of addition.  About continuing to build on what was possible.[3]  It is as a seedling patiently unfolding at first two leaves. And that’s how resistance would melt away.  “Nearer and nearer draws the time…”

That little Seed of Hope, the Kindom of God, had its birth with John Lewis organizing sit-ins at lunch counters – that little seed grew into a great tree of accomplishment.  It was watered by Gospel values and Gospel hope.  At the Capital, John Lewis will rest in state, the “Conscience of the House.”  A man who was the offspring of share croppers.  He was a man noted by friend and foe as a Christian gentleman — a strong man who never compromised his values, and in the process did not demean others.

John Lewis’s well-lived life has become a mighty oak under whose shade we all, black and white, can briefly find refreshment, until it is time to pick up and resume that march towards Freedom Land.  Always processing toward a greater equality, a greater freedom and a greater compassion.  God has surely nurtured the seed that was John’s being and life, and inspires today. That is the Kindom of God –  as my friend, the Rev. Mike Kinman, aptly terms it.  It’s about the birth of a community in the Spirit where all are kin.

Recently, featured on “Morning Joe,” was Jennifer Palmieri, introducing her new book, She Proclaims: Our Declaration of Independence from a Man’s World.

She begins the prologue by recounting the small beginning of the Women’s Movement.  A seed planted, if you will that would eventually grow into such a mighty plant.  The Vote.  The right of independently owning property, Title IX, careers in science, politics and mathematics.  And to think that a previous presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church was a woman.  Not just any woman, Catherine Jefferts Shori is a PhD marine biologist.  It’s marvelous we have had such women’s leadership.  Through the struggle for full personhood, God has given life and breath to this movement.  The flourishing of these women is the Kindom of God,

It’s about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez standing up for herself and all women as she called out the despicable behavior, the piggish sexism of Republican Congressman Ted Yoho.  The vulgarities he spat at her on the steps of the House, she read into the Congressional Record.  Her assertion of her God-given dignity and the dignity of all women members of the body was a cultural earthquake. These women are going to take no more…stuff…from the lewd and crude crowd.  And the stars in heaven rejoiced.  This is an astounding moment in God’s unfolding Kindom.  And from Ted’s fellow Republicans, silence.  Crickets.  The Kindom is grounded in RESPECT.[4]  My God, are we ever at a new day, and it is glorious to behold!  For women and men alike.  Fathers, take care in how you raise your sons.  And for the Ted Yohos of the world – women and their supporters will remember your behavior on November 3^rd.  Just sayin…

Look at those amazing women mathematicians, those unrecognized women who calculated the trajectories of the first trips to the Moon. Only recently have they received the accolades due their accomplishments.  We’re talking of the dark ages back in the time of slide rules.  I bet many reading this haven’t a clue as to what a slide rule or a log table is, let alone what to do with them.  They’re now in the Museum of Science and Industry.

In Alaska I knew a woman who had been part of the corps of female pilots who transported military aircraft from factories to air bases.  The flew the largest aircraft for delivery, maintenance and modification.  They flew them across the Atlantic to bases in England.  They trained the men who would become fighter pilots. These were the members of W.A.S.P. – Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.  Sometimes, flippantly called the “Fly Girls,” these women pilots quickly proved their mettle.

“In 1944, during the graduation ceremony for the last WASP training class, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry “Hap” Arnold, said that when the program started, he wasn’t sure “whether a slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 in heavy weather.”

“Now in 1944, it is on the record that women can fly as well as men,” Arnold said.[5]

I believe what those first ordained women in my denomination asserted early on, “If a woman was fit to bear our Lord’s body at birth and to receive his body from the cross, she is certainly fit to bear his body at the altar.” Of course, I didn’t start out with such a view.  I believe I was the stupid jerk who said, “I’m all in favor of women’s liberation – as long as I don’t have to change.”  Fortunately, some kind, and some not-so-kind, women quickly disabused me of that notion.  I’m still a work in progress.  Ask my wife.

Ms. Palmieri tells of the very early beginnings of the women’s movement.Early on, a small innocuous beginning, a very small seedling sprang forth on July 1848 when “four women sat at Mary Ann M’Clintock’s kitchen table in upstate New York to draft the Declaration of Sentiments and accompanying resolutions that were to be presented at the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls later that month.”  In that august group were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Ann’s two grown daughters Elizabeth and Mary Ann.[6]

This dream was put to paper in a time when women had absolutely no legal or political power. Women’s suffrage was even considered by many women as perhaps a step too far.

God gave force and power to that seedling, for with in each human breast is the movement toward fulfilment.  This was a force that could not be squelched. This drive to fulfillment is God’s mighty power moving towards completion of what each person, each woman, each man is meant to become. It is what Paul means by “perfection.”  The unfolding and renewing of God’s Kindom.  “Nearer and nearer…”

This incipient movement is a seed that has become the largest coterie of women ever to serve in congress.  It has blossomed into the many who offered their candidacy for the presidency on our nation.  These women let loose in our world are like that song, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.”  You can find them in labs pulpits, and in cockpits.  You can find them in congressional offices – yes find them elected.  You can find them in class rooms and find them with stethoscopes.  You can find them most any place you’d care to look   And, we are all the better for it.

God’s power budding forth in each, brings forth a miracle. To paraphrase a line from a favorite hymn, “nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.”[7]

Every evening I look forward to the PBS News Hour with Judy Woodruff. (Did I mention that she is a national treasure?  But that’s another sermon).  At the end of the newscast she has a segment devoted to those we have lost as a result of COVID-19. 

I find Judy’s stories are precious seeds in my soul packing a wallop. They are motivation I need to get up and do whatever I can do to stop this pandemic where I live.

Here are a couple of their stories:

“Postal worker Jesus Collazos was known for taking the time to greet every neighbor along his mail route in Arlington, Virginia.  The 67-year-old spent over two decades with the U.S. Postal Service, after immigrating from Colombia in 1978.  Jesus and his wife raised his two children in a home he first discovered along his route.

“The proud grandfather loved posting family photos on social media always with the simple caption: “Life is good.”[8]

“Lynika Strozier never gave up on her dream to become a biologist.  As a child, she was diagnosed with a severe learning disability, but went on to earn two master’s degrees in biology and science education.  She became a researcher of plant DNA at the world-renowned Field Museum in Chicago, and a science professor at Malcolm X College.

“Fun-loving and friendly, Lynika was at home in the lab as she was out with friends, or watching horror movies with her grandmother, Sharon, who raised her.  Lynika was 35 years old.[9]

As I allow these stories, these seeds budding forth with abounding Grace, to rest in my heart, watered by prayers of gratitude, they blossom into the desire to do my part, to be a faithful citizen ot this grand Republic. Wear my mask.  Remind others gently to wear their masks. Social distance. Stay home as possible.

I lift up in my Facebook posts – diatribes and urgent pleas — the urgency of combatting the COVID-19 scourge that has taken so many precious lives.  And simply give thanks for the lives that those they have touched.  And their memory is a reminder to give thanks for each morning that I still have an opportunity to sally forth into the struggle.  Always a happy warrior.

I now close, giving Rep. John Lewis the “Last Word.” It’s called “Necessary Trouble.”  Our Lord would have known all about “Necessary Trouble,” as would his followers down through the ages. John Lewis has been a marvelous scion sprung from the Tree of Liberty.  For his life and sacrifice our nation is greatly indebted.  Never, never discount the power of God welling up in the human breast.  Look at the mighty miracle that was, and that lives on, in John Lewis’s testimony.  And what a mighty tree it continues to be.  We all, black and white, first nations folk and those who have come lately – we all can rest in those branches.  The glorious Kindom of God.”HH    JJJJKK

Necessary Trouble

This is the way another generation did it, and you too can follow that path, studying the way of peace, love and nonviolence, and finding a way to get in the way.  Finding a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. With all sainted troublemakers down through the ages, let us say, AMEN.

---

[1] Matthew 13:31, Revised Standard Version.

[2] Romans 8:26, Revised Standard Version.

[3] Mirjam Swanson, “Rivers reflects on civil rights icon, politician Rep. Lewis,” The Inland Valley Daily News, Sports Section, p. 2.

[4] Luke Broadwater and Catie Edmondson, “Ocasio-Cortez Defies Sexism by Shaming It on House Floor,” New York Times, July 24, 2020.

[5] Susan Stamberg, “Female WWII Pilots: The Original Fly Girls,” Morning Edition, NPR, March 9, 2010.

 

[6] Jennifer Palmieri, She Proclaims: our Declaration of Independence from a Man’s World (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2020) 2.

[7] Arthur Cambell Ainger, The Hymnal 1982, “God is Working His Purpose Out” (New York: Church Hymnal Corp.)   534.

[8] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/in-memory-of-5-more-u-s-victims-of-the-coronavirus.

[9] Ibid.

July 26, 2020

Pentecost 8, Proper 12

“With Sighs Too Deep for Words – Seeds of Hope” The Rev. John C. Forney