Many, many gone.  Over seventeen thousand since election day alone.  So many gone in this Dark Night of Despair.  This Sunday we are summoned to wakefulness.  We light the first Advent candle for HOPE.  We are summoned to wakefulness.  WAKE UP!

When I was in medic training in Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, we learned all the various aspects of what would be required of us, whether we be out in the field or assigned to a hospital or dispensary stateside.

After lunch, in the hot, humid afternoon, we were marched to our training bungalow and shown old training films produced for the Army of WWII.  No air conditioning.  These were old scratchy, black and white films introduced with the sort of music that you may remember from the newsreels that were shown before the main feature.  If you’re around my age, you remember that music.

One afternoon, the feature of the day was a film on “folding the forty-five-degree corner of the hospital bed sheet.  The lights went off, the projector began grinding away.  The narrator was droning on, “Notice how the corner of the sheet is folded back to make a forty-five-degree fold.  Let’s look that again, this time in sloooow mooootion.” 

The lights went on with no warning and Sarge was bellowing, “Wake that man up.  Wake that man up!”  He was assigned to KP duty for the next two decades and told to stand up against the wall.

The lights went off.  Again, “Let’s see that one more time in sloooow mooootion.” 
The actor in the film hadn’t even gotten the blankets pulled up before we heard a loud crash.  Again, the lights flicked on.  This poor slob against the wall had fallen asleep again – and had fallen to the floor.  He was probably scrubbing pots and pans until Vietnam was over.  Lord have mercy.

This Advent a stirring sound is heard.  WAKE THAT MAN UP.  WAKE THAT WOMAN UP.

If we don’t sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” it would be no First Sunday in Advent at all.  Like a birthday with no cake and candles.  The Fourth of July with no fireworks.  “Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!”  Yes, indeed.  Rejoice!  Something’s happening.

In this dark age of COVID-19 the night is indeed long Yet’ God is ready to bust out doing a new thing.  It’s Jessie Jackson’s chant raised to a cosmic level, “Keep Hope Alive.”

In Mark we get the wake-up call.  No gentle, “Wakie, wakie, wakie.  Here’s your coffee, dear.  Time to rise and shine.”   NO!  It’s earthquakes, thunder, planets and stars falling out of the sky.  All the powers of heaven shaken.

Mark doesn’t want anyone to sleep through the alarm.  No snooze button here.   And why all the ruckus?

“Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He will strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of the lord Jesus Christ.”

WAKE THAT WOMAN UP!   WAKE THAT MAN UP! 

This IS THE DAY OF THE LORD.  ARISE, SHINE.

He is here in clouds of glory.  His angels have been dispatched and are presently gathering among us.  Folks WE are the angels appointed for this dissolute day.  WE are the power and glory for this hour.  WE are the ones elected.  Called into tender fellowship with the Living God who now appears among us.  Emmanuel.  So…

WAKE UP.  GET UP.  GET ENGAGED.  And don’t be attached to the results.”  This was always the summons from my friend Ed Bacon every first Sunday in Advent.  To whom else did you think the Lord was shouting?

And while the summons is dramatic and abrupt, so often the work seems mundane.  In this time of pandemic, it seems a most modest request.  Wear your mask.  Keep social distance.  Don’t have people over for the Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Don’t sing.  Don’t have indoor worship.  Such common sense, but a great burden on the heart.  Be awake to what will give life, to what will allow us to celebrate a most Merry Christmas together next year.  After the vaccine.

We are summoned to lift up in prayer all essential workers whose health is at risk so we can minimally carry on.  Grocery store clerks, nurses, therapists, tellers, police officers, pharmacy assistants.  We lift up in prayer students struggling to master lessons from afar, across the internet.  Teachers baffled by new technology.  Something they never learned in their ed classes.

We lift up in prayer those who have lost everything:  wives and husbands, homes and incomes.  If you’re in the supermarket parking lot and hear the tinkle of that little bell.  Do drop something in the Salvation Army kettle.  They are Christ’s hands, heart and wallet.  They serve those we probably don’t run across in communities like Claremont or Alamo Heights.

In this darkness drear, STAY AWAKE.  You may be the only light about.  Let it shine.  COVID-19 will not have the last word.  It may get some of us, but it will not subdue the full Body of Christ.  Even in the midst of death, LOVE WILL PREVAIL.  Do not despair.  Hold on to each other and be of good courage.

In the early days of the Jesus Movement, in the midst of plague and death, followers of The Way, nursed the sick and dying.  It was not so among the fearful, those not of the household of faith.  Even their dearest — a child, a husband, a wife or beloved servant who took ill, would be cast out into the street.  Left to die in the gutter.  Not so with those of the Christians.  Those who gave the last ministrations to the dying, were soon, in their turn, the recipients of the same care. 

Even pagan philosophers were astounded and won over by such love.

Knowing much more about the spread of disease, we sophisticates, certainly, would do otherwise.  You think?  Walk down any city street and encounter the many wearing no mask.  Look at last summer’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.  Corona virus followed those cyclists home to communities all across the country, spreading the contagion.

Tell me how sophisticated we moderns are.  Look at Trump’s Superspreader Rallies that left behind waves of illness and filled hospital ICU wards fourteen days afterwards.  And morgue trailers.  And now, mass graves.  Speak to me of our modern enlightenment, and I say, “Lord have mercy.”  Tell that to the exhausted medical staffs with nothing left to give.

STAY AWAKE.

Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us, “It is always the right time to do the right thing.”  Now is the RIGHT TIME.  Today God gives us every good gift and a sound summons:  Heal the sick.  Feed the hungry.  Shelter the homeless.  Wear your mask.  Write that letter to your congress critter.  Demand relief for the destitute, the hungry.  This illness IS a national emergency.  We need to be on a war footing.

In earthquake, in sunset, in the exhausted face of a doctor, in the hopeful smile of a young girl, in the cup of coffee offered a homeless man, we discern the inbreaking of divine illumination, the urgency of the moment. The Call of Advent.  However God gets our attention, it’s wakie, wakie time.

In this fragile body of Christ, yes, we the Church, in we who feebly struggle, Christ is here to shine.  No matter how downcast we might be, Christ is come in our midst with great power and glory.  WAKE UP.

Let us light that first candle for HOPE.  WE are that HOPE.  WE are the Light of the World.   “Signed. Sealed. Delivered.”  Reporting for duty.

Amen.

November 29, 2020, First Sunday of Advent

“Wake Up”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Isaiah 64:1-9a; Psalm 80:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9;
Mark 13:24-37

When I would stay with my friend Artie for a sleepover – yeah, we probably didn’t sleep much – I can still see in my mind’s eye his picture of Jesus at the door knocking.  The thing about this picture was it glowed in the dark.  As Artie’s family was Roman Catholic, and he always asserted that his church was the “One True Church,” I thought it was fitting that his Jesus glowed in the dark.  I didn’t even have a picture of Jesus on my wall.

In our Sunday School room was a picture of a blue-eyed, blond hair Jesus with Nordic features.  Harmless as a small puppy.  He certainly wouldn’t be whipping folks, yelling and screaming and turning their money tables over.  In college I called it the Cocker Spaniel Jesus.  Harmless as a sweet, adoring pet.  AND of absolutely no consequence.

Throughout the years of Christendom, we have had many images of Jesus the Christ.  Many versions of Christ Crucified, Christ Risen, Clean Cut Chamber of Commerce Capitalist Christ, Beatnik Poet Christ, Christ of the 1960s Jesus Freak. I found most intriguing that elusive figure of Flannery O’Connor in her stories of the Christ-haunted shadowed woods of the South darting from tree to tree.

In Matthew’s gospel, the Parable of the Last Judgement, we have a very different picture of the Christ, a portrait I find most compelling.

Those welcomed into the embrace of the Holy are the ones who have been in solidarity with those who suffer, those who hunger, those imprisoned, those abandoned.  This Christ is one at heart with mercy, justice, forgiveness.

I remember visiting my son in New Haven, walking on Sunday morning to the Episcopal Church on the corner of the green.  On the way to my church, I would pass two UCC churches, one next to the other.  One always seemed so quiet that I wondered if it was even open for business.  At the other I noticed a huge group of people in the back.  They were serving up breakfast and engaging a bunch of folks in conversation, passing out lunches.

I asked my son about that church.  He admitted that that is where he and his girlfriend had been attending.  Yes, they had tried the Episcopal Church out of loyalty, but it had nothing for them, nor had it had much of anything for the community.  It really was the House of the Frozen Chosen.  If you weren’t already part of the tribe, there wasn’t much of a welcome mat.  They were now at the church where Christ was visible, feeding the homeless, visiting the addicted, caring for the mentally challenged. 

Though he didn’t say it exactly that way, what he was describing was the Compassionate Christ of Matthew 25.  This is the Good Shepherd of Ezekiel, who gathers up the scattered and discouraged.  The students of that congregation were in fact Christ to those who gathered each Sunday behind the Church.  They were the only face of Christ some of those homeless would see.

In our day of COVID-19, this is Christ in a Mask. 

This Sunday we celebrate the Reign of Christ, the conclusion to the season of Pentecost.  Featured up front this Sunday is the Risen Christ of Great Compassion let loose in the world.  This Christ appears wherever those, driven by his power, embody the hallmarks in Matthew’s Parable of the Last Judgement – wherever that Shepherd of Ezekiel gathers up the fallen and lost.

Yes, we celebrate Christ in a Mask in these days of pandemic.

My friend Katy writes a response to a Facebook friend who had insisted on her freedom not to wear a mask.  This “freedom” is American individualism run amok.  In South Dakota the governor, confronted with overflowing hospital wards, exhausted staffs and filled morgues, has finally signed a mask order.  BUT refused to include any enforcement mechanism. 

You can’t tell us what to do.  Born Free.  Free to die like rats, coughing our lungs up having swallowed the strychnine.  Yes, siree, you can’t tell me what to do.

It is out of her assertion of rugged individualism that Katy’s friend strenuously objects to her freedom being curtailed.  It’s her life, and if she gets sick that’s her business.  This friend has no thought of who she might spread it to.  It’s all about her!  Sound familiar?

A weeping Christ stands at the door of this friend’s heart, patiently knocking, asking that she might have a care for the rest of us.

Katy shared this touching Tlingit story from Southeast Alaska.  It’s a story of a Christ her Facebook friend would not understand, but those native people of Southeast Alaska embodied to the fullest.  Katy, admonishes her friend:

“I remember a heartfelt Tlingit story of a village that got sick from a disease brought by the Europeans. Many were sick and many were dying. One family was healthy and the tribal elder told them to get into their boats and leave before they got sick too. They did so, but it was hard.

“Others whose families were sick wanted to go too. The family that left in their canoes came upon another village, one that was happy to see them. But they didn’t go ashore. They communicated with their paddles that there was a sickness in their home village and they didn’t want to bring it to the ones on shore.

“So, the people on shore built big bonfires in their honor and they sang songs across the water to one another. There was much grieving. The next day the family in canoes left to find a new place to build a home and did not visit others until they knew the sickness was gone.

“They must have felt lonely, but they also wanted to keep the sickness from spreading.

Here is a fulsome portrait of Christ in a Mask. 

When did we see you isolated and lonely, cut off from friends and family?  You wore a mask, you visited us in a park and kept social distance.  You would not risk spreading this contagion to us or our family.  We sang songs to one another across the green.   Christ in a Mask.

Being part of the Jesus Movement in this time of great national upheaval and contention is a true test of faith.  As a political pugilist, I fear I often fail the test.  I hear from afar the Lord of all Hopefulness saying, “Fifteen minutes in the penalty box, Forney.”  For I was not the least bit hopeful, but a chastening rod.

After listening to our Presiding Bishop’s message to our diocese this week, I think I finally comprehended the enormity and the difficulty of the challenge.  When asked how one remained true to one’s commitment to equity and inclusion, how did one answer an opponent who was a white supremacist?  How did you relate to such a person as Christ might?

First, Bishop Michael said this was not an easy task.  Most difficult, one at which he often fails.

Second, Bishop Curry remembered an admonishment from an elder early on in the first days of his ministry.  You need to stand tall before that person with what you believed – stand tall but also humbly kneel at the same time before the image of God in that person.  Most difficult.  A superhuman request for many of us.

No matter the invective and racist innuendos, the slurs and the misogyny, without accepting that verdict and holding fast to the truth within yourself — realize that deep within this most wounded human being is the image of God.  Though well hidden.

His wise council caused me to remember a day, late in the afternoon when I was working for then Candidate Obama in Akron, Ohio.  I had been instructing high school students how to canvass a precinct.

The students had all left for home and I had just a couple of blocks remaining to finish that tract.  As the sun had set behind the trees and shadows lengthened, I came to an old battered, yellow, wood-frame house with peeling paint.  To step on the front porch was a broken leg waiting to happen, as it had mostly rotted out and was sinking into the front lawn.  Above the door hung both a tattered Marine Corps flag along with a very faded and threadbare American flag.  Not the hallmarks of what looked to be a progressive person, I thought.  But who knows?

A sign next to the doorbell said, “Deliveries Around Back.”  So, I trudged around the side of the house and up the driveway and knocked on a sliding glass door.  I could hear the sounds of a televised sports event as an elderly woman in a faded housedress cracked it open just a bit. 

What did I want?  She could see my Obama T-shirt and cap.  I told her I was from the campaign and would like to give her some information on Obama’s health plan.  She hesitated, then turned to whomever was watching the game and yelled, “Honey, who we voting for?” 

A voice came back, “The nigger.”  For a moment I was speechless.  That’s not how I was raised.  Then it began to sink in.  This was just how he was raised.  Since he was willing to give Obama his vote, I guessed he didn’t mean anything offensive about it.  As my pastoral counseling professor, Dr. Kemper used to say, “He’s just doing the best he can at this moment.”  This fellow just didn’t realize, or want to acknowledge, how hurtful that word is, not just to black people, but to many of the rest of us.

At this point, his wife was willing to take my literature and we talked a bit about where to vote and the hours of early voting. 

When we encounter those who use vile, offensive language, who believe in the most bazaar conspiracy theories about Democrats drinking children’s blood in the basements of pizza parlors – while most disgusting and unbelievable — let us acknowledge that somewhere, most hidden in that soul, is the Image of Christ.  How might we honor it while staying true to what we hold fast?  The same for those crazy, lefty adherents of Antifa.  Somewhere a wire gets crossed in too many of us.  Lord have mercy.

Maybe the best we can do at the moment is to wish our interlocuter, “Have a nice day,” and admit to that person, that we presently have not enough in common for a civil conversation today.  Maybe at some later time.  But not now.   And pray not only for them, but for patience and sufficient compassion to see beyond both our damaged exteriors.  Pray for the insight to see this person, to see ourselves, as doing the best we can at the moment.  And pray, trusting God to perfect the poor, pitiful results of that encounter, the bare surface the human eye presently sees

Christ is that Great and Good Shepherd who would gather all into the arms of Welcome, much as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.  Christ is that Power, living still today, leading the naive and hopeful to reach out to the homeless and hungry.  Christ is the Perseverance to go through the mountain of paperwork to bring publicly supported housing into being, especially in fearful, exclusionary cities – to see beyond excuses for exclusion. “We have no homeless here.”  Christ is the Foolishness to believe that we can actually make a difference.  Christly love is not some vapid sentimentalism.  It’s doing the right thing to keep our neighbors healthy, to save lives.

Christ in a Mask, moves us to put our neighbors first before our own prerogatives and rights.  In our retirement community there’s a sign: “Behind every mask is a person who cares.”  

Christ in a Mask inspires us, over the distance of time and political ideology, when this pestilence is over and done with, to sing songs back and forth to one another across the divide — to celebrate this Christ in a Mask who has shown us how to enter the eternal realm of LIFE ABUNDANT.

Amen.

November 22, 2020, Last Sunday in Pentecost

The Reign of Christ Proper 29

“Christ in a Mask”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 95:1-7a; Ephesians 1:15-23;
Matthew 25:31-46

The election is over.  Some may be gnashing their teeth.  Some may be rejoicing.  Whatever your political persuasion, it’s been a most frightful season.  Is it possible that we can ever put America back together again?

I’m reminded of one of our boys’ favorite books.  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.[1]  Alexander knew it was going to be a terrible day when he woke up with his chewing gum in his hair.  His best friend abandoned him.  On top of that, his mom had forgotten to put dessert in with his lunch and, One disaster after another.  Alexander knew partway through, it was going to be a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”  And it didn’t get any better that evening.  Yuck!  There was kissing on TV.  Alexander threatens to move to Australia, but nobody is listening.  Australia is his favorite go-to place to escape to when the world is against him.  I, myself, always consider France.  They eat very well there.

As his day comes to an end, Judith Viorst concludes this sad saga:

“The cat wants to sleep with Anthony, not with me.
It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

My mom says some days are like that.  Even in Australia.”

Much of Alexander’s terrible day is the scrapes and knocks a young boy goes through, especially the youngest of several siblings.  Stuff happens, and when it does our immature reaction so often makes it worse.

Amos paints the picture of really bad stuff the self-satisfied, religious elite will endure.  These are they who consider themselves most favored in the eyes of the Almighty, yet do not abide by the will of God when it comes to the poor and the socially marginal.  The religious phonies will indeed endure some terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, Amos predicts.

Through Amos’s thunderous excoriation, God breaks through smug self-delusion:

“Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!

     Why do you want the day of the Lord?

It is darkness, not light;

     As if someone fled from a lion,

     And was met by a bear;

Or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,

     And was bitten by a snake.”

And why all this grief for the favored and chosen?  It is because the institutions of religion, divorced from the substance of mercy and honesty are nothing.  It all rings hollow as pretense.

“I hate, I despise your festivals,

     And take no delight in your solemn assemblies……

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

     I will not listen to the melody of your harps.”

I come from the tribe of beautiful, stately worship.  Incense and fine vestments.  We have wonderful tracker organs and magnificent, chanting choirs.  We worship in stately buildings.  So why is God not pleased.

It is because too often, it’s only a Sunday morning show.  And not just my tribe.  When church becomes entertainment divorced from the needs of the “least of these,” it’s plastic, ersatz grace.  Such self-congratulatory religious exercises are an offense to the One of the Holy Torah who commanded justice and equity in the land, the One who reminded the faithful settled in the land that at one time they were all foreigners, strangers.  We are that caravan of dispossessed children at our southern border, though we don’t know it — though we dwell in fine houses and live fat on the land in splendid isolation from their desperation.

God, through Amos, promises the religiously smug a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  Many such days, for they are without vision or discernment  Yeah, we’re all there sometimes.

And such will be the case for the nation that does not abide by the very same standards of loving kindness and righteousness. (Remember the Hebrew word – tsaddik – that which we translate “righteousness,” should best be translated as solidarity —  as one who is in SOLIDARITY with one’s fellows.  It refers to a complete human being, one whose life carries the weight of doing what is right and just in the eyes of both God and all humanity.  It does NOT denote a pious goody-two-shoes demeanor.  It carries the full intent of the command to love the “Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

America, I believe, enfolds that commandment in our foundational documents.  We know the watch-words: “Liberty and justice for all.”  A “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  These intentions are the bedrock of who we are.  Or who we wish to be.  They are aspirational, not reality.

Unfortunately, we do not even come close to living up to that standards.  For much of our history, our solemn national occasions have rung hollow.  As Frederick Douglass, out of slavery in the 1800s, confronted the self-satisfied white establishment: “What is your Fourth of July to Me” is a speech Douglass was invited to give at a gathering of the well-to-do on the occasion of the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of to the Independence in Rochester, New York, July 5^th, 1852.

He gave this speech as one left out of the fine promises assumed for others.  This is an address which echoes Amos’s denunciations of the elites of his day, the piously indifferent.

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

Woe to that nation which does not live up to the simple standards of decency and fairness for ALL its citizens. 

We have been through one of the most contentious elections since that of Jefferson and that of Lincoln.  We are now at the politics of grievance and tribe.  Personalities and program matter not a wit.  The only determinant is, does the candidate have a “D” or a “R” following their name.

Too many throughout the land feel excluded from the high and lofty promises of our founders, whether they be a floor worker in a factory in the Midwest or a grocery checker in downtown East Los Angeles.  They resent those who abuse their authority whether as police or as a city planning clerk.

They have had it with an economy that has loaded them up with massive student debt or cheated them in a house mortgage with fine print only a well- trained lawyer could understand.

Now, in the midst of a pandemic reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt, we, our loved ones and neighbors are dying like flies.  The incompetence of our government in managing this disease staggers the mind.

Like those whom Amos addresses, like those to whom Frederick Douglas, James Madison, Jane Addams and Susan B. Anthony spoke, we have fallen far short.  Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy upon us.

What is the fine rhetoric or our anthem, its lofty vision — to the dejected family sitting at curbside with their worldly belongings piled up as trash?  What is the vision to the mother and father with no food in the cupboard?  What are the promises of this nation to that black family mourning the death of a son beaten by police at a traffic stop?  What mean these promises to a mentally ill homeless person living on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles?

We Americans on the conclusion of the election of 2020, find ourselves at each other’s throats.   We vilify those we judge to be responsible.  We seethe with anger and boil over with plots of conspiracy. 

Someone has to be responsible for this pitiful state of affairs.  Are we at the dead end of Sartre’s play, “No Exit”?  Are we doomed to a Hobbesian war of “all against all?”

LISTEN UP!  Amos does have a saving word, a restorative word.  Those with ears to hear, let them hear:

“But let justice roll down like waters,

    And righteousness (solidarity) like an ever-flowing stream.”

The cure is simple.  This truth is not so far away, so high that we need send someone afar to bring it to us.  It is right here, planted in the heart and mind of each of us.

We know what must be done.  We need only take a deep breath, accept the reality of our condition and allow the Divine Wisdom to flow through us.  We know how to treat neighbor as self.  This truth is not hidden or so obscure that only the smartest can discern it.  We know that when one suffers, all suffer — all are diminished.  We know this.  We learned it in Sunday School, in kindergarten.  We learned it at a parent’s knee.

As the South African saying goes, “I cannot be who I am meant to be unless you are who you are meant to be.”  That’s the principle of “Ubuntu.”  Call it “solidarity.”  We all rise together.

Let justice roll down like waters and solidarity like an ever-flowing stream.

What will get us there?  Listening, to start. 

As Joe and Kamala become our next president and vice-president, I would suggest the first order of business for them would be to pack suitcases, board the bus, and embark on a national “Listening Tour.”  Get out into our cities and suburbs, into our prairies and the foothills of Stone Mountain.  Talk with those who make the “amber waves of grain” happen.  Speak to workers on shop floors and students in the classrooms of our nation.  Simply listen.  Not just to the words but to the sentiments.  To the aspirations.  And ask that toughest question: “What are you willing to do to make it better?”  Of each of us — What am I willing to do?  What are you willing to do?  Today, we might have to do it all by Zoom instead of on the road.

If American does climb aboard, this train is bound for glory.  The glory of a reborn people fully alive.  Indeed, the glory of God!

At the end of it all, I want to be accounted among the tzaddikim — The Righteous.  I want to be numbered as among those abiding in Divine Solidarity with all the others.  Don’t you?  What greater hope?

What are we willing to do to become grounded in the reality of global warming, to become grounded in our national plight of poverty and homelessness, mental illness, addiction? 

Where might we make a difference for a child in a crap school deprived of the necessary resources and good teachers?  Are we willing to share and demand fairness in our tax codes that we overcome present economic realities – where just thirty some families have as many marbles as one half the nation? 

America, “I set before you the ways of life and death.  Choose life that you and your descendants may live.”  That you may enjoy the bounty of this land.

Are we, in the face of this pestilence, willing to do our part — to wear masks and social distance?  Yes, it’s a pain.  So was Valley Forge and the Edmund Pettis Bridge march.  So were the beaches of Normandy and the killing fields of Vietnam.  So is slogging through a chemistry textbook and learning all those Latin names in a zoology class.  A total pain.  Citizenship is hard, requires effort.  Every single day.

Matthew reminds us that the reality of this holy vision is like unto an approaching bridegroom to the wedding feast.  Our sole responsibility is to be ready to celebrate the feast.  We are simply asked to rejoice in the happiness of the couple soon to be united as one. 

We are summoned to embrace opportunity before us, lying fallow in fields of despair and anger.  We but must ready hearts to greet it, like an approaching bridegroom.  Like a bride anticipated at the altar as she approaches down the center aisle.  Christ only enters the open door of the heart and mind.  Love does not force.

Look at the promise, as the feast is ready and the band strikes up the beat.

“Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul.  I want to get lost in your rock-n-roll and drift away, drift away.”  Drift away into the delicious imagination of God’s glorious possibility.  Set before us.  Always approaching, never quite arriving. 

Such a nation will flourish.  Such a people so grounded are like a mighty tree planted by a living stream.  Such a people will flourish and be a blessing to the nations.  Such a nation will do its part.

Let our God’s honest truth and mercy flow through us.  Today, tomorrow – we need it more than ever.  

Yes, there are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.  Even in Australia.  Even in America.  Sometimes an adder hidden on the wall.

But we are not left as orphans with no hope.  Let God’s ever Loving-Kindness, God’s Justice, God’s Truth, God’s Liberty – a vision already implanted in our very being — flow through us.  Amen.

---

[1] Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (New York:  Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1987).

November 8, 2020, Pentecost 23

Proper 27

“A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Amos 5:18-24; Psalm 70; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18;
Matthew 25:1-13

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.

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[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.

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[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”