Looking at our president’s business history, I remember telling my wife that we could be a lot richer if I followed his example.  First, stiff all the workers and if they complained, threaten them with massive lawsuits.  Secondly, strip all the assets from our company and pocket the money.  Third, declare bankruptcy to get out of all our financial obligations. Lastly, walk away, laughing all the way to the bank.  The Art of the Deal, right?

Yes, we would have a lot more money.  And in the process, we would have lost our soul.

Life is not about whoever dies with the most toys wins.  That’s not the Main Thing.

Amos similarly warns that greed is not the point of the glorious heritage of Israel.  He excoriates those thieving merchants who jigger the scales to rob the poor, “buying the poor for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”  And these vulture capitalists can’t wait for the sabbath to be over so they can go at it again the next week.

Nothing is new under the sun.  In the same way, most of our major banking institutions have been caught up in the same greed.  I was personally the victim of the fake accounts Wells Fargo set up for their customers, draining their accounts each month with bogus fees.  And we customers were completely unaware of these phantom accounts.  Millions of these accounts were created out of thin air to bilk us out of our hard-earned money.   These folks didn’t even wait for the sabbath to be over.  And Wells Fargo didn’t have far to go to laugh all the way to the bank.

JP Morgan Chase hid hundreds of thousands of payments from scrutiny that Jeffrey Epstein made to run his international sex trafficking ring.  Transactions which should have been by law reported to the FDIC.  The reason for this provision is to prevent money laundering.  A blind eye was turned at that bank.  Who got paid off?  And how much did they rake in on these suspicious transactions?  And Jeffrey Epstein laughed all the way to his bordello.

Under this administration no charges have been filed.  No surprise here.  No, nothing new under the sun.  Only one person sits in jail to account for an international sex trafficking ring involving hundreds of girls – and in a country club jail at that!  What’s the pay off?  A future get-out-of-jail-free card?

Is the Main Thing a hoard of wealth?  Or might it be a life of integrity lived in solidarity with one’s neighbors?  The Jewish theologian Martin Buber nailed it.  God is Relationship. 

My friend Jim always reminds me when I go off on a tangent with our House of Hope project, “Let’s keep the main thing the main thing.”  Jesus and the prophets, the body of the Torah reminds us again and again of the “Main Thing.”  It is a compassionate life with others that opens the door to eternity.

Now today we come to this perplexing parable in Luke of the “Unjust Steward.”  Hearing rumors in the marketplace that his steward is crooked, the master calls him to serve notice.  The steward knows he’s screwed if he doesn’t take immediate, drastic action. 

After all, the tenancy system of that time and place was screwing most everyone.  Except the landlord.  And even Caesar and his tax collectors had his claws into him.

The steward calls in the master’s creditors.  Tells them to jigger their accounts.  If you owe 50 denarii, here write in the books, 10.  Or maybe 5.  You owe 50 ephahs of wheat, write 7.

In this way, when this steward was out on the streets, maybe some of these former business colleagues will have pity and give him a job, or at least some charity.

Now, get this!  Jesus praises the steward for his shrewdness.  His larcenous savvy has saved his hide.  Even in unjust systems, the children of this age are shrewder than the children of light in dealing with corrupt systems.

What to make of this parable?  One commentary said, tongue in cheek, there are as many interpretations as there are readers.

Perhaps a minor digression, but a juicy story.  One writer in Christian Century has a marvelous recounting of a disastrous attempt to preach this parable to a group of students assembled in the school auditorium of their evangelical high school.[1]

First of all, this speaker, an ego-inflated, puffed-up jock whipped out a football, I guess to substantiate his credentials as a real he-man.  He asked if any out in the audience would volunteer to catch his pass.  One eager student raised his hand and the speaker uncorked a perfect spiral.  Unfortunately, the receiver was not in the same league as the passer.  He bobbled the catch which hit the student behind him in the face who was soon carried off to receive medical attention.

Things went downhill from there.  The speaker, puffing out his chest as he tried to unravel this most difficult parable, bobbed and weaved.  Inanity followed inanity leading to nothing anyone remembered.  Certainly, the narrator of the incident remembered nothing.  Except that it was awful.

Like that hapless receiver, most of us are not in a league to catch the purpose of this parable.  Don’t feel inadequate if you find it terribly mystifying.  With this one it’s easy to go astray.  So, here’s my take.  Hopefully, I can do a bit better than our jock expositor.

If there is anything commendable in this parable, it is that when the chips were down, the steward decided and took action.  Just as those who might hear the Gospel’s call to life abundant and choose action — leave their boats and nets to follow this Living Word through the door to Eternity. 

I came across a marvelous story of a woman, who was caught in one of the upper floors of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and has taken such dramatic, life-enhancing action.[2]

Jocelyn Brooks was on the 40^th floor when the plane hit her building, about an hour after she had arrived for work. The whole building shook and she thought, “This is it.”  Outside the window she saw thick black smoke and debris raining down along with people leaping from windows to avoid being burned alive. 

She thought she was going to die.  Gathering her wits, she left her backpack and cellphone behind as she ran to the staircase.  By now it was overcrowded with people descending and firefighters ascending.

She came upon one woman whose progress was stalled, grasping a handrail. Gasping for air, the woman shouted, “I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.”  Brooks said she thumped her on the chest for about a minute and told her to breathe until she calmed down.

When Jocelyn got clear of the building, she had a clear vision on what the Main Thing was going forward.  Amidst the debris and body parts, the smoke and anguished screams.  For her, the Main Thing was clear.  As clear as it was for those fishermen who eagerly left their nets so long ago on that lakeshore.

When she looked around through the carnage, saw the clear blue sky, she realized she had been given a whole new life.  She had two thoughts, she needed to see her two boys grow up to be adults, and she needed to be a nurse.

Surviving seemed like the hand of fate, she said, and she wasn’t going to waste it.

In that clarifying moment, Jocelyn knew what she wanted to do.
“I must become a nurse,” Brooks recalled thinking. “I’m getting a chance, and I am going to do it.”  Every bit as clarifying a moment as that of a steward who heard he was about to be canned.

And she has – and still does at 62 at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  By a bedside she takes the time to hold someone’s hand “because I survived.”  She often trades stories with cancer patients sick as a result of the toxins they inhaled on that fateful day. The Main Thing indeed!

She daily brings a joy to her work.  Her colleagues often remark on the spirit she brings to the entire unit.

“’She just has such a gentle, caring way about her that I’ve never seen in any other nurse,’ said Brooks’s colleague, Rachel Lemmey.

On busy mornings when manynurses are overwhelmed, Lemmey said, Brooks is enthusiastic and gives a pep talk that Lemmey recites back to herself.

‘We’re going to get through the day together,’ Brooks said she tells her colleagues. ‘And it’s going to be a great day.’”[3]

Keep that Main Thing at the heart of your days as Jocelyn does, and you’re going to find that “It’s going to be a great day.”  Every day!  All the way to the Promised Land.  Amen.

---

[1] Jon Mathieu, “Wait, What’s the Point of This Parable? Christian Century, September 21, 2025.  The story he tells on the Parable of the Unjust Steward.

[2] Kyle Melnick, “She survived 9/11, then began a life of healing others,” Washington Post, September 11, 2025.

[3] Ibid.

September 21, 2025
Pentecost 15, Proper 20
Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113;
1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

“On Keeping the Main Thing, the Main Thing”

On some days when I would arrive at the Long Beach office of our family construction company, which I helped my dad run, I would find him to be in an absolute tizzy, frantically hunting for his hearing-aids he had misplaced.  Sometimes we would spend the first hour or so of my day there hunting.  Nothing but nothing could happen until they were found.

It’s the same with my keys or sometimes my glasses if I have taken them off during the day.  We all know that obsession that can only be ended with eureka, I’ve found it.  Finally!

In the book of Exodus Moses is told to get his butt down the mountain muy pronto.  The people he led out of Egyptian slavery have yielded to a new slavery.  Every bit as pernicious and soul-sucking — a golden calf.

This idol will only subject them to the theocrats who set it up.  It will not get them to any promised land.  They’ve lost their way.  Destruction will be the end result.  And God’s going to lower the boom – which will only be the logical consequences of such a disastrous choice.

Moses arrives on the scene at the critical moment.  He reminds the people of how far they’ve come from slavery.  He recalls the improbable and mighty acts of God that got them thus far.  He pleads with God.  And God’s mind is changed.

Like those nomads Moses led, we in America have lost our way.  The signs are as obvious and as bright as a golden calf.

Who will intercede for us who have lost the true way?  Who will help us recall the glorious moments of our journey that got us thus far?  Will we listen?

That is a key question:  will we listen?  Will we attend to the looming danger?

In a recent issue of The Economist, there was an article on the mental health of our youth.[1]  In longitudinal studies of well-being, previous generations pointed to experiencing significant despair in their 40s and 50s.  Gen Z reports even higher levels of despair in their early 20s.

There seem to be multiple factors involved.  Especially, among the less educated, work no longer provides the protective effect against poor mental health.  My suspicion is that this is in part due to the transient nature of employment and the decline in union membership which provided essential face-to-face solidarity and support.  I remember going to union picnics with friends whose fathers were union members.  The comradery was palpable.  Not so today.  Without unions a strong ingredient of social cohesion is missing – from picnics, to bowling leagues to meetings at the union hall.

Another factor in poor sense of well-being is social media and cellphones.  Many of our young people have lost their way.  Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, in a new and definitive book on the psyche of our young people, documents the anxiety and depression of this new generation.[2]

One reviewer writes, “Jonathan Haidt is a modern-day prophet, disguised as a psychologist.  In this book he’s back to warn us of the dangers of a phone-based childhood…”  So says Susan Cain, the bestselling author of Bittersweet and Quiet.[3] A prophet indeed.  A prophet we ignore to this generation’s peril.

He lays out the addictive aspect to the mathematical algorithms that suck in the users of social media.  He describes in painful detail the battle royale that ensues in many families around these smartphones.

These devices can be deadly – this is not hyperbole.  The other day I saw a pedestrian almost run over in a parking lot while totally immersed in his cellphone.  Not aware of his surroundings at all, weaving his way through traffic.  I was tempted to yell out the window, “Hey, mister, when you get killed, can I have your phone?”

More pernicious than a traffic accident is what social media has done to our face-to-face support systems.  Like the family, like school, like faith communities.  In ways, large and small, we have lost our way.

Think back to your childhood.  The most exciting memories were of times you spent outdoors with your friends.  Even those times that were a bit risky.

When in the sixth grade I got a new bicycle, a 10-speed racer, an entirely new world opened up.  Of course, the first thing we were told was, don’t go to far.  Stay right around the neighborhood or just bike to school.  Especially my folks didn’t want me peddling to the Pike in downtown Long Beach. 

And of course, where was one of the first places I and my buddies went on a bright Saturday morning?  To the Pike.

The Pike with its vast assortment of carnival rides and game booths was a notorious destination in WWII for sailors on shore-leave.  It had, at best, a tawdry reputation with flim-flam men and ladies of the evening and other assorted scammers and pickpockets.  No, you don’t want your kid down there.

By the time we biked down there it had been cleaned up quite a bit, but still had that bad reputation, especially among our parents.  Definitely off limits for us young boys.

Much of that outdoors adventure has evaporated for many of our teenagers.  Their souls are sucked into some damned electronic device.  They think they have lots of friends on Facebook, yet in reality these are just acquaintances to pass away the hours with trivia.  No face-to-face contact, the essential ingredient of what makes us human, what builds community.

We are all on journey, our nation is on a journey.  Not unlike that of the people Moses led.  Such adventures are fraught with danger as well as promise.

In the journey of the soul, Dante begins his poem, The Inferno.  “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost…I cannot rightly say how I entered it. I was so full of sleep, at that point where I abandoned the true way…”

Too often in the early years, the true way is lost.  As early as the late 1980s, Haidt notes the transition from a play-based to a phone-based childhood.  Yes, we cannot rightly say where the direct way was lost, so insidiously it crept up on us — with the full connivence and foreknowledge of the pushers of this addictive electronic drug.

He documents parents and their children lost in cell phone addiction.  Or if the parents seek to guard their kids’ mental health, the battles that too often result, especially around the dinner table.

“Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and – as I will show – unsuitable for children and adolescents.”[4]

Too many of today’s teens are “sucked into spending hours and hours each day scrolling through shiny happy posts of friends, acquaintances and distant influencers.”[5]

To find these lost and lonely kids – that must be our mission.  As parents, grandparents and friends.  Every bit as urgent as God, imagined as a desperate woman frantically hunting for a lost coin.  As desperate as God’s prophet Moses, struggling to reclaim his people’s freedom.  As desperate as Dante fearing the true way has been utterly lost.

So, to find these lost and lonely souls?

Haidt says that early, collective action is essential.  We now know the harmful effects of social media.  Far worse than anything that might happen at the Pike.  First of all, we need to become aware of the scope and depth of this danger.  Both parents and their children.

One girl who has come out of electronic addiction recounts:

“What made it so addictive was that I just wanted to fit in with my peers.  I didn’t want to miss anything, because if I missed anything then I was out of the loop, and if I was out of the loop, then kids would laugh at me or make fun of me for not understanding what was going on, and I didn’t want to be left out.”[6]

Your phone is a drug.  Know the danger every bit as you know the danger of heroin, gamboling or alcohol.

Parents, grandparents, early on guide your children and grandchildren into healthy, outdoor activities.  And be there with them.  Little League, outdoor camping trips, trips to museums.  Yes, even the Pike (though it’s since been demolished – even the highest wooden roller coaster on the West Coast – all gone.  So sad. Though I remember being scared spitless the one time I rode it on a dare).

Insist on quality face-to-face time without phones or tablets on.  At dinner time, allot at least one meal for the entire family without electronic intrusions.  Phones off.  Even, especially, for the adults.  Present adults are what these young folks need.  Even though they may protest.

To find the lost and lonely, ever the goal.

Support school districts in their mandates that phones go off during school hours.  The addicted will scream and shout as if you were ripping on their arms or subjecting them to some diabolical torture.  Stay strong and demand your school board has a policy in place.  Lockable pouches for phones. 

Parents need to support each other, stick together.

Engage your children in a faith community or if secular, in a public service community like Sierra Club or in political action against the wayward violations of our Constitution, norms and values.  I can’t tell how many political activists recall how at young ages a parent brought them to political demonstrations.  Also, a wonderful grandparent activity with young ones.  Pack a picnic, make a sign together.  Have fun and meet likeminded people. 

Do some good cooking together.  The fun’s in the making and the delight is in the tasting.  And the hours will fly by in great smells and life-giving conversation.  A reason some cuisines are called “soul food.”

Get a croquet set or toss a baseball with your young one.  They’ll love it and so will you.  Good healthy exercise.  A gym membership together is also a winner.  Soul-making physical exertion.

A family cross-country driving trip to see the splendors of America and our historical heritage.  Visit a national park or a presidential museum.  Visit a college to implant the idea of an educated future.

Use your imagination.  It’s the Spirit’s breeding ground.  And you will find the lost and lonely.  I guarantee it.

To find the lost soul of our nation; for this democracy depends on an educated and engaged citizenry.  Not an addicted populace.

Check out the Center for Humane Technology, an organization created by the former Google ethicist Tristan Harris.  He is offering solutions and laying out initiatives to stem the tide of attention theft.

To find the lost and lonely in this electronic age is every bit as essential as is the Spirit moving through a desperate old lady hunting for her lost coin.  It’s the Gospel mandate.  And in the finding, we together, might find our souls – lost somewhere in the journey of life, we cannot quite recall how or when.

The Gospel mandate is to stay strong, every bit as strong as those Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  Remember, that fake calf is a drug that won’t take you anywhere good.

To find the lost and lonely; and in the seeking we might also find ourselves and discover a smidge of the Glory of God.  Amen.

---

[1] “Teenage Angst,” The Economist, August 30, 2025.

[2] Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (New York: Penguin Press, 2024).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Op cit., 6.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Op cit., 222.

September 14, 2025
Pentecost 14, Proper 19
Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 51:1-11;
1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

“To Seek the Lost and Lonely”

Last week when weighing in at the dialysis clinic I was chatting with some of the technicians who know I’m a clergyperson and always welcome me with the greeting, “Father.”  They also know a little of our work with our Garden of Hope at St. Francis and ask me how the watermelons are coming along.  “Haven’t planted them yet,” I reply.  “The coyotes ate up some of our dripline irrigation.”

I mentioned that in our evening family prayer I often give thanks for how well they keep me in good health so I can be about my work.  To which one of the older fellows responded, “Pray for my soul.”  I told him that I would indeed pray that he, in cooperation with God, be about good soul-making work.  Spiritual development is not a spectator sport.  Not done by proxy.

The action required is choice. 

The Torah injunction is to choose life.  “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.  If you obey the commandments of  the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways and observing his commandments, decrees and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess…Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…”

To choose life is to choose Truth.

This week many of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell chose Life in speaking their truth of what they had endured.

These brave women, after hiding in years of shame and guilt spoke what this administration has gone to unbelievable lengths to cover up – the predations of Epstein and Maxwell, and their associates — and how it was all swept under the rug.

As one woman demanded, her voice quaking, how is it that she, Maxwell, is the only one in jail when hundreds of others were involved?  How is she the only one answering for these crimes?

What is the sweetheart deal that kept the entire tawdry affair secret?  Letting hundreds off the hook.  After all, this was an international sex trafficking operation.  Surely more than just two persons were involved.  Who are they protecting?  And now she’s in a “country club” jail – explicitly forbidden for sex offenders.  How is that?

Her question is our question.  And what are the House Republicans, the see-no-evil-hear-no-evil crowd, trying to hide by keeping the hundreds of thousands of pages of this episode, the video tapes, the FBI files, hidden?

That Trump’s Republican supporters have attempted to sweep this all under the rug and deny these women their voice, this is despicable.  You might even say “deplorable.”  They are complicit in these crimes in their cover-up.  Most of all, the dismissive Rape President[1] who cries, “Hoax, hoax, hoax,” as these women recounted the horrors of their ordeal.  Do the jobs of The Donald’s Republican sycophants in Congress count for more than their souls, than the soul of this nation?

By sharing their story, these victims, some as young as 14 when first abused, have chosen Life.  And we who dare to listen, to “read, mark and inward digest” the testimony of these brave women have chosen Life.  As painful as all this is to take in.

Elie Wiesel counsels, “Always take sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”[2]

In hearing these women out, our nation is choosing the Truth of this perverse and corrupt presidency.  And that Truth shall eventually set us free.  Yes, it will be costly to have our tawdry laundry on full display to the derision of the civilized world.  It will be a huge dish of humble pie.  And we will have earned every mouthful.

To enter into the Truth of these women’s testimony is soul-making.  Nowhere does scripture say that this is easy or fun.

Speaking of fun – consider the fun that deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislain Maxwell were having on the tape of his interview with her.  Lawrence O’Donnell, on his Tuesday evening program, spoke of his disgust at the laughter from all in that room that filled much of the tape of that interview.  They spent several hours yucking it up at the expense of the trauma Maxwell’s victims endured.  Absolutely horrific!  The banality of it all is astounding. 

The disrespect for these women that this president and his administration, his Republican toadies in Congress, continue to display is nauseating.  These abominations, the sexual abuse of children, reek to the highest heavens.  To call their testimony a hoax is the most damnable lie yet of this wretched administration.

This presidency continues to drag our nation through the most putrefying of vile sewers.  Once we come, or enough of us come; to realize the reality and extent of our Fall, Life will begin to shoot forth green sprouts.  It presently is, thanks be to God.

America, these women will restore our national soul.

Never mind the utter incompetence of the appointees of this administration.  Never mind that Republicans in states they control, they are banning schools, first in Florida, the requirement of  vaccinations.  That we are giving up on the fight against polio and pertussis, measles and Covid19.  That stupidity seems not to register with Trump’s supporters.

Never mind that hundreds of notable, reputable scientists have castigated the most recent report on global warming coming out of EPA this past week.  Denounced it as weak and dismissive of the existential crisis this planet faces – that climate tipping points have been reached and now crossed, leading to irreversible consequences for a habitable world.

Never mind that that the newest best buddies of this president are not our allies but the most notorious autocrats and murderous war criminals since the Axis of WWII.  Never mind that Putin continues to bomb Ukraine with impunity while this president is in denial that he is being played for a chump.

Never mind any of that.

The Truth that will set us free of this corrupt, incompetent regime is the stories of these victims.  It is the rage of these women who will bring down the whole rotten mess of this despicable government — and every single one of their cowardly apologists.  Mark my words.   And great will be the fall of it.  Right around November, 2026.

When these women join together to assemble their own list of all the other perpetrators, the high and mighty, the foundations of this stale and rotten propriety will shake top to bottom.  As Jesus in Luke counsels, propriety and secondary claims must be put in the context of the Gospel call to God’s love and justice.  Yes, indeed, what are they trying to hide.  Let these women count the ways!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns us that Grace of such Truth ??? can be quite costly.  I discovered that early on in my college years when I lost a girlfriend over the fair housing issue.  Her father owned apartments, and she couldn’t understand why I would be supporting “those people” in their rights to rent them.

What I lost was nothing.  Absolutely nothing compared to what these women have sacrificed in coming forward – the reliving of the trauma of their ordeal all over again.  Yet their testimony is God’s Liberation – Life itself.

The admonition is before us each and every day.  Choose Life that you may live and your children after you.

On many days I fear for the world that we are leaving to my new grandson soon to be born in a couple of weeks (more or less).  But when I heard these women speak on the “News Hour,” [or were you watchng The Last Word?] my spirit soared.  I was filled with hope, and pride that we in America can still imbibe at the living fountain of such dangerous Truth.  National soul-making. 

What can you do?  Call your representatives and demand transparency.  Raise hell in the checkout line and wherever you have an impromptu audience.  Write letters to the editor.  Do not let the enormity of these crimes slide in casual conversations.  No. they do not all do it!  Donate to the opposition, those willing to stand for Truth.  Take sides.  This will be your soul-making.

As Lawrence O’Donnell typically closes his show, these women get “The Last Word.”  The God’s Gospel Truth.  We and our children and grandchildren will be blessed by its telling and retelling down through the generations.  Amen.

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[1]  In the filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, he stated at Trump’s sentencing that while the jury did not explicitly convict the president of rape, his actions fit the definition of rape as most people would understand the term.  The Washington Post, July 19, 2023.

[2] From Bits and Pieces, Chicago, IL, September 2025.

September 7, 2025
Pentecost 13, Proper 18
Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1;
Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

Intentional Soul Making

We are creatures of habit.  When I look around the church on any Sunday morning, I can pretty much predict where I will find everyone seated.  We also are creatures of prerogative and entitlement.  We know who belongs where.

There’s a story told of one of the first Black women who showed up for worship at All Saints in Pasadena.  As she sat up toward front waiting for the service to begin, she overheard two women behind her speaking loudly enough so she would hear, “Why don’t they just go to their own church?”  “What’s she doing here anyway?” the other commented.

She paid them no mind.  She’d heard it all before.

After the service was over folks had stayed for coffee, conversation and the action tables out in the patio.  Afterwards, she found her car and was leaving, driving past the front of the church.  There she saw one of the two woman who had been sitting behind her out there on the standing at the curbside in the sweltering heat.  She pulled over, leaned out the window and asked her if she needed a ride home.

That offer began a fifty-year friendship.  Some days it’s all about who’s sitting where and coincidence, and where the Spirit plops us down. 

We shouldn’t be so presumptuous about such things, the book of Sirach consuls its readers.  “For the beginning of pride is sin, and the one who clings to it pours out abominations, Therefore the Lord brings upon them unheard of calamities and destroys them completely.”

Likewise, Luke.  “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place…’”

And if you’re throwing a party “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind and you will be blessed.”  And they will have the best seats in the house.

So, who would you choose for those coveted seats?  Who might God choose?

It might be thirty-six Mayan women who fought back, who refused to accept their degradation by government paramilitaries during Guatemala’s civil war.  They were systematically raped and brutalized for months on end by these roving patrols of government-supported thugs.[1]

Because they lived in remote villages, these Achi Mayan women were at the mercy of these men looking for subversives and anyone cooperating with the other side.  When rounded up, some of the victims were as young as 12 and 14, raped and held captive for weeks on end – the age of some of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s victims.

Four decades later, dozens of these women have come together to prosecute their attackers for crimes against humanity.  These women, many in their 80s, now have a last chance to see these man brought to justice.  The final case went to trial this past April.

Others have stepped forward to confront other crimes committed during that brutal civil war.  A war conducted by the brutal dictator Efrain Rios Montt, supported by the U.S. as more then 200,000 were killed or disappeared, most civilians.  U.S. foreign policy at its finest.

One of the survivors of a most notorious massacre, Jesús Tecú Osorio, then just a child, worked for months on a farm after being abducted by a patroller.  In 1993 he led an effort by the survivors of the killings in their village to prosecute the perpetrators, including those who murdered his entire family.

While interviewing survivors, he came across those Achi Mayan women who had been abducted and raped by the patrollers and soldiers.  Could these men be prosecuted for sexual violence as they had been for their role in the massacres?

He, working with many of these women, decided to try.  With the legal aid society that Jesús had created, lawyers, also Mayan, began meeting with many of the women in Rabinal to build a case.

For years, these women had sheltered in anonymity, barely speaking of the horrors they had endured.  Brutal assaults that left some pregnant.  Many suffered miscarriages.  One victim said she never even told her husband what had happened.

As they continued meeting, their courage grew.  “I feel more like talking, because it isn’t just me.”[2]

In 2014 the first case went to trial.  While only a few were named as plaintiffs, the case relied on the testimony of all 36.
 
One woman, Paulina Ixpatá Alvarado had been held 25 days at the barracks.  She took the stand to describe to the judges how she and others had endured the nightly assaults.

After a landmark ruling in the women’s favor, another judge freed the imprisoned men, “finding the women’s testimonies insufficient, and dismissed the case.”[3]

Again, these strong women banded together and managed to get that judge removed.

“For years [Paulina’s] community had cautioned against speaking out, believing nothing would be done. ‘That’s why we have to persist,’ she said in an interview.  ‘Because if we leave it be, it will stay like this – sealed away.’”[4]

These courageous women and their supporters, Jesús and his companions at the legal aid society he founded — these will have front row seats at the Banquet of Life.  Serving has already begun.

And we are blessed by their courage and perseverance.  In the face of the growing totalitarianism in our own nation, the Spirit has provided all patriots the courage to resist.  How dare we, in the face of what these Guatemalan women have endured…how dare we stay silent!

Daily we have front row seats to the opportunity for involvement.  The sign urges, “If you see something, say something.”

That’s what I do in the checkout line at the supermarket.  My opening is there in the increase in grocery prices.  In a very loud voice, I castigate the effects of Trump’s tariffs.  How my coffee prices have gone up 20 percent.  How we can barely afford hamburger anymore.  “Is this what we voted for?” I ask those standing with me in a raised voice.  Then I’m on to the Jeffery Epstein sex scandal, Trump’s buddy for 10 years.  What did he know and when did he know it?  And what are they hiding?  Yes, by golly, by then I’m on a roll.

This is what Sister Simone Campbell of “Nuns on the Bus” calls “checkout line evangelism.”  Helen asked me as I explained my method, “Is Jai kicking you in the ankle by now?”

Given what these Achi Mayan women have endured and their courage to come forth, my meager protest pales in comparison.  Nothing on the order of Jeremiah’s dramatic diatribes.  Or Elijah’s excoriations of King Ahab.

Like that old gospel hymn, “Down to the River to Pray” …”studying about that good old way and who shall wear the starry crown.  Good Lord, show me the way.”

Like those Achi women who in their courage and fortitude now wear that starry crown, that’s where I want to be headed.

Like a young ten-year-old boy who threw himself on top of a classmate and took the bullet himself in a Minnesota mass shooting this past week at a Catholic school.  That kid already wears that starry crown.  And has a front row seat at the Lord’s table.

And when the heavenly banquet is served up, here are the seats of honor.  Reserved for those who have washed their white robes in the blood of the slaughtered.  Reserved for those who put stranger and friend first.  Reserved for those who have endured unimaginable suffering in Guatemala and Gaza.

In the meantime, we lend our feeble efforts to building up the Kin-dom of God, the Beloved Community.  Trusting that the Spirit will have a reserved seat for us at that table.  Just as long as I get there before the coffee’s gone and the beer’s finished.

In the meantime, “studying about that good old way and who shall wear the starry crown.  Good Lord, show me the way.”  Good Lord, show me the way.  Amen.

---

[1] Annie Corral, “The 36 Who Fought Back,” New York Times Magazine, August 10, 2025.

[2] Op cit., 30.

[3] Op cit., 32.

[4] Ibid.

August 31, 2025
Pentecost 12, Proper 17
Sirah 10:12-18; Psalm 112;
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

We are a distracted nation.  I see folks walking down the sidewalk in front of my house, their faces in their phones.  Having no idea of what’s going on around them.

Kids in restaurants with their parents, what might be quality family time, but in their phones.  And sometimes it’s also the parents captivated by their phones.

We’re bombarded with hundreds of messages daily seeking to get our attention.  Overwhelmed, I sometimes have several tens of thousands of e-mails awaiting my attention at my inbox.

With such competition, how can God possibly get a few moments of our undivided attention?  Only when things get catastrophic, or unusually emotionally disturbing.  Or sometimes so radiantly beautiful it knocks our socks off.  Or when something so deeply speaks to our heart that we’re speechless.

The little vignette in Luke is all about attention.

Jesus is an itinerant, homeless street preacher who happens upon the home of two unmarried sisters.  He’s tired and hungry and initially they must be overjoyed to have the change of routine this visitor presents.

Not only does Jesus violate custom by imposing on these two women, but he’s soon pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable.  He soon fills the house with his presence, takes it over.  He invites both women to “tremble forth into their souls” as he expounds on what makes for life – humility, generosity, patience, truth, justice among other matters.

But Martha is too busy with extraneous busyness.  She is all about herself – me, me, me she proclaims three times.  Jesus notes her distraction, and yet there she might be, before Holy Ground – at his feet.

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”  In his rebuke, Jesus invites Martha to also sit as his feet also where Eternity is revealed.

In that moment, the presence of the Lord is asking both women, “May I have your attention?”

In the midst of our infernal busyness of phones and meetings, that voice still echoes, “May I have your attention?”

The summons comes through the excruciating pain of ICE raids.  The stories of inhumanity cry out to the heavens.  Pain our Lord embraces utterly and completely.  Holy Ground.

Matilde, from Mexico, age 54 – not a threat to anyone, every day worked her taco cart, providing for herself in Pacoima.  Every day, early in the morning she set up her business, selling tacos and tamales near Lowe’s.[1]

As ICE agents began swarming the parking lot, grabbing up anyone with dark skin, she began hastily taking down her stand.

One agent, no identification ran up to her, provided no warrant, never asked about her immigration status, but grabbed her from behind and held her in a suffocating bear hug.  “I could feel his vest on my ear.  ‘I told him I couldn’t breathe.’”

The agent pulled up her shirt exposing her bra.  As she tried to pull her shirt down the agent applied more force.

Matilde can’t exactly remember what happened next because she fainted from lack of oxygen.  She came to on the ground crying, “I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.  “’My chest hurts.’

But they didn’t listen.  They ignored me.”

“I looked up at the tree where I had a picture of the Virgin posted and began to pray, ‘Virgin Mary, please help me, don’t abandon me.  I don’t want to die.”

Another agent came up who identified himself as a paramedic.  She told him that she had high blood pressure and was a diabetic and that her chest was hurting.

Though someone dialed 911, they left her on the ground unattended.  Videos taken by bystanders show her now on the ground unconscious.

One woman in the crowd screamed in Spanish at one agent, “You have Latino blood!”  Another, “Does it feel good doing this?

When Matilde arrived at the hospital, the doctor told her she was fortunate that her veins weren’t too clogged.  Otherwise, she would have to have been rushed into open heart surgery.  She was told that she had had a minor heart attack.

In all 29 years she has lived in this country, she could never have imagined that America would have come to this.

She is now kept sleepless many nights from anxiety and pain.  Because of the bruises on her arms and legs she can’t do much, not even cook.

She and her husband had come here for the opportunity and to send money back to relatives still in Mexico.  They have raised a family, paid taxes and abided by the laws of their new home.  Her 28-year-old daughter is a nurse and her 15-year-old son wants to go to college. 

“We both suffered from our sacrifice…but we wanted a better future for our kids…we wanted things just to be better.”

To stand before both the pain and the hope of Matilde’s story is to stand on Holy Ground.  If God doesn’t have your attention through the aching humanity of this story, you are as hopeless as Martha.  Just flitting about, a complete flibbertigibbet.

And yet, I would imagine, Jesus still asks of the Martha in each one of us, “May I have your attention?”

While overwhelming sorrow and pain is the Holy Ground Jesus enfolds in his own being, so also is unimaginable beauty.  Gaze upon the Milky Way and perceive the Holy asking, “May I have your attention?”

As the hymn proclaims in the second verse, “Lord, how thy wonders are displayed, where e’er I turn my eye, if I survey the ground I tread, or gaze upon the sky.”[2]  Yes — may I have your attention?

This week I opened the science section of the New York Times and gazed upon spectacular beauty revealed in the photo covering the entire lead page, God had my complete and undivided attention.  It was our universe; that’s right, the whole shebang laid out right before my eyes.[3]

With a new telescope in Chile, we will now be able to stitch together, photo by photo, the panorama of the entire universe in exquisite detail.  Looking back almost to the time of the Big Bang. 

Thousands of galaxies in this one small frame, dating back to almost the beginning of it all.  Millions upon millions of galaxies we’ve never before seen.  Imagine the billions of stars they must contain with multiples of planets orbiting most of them.  It astounds with Glory.

This was a story of the Vera C. Rubin telescope perched high in the mountains in northern Chile.  Dr. Rubin and her team were the ones to first postulate the presence of dark energy and dark matter.  Dark matter is that mysterious energy propelling the ever- increasing expansion of the universe, gaining velocity with each passing second.  Discoveries that would transform the study of astronomy.  One of her colleagues commented, “She was the ultimate role model for women in astronomy in the generation after her.”[4]

Just as an aside, this, the Befuddled Administration, in their signature legislation passed this week – the Big Bodacious Boondoggle — reduced funding to the National Science Foundation by 56 percent – a significant reduction in any D.E.I. efforts.  The sort of effort that would bring a stellar scientist (pun intended) like Dr. Vera Rubin to the fore.  How crazy is that?  But I digress.

And how many might have sentient life?  Boggles the mind.  The beauty of it all held me in rapt attention.  All I could murmur was, “Thanks be to God” — “Gloria in Excelsis.”

With every new dawn our undivided attention is requested in a hundred different ways.  It may be the invitation to dwell in the pain and distress of a fellow human being.  It may be in the lingering beauty of an embrace.  It may be in the anticipated birth of a baby. In it all, the summons of such, Eternity addresses our puny existence, “May I have your attention?”  Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.  And those with eyes to see, let them see.  Amen.

---

[1] Ruben Vives, “Outrage and criticism over immigration sweeps,” The Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2025.

[2] “I Sing the Almighty Power of God,” The Hymnal 1982, No. 398 (New York: Church Hymnal Corp., 1985.

[3]Kenneth Chang, Katrina Miller, “Technological Marvel’s Stunning First Images, The New York Times, Science section, June 24, 2025.

[4] Katrina Miller, “A Powerful Telescope, with a Legacy to Match, The New York Times, Science section, June 24, 2025.

July 20, 2025
Pentecost 6, Proper 10

Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15;
Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42

“May I Have Your Attention”

On the Fourth we celebrate in all sorts of ways:  some with downright jingoism, some with smoky barbecues, some with a sporting event, some just chillin in the park with friends and family.  Oh, and don’t forget the fireworks.

July 4th is also a popular date for naturalization ceremonies wherein immigrants officially become US citizens — ceremonies often held in parks, courthouses, stadiums, or even historical sites.

America means many things to many people, but it’s especially precious to the many who have chosen to move here from far-away lands and make America their home.  Precious to those who have seized the golden opportunity for a better life.

As Neil Diamond belts it out, “America.”

“On the boats and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again
They’re coming to America”

Coming to America is coming to the full promise of America.  It’s about all men and women being created equal,”the existence of unalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  It’s about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”  Sacred principles that must be fought for every single day.

That’s the  reason they’re coming to America.  Compared to the many places of corruption and dictatorship, oligarchy and rule by drug lords, for all our flaws – America, to much of the world, spells opportunity.

To my mind, the greatest tragedy is to miss the open doors of opportunity, to fail to make something of oneself, or contribute to a cause greater than self.

During college, when I worked in L.A. County Juvenile Hall, one of the saddest days of my experience there was one day on the night shift.

Mostly what we did at night was just to monitor those sleeping, and because of the overcrowding, many slept on mats on the floor.  If a boy needed to use the restroom, we would accompany him down the hallway and unlock the restroom door, wait until he finished his business and then walk him back to his dorm.

This one evening, a young fellow who had made a life’s career of juvie hall over many of his twelve years or so, upon returning from the bathroom paused with me at my desk.  I’ll never forget his words.  He said, almost a prayer, “I wish I’d studied in school and listened to my Mom – so I wouldn’t be where I am now.  I wish I’d been like you.” 

For this young boy, the hope and promise of America was so, so far away.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Last Thursday I had lunch with a fellow who did listen to hope and promise beckoning.

Michael, a former gangbanger, a former inmate of California’s correctional system sent up for murder, at fifty-two, is a changed man.

Michael gave me a paper he had written for an English class on critial thinking.  It told his life story. 

Michael writes: “Growing up in a broken home, with my siblings all in gangs, it was all around me.”  His father, his mother’s fourth husband, after an episode of domestic violence, left the family when Michael was three years-old.   Michael was one of ten children, every one of whom was, or still is, in a gang.

Michael ended up in prison for murder, killing a man when he ran a red light while high on PCP.  He was sentenced at the age of twenty-four to 19 years to life.  Somewhere along the line in his despondant loneliness, the Spirit spoke.  “Your life doesn’t have to be like this — an addict behind bars for the rest of your life with no future ahead but death.”  In that bleak instant, Michael listened. “Your life doesn’t have to be like this.”

Michael has been released.  He has turned his life around.  Found sobriety – he’s been sober many years.  Found a wonderful woman and made a family.  He’s on the cusp of completing his A.A. degree and headed for a B.A. in addiction recovery.  He now wants to work with those stil incarcerated, to let them know they have a better choice.

I must say, his GPA is far better than mine was in my first go around at college.  Far better!

Michael is the promise of America.  He is living proof that recovery works. Catching up with him over lunch, Michael reaffirms my hope in the work we do, and in the promise of our nation.  He shines brighter than any sparkler that I’ve ever set off.  Michael is the promise of America.  This Fourth I celebrate him.

I need to hear again and again Michael’s story because it is easy to become discouraged and jaded by the chaos, brutality and lies of this government.   His story gives me the courage I need to press on, doing whatever I can to “Keep Hope Alive.”

Michael focused on what was life-giving during his time in prison.  That is what James Baldwin urges.  The only fact for certain is death.  The other fact is the choice we make to live a life worthy of the brief moment we each are given.

At the conclusion of this earthly drugery, there are no do-overs.  But in the midst of it, the moment may be seized for a worthy life of self-respect, a life of true companionship with one’s neighbors, family and friends.

The question is ever and always: what is owed?  And to whom?

In our lection for today, again Jesus’ opponents confront him with a ploy to trick him into sedition.  “’Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’”  Just an aside here – while such empty flattery usually works to sway the Orange Felon, Jesus has no patience for such hypocritical fawning. “’Bring me a denarius and let me see it….Whose head and title is on it?’  ‘The emporer’s,’ they answered.  ‘Then give to the emporer the things that are the emporer’s and to God the things that are God’s.’”

This choice of allegiences  is becoming abundantly clear to many Americans as we head into the sixth month of this incompetent, inhumane administration.  The choice is becoming clear as we come together to celebrate the Fourth this year.

As we look at the human misery caused by this morally blind and shambolic administration, many are sorting out their allegiences to God and country.  But above all, it’s the blatant cruelty that shocks most citizens.

In reporting by the Associated Press, there was a piece on the abhorrence of Americans to ICE raids.[1]

One fine day in San Diego, Adam Greenfield was nursing a cold when his girlfriend called to tell him that ICE was in the neighborhood conducting a raid.

Adam couldn’t be an unconcerned bystander.  Grabbing his iPhone, he was still barefoot as he rushed out the front door of his house.  By the time he got to the street, assembled were some seventy-five of his neighbors, resturant patrons, workers and others gathered around an ICE vehicle.

They were recording masked agents barging into a popular Italian eatery down the street in their upscale neighborhood.  The crowd yelled for the agents to leave as they blocked the agents’ van.

“I couldn’t stay silent,” Greenfield said. “It was literally outside of my front door.”[2]

Continuing from the reporting:  “More Americans are witnessing people being hauled off as they shop, exercise at the gym, dine out and otherwise go about their daily lives as President Donald Trump’s administration aggressively works to increase immigration arrests.  As the raids touch the lives of people who aren’t immigrants themselves, many Americans who rarely, if ever, participated in civil disobedience are rushing out to record the actions on their phones and launch impromptu protests.”[3]

Finally, over the protests of the crowd and through a haze of smoke from flash bangs the agents rode off with four terrified workers.

Hauled off to where?  To overcrowded, squalid and unsanitary holding pens.  No due process whatsoever.  Their grieving families not knowing whatever happened to their loved ones.

For Adam Greenfield, it was very clear where his allegiance lay — to God in standing up for these decent, hard-working immigrants just trying to provide for their families.  Many of whom have peacefully lived among us 20, 30 years or more.  Paying taxes and abiding by our laws.  These are not the storied gangbangers, worst-of-the-worst criminals this administration claims to be targeting for deportation.

These are the real essential workers of America. 

Our duty to the nation?  To work the politics of our system to provide a pathway to citizenship for these unseen, unacknowledged heroes of our national life, essential workers of our communities, of our economy. 

Essential workers!  Whether washing dishes, picking vegetables or processing our meat – caring for our elderly in nursing homes, building our houses and highways, putting out linens in our hotel rooms or studying to better themselves.  Essential workers all.  

The worst of the worst?  Ask yourself, how many gangbangers and criminal scumbags are out there toiling in one-hundred-degree scorching heat picking our cabbages?

Our duty to God is to stand up for their dignity, to honor and be grateful for their labor.  To care for them and their families.   Our duty to our country is to provide a path to citizenship so they can continue to enrich the fabric of this nation.  To resist the cruelty of these raids. To open the opportunity for them to make their contribution to building this nation as have countless immigrants done before them.

They’re coming to America.  Some from faraway places, some from the ghettos and barrios of our cities, some from addiction and prison cells – given a chance, they’re coming to America.  Its promise and duties.

It’s children like a discouraged little boy in juvie hall, who, given half a chance would, I hope beyond hope, leap at that opportunity for a different life – that he might be coming to America. 

It is folks like Michael, now making an incredible contribution to himself, his family and to this nation as he continues his journey through recovery.  This Fourth — Coming to America.  Coming to America. Coming to America.  

That all who call this land home might seize the promise of America.  This hope I celebrate with my barbecue, potato salad, cheese and beer, friends and family this Independence Day.  Remember that Wisconsin saying, “With brats, cheese and beer, you can save the world.”  Coming to America.  Amen.

---

[1] Julie Watson, Jake Offenhartz and Claire Rush, “Many Americans are witnessing immigration arrests for the first time and reacting,” Associated Press, June 20, 2025.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

July 6, 2025
A Celebration of Our Nation

Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Psalm 145;
Hebrews 11:8-16; James Baldwin Reading;
Gospel: Mark 12:13-17

“Made for You and Me”

Today the Church celebrates the only Sunday reserved for a doctrine, the doctrine of the Trinity.

All across the nation hapless preachers will stumble from one heresy to another in an attempt to explain what can’t be explained.  For you see, it is the experience that comes first, then come our feeble attempts to put inadequate words to it.

When the first humanoid looked up at the sky, beholding the Milky Way, when astounded by the immensity of the sea, when she beheld the wonder of a newly birthed child, when a person painted in caves the first likenesses of the beasts of the fields that provided nourishment, these were moments of sheer awe.  They may not have had words for the emotions that welled up in their being.  But as they acquired language they told Stories of Wonder.  Eventually, a sense of gratitude grew for the entire panoply of nature in which they were immersed.  Stories of Wonder.  Sacred Stories.

Gratitude to whom?  To a Great Spirit, to a Birthing Mother, to the Holy of Holies, to a benevolent and sometimes terrifying diety?  El Shaddai, Allah, Elohim, Yhwh?  One whom my tribe calls Creator — Father/Mother, for lack of other words.

As our particular tribe unquely received this heritage through the person of Jesus, we saw the same Force within his very persona.  A Force for healing and renewal.  A Force for admonishment and entreaty.  The life-giving parables he told, often against exclusionist ideologies and hateful antagonists.  Restoration and wholeness.

Such folks often confronted him, seeking to diminish him in the eyes of the crowd.  When told to love the neighbor, one such — a lawyer (and wouldn’t you have to just know it would be a lawyer) – arrogantly demanded, “Just who is my neighbor?”  So, Jesus told a story.

There was a man on the road from Jerico to Jerusalem who was beset upon by robbers, highway men.  They stole everything, beat him and left him for dead at the side of the road.

Several religious folk came upon him but didn’t want to get involved, get their hands dirty, and so they ignored his sighs and passed him by.

Finally one considered a despised outcast, a Samaritan, came upon him.  He tended to his wounds, loaded him on his own donkey and brought him to a lodge in the next town along the way.  He told the innkeeper to take care of the man, gave him some greenbacks and said he would reimburse him for any extra expenses on his return trip.

“Now, of all who came upon the unfortunate traveler, who was the neighbor?” Jesus asked.

Of course, the lawyer was cornered, for he knew the sympathies of that crowd of listeners.  Trapped, like a rat.  “The man who took care of the beaten and robbed man,” he reluctantly, and barely audibly answered.  “Go, thou, and do likewise,” Jesus commanded.  A Story of Wonder, indeed!

Through such compassion, Jesus followers and others began to believe that within himself, within his teachings, dwelt the Divine, a spark of Eternity.  “Great High Priest,” “Son of God,” “Emmanuel,” “Messiah,” “Savior,” “Bread of Life,” “Light of the World,” and many more they called him.  For in their experience of Jesus they beheld the Holy.  In him the saw their beginning and the end to which they were drawn – the Alpha and the Omega.

That was their experience, and the experience of those of us who have followed him down through the ages.  Incarnated in John the Revelator, St. Francis, and Hildegard of Bingen  –Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, John Lewis – they also, through this tradition of the Jesus Movement, have revealed all that is Holy and Redemptive.  His parables and teachings, his life, lived out down through the ages — a Story of Wonder.

And we have beheld the residue of that Glory.  Working through imagination, working through daring impulses of courage, working through moments of utter surprise and delight, working through moments of fall-down laughing humor that puts all in grace-filled perspective. Undistilled Wonder!

When my wife Jai asked me recently how my day went, I told her of the five of us planting a bunch of bareroot persimmon trees that morning in St. Francis Garden of Hope.

Without missing a beat, she asked, “Did you plant them upside down?”

She was refering to a story I had told of my Army days in basic training.  Since all of us in our Company D3 were conscientious objectors to be trained as medics, we didn’t have rifle practice and weapons training to attend.  So, the Army thought of other ways to occupy our time.

One of these diversions was called “Area Beautification.”  One Saturday morning before mail call, we were assigned to weed the bed of irises outside the orderly room.  We were being supervised by one of our fellow draftees, elevated to acting corporal, Corporal Palmer.

As we were pulling weeds, separating the iris bulbs to replant them, my friend Bob Mead nudged me and whispered, “Just follow my lead.”

As Palmer strode over to see how the work was going, Bob began replanting the irises upside down.  Palmer, in an accusatory voice, asked, “What are you doing?”

Mead responded, “Don’t you city boys know anything?  You plant the leaves down so they rot and become fertilizer,” and with a dramatic swoop of his arm, he continued, “and the flower comes up here.”  Palmer, most skeptical, responded, “What???”

Mead continuing, “If you don’t believe me, let’s go ask Sarge.”  “Yeah, Sarge will know,” I chimed in, supporting Mead.  Grabbing one of the plants, Bob strode up the stairs, Palmer in tow, and plopped the plant, dirt and all right on Sarge’s desk.

By this time we were all avidly listening at the open window.  We heard Sarge yelling, “Stop.  Your getting dirt all over my papers.”  Bob was then going on with his explanation of how the flower grew up from the inverted iris plant.

Finally, in exaspiration, Sarge responded, “I don’t know anything about these plants, they’re the lieutenant’s flowers.  Go ask him.”  By this time we were rolling around on the ground in fits of laughter.

The answer from the lieutenant after hearing Palmer’s routine?  “Maybe you should plant them rightside up so they all look the same.”

When Mead and Palmer returned from the orderly room to see us in gales of laughter, Palmer realized he had been had.  Even he, too had to crack a smile.

An outrageous Story of Wonder.

Laughter that softens a boring, demeaning experience, we can surely call a gift of the Spirit of the Risen Jesus.  Just as Sarah laughed at the incredible promise of the Three Strange Angels camped outside her tent.  Laughed so hard she named that unexpected child Isaac, Yittzak, laughter in Hebrew.

Moments of unexpected insight, could only come from that Creative Force, an inspiring force those of the Jesus Movement connected with his promise to send a Comforter, a Guide, a sustaining Spirit.

Spirit — that Justice Force now prompting thousands across our nation to rise up in protest against the inhumane and unjust treatment of sojourners in our midst from ICE and and our own soldiers.  Illegially dispatched, I might add.  Would have been nice if President Mayhem had sent them out on January 6 when we experienced an actual insurrection.  Just sayin’.

No, we did not plant the persimmon trees upside down that morning, but as I prepared to get in my car for a meeting, a monarch butterfly flitted past and then soared upwards in a current of wind.

The Spirit struck.  She summoned, “Why not reserve one or two of these thirty beds for milkweed?” 

Milkweed is the only plant monarch caterpillers will eat.  That’s where they will lay their eggs.  We can also, as cooperators with nature and God, provide food for this endangered species.  Milkweed seeds are on order.  Thanks, inspiring Spirit.

Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, aka. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  That’s my story, the story of my tribe, and I’m sticking to it.

Amen.

June 15, 2025
Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Canticle 13;

Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

“Stories of Wonder”

Take a trip down Memory Lane to your high school days.  The homecoming game your team won and the sock hop at the gym afterwards.  Hormones raging and some old-fashioned teacher attempting to police the two-inch distance between slow-dancing couples on the dance floor.  I can still picture my girl friend of that time and to this day her perfume lingers in my mind.

And after a few slow dances, the DJ would do a change-up and on would come Elvis with “Jail House Rock” and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire.”  By then the gym was rockin’.  Sweat pouring down our foreheads and hearts racing.

At the next change-up to “Love me Tender, Love me True,”  we were all too hot and sweaty to dance so close together that the prude on the prowl need worry.

That’s what Pentecost is all about – Great Balls of Fire, fire in the imagination, fire in the gumption.

The most opportune moment for the Holy Spirit to get hold of us is through our imagination.  To fire us up with an idea, to fire us up with hope, with a moment of sheer grace.

When the Spirit hits, it’s Jerry Lee Lewis’s song come to life.

“You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much love drives a man insane
You broke my will but what a thrill
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire.”

Well, in the words of the ’08 Obama campaign, folks touched by the Spirit are “Fired up. Ready to go.”

 A saying attributed to Augustine concerning Hope – Hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage.  Anger at the way things are and courage to change them

Here’s the story of one man fired up with anger at the high cost of higher education and upset by the countless minds going to waste because of their want of opportunity.

And ready to go with audacious courage.

Shai Reshef in his retirement as an entrepreneur thought there might be a fix to this dilemma.  He had an incipient idea for a university on line, University of the People — UoP.  It would be free to any student anywhere in the world that had access to the internet. 

Since students in many countries, in grammar school through high school, learn English, courses would be taught in English; but since he was also wanting to include women in the Middle East who are often deprived of schooling, the courses would also be taught in Arabic.

Classes demand 20 hours a week and are kept small at 20 to 30 students.  A student has 10 years to complete a degree.

A young Afghan woman, Maliha, now living in America, tells of the great sorrow in her nation as the Taliban took over.

Twenty-three-old Maliha was studying civil engineering at the University of Kabul, Afghanistan, when everything changed.

“The first thing they did was that they said that women are not allowed to go to schools and universities.”[1]

But she and many other Afghan women found a way – the internet.  Surreptitiously, some 4000 Afghan women have continued their education right under the noses of the Taliban.

These women have certainly imbibed the spirit of Langston Hughes, “I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”  These women did.

Maliha remembers, “On those dark days that I was at home and couldn’t do anything for my future, University of the People was like a light in my darkest days.”[2]

Women in a university in Afghanistan!? – Good God Almighty.  Great Balls of Fire!

Unlike many online courses which are scams – Trump University comes to mind – UoP offers fully accredited BA and Masters degrees.  And they’re free.  There are some fees, usually not more than $5,000 over the course of the degree.  More than half the students receive a scholarship.

The founder and now president of the UoP, Shai Reshef, does it through grants from foundations and wealthy donors.  He also relies on a staff of 47,000 volunteer faculty.  These are mostly world-renowned professors, who in their retirement have decided to “pay it forward” by teaching without charge.  As Reshef remarked, “I’m a volunteer.”

Degrees are only offered in a limited number of majors:  associate and bachelor’s in business administration, computer science and health science, master’s in business administration, information technology and education.  These are majors leading directly into jobs, and 80 percent of graduates end up working in the field of their major.  Come, Holy Spirit, come!

With a valid degree earned online, Maliha eventually escaped Afghanistan and is presently living in the United States pursuing a master’s degree.

All this glory began with the spark of fire in one man’s mind.  Yes, the Glory of God is a Woman fully alive.  “Great balls of fire.”

The Fire of Compassion has struck also an Israeli former prime minister – Ehud Olmert.  He has written an op ed in Haaretz (The Land), the foremost progressive newspaper in Israel – calling the government’s operations in Gaza war crimes.

Prime Minister Olmert, obviously angered at Isreal’s role there had great courage to call his nation to account.  He certainly was fired up and ready to go when he wrote this.

In his interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR, this is what he had to say about the death and starvation inflicted on Gazans.

“All of us are absolutely certain that there is not any achievable purpose that is worth continuing and expanding this operation. Now, while these operations are not going to save the hostages, are not going to achieve any important national interest, and hundreds of people are killed on a daily basis, who are not involved. This is a crime.”[3]

Further…

“…the fact that senior Israeli ministers in the cabinet called expressly and explicitly to deny any humanitarian needs from the people in Gaza, a couple of million people living in Gaza, and they say they should all starve and be demolished. This is a call for war crime by the many senior ministers in the cabinet, without one comment by the prime minister that he’s not – that he does not support this.”[4]

Great Balls of Fire – an Israeli prime minister said this?

Of course, he is appalled by what he sees on this TV, as are we.  The other day Israel was boasting that fifty-some aid trucks went through checkpoints, yet over 600 daily are needed daily to prevent famine and disease. 

Not quite fired up?  Not by a long shot.

Such enforced starvation is genocide.  Tell me how this is any different from Hitler’s forced starvation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Olmert is tragically late to this catastrophe, but at least he got there.  And it’s important that he’s a former prime minister willing to go public with his anger at his own nation.

Visions of suffering and deprivation are part of the Spirit’s toolbox to stir folks to amend their ways, maybe even make restitution.

Hopefully, Olmert’s courage will fire up the rest of us yearning for a ceasefire and sufficient provision of aid.  Fire us up and make us ready to go!

By the way, Gaza ceasefire demonstrations are held weekly in Claremont on the corner of Arrow Hwy. and Indian Hill Blvd. if you should happen to get fired up about this inhumanity, these war crimes.  You might suggest that our government cease to send Netanyahu money and arms to support this atrocity.  If that happened, the war would be over shortly, for we are the ones funding this genocide.  Write your representatives.

As we at St. Francis survey the needs about us, may the Holy Spirit come with Great Balls of Fire to fire us up and make us ready to go!  The Garden and Food Bank await – just sayin’.  Amen.

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[1]Fred de Sam Lazaro, University of the People offers students a new and affordable college experience, PBS News Hour, May 28, 2025.

[2] Ibid.

^{[3] Steve Inskeep, “Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert says his country is committing war crimes in Gaza,” Morning Edition, NPR, May 28, 2025.}

[4] Ibid.

June 8, 2025
Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37;

Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27

“Great Balls of Fire”

When I opened my Sojourners magazine this month I found a few articles about self-care.  Yes, self-care in the face of the devastation that we witness daily as workers are summarily fired, the genocide in Gaza unfolds nightly in living color, our healthcare as put at risk by a quack administrator of Health and Human Services.  Yes, Medicaid threatened with over $700 million in cuts, threatening to eliminate care for over 40 million Americans.  Not to mention the damage this will do to their caregivers.

Yes, self-care is in order.  Faced with such a barrage of bad news, it would be easy to turn on to trivia, tune out and drop out.  I admit, some days it’s just too much.

But as many of my mentors, people like Bernie Sanders and Stacy Abrams, keep repeating – this is not the time to give up.  But we need to be of sound body, sound mind and sound spirit to continue into the fray.

First, keep our eyes on the prize.  As we end the liturgical season of Easter, let us rejoice that we have seen the Risen Lord.

We have received him in the rich memories of stories of healing and salvation passed down through scripture and hymn, through grandparents and Sunday school teachers.

The bleeding woman who only seeks to touch Jesus’ garment that she might be healed.  The leprous man crying out at the side of a dusty road, the woman caught in adultery.  All made whole. 

We remember the faithless disciples at Jesus’ trial, all of whom abandon and deny him in his hour of need.  All forgiven and redeemed for the most incredible mission ever.

Here is the Risen Christ amongst us in memory and steadfast faith.

Thomas says he will not believe until he can touch the scars and wounds of the Crucified One.  Christ is among us in the wounded we encounter daily – sleeping on the streets, in the bombed-out homes of Gaza, in the aching bellies of starving children, not in some far-off place, but right here in America.  Yes, and also in such abandoned places as Sudan, Venezuela, Afghanistan and Syria –all made worse with the elimination of USAID programs.  These are his wounds.  Touch and feel.

The “waste, fraud and abuse” are the bankrupt, inhuman policies of this shambolic administration.  Incompetency heaped upon incompetency.  What you get with “retribution” and “revenge” politics.  All you get!

In the midst of such mendacity, Christ assures us of his healing presence – empowers his followers to exercise the same spiritual power for healing and the renewal of creation.  Praying to God, Jesus commends his followers to Holy Guidance and Eternal Presence.

“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may know that you have sent me and I have loved them even as you have loved me…I in them and you in me, that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me…”

Yes, us.  We are empowered as the Risen Christ to this world – we are the Easter Blessing.  And might all who see that the hungry are fed, the sick cared for, the dying comforted – might they say, “Alleluia, He is risen. 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus assures his followers that he will be with them, and his promise is not empty as followers, members of the Jesus Movement bring healing, reconciliation and justice to those the world regards of no account.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”  True in the 80s, true today.

The Risen Christ indeed!  I saw the presence of Christ in the installation of my friend Bill Dunn to be the new rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Redlands this last Saturday.  What I witnessed was an energized congregation with strong lay leadership raising up young people in the faith, serving the needs of their neighbors – and Fr. Bill, their chief cheerleader.  These people in their love for one another and love of neighbor are the real Easter Blessing.  Christ is risen, risen indeed in these followers.

I opened my spring issue of The Veteran to note the passing of Joan Davis, a long-serving wife of one of our Vietnam veterans – a member of VVAW for fifty years. 

Following the end of that disastrous and immoral war that we had stumbled into, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), my veteran’s organization, has organized opposition to the cavalcade of senseless wars of our nation.  Our motto, “Honor the warrior, not the war.” Is one of respect for those who served.  We have held teach-ins on the war machine that drives the insanity of war as the first, go-to option of foreign policy.  Yes, we are against invading Canada or Greenland. We have built several libraries and learning centers in Vietnam in a token of reconciliation.  We support medical care for those suffering the effects of Agent Orange, and the removal of landmines scattered about their countryside.  And this remarkable woman has been at the heart of it all.

She had met her husband, a Vietnam War veteran in Chicago in one of the many street marches against the war machine.  Later they moved to Oak Park, where she became a teacher.

As a high school teacher, she fearlessly presented the real history of America to her students – warts, glory and all.

“Joan brought rigor and real debate to her classes, supporting students in learning about the past and helping them understand what it meant to engage with the present and have hope for the future.  Through field trips to art and history museums, bringing in guest speakers, and courageously discussing more recent events, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she was able to help thousands of young people find their confidence, opinions and values over the years.”[1]

She founded a group, REALITY, on campus aimed at enlightening students about racism, welcoming diversity, and making the school a more inclusive place, empowering “generations of students to become advocates for equity and justice.” [2]

She led them in exercises of constructive, respectful debate on the issues of the day.  “She organized marches for human rights

Beloved by her students, she was an image of the Risen Christ.  Countless students over the years have returned to York High School to thank Joan for her influence on their lives.  Many have gone into careers and activism that have made the world, made America, a better place. 

Yes, risen indeed.  This woman, in life and in death has been an Easter Blessing.  A harbinger of new life and sanity for a desolate nation that has so often lost its way.  In her service to her students and community, she is an incarnation of the Risen Christ.  Christ is risen; he is risen indeed.  Alleluia.

Last Thursday, another truck from Burrtec arrived with 80 cubic yards of mulch for St. Francis Garden.  Arranged for free by Christopher.  Six workers: James, Miguel, Denis, William, Joseph and Fr. John — all braved the hot sun to get it spread it on the first of what will eventually be some thirty beds of fresh vegetables – melons, squash, cucumbers, okra, string beans and bell peppers.  And later winter vegetables – kale, spinach, lettuce, radishes, cauliflower, beets.

When someone noted that it smelled, I agreed – it smells like Heaven.  Smells like the Gospel in Action.  Smells of the Risen Christ at the food bank.  That smell is an Easter Blessing as are all who’ve worked to bring St. Francis Garden into reality.

I love that poem: “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one.”  Here is a sermon that no one can miss.  Out in front of God and everyone. People at St. Francis, we are the living Easter Blessing.  In our labor of love, even in the hot sun, Christ incarnate.  Even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.  How does this garden grow?   A nursery rhyme gets it swimmingly.

St. Francis, St. Francis,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And lovely tomatoes all in a row
Zucchini and cabbages all in a row. 

An Easter Blessing — a living sign of the Risen Christ among us.  Amen.

The Scent of Heaven

Spreading it Deep

Working on a sermon that can be seen.

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[1] “Remembering Joan Davis: 50-year Member of VVAW,” The Veteran, Section C, vol. 55, number 1.

[2] Ibid.

June 1, 2025
Easter 7

Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 148;

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

“Easter Blessing”

For those who are fans of Bill Maher, his show, “Real Time,” ends with a segment called “New Rules.”  This is  a humorous rebuttal to the common wisdom and some of the follies of the week.  Yes, I know some of Bill’s language is a bit rough, and his attack on religion gets a bit tiresome, though in many cases we have earned his scorn.

New Rule on flirting: “Humans cannot be trusted to just flirt with other attractive humans.  And the MAGA crowd cannot be trusted to flirt with dictatorship.  Not everyone who flirts cheats but all cheating starts with flirting.  ‘I’m not in bed with Putin; he’s just my work wife.’  Okay, aren’t we kinda past the flirting stage?  Sure, Trump’s love letters to Kim Jong Un, and his siding with Putin at Helsinki and the tanks in the streets on his birthday — all coquettish good fun.  And the ‘lock her up’ chants, and suing the press and calling them the ‘enemy of the people,’ and saying that shoplifters should get shot on sight – innocent flirting, all of it. Except, you know, I don’t know.  Now it seems a little less like just flirting and now more like we’re actually meeting every afternoon at the Motel 6.” 

New Rule – no flirting with dictators and autocrats.  Vladimir Putin and Victor Orban are not our friends.

The old rules on church attire were that woman wore dresses and men wore suits, white shirts and ties.  I still remember the time my brother came up to Inyokern to visit.  That Sunday I overheard one of our teenage boys pleading to his mother: “If the pastor’s brother can wear jeans to church, why can’t I?”

New Rules:  The old dress code is out the window.  Though we did have to have a dress code for our foster daughter whose motto was, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

Jesus institutes New Rules – the hundreds of laws and customs are boiled down to one simple command in John’s gospel: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you.”

In the reading from Acts, we see that the Jesus Movement is expanded beyond its Jewish origins.  It is open to all beyond the circumcised.  Beyond those who observe the dietary laws.  “No creed or race can love exclude if honored be God’s name,” as a line of the hymn goes.

Peter, honoring this love commandment, baptizes the Gentiles from Caesarea.  Peter, upon his return to Jerusalem compelled to defend his decision in the Book of Acts.

“Three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where they were.  The Holy Spirit told me to go with them and not make any distinction between them and us.  These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house.  He told us how he saw an angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’  And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning…If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’”  New Rules, indeed!  All means all.

And so the Jesus Movement grew, energized and enriched by an expanding Love.

Our nation is sorely in need of some New Rules right now.  As this shambolic administration is at one hundred days and then some, New Rules are desperately needed.  Their vision of humanity is so crimped, we’re abandoning even our so-called friends.  Its all about the “Art of the Deal” – old loyalties are cast aside.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a statement on Monday. “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent[s] them from returning to their home country.”  There’s a reason why these refugees are here under Temporary Protected Status.

Situation improved??? Improved???  Not for these people.

How could this woman be so willfully ignorant?  So devoid of any human decency?  These are Afghans and their families who supported the American effort to defeat the Taliban.  They steadfastly stood beside us in that twenty-year war.  These are people for whom a return means a virtual death sentence.  And the girls will most likely be sold into sexual slavery to the highest bidder.

Improved?  You’ve got to be kidding.  What happened to “Family Values?”  Apparently, that was all a lie.

New Rules – Honor our commitments to those who supported us.

Abandonment will cause what’s left of America’s tattered honor to be dragged through a pit of sewage.

God help us all.  New Rules —

Remember when the nation held the president to the highest standards of probity?  Even old Tricky Dick ultimately respected the rule of law.  He turned over the tapes.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that the holder of the highest office in the nation would have the temerity to turn the presidency into “America’s Home Shopping Network.”  Here’s a man who would know the price of everything and the value of nothing, including the sacred trust connected with that office.

It’s all for sale.  Grand opening.  You want a Tesla?  Well, just stroll down the White House driveway and pick the color you want.  Oh, and did we mention the new Donald J. Trump meme coin?  At just a little over $13 each.  You can own your own keepsake of the ruination of this republic.  Buy lots and lots and you might get a free dinner with the most ignorant, opinionated host ever.  Lots and lots more gets you a visit to the White House.

I was surprised that my wife turned down a gift of a Melenia meme coin for Mother’s Day.  But folks, you can phone in your order now.  Operators are on standby.  They’re going fast.

This goes well beyond the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration in the 20s.  Way beyond Nixon or Reagan’s clandestine Iran “Contragate” scandal.  The only legal part of that escapade was the birthday cake Oliver North took over to the Ayatollah. 

And all the money goes right into the Grifter-in-Chief’s pocket.  One buyer has already purchased $148 million worth of Trump coins.  Really hoping for that White House dinner.  It will be the most expensive Big Mac he ever ate.  And how many foreign actors are investing in this grift to curry favor and make deals?  Who knows?  It’s a black box. 

But it looks like he might get a huge jumbo jet to tool around in and, later, for his library for his efforts.  Nice to have friends in rich places.  BTW, did you get a plane, or even a return call?  Buy more coins.  They’re the new hot item.

Meanwhile it’s slash and burn the safety net for the neediest, the least of these.

 Now, where’s that Emoluments Clause?

New Rules – Thou shalt not turn the White House into a den of thieves.

Yes, New Rules – Let the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution be enforced.  Excruciatingly!  No meme coins or Teslas sold from the White House.

New Rules – Greed is out.  Compassion is in.

New Rules — Thou shalt love the Lord your God with your heart, mind and strength.  And the second commandment is like unto it.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two, hangs the entire Law.  This is the Love Commandment.

That means respect for the covenant of laws and norms that bind us together as a people — such things as honesty, decency and faithfulness to your office.  Whether that office is an elected one or the office you hold as simply as a citizen of this republic.

It means charity to neighbor and stranger alike – even if they come from Afghanistan.

It means assuming the best of others unless evidence is to the contrary.

It means honoring the rich and diverse fabric of this nation.  As I often say, “All means All.”  E pluribus unum for sure.

In sum, treat others as you would like to be treated.  That’s what that Lady with the Torch who stands astride that golden door in New York harbor is all about.  Let us live up to our highest aspirations and ideals.  In such a New Rule is our personal and our national salvation.  And against such charity there is no rule. 

I close with the words of James Baldwin, “In this world there may not be as much humanity as one would like to see; but there’s enough.” [1]  The same must also be said of America.  There’s enough to right the ship.  Amen.

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[1] Bruce Springsteen’s quote of Baldwin at a Manchester concert tour, May 15.2025.