Strive to enter the narrow gate.  That sounds like a lot of work.  Actual effort.  I must confess that my early college career was not stellar by any sense of the word.  I can still hear my kindly German teacher, Frau Bluske, telling me in front of the entire class one afternoon after I had to admit that I hadn’t done my homework, “Herr Forney, wenn sie nicht studieren, sie will durchfallen.”  Translation:  “Mr. Forney, if you don’t study, you will flunk.”  The narrow door was a much more difficult operation than hanging with the guys the night before in the pool hall drinking a beer.  Enter the narrow gate, indeed!

And I still shudder when I remember that physics exam on electricity.  The only question I could answer with any certainty was the one that asked, “name.”  Not my finest moment.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t much better at pool.

The reality is, that if one’s Christian faith is to amount to anything, it takes a bit of doing.  Sometimes this Jesus stuff is downright hard. And the results are not always going to be what we had in mind.  There’s no guarantee of success.

It has not been that long ago that the Episcopal Church had a bit of a reputation for being the “party church.”  You’ve probably heard the line:  Where two or three Episcopalians are gathered together, there’s usually a fifth.  We have been a part of that “wide door” the world holds open.  Hopefully, that’s not so much the case anymore – back in the day when our church was known as the “status church” of the upper classes.

To the extent that we come to church “for solace only and not for renewal,” as the communion prayer puts it, we may be coming to just a party church.  Church as entertainment.  And all we will get is junk food religion.  Lots of sugar and calories but no nutrition.  As the grandma in the Wendy’s commercial demanded to know, “Where’s the beef?”

If we’re prone to take our ease in Zion, today we get a warning shot across the bow from our Lord.  When asked who would be saved, Jesus answers, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying ‘Lord, open to us.’  He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’”

That the road through the narrow door is difficult and the path ahead is unclear, is no excuse.  Jesus didn’t give up, and his narrow door led to the cross.  One friend said about extravagant discipleship, “There’s two possibilities.  There’s success and there’s a learning experience.” 

Now, some are wont to say upon hearing such dyspeptic talk, “Well, I don’t agree.  The real Jesus would never say anything like that.  I come to church for comfort, not to be riled up.”  I don’t remember Jesus promising comfort.

Don’t discount what Bonhoeffer calls “the cost of discipleship.”  And what was all this talk we had last week about Jesus bringing a sword.  Pretty tough stuff.  His message is sure to cause great consternation.  It asks of us something difficult like loving our enemies and forgiveness.  It is about struggle, it’s about spiritual warfare, if you will.  The ethic of the Jesus Movement is not the ethic of the world. 

My friend Wesley knows that he needs a big kick in the pants at times.  He needs challenge.  His frequent prayer upon entering the church door is, “Jesus, dropkick me through the goal posts of life.”  He wants the whole gospel, not fast food spirituality.  Where’s the narrow door.  Point me there, he asks of the preacher.

I suspect that Jesus was a pretty radical fellow who put his marker very far out there, knowing that we couldn’t possibly reach it in all likelihood.  But we would enter into life abundant in the trying.  We need such a holy goad because it’s so easy to get distracted by all the stuff out there which does not nourish.

Jesus might be sort of like my old chemistry professor.  She was a tough old bird who told us all on that first day of class in that huge lecture hall to look at the person on either side of us, because by the time the course had finished, one of us wouldn’t be there.  She was right.  Talk about the narrow door!

Now, she didn’t want people to flunk out, but she knew that for those folks who didn’t keep step, who idled in the pool hall, that they would soon fall by the wayside.  She was indeed right.  Far less than one half the class was left by the time the final rolled by.  I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth.

“Strive to enter at the narrow gate,” Jesus admonishes.  It’s easy to get lost.  Durchfallen doesn’t require much effort at all (remember Frau Bluske).  As Dante writes in the opening pages of the Inferno:

       Midway in the journey of our life

       I came to myself in a dark wood,

       For the straight way was lost…

       How I came there I cannot really tell,

       I was so full of sleep

       when I forsook the one true way.

That the “true way” could so easily be lost on the road to the pool hall, I’m here to tell you.  The world offers a plastic religion – all sorts of things that will make life worthwhile.  Indeed, there are a jillion things out there that promise life abundant.  If you only have the right car, the right trophy wife or husband, the right toothpaste, the right hair, or at my age, if you have any hair at all!  And so much of this hype is aimed right at our youth and young adults.

One of my friends had a Porsche, another had a chopped and souped up Olds.  The girl across the street got a new Thunderbird with those little porthole windows on the sides.  But I was in teenage agony.  I didn’t have a car.  I had a hand-me-down 1950 Studebaker!  You remember the ones of the early 50’s with the curved back window, so you really couldn’t tell whether the thing was going backwards or forwards.  It had a chrome bullet nose and was sort of a pukey dark green.  Even the name sounded horrible – like rutabaga, or cauliflower.  Bleah!  It’s a wonder they ever sold any of them.

My dad the dentist was the only one I ever knew who bought one, because it was cheap.  Cheep!  Not cool.  Cheep.  My dad didn’t understand cool.  I don’t think most dentists do.  Not another family in the entire neighborhood had one.  So, it was a miracle I ever got any dates at all with that car.  I was convinced that my whole career as a teenager was being severely stunted by this ugly car.  No telling how many years I might have to spend in therapy working through the psychic damage.  (Looking back on things, I did get a pretty good wife — but probably not because of the car.)

Now, as my hair has turned quite grey in my latter years (my wife says “white”), perhaps a bit of God’s wisdom has finally sunk in.  “Strive to enter at the narrow door,” says our Lord.  It will never be about the car, the toothpaste, or any of the rest of it.  It is about a tradition that nourishes.  It is about a God who redeems.  Yes, even through the difficult sayings and hard lessons of life – God redeems.  It is about a spirituality that is mature enough for the long haul.

Fortunately, I believe the party days are mostly bygone for our beloved Episcopal Church.  The period of cultural captivity of our church has been slowly coming to an end.  Reality check time.

When the church came out foursquare against the Vietnam War, it took on a tough issue.  Just as it had over slavery.  When the church came out for women’s ordination, it knew we would lose some folks.  The same as for LGBT inclusion.  Yes, God does love everyone!   When we elected our first woman bishop…well, can you imagine the uproar in some quarters.  And then a woman presiding bishop.  Yes, there was hate mail.

I can still remember my friend Bob up in Sitka one day announcing, “Well, I finally figured out why God wanted us to have women priests.”  Knowing Bob’s unrelenting opposition to women clergy, in amazement I asked, “Why’s that, Bob?”  “To show us that it couldn’t possibly ever work!”  he said, banging his fist on the desk.  Yes, we lost members.

When you drove or walked up to church this morning, you surely didn’t see any “Golden Arches.”  No junk food spirituality offered here. Here you get a meal here which lasts for the long haul.  It is this same rich and deep Anglican spirituality that has nourished so many faithful souls who have gone on before.  That’s what we’re about at St. Francis.

In the New York Times this week I came across an article about a nun, a doctor and a lawyer…now, now, I know.  You’re thinking that this is leading to some bar joke…a nun, a doctor and a lawyer walked into a bar…   Well, that’s not the case.  Actually, it’s all about the narrow door.

What these three stalwart people did was to walk right into the face of big pharma, Purdue Pharma, to be exact — in Pennington Gap, Virginia. This Catholic nun, this doctor and this lawyer were present at the beginning of the opioid epidemic in Appalachia.  In sounding the alarm, these three entered through a narrow door they hoped would prevent a lot of misery.

They inspired “a burst of local activism against Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin’s maker, that the company ultimately crushed.[1] Their failed effort was a missed opportunity to stem the onslaught of addiction to opioids and the drugs they quickly led to — fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine.”

Sister Beth Davies had known an epidemic was on the way.  She witnessed it’s unfolding in their little town of nineteen hundred people in the southwest corner of Virginia.  The journalist covering the story, Berry Meier, had come to that part of Appalachia about twenty years ago.   Out of the activism of Sister Davis, Dr. Van Zee, and Ms. Kobak, Barry Meier also witnessed the inception of the scourge.  These three would become the central cast of the reporter’s book, Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic.[2]

Dr. Zee urged Purdue to change the way it was marketing OxyContin but to no avail.  He and the others launched a recall petition to the FDA to have the drug taken off the market.  Purdue countered by threatening to publish a full-page ad in the local paper attacking the recall drive, and offered $100,000 to the group to drop the recall drive.  They refused.

Things looked up when the Justice Department finally announced felony criminal indictments against Purdue Pharma and it’s three top executives.  The charge?  Deceptive marketing.  Purdue said the stuff was harmless.

Victory was short lived.  Department officials negotiated a plea deal under which the executives would cop to minor charges and no jail time.  There would be no right of discovery.  No chance to see all the emails documenting the nefarious plot to cover up the work of this addiction factory.

“In the years that followed, executives of other opioid makers and distributers kept shipping millions of addictive pain pills into towns like this one apparently without fear of serious penalties.”[3]  Dr. Zee is convinced that had the Justice Department not reversed course, the outcome would have been completely different.  Appalachia might have avoided so much needless death and misery.  The malefactors would have been in prison.

Recently, Dr. Van Zee and Ms. Sue Ella Kobak flew to Oklahoma to testify in its lawsuit against Purdue.  They continue the fight.  Sr. Beth, standing outside a courtroom in the rain, still remembers her bitter disappointment in the Justice Department’s settlement of the case against Purdue.  All three continue to insist that these pill-pushers face scrutiny and be held accountable for the untold lives they have ruined and the communities they have destroyed in Appalachia. 

These three activists indeed entered through the narrow door of our criminal justice system.  And though the door of justice was slammed in their faces, yet they persisted.  The tide is changing.  I hope they know the satisfaction of having alerted all of us to this disaster now facing America.  I’m sure our Lord is saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”  Indeed, strive to enter the reign of God through the narrow door.

When it comes time for me to lay my life down on God’s altar, I would like to be able to offer something like the work of those fearless Appalachian activists: Sr. Beth Davis, Counselor Sue Ella Kobak, and Dr. Van Zee.  Oh, that our lives might be laid upon God’s altar, if only as a pale likeness of their gift. 

That it might be said of each of us — as I believe the Lord must regard the unblemished gift of a nun, a doctor and a lawyer from Pennington Gap, Virginia — they have striven to enter at the narrow door, and it has made – it still does make — all the difference in the world.  Blessed are they indeed.  Amen.

---

[1] Barry Meier, “Ruling Lost Chances to Stem the Opioid Crisis They Saw Coming,” The New York Times, August 19, 2019, p. A13.

[2] Barry Meier, Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic (NewYork: Random House, 2003).

[3] Barry Meier, New York Times. op.cit.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews12:18-29;

Luke 13:22-30

Proper 16, Year C, August 25, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

It has been said that the past is never past.  Our history, for good or ill continues to live in and through us.  When I was in the Army, stationed at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, I discovered that my U.S. history teacher was greatly misinformed.  I discovered that we, the North, didn’t win the Civil War, called by many locals the “War of Northern Aggression.”  In fact, the Civil War wasn’t even over.  It was still being fought, only with different weapons and strategies.  And so it continues down through Jim Crow and Nixon’s Southern Strategy, down to this very day.  Our racial differences have become weaponized and are tearing the country apart.  William Faulkner has said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”  This truism runs like the trajectory of a bullet straight through his novels and through our politics.

In the same way, our ancestors and others continue to live through us, even to this day.  I can surely see parts of my parents in myself.  I can see a few of my former teachers in myself.  A scoutmaster as well.

The early Christians understood that we were surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  My friend George Regas speaks of two sorts of witnesses – Balcony People and Basement People. 

You know the basement people in your life.  They are the folks ever dissatisfied with life.  Nothing is good enough.  Everyone is against them.  They are hidebound rule followers who delight in beating our hopes to death with the rule book.  They are the glass-half-empty folks.  They always have a “BUT” ready to dash any good idea or dream.  But it will never work.  But nobody will want to do it.  But.  But.  But.   A beat-it-into-the-ground-and-stomp-on-it BUT.  They’re like Joe Btfsplk in the Li’l Abner cartoon who walks about with a thundercloud over his head.  Anyone coming in contact with him is permanently jinxed.  He’s the ultimate bad news.  You know these people.    Basement people can infest your life like plague of cockroaches.  If you let them.

Those in the balcony we might visualize as beaming faces benevolently looking down on us, cheering us on as we run the race of life.  The biblical writer was thinking of Balcony People, those of gladsome tidings.

Balcony people cheer us on as we go forth to live out the joyful message of God’s radical love.  They are the ones who push us to pull out our best stuff, to go the extra mile, to get to our “A” game.   They are the ones who don’t give up on us, even when we’ve made a total mess of things and have given up on ourselves.  They are the ones who shout in my ear, “John, wake up.   Wake up.  Get out of bed.  The day’s a-wasting.” 

My balcony people are those whom the hymn, “For all the Saints” conjures up: “And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.”  These are the brave hearts in our lives, whose strong arms we depend upon. These people persist.  They endure. 

I cannot run the race without such folks cheering me on.  This Cloud of Witnesses lives in our hearts and minds.  They are the absolute sign of God’s presence with us.  As I and my co-workers working on House of Hope have found, this stuff that Jesus has put into our hearts to do is not easy.  Sometimes it gets downright discouraging, especially when those you thought ought to be with you turn out to be lazy, self-indulgent, hostile and territorial. 

Even when one tries to do the right thing, division will arise.  The malevolent forces of NIMBYism and greed will raise their ugly heads.  Thank God for those balcony people who cheer us on in spite of fearful and wrongheaded opposition.  In our minds and hearts, our balcony people bring a smile.  They are our fortitude.

Like this past week in West Virginia working to round up allies and friends.  Our development officer called up one newly established opioid treatment centers to learn what they might  have to teach us from starting up their facility.  My colleague hadn’t gotten very far into the conversation when the woman on the other end of the line stopped him.

“Where are you located?

“In Wellsburg.”

“Wellsburg, that’s district 1… You’re going to steal my patients; you’re going to take my beds.  Why would I help you?”

“I thought we were all working together to help people.”

“Well, yes, BUT…  Well, of course, we are, but, but…you’re going to steal my clients.”

Oy veh…  Sigh.

Later that day when we met with one of those marvelous bureaucrats (and there really are wonderful, dedicated civil servants in state government offices) our host stated that he was well aware of us and our project.

“I already know about you.  I’ve had calls about you.”

Our development officer Jim responded, “I know who called you.”

“You spoke to (name deleted to protect the insecure).”

The fellow had a good laugh.  “Because of you folks, I missed my lunch.  This woman went on and on and on for some forty-five minutes.  You guys are going to steal her clients.”  We all chuckled some more.

This wonderful public servant is truly a balcony person, a gift of God, to cheer on House of Hope and our efforts to “do something” about opioid addiction in the state of West Virginia.  That he controls some of the state funding for programs like ours is only an additional plus.

In my mind, I could see all those who, down through my life have given me the strength and resilience to withstand the nay-sayers.  Even when I was the nay-sayer.  Those nay-sayers who might like the idea of an opioid recovery center somewhere – just not near them.  Not in their back yard.  No!   We need balcony people – that great cloud of witnesses who cheer us on.  People like my dad who was persistence personified.  People like an English teacher in high school who believed in my abilities far more than I did.  A college professor who taught optical mineralogy.  A campus minister.  Various parishioners.  A United Methodist superintendent.  A bishop or two.  We need that great cloud of witnesses.  All members of the glorious company of saints calling me to bring out my best effort.  To persevere and run the good race. 

Jesus has warned us that his message of compassion, his message of justice and deliverance would bring opposition.  Families will be divided as will communities.  They had NIMBYism even back then.

I came into adulthood at the beginning of the Vietnam war – a time when our country was most divided.  I was counter culture personified.  My family was divided.  I don’t think my dad and I spoke for over two years as a result of my opposition to that war.  Unfortunately, many of us displaced our anger to that war.  We blamed returning soldiers rather than the misguided government that had sent them into a corrupted, no-win situation.  That is why the slogan of Vietnam Vets Against the War is “Honor the warrior, not the war.”

Before I left on this last trip to West Virginia, I received my copy of The Veteran. the biannual publication of VVAW.  Featured was an article about the library being built in a Vietnam city by our members.  That, after all the animosity and pain coming out of that war, we should now be building and furnishing a library warmed my heart.  That the Vietnamese would be receptive to such a gesture – well, it brought a tear to my eyes and a check from my checkbook.  The people involved in this project from both nations are indeed balcony people.  They are the sign primordial that grace trumps evil.  Even the evil of a most divisive war that destroyed both our nations.  Hate may last for a day, but not forever.  Balcony people eventually will have the last word.  And the world is better for them.  Indeed, they are tokens of the grace of God.  It brought joy to my heart that I could be a small part of that project in Vietnam.  A great cloud of witnesses indeed!

Our recovery facility in West Virginia will not only be treating opioid addiction, but PTSD as well, for both our current vets and our first responders.  All involved in this effort are a part of today’s great cloud of witnesses to hope.  It’s about paying it forward.  It’s what the twelve-step folks call “an attitude of gratitude.”  It’s the Jesus movement in action.

Our nation could presently use a few balcony people.  We are presently two or three, or more Americas.  Our politics are at the breaking point.  We are a nation of haves and (mostly) have-nots.  Income and wealth inequality, since the first days of slavery, poison our national discourse.  With the demise of unions and many good jobs, the politics of resentment now feeds on itself. 

However, there are hopeful voices of sanity.  Often the political fabric of America can be much better discerned and unraveled through the art of the novelist.  We’ve had facts heaped upon facts.  We’ve had expose and commissions until we’re numb.  Mueller has testified.  Trials have been held.  Some guilty have been sent packing off to jail.  Yet none of it has seemed to have grabbed the national conscience.  Maybe, as Shakespeare is oft quoted, “The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”  But in a pinch, a good story or a novel will do.

Lately I have come across Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, a story of both the worst and the best of our national politics.  Written in 1959, it captured the silent generation that came to power during the Eisenhower years and the McCarthy period.  In Drury’s frank and compelling narrative, we find those qualities of character that rise above the moral quagmire of Washington’s political scene.  Drury explores the enduring themes that have always been the material of great literature:  tragedy, sacrifice, sex and power – the great themes of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Melville, Hawthorne and scripture.  Drury has become one of my balcony people, as he has told a great tale that captures both the triumph and the pathos of that fateful time, our fateful time.  His use of the English language is mesmerizing.  I can see why it is that he received a Pulitzer Prize and I didn’t.  Speaking of the ethos of the Eisenhower years – and might we say the pathos of our years — he writes:

The great age of the Shoddy came upon America after the war, and Everybody Wants His became the guiding principle for far too many.  With it came the Age of the Shrug, the time when it was too hard and too difficult and too bothersome to worry about tomorrow, or even very much about today, when the problems of world leadership were too large and too insistent and too frightening to be grasped and so everybody would rather sigh and shrug and concentrate instead on bigger and bigger cars and shinier and shinier appliances and longer and longer vacations in a sort of helpless blind seeking after Nirvana that soothed them but unfortunately only encouraged their enemies.

A dry rot had affected America in these recent years and every sensitive American knew it.[1]

Marvelous writing.  Drury speaks to our ethos, and his story telling is riveting.  No, I don’t have any stock in Doubleday, but I heartily recommend Advise and Consent for the hopeful vision of his writing. In the midst of “the Shoddy,” Drury congers up fully fleshed out, multi-dimensional characters worthy of the story he would tell.  This is the sort of writing that elucidates and gives perspective on our dissolute days.  Drury indeed knows us and our politics.  Read any of his rewarding books.  They’re at your local library, or available on line.  Allen Drury is definitely one of my balcony people.  You most likely have similar authors you’d recommend, authors who know our hearts and our times.  Definitely balcony people.  Authors such as Allen Drury are God’s gift to us.

Another of my balcony people was the dearest, sweetest pastor’s wife I have ever known.  In Long Beach our pastor was very near retirement.  He was a rather stern, austere man.  Difficult to know and not very approachable, especially for a young junior high boy.  But his wife, Nellie was another matter. 

Now, remember we were junior highers, full of energy and full of mischief.  We were awful – the stunts we would pull were beyond the pale.  Instead of having us sit through adult church, we gathered in the gymnasium for a brief worship period before we went to our classes.  The hymns and prayers and brief meditation were led by Nellie Hughes.  She seemed to know each of us by name and it was obvious that each one of us, yes, even us disruptive boys, had a place in her heart.  I would rather die than disappoint Mrs. Nellie Hughes.  And to have to be disciplined by her?  Unthinkable!  It was during those years that what little I learned of kindness and gratitude, I most likely learned from her.  I can still picture in my mind that diminutive, frail, old woman waiting at the mic in that cavernous room for us to settle down.  And settle we did.  Her smile could light the deepest darkness.  She was kindness personified. As a young boy, I knew that whatever Jesus might have looked like, my bet is that he looked an awful lot like Mrs. Nellie Hughes.  Nellie Hughes, you are indeed one of my balcony people.

It has been through the lives of these sorts of people that we catch the Christian faith.  Though there be controversies and disputations, the church endures through people like Nellie Hughes. I can’t recall anything she might have told us, yet she endures because of who she was, and who she is in my heart today.  Each of us is surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  People who, like Nellie Hughes, testify that love endures, and so can we. 

Though Jesus may be the source of division, though members of a household will be set upon one another over what it means to follow him, do not despair. Sometimes the church eats it’s young and destroys its prophets. The NIMBY crowd may endure for a season, but will not always have the final say.  While it may look in the heat of the moment as though fire has been cast down upon our best efforts, it will be the quiet folks like Nellie who endure and persevere.  Allen Drury assures us that in the morass of the D.C. swamp, it will be stateswomen and statesmen who will reach the needed compromises to carry the day forward for the common good. 

Yes, we give thanks for the balcony people in our lives, those of strong arm and stout heart.  They are the tokens of God’s grace incarnate.  “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aide every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…”[2] 

“And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.”[3]  Amen.

1 Allen Drury, Advise and Consent (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1959) 483.

[2] Hebrews 12               

[3] William Walsham How, “For All the Saints Who from Their Labors Rest,” The Hymnal 1982 (The Church Pension Fund, New York) 287.  This is the hymnal of the Episcopal Church, however, many other denominational hymnals include this well-known hymn.

A Great Cloud of Witnesses

Jeremiah 23:23-29; Psalm 82; Hebrews 11:29-12:2;
 Luke 12:49-56

Year C, Proper 15, August 18, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

As we were preparing to leave for an errand, I opened the trunk of my old Buick and one of my sons looked in.  Shaking his head, he asked, “Dad, does the landfill company pay you rent to keep their stuff in your car?”  Or my wife might query, “Does the landfill company pay you to store their stuff in your office?” 

Yes, we have a well-expressed wiseguy gene in the Forney family.  We also have a very prominent packrat gene in the family.

I remember one breakfast when my wife Jai shared a dream she had had that evening.  She was defrosting the refrigerator and opened the freezer.  It was full of books in her dream.  After she finished recounting her dream, or was it a nightmare, I flippantly remarked that she was very fortunate to be married to a biblical scholar who could interpret her dream.

The meaning?  She needed to buy another refrigerator – so there’d be room for the food.  She had another solution in mind.

Stuff!  I do have a lot of it.  Now, I would not subscribe to the bumper sticker that proclaims: “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  I do know that accumulations can become all consuming.  It comes down to the question, Roberta Flack poses in her song, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” 

That is the question about a good life posed by the writer of Ecclesiastes.  The book speaks of a life of vain toil coming to the point of futility.  “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me; and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?”  In our reading from Luke we are again confronted with the question of acquisitiveness in the story of a rich man and abundance.  So much abundance that he is forced to keep pulling down his barns to build larger.  So much stuff!  And, after a life of laying up ample goods, after a life of ease and making merry, God confronts him late in the evening, “Fool!  This very night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” 

St. Paul provides alternative to a life of stuff.  If one is wont to accumulate, try accumulating such as “compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience.”  Is not that where true happiness lies?  Try “forgiveness and love.”  How about the “peace of Christ?”

David Brooks in his new book, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life[1], arrives at a similar place.  He identifies the “first mountain” as that effort to establish oneself.  It’s about acquiring the stuff of accomplishment:  a good education, a family, material possessions, the right circle of friends, respect of colleagues.  And let’s not discount these.  In some measure, all have their place.  As someone once said, “Poverty is not a disgrace.  Just damned inconvenient.  We all need certain things to live.  Basic stuff.  The psychologist Robert Maslow talks about the “hierarchy of needs” – usually portrayed as a pyramid. The basic needs form the base while the “nice-to-haves” are towards the top.  If one doesn’t have a roof over one’s head, you’re probably not worrying about buying the latest SUV you spied out on the dealer’s lot.  You’re probably not worrying about violin lessons for your kid.  Yes, we all need some basic stuff just to live.  And in our greed, we’re not very good at making sure everyone has a chance at the brass ring.  Most end up being thrown off the merry-go-round.

A recent Christian Century commentary on today’s lessons pokes fun at excessive stuff, car-trunk-filled stuff, through a monologue of the stand-up comedian George Carlin.  One of his few routines suitable for a “G-rated” audience:

You got your stuff with you?  I’ll bet you do.  Guys have stuff in their pockets; women have stuff in their purses…Stuff is important.  You gotta take care of your stuff.  You gotta have a place for your stuff.  That’s what life is all about, tryin’ to find a place for your stuff!  That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff.  If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house.  You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.  You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane.  You look down and see all the little piles of stuff.  Everybody’s got his own little pile of stuff.[2]

David Brooks says that there’s a second mountain, and between the two is often a devastating valley.  That valley might be an illness, a divorce or unemployment.  It may be a child addicted to drugs or one who has committed suicide.  It might be the subtle feeling of malaise.  I made it to the top and it’s not what it was cracked up to be.  Most of my associates were only fair-weather friends.  Let a slight bit of difficulty come up, and, poof! they’re gone.  No wonder President Truman was famously quoted as saying, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

At some point of disenchantment, we begin to approach that second mountain, the mountain of generativity.  This is the assent towards a greater fulfillment.  Those on that journey up the second mountain begin to learn the joy of being part of something greater than one’s self.  It is about riches gained from giving stuff away.  It is about the meaning of it all.  Indeed, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”  Certainly, not the biggest pile of toys at the end. 

Phillips Brooks, that famous Episcopal priest and bishop of the late 1800s, the lyricist of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” said something to the effect that the greatest tragedy in life is to have missed the opportunity to have been a part of something greater than one’s self.  To have missed that higher cause to which one has been called.  That higher cause is the second mountain.

Sometimes a greater cause finds you.  No need to seek it out.  A while back, when I was up in Portland visiting our oldest son, an article on the front page of The Oregonian had caught my eye.  It was about what is happening to our wounded veterans upon their return from combat.  Being a Vietnam era veteran who served as an Army medic, I have very sensitive antennae when it comes to how our vets are treated.  Now, mind you, I’m not an enthusiast about these wars, or war in general.  In fact, I’m already against the next one.   I do belong to a veteran’s group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.  Our motto is, “Honor the warrior, not the war.” 

The great patriot Thomas Paine understood the tragedy of war when he warned his countrymen: “He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

Yes, we do not honor the war, we honor those who have served.  And take care of them upon their return.  I believe that.  If someone goes off to risk life and limb for our nation, we have a binding obligation to do whatever it takes to make that person whole if they return to us wounded. 

But I digress.

Anyway, right there in the Oregonian was a story about a soldier, Mayer, who was serving in the Oregon National Guard and had returned home from Iraq suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.  The article talked of how Meyer tires easily, how his short-term memory problems make it nearly impossible for him to remember even the simplest tasks.  He cries easily as he struggles to get words out.  A grey confusion clouds his mind with the result that he cannot drive over 20 miles from home without getting lost.  Returning to his civilian job is not in the realm of possibility.  He could not hold down any job.

Mayer and his wife, Jeannette, know their life together will never be the same again.  They have a strong faith and they are committed to each other.  They are a couple that truly meant it when they promised, “in sickness and in health…”

But what they have found most distressing has been the treatment Mayer has received.  They have had to fight the Army every step of the way for the little care he did receive, and for his paltry disability payments.  The Army seemed much more interested in getting him off the payroll than in doing what is right.  He was prevented from getting into a specialized brain injury program through bureaucratic intransigence.  This was not bungling.  It was premeditated callousness.

Now I can see how one unfortunate soldier could become the victim of Army red tape.  I was in the Army.  I know red tape.

But it turns out, as I read further, that this is not about just one or two isolated cases.  It is about thousands who have been victimized by an adversarial system of rating disability.  How can anyone in such a mental fog negotiate this system, I ask you?  Mayer and his wife have tumbled into some Hieronymus Bosch version of hell.  Some demonic hall of mirrors where up is down and down is up.

As I continued to read, my blood was at a furious boil.  Prayer unbidden rose up within my breast.  My God, is there no justice?  No sense of decency?  What do these hypocrites, these cheapskate patriots, mean when they urge us, “Support the troops?”  And then they behave like this?  What could “support the troops” and a yellow ribbon bumper sticker possibly mean to Mayer and Jeanette with all they’ve been through?

My fervent prayers, and maybe even a few obscenities – yes, that also is unbidden prayer – the unspoken petitions of heart and soul shortly transformed themselves into action.  I wrote e-mails.  I sent in my donation for my veterans’ organization that they might continue to be a forceful advocate for our Vietnam vets.  I hectored my political representatives.

But we can do more.  Much more.  That’s where my friend Scott comes into the picture.

Scott, also a vet, also believes with all his heart that we need to care for those who served.  Scott is a colleague already up that second mountain, the mountain of service beyond self.  When he called one evening three years ago to ask about hosting a Wounded Warrior event on our farm outside of Bethany, West Virginia, I was all ears.

After telling me what he had in mind, of course I wished him all the best. “See what you can do,” I responded.  I had no idea that he was a crackerjack community organizer, so I was absolutely amazed when he later sent me back some pictures of his event.  Incredible!  I definitely vowed not to miss the second, and I didn’t. 

We’re now heading into the third this August 10^th.  I’ll be there along with our son Christopher.  We will also have the founder of Wounded Warriors, Brace, coming out again from Detroit.  Brace says that Scott’s weekend is one of the best run events for Wounded Warriors in the whole country. 

Parenthetically, it should not surprise anyone to discover that Scott is also our West Virginia point man for House of Hope – Ohio Valley.

We are indeed proud to be holding our third annual Wounded Warrior event this August on the Forney Farm.  Scott tells me this one will be bigger yet, with three bands playing.  We call our weekend “Mudding with the Warriors.”  It’s a thrill ride through one hundred eighty acres of abandoned back woods logging trails in off-road vehicles.  It’s definitely an “E” coupon ride.  Any of you old enough to have been at Disneyland in its early days knows that the “E” coupon rides were the fastest and the scariest. 

Once again, Scott has pulled together a good chunk of Bethany and Brooke County to give back to our vets — Brooke County’s finest to show a little love.  And I can absolutely bet that Dagmar will be bringing my favorite – hot German potato salad.  Scott and his gang are definitely well up that second mountain of giving back.  Scott, I thank you, and I know these vets thank you.  America, at its best pays it forward.

Right now, every day, an active duty service member takes his or her own life.  What is wrong with us that we have pushed them to such desperation?  We can do better.

The assent up that second mountain may drain the soul and tire the body, but for many of us nearing the end of our journeys, it’s the only trip worth taking.  It is, in Summerset Maugham’s words, “A summing up.”

Try the stuff of eternity – “compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience, forbearing one another…”  For this one needs no larger barns, no bigger car trunk.  Or even an extra bookcase.

As St. Paul would further exhort us this morning: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts.”  This is the climb towards eternity.  God in us and we in God.  And sing!  For God’s sake and for ours, SING!  For the sake of your own soul, SING!

Phillips Brooks preached a most joyful gospel.  He would remind us, it’s about the happiness and blessedness that second mountain. “Distrust your religion unless it is cheerful, unless it turns every act and deed to music and exults in attempts to catch the harmony of the new life.  Yes, indeed: SING!  Don’t mumble.  SING! Speaking of blessedness, this week around the campfire at our farm, with good friends and food, I’ll be joining our vets and others in sweet harmony – in a spiritual song. “Country roads, take me home/To the place I belong/West Virginia, mountain mama/Take me home, country roads.”   Amen

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[1] David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York: Random House, 2019)

[2] Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, “Living the Word,” The Christian Century, July 17, 2019.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11, Colossians 3:1-17;
 Luke 12:13-21

Year C, Proper 13, August 4, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

The other day a young fellow came to the house to change the batteries in our pendants.  Those are the things given to us at Pilgrim Place to alert the staff should we fall and can’t get up.  Or worse yet, have an emergency medical issue.  An “incident,” as my cardiologist calls it.  The Mueller testimony was on the TV and I asked him what he thought about the revelations Mueller had to report to our nation.  He said, he doesn’t watch any news.  He said that none of our politics concerned him.  He just tunes it out.  Not his worry.

Fair enough.  I must confess that, frankly, some days I’m weary of it all as well.  The problems of our nation, our world, are just so overwhelming that I sometimes I just don’t even want to hear about it.  I want to pass over those stories in my morning newspaper.  Surely, what Mr. Mueller had to report was most distressing.  But as alarming as his findings were, what is even more distressing is the fact that the work of his office has settled nothing.  We Americans are still as divided as ever concerning the facts he and his team have reported.  And if we can’t agree on the facts, we certainly can’t agree as to their meaning.  We’re as divided as ever.  And so, we’re going to yell and scream at one another until the 2020 election?  And beyond?

When our boys were little, the remedy for antisocial behavior, for the violation of family rules, for fighting, was a “time out.”  When they were unfit for human consumption it was “chillout time.”  Fifteen minutes in the penalty box.  It’s as if our entire nation now needs a “time out.” 

In addition to the lies, to the duplicity, to a Russian attack on our elections — a thousand other civic and family tragedies have unfolded as well.  All overshadowed by the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Mueller Report.  In Los Angeles we had another mass gang shooting.  Six members of one family shot, four killed. One cannot drive down Wilshire but note the ever-increasing number of the tents of the homeless.  They’re all over McArthur Park.  Forty percent of our families are on the brink of eviction as rents skyrocket.  To boot, addicted people usually don’t have money for rent.  An emergency car repair or illness would drive many families right over the financial cliff.

Yes, we need a national time out.  A collective moment to calm ourselves, to take a deep breath and count to ten.  The words, “Let us pray,” come to mind.

Jesus’ disciples certainly must have been at their wits end from time to time, and had frequently observed our Lord at prayer.  One day, after observing him in solitude, they implored him, “As John had taught his disciples to pray, teach us to pray.”  And so he did.  “Our Father, who art in heaven…”  Thus, we received one of the most radical prayers known throughout the world.

In the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion this prayer is imbedded in the communion liturgy.  It is introduced by the words, “We are bold to say…”  But I believe it should be, “We are bold to pray!”  This is about being audacious!  In your face spirituality.

Bold?  Bold?  We Episcopalians don’t do “bold.”  We’re the quiet.  We’re the “frozen chosen.”  We mostly mumble through these familiar words on autopilot.  Not giving them or their import a thought.  And yet, this simple prayer is absolutely mind-blowing.  If one considers and takes seriously what our words actually are saying.  If one doesn’t mumble through it in a mind-numbing spiritual haze.  This prayer offers one humongous spiritual “time out.” 

The Lord’s Pray, taken to heart, is a cry from the heart and soul for a complete reordering of all that is.  It’s a plea for a far different world, where it’s not okay to lie, steal and cheat.  Where it’s not okay to sell your country out to a hostile foreign power.  It’s a cry for a world where murderous dictators are not considered “good people.” 

The Lord’s Prayer is a plea for a moment of sanity, wherein we might collect our wits.  Wherein we might recenter on what truly matters.  It is at the heart of all that church means and what we value.  It is a spiritual time out — a brief moment in even the most hellacious of weeks, to reorient our lives to what actually gives life.  Yes, that we might choose life!

In these simple words, words like “on earth as in heaven,” an entire new vista unfolds.  Time when spent with what truly matters, stands still.  Eternity opens up.  St. Paul’s words, “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.”  Heaven on earth.  Now.

A clergywoman friend of mind reported to her church that recently she had had an opportunity to visit a parishioner in hospice.  Now, hospice is certainly a “time out.”  A final time out.

Sally reported that this woman was given the gift of a complete reorientation of her priorities, her values.  She shared with Sally that one day the director of the hospice facility had asked her why she thought she was still alive.  This is how the woman responded:

“God knew I needed to become a better person while I’m still on this earth.  You see, I’ve cared about peace and justice all my life, and I’ve always known God loves every human being.  But I’ve never really gotten to know anyone outside of my own circle until I needed hospice care.  Now, interacting with my caregivers, hearing stories of their lives, I’ve gotten to know them.  I know their names and the names of their families.  Now when I hear the news, I’m not at a distance anymore.  I see faces that look like, and hear names that sound like these women that I have come to know and love, and it wrenches my heart.  Through these women, God has given me one last opportunity to become more of who God wants me to be.”

That’s the sort of time out these simple but powerful words of the Lord’s prayer offer us.  Let us ever be “BOLD TO PRAY” these words.  And pay attention to their meaning.”

That hospice director’s question ought to be before each of us every morning, right up front with that cup of coffee or OJ.  “Why do we think we’re still alive?”

My friend, Fr. Paul Clasper, used to say that if we had lost almost all of scripture but had just a bit remaining, just a smidgen – the story of the Good Samaritan, the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Lord’s Prayer – we would have enough.  We would have enough in these few spiritual snippets to get the whole thing.  The centerpiece being the Lord’s Prayer.  It is about the entire journey of life, beginning to ending.  What this dying parishioner has been learning in her latter days – it’s all grounded in the spirituality of that short prayer.  Let us not mumble through it.  Let us be “BOLD TO PRAY.”  For forgiveness for the wrong we do, for the inbreaking of God’s new order, for our daily bread.  For everything we need to enter into eternity.  It’s all there.

You won’t get this at Rotary or at City Hall.  You won’t get this out on the golf course or in the poolhall.  You won’t get this at college or in the union hall.  You got this in church, or at your mother’s knee – where she got it from church.  This is the spiritual treasure that this frail, earthen vessel — the church — contains.  More precious than much fine gold.  And it’s not for sale.  Freely given, it is.

The time out offered by this radical prayer leads both to internal solace and to daring works of justice.  Daring, life-on-the-line, acts of justice.  The Lord’s Prayer is, as John Lewis is wont to say, a call to get in trouble, “good trouble, necessary trouble” as it did those priests and nuns led away in handcuffs this last weekend protesting the horrific conditions faced by children crammed in cages on our southern border.  Ever let us be BOLD TO PRAY, our Father who art in heaven…  And let us be bold to attend to what we are actually saying as we pray.

Every month it seems another high-ranking administration appointee is hauled before one congressional committee or another to account for incompetency, corruption, lying.  Or sent to jail.

The world continues to heat up.  Drought stalks the land.  Al Gore was right, for all the good that seems to have done us.  We seem not to have the capacity to act on what we know.  Bill McKibben, the noted climate author writes in his latest book, Falter, “…as a team of scientists pointed out recently in Nature, the physical changes we’re currently making by warming the climate will ‘extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far.’”[1]

Might that we be BOLD TO PRAY…   We need a global time out.  We need a complete reorienting of our values.  Yes!  Our Father who art in heaven…restore us to our senses.

In the paper – the business section of all places – we read of the McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm to drug manufacturers.  The business model these wizards were advising their pill-pushing clients?  “Get more patients on higher doses of opioids,” and study the techniques “for keeping patients on opioids longer.”[2]  What could possibly go wrong?  Indeed!  This is definitely not the ethic they might have gotten from the Lord’s Prayer.  They didn’t learn this in Sunday school.  No, this is the sort of ethic they might have learned in most any business school.  Oh, not directly.  It would have been inhaled from the go-go ethic of the atmosphere of the place and of their fellow students.  It’s in the ethic of get it while you can.  Time’s a-wasting.

With big money in our politics, everything and everyone seems to have a price.  All is for sale.  Our democracy is so stretched beyond all recognition, to the point that would have poor Madison rolling over in his grave.  Money.  Money.  Money.  Where’s my commission?

Was Timothy Leary, the guru of my age, ultimately right?  Should we all just “Turn on. Tune in. And Drop Out”?  Don’t you sometimes find yourself in this sort of blue funk?  And a huge portion of our citizenry has tuned out.  Just like the pendant technician who came to our house the other morning.  There are days I would like to do that.  Just retire to some rural Elysian field and spend the rest of my days fishing, reading, and keeping up with friends and family. Drinking a brewski with the folks out at the farm.  Yes, “take me home, country roads.”  AND Let the country take care of itself.  But that’s not the ethic of the Lord’s Prayer.  This prayer shoves us back into the fray.   It is life-giving, not life-denying.

This simple and profound prayer recenters us in what really matters.  It recenters us in friendship and commitment.  Recenters us in truth.   It recenters us in the entire message of our Lord.  The whole enchilada!  Had McKinsey & Company grounded its ethic – had they been BOLD TO PRAY – they would have recommended a far better business plan to their drug company clients.

BOLD TO PRAY…That is the sort of prayer that might open one’s eyes to doing something about the McKinsey business plan.  It might move some to the Jesus business plan of bringing liberty to the captives of opioid addiction.  BOLD TO PRAY…it might even bring ordinary folks like you and me out to begin a rehabilitation clinic.  Clinics in West Virginia and San Bernardino.  Just saying…

This Jesus stuff could be dangerous to drug company business models.  Could put them out of business.  A time out in the spiritual penalty box.  Definitely – they’re unfit for human consumption!

Unspoken sobs, moans of the spirit, prayers through which God might move to bind up the hurt and sorrowful — prayers transcending the inexplicable, prayers ushering in the yearning of many hearts, prayers moving towards a new reality rooted “in heaven as on earth.”  Prayers awakening us to be co-creators with God, in and through the kick-ass power of the Holy Spirit.  Like the saying goes, “Without us, God won’t.  Without God, we can’t.”  It’s all there in the Lord’s Prayer.

Let us ever BE BOLD TO PRAY…  These few words of Jesus are an opening of our lives to God, that God might begin to work through our hands and feet, hearts and minds, checkbooks and datebooks.  Entering the Lord’s Prayer at its deepest level, it is ultimately not we who pray, but God praying in and through us.

What about the fallout from the Mueller Report?  What about the opioid crisis?  What about a terminally ill patient in hospice?  What about us gathered here as St. Francis’ spiritual heirs?  What about finding a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble?  Gospel trouble?  Jesus trouble?  The answer all begins with that brief, simple, and most radical prayer we all learned in Sunday school. 

Let us also BOLDLY PRAY for the comfortable – for us — that our consciences might be sorely afflicted by the Spirit of all that is holy.  Let us BOLDLY PRAY for an audacious spirituality that dares to build a House of Hope.

Let us BOLDLY PRAY for a generous spirituality that will strengthen our bond of affection that we might be up to the task.

Let us BOLDLY PRAY for a creative spirituality that will invite our neighbors to join with us in building House of Hope. 

WE ARE BOLD TO PRAY: “Our Father who art in heaven…”     Amen.

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[1] Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (New York: Henry Holt, 2019), p.15-16.

[2] Walt Bogdanich, “McKinsey Had Advice on Opioids,” New York Times, July 26, 2019

Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138, Colossians 2:6-15;
 Luke 11:1-13

Year C, Proper 12 July 28, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

It was a most glorious moment when that team of women won the Women’s World Cup.  I cannot forget the ecstatic glow on the face of Megan Rapinoe.  Yes, glorious it was.  But what brought a catch in my throat and a tear to my eye was the chant that soon broke out in the stands.  “EQUAL PAY.  EQUAL PAY.  EQUAL PAY.”  We are definitely in a new era, and none too soon.  These women have a better winning record than the men.  Their crowds bring in more money.  And had the winners of the FIFA Cup been men, each player would have received a $1,000,000 bonus instead of the measly $200,000 that each of the women received.  EQUAL PAY INDEED!

Now you’re maybe thinking, “This is all great, Fr. John.  We loved the game too, BUT what does it have to do with the story of the Good Samaritan?  And, you’re right, it’s time for a talk about equal pay.”

Well, let me tell you the connection.  You know well the story of the Good Samaritan.  Jesus is confronted by a self-serving member of the legal profession, seeking to score points.  He asks Jesus what must be done to be saved?  To inherit eternal life? It’s not like he was really interested in the answer.  It was a test to trap, to embarrass.

Jesus throws the question back at him, asking, “What does scripture say?”  The lawyer is sort of forced to answer Jesus because everyone now gathering around the exchange knows the correct answer.  They had been taught it from the time they were knee high to a grasshopper.  “You must love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus gives him an “A,” for he has answered correctly.  Prize student.  Go to the head of the class.

But unwilling to let well enough alone, the lawyer ploughs on.  “Well tell me this, smarty pants.  Just who IS my neighbor?”  Ego just doesn’t know when to quit.

And true to form, Jesus resorts to a story.  There was a businessman on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He was set upon by highway men who beat him senseless and stole everything.

While the poor fellow is lying in a ditch by the side of the road it happens that a member of the clergy should pass by.  The pastor, seeing the bloody mess, quickly steps to the other side of the road, hitches up his robes and scurry’s on by.  “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. No time to say hello, good bye.  I’m late. I’m late. I’m late.”

Next came a Levite, one who leads the singing of the services.  Let’s just say the choir director, to make this easy.  He also notices the businessman and likewise, crosses to the other side and hurriedly passes by, not wanting to get his robes soiled.  Don’t want blood on the music.  Besides, he’s a stickler for starting choir practice on time.  Late comers absolutely drive him nuts.

Finally comes by a most despised fellow.  He’s got tats from face to hands.  His clothes are ragged and he smells like he’s coming off a three-day binge.  He hasn’t had a bath since who knows when.  He sees the traveler from some distance and wonders what this is.  From afar it looked like some wounded animal.  As he draws near, his eyes flood with tears and he begins to run towards the man.  Amazing, he’s still breathing.  He knows this man.  He’s been this man.  He knows “down and out.”

Well, you know the rest of the story.  This despised fellow bandages up the bloody wounds and cleans up the businessman as best he can.  At the nearest Motel 6 he arranges for the inn keeper to feed and take care of the man’s needs, depositing what reasonably might handle the charge.   He then sets off, assuring the manager that he’ll take care of any further expenses on the flip side.

“NOW.  Who is the real, genuine neighbor?” Jesus demands to know.

And might that also be our question concerning last week’s soccer match?  When over eons of pay discrimination, who was the real neighbor to these glorious women who just won it all?  You already know in your hearts.  It was the crowd.  Their fans: all chanting EQUAL PAY to the high heavens.  These are the real neighbors, not just to these women, but to all women who have suffered the indignity of having been treated as second class when it comes to equal pay for equal work.  Why is it we pay teachers so little?  We don’t value their work.  And yet we entrust the future of our nation to them every day.  Why?  Because they’re mostly women.  Guys, it’s time to wise up.

Too often, we so individualize the gospel that we fail to take in its fulsome meaning.  Yes, sometimes it is a single individual that comes to the aid of the beaten down and oppressed, the victim if you will.  But it can also be a collective action as well.  It can be a whole bunch of great neighbors.  The sort you’d want in your neighborhood.  The kind that make it a beautiful day.  Every day.

Who cannot read the past news coverage of the horrors that Jeffrey Epstein perpetrated over the years against vulnerable girls, some as young as fourteen years old and not be repulsed?   And who cannot read of the sweetheart deal arranged by the federal prosecutor, recently the Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, and not be disgusted?  The miscarriage of justice in Florida for Epstein’s young victims astounds.  It is an offense against the Almighty and all that is decent.

It is a member of the media, you know, the FAKE news, who brings the healing light of exposure.  It was a single reporter who had the smelled the rot and brought it into the sunlight.  She was the Paul Revere of the keyboard, alerting her readers to the stench.  And she had the persistence to follow the whole sorry trail in all its lurid detail.  She was the Good Samaritan to these now-grown woman.  She brought it all to light that justice might be done.  Her truth-telling created the safe space for healing to begin – to allow these women to come forward.  To allow for a final reckoning for the perpetrators and those who covered up.  This reporter was indeed the neighbor, the real McCoy.  For all of us, thank you Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald.  You are the sort of neighbor I want in my neighborhood.  You make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood of America.  I want you writing for my morning paper.

No, she’s not a despised stranger or considered to be a heretic as was that original Samaritan – though some in the White House most likely considered her to be such.   But, as in the original story, Julie K. Brown, through her dogged reporting, has been the source of blessed healing, every bit as much as that original Samaritan in Jesus’ story.

Love of God and Love of Neighbor.  It is through faithful action, not correct belief or right theology, or any theology at all for that matter, that wholeness comes.  It’s through righteous action that we enter the realm of God – eternal life.  Rabbi Beerman used to say, “My marching feet are my prayers.”  It’s what we give our lives to that counts.

There is no right moment.  She who tarries may miss the appointed moment forever.  As my friend Vern was fond of saying, “Timing is everything.”  As in the Nike commercial, “Just DO it.”  And Julie K. Brown? – Boy howdy, did she ever do it!

That blessed restorative neighbor might be the collective action of sound public policy.  Remember President Reagan’s famous quip against government programs?  What were his “nine most terrifying words” according to him? — “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”  Well, he was wrong.  FDR showed us the power of government for the good — for a godly purpose if you will.

In fact, the government, that is, our collective action, is often what is required to bring healing in the face of systemic injustice and racism.  It is the collective will of an entire people that assumes the role of healing neighbor.  Collective action that brings restoration.

There was a heart-warming article in last week’s NY Times with the headline, “A ‘Second Chance” to Choose a Diploma Over a Rap Sheet.”  It is about Maurice Smith, a convicted murderer who spent twenty-seven years behind bars for a murder committed when he was nineteen.  And, today, now he is a member of Goucher College’s graduating class of 2019.  Yes, there he is in his cap and gown, as proud as any of the hundreds of thousands of graduates all across America who walked across that storied platform to receive their diplomas. 

And how did this amazing feat come about?  It was through the efforts of a Republican Senator in Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison.  A REPUBLICAN!   Yes!  We can work together!  Sometimes. 

It was Senator Hutchison who proposed broadening the restrictions that had been placed on Pell grants.  Through her efforts a most remarkable coalition was brought together:  far-right conservatives, the religious community, folks from the ACLU and the very liberal Center for American Progress.  This coalition managed to undo a provision in the original Pell grant authorizing legislation that had kept college from anyone with a rap sheet. 

Growing up in Harlem, Maurice Smith had spent his youth working on an increasingly long record for drug possession.  Though he had shown ability in high school, he was basically unmotivated.  And even when he had achieved the second-highest score on a state test, his vice principal accused him of cheating, only further diminishing his low self-esteem.

In 1992 Maurice had shot and killed a man breaking into a friend’s house.  He was sentenced to life, though with the possibility of parole in some distant future.  Maybe.   He spent the next years mostly sullen and angry.  In and out of solitary confinement.

President Obama introduced what became called “Second Chance Pell” in 2015.  Goucher Prison Education Partnership and the work of some sixty other colleges unlocked the door to advancement for some 12,000 prisoners.  From those serving short sentences to those on death row, the door to a future opened.  Maurice grabbed the second chance.  Before long he was reading Immanuel Kant on ethics and studying precalculus.  He loved reading Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” aloud with another inmate.

Looking back on the classes she taught, one professor, Dr. Nina Kasniunas, remarked that students like Maurice “made the pat downs, metal detectors, lack of technology and other constraints of teaching in prison worth it.”  Such students “reminded me of the power of what we do.”[1]

Maurice Smith graduated with a 3.79 grade point average.  And, with a wide smile beaming across his beautiful face, he crossed the stage and received his diploma, pumping a fist as the announcer was proclaiming, “Maurice Smith, magna cum laude.”

Maurice was released from prison two months before his graduation and presently works the graveyard shift in a Johnson & Johnson warehouse.  He reconnected with an old childhood girlfriend whom he has since married.

A person with Mr. Smith’s background we could have previously considered a throw-away – human trash.  Resentment, anger and hostility would have been our guiding attitude.  But you know the results of resentment.  It’s like drinking poison and then waiting for your enemy to die.  But what is dying is America.  As my friend in West Virginia, Sheriff Larry Palmer, says, “John, we cannot arrest our way out of these problems.”  With no hope for restoration, the only results one can expect is bad neighborhoods from coast to coast.

Just who was Mr. Smith’s neighbor?  A whole lot of people, most of whom he will never meet.  Neighbors are those who push for sound public policy and a justice system that restores.  The neighbor may be an orderly in a nursing home who, keeping vigil into the wee morning hours, clasps the hand of a dying man.  He may be that brave young boy on the playground who rebukes a bully.  The neighbor may be a medic in a war-torn land far away.  She may be that persistent doctor who struggles for days on end to properly diagnose a mysterious and obscure illness.  It may be anyone, or an entire assortment of strangers.  As we used to say in the Fair Housing movement: “Good Neighbors Come in all Colors.”

There was a traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell among robbers and was left beaten half to death.  Many others passed by, ignoring the plight of the bloody wretch.  Finally, approaching, a stranger, his heart in his throat, rushed to him.  His very soul went out to the man.  He carefully bandaged his wounds and set him up on his own donkey.  At the nearest inn he provided for the man’s care, telling the innkeeper to spare no expense.

Now, who was the neighbor?  In your heart you have already answered Jesus’ question.  Your answer burns in your soul like a hot coal.

Now, go and do likewise and you, too, will pass into the mystery of eternal life.  Your answer, lived daily, is where the living Christ will meet you.  Amen.

---

[1] Erica L. Green, “A ‘Second Chance’ to Choose a Diploma Over a Rap Sheet,” The New York Times, July 9, 2019.

Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Psalm 25:1-9, Colossians 1:1-14;
 Luke 10:25-37

Year C, Proper 10 July 14, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Last year at St. Francis, it was Deacon Pat who had the honors of preaching on Trinity Sunday.  I did not envy her.  Trinity Sunday is  the most problematic Sunday in the liturgical year for a preacher.  She could have been forgiven for having had the thought, “Gee, thanks, Fr. John.”   Well, it’s Trinity Sunday once more and I’m up at bat.

To preach a sermon on Trinity Sunday without falling into one theological pitfall or another is well neigh impossible.  Today, on this Sunday, all across the nation, heresy will be compounded upon heresy as hapless clerics attempt to explicate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  I told my wife that she might as well start gathering the kindling for the heretic’s fire that will be awaiting me following the service.

Frankly, the doctrine of the Trinity is such a nuanced statement in abstruse philosophical language that only the foolish would purport to understand it.  I have to tell you now; such an understanding is certainly beyond my pay grade.  And frankly, anyone who claims to have a comprehensive and complete understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is a fake and a fraud – because what we are dealing with here is a holy mystery beyond human grasp.

Our passage from Proverbs speaks of Wisdom — She who was before all creation, She who delighted in the creation of the stars and galaxies, She who romped through all creation: When God established the heavens, I was there.”

Indeed!  “Does not Wisdom call and does not Understanding raise her voice?”  Only the fool would behold the handiwork of the marvelous web of life and declare it to be of no account. 

Of this same spirit, in the gospel of John Jesus declares, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth…”

It has been said that it is through our imagination that the Spirit has the best chance of grabbing hold of us.  The heart knows.  Pascal proclaimed that the heart has reasons of its own which reason does not comprehend.

Does not wisdom call and does not understanding raise her voice?”  Let us delight in creation and glimpse a smidgen of the Creator’s mind.  Let us delight in our brother Jesus who redeems all creation, leading us to honor the created order and our interconnection as members of the Beloved Community.  And let us be open to the promptings of the Wisdom, bearer of insight and the courage to act.  Does not Wisdom call and does not Understanding raise her voice? 

That doesn’t mean we should dispense with the Trinitarian understanding of divine reality, just because it is beyond our understanding. It is our feeble attempt to grasp a smidgen of God’s glory.  Provisional, at best.

When in doubt about things greater than myself, I believe in starting at basics.  And the basic beginning of all theology is human experience.  The experience always comes first.  Through experience the Spirit will teach and delight. 

“Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?”

When we are talking about the mystery of life – God – our understanding is always provisional.  When we stand before absolute and total holiness, we can only lapse into poetry and confession: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.”  When we are confronted with the primordial splendor of the universe around us, we can only say: “O Lord my God, how great thou art!”  Confronted by a saving grace beyond merit, we may blurt out, as did Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”  And in moments urgently demanding justice, we like the prophets of old, may burn with the Spirit of Truth.

We have known those times when our lives were confronted in the deepest way by Total Mystery and Power.  That is the experience I’m talking about.  I recall a frigid night in Alaska, sitting on my back porch.  A neighbor had called at around 11:30 that night and told me to go outside because the sky was absolutely lit up with the northern lights.  As I huddled up in my blankets on the chaise lounge, looking up at the sky, I saw the lights eerily snake across the sky, dancing and skipping.  Sometimes pink, sometimes white, or a faint blue.  Suddenly it seemed as if all the lights of heaven had gathered right over my head and then cascaded down on me as if someone were pouring a great pitcher of milk over my head.  My whole body was seized with goose bumps.  It seemed as if time stood still.  In that moment I knew I had come about as close as I ever would get to an experience of the One who stretched out the heavens and called them good. 

Through experience and imagination, the Spirit continually leads us into all Truth if we are but awake enough to see her actions.

The spirit leads us into that Connection that binds us to one another and to all creation.  Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?”  ALL THE TIME!  If we are but awake.  Yes, let those with eyes to see, comprehend, and those with ears to hear, listen.

Almost a year ago, when I was out at our farm in West Virginia for our second annual Wounded Warrior event, our younger son Christopher had admonished, “Dad we need to spend some of the money from the farm on this opioid crisis.  It’s killing people.”  I told him I would explore the possibilities.  Well, nothing but nothing was offered in Brooke County, where our farm is situated.  In the middle of the night, I believe the Spirit spoke.  And she said, “Well, it looks like you are going to have to do this yourself.”  Later, I told Christopher, “Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into – a godly mess indeed.”

Yes, indeed.  Wisdom does call and Understanding does raise her voice.  And she gives us the gumption to do what must be done to knit up our human community.

When I head out to West Virginia again this Tuesday at O’Dark Early, what will get me out of bed at that ungodly hour will be those visions Wisdom planted in my mind of children raising children because their addicted parents were unable to care for them.

In the New York Times, an article on the opioid crisis told of a five-year-old left to tend his one-month-old baby brother for days because their addicted parents were nowhere to be found.  For days.  Now, I ask you – what five-year-old should ever face that burden?  How many of us at five years old could have managed that?  It is the Spirit that has seared this image into my mind and that is what keeps me going.

I read of teachers completely unprepared for such traumatized children in classrooms across our America attempting to teach these students. 

Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?  

To anyone with eyes to see and even an ounce of compassion the urgent message is:  DO SOMETHING.  DO SOMETHING NOW!

This last week we took note of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy.  We, and all of Europe, paused to give thanks for these brave men who raced across those beaches under withering fire to roll back the Nazi scourge.  No, freedom’s not just another word for nothing left to lose.  It is the lifeblood of what it means to be human.  On that bitter cold day, those who waded through the surf, those who swam past dead comrades floating face down in bloody foam — they were called to a higher purpose than self.  Wisdom gives us pause to honor their sacrifice.

This last Friday, six of us, representing St. Francis, spent another full day planning for a House of Hope and sober living homes right here in San Bernardino.  The Spirit compels it.  I believe our nation asks it of us with the very same urgency it required of those brave souls on D-Day, June 6^th, 1944.  To the NIMBY crowd who might fear an opioid recovery center, I would say that the patriotism required of us in this fraught hour of opioid addiction is absolutely nothing less than what was required of those who hit Omaha Beach seventy-five years ago.

As I read the testimony of those veterans, now mostly in their nineties, I am moved by the Spirit to stillness, to humility, to gratitude.  What they did in those early morning hours – we can only salute in silence.  Wisdom requires nothing less.  The men and women who stood against the threat of fascism in that hour were indeed a great generation, if not the greatest.

Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?  

Does she not call us to silence in honor of those men and women who liberated Europe?  Does she not call us to silence to honor those teachers who daily struggle against the greatest odds to raise up a generation of students abandoned by addicted parents?  Does she not call us to silent tears as we ponder that five-year-old boy attempting to comfort, to feed and diaper a one-month-old baby brother? 

Does not Wisdom call, and does not Understanding raise her voice?  O Lord, give us the insight and fortitude to do the right.  Give us the courage to admit these searing stories into our hearts.  Give us the gumption to respond.

On this Trinity Sunday let us join in heart with the words of St. Patrick’s Breastplate: 

“I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the Three in One, and One in Three.”

“I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead, his eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to hearken to my need, the wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward; the word of God to give me speech, his heavenly host to be my guard.”

Give us, O Lord, the nerve and care to DO SOMETHING.  For Christ’s sake.  For our sake.  And for theirs.  Amen.

Does Not Wisdom Not Call?

Year C, Trinity Sunday June 16, 2019

A Sermon Preached at
St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Canticle 2; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Last Thursday Lawrence O’Donnell had a segment on Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway play, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  In it, Atticus Finch is the lawyer for the black defendant, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman, however Judge Taylor knows that Tom is in fact innocent.  The judge implores Atticus to take the case. “In his small town in the nineteen thirties of Alabama, Atticus Finch is the lonely voice telling people we can’t go on like this.”  Jeff Daniels, portraying Finch’s address to the jury demands, “The sin, the crime against God, can’t go on like this.  We have to heal this wound or we will never stop bleeding…We can’t go on like this, we know that.”  Confronting the racism of her southern society, Harper Lee in her novel raised the voice of many, “We can’t go on like this.”  “We can’t go on like this.  That is how most Americans feel in 2019.  It is a recurring feeling in American society…” [1]

Republican congressman Justin Amash, a modern-day Atticus Finch, has warned this nation, “We can’t go on like this.” — Lies.  Deception.  Nepotism.  In calling for an impeachment investigation at a recent townhall in his district, Congressman Amash, — born of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt — is the lone voice of his tribe calling for decency and Truth.  As a nation, we can’t go on like this.  God, give us more Republicans like Justin Amash.  Though I would agree with Justin on little concerning policy, I salute him for his courage and his patriotism.   This Republican is God’s gift to our nation in this time.

The words might well be God’s — we can’t go on like this.  On Easter morning, the power of Love is again let loose in human history —  because we can’t go on like this.  God can’t go on like this.  From the Big Bang of creation, from Jeremiah thundering against the usurpations of a corrupt king, down to a miraculous birth in Bethlehem — through all ages, Grace has been God’s answer to the human plight, “We can’t go on like this.”  Truth will out.  Love will trump hate.  Grace trumps evil.  That’s Easter, folks.

So it is that Jesus imparts critical, final instructions to his little community:

The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.[2]

The Book of Acts of the Apostles is the continuation of this great love story.  Through the incredible happenings recorded in this first history of the Church, God’s intervention of Love continues.  “We can’t go on like this,” echoes down through our history — to which, Love is the answer.  In the most improbable ways.

This morning the lectionary gives us a rollicking good story of such improbable occurrences from Acts.  Few itinerant clergy have ever had the sort of excitement and misfortune as Paul and Silas.  They no sooner enter Phillippi when some addled, rag-a-muffin girl begins to follow them.  Exactly like a stray dog that once began to follow me home on the way from school — no matter what I did I could not shoo it away.  I didn’t want to walk too much further for fear the dog would become completely lost from whatever yard it had escaped.  But no matter how I yelled at it, or chased it, or stomped my feet, it wouldn’t leave.  I finally decided to stand still and ignore it.  The dog sniffed my pant leg and shoes, and after what seemed forever, it finally wandered off into the weeds.

So here is this young waif following Paul and Silas, all the time crying after them and making a nuisance of herself.  For days.  And days.  Yelling something about them being sent by the most high God.  Finally, Paul snaps.  In anger he wheels on her and casts out the evil spirit that had been troubling the girl.  Abruptly, it leaves her as she collapses to the ground. 

Her owners discover that she is now normal.  She’s of no use that they can no longer make money from the fortunes she tells. They drag Paul and Silas before the magistrate. This is certainly the point where no good deed goes unpunished.  The girl’s owner accuses Paul and Silas of being disturbers of the peace.  They are trouble makers.  One little exorcism, and what could possibly go wrong?  A lot, that’s what went wrong.  And next thing Paul and Silas are in chains and locked up in the furthermost reaches of the worst prison ever.

This place is a real hell hole.  It’s dark and dank, the smell of excrement, vomit and mold are overwhelming.  Definitely, not the Ritz.  Crowded with sweating, unwashed bodies it’s hot and humid.  Stifling.  Their new companions are less than desirable.  Downright argumentative.  Nasty wretches.  The worst thugs.  Within minutes their few possessions have been taken from them, and one prisoner has almost choked Silas to death.  Only the intervention of some huge guy speaking a language they didn’t understand had saved them. 

As they cowered in a corner, hoping to avoid notice, they eventually dozed off.  Terrible dreams.  Paul, dreamt of being back on board the little skiff that had landed them on the beach.  Gently rocking back and forth, when suddenly he came to.  Prisoners were shouting and running to and fro as the walls creaked and the floor buckled.  Silas grabbed his arm, drawing him near.  This was the end.  They commended their souls and bodies to God as the prison continued to rock.

Finally, the commotion subsided as shaking ceased.  Next, they heard the frantic guard come running into their midst.  They could barely see the sword he drew in the dim torch light. He raised it as if to impale himself, but before he could complete the fatal plunge, Paul had grabbed his arm.  The man pleaded with the two to let him die.  He would surely be held responsible for any escaped prisoners.  Death by torture would be far worse than a quick death here and now.  “You don’t know these people.”  He begged Paul and Silas to let him die.  Paul and Silas quickly looked around and a mental count revealed that, miraculously, all prisoners were accounted for.  “Don’t harm yourself, everyone’s here.  Several have injuries but no one’s missing.”

The jailer fell on his knees, grabbing Paul by the legs.  Paul and Silas began to testify to the goodness of God and gave God credit for their preservation.  Other prisoners began to gather around the two men and the jailer as Paul continued his witness.  Late into early morning Paul related the story of Jesus of Nazareth and how misguided men had killed him, but that the story had not ended there.  Out of the tragedy of a shameful death an incredible power had been let loose — a revolutionary Spirit of Love binding all together as one.  A new community. That is why Paul and Silas had not escaped and had pleaded with the others to remain.

That night the jailer took Paul and Silas to his house, where by candlelight he related to his wife, servants and children the wondrous events that had transpired.  He had the two men’s wounds cleansed and bandaged.  By this time all present were asking how they could be part of this miraculous family of Jesus’ followers.   On the spot, water was brought and all were baptized into a new way of life.  And that early morning the Church grew by just a little bit more.

Through gracious acts of love and self-sacrifice, the community of Jesus followers attracted more and more followers.  Soon, the entire town.  That all might be one!

And now, here we are.  This very same power of Love has been let loose down through the years and centuries – though we fail to recognize its origin.   This is the same Power that drove the Renaissance and Enlightenment.  The same Power behind and within the idea of our modern democracies.  It is born of the idea that everyone counts and that we are all bound together – that all are sacred vessels of One Divine Love.  That we all might be one!  Yes, even with the created order – thrips and opossums.

Even when we lose the vision and our unity is shattered, Jesus prays in the wreckage that we all may be one.  Even when the operating ethic is me first and if anyone else survives it’s mere coincidence — Jesus yet prays that we all may be one.  Love is the answer.

My Quaker friend Anthony has a bumper sticker on his car that proclaims, “War is not the answer.”  The imp in me always wants to subvocalize, “Well, what’s the question?”  Actually, it’s about the answer.  Love is the answer — if anyone cares to know.  Love is the answer.

The other day on the PBS Newshour, Judy Woodruff had a segment born of just such understanding.  It featured a Sacramento restauranteur who had become quite distressed over the several suicides of some of his colleagues.  This tragedy jolted his mind to the realization that the restaurant business is extremely stressful.  We can’t go on like this.  That was his realization.  We can’t go on like this.  And someone needs to care.  Love is the answer.  In my business we are family!

Amidst all the hubbub of his busy kitchen, he had not taken notice as to how his staff was coping.  He had no idea how his employees were doing.  Or not doing.

Who had had a girlfriend or a lover breakup, or an ill child?  Who was under financial stress or had received an eviction notice?  Who had come to work addicted or depressed?  He just didn’t know.  No one probably knew.  But these twenty-some people were his family.  He did care about them.  Love is the answer, but there was no time for that.  Not in a hectic kitchen or on a busy floor.

After talking with some psychologists and other helping professionals, he instituted a program among his employees called, “I’ve Got Your Back.”  Using a system of color-coded cards that folks drop into a box as part of their shift check-in, someone would know.  He now had an idea of how many had come to work sad or under stress.  How many were happy, or dealing with some really bad stuff? 

He also had some staff in each shift trained as peer counselors – people who were safe to talk to.  People to share even the worst news or feelings with.  These were employees trained to read body language, to sense who was not okay.  This man’s restaurant now, in fact, has begun to behave as a caring family.  Yes, Love is the answer.  You know that, just to hear his employees talk about what has changed at work.

This restaurant owner’s goal is to spread his program to restaurants all across the country.  But why only restaurants?  Why stop there?

It is my hope that we import this same gracious gift to House of Hope – San Bernardino.  We bring it to our staff.  Love is the answer, just as it was in that dank prison cell over two thousand years ago.  Born of deep subterranean tremors, Christ’s church will continue to grow in love.  Even on an intense recovery ward.

Love is the answer to the despair of “We can’t go on like this.” 

At St. Francis we gather weekly because we know that we can’t possibly go on like this.  No more.  The world can’t go on like this.  Our country can’t go on like this.  We gather to remember and to remind one another around this table that Love is the answer.  Self-giving, sacrificial love.  Love powerful enough to interrupt busy date books and impact checkbooks.  We come to remind one another that we don’t have to go on like this — a Power greater than ourselves has our back.  Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey – we’ve got your back.  That’s Jesus’ story and he’s sticking to it.  So are we.  Amen.

---

[1] Lawrence O’Donnell, “The Last Word,” MSNBC (May 30, 2019), Jeff Daniels plays Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

[2] John 17:20-26

Year C, Easter 7, June 2, 2019

A Sermon Preached at
St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

We live in an age of discontinuity.  The old verities that once guided former generations are now up for grabs.  The traditional jobs that provided a lifetime of security are in short supply while the gig and sharing economy has for many been a race to the bottom.  No benefits.  No pension and no living wage.  Bill Clinton’s mantra for success – play by the rules and work hard these days does not necessarily guarantee much of anything.  If you are born poor, the overwhelming odds are that you will die poor.  Churches that once dominated the skylines in our large cities now stand mostly empty on Sunday mornings.

Change.   Change is the one constant.  And Love is the other constant.  Hear some of the final farewell words of our Lord from the gospel of John:

“I give you a new commandment that you love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Love can be a soft mushy word.  Lots of feeling but little substance.

“I give you a new commandment that you love one another.”  Certainly, it is essential that the Church, the Body of Christ be one of affection and deep concern for one another.  But too often, being human beings, we so invariably fall short of that.  Bickering and snark can rule and destroy the community.  Paul in Corinthians, complains about the strife that has consumed that community over speaking in “tongues.”  Strife consumed the early church over the inclusion of, and table fellowship with, the Gentiles, the so called “uncircumcised.” 

So, what does this Love look like?  It is something that goes beyond tribe and kin.  Let me tell you what this Love looks like

The other night we had at Pilgrim Place two of the great hymn writers of the church, Jim and Jean Strathdee.  They were our musicians at the church I served in the upper Mojave Desert, Ridgecrest United Methodist Church.  Yes, I was under Methodist management at the time.

As part of our vespers service that evening Jean told the story of her mother, Inez Stevens.  Early in their marriage Jean’s father was in the navy.  Lou was stationed near Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed it on December 7^th, 1941.  For six months she didn’t know what had happened to her husband.  There was absolutely no word.  In the meantime, Inez was a teacher in the San Joaquin Valley of California.  Many of her students were Japanese.  She loved those children like they were her own.  Many of those families were completely mortified at what their home country had done.  Their shame was more than they and their children could bear.  Yet, when those families were deported to concentration camps, Inez and Lou made arrangements to safe-keep the farms of two of those families during the length of their internment.  After the war, upon their return, she and her husband turned the farms back to them.  This was a gift freely given. 

Fast forward many years to the memorial service held for Inez.  One of the largest contingents at the service were her former Japanese students.  They had never forgotten that bond of affection and the righteous deed that Inez and Lou had done for their community.  By far the largest amount for a fund in her memory came from the Japanese community.  Friends, this is what Love looks like.

“I give you a new commandment that you love one another.” 

What does Love look like?  Paul says that this Love is patient and kind.  It does not insist upon its own way.

I have lately had to take St. Paul’s tutorial on this love.  On every trip to West Virginia.  Early on, our fellow, Scott, who takes care of the farm and now is organizing for House of Hope – Ohio Valley, cautioned me, “You know, John, a lot of these people here voted for Trump.”  And those of you who know me, know that I can be as rabid a partisan as any.  I’m definitely not a fan.

Let me tell you what I am learning about what this Love looks like.  On my part, it has meant a lot of listening.  It means deeply hearing the struggles of many working in an economy of low wages, part-time jobs and no health insurance.  No retirement package.  It means deeply hearing the struggles of families caught up in addiction to painkillers and meth.  It means hearing the despair of communities that have lost the next generation for lack of employment.

And in the end, I know exactly why they voted for Trump.  In my heart, I cannot blame them.  I understand.  Many feel as though this nation has abandoned and disrespected them.  Left them behind.  Let me tell you what Love looks like.  It means the willingness to feel, and take into our being this pain.  This is what I’m learning.  This is what that sort of Love looks like.

So, when I head out to West Virginia, when it comes to politics, I have to say that I’m agnostic.  The only important thing is the work we are doing to combat opioid addiction.  That’s it.  Nothing else counts.  I’m learning that that’s what Love looks like.  “Love one another.”  This is the listening we will have to do as we approach the 2020 election if we are going to have half a chance of making our democracy work.  We are going to have to find those areas where we can work together and let all else rest.  And I’ll try to be on my good behavior.

What does Love look like?  It looks a lot like the effort a group of us put in a week ago at the Cathedral Center.  Six of us represented St. Francis at the Episcopal Enterprises Academy.  For most of us, it meant getting up early, early to brave the 10 Freeway morning rush hour traffic.  It meant spending a good eight hours in class.  It meant homework.  It meant digging in and really working on what our mission might be here in San Bernardino and how we might financially support it with some entrepreneurial activity that would pay the bills but also benefit those we are called to serve.  That’s what Love looks like.  It can involve tedium and some stress.  It isn’t always fun.  It’s often hard work.  And sometimes even drudgery.

In the Inland Empire, in San Bernardino, as in West Virginia, many feel left behind in this new gig economy.  Blight and crime infest many neighborhoods.  Wages are stagnant and our homeless population grows.  Entire families are destitute on the streets.

The other Sunday, at the conclusion of coffee hour, a young fellow came into our midst.  He was a mute and could only with great difficulty understand what was spoken to him.  But we could communicate through writing.  I can imagine how embarrassing it must have been for him to ask for food for his family.  No, he didn’t want cash.  He only wished for someone to take him to Food for Less and buy the few items on his list his wife had given him.  I had no difficulty whatsoever understanding when he mouthed the words several times, “Thank you.”  Yes, Love looks like food.  This man is no longer a stranger.  He’s our brother in Christ.  That’s what love looks like.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

All the talk of the saints gathered up in the bosom of God — all the talk of God wiping away every tear – all the talk of making all things new – it all rings pretty shallow if folks don’t see any signs of newness and hope right here and now.  They’ve got to see and taste it.

As Mark Twain once quipped that would be a little easier to believe in the possibility of redemption if the redeemed looked a bit more redeemed.

Friends, you and I are, most likely the only copy of gospel Love most people will ever see.  As has been said, you and I are the hands and feet of Christ.  You and I are the mind of Christ.  You and I are the beating heart of the gospel Love we proclaim each and every Sunday.

Let us give thanks for those blessed exemplars like Inez and Lou Stevens who have paved the way, who have shown us what this Love looks like.  Let us learn for our own time the new duties and the sublime joys of this gospel Love.

This Sunday after church, I’ll be with Nan Self, a mentor and part of the campus ministry team that is responsible for me even being in the church.  Today Nan celebrates her ninetieth birthday.  She is another blessed disciple who has also left it all on the field.  Through her ministry over the years, the whole body of Christ has been built up and glorified.  Happy birthday, Nan.  Thanks be to God for your example of gospel Love.  Nan, you are what Love looks like.

What does this Love look like?  Let me tell you what it looks like.  It looks like a community gathered around this altar remembering a teacher, a friend, a pioneer, who says to those assembled.  “This bread is my body broken for you.  This cup is the cup of the new covenant poured out for you and for all.  Broken and poured out for the knitting up of this broken world.  This one Lord left it all on the field.  And in his fellowship is our most exquisite joy and purpose.  Amen.

Year C, Easter 5, May 19, 2019

A Sermon Preached at
St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm148; Revelation 21:1-6; Luke 13:31-35

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

I have a wonderful friend in Wellsburg who runs what our House of Hope team thinks is the best restaurant in town.  Nicol and her husband are the owners of The Dovetail – dovetail as in wood working.  It is a joint that is made up of interlocking fingers if you will.

Nicol has quite a bit of experience running kitchens, having managed them in several large institutional settings.  She and her husband Rob are a couple of the hardest working folks you’ll ever meet.  She is up early, early in the morning to make sure breakfast is going smoothly.  The Dovetail is a place of wonderful dishes, and in the morning the oatmeal covered with baked apples is to die for.  Along with the coffee.

Unfortunately, Wellsburg isn’t large enough to support the Dovetail the way it should.  As hard as Nicol works, she and Rob barely keep their heads above water.

This is the story of many people these days.  Yes, the economy is booming and unemployment is at its lowest since the late 60’s.  But most workers have seen far too little to show for their efforts.  So it is with many of our clergy.  Pastoral work is a lot like housework.  It’s never done.  Yet in an age that sees less and less need for what the church offers, the long hours most pastors put into their work seem to bear little fruit.

In our gospel selection from John, Peter and some of the disciples have gone out fishing.  Maybe, after the utter disaster of the past few days, they had given up on the disciple thing.  Maybe they were just at odds about what to do.  Anyway, Peter had announced, “I’m going fishing.”  The others decide to tag along.  But they catch nothing.  I have certainly been on plenty of fishing trips like that!

The fishing business has been so unrewarding that now they’re fishing at night to try and survive.  And for all their efforts, in spite of their all-nighter, they’ve caught nothing.  That’s when a stranger a ways off on the shore calls out to them, “Hey, guys!   Have you caught anything?”  Who is this busybody?  What does he care?  “No,” they have to admit.  For all their effort, they’ve come up empty handed.  There’s not even a single catfish in the net.  Zip.  Nada.

At this point everything changes — this intruder has the nerve to tell them how to do their job?  “Try casting your net on the other side of the boat.”  Yeah.  Right.  Sure.  But, having nothing to lose, that’s exactly what they do. Maybe it’s an authority they sense in his voice.  And surprise upon surprise.  The net is now so full of fish they can barely pull it back in.  About this time, they recognize that in the guise of a stranger, they’ve encountered the risen Christ.  And the confirmation is abundance. All in all, one hundred fifty-three fish.  But we’ll get back to that number later. 

How often it is that strangers on the shore alert us to God’s abundance.  Alert us to the presence of divine possibility.

Many of the people I’ve encountered in my trips to West Virginia, though they live sparse lives, experience an amazing abundance in spiritual gifts.  The comradery around a campfire, in family connections and in community gatherings — there’s an abundance that can’t be measured in dollars and cents.  Friendships are deep and rich. And church is often at the center of lives that are well-lived.  In new found friends, over and over I’ve been alerted to an abundance I would have overlooked. This has been the case with our Wounded Warrior project we hold on our farm.

Our little church of St. Francis may never reach its glory days of the 60s and 70s, but we do have an abundance of joy in one another.  We have abundance in the vision of reconfiguring our campus for mission, as we seek to walk with the addicted and homeless. 

Abundance comes in guises we often fail to recognize.  It’s not necessarily about number, what can be measured.  It’s about the quality and the timelessness of events.  The Bible calls this quality Kairos time.  The fitting season – when time is right.  Fishing is like that.

There’s the old saying that any days spent fishing are not deducted from one’s allotted lifespan.  Days spent fishing are days of “miracle and wonder,” as Paul Simon put it.

When I was in about the second grade my family went on a summer trip to Ensenada, Mexico.  I was somewhat upset because the trip was during the time of my birthday.   I was very disappointed that I wouldn’t have any friends over for a birthday party.  I remember my parents assuring me that we would do something special for the day anyway.  They wondered what I might like to do.  I hadn’t the slightest idea.  What did I know?  I had never been here before.  I didn’t know anyone here.  It seemed that my parents had spent most of the time during the drive down in an ugly family fight.  I was most unhappy.

As we drove through the town of Ensenada, we passed all these fishing boats and rows and rows of fishing poles with signs advertising fishing trips.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do for my birthday.  I wanted to go fishing.  My mom knew nothing of fishing and somehow, between my mom and dad, it was decided that he would be the one to take me out on a charter boat.

I remember waking very early.  It was cold and foggy as we walked along the beach front.  I could taste the salt air.  When we approached the boat, the smells of diesel and fish also permeated my senses.  It was an old wooden boat that creaked as it moved with the gentle swells in the harbor. 

Several of the crewmen spoke English and, as I was the youngest on board, they adopted me as their mascot.

As we were leaving the harbor that morning, I remember my dad sternly warning me, “Don’t look down at the water; look at the horizon.  That way you won’t get seasick.”

It seemed that it took forever to get out to the fishing area.  On the way, we stopped by a boat and picked up a load of little fish that we would use for bait.  By the time we had arrived at the fishing grounds, my dad was not feeling too well.  He said that he was going into the cabin to lie down. 

The deck hands helped me bait my hook and showed me how to cast out from the boat.  Within a very short time I had caught my first fish.  They helped me get it over the rail of the boat and off the hook.  It was the biggest fish I had ever seen as it flopped about on the deck.  And to think, I had actually caught it.  Looking back on the episode now, I realize that it was only a medium sized sea bass.  Probably not that big at all.  But to a young fellow, it looked like it might have hooked Moby Dick or Jaws..

We continued to fish into the afternoon.  I caught fish after fish.  By the time we headed back into the harbor, I had quite an impressive gunny sack full of them.  It was so full that I couldn’t begin to lift it.

As we arrived back at port, I saw my mom and brother waving at the railing of the pier.  All I could do was to point to the huge sack of fish.  About this time, Dad appeared from the cabin of the boat.  By his acrid breath I could tell that he had been seasick.  He really didn’t look too good.  As a big orange sun was setting into the sea, I rushed up the gangway to Mom with Dad trailing somewhat unsteadily behind struggling with my sack of fish.  The first thing I blurted out was, “Mom, Dad didn’t look at the shoreline!”  Even, Dad, woozy as he was, cracked a smile.

Together we all walked back home.  For that moment we were a happy family.  It was the best birthday ever.  Nearing our cottage, we passed what seemed to be some shacks.  Even as young as I was, I realized that these were a pretty poor houses, not at all like ours back home.  I had bad feelings about it.  I remember my mom and dad talking to one of the guys standing out in front in a language I didn’t understand, and pointing to the sack of fish.  I was upset when they then gave away almost all of the fish.

Coming up to the patio out in front of our place, my dad explained that these people didn’t have much and their families would certainly appreciate the fish.  Besides, we could only eat a few of them.  No use wasting them.  My mom didn’t like them at all because she said that they smelled up the place.  To my mind, they were they were the most delicious fish I had ever eaten.

Later on, I came to realize what a gift it really was for Dad to have taken me.  Now I, like him, only have to experience the boat going up and down about three times before I’m hanging on the rail feeding the fish.  He knew that he was going to be absolutely miserable and yet he took me anyway.  I now realize what a sacrifice that was for him.

One of the lessons that I have taken from this first fishing trip is that God’s abundance is seen in the sacrifices we make for one another, the big and small ways we go out of our way just because we know that the gift of time or presence will be important to another person. We are Christ to one another in this gift of self.

That day, though I didn’t have the words for it then, I knew that I and my family had been blessed in a way I would never forget.  Life was full and overflowing with goodness.  Abundance.

In our Gospel story from John, we have a continuation of appearances by the Resurrected Christ.

In the risen Christ we experience forgiveness as well.  Why is it that Peter is asked three times if he loves the Lord?  It is to undo the three-fold denial at Jesus’ trial.  Peter is now reclaimed and sent out as an embodiment of the same Easter abundance.

Likewise, as we experience forgiveness for the daily stupid and carless things we do and say, we are restored to gospel usefulness.  Abundance brought so often by a stranger on the shore of our life.  Christ in the guise of a stranger, an interloper.

In the abundance of fish, the Beloved Disciple recognizes the man.  “It is the Lord.”

The net is so full of fish, 153 in all – large fish – that all the disciples come out to the boat to haul it in.  When they get back on land, they saw the charcoal fire with fish and bread roasting on it.  Jesus invites them to also bring over some of the fish they have just caught.

This is a story about abundance and sharing.   John wants his community to know that they will recognize the Risen Christ in the abundance God provides when life is shared.  That’s it.

I could go on at great length about all the theories of the 153 fish.  Looking at the commentaries, there are all sorts of speculations about the significance of this number.  But, I fear, you might have as much trouble staying awake hearing about them as I did just in reading about them.

So, if anyone asks you about the meaning of the 153 fish, just tell them, “Fr. John had nothing profound to say.”  Our salvation does not depend on knowing the significance of this number.

However, John in his Gospel has something most profound to say about abundance, and this revelation has a lot to do with our salvation.   Christians, when gathered together, will experience the Risen Lord in the daily abundance that God provides for us when it is shared.  In the sharing we will know his real and living presence. 

When we gather around this altar, let us remember this teaching.  Food is basic.  It is to be shared.  It is our very Lord who said, “I am food.”  In the sharing of this bread broken and cup poured out, he is present to bless and encourage us. 

In a similar way long ago, I experienced God’s goodness to me on my birthday – in the abundance of a monstrous gunny sack full of fish that were shared with those who had none.  (There had to have been 153 of them!) And in the abundance of love that permeated our family dinner that evening, I now know Christ was present.

Amen.

Third Sunday of Easter
Strangers on the Shore

Acts 9:1-6, [7-20]; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14;
John 21:1-14

Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino;

 The Rev. John C. Forney
May 5, 2019

You’ve certainly experienced a traffic jam caused by lookie-loos gawking at an accident in the opposing lane.  Of course, you have.  You live in Southern California, or in some other place similarly overcrowded.  Drives you nuts – unless you’re the one doing the looking.  As you approach the scene of the accident, there’s the patrol officer waving a flashlight saying to drivers as they all slow down to stare, “Move along, folks.  Just move along.  Nothing to see here.”  And as you pass, she gives you the evil eye of consternation.

That is the word from the empty tomb this morning.  “Nothing to see.”  Why do you look for the living amongst the dead?  How often do we Christians find ourselves lost and wandering about amongst that which does not give life?

I came across an intriguing book a couple weeks ago, The Grave of God.  What a title.  I wondered if this was a reprise of the Death of God theology of the 60s or what.  It was a much more damning indictment than anything out of that period.  It concerned the tendency of the church for self-preservation over mission.  For safety over risk.  For condemnation over liberation.  For death over Resurrection.[1]  The church has used God to justify oppression, wars and patriarchy.  God has been used to justify narrow partisan and parochial interests.

When I was a small boy, I wondered why it was that part of the family wouldn’t talk about Aunt Donna.  It was as if she were dead.  It was only after I had become a teenager that I discovered the real story.  Aunt Donna, after losing her husband Frank, went into a deep depression.  Her life literally fell apart.  It was only when a Catholic friend reached out to her and took her to church that Aunt Donna got her footing.  She found such a nurturing community that she converted from the Christian Science faith of my grandmother.  She ultimately became a nun, working as a nurse with the Sisters of St. Joseph in Tacoma, Washington.  I’m sure her work was a blessing to those hospital patients, but to us she was as if dead.  We dared not speak her name or we were hushed.  In retrospect, it was very hurtful, especially to us children.  So much hate.  And this is what the church taught?  Such vindictiveness is indeed the grave of God and the tomb of all that is holy.  The Resurrection Spirit is like the wind.  It blows where it will and it liberated our Aunt Donna from that dark cloud  of depression over her head. Yes, it did! 

Today, we rejoice that these narrow denominational tombs are empty.  Alleluia.  We Christians are a Resurrection people.  We live not in the House of Fear but in the House of Love as my friend Ed Bacon would put it.  I saw that one of his internet friends had responded with the reminder, “The House of Love has room for all, and we need to remember to leave the door unlocked and porch light on for all who want to move in.”

Easter is about Resurrection.  It does us no earthly, or heavenly good for that matter, to have ideas and opinions about that empty tomb unless we are moved by Resurrection Power to leave the tomb and beginning to live as a renewed people. 

Resurrection breaks into our lives sometimes when the Spirit grabs our funny bone. Humor allows the dreary stuff of life to fall into perspective.  Humor is some of the best Resurrection medicine.  Resurrection humor blasts through self-absorption and anger, through custom and the walls of clan and tribe.  It liberates us from the tomb of self-importance.  Nothing to see in there, folks.  Nothing to see.

Ed, in his book, 8 Habits of Love,[2] tells the story of one of his mentors, Rabbi Friedman.  The rabbi recounts a time when his son had to go to court for rear-ending a woman’s car on his way to work.  By the time the father and son had arrived at court the other driver was already there in the courtroom, furiously pacing back and forth.  When she noticed the two, her look became a hateful scowl.  She wanted the judge to throw the book at this young boy.  The rabbi begun to sense that the judge and spectators were becoming caught up in the tension filling the courtroom.  In fact, he himself was getting caught up in it.  As Ed reports the scene, “…he began to sweat; he was getting angrier and angrier.  His son looked at him with pleading eyes.  Everything seemed to be getting out of control.  The rising panic was infectious and debilitating.”

The rabbi moved away from the others to get some perspective and to calm himself, and when he returned, he heard the judge asking him what he as a father thought would be a reasonable punishment.  In an instant that blessed liberating spirit, might we even say that Resurrection Spirit spoke through the humor of the words that escaped his lips: “Life imprisonment,” was the judgement of the father. “This is surely the worst crime a young man can commit – to have a fender bender against this woman.”

The judge and the lawyers burst out into laughter.  The woman’s demeanor began to change as she, too, began laughing.  Holy laughter brought them forth from the tomb in which the proceedings had become mired.  Holy laughter, Resurrection laughter was the medicine which restored reason.  And Ed reports that all went home without any dire consequences.  A Jewish rabbi and Resurrection?  Why not?  Was it not also a Jewish rabbi who burst forth from that tomb on the first Easter morning?  Resurrection cannot be contained in any one religious tribe.  It bursts through whatever tomb in which we contrive to stuff it. 

The power of Christ has been let loose throughout the humane values of not only the West, but it has infected all who have absorbed those values, even though they are adherents of other faiths.  Or of no faith.  The power of Christ is now so diffuse throughout the world that most, even professing Christians, fail to recognize its origin.  Take the power of liberated women.  Yes, it took us Episcopalians a long time to get there.  To our shame, women could not be deputies at General Convention until 1970, when twenty-eight women delegates were finally welcomed to General Convention by President of the House of Deputies, John Coburn.  Yes, Resurrection!  Even in our beloved Episcopal Church.  Male chauvinism is a dark, empty tomb.  Nothing there for anybody.   Absolutely, nothing!

The Church, in John’s account of that first Easter morning, reports trouble with some Pesky Women who beat the men to the Easter miracle.  And then there’s that foot race over which man gets to be there first, as if the women’s testimony accounted for nothing.  This whole episode is a reflection of the argument over who really counts in the church.  It’s all about church politics.  The Resurrection message could easily have been lost in this church skirmish.  And so often it is.  And those Pesky Women?  We men eventually wised up to God’s Resurrection Power residing in their persistence and in their glorious gifts.  In the end, we men had both the good sense and the grace to get out of their way.  And what an Easter blessing these women have been for our church, both as lay and ordained! 

The infection of empowerment has now spread to the women of Afghanistan.[3]  After the most horrific abuse under the rule of the Taliban and ISIS, these women are now rising to their full potential.  They will not be suppressed. Not any longer. Resurrection, I say.

In The Daily Good there was a story about a girl, Hassanzada, who at the age of sixteen becomes a news presenter, the first woman to do this in Afghanistan.  In her hometown of Mazar-i-Sharif such a notion would have been dismissed as a childish dream.  Yet, here she was, broadcasting the news. 

Today Hassanzada is now twenty-five and runs her own magazine, Gellaria.  Sort of like Vogue.  And to think that just a few years ago, women were not allowed to leave their homes alone or permitted to attend school.  Girls who had the temerity to go to classes were sometimes the victim of acid attacks by the Taliban.  Under ISIS, girls had been sold into sexual slavery, considered as mere animals with no agency of their own.  And now, even with the Taliban gone, the oppressive cultural norms internalized by many women remain as a stale tomb imprisoning any aspirations of personal fulfilment.

It has not been easy for Hassanzada.  Shortly after she appeared on television, she began receiving threats from the Taliban and their warlords.  The elders of her own village were furious that a woman dare have her face publicly shown on television.  There were angry letters, threatening phone calls and bullying.  Yet she kept going to work, day in and day out.  She persisted.  Yeah, one of those sorts of women.   Hassanzada is that beloved angelic messenger shouting to the women of Afghanistan, “Move along, ladies.  Nothing here for you in this Taliban tomb.  Only the death of your dreams.  Absolutely, nothing to see here.  Nothing for you.” 

Hassanzada knew that if she gave into this intimidation, every girl in Afghanistan would suffer a diminished future.  The Taliban mentality would have won. “If we quit every time we are threatened or attacked, then women would never get anywhere. We have to be fearless,” she insists.[4]

Even tragedy did not deter her.  One day her younger brother was attacked and brutally beaten, almost to death.  Yes, the family decided to move to Kabul for their safety, but her parents continued to support her work and aspirations. 

What has enraged Hassanzada more than the violence directed at her and her family has been the complacency of so many Afghan women and their servile acquiesce to the Taliban attitude that they are nothing.  Today she continues in her media work to encourage young girls to dream dreams like she had.

The Resurrection Spirt has surely burst forth from the Taliban and the ISIS tomb of dead ideology and dead male privilege.  There is no stuffing it back in.  Don’t even try.  There’s a whole new generation of Pesky Women out there bringing new life to Afghanistan.  God bless ‘em.  Men, let’s face it.  You cannot stifle these women.  So, join them.  Join them and become a part of the Resurrection of Afghan women.  Become a part of a resurrected Afghanistan.

This Resurrection Morning, we celebrate the bursting forth of new life at St. Francis and in our beloved Episcopal Church.  We are so fortunate to have a bishop like John Taylor who has refused to sell off any more church properties, but insists that we, the church, discover our new ministry when the neighborhood changes, when the world thinks it no longer has any use for the Gospel Message in this so-called modern age.

A number of us will be attending the Episcopal Enterprise Institute, training to learn how to reconfigure our ministry in such a way that it will serve the present needs of our neighborhood on Sterling Ave.  We are an irrepressible Resurrection People. 

The watchword of House of Hope is this:  Instead of judging people by their past, stand by them and help them repair their future.  That is Resurrection theology in action.  No dank, smelly tombs for us!  And addiction is the worst sort of tomb.

This Good Friday I so missed our sister Joyce Marx at our Stations of the Cross service.  I still remember following her last year as we processed from station to station.  For those who didn’t know Joyce, she was one of the founders of St. Francis.  And let me tell you this.  She and her husband Gene did not sweat and toil all those years for us to give up.  At St. Francis we’re just getting started.  Hold my beer and watch this!  Or diet soda, if you prefer.

Move along.  Move along, nothing to see here in any old dark and smelly tomb.  Friends, the action’s out there — Resurrection action bursting forth uncontained.  Matthew tells us that following his initial appearances, Jesus went on before them back to Galilee, went on before them, even back to Sterling and Citrus, San Bernardino – back to the world of hustle and bustle, the world both of tears and unrestrained joy.  Back to the sometimes pedestrian world where we’re daily empowered to live Resurrection. To paraphrase David Letterman, Easter has no “off” switch. 

Christ has risen.  (He is risen indeed).   Happy Easter.  Amen.

---

[1] Robert Adolfs, The Grave of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 26ff.

[2] Ed Bacon, 8 Habits of Love: Open Your Heart, Open Your Mind (Boston: Grand Central Life & Style, 2012),

[3] Kiran Nazish, “Afghan Women Making their Voices Heard by Launching their Own Companies,’ The Daily Good, April 27, 2018) http://www.good.is/features/media-women-in-afghanistan-gellara-magazine-zan-tv

[4] Kiran Nazish, op. cit.

Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43;
John 20:1-18

Preached at St. Francis Outreach Center, San Bernardino;

 The Rev. John C. Forney
April 21, 2019