In our basic training post at Fort Sam in San Antonio, all of us in Company D-3 were conscientious objectors to be trained as Army Medics.  Before going on to our medic training, we went through an 8-week course. 

Usually in the evening if we didn’t have much homework or Army busywork, we’d head over to the PX and have some beer and pizza.  One of our fellows was a Buddhist named Holderbaum.  One night someone asked him, how with a German name like that, was he a Buddhist.

He said that to be given conscientious objector status he had to be some religion.  He knew he couldn’t be a Christian because they can’t drink or have sex.  He knew he wasn’t a Catholic because he didn’t believe in the pope and all the saints mumbo jumbo.  By elimination, that must have left Buddhist.

Yes, some of us starchy, legalistic Protestant types are a bit over the top in our understanding of Jesus’s basic message.  We get caught up in the jots and tittles, neglecting the weightier part of the message: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Today’s gospel passage also contains the basics of the Christian-Judeo faith.

It is eloquently summed up in Matthew’s Beatitudes.  You know them — ”Blessed are those who” – fill in the blank

If these are used as a legalistic standard, imposed in a ridged way, who could possibly be saved?  Holderbaum’s right.  No mortal could live up to them in an exacting way.  In some congregations they are “weaponized” to beat others over the head — doing incredible spiritual and psychic damage.

I decided to look in the Trump Bible to see how modern man has approached these injunctions.  I wasn’t going to give him one red cent – he’s already monetized the presidency for some $1.4 billion[1] and counting — so I snuck a free peak.

The modern ethical version goes something like this.

Blessed are those who use the public trust of elected office to run a grift of hundreds of millions of dollars, for they shall have many friends.

Blessed are those who appoint the least qualified to office, for no one will confront you with embarrassing “alternative facts.”

Blessed are those who trash our immigrant neighbors by sending armies of undisciplined goons into the streets of our cities, for they will imagine themselves safer when might makes right.

Blessed are those who ignore the laws and statutes of their nation, for they shall not be inconvenienced by legal niceties and pesky lawyers.

These are Caesar’s beatitudes.  And the spiritual warfare with Caeser yet rages full on in the Book of John’s Revelations.  The mark of the beast, 666, is firmly stamped on this administration’s “banality of evil.”[2]  It has become normalized, cavalierly dismissed.

Not quite the ethic of the Jesus Movement that I learned in Sunday school or seminary.  Or you either.  No, we as members of that saving movement are held to a higher standard.  “To do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God.” 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

These beatitudes are the goal for which we would strive.  Yet, being far from perfect, we will mostly miss the mark.  They are the hallmark of a mature spirituality.

This Easter, Luther James Forney will be baptized.

I was in a quandary as to how to assist Christopher and Alexis in fulfilling their baptismal vows made on Luther’s behalf.

One book that came immediately to mind was Bishop Budde’s book, How We Learn to be Brave.[3]  It was occasioned by her interview on CNN after Trump and an entourage of cabinet officers and military generals proceeded to St. John’s to hold up a Bible upside down.

This was a desecration of our scriptures and a place of worship under Bishop Budde’s jurisdiction.  “I had to say something,” was her stance.  Later, came the blowback she received after she had had the temerity to ask the president for mercy for those being hurt by his policies.

Courage is the character of a mature person of faith, regardless the religion.  Courage to change what can be changed.  This I would hope for young Luther as he grows into his personhood.

I passed along also Dag Hammarskjöld’s book, Markings.[4]  This volume of meditations reflects the mature spirituality of one of our most notable UN Secretaries General.

In Markings a most courageous Swedish diplomat wrestles with his purpose of existence as he enters some of the most harrowing sites of conflict on the planet.  Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld would be killed in a small aircraft crash while on a dangerous mission into the heart of Africa.

In the introduction by W.H. Auden, there is Hammarskjöld’s introduction for an interview on CNN.

“I found in the writings of hose medieval mystics for whom ‘self-surrender’ had been the way to self-realization, and who in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found strength to say Yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbors made them face, and to say Yes also to every fate life had in store for them.”

“Love…for them meant simply an overflowing of the strength with which they felt themselves filled when living in true self-oblivion. …love found natural expression in an unhesitant fulfillment of duty and an unreserved acceptance of life, whatever it brought them personally of toil, suffering—or happiness.”[5]

I would hope for young Luther that he would have the spiritual strength and courage to wrestle with life in this same way.  That he would realize that truly living would be found in a task greater than himself.  That he would find where the needs of the world met his innate gifts and interests, there would be his vocation – his true calling as did Dag Hammarskjöld.

In Mitch Albom’s book, Tuesdays with Morrie,[6] I found a delightful and most poignant story of a former student spending time with his dying professor.  It is graced with compassion and deep understanding.  It is a master class in the Beatitudes.

Mitch had promised upon graduation to keep in touch with this favorite professor.  But, of course, work and family and a hundred other things got in the way.

Flipping through the channels late one night he inadvertently comes across an interview with Ted Koppel on his program “Nightline.”  There was his professor, Morrie Schwartz.

Koppel had been alerted earlier on by a friend to a headline in the Boston Globe: “A Professor’s Final Course:  His Own Death.”  The professor had recently received a diagnosis of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  A slow wasting disease inexorably leading to death, beginning with a wasting of the muscles of the legs and proceeding up the trunk of the body.

Cameramen and sound equipment were situated in Morrie’s living room.  But before Morrie would let Koppel proceed, Morrie said he would first needed to  “check him out.”  One of Morrie’s friends quipped, “I hope Ted goes easy on Morrie.”  Another replied, “I hope Morrie goes easy on Ted.”

The door closed and Ted and Morrie were left alone inside Morrie’s office.  Morrie began, “Tell me something close to your heart.”

“‘My heart?’  Koppel studied the old man. ‘All right,’ he said cautiously, and he spoke about his children.  They were close to his heart, weren’t they?”

“Good.” Morrie said. “Now tell me something about your faith.”

When Ted demurred, saying that he didn’t often talk about such things with strangers, Morrie interjected, “Ted, I’m dying,” peering over his glasses.  “I don’t have a lot of time here.”

Once they were back in the living room with cameras rolling, towards the end of the interview, the reporter asked Morrie a question: what did Morrie dread most about his slow decay.

“Morrie paused.  He asked if he could say this certain thing on television.”

“Koppel said go ahead.”

“Morrie looked straight into the eyes of the most famous interviewer in America. ‘Well, Ted, one day soon, someone’s gonna have to wipe my ass.’”

A thousand miles away Mitch, the professor’s old student. heard Koppel intone, “’Who is Morrie Schwartz…and why, by the end of the night, are so many of you going to care about him?’”

Mitch Alom’s precious book, which has sold in the millions, came into being out of that late night happenstance before his TV.

The compassion displayed by Mitch as week after week he sat with his dying professor is the entire summation of the Beatitudes. 

These brief injunctions are the door to eternal life, yet a blessedness possible in some measure right now in this life.  This is the gentle spirituality I also would hope for Luther James as we baptize him in April.

Such compassion is the most courageous act in these disjointed and inhumane times.  It is the mark of our full humanity.

And like Morrie, we don’t have a lot of time here, so what we do have, let’s use to the Glory of God and for the love of our neighbor.  Amen.

---

[1] The Editorial Board, “Trump’s Cash Grab Undermines our Republic, The New York Times, January 25, 2026.

[2] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963).  Arendt makes the point that the evil Eichman spawned seemed so benign that ordinary Germans would dismiss as well as participate in it.  It became normalized in the culture of Hitler’s Nazi regime.  Here, a matter of degree, not kind.

[3] Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (New York: Avery, Penguin Random House, 2023) 

[4] Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).

[5] Op. Cit., viii.

[6] Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson (New York: Doubleday, 2007) 18-23.

February 1, 2026

Epiphany 4

Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15
I Corinthians 1:18-31; Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
“What Does the Lord Require?”

It was a cold and rainy night in Memphis, Tennessee.  As the sanitation workers were given no provision to get out of that weather, two Black workers had taken refuge in the bin at the back of their truck. 

Inadvertently, they were crushed to death when the compactor mechanism was triggered.

It was that incident and the strike that followed that prompted Dr. King to head to that troubled city.  Many of his followers had advised against the trip, but Dr. King resolutely set his face to Memphis.  Why, for just a bunch of garbage collectors?  Why?  King set his face for Memphis in steely resolve despite their counsel.

That night, after his arrival, a congregation gathered at the Mason Temple.  It was a hot, sweltering crowd that packed the sanctuary as Dr. King addressed the congregation.  We should all remember that stirring line that came towards the end of his sermon.  “I’ve been to the Mountaintop.”  I’ve been to the Mountaintop.

This, it so happened. would be the culmination of that marvelous life, for in the morning a shot would ring out at the Lorraine Motel as Dr. King stood on a balcony for some fresh air and conversation with colleagues.

In his witness to the dignity of all people, he not only made it to the mountaintop, but he took this nation with him.

I had the experience of hearing him talk in person.  It was in Lincoln Nebraska at a conference for some 5000 United Methodist students and pastors from all across the U.S.  He was the keynote speaker for the last day of that event.

I didn’t know that much about him at the time.  I did know he was famous and he had led a bus boycott in the south.

But when I heard him that evening, he took me to the mountaintop.  I said to myself, if this is the church, INCLUDE ME IN. 

It was a rebirth of my faith.  It made all those lessons in my early Sunday school years come to life – cohere into a faith I could claim as a young college student.  King opened up an entire new world for me.

I grew up in a very conservative, prejudiced family.  Cloistered in an upper-middle class neighborhood of Long Beach, California.  My parents made very clear to me who “our people” were and who they weren’t.

They weren’t blacks, though that’s not what my father called them. They weren’t Mexicans.  They weren’t Jews.  On my mother’s side, in addition to all these, they also weren’t Okies and Arkies.

These last two had come into the San Joaquin Valley in the 20s, fleeing the desperation of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.  They are the characters of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family, poor as dirt.

The struggle for economic and racial equality in Black theology is grounded in Moses’ experience in a wasteland when a burning bush catches his eye.

The message of God to him, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters…So come, I will send you to Pharoah to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’”

“Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land,
tell old Pharaoh: Let my people go.”

The image of Dr. King’s mountaintop in his final sermon in Memphis comes out of the Book of Deuteronomy.   God told Moses, “This is the land I promised… I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you will not cross into it”   Moses from the top of Mount Nebo could overlook that Promised Land, but would not make it himself, but his people would.

Dr. King had been to the mountaintop.  Though he was not sure if he would make it to that promised land of equality, opportunity and respect, he had absolute faith that God would lead his people, and by extension all people to that land.

Yes, the promises of our creeds and Constitution had not been fulfilled.

My dad, a dentist had a number of Black patients, but in the way he spoke of them, it was clear to me he didn’t respect them.  Somewhere in the category of the Cadillac Welfare Queen.

BUT, BUT, BUT…the transformation King wrought over my lifetime was nothing I could have imagined.  Our entire nation (or at least a lot of us) were taken to that mountaintop of brotherly and sisterly love – and something had happened in my dad’s heart.

Late in life, he began to realize that if this nation didn’t work for everybody, it wasn’t going to work for much of anybody.  That included his former Black patients. 

One morning when I showed up at the office when I was working with him to run our family construction company, he greeted me, “John, how’s Al Gore doing?” 

“What do you care about him,” I responded.  Puzzled that this life-long Republican cared a wit about this Democratic candidate.”

“I always thought, as a dentist running a small business that the Republicans were the party of small business.  They don’t give a damn about small business, nor much of anyone else unless they have a ton of money. It’s all about the money.  And Bush is an idiot – he’s destroying the country.” 

An EPIPHANY! 

He went for quite a bit more of a rant about how the Republicans were ruining the country and everybody was getting poorer and poorer.

My father had had an entire change of heart and mind about who counted in America.  It was the “little people” – people like him and many of his patients on welfare.  He was even now okay with unions.  They’re the only ones standing up for the average worker.

Dr. King has indeed taken this entire nation to the mountaintop and we have seen a shining promised land of harmony and opportunity for all.

I also realized a moment of closure.  In our “nice” – read “white” –neighborhood a Black dentist and his family had purchased a house down the street from us.  I still remember moving day when I and some of my playmates went down to see what was happening as the van unloaded furniture and lots of boxes.

The mother served us up some cups of lemonade.  Their boy seemed like he’d fit into our group.

Several weeks later, while they were on a vacation, one of their neighbors ran their garden hose through the second floor and turned on the water.  It must have run for almost a week, completely ruining the house.  Shortly afterward, they moved out.

There was only some hush-hush talk about what had happened.  This to my young mind seemed so unfair.  Completely contrary to what we had learned in Sunday school about Jesus.  AND our church said absolutely NOTHING.  NOTHING!

For me, Dr. King brought some resolution to the guilt and pain I had felt over that incident.  Things would not be perfect, but I could now see a time coming when this hateful act would be condemned.  Publically condemned.  And some of our white neighbors would rally around this anguished family.

The memory of that incident was front and center in my first ministry out of seminary.  I and another seminarian founded a fair housing organization in the San Gabriel Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles.  We and our committee of volunteers would work against injustice in the housing and apartment market.  And irony of ironies, our first client?  He was an Italian man.  This one landlady hated Italians. 

Yeah, we got him his apartment once she knew the consequences of violating California’s fair housing law.

As we now have government ICE goons beating and shooting people in Minnesota, we must rise up against a new Pharoah.  We must march together, sing together, pray together.  It will be a long struggle against the most vindictive president this nation has ever had.

But, as in Memphis, we can see a way ahead.  We will take care of one another.  Ada Limón reminds us, “Caring for each other is a form of radical survival that we don’t always take into account.”

With Dr. King, we have all – America has been to the mountaintop and looked over.  That evening at the conclusion of his sermon, this was Dr. King’s message:

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now.  We’ve got some difficult days ahead.  But it doesn’t matter with me now.  Because I’ve been to the mountain top.  And I don’t mind.  Like anybody, I would like to ive a long life.  Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.  And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.  And I’ve looked over.  And I’ve seen the promised land.  I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.  And I’m happy, tonight.  I’m not worried about anything.  I’m not fearing any man.  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”[1]

Amen.

---

[1] Martin Luther King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968.

January 11, 2026

Epiphany 2
Martin Luther King Sunday

Exodus 3:7-12; Psalm 77:11-20
Letter from a Birmingham Jail; Gospel: Luke 6:27-36

“We’ve Been to the Mountain Top”

I vividly remember a critical moment in our confirmation class when I served a medium-sized United Methodist Church out in Ridgecrest.  As in the Episcopal Church, confirmation is that ritual wherein one claims for oneself the baptismal vows they made, or were made on their behalf if they were infants

I had arrived a little late and Kay our secretary had already let the class of about 8 into my office.  I made my apology for being a few minutes late and moved to get the class going.  “Alright, guys, lets get our books out and get started,” I urged.  At this point one of the girls corrected me, “Hey, we’re not all guys.”  At that point, the wise guy in the room blurted out, “Well, you’re sure flat enough.”

Instant thermonuclear explosion.  Alicia jumped up in tears and stormed out of the room.  I rushed out after her as she ran into the arms of Pete, our associate pastor, who just happened to be coming to my office to drop something off.  I asked him to deal with distraught Alicia while I went back to the class.

Absolute quiet.  The silence was an acknowledgement that a social rule had been violated to devastating effect.

I realized that the lesson for that day was out the window.  Instead, I told them we were going to talk about community, what makes it and what rips it apart.  I asked them to share what they were feeling at the moment.  Of course, all comments were directed to the boy, Warren.

When they had had a while to share their thoughts and feelings, I asked them, what would it take to restore community of our class.  Sheepishly, Warren quietly mumbled, “I guess I have to say I’m sorry.”  At which point the entire class as a chorus erupted, “Yeah, Warren!”

Later that day, Warren did in fact apologize and the next week the class was able to resume according to schedule.  As devastating as that incident was, in a strange way working through it as a group, we developed a much closer bond.  And no one will ever forget that lesson of sin, repentance, making amends and grace.

I could have never devised such a powerful and lasting lesson on my own.

After confirmation, a good number of the kids drifted away from the church.  For them and their families, confirmation was the end of the faith journey.  So, it is with many of our mainline churches.  Confirmation is the graduation ceremony right out the back door.

We might see them again at a few significant moments, the baptism of a child, marriage or when six strong men have carried them through the door at the end of their journey.  As one wit put it, the church is significant if at all on three occasions: hatched, matched and dispatched.

If we look at Jesus baptism and commissioning, it is not a culmination, but a beginning.

Personally, I compare it to my induction into the U.S. Army.  I had registered as a conscientious objector willing to go into the medics.  I wasn’t willing to shoot anyone over what I considered an illegal and immoral war but I was willing to patch up anyone who got shot or worse.

I remember reporting at the induction station in downtown Los Angeles early on a dreary, overcast morning.  My mood matched the weather.

A primary thing I learned about the Army would repeat itself throughout my two-year stint.  After the first minutes of going through that door it was hurry up and wait.  And wait.  And wait.

Finally, someone assembled us in a loose formation and we were herded off to a battery of tests. We were tested, inspected and injected.  And yelled at a whole lot as we went through this process.

Finally, in groups we were lined up before a white line on the floor.  We were given the oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”  One step over that white line and we belonged to Uncle Sam for the next two years.

Flawed as it is, our Constitution is the covenant that unites us together.  The defense of it is what each of us, in our own specialty would be doing.  I was trained as an electroencephalograph technician.  I stuck pins in peoples’ heads for the next two years.

The other lesson I learned, take care of the colonel and he’ll take care of you.  After my two years I was discharged as an E5, the equivalent of sergeant.

Likewise, we in our baptism are also commissioned.  We are called, through word and action to respect the dignity and worth of all persons.  How we each do that will vary over the course of our life’s journey.

From Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ baptism:

“And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”

And for all who follow, God’s honest truth holds:  You are beloved, in you I am well pleased.  You are commissioned.  Go forth and be of good courage.

Bishop Mariann Budde lives out this commission in Washington, D.C. where she serves as the bishop of that diocese.  She has written a wonderful book; How We Learn to be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith.[1]  In it she explores what bravery means in light of our baptismal vow.  In part this pledge is: “to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.”

“The decisive moments in life are those pivot points when we’re called to push past our fears and act with strength.”[2]  And I would add, push past our lethargy.

Through several life choices, like the decision to leave friends and move across the country at the age of 17 when her family fell apart – to leave an alcoholic and clinically depressed father and a step-mother who resented her, Mariann had displayed moments of bravery. 

Bishop Budde had begun receiving phone calls about President Trump having assembled a group of top cabinet members and top military brass at Lafyette Park, across the street from the White House which then the whole entourage marched the short distance where Trump stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal church.  There he held up a Bible upside down for a photo op and mentioned what a great country this is. 

On CNN the Bishop was moved to say:

“Let me be clear: the president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches in my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.  Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence.  We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”[3]

Her words, after the massive nation-wide protests over the George Floyd murder, captured the moment and spread throughout the airwaves.

Leading up to that point, the bishop’s essential work had been with clergy and congregations in her diocese.  Definitely not on the national stage.  But as phone calls flooded in after the incident, she arrived at that decisive moment where she knew she had to say something.  This is what bravery looks like.

Many new beginnings are fraught with the call for bravery, for leaving our comfort zone.  A new job can be quite a baptism into the unknown.

My friend Kep, having a Stanford masters degree in engineering, tells me of his first job with an oil company in Texas.  Before he knew it, he was in a small boat being tossed about by a choppy sea.  They were headed for an oil rig hundreds of miles out in the middle of the ocean.  Everyone was getting seasick and Kep was wondering what he had gotten himself into.

But even the terror of getting on that flimsy contraption to hoist them up some nine stories, swinging over open ocean water to the living quarters of that rig.  Even this was better than staying in that small boat retching over the rail feeding the fish.

Out of his comfort zone?  You bet!  A heart-in-his-throat moment for a city boy to be sure.  No small degree of bravery is involved in some new beginnings.  For Kep, a baptism by water, a lot of salt water.

I opened the paper on Friday to the headline: “Trump Asserts His Global Power Has One Limit: Himself.”  Further: “My own morality.  My own mind, It’s the only thing that stop me.”[4]  This from one who has all the impulse control of a two-year-old.

The royal pronouncement of Louis XIV: L’État, c’est moi (I am the state) was given to his parliament in the assertion of complete and absolute authority.  Well, Mr. Trump, we have no need of such royal rubbish.  The last time we had a king, we had to kill an awful lot of British soldiers to get rid of him, and we aren’t about to go back now to any such subjugation.  We’re not going back!

In his interview with the New York Times, Trump has abrogated the entire international order crafted following WWII.  Tossed it all aside.  It’s now Darwin’s rule, the law of the strongest.  The United Nations may as well as fold up shop if it’s okay for any powerful nation to gobble up a weaker neighbor.  A clear signal to Putin that Ukraine is up for grabs – along with any NATO country he might want — Lithuania or Latvia, or, maybe even, Poland.  Yours for the taking.

Such sentiments are a reckless dismissal of the constitutional order that has guided our nation, for good or ill, for over two hundred fifty years.  Lawless it is!  The day after November 3^rd must be Impeachment Day.

As our own Bishop Taylor urged in a recent Facebook post, we need all of us out in the streets on January 20 for the next No Kings Day.

 I know some brave souls who have confessed that this was something they never thought they’d do.  Be out in the streets with a sign protesting.

Their bravery is what our baptismal vows look like.  The forthright statements of our religious leaders – that is what our baptismal vows look like. 

Unfortunately, like some in my first confirmation class, too many Christians have come up from the baptismal waters stillborn.  A lot of to-do to no noticeable effect.

That’s why our church believes that baptism is a public event wherein the community of faith pledges over the long haul to nurture the baptized in a life of faith that is courageous.

When we step up, screw up our courage to stand for the right thing, it is contagious.  Our singular example gives others to follow the impulse to bravery, to join us.  Yes, it will take not only a village but an entire nation risen up to rid ourselves of this tyranny.  As someone said, they can’t kill us all.

As the nationally known gardener Paul Avellino asserts: “The point of standing together isn’t to change something overnight.  It’s to become the lighthouse that reminds others there’s still a way through the storm.[5]

Remember your baptism and be thankful.  Thankful for the most expansive journey opening up your days and years to come.  And through that door lies eternity.  Be thankful.  Amen.

---

[1] Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (New York: Avery, 2023.

[2] Op cit., book jacket.

[3] Op cit., xviii.

[4] Katie Rogers, “Trump Asserts His Global Power Has One Limit: Himself,” New York Times, January 9, 2026.

[5] Paul Avellino, quoted in Bits and Pieces, January, 2025.

January 11, 2026

Epiphany 1
The Baptism of Our Lord

Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43; Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17

“Our Baptismal Vows”

The story goes in Matthew that there was an anomaly in the sky, something ajar.  More than a shooting star caught their attention.  In a world beset by a great malaise, a wonder to behold. 

In that “bleak midwinter frosty wind made moan.”  And moans yet today in the souls of the dispossessed.  A very bleak midwinter for those on the streets or sleeping in their cars.

Let me tell you of one such woman, a woman who works at a tough, thankless job and yet found herself and her family homeless.  Priced out of her apartment in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cokethia Goodman and her children have been homeless for several months when the author of Working and Homeless in America[1], Brian Goldstone, came upon her.

The road to ruin began when she noticed a letter from the landlord in her mailbox on the afternoon of August 2018.  The terse letter informed her that the property had been sold and that she would have to move out. 

She and her children had lived in that quiet Atlanta neighborhood over the past year.  The apartment was near her kids’ schools and a nice playground.

That was it.  The property had been sold and her lease would not be renewed.  Time to cash out in this gentrifying neighborhood.

After frantically looking for anything nearby, she settled in a dilapidated dump in Forest Park, on the city’s outskirts.  A dump, and for $50 more a month.

After two weeks in the place, she heard a scream from her twelve-year-old son.  Running the water, he had received a bad electrical shock.  She called code enforcement and the place was condemned.  The family was without housing again.  Nowhere left to go.  For a while they holed up in a squalid hotel, but soon couldn’t afford that.

All the time she was working fulltime as a home health aide.  She was working, doing everything she was supposed to do and they were out on the streets.  How could this be?  She thought homelessness and a job were mutually exclusive.  This didn’t add up.

In her job she had been taking care of men and women in her city of Atlanta, and now she and her kids were homeless?  There she was in her blue scrubs checking to see if any of the shelters had room for her and her children.[2]

This is America, for God’s sake!  The wealthiest nation in the world and this is how we reward people who play by the rules and do everything in their power to support themselves?

Jesus, let your love light shine down on this humbled family.  Let the Epiphany Star of Promise shine down on Cokethia and her children.

It is a bleary, depressing landscape over which the Epiphany Star will shine in many of our cities and in our rural areas.

The citizens of Willows, California, are in a state of shock as the only medical center for miles and miles around is being forced to close.  Yes, that “One Big Beautiful Bill” has done them in.

Like countless other small rural communities, Willows has lost its only medical care facility.  Glenn Medical Center in Willows closed Oct. 21 after losing “critical access” status for being 3 miles closer to the nearest hospital than rules require.

This rural outpost has treated residents wounded in accidents along with countless victims of car crashes on nearby Interstate 5 and a surprising number of crop-duster pilots — all done on Oct. 21

As hospital staff carted away medical equipment from emptied patient rooms, Theresa McNabb, 74, roused herself and painstakingly applied make-up for the first time in weeks.

“’I feel a little anxiety,’ McNabb said. She was still taking multiple intravenous antibiotics for the massive infection that had almost killed her, was unsteady on her feet and was unsure how she was going to manage shopping and cooking food for herself once she returned to her apartment after six weeks in the hospital.”[3]

This was in a county that voted over 60% for Trump.  What did they expect when Johnson and his marauders cut over $900 billion out of Medicare.  That’s Billion with a capital B.  And slashed Medicaid payments to the states by hundreds of millions?

Oh, that the Light of Epiphany might brighten our wits to understand that elections have consequences.  The Orange Felon has done exactly what he said he would do – slash government to the bone.  Except for his rich buddies and fellow grifters.  And your New Year’s present?  Exploding health premiums.  But no sweat for Congress – they’re on extended vacation and have wonderful taxpayer-supported, gold-plated health care.

Jesus, let your Love Light shine on those abandoned folks in Willows, California.  Let your Light of Compassion and Enlightenment shine on their choices this coming November.  Let it shine!

Dr. King reminds us that we’re all part of an “inescapable network of mutuality” where one person’s fate is tied to that of everyone.  As American citizens we have a shared destiny.

We learned this in our churches, our mosques, our temples and in our synagogues.  Now, let’s vote like it.  Take your concern, prayers and thoughts right into the polling place.  Be the Light!

Jesus, Let your Love-Light shine in our politics, the darkest of places right now.

Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG) has had an epiphany.  A Damascus Road Moment.  Maybe so the residents of Willows, California.  Rugged individualism is a lie, not the ethic of the Jesus Movement.[4]

MTG had gone so far as to accuse Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of treasonous conduct, adding that treason was punishable by imprisonment or death. 

After the death of Charlie Kirk, she has now suddenly lost all appetite for vengeance. She later told a friend, who confirmed the exchange: “After Charlie died, I realized that I’m part of this toxic culture. I really started looking at my faith. I wanted to be more like Christ.”[5]

Jesus, let your Love-Light shine on Marjorie Taylor Green and her spiritual awakening. 

Sister Simone Campbell, the lead Nun on the Bus of several years ago has a new book out on the spirituality that undergirds her work and helps her be fit for human consumption.

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, notes in her Forward, “If there’s one governing mantra of Simone’s life, it is this: get in there close with people on the margins of society and allow your heart to be broken open.  It’s in the breaking open to raw human need of real people that is for Simone the fire at the heart of her passion for justice.”[6]

Sister Simone is a splinter of this Epiphany Love-Light.  Her recent book will be our Lenten study if I can find enough copies.

The Epiphany Star reveals reality to us.  As it revealed the Christ Child to the traveling sages, it also revealed through a dream the wicked intent of Herod.

The Love-Light of that star also reveals bitter reality, past and present, but also reveals those merciful souls who acknowledge the wrongs of their people and in some small way make amends.

Timothy Snyder, in his book, On Freedom,[7] tells the story of taking his children to school in Vienna, Austria.  While they waited for the bus for kindergarten, his son became fascinated by the construction machines operating across the street.

As the workers spread new asphalt for the sidewalk, they were preparing to install Stolpersteine, “stumbling stones.”  These are markers denoting the houses where Jews once lived before the Holocaust.

“The information they carry – names, addresses, sites of death – give us a chance to rehumanize, to restore, at least in imagination, what they lost”[8]

“Before the Jews were killed, they were stripped of everything: first their property, then their clothes.”[9]

Jesus, let your Love-Light enfold those repentant souls willing to acknowledge the past.  Let it gently shine and embolden.  Embolden historians like Timothy Snider who are willing to write the truth that it may warn us of what we are capable of in the future.

May we in America have the same courage to acknowledge the dark moments of our past where we have inflicted incredible suffering.

Let your Love-Light shine on our willingness to make amends and move forward in to this eternal Light of Promise, the Light of a New Day.

If you have a chance, catch Rachel Maddow’s new podcast, “Burn Order.”  It’s about our roundup and incarceration of thousands of American citizens solely because of race – our Japanese-Americans.  Folks who had absolutely nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.  These citizens lost virtually everything.  New evidence shows the underlying avarice of those wanting their farms that was behind the racist accusations of treason.

On her recent program introducing this podcast, Rachel had three Japanese-American scholars, some who had been incarcerated in these camps.  This truth-telling is Love-Light brightly shining.  Jesus, let your Love-Light shine on Rachel and all intrepid reporters who would inform us on what is really going down in 2026.

Jesus, keep your Love-Light shining that we learn from our past, the good and the bad.  Keep your Love-Light shining on those stalwart souls who continue to forge a better way forward.  And warn of dangerous curves ahead.

Jesus, keep you Love-Light shining on those who would be victimized by the worst of us – for our Somali immigrants, for the Haitians — for the destitute immigrants seeking work at Home Depot stores, for those who can no longer afford the steep, new premium increases for their health care — or even groceries or rent, for God’s sake. 

Jesus, keep your Love=Light shining today, tomorrow and all through 2026, for renewed days of promise and for the Love of God.  Keep it shining.  This we urgently pray.  Amen.

---

[1] Brian Goldstone, There’s No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (New York: Crown, 2025).

[2] Ibid, xv-xvii.

[3] Jessica Garrison, “This rural hospital closed, putting lives at risk. Is it the start of a ‘tidal wave’?” Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2025.

[4] Robert Draper, “‘I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump,” New York Times Magazine, December 29, 2025.

[5] Op.cit.

[6] Sr. Simone Campbell, Hunger for Hope (New York: Orbis Books, 2020), Forward by Sr. Helen Prejean, ix.

[7]Timothy Snyder, On Freedom (New York, Crown, 2024), 24.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

January 4, 2026

Epiphany Sunday

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

“Let Your Love-Light Shine”

We live in a fearful age.  “Precarious” describes the situation of many folk these days.   Many of us think the country is headed in the wrong direction, with a sociopathological narcisist at the helm.  Heroid incarnate.

Destitution is everywhere.  On the streets you can smell it, the oder of urine and feces wafts from the sidewalk encampments of the dispossed.  This season many families are food insecure.

Pregnant immigrant women are held in detention even though it’s against federal policy.  ICE dosen’t care.  “Screw the courts,” Stephen Miller and his crew retort, or words to that effect which are inappropriate from the pulpit.  The present day Madonna now pregnant in a holding facility, lies shackled to her bed.  Terrified, she remained tied to her bed as she miscarried.[1]  Outrageous! 

Undocumented mothers are separated from their children – the descending gloom of our national disgrace.  A palpable fear seeps in through such misery and torture.  A fear not of one but of many.  The fear of those judged only to have the wrong skin color.  How dark the night in today’s Bethelhem.

And on Christmas Day someone will win a Powerball jackpot of $1.7 billion.  In the midst of so much want, that amount of money for just one person is obscene.  Who needs $1.7 BILLION?  That’s right, folks billion with a capital B.  How dark this night!

Heroid’s raging – his campaign of retribution and vengeance ever presses against this season of expectation and hope.  Yet it is precisely into such a bleak winter that an unexpected Gloria in Excelsis breaks through.  “Be ye not afraid.”

“Unto you.  Unto you.”  That is the ever present joy that yet seeps into this night.  “Be ye not afraid.”

This is the world of those shepherds tending their flocks on that pitch dark and chilly night.  They, like ninetynine percent their fellow inhabitants, lived on the margins.  Cold, malnourished, at the whim of robbers, wolves and greedy taxmen.

As Luke tells the story of that wretched, freezing evening, how a most astounding, disrupting event burst through the skies above.  And for this, we’ve just gotta have the King James version.

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth peace, good will toward all.”[2]

What joyous words – “Fear not.“  Do Not Be Afraid

Calm, soothing words.  The sort of comfort a parent would give a child who has been awakened by a terrifying nightmare.  “It’s okay.  It’s just a bad dream.  Don’t be afraid.  The same comfort our brused world seeks today.

Mary’s child is Good News to a fearful planet.  Do not be afraid.  In the birth of this tiny baby is the Good News of Salvation.  Hope restored, In this message we are gently held.  Yes, in a tiny, squalling baby born in ICE detention is also the promise of ages.  His mother shackled to a bed without pain relief.  Unseen, the multitude of the heavenly host attend that lowly birth.  Gloria in Excelsis Deo the chorus.

On Christmas Day our Luther James will be exactly three months old.  A sign of God’s favor.  Best present ever!  My Christmas prayer is a supplication for the other precious children of this world that they might have the same care, the same promise of our little Luther.  I know this presently is not the case. Yet each newborn is a miraculus blessing, no matter how rude and impoverished the circumstances of their birth.

For this prayer to become sacramental reality — our political action, our open wallets, our ready credit cards, our raised voices, our gumption will be the tangible expression:  In Gaza, in Sudan.  In the Congo and in Ukraine – where wealthy nations make real their concern and care.  Where we make real and visible our concern, our hope — our supplication becomes sacramental reality.  Actual care delivered on the ground.  Follow the money derect to Doctors Without Borders, to UNICEF, to Episcopal Relief and Development.  Follow the money.  Gloria in Excelsis.  Yes, we are cooperators with the Spirit of Christmas for these others.  Santa — if his visage means anything at all in our commercialized day.

As God brought forth Blessing and Salvation by way of an illiterate, impoverished pesant woman in Bethlehem, who knows that miracle lies hidden in any of the millions of children born in these war-torn lands, in impoverished America.  With God, this Christmas, all is possible, for we of the Jesus Movement, God willing — we are the hands and feet of this Christmas promise.  Gloria in Excelsis.

I close with a poem by John Core, “This Night the Music.”

“This night the music of the spheres is somehow disarranged;
with dissonant surprise one star un-tunes the sky, set heaven ajar;
the universe is changed.

…

“The shepherd’s narrow world grows vast as glorias begin;
while God’s own voice, wide as the sky, consricts itself into a cry
behind a crowded inn. Gloria. Gloria. Gloria – Goria in excelsis Deo.  And with Tiny Tim I say, “God bless us everyone.”  And a Merry Christmas to all.   Amen. 

---

[1] Karla Gachet, “Pregnant immigrants held for months in detention despite rules against it,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2025.

[2] Luke 1:8-14, KJV.

December 24, 2025

Christmas Eve

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14; Gospel: Luke 2:1-14

“Do Not be Afraid”

What’s in a name?  As parents about to be at the rather advanced age of 40 and 41 we felt especially blessed that a first child was on the way.  We had been married 17 years when we found out we were expecting.  I’m sure by then our parents had long given up hope of being grandparents.

Of course, the question of names began to surface.  After all the years of waiting, we felt like Abraham and Sarah, startled by that outrageous prophecy at their tent.  So, outraged, Sarah laughed.  They named the boy Yitzhak, laughter in Hebrew.

Feeling especially blessed, like Abraham and Sarah, Jonathan seemed appropriate.  In Hebrew, Gift of God.  Jai also had a favorite student in her class, Jonathan.  That was also the name of my grandfather on my father’s side, though I never knew him because he had died when my father was 12 or so.  He was the last of some 13 children, his first sibling being born during the Civil War.

Christopher came along in a year-and-a-half.  I remember asking Jai if she thought Jonathan should have a brother or sister.  “Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” was her reply.  Christopher in Greek means Christ bearer.  I had suggested Wren as a middle name, after Christopher Wren the architect of St. Paul’s in London.  “I’m not having my child named after a bird,” Jai protested.  So, he became Chrisopher James after some favorite folks bearing that name, including his godfather.  Yes, in him on the day of his arrival was the spark of Christ.  I still remember our pediatrician Clint slapping him on his back as he held him by the heel, shouting, “Breathe, damn it, breathe.”  With relief I heard the first loud squall.

Names in biblical times were considered significant for they indicated a person’s inner disposition.  In Genesis one of the first tasks of Adam is to name the animals -each name reflecting their quality of usefulness to humans.  Names indicated the life trajectory, the quality of one’s contribution to the greater good.  Or a disastrous and bad outcome of one’s end.

And Jesus?  Here is the story from Matthew’s gospel that told of his name.

When Mary was found to be with child, “Her husband joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace (actually she probably would have been stoned to death by the villagers) planned to dismiss her quietly.  But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him to in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus (Yashua in Aramac) for he will save his people from their sins.’”

He will save his people.  And do we ever need help.  But this word, “salvation,” seems so remote and obscure, so out of date to us moderns.  Yet, there is today a great longing for purpose, for meaning, for connection, for wholeness.  Our kids are experiencing their life crisis in their teen years, not in their forties.  Suicide among our youth is at an all-time high.  It is “blessing” we yearn for, to know that our lives amidst the toil and tedium that they are significant, that we are beloved, that there is a purpose to it all.  And some joy in the mix.

Jesus will go about the countryside; his healing and message are all to pronounce a kin-dom in which all are blessed.  All are loved by Abba, his father.  His parables and stories, his daily actions are an affirmation of blessedness.  A blessedness that includes all.  Includes that women of ill repute at the well in Samaria.  The woman of ill repute who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and hair.  Beloved and blessed.  Includes tax collectors.  You remember the story of the hated tax collector Zacchaeus?  Beloved!  Jesus yearned to include that rich young man with many possessions who cannot bear the cost of discipleship.  As he walks away, sorrowful, and Jesus is also sorrowful for he also loved that young man.  Yes, beloved!  All these exchanges are transforming events, transcendent events of blessing.  All are beloved.

And this Salvation includes all, down through the ages, in whose hearts he has taken up residence – the hearts where he has been born anew in members of the Jesus Movement.  Stalwart members of the Jesus Movement, who, down the ages have been agents of wholeness and blessedness.  Bringing in word and deed the Good News that all are beloved by God.  Sometimes at the cost of their own lives. 

These are the saints of God; yes, the ones you can meet at tea time, on trains or even in committee meetings.  Let me tell you of one of these I have known.  As she could no longer drive, I would come by and pick her up for our endowment committee meetings.  Her name is Phyllis Colclough.  A blessing incarnate.

One evening when I stopped by to pick her up, Phyllis shared this story shortly after the events of 9-11.  She had noticed that for several weeks after those horrific scenes of September that she hadn’t seen her Iranian neighbor who lived a couple of houses down the street.  Finally, under the prompting of the Spirit, Phyllis gathered together her courage and walked down to her neighbor’s house and rang the bell. 

After some period of time the woman finally showed up at the door. It opened just a crack.  About all Phyllis could see was an eye.  Finally, the woman related to Phyllis that she had been afraid to go out after the two planes had destroyed the World Trade Towers.  People might blame her.  Phyllis was the first person she had actually seen for several weeks, as fear of her neighbors had kept her locked in her house.  She was now running our of food but was afraid to go to the market.

Phyllis told the woman, “Honey, let’s go over to my house and let’s have lunch.”  Timidly, her neighbor took her hand and they had lunch. Over lunch, the woman softened and they enjoyed a wonderful afternoon together.  A moment of transcendent companionship.  Blessed neighbor to blessed neighbor.  Salvation!

This simple act of hospitality allowed a terribly frightened woman to understand her Christian neighbor was a friend, not an enemy, or someone indifferent to her plight.  As Phyllis’s neighbor gave voice to her fears over lunch, they began to subside.  This elementary act of kindness was blessedness incarnate.  Release from fear and estrangement.  Blessedness.  Salvation!

Often it is in such small acts of kindness, of service to others that Salvation is manifested.  St. Augustine long ago put it this way about these small deeds of love.  “Faithfulness in the little things is a big thing.”  This was a “big thing.”  As Phyllis related the story, I could see in her retelling of this incident that she had been blessed as well.  I was certainly blessed by Phyllis’s story as a tear welled up in my eye.

Salvation in that brief moment of compassion.  Phylls affirmed the blessedness of her Iranian neighbor.  The Spirit which prompts to such active compassion is the Salvation Jesus sends to his followers in conjunction with his Resurrection in John’s gospel – known as John’s Pentecost.  Active Salvation let loose in creation.

This week at St. Francis, we had our fall pruning workshop led by Tom Spellman, master gardener, who has been at this for years.  Unfortunately, the Aquinas students who work in St. Francis Garden of Hope couldn’t come this week.  Pesky finals and then Christmas vacation.

But we had a fantastic turnout of St. Francis folks.  Yes, many old, somewhat decrepit and tired, but we were there.  With persimmon pudding with lemon sauce as a lure, we had a good showing of our congregation, some 10 of us.

All this to ensure that the pruned trees will in the spring produce an abundant crop of peaches, plumbs, nectarines, apples for the food bank we do with St. John’s. 

Folks, this is what Salvation looks like.  This is what Blessedness looks like.  It’s allowing Christ into our date books plus a bit of hard work on behalf of our neighbors in need.   In need, indeed.  Today, nationally, some fifty percent of us live paycheck to paycheck.  Forty percent of us live in poverty or near poverty.  A $500 unexpected expense could cause family financial disaster.  These, “the least of these,” are precious in God’s sight.  Our Food Bank makes real the Gospel claim of Blessedness.  A sacrament – an outward sign of an inner spiritual reality.

It’s going out of one’s way to be in service to others.  It’s sweat and aching muscles, some thirst in the hot sun.  But this crew of some 13 folks got most of the trees prunned; with the remaining five left for Miguel to finish.  That is a living picture of Salvation.  In his name we bring that Blessedness.

Most of the time it’s hot, boring, grubby work, not glamorous for sure – all to affirm that the people who come on Wednesdays to St. John’s Food Bank truly understand that they are blessed.  Even out in our orchard, loppers in hand – we in turn also experience transcendent moments of Blessedness.  Salvation!

I believe that when anyone new shows up on our doorstep here at church, it is because of a prompting of the Spirit in their life.  Something is missing.  Something is askew.  Something is hurting.   There is an inner longing.  They come to the one place that their heart tells them where there ought to be an understanding, a listening compassionate ear.  And however maimed they are, they come as a blessing to us.  As I’m wont to say, “We do church with whoever shows up.”  Our task is to affirm that in our welcome newcomers know they are beloved, that they are a blessing to us. On any given Sunday morning. 

O Come, O come to Bethlehem and see, see what awaits.  The Mystery of ages.  He shall be called Yashua, Jesus, for he will save his people.  That Blessedness, that Salvation, is passed down through eons by all who have signed up for the Jesus Movement.  It’s in our DNA.  This is the Good News that you and I are beloved and precious in the sight of God and so is all creation.  Treasure in earthen vessels – each of us.  Our lives are grounded in something greater than ourselves – Blessedness.  And this is the gift that awaits in the manger of your heart, in the manger of my heart.  O Come, O Come to Bethlehem and see.  Amen.

December 21, 2025

Fourth Sunday in Advent

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

“All Changed into Blessing”

It is ever into a world torn asunder that faith is birthed.  Isaiah speaks to a desolate people, brutally slaughtered, hauled off to exile.  Sing us a song of Zion their captors taunted. “How can we sing the Lord’s song in this God-forsaken place,” they sobbed.”  No, they sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept.

We, like them live in a time of exile.  Death and destruction reign.  You know the places:  Gaza and the West Bank, Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine, the Congo, Russia, off the shores of Venezuela.  Gazing upon the ruination of our nation, its laws, its customs, its civility.  It has all been turned to an ash heap – reduced to a garish ballroom that dwarfs the People’s House – reduced to the lawless murder of hapless folks in small boats on the high seas in the Caribbean – reduced to our complicity in settler murder of Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank — reduced to a pastiche of our former constitutional order.  All by the most ignorant man to have ever held the office of president, a doddering old fool who can barely stay awake during his own meetings.  Attended by a corrupt, greedy and imbecilic cabal that is the laughing stock of much of the civilized world.  Yes!  Exile from all we have known and revered.  Exile from the America of youthful ideal.  Exile – strangers in our own land.

It Is into such distraught and barren times that Magnificat, the Song of Mary breaks through.  As I’ve mentioned, in Luke’s telling of the episode Mary is not some coddled, mild young thing who meekly accepts this angelic outrageous greeting.  It’s as if she takes one step back and tells that rude interloper, if this is the way it’s gonna be, hold my beer and watch this.  She then cuts loose with one of the most radical prophecies in all of scripture. 

Those on the top will soon find themselves on the bottom.  Those who have grabbed up all the goodies, will walk away with empty hands.  The powerful are confronted and confounded.  No garish, monster ballroom for them.  It will be the lame and the halt who will joyfully do-si-do to fiddle, banjo and mandolin out in the Rose Garden – the People’s Garden.

Yes, “He has showed with his arm;
        he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
        and hath exalted the humble and meek.”

I just love the language of the King James version for this canticle.

And finally…
“He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel,
        as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.”

Mary, maybe a 12 or 14-year-old girl, the property of a father with the prerogative to marry her off to whomever and whatever age.  Yet, in Luke’s, telling no shrinking violet she.  No!  Brimful with prophetic righteousness.

And she will persevere through the worst that life can deal out, eventually weeping at the foot of a tree of torture as her son succumbs to a most agonizing death.  Holy Resilience, indeed.

Christmas each year is killed not by those radical liberals who want to banish it, but by saccharine sentimentality.  Its message of Good News is NOT for the timid or the lazy, the willfully ignorant.

It’s about God feeding the people with the nourishment that builds the soul, true manna.  Much more about manna than Macy’s.  Yeah, manna like the veggies of St. Francis Garden of Hope.  The sort of stuff that takes hard work.

It is into the desolate and rough places the actuality of hope breaks through.  That’s the Baptizer’s, that’s Mary’s message.  Hope, perceived through Holy Resilience.  Yes, Lord, we stand ready to be “holpened.”  NOW!

“Remarking on the occasion of Christmas, Thomas Merton once said, ‘Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him, Christ comes uninvited.’  So it is with the true message of Advent. The very life of God takes flesh among us.  It is a scandal, an offense, a disruption to this world.”[1]

Mary is a part of that story of disruption to the very end, from the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Wedding at Cana, the Crucifixion and Resurrection appearances.  It is difficult to imagine a mother bearing more sorrow than Mary, yet she is a most resilient of women.  In the end, the disciple John is entrusted with Mary’s care, Jesus’ last wish from the cross.

Holy Resilience is a gift of the Spirit.  It is what keeps the community of Faith true to it’s calling.  It is our North Star. It’s easy for good intentions to dissipate under the pressures of modern tedium and annoyance.  Let me tell you how.

The other day at Cardenas Market, I completely lost it in the checkout line.  Some woman ahead of me was cashing in vouchers or something.  She must have 20 or 30 or so of them, and for each one the clerk had to go through a big rigmarole with the register.

It was taking forever.  We waited minutes and more minutes.  Customers behind me began moving to the adjacent line.  It seemed so inconsiderate that this woman should be wasting some 20 minutes of everybody’s time – no, change that – of MY time.  I said a few snide things, huffed and puffed.  Finally, we were checked out.  I felt rather sheepish when, afterward, my home health aide Ileen told me that all those receipts and whatever were for a homeless project.

How long, O Lord, must we wait for peace to settle into our hearts, into MY heart?   My resilience had completely evaporated in those few moments behind this woman doing a righteous deed for some destitute homeless folks.

Pastor Heidi Neumark, one of my favorites, tells of a girl’s birthday party around the time of Advent in New York City.[2]

By the time she arrived with her two children the festivities were already under way.  When they entered the house, they were confronted by Tweety Birds, scores of them everywhere.  On the napkins, on balloons, plates, the cake, and center stage, a big Tweety Bird piñata.  Heidi had taken her children because the mother, Marta, was their favorite baby-sitter.  It was the first birthday party for Marta’s baby and it was to be the baby’s baptism.

The children were crowding around the piñata, eager to take a whack at it.  Eager to bash it to pieces and grab as much candy as they could hold in their small hands.

Marta’s one brother was absent, serving time in jail and no one had seen her other brother, 16-year-old Christian.  Va y viene, he comes and goes.

In the middle of the chaos, Christian walks in, baggy red pants and a red sweatshirt.  Hanging out of a back pocket was a red bandana.  Christian had joined the Bloods and he was flashing their colors.

This family had for some time teetered on the edge.  Their mother was strung out on drugs, and the three children had been raised by an elderly grandmother who could barely keep up with them.

When Christian’s own mother died of AIDS, he was 15.  “He sat slouched with his face in his hands, crying uncontrollably through the entire funeral, Heidi recalls.”  It was after that he had joined the Bloods.

Seeing Pastor Heidi, he comes over, gives her a hug and a kiss.  In her arms he, always a slender boy, seemed so frail.  That is why, now, he is most likely armed.  “Young, dangerous and endangered,” she remembers thinking.[3]

It is soon time to leave.  On the way home, Heidi and her children pass two groups of teenagers.  They are walking towards a fight that’s about to explode between the two.  She pulls her children in tighter and quickly walks around the kids.  She doesn’t know the neighborhood and these are not kids she knows.  Heidi and her children hurry to their car.

She notes, once they are safely home and the children in their beds, that tomorrow will be the first Sunday of Advent.  After putting out the Advent decorations – calendars, the wreath of candles, the lion and lamb and a bowl of stars – each one bearing a prayer for the person named on it (Yes, Marta and her family are inscribed on one of those stars) – Heidi takes a few minutes to herself to reflect on the reading for that Sunday from Isaiah 40.

“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain.”

In the stillness of the night, she wonders when this might be.  In the daily grind of violence of her large city, God seems so absent.  For people like Marta and her family, where are the signs of that promise?

Yet, in the resilience of Mary, in the resilience of all mothers like Marta, that the promise finds fulfillment.  The testimony of the Mothers of the Desaparecidos in Chile and Argentine, their resilience each week in the central squares of those nations – their silent resilience is the sacramental sign of this hidden God’s presence.  Their sorrow is the manger in which the Christ Child is born.   Holy Resilience his swaddling. Where is this Christ born?  His birth is in those places where we are weak and vulnerable.  Those places where we are not so full of ourselves — those places, where in the silence of the night, unbidden prayer breaks through:  O Come, O Come Emannuel.  Enter into our brokenness.  Come, O Advent Promise, and shine forth, burning brightly as once did that Epiphany Star, pointing the way. Enlightening our coming days, Marta’s coming days, and the coming days of a world that has sorely lost its way.  Come quickly.  Come, quickly, Lord Jesus.  This we pray.  Amen

---

[1] Jim Wallis, “The Low Estate of His Handmaiden,” Sojourners, December, 1976.

[2] Heidi Neumark, God’s Absence in Advent, Christian Century December 5, 2001.

[3] Ibid.

December 14, 2025

Third Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 35:1-10 Psalm 146:4-9
The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55); Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11

As a young boy I was immersed in our family’s history.  Both sides.  From my father’s side, it was West Virginia and the Forneys who had been on that land since 1804.  There’s where the family graveyard sits, on a small portion of those180 acres.  Grandpa Jonathan Forney taught at Bethany College there in the Northern Panhandle.  There’s also, until it was recently replaced, a concrete bridge over Buffalo Creek that he built, or engineered.  Dad never told me what he taught, but I’m guessing it wasn’t Shakespeare.

The thing Dad did stress was that Grandpa was a hard-driving man with definite expectations of my dad, an only child.  Not strong on affection but stern on discipline.  That was part of my heritage from my father’s side.

On my mother’s side we were a mix of the Gross and Howe families.  Grandpa and Grandma Gross came from Iowa to California.  I wouldn’t say with nothing as Grandpa had a degree from Julliard School of Music.  He found a job as a letter carrier in Lodi where they’d settled.  Over the years he worked his way up ladder and at the apex of his career was the postmaster of Lodi, California.  His vocal talents were in great demand throughout the area and he sang at weddings, funerals, anniversaries, birthdays.  He had a great sense of civic pride, nurtured by his membership in the Odd Fellows organization.

Grandma’s side gave us two famous Howe relatives, General William Howe, who I told my 8^th grade classes, won the American Revolution by allowing General George Washington slip through his fingers three times.

Most exemplary in that lineage was Julia Ward Howe.  Yes, the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  More notably, she authored the first Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870.  Read it – it’s radical.  She was a suffragist and an abolitionist.  From her we get our activist roots.  It’s in our DNA to raise hell against injustice.

Altogether a marvelous lineage.  And what did I make of it?  Growing up, absolutely nothing.  I was so lost in my teen and early adult years, that all that heritage amounted to nothing.  I was as useless as an old stump.

Isaish, proclaims that even from old stumps can come amazing new growth.

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”

Out of a useless old stump, fire of new life shall come.  Yes, even the useless old stump my life had become in those early years. 

That fire was the appearance of John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness to rouse up life in the House of Israel.  Breathing fire, he minced no words concerning the corrupt leaders of the people.  “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

What preacher ever began Sunday’s sermon screaming at the congregation, “You brood of vipers…?”  And kept his or her job?

It’s a parallel to John the Revelator chastising some of the do-nothing churches of his day. Yes, right there in chapter 3, he zeroes on the congregation at Laodicea, “I know your works, you are neither cold nor hot…so I will spit you out of my mouth.”  A heritage gone for naught.  An old dried stump of the Jesus Movement.

Truth is, those congregations that have lost their way through numbing complacency, probably won’t be spit out.  They’ll just be ignored as irrelevant.  Irreverent and as useless as a dead old stump. 

And we who might take our ease in Zion, no sense of mission, no little light shining, might dwindle away to nothing.  Much of that pitiful journey is the story of Mainline Protestantism.

But, sometimes, just sometimes we’re jolted out of our lethargy.  A John the Baptizer comes along breathing fire on the dry stubble.  A flame bursts forth and the Church is transformed into the Glory of God. 

That’s the story of our patron saint, Francis of Assisi.  He heard the voice of God calling him forth, “Build my church.” 

That call of the Baptizer echoes down the ages, and fired-up leadership emerges, lay and clergy.  Even a few bishops to boot.

It was a sermon that fired me up.  Paul Tillich’s sermon, “You are Accepted.”  It was a jolt from beyond the blue.  Acceptance, welcome, is the first mission of the church.  Acceptance, welcome, is the sacramental presence of the Grace of God.

Our St. Francis Garden of Hope is the visible sign of that as we are now providing huge amounts of fresh produce for those our economy has shut out.  That produce and the canned goods distributed at St. John’s Food Bank, is the open door of acceptance.  And though we might on the outside look like a withered old stump, the folks there are splendid new shoots.  Sometimes shoots of fire as in the shrub Moses spied in his wilderness.

There’s a story of an old stump in England that is instructive.   Liddy Barlow tells the story of some vandals whose criminal actions were the source of great sorrow and anger in a small English village.

“Nestled into Hadrian’s Wall at the northern edge of England, the elegant Sycamore Gap tree rose from a dip between two hills. Its dramatic setting made it one of the most photographed trees in the country, featured in calendars and guidebooks and postcards. Day hikers posed in front of the tree for selfies; couples said their vows beneath its branches; Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman strolled around it in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.”[1]

On a stormy night on September vandals took chainsaws to that tree and sawed it down, leaving only a stump.  In the morning not only were many in that village mourning the tree, but the entire nation was gripped in sorrow and anger at the destruction of that iconic tree.

What had taken a century or so to grow was demolished in only a matter of minutes.  Thousands poured out to mourn the loss.  Such a treasure turned into sawdust and wood for what?  A hobby, furniture, knickknacks?  Only a stump left behind.

That following spring the Northumberland National Park Authority placed an amazing sign at the roped-off stump.  “This tree stump is still alive,” followed by the hope, “If we leave it alone it might sprout new growth.”  Passersby were warned to heed the admonition to respect the barrier.

And wonder of wonders that spring there were seven new shoots that had come forth.

Isaiah speaks to a nation that had a battle axe taken to it as families were split, killed and hauled into captivity.  A nation as dried up and desiccated as an old stump.  But out of the Torah heritage of what had once been a flourishing tree with strong limbs for birds to roost in, would come new life.  Green shoots.  As captivating as a burning bush in the middle of nowhere.

One would be sent and on him would rest the “spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”

John the Baptizer would proclaim his advent, breathing fire and thunder at those who had led the people of Israel astray.  Offering an opportunity for repentance at the River Jordan.

And that old stump continues to produce wonderous growth, inviting all who would read and heed the summons.  Yes, fire from an old stump – that was John’s summons.

And that fire yet lives on in the hearts of all who have signed up to follow that Prince of Peace, that Mighty Counselor, God with us.

I saw it in a very small way in the grocery checkout line as I waited with Ileen, my home health aide.  We were behind a woman in one of those motorized shopping carts who was having great difficulty in getting her purchases out of the basket.  Without saying a word, Ileen went around in front of her and asked if she might help.  That customer was so grateful, it made my day.

But behind us was an elderly gentleman also in a motorized cart and there was Ileen in a flash helping him.  In just a few minutes of kindness, all of us were chatting together like old friends.  What an Advent delight.  Ileen is the embodiment of her Catholic tradition with a strong social conscience.

A delightful green shoot from that tradition.  A blazing spark of delight in what could have been a dead stump of a mind-numbing wait in a long line, listening to insipid Christmas elevator music.

President Obama was right when he counseled Americans on how to get through the deadness of a nation gone amiss in lies and repression.  Be kind.  Kindness is important, he advised.  It will get us through.  Its pedigree goes right back to the Prince of Peace.  Ileen is most kind – an Advent harbinger.

Amy Frykholm in her interview with a genuine woman of peace brings to her reader the Straight Glory right out of Isaiah’s promise.  Leymah Gbowee shares the amazing tale of an African woman caught up in the terror of Liberia under the dictatorship of the warlord Charles Taylor.  And the price the women of that nation paid.[2]

During that savage reign of horror, Leymah was a terrified 18-year-old girl.  As a result of the fighting between rebel forces led by Charles Taylor and the government, she and many others had taken refuge in a nearby Lutheran church compound, St. Peter’s in Monrovia.

Government forces, looking for food, attacked the church.  After raping and killing the woman who held the keys to the church they proceeded to massacre most of those sheltering there.  With knives, machetes, machine guns, they slaughtered more than 500 men, women and children.

Because Leymah’s uncle had lied to the soldiers, telling them that their family was of the same tribe as the soldiers, they had been released.

Traumatized by that incident, Leymah fell into a desolute life, entering into a relationship with a married man who was abusive.  Giving birth to four children.  She eventually moved back home to her family and reunited with that congregation at St. Peter’s.  There the pastor recognized her unique gifts and her intelligence.  He soon had her reading M.L. King, Gandhi and the Mennonite peace activist, John Howard Yoder.

One night she heard the summons, a call as distinct and clear as any ever heard by a prophet.  In the midst of that turmoil, sleeping in a church office, she heard the ask. “Gather the women to pray for peace.”[3]

Some women overheard her sharing that call but she didn’t see herself as a religious leader. 

“She was a single mother, never married, who had a complicated relationship with her church. ‘It was like hearing the voice of God, yes, but . . . that wasn’t possible,’ she writes in her memoir. ‘I drank too much. I fornicated! I was sleeping with a man who wasn’t my husband, who in fact was still legally married to someone else. If God was going to speak to someone in Liberia, it wouldn’t be me.’”[4] 

A gentle shoot out of desiccated remains of a nation torn by violence, rape and famine.  The few women who had overheard her sharing the vision of that night with a co-worker told her, “We need to pray.”

Some twenty women began to pray once a week, and this small green shoot became a national movement, “Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace.”  It eventually was comprised of thousands, not just Christians, but Muslims, Jews and others – crossing all tribal, religious, educational levels, rural and urban.

Out of this Spiritual fire was born a new Liberia from the dead stump of a ruined nation.  Under the soul force of these woman, warring parties were brought to heel and arms were laid down.

Out of the stump of Jesse, God continues to breathe new life into the People of the Covenant, the people of the Jesus Movement.  And when that roll is called up yonder, I want my name to be there along with the wonderful folks of St. John’s and St. Francis in glorious array assembled. 

This godly heritage, every bit as much as the familial backgrounds of each of us, yet bears the possibility of new life.  If we but attend to and heed the promptings of the Advent Promise.  Amen.

---

[1] Liddy Barlow, “More Life to Come,” Christian Century, December 6, 2025.

[2] Amy Frykholm, “To tell the truth: Nobel winner Leymah Gbowee,” Christian Century, November 16, 2011.

[3] Op cit.

[4] Op cit.

Farmer Miguel with some of Wednesday’s harvest, 12-3-25
A sermon you can see and taste!

December 7, 2025

Second Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
2^nd Reading: Romans 15:4-13; Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12

“Fire From an Old Stump”

“Johnny, don’t go beyond the curb,” my mother would admonish me when I asked to go outside.  And if the ball goes out into the street, let someone go get it for you.  All instructions to keep me safe.

Later there would be other instructions and advice.  Like that from my father when I slacked on my homework or came home with terrible grades.  I was told that I needed to get an education so I didn’t have to rely on my back to make a living. 

My dad, growing up in West Virginia coal country, had seen the ravages of that industry on the men who moiled for that coal underground.  Men whose bodies were spent before they were forty.  Men with black lung disease slowly wasting away.  Families consumed by poverty and despair as union rights were violated by the owners. 

And some of that instruction sunk in.  Even though my grades and diligence did not substantially improve, his admonition idled at the back of my thoughts.  I knew he was right.  His instruction had imbedded itself in my consciousness.  And after I was married with a family, I finally had my nose to the grindstone.

Does anyone know how many “A”s it takes to redeem a 1.2 GPA.  Yeah, I was a real academic screwup.  I knew my mind was much better than my back.

Isaiah proclaims similar words of wisdom and enlightenment in today’s Advent reading.

“In the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills…Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’   For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the lord from Jerusalem.”

Instruction and wisdom, indeed!  Torah Righteousness will find a new expression, a new embodiment.  And his name shall be Mighty Counselor, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us.”

Matthew alerts us, that that day which no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, may happen in a flash.  That day when the roll is called up yonder.  Scientists tell us that that day is certain.  Our sun will massively explode consuming all the neighboring planets.  The universe will slowly expand into lifeless nothingness.  All this apocalypse billions of years away.  Here is one doctrine supported by science.  Trust the science; but more, trust the Lord’s goodness to embrace us all in that end.

Yet in a sense, it is every day.  Opportunities to enter the kin-dom of God present themselves, are revealed through the agency of the Holy Spirit.  Let us each prepare a humble manger of our hearts that it might be born in us.  The Spirit of Christmas Promise never sleeps – 24/7 she’s on duty seeking to rummage through our dreams and imaginations, bearing anew the Christ Child.

And how gentle is often his instruction, his guidance.  Yes, sometimes he has to overturn the tables of our obstinacy and blindness.  All to our own good.  Don’t rush heedlessly into the traffic of evil this guidance compels.

Sometimes, it’s a word I resist.  I’ve been reading Fr. Greg Boyle’s new book, Cherished Belonging,[1] a work revealing the gentleness of Christ on the streets of Los Angeles.

When someone at a retreat of his order was praised as “THAT is a good Jesuit,”[2] inwardly he instinctively rebelled.  If there are “good” Jesuits then it is implied that there are “bad” Jesuits.  It was the Christ within him crying out in that inner moment of protest.  He states that he has never known a “bad” Jesuit.  “I’ve met many broken Jesuits: traumatized, despondent; on the spectrum; wounded; stuck in shame, mental illness and crippling inferiority.  I’ve known Jesuits who are strangers to themselves.  But I’ve never met a bad one.  Please don’t call me a good one.”[3]

The gift that Mary carries in her womb would instruct the world in such gentle, patient understanding.  It’s called Grace.  A sister of the Torah Righteousness that would instruct the life of her child to be born.

Now, I’m often so resistant to that gentle word of admonishment, that gentle word of Love.  Out of the damage of my childhood, I want to nourish my hate for one who has wronged me, wronged our nation.

Perhaps, maybe this president is not evil as I would like to judge, but he is a very damaged person.  And out of that damage he inflicts damage on the rest of us.  Damage that in itself is evil.

Just as Jesus did not see a “loose” woman at the well in Samaria that day, he saw a precious child of God who had become lost in the trauma she had endured as a girl.  Lost in the trauma of assault by similarly damaged men.  Self-absorbed men having no regard for anyone but themselves.

It is the gift of Grace that would await us this Advent season, the gift of allowing us to get beyond ourselves, the gift of self-transcendence that allows us to enter a glorious Kin-dom of God’s full creation.

The Christmas gift for which we prepare is a spiritual reality clothed in flesh and foliage, other people, and yes, Ellen, the animals. Crickets and bees.  Trees and lettuce, baobab trees and seaweed.  St. Francis being a branch of that revelation.

We await further instruction each day to the splendid gift of this wonderful world.  That is the Advent summons to our hearts and minds.

This instruction we would imbibe, would “read, learn, mark and inwardly digest.”  It is the open door to a new way of living that Mary’s child will reveal.

It’s not for sissies, for in our days evil deeds are done by very deranged people.  People whose actions we must resist with all the faith that is within us.  Yes, these times call for “Holy Resistance.”

The pure, unadulterated Grace that awaits to be born in our lives is liberation from all that separates us from our true selves, men and women fully alive in the Glory of God.  God has put a big, shiny bow on that in the work of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Innocence Project. 

That Christ living in his work is a direct spiritual inheritance, root and branch, from his mother who lived it daily.  The Advent gift we expectantly await in these divided, traumatized times.

Bryan Stevenson’s mother lived the beatitude of reconciliation.  She was an Advent Beatitude, blessed to the core.

Blessedness restores broken relationships and enables life to go on.  Bryan Stevenson tells of a lesson in saying you’re sorry his mother taught him that has stuck with him over the years.  Sometimes the most embarrassing lessons are the ones that stick.

Blessed are those who say they’re sorry.  Blessed are those who go the extra mile, those who seek to understand with the heart. 

Bryan Stevenson’s mother is one tough lady, the sort of disciple Jesus will call. The sort he needs.  You have to be tough sometimes to be a parent these days.  She, and any parent on God’s green earth, knows, parenting is tough stuff – not at all for sissies or the unformed.  There’s a reason sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t be having children.

For those who don’t know Bryan Stevenson, he is the Black lawyer who works on death penalty cases for indigent inmates awaiting execution in Montgomery, Alabama.  As he listened to one inmate about to be led into the execution chamber who was having great difficulty in talking with Brian due to a severe stutter, Bryan had a flashback to an old memory from his childhood. 

Bryan and some of his friends had been making fun of another boy with a speech impediment.  As Bryan and his friends were laughing at this boy, he saw his mother looking at him with an expression he’d never seen before.  Bryan continues his story in his book, Just Mercy:

It was a mix of horror, anger, and shame, all focused on me.  I stopped my laughing instantly.  I’d always felt adored by my mom, so I was unnerved when she called me over.

When I got to her, she was very angry with me.  “What are you doing?”

What? I didn’t do…

Don’t you ever laugh at someone because they can’t get their words out right.  Don’t you ever do that!”

“I’m sorry.”  I was devastated to be reprimanded by my mom so harshly.  “Mom, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

“You should know better, Bryan.”

“I’m sorry. I thought…”

“I don’t want to hear it, Bryan.  There is no excuse, and I’m very disappointed in you.  Now, I want you to go back over there and tell that little boy that you’re sorry.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Then I want you to give that little boy a hug.”

“Huh?”

“Then I want you to tell him that you love him.”  I looked up at her and, to my horror, saw that she was dead serious.  I had reacted as apologetically as I possibly could, but this was way too much.

“Mom, I can’t go over and tell that boy I love him.  People will—”

She gave me that look again.  I somberly turned around and returned to my group of friends.  They had obviously seen my mother’s scolding; I could tell because they were all staring at me.  I went up to the little boy who had struggled to speak.

“Look, man, I’m sorry.”

I was genuinely apologetic for laughing and even more deeply regretful of the situation I had put myself in.  I looked over at my mother who was still staring at me.  I lunged at the boy to give him a very awkward hug.  I think I startled him by grabbing him like that, but when he realized that I was trying to hug him, his body relaxed and he hugged me back.

My friends looked at me oddly as I spoke.

“Uh…also, uh…I love you!”  I tried to say it as insincerely as I could get away with and half-smiled as I spoke.  I was still hugging the boy, so he couldn’t see the disingenuous look on my youthful face.

It made me feel less weird to smile like it was a joke.  But then the boy hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear.  He spoke flawlessly, without a stutter and without hesitation.

“I love you, too.”  There was such tenderness and earnestness in his voice, and just like that, I thought I would start crying.[4]

That day Bryan learned compassion.  Now, that’s a BLESSED moment!

That is the glorious, new way of living that awaits us each under the Christmas tree, or my friend Bob’s Hannukah bush.

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and ransom us from a world gone awry, from ourselves gone awry.  Reveal a greater Glory that awaits.  With expectant hearts we stand by.  This Advent we await with eagerness to be instructed in such Love.  Amen.

---

[1] Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2024).

[2] Op. cit., 42.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, (New York, NY, Random House, 2000), p. 286,287.

November 30, 2025

First Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122;
2^nd Reading: Romans 13:11-14; Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44

“Instruction Shall Go Forth”

At a student conference at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, I first encountered a mature, muscular understanding of the Christian faith I had received from Sunday school.  The Rev. Joseph Wesley Matthews had been holding forth for several days on an understanding of the faith that led to intentional living, cruciform living for the world.

The energy level of those days was unbelievable.  Methodist students from all over California had assembled for that week.  And the air was electric with possibility, with hope.  I remember on one break, several of us male students and their pastors had gathered around a piano singing “For All the Saints.”  The bond of that male camaraderie was nothing like anything I had experienced in the church.  Yes, “Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host.”  Indeed, a taste of heavenly bliss.

As we broke for lunch, over the PA loudspeaker, boomed an urgent announcement, “Jim Donaldson, this is your eschatological moment!”    Oh oh.

Eschatological — of final things.  A moment of being called to account.  Dealing with final judgement.  Yes, we’d absorbed a lot of theological jargon in those few days.

But in a sense, that conference was an eschatological turning point, days of decision, for many of us.  More than one that week began a journey leading to the ordained ministry.  We were, in a way high on a conversion experience – a decision for a life of intentionality.  I can say I’m here in the church because of that week in Stockton.

The prophet Malachi proclaims such an eschatological moment in the life of the people Israel.  “See the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble, the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”

Out of this moment of crisis shall come a sprig of hope.  “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

One of my favorite hymns, “Once to Every Man and Nation,” speaks to such moments of decision, eschatological moments when our entire life is summoned before us.  “Comes a moment to decide…for the good or evil side.”

While the theology might now be somewhat questionable and the imagery sexist, the truth of this hymn is that in the life of a person and nation, there are critical moments.  Eschatological moments when it’s all on the line.  As the old union song asks, “Which Side Are You On?”

America presently faces such a moment.  As more and more of the Epstein files come to light, we now have three of Jeffrey Epstein emails attesting that Donald Trump knew all about the underaged girls being raped and trafficked by him and Maxwell.  In fact, one avers that Trump had been alone with one of those girls in Epstein’s house for several hours.  What was going on?  I doubt he was helping her with her math homework.  Certainly not a paper on morality!

In this critical moment of decision, who will we be as a people?  Will we join with the MAGA cult to sweep this all under the rug?  Ignore those brave women now coming out to testify to the horrors of their ordeal? 

Amazingly, maybe we will.  The House of Representatives has been away on vacation for seven weeks, in part to avoid seating a new representative who had pledged to sign a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the entire Epstein files.  Yes, hiding in order to protect child rapists.  And depriving children of their nutritional benefits only to protect these rapists.  Depriving one in eight Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to protect these traffickers of girls?   And a tawdry president attempting to cover it all up.  Yes, what WAS he doing alone in that room for several hours with that underage girl?

Once to this nation can’t come soon enough the moment to decide.  November, 2026 awaits our judgement of it all.  Judgement of this corrupt administration and of all who have by their obfuscation and silence have countenanced this criminal sex trafficking ring.

Oh, and just why might Ghislane Maxwell now be ensconced in a country-club prison with room service?  Of course, it wouldn’t have anything to do with her silence, would it?  Or a presidential pardon? 

This is America’s eschatological moment.  We stand before the bar of history.  Whose side are we on?  The day is coming to decide.

The protectors of the world’s climate are now gathering in Belém, Brazil over these next few weeks for COP30.  COP30 stands for the 30^th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  That’s a mouthful, but all stands for our collective effort to combat global warming.

Needless to say, the United States is absent, having pulled out of the Paris Accords under this anti-science administration.  Yeah, “Drill, baby, drill” – “Dig, baby, dig.”  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, plenty.  Sarah Palin may have suggested that we don’t need all this “sciency stuff,” but what you don’t know can actually kill you, and the planet.

The Paris Accords, due to the temporizing position of the Obama administration, watered down a critical goal – to keep global warming at or under 1.5 degrees Celsius increase – an increase 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Beyond that, we approach or exceed critical “tipping points,” beyond which there is no return.  Climate disaster becomes a run-away freight train barreling through the coming centuries to the planet becoming a crispy critter.

Those pesky climate scientists warn us that we have already exceeded that goal and are on the way to a 2-degree Celsius increase – some even thinking that enough warming has already been stored in our oceans to take us to a 3-degree Celsius increase in warming.

The root cause driving all this, at the very bottom, is a predatory capitalist system demanding, “More, more, more.”   As the economics professor Richard Parker said, “Only a fool or an economist would believe in the possibility of infinite growth in a finite system.”  Our Mother Earth has its limits, and we’re exceeding them.

At a three degrees Celsius increase, what is the future?  The Amazon, due to the shift in the jet stream, looses its rainfall, becoming as arid as the Gobi Desert.  All gone.  The great Amazon River with its piranha and fresh water porpoises.  howler monkeys, spider monkeys and jaguars – all gone.  Statuesque mahogany trees, Brazil nut trees, and the immense Kapok tree.  And did I mention the cacao tree, yes, your Hershey’s chocolate bar gone to extinction.  All the shifting sands of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl.  And what about my coffee?  Huh? – now, this is getting serious.[1]

And worst, all that carbon storage the Amazon provided.  That jungle is truly the lungs of the planet.  Our world is becoming a runaway freight train headed to oblivion as tipping point after tipping point is passed.

In the days of flood, drought, tornado, and wildfire comes the moment to decide.  Our planet’s eschatological moment.  Will we opt for a livable future or an unknown hellscape?  Poor Luther James, we have dropped a very heavy load on his shoulders.

Luke’s gospel warns that those standing for what is right will be hauled before the authorities.  Before ICE and the machinery of government weaponized against our citizens.  We must be ready to give an account for ourselves who believe in Torah Righteousness and Gospel Goodness.   In this contest, “you will gain your souls.”

I believe the evidence is in — that Malachi’s promise, Luke’s promise is worthy of our faith.  “But for you who revere my name the sun of Righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”  And power our future.  This last November the American people rejected MAGA extremism and the starvation of our children as the cutoff of SNAP benefits was used to punish our most vulnerable.  We will reject sexual predation of the most vulnerable.  And Global Weirding.

This administration may not be present at the COP 30 conference, but our Governor Newsom has led a large delegation to place a marker down, that America will accept its responsibilities.[2]  And, without the Trumpy folks present this time, just maybe this time we will accept a realistic goal for action.  No more aspirational, pie-in-the-sky “hopium.”  The delusional thinking of the past is a narcotic the planet can no longer afford.  It is our eschatological moment to decide.  The day is coming.

Bill McKibben, in his new book, Here Comes the Sun,[3] lays out the realistic possibility of a living future for our Mother Earth.  We have it in our capacity to amend our ways.  Much damage has been done, irreversible damage.  But we can yet adopt to something like a 2-degree Celsius increase.

“In the US, something like 42 percent of the energy we use comes down to how we heat our air and water, cook our food, dry our clothes and drive our cars.  That is to say, almost half of the emissions are the result of decisions we make around the proverbial kitchen table…a big part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was designed to push those decisions toward the clean and efficient appliances I’ve been describing” – heat pumps, induction stoves, bikes, electric vehicles. 

Just ditching the gas stove can be done for an induction burner at $60.00 to $100.  Of course, a full induction stove will cost around $2000 and you will probably need new cookware.  But all this is possible. 

In that legislation, the IRA, approximately a half trillion dollars was allocated to help America adapt.  Until it was canceled under this administration of anti-science know nothings.  It is up to us to chose the future we want.  The tools are at hand.  Yes, the day is coming – a day when we either burn the place down, as with the fires of last year, or we “cool it,” as the kids would say.  The day is coming.  Our moment to decide.

Momentum is building for solutions.  Time magazine in its November 10th issue, featured a large number of activists, scientists, and others on the front lines working for solutions, and sounding the alarm – yes, that a five-alarm fire is in the making.  Our climate crisis is finally getting front-and-center attention necessary to grab collective attention.[4]

And I believe the American people will choose wisely.  As my friend Vern was wont to say, “Timing is everything.”  The day IS coming.

I close with my favorite quote from James Baldwin on our collective responsibility, our pledge to one another, from his essay, “Nothing Personal.”

Listen to James Baldwin in this essay, he admonishes:

“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; The earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.  The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”[5] 

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, might we pray for the strength and wisdom to keep the Christ Light burning brightly now and, in the days to come, that we might not be found wanting of any good grace.  Let us commend the faith that is in us.  All to the “Glory of God and our neighbor’s good.”  Amen.

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[1] Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C., National Geographic, 2008), 140-143.

[2] Melody Gutierrez, “Climate Gives Newsom a World Stage,” Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2025

[3] Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun (New York: Norton, 2025).

[4] “Climate: The 100 Most Influential Leaders Driving Climate Action, Time Magazine, November 10, 2025.

[5] James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 393.

November 9, 2025

Pentecost 23, Proper 28

Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98;
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

 
“The Day is Coming”