Today, my issue of the Living Church arrived and on the front cover was a picture of the “Harrowing of Hell.”  This image is from the Icon Museum in Recklinghausen, Germany, artist unknown.

In the Apostles Creed, one line reads, “he descended to the Underworld” – which we interpret to mean “to the dead” – or to “Hell.”  This is taken from the verse in 1 Peter, 4:6.  The Harrowing of Hell is commemorated on Holy Saturday.

I take this observance to mean that, ultimately, no one is beyond the saving grace of the Good News.  Yes, even Judas.

When Jai and I were in Jerusalem, that city was so commercialized that It was difficult to get into the mind of the auspicious and seminal events of Holy Week.  Among all the stalls offering everything from tourist trinkets to lentils, dates and melons, nothing seemed to have remained from the time of Jesus’ last days.

It wasn’t until we got to the Wailing Wall – the only remains of the second temple wall begun by Herod the Great — and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that I began to feel some of the ambiance of that ancient City of David.  Yet I had no idea where the path of sorrow was which Jesus took from his trial to the Cross on Golgotha — the Via Dolorosa –I had no idea of how it might have wended its way through the city to that fateful end.

It is during this time of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, that even the non-believing world becomes aware of the Christian story.  With the reenactment of the pageantry of the processions of the palms around the world, the world becomes acutely aware of that Man for Others.  The one who “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”[1]

In our milieu of hyper-partisan Christianity, many – especially our younger generations — are repulsed by the vulgar sensationalizing of the message by right-wing Christian Nationalists.  Whatever their mental picture of Jesus, THIS IS NOT IT.

In his book, Evangelism in the Age of Despair,[2] Andrew Root makes the point that the substance of the Good News can mostly be conveyed by those who come to others as a servant, in humility, entering the suffering of this age.

The only Christ that neighbor might ever encounter is in that neighbor, friend, who becomes vulnerable to their pain, their great despair.  Just as Christ descended to the dead with Good News – for in his or her despair, overwhelming grief, that friend was indeed dead to themselves and those around.

Dr. Root tells a prototypical story, drawn from a number of experiences of such a contemporary encounter.[3]

The story begins with Mary Ann, who had landed a job with a trucking company outside of San Diego, California.  Her new boss, Bud, the owner, of this small operation, was most supportive, though a somewhat gruff personality.

As the company grew, Bud realized that he needed someone to manage personnel, a Human Resources manager.  He offered the new position to Mary Ann, though she’d had no experience in such work.  But Mary Ann was a quick learner even though she had no college background.  By attending conferences, seminars and through reading, she was soon up to speed.  The company was still small and the demands for the new HR position were not overwhelming.

It finally looked like everything in her life was clicking.  She had two wonderful children, a home in a nice neighborhood and a great job she loved. 

Until, out of the blue, her husband announced he wanted a divorce.

She might have seen this coming.  She and her husband more and more frequently bickered over money and pretty much everything else.  Mary Ann figured that more money from her increased salary would resolve the tension.  Not so.

There she was, now on her own with two children under ten without a father.  Grief, self-doubt and depression became the order of her days.  The emotional pain shook her to her core.  She could barely be there for her children or her job.

She poured herself into her job and that helped somewhat.  But busyness could not take away the shame, the anxiety and the sorrow.  The sorrow, more than anything else, settled about her as a dense fog.  No sunshine to her days.

Mary Ann’s father, like many from the 60s counter culture had drifted to the West Coast.  Some in Los Angeles, others to the Bay Area around San Francisco and Berkeley.  Unlike her father, she didn’t hate the church, she just never gave it much thought.

Her father was a “tough-it-through” kind of guy.  Never admit your hurt.

One day, a coworker, Valentina, who had been noticing Mary Ann’s slow decline into despair, approached her and asked her if she was okay.  “I’ve noticing that you seem to be carrying a lot of weight on your shoulders – a pretty heavy load.”

Those words caused an emotional dam to burst in Mary Ann.  She, for the first time, unloaded her burden.  For two hours they talked.  Mary Ann felt that she had been held in a way she never had before.  Yes, she needed a friend.

Valentina, also, had known loss.  Her son had been arrested and sentenced to jail for theft, which led to addiction.  She told Mary Ann how the people of her church had come to the courtroom and sat with her during the trial.  They fed her for three weeks afterward.

Because of that experience Valentina was walking a nearby horse-trail with Mary Ann three times a week.

Valentina’s pastor was constantly telling the congregation that the followers of Jesus know sorrow.  She saw that example through the depths of her own depression.  Because of that, she was now out on this horse-trail with Mary Ann three times a week.

Valentina may be the only image of Christ that Mary Ann would ever know.  And that is sufficient.  In that friendship was born the entire message of the Gospel.  Now vibrantly alive in Mary Ann’s heart as well as she walked her own Via Dolorosa.

I never found out where that ancient trail of tears led through Jerusalem, but I am well acquainted with that Via Dolorosa in my own heart.  And it has been a saving grace at needed times to have had trusted companions along that way.

Yes, together we navigate that path as it has wound its way through our lives, through the lives of friends and family for in faith we know it leads to an Easter Sunrise. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, for Christ in our friends will join us along the way to lift and to sustain.  Just as Christ does three times a week on that horse-trail in the guise of Mary Ann’s dear friend.  Amen.

---

[1] Philippians 2:8, NRSV.

[2] Andrew Root, Evangelism in an Age of Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic).

[3] Ibid, the story which follows is from pages 4-7.

March 29, 2026
Palm Sunday, 2026

  “The Summons of the Via Dolorosa”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Liturgy of the Psalms: Matthew 21:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16;
Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14-54

There’s an old song from the 80s by Boxcar Willie.  Born as Lecil Travis Martin, one day sitting at a railroad crossing he saw a boxcar go by and in the door was a fellow who looked like his loading master in the Air Force.  Willie Wilson became the inspiration for a second career as Boxcar Willie.  And for many years during the Korean War, he had a full-time gig with the Air force, retiring as a Master Sargant.

One of his signature hits was “Hey Mister Can You Spare a Dime.”  Like many of his songs, this one showed great empathy for the down-and-out – the hobos cast adrift.

During times of adversity and social dislocation, many families were splintered, often as the men went looking for work in far-away places, or sometimes out of guilt they felt their families would be better off without them.  They didn’t want to be a burden, or were too ashamed to stick around.  Or they became stuck in the bottle. 

These days, it is often addiction that shreds families.  Or mental illness.  Sometimes, it’s losing or being priced out of housing.  Or the loss of a job.  Right now, so many Americans are living on the margin.  One little unexpected expense throws many families into financial chaos.

In John’s gospel we encounter a barrage of dysfunction occasioned by the completely unexpected.

Jesus encounters a blind man on the side of the road.  The disciples first instinct is to cast blame.  “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”  Who’s to blame?  Often, it’s blame the victim.  That’s how racism works.

When Jesus dismisses such scapegoating, he then proceeds to heal the man with spit and mud.  Then tells him to wash in the pool of Siloam. 

The man, to his astonishment, sees.  The unexpected, the unexplained.

The man’s neighbors who had only known the fellow as a beggar, now begin to argue among themselves.  The blind do NOT see.  Their fellow villager could not possibly be now seeing.  They refuse to accept what their own eyes see – this guy now seeing must have just looked like the beggar they had know at the side of the road. 

When the man explained how it was that Jesus had healed him, he can’t rightly explain where that man presently was.

And since this was done on the Sabbath, the religious authorities are now involved in this community-wide imbroglio.  This Jesus must be a sinner since he had done the deed on the Day of Rest, the Sabbath. 

But no one who is a sinner, one group argued, could have done such a deed.  Yet most of the pious folks cannot believe this man.  They ask him to explain again and again what had actually happened.

They now call the man’s parents.  Out of fear they mumble, ask our son.  He is of age.  Yes, even the man’s parents deny him.

When the formerly blind man is again hauled before the righteous religious leaders, they now tell the man to give Glory to God, not Jesus – for he is a sinner.

All the seeing man can say is, “I only know that …  I only know that I once was blind but now I see.” 

In the Gospel of John, this event was considered much more than a healing miracle.  It is a sign – a sign that in Jesus and his work, God is in this place.  It as a sign of the Divine Will for redemption and salvation.  Indeed, God is working God’s purpose out step by step as our Lord trods the sacrificial path to Jerusalem.  Step by step with wonders along the way.

And we, when the most astonishing things transpire, can only say… in open-mouthed amazement — can only say, “Thanks be to God.”

What exactly happened, and how it happened we cannot rightly say.  As my Methodist friends would say, “My heart was strangely warmed.”

In response, we with warm hearts respond as best we can and thank God we have breath and life, and capacity to make some meaningful response.

My friend Dick came upon a fellow just by chance, or maybe not by chance.  Who knows, he can only say that… he can only say that this man was a gift of God as he lay on his cot.

Over the months Dick got to know Tom and his little dog.  Dick helped Tom find a living situation that would accept his little dog.  When the shelter demanded that the dog be licensed and given his shots, Dick hit me up to help foot the bill.  In that way I got to know Tom and his dog.

No, the dog was not blind but now sees.  But he was licensed and vaccinated.  And for Tom, that was miracle enough.  Tom had been on his own, no known family but that little dog.  And the people who rallied around the two to keep them safe, housed and fed.  Miracle enough for Tom.

Did God direct Dick to Tom in that first shelter?  I only know that…  a mystery.  And a blessing to all involved.

Ohers would have blamed him for his shabby circumstances.  Or have run Tom out of their communities.  Many of our communities would not have behaved any better towards Tom and the other homeless on our city streets than had that beggar’s village regarded him.  Sweep them off the streets.  They’re a big inconvenience.  Bad for business.

But as debilitated as he was, Tom was doing the best he able to do with his mental health issues.  In and through friends of the Jesus Movement healing happened in some small way for Tom and his dog.

Such healing, call them miracles if you will, is wrought through human agency and the real stuff of creation – even spit, mud and water.  Through the solid voice of compassion and encouragement.

How often have you felt that gentle nudge, that silent voice propelling you as an agent of mystery, of compassion?

During the Great Depression on many nights my grandma who lived in Lodi, CA, would set some of the supper she had made for the family out on the back porch with a ladle and paper bowls.  This was for the vagrants who came through her’s and grandpa’s back alley at night hunting for any sustenance, anything useful that might have been thrown away.

She was well aware, since her husband was the postmaster of Lodi, that they were going to be okay.  Unlike the many who trod that back alley.

Her hands and bowls of supper on her back porch were signs that in some small way God was in this place.  You may be down-and-out, but a kind, gentle woman has remembered you.  Sacrament of God’s Remembrance.  A sign that in some small way God was in this place.

Under the tyranny of the ruling religious leaders and the pressure of the Roman empire, we have the story of an entire community fractured – a family, a village, a faith community.

And the only fully functioning person in this melodrama is the beggar, the one considered of no account.  He speaks the truth, “All I know is that…that I once was blind but now I see.”  A sign of God’s will for the healing and restoration of all creation – into a community of love. 

Amid all the chaos and incompetence, the horror of masked goons dragging Americans and others off the streets.  Killing with impunity on our nation’s city streets, I cannot blame those who are totally bummed out and would rather withdraw in a warm cocoon. Thankfully, we have those amongst us who are opening the eyes of an electorate gone blind.

One of these healing persons is the United Methodist Bishop, Grant Hagiya.   Bishop Hagiya, now retired, is presently the president of Claremont School of Theology – my alma mater. The bishop, in his episcopal letter, gives us sound instruction on how to survive the next three years.  With our souls intact.

1.  Focus only on that which we have control over in our lives.  We can’t personally stop this insane war.  We can’t stop the predations of the grifters around this president.  But we can support candidates we believe in.  We can make sure our friends and family vote in November.  Save the date – November 3^rd.

• We can take our baptismal vows seriously.  Resist evil, and when you fall into the sin of complacency and accommodation, repent.  Rely on the One who empowers you to resist evil and oppression.
• Speak the truth to the erasure of our history by Trump.  Have the moral courage to embrace the total American journey, its glorious people of all races and nationalities that have made their contributions.  Have the courage to accept open-eyed the worst we have done and been.  Speak that truth to those who would whitewash our errors.

• Take time to enjoy the ordinary activities of the day, whether washing dishes, playing cards with you kids or reading them a book.  Take time to enjoy a lunch with a cherished friend or making dinner.  Delight in these pieces of our lives.

The bishop’s letter draws on the wisdom of a Zen monk who counsels us to look at the day’s activities as a string of beads.  Some large, some small.  Some eye-catching, others dull.  From the broad perspective of time, all beads are equally important.  They’re all pieces of our lives.  Rejoice and be glad that they are given to your hands and heart.  The appropriate response here is, “Thanks be to God.”

This is clear-eyed wisdom for getting through the next three years with equanimity and graciousness.  And your sanity.

The Serenity Prayer is a fitting close here.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

With this calming of mind, like that ancient beggar, we can rightly say, I only know that…that God is in this place.  A sign indeed!  Amen

March 15, 2026
Lent 4 – Mothering Sunday
  “I Only Know That…”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
1Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23;
Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

One of the most foreboding places on this earth is a scorching, dry desert.

I remember my first church off the 395 Highway in Randsburg, California.  Randsburg in the 1890s had been a thriving gold mining community of over 6000.  More gold was taken out of the Yellow Aster Mine on the outskirts of that town than from any other mine in California.

A number of citizens of that town had banded together to build a Methodist church and from stories of the old timers — those pews for some 80 persons were mostly filled on any given Sunday.

By the time I arrived as pastor, some 80 years later the town had dwindled down to some 200 souls and the remnant congregation was comprised of 4 persons.  That’s right, just 4.

My assignment was to follow up on a major bequest that had been given the church, collect the money for the denomination and then close the church.

What I soon discovered was that my predecessor had been a rather cranky personality who alienated many in that community and the other adjacent communities of Red Mountain and Johannesburg.  He also hated visiting folks.  He was uniquely ill-at-ease with people.

I also discovered that if I spent a couple of days a week visiting around the three towns, all about a mile apart, there were a number of folks interested in having a vital alternative to the bars and TV.

Within weeks we had a little congregation of 10, then 20-some. 

When I had first arrived, besides the minute congregation – the most depressing thing was that there was no water.  The water had been shut off a couple of years ago to save money.

Out in that scorching desert without water – I desperately wanted it to flow for our little group. Another new member of the church and I did the repairs to the plumbing, paid the fees and got the water flowing.  The next Sunday was a real celebration.  Water was the sacramental sign that the Spirit was alive in this place.

We did a lot of other things in the six years I served there:  Started a senior citizen’s lunch program in the community hall in Johannesburg, started a youth group, had a church breakfast before the Sunday services began.  Even built the first indoor flush toilets.  Previously it had been taking your chances with the black widow spiders in the outhouse. 

But I always felt that getting the water running was the sign of the real beginning.  The proof that there was life in that place.  That small community of faith was Living Water for those three towns.

In our lectionary readings appointed for this Sunday we have two passages where water is front and center.

In Exodus we read of the grumbling of the parched Israelites as they travel the desert wilderness under the leadership of Moses.  In fact, they are at the point of mutiny, about to stone Moses.  Their complaint was about the lack of water to drink.

“But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’”

The upshot was that God instructed Moses to take some elders and go to the rock at Horeb.  Strike it with the staff used to strike the Nile.  Moses did as told and water flowed from that rock.

Water, the precious substance of life, was the sure sign, the answer to the people’s quarrel with the Lord, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

In our passage from John, this gift of water is also life itself.  What Jesus provided at the well for that Samaritan woman was Living Water, the very substance of Eternity itself.  In those few moments at that well Jesus reveals her to herself at the deepest level. 

With amazement she leaves her water jug and runs back to her village, summoning one and all.  “Come and see.”  This Living Water is Jesus himself.  “Come and see.”  And all in that town made their way to him.  She had come upon the very substance of Life Everlasting – and her life overflowed with it as well.

“Living Water” is a metaphor – a word-symbol that connotates multiple meanings.  That is its richness.

When those words become sacramental – a physical substance revealing a spiritual reality – they are just that, real.

That woman at the well experienced a profound reality in the truth Jesus revealed about her life.  And in his lack of judgement, he freed her.  She became a living witness to his reality.  In her being that soulful exuberance was Living Water.

In this passage from John’s gospel, he is not only speaking to that woman long ago, but he’s speaking to us.  As we drink deeply of what Jesus is offering, we become “Living Water.”

We live in a parched land.  Hate and division are the weeds of this desert landscape.  Greed and racism the tumbleweeds that are blown by an ill wind.  We have a politics that feeds on it all.  And billionaire grifters that profit from it.

So, where in our deepest souls do we encounter that saving “Living Water.” 

One theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, identified that essential life-giving substance as Truth.

When I immerse myself in my Book of Hours, prayerbook readings for traditional times of daily prayer for each day of the week, I find myself before a Centering Reality.  There I find the redeeming truth that God loves me and all of creation – that you and I are persons of worth, persons who matter, bound up together in a life-affirming mutuality. 

These prayers are a needed reminder that no matter my pitiful state of mind, that’s not the final story.  Yes, God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God in them.  End of story.

These passages from scripture are Living Water.

Yesterday, in my dialysis chair I had the opportunity to watch the funeral service for the Rev. Jesse Jackson.  The eulogies and singing – a huge gospel choir – they were a gusher of Living Water.

Remember his signature mantra.  “Keep Hope Alive.  Keep Hope Alive.”

As former president Obama cautioned, in our day, given the outrages of this current administration, that’s a difficult task.

Every day we are assaulted by new disasters, new incompetencies.  Lies upon lies that give the “Father of all Lies” a run for his money.

We were not going to have anymore “Forever Wars” was the pledge, yet with no congressional approval we’ve committed American forces to a debacle that is now consuming the entire Middle East.  Americans are being slaughtered in our city streets by ICE thugs right out of a Gestapo play book.  The planet continues to heat up and the response of White House incompetents who seem to have never read a science book is, “Drill, baby, drill.  Drill, baby, drill.” And fire all the people at EPA who had previously monitored the increasing amounts of greenhouse gasses.  Yeah, what’s that burning smell?

All this to avoid the fallout and consequences of the Jeffrey Epstein files?  All to distract us from the testimony of an underage thirteen-year-old girl who had allegedly been sexually assaulted by Trump at an Epstein party?  Any FBI investigation into her story?  Nothing!  All swept under the rug.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Just move on.  Just move on.

Every day a new outrage.  Yes, it’s difficult under such a barrage of sewage to Keep Hope Alive.

Yet, Jackson’s memorial service was a tonic for the soul.  An overflowing fountain of Living Water.  A river of Gospel Goodness straight from our Lord, running down through the centuries to that church auditorium yesterday.

President Obama laid out the challenge facing the community of faith these coming days.  The temptation is just to keep our heads down and hope this would all go away or pass us by.

Rev. Al Sharpton, in the midst of this debilitating chaos, gave us our assignment.  Much as Jesse Jackson would hand out assignments at his rallies.  Our assignment is to be that Living Water, nourishing all we lift up, all we sustain by Holy Resistance, uniting not dividing.  Rev. Al gave us our commission to Keep Hope Alive in whatever small ways we can.  He buoyed up our faith that Hope might flow through us.

That service was a healing balm to the souls of all who witnessed it.  You can catch the entire event on MSNOW YouTube.

And so the community is gathered in around this life-enhancing Word, a bountiful spring of Living Water.  We share stories of family and of hardship. Stories of grandchildren.  We share stories of adventure and joy.  And the stories of such legends as Jesse Jackson.

And the garden just outside our parish hall that feeds 470 persons each week with nutritious vegetables and fruit – that also is Living Water for those who come to St. John’s Food Bank every Wednesday.

We are a community of Living Water that nourishes not only the soul but our real-life neighbors in need.  Those veggies are Spirit made flesh.

Here is the Living Water we thirst for in this barren desert now called America.   Our assignment is to pass along those stories, to be those stories of Living Water in word and deed.

I close with a favorite story from my dear friend Dick Bunce.  A story flowing with pure Grace.  Living Water.

Early in the last century, a minister boarded a train and went looking for a seat.  The train was crowded and he felt fortunate to land a seat.  He found himself sitting next to a young man who seemed disinterested in conversation.  As the train got underway, the minister saw that the young man seemed burdened and preoccupied.  The minister found a way to get a light conversation started, and this led to a question to the young man about the purpose of his trip.  

Somehow, the youthful man sensed that this older fellow was trustworthy and genuinely interested.  So he shared his story.

A couple of years prior, while in his late teens, he had become rebellious.  He wanted more freedom and pursued it in a lot of the wrong ways.  One evening, when confronted by his parents, he exploded with anger and shouted over his shoulder as he strutted out that he was leaving and would not be coming back.  

He held to that for two years.  He hitchhiked, took odd jobs, and made no attempt to reach out to his parents.  

During his self-imposed exile, he matured.  One day, at long last, he sat down to write a letter – perhaps the hardest letter he’d ever attempted to write.  He stated that he been wrong and that he would like to see them again.  He said he’d be on the 4:30 afternoon special and gave the date.  

This was the train he was on as he talked to the minister.  It happened to pass the backyard of his parent’s home.  By simply looking out he’d be able to get a good view of the yard.  

After writing the date and time, he said to his parents that if they wanted to see him, simply hang something white on the Sycamore tree.  He was quick to add that he would understand if they preferred not to see him considering how rudely and irresponsibly he had behaved. 

Eventually, the train neared his old neighborhood.  The minister and young man fell silent as the train rounded a wide curve that would bring the yard into view.  The yard appeared.  And there was something white hanging from the tree.

Oh yes!  White towels, sheets, blankets, pillow cases, you name it – a blizzard of white hanging from the tree, eaves of the house, even the telephone wires. 

The minister watched as this young fellow stepped off the train at the station just a mile or so from the house.  As soon as he was off the train, he ran.  

He ran toward the open arms of his mother and dad.  

Just as, at our end, when our journey’s over, we run into the open arms of our Lord Jesus Christ – Living Water for all who thirst for something of eternity.

Amen

March 8, 2026
Lent 3
  “The Invitation of Living Water”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95;
Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

The beginnings of ambitious journeys are often beset by missteps and bad luck.  Or sometimes splendid serendipity.  Nothing certain here – that’s definitely the case with any Lenten journey taken in deep prayerful seriousness.

It was certainly the case for one man’s most ambitious journey to capture the presidency of the United States – a journey into the unknown.

It should have been a slam dunk.  George H. W. Bush, a former pitcher in college, would be throwing out the first ball at Game One of the National Leage Championship Series.  All he would have had to have done was to take a taxi to the game, buy his hot dog, walk out onto the pitcher’s mound and throw out the first ball at Game One on the National League Championship Series. 

It would have been a friendly crowd of some 40,000 fans, many of whom would have been his fans as well.  Seated with beers and hot dogs in hand at the Houston Astrodome – a solid GOP crowd of Bush’s hometown.  Many more looking on through the magic of TV.[1]

BUT, NO!

Plans and arrangements are meticulous, byzantine even.  Every moment scripted.  A huge motorcade.  A black, handsome book with the seal of the Vice President noted every event down to the minute with diagrams – from the seating on the plane, the order of cars in the motorcade, staffing, every division of the staffing party, their phone numbers, every word that Bush would speak.  Everything.  The whole enchilada – planned down to a T.  Down to the minute.  A cast of hundreds.

Everything accounted for.  Except one thing.

It had been a loooong time since Bush had last thrown a ball.  A long while – back when he had played for Yale.

In his windup he couldn’t get his arms over his head so they ended up in front of his face.  “…he sort of swivels to his left, and his arm flies back—but it won’t go back, so he gets it back even with his shoulder, and starts forward while his right lace-up feels for the dirt on the downslope, and he can tell it’s short while the throw is still in his hand, and he’s trying to get that little extra with his hand, which ends up, fingers splayed, almost waving, as he lands on his right foot, and lists to the left, towards first-base line.”

The upshot? The ball bobbles, then lands in the dirt many feet from the catcher and slowly rolls into his mitt.  All on nationwide TV.

One just never knows how it will turn out with such a shaky beginning.  Definitely, nothing certain.  Not in this case.  Yet we all know how that race turned out.

This was the inauspicious beginning of the most improbable journey any man or woman might undertake – the journey to be elected president of the United States of America.  For a man or woman to leap from the belief that he or she should be president to actually saying in the back of their mind, “I am going to be president,” is a most improbable journey, fraught with many chance moments of disaster, moments of glory, and moments of missed opportunity.  A journey into a great unknown.

Abram and Sarai likewise embarked on a great, fraught adventure, a most improbable journey into an unknown future.  No guarantee as to the outcome.  Nothing certain, but by faith alone.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…’ So, Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”

Went.  Went to where?  Literally, only God knows.  Sarai must have been ready to institutionalize her husband.  He and his little band could have easily perished following this phantom of his own mind.  The wackadoodle voices of mental illness.  Delusional promptings of an unwell mind.  No one would have ever heard from him again – as tragic as the Donner Party that perished in 1846 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

And yet, most unlikely, three of the world’s great religions – Jewish, Muslim, Christian — look to Abraham as a forefather of their faiths.  And don’t forget Sarah, though the men left her out.  Biblical note: Abram’s and Sarai’s names were changed in Genesis 17 to signify their acceptance of a new covenant with God.

Lent is also a time of journey, embracing an unknown and uncertain future.  It’s in our face, right there as ICE pulls terrified immigrants from their houses, workplaces and cars.  People whose perilous journeys to the US in search of safety or fleeing hunger or opportunity have led them to travel on foot thousands of miles.

This time of Lent invites us also to embark on such a incredible journey with all its perils and promise.  A journey without maps as Graham Greene called it in 1936 – a travelogue based on his journey into the heart of Africa.

Instead of passively listening to the lessons of this Lenten season – what my boys would label as blizz-blaz, floating over distracted minds at 10,000 feet as it is read on any given Sunday morning.  In our book of Lenten readings, focus on one or two passages that grab your mind.  Or a hymn.  Ask yourself in prayer, how does my life and my spiritual journey relate to the inner truth of this reading, this song?

What might it be saying to me personally?  What might it be saying to my faith community?  Finally, what might it be saying to the world?  Trust that if this really is the Word of God, it has hidden power to restore, to change your life.  Yes, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.  It will feed your soul.

In open, unguarded prayer with that passage, you might discover some wonderful surprises.  You might discover some needed correction.  You might find opportunities to be part of something greater than yourself.  All, an open door to eternity.

The unexamined, closed up and guarded life goes nowhere.  I’ve been reading a new book on the life of Robert McNamara, McNamara at War.[2]

McNamara had been a whiz kid.  He had a superior intellect that he believed could solve virtually anything he put his mind to, whether it was running the Ford Motor Company or the World Bank.  And mostly, he had succeeded.

But when he served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, he came upon a problem that utterly confounded him.

At first, he thought that if he could just produce a high enough enemy body count, the numbers would vindicate his efforts.  In his hubris he vastly underestimated his foe and their willingness to sacrifice for their own country.  He also underestimated their inventiveness and the assistance they were getting from the Soviet Union and China.

We all know how that ill-fated journey ended.  The authors of McNamara at War dramatically portray how the folly of Vietnam consumed Robert McNamara in guilt and self-reproach.  It ate him alive.

Though at his life’s end he could confess his role in the many mistakes that led to the final debacle, with fleeing citizens scrambling to board helicopters taking off from the US embassy roof — many falling to their deaths, losing their finger-holds on the sides of those crafts as they became airborne – He  could accept responsibility for all this, in the end he could not answer the primary question – why were we there in the first place?

The tragic end of McNamara’s life is portrayed as that of a doddering, disheveled old man, wandering the well-worn trek from donated office space to his Watergate apartment in Washington, D.C.  Though some folks recognized that old man, when they greeted him, he kept his head down and plodded on.  He no longer had that youthful powerwalk.  “Some thought he looked more like “’Ichabod Crane,’ hunched over, old and shaky, wearing a shabby trench coat with is belt hanging down” [3]

McNamara’s ill-fated journey into that war was one unexamined by any deeper spiritual values.  A journey emotionally kept bottled up inside his depressed, tormented psyche.

In the end, his second wife would recall, “Throughout his life he had surmounted almost every challenge he and encountered.  But not this one ‘It was the big heavy albatross around his neck…and he couldn’t get rid of it.  It was suffocating him.  It was killing him.’”[4]

Such are the dangers of any life’s journey when wrapped up in oneself. 

Any journey into the unknown is chockablock full of dangers and opportunities.  Discernment is critical.  As well as trusted companions who will speak the truth to you as well as encouragement.  Unexamined through a lens of any lasting values, disaster often waits. 

We begin our Lenten journey with the eternal guidance of the Word of God, the traditions of our church, and the companionship of a gathered community.  Fed and nurtured by the Body of Christ and the Cup of Salvation, we do not stumble into the darkness of unexamined imaginings and folly.

While we do not know what the future holds, we do know who holds the future.  With the Lord as our guide, as we step into a Lenten journey we step smack dab into the need of the world.  And into our own deep inner spiritual needs.

As Fleetwood Mac sang, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.  Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.  Yesterday’s gone.  Yesterday’s gone.  Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.  Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

We boldly step out into that tomorrow in faith, not knowing the twists and turns, but confident in the Promise.  Amen.

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[1] Richard Ben Cramer, What it Takes: The Way to the White House (New York: Random House, 1992), 3-29.

[2] Philip Taubman and William Taubman, McNamara at War: A New History (New York: Norton, 1925).

[3] Op. cit., 1.

[4] Op. cit., 2.

March 1, 2026
Lent 2

 “Journey into the Unknown” The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121;
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

Philip Roth wrote a novel set in the 1990s, The Human Stain, being the last of a trilogy on American life.  It looks at the messiness of human existence, and how, in finality, there are no complete remakes, no ultimate do-overs.  The American myth of self-reinvention is just that – a myth.  In many ways, we’re stuck with who we are.  And this year we feel so stuck.

I’m reminded of a high school friend telling me the story of his first and last motorcycle ride.  Several of us were standing around at my good friend Jerry Weisner’s house talking big bikes when he told us why he didn’t ride one anymore.

He had come to a friend’s house to admire his new Harley-Davison and the friend asked if he wanted to try it out.  Of course, he knew how to ride it.  What kind of sissy did his friend think he was, anyway?  Of course, he knew!  Though he did have some considerable trouble in getting it fired up.

As he listened to the deep bass of the muffler, revving the engine, he popped the clutch accidentally.  The bike shot across the street at very high speed.  Jumped the curb and roared across a neighbor’s front lawn on the opposite corner.  When he came to, he was lying sprawled out on the remnants of a coffee table in the front room.  Cut to ribbons.  Shards of broken glass and lamps all around.  Did I mention blood?  Lots of it.

When a hysterical woman ran in screaming, my friend said that all he could mumble was, “Lady, I’ve really screwed myself up.”   Although “screwed” was not the word he used. 

My friend’s plight vividly describes our situation, personally and nationally. 

As Ricky Ricardo, upon coming home to the latest domestic disaster, would, in exasperation upbraid Lucy, “Lucy, you’ve got a lot of ‘splaining to do”.  We all do.  And life is short.  Eventually, ashes to ashes we all end up.

O Lord, teach us to number our days that we might get a heart of wisdom.

We’re cooking the planet.  We in America are awash in a sea of guns.  Poverty stalks the streets of our cities and rural countryside.  You know the litany.  Got a lot of ‘splaining to do.  And then there are our personal failings: lethargy, our half-truths, pretended helplessness, frivolity, cowardice — pretending that the evil all about us is none of our concern.

What’s left?  What’s left is an opportune time for some deep soul searching.  Taking a moral inventory. 

As we receive these ashes, let us remember that we are but a moment of sunlight fading on the grass.  In the passages we read in these forty days, we are again presented with the opportunity to allow them to sink deeply into our being.

During these forty days we are presented with the opportunity to allow the Spirit to move us beyond ourselves, to move us to something greater, something of eternity.

Time to take stock. 

What’s left is “in the meantime.”  Only to come before our Maker with the words of that old gospel song: “It’s me, It’s me, It’s me, O lord.  Standing in the need of prayer.” 

Answered with another hymn: “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy like the wideness of the sea.” 

In and through faith we find restoration.  We are lifted beyond the muck and distracting voices that we might hear that “Still, Small Voice.”   This is what a Holy Lent is all about.

As we pray every Sunday, “It’s in giving that we receive, and in dying that we’re born to eternal life.”  In the Christ let loose in creation, we also shall rise.  Amen.”

February 18, 2026
Ash Wednesday

 “How is it With Your Soul?”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 103;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We’ve all seen the sickening TV coverage.  ICE agents bursting into people’s houses.  No warrant.  Hauling out suspected immigrants in their underwear, forced to lie facedown in the snow.  No warrant necessary.  Car windows smashed as a disabled woman is jerked out of her car and body slammed into its side.  And smirking ICE agents ridiculing her as she struggles for breath.

All with no warrant. 

And Trump’s cavalier attitude toward such Constitutional niceties?  In an interview with NPR’s Luke Garrett, it was evident when he glibly answered the question, did he need to uphold the Constitution, “I don’t know,” he dodged.

ICE is now his private army.  Might makes right.  And the courts be damned.  Where are Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton?  Jane Adams?

The most venerable of us, immigrants are the prime victims of this lawlessness.

This Sunday, the Episcopal Church, nationally, is honoring our immigrant neighbors.  It is Migration with Dignity Sunday 2026.

It is most fitting that the Old Testament selection from Isaiah falls on this Sunday.

The religious folk in Isaiah’s time gathered with great gusto.  Processions in the finest vestments.  Incense wafted to the ceiling.  Praise hymns echoed from wall to wall.  A sermon would challenge no one.  Platitude piled on platitude.  No one walked out in the middle of the homily.  No one was offended.  They got what their itching ears longed to hear.  You are the people of Abraham and Sarah – what could ever be amiss?

And the congregation that Sabbath left self-satisfied that in their solemn assembly they had fulfilled their minimal duty.  Now, off to the marketplace to lie, cheat and steal.  And get filthy rich. To sell the poor for a farthing.

BUT WAIT…WAIT.  Isaiah’s shout interrupts the saccharine proceedings.

Your assemblies of song and holy smoke are to no avail.  They amount to less than nothing.  They are a hypocrisy.  They are a blasphemy… Utterly useless to the Lord of all Compassion.  UNLESS…UNLESS…

UNLESS you have consummated this spectacle in deeds of justice and mercy.  Actions are the completion of your worship.  The final “Amen.”

As Jesus warned, “Don’t say we have Abraham as our father.  That will get you nowhere.  If God wanted children of Abraham, he could make them from the stones on the ground and the cigarette butts trashing our highways.  Same for daughters of Sarah.

Your fast???  “Is not this the fast that I choose:  to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?  Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly…”

This is the completion of your worship, its fruition.  And in the midst of this ICE darkness your light shall shine as the brightest supernova.

And do our immigrant neighbors ever more need our Light than in this day of ICE terror!?

Here their stories.

I spoke with one of our ICUC[1] organizers who recently returned from the Coachella Valley where ICE has run rampant through the agricultural fields rounding up anybody with brown skin, anybody speaking the wrong language.  Anybody working at the wrong job.

One mother told of finding a note from her four-year-old girl when she returned from a day of drudgery in the fields.  “Dear Mommy, I love you so but I am afraid everyday when I come home from school you will be gone.  And I will never see you again.  Love (daughter’s name).” 

No child should be subjected to such anxiety and mental trauma.  No child!

Minneapolis is under a state of siege.  The city is virtually shut down.  Local merchants have borne the brunt of the economic chaos.  Restaurants closed.  School and church attendance slashed from fear.  And the horrifying pictures of neighbors being brutalized by this army of masked thugs, sadistic federal agents, smirking and laughing at the plight of their hapless victims – it’s beyond the pale.

Is this the fast, the worship, the Lord requires?  It is a travesty of our American values.  A travesty of any nation purporting to be a so called “Christian” nation. We mock God.  Blasphemy!

Have a heart.  Have a heart, cries the Lord of Hosts.  Then your light shall rise in darkness.  Even ICE darkness.  “You shall be as a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”  That very same light shall blaze forth in the hearts of those we welcome.

Hear Paul’s story.

“I asked for asylum at the border station in Tijuana.  That is what the law tells you to do.  I started to worry when border patrol put us on a bus with blackened windows.  When they shackled our hands and feet, I was terrified.”

“They but us on a plane and would not remove the shackles to let us eat or go to the bathroom.  Why this humiliation?  Were we going to jump out of the plane?

That was just be beginning of a regime of fear and torment.  Yes, with this beast, cruelty is the point.  This policy has the mark of the beast written all over it, 666.  The Antichrist, antithetical to the Christ-affirming values of care and dignity.  666 from start to finish.

Consider the case of Junita who was just one of the many who have died in ICE custody due to neglect or murder.

Juanita is an asthmatic and was held in an isolation cell.  Given no mattress, food with worms in it.  The light on day and night, depriving her of any beneficial sleep.  When she began to have difficulty breathing and complained, three guards wrestled her to the floor and held her there while life and breath were slowly drained from her limp, unconscious body.  This, folks, is your taxpayer dollars at work.  666 written all over it.

She is just one of the 30-some in recent months who have died from such cruel neglect and torture. 

The racism of this administration knows no bounds.  In public and private he refers to our Somali neighbors as “garbage.”  This weekend the Orange Felon posted images of the Obamas as chimpanzees or orangutans.  We have become the shameful laughingstock of the world.  The brand of this loathsome racism is 666.

We affirm in our blessing every Sunday that in Christ we can make a difference.  We are that illuminating light that brightens every corner – even the most putrefying, inhumane ICE corner.

Sojourners lists a number of ways we can help the citizens of Minneapolis, and by extension every community besieged by this army of terror.  These are the asks of faith leaders of that city:

Donate!  Even small amounts make a big difference.  They add up and strengthen the souls of the activists on the front lines. They are solidarity, an excellent translation for the biblical term, “righteousness.”

Go to Stand With Minnesota.  That website lists numerous organizations that have been vetted and will efficiently use your dollar.

Wear your ICE whistle.  You may find yourselves on the front line.  You in that moment are being Spirit-called to be Holy Resistance.

Call your elected officials.  ICE defunded and out until proper constitutional protections are in place for our immigrant neighbors and the activists who stand with them.  Such essentials as: judicial warrants for any search or apprehension.  Body cameras.  Remove the masks.  Identifying information on every ICE agent.  Unhindered inspections by congressional leaders of any and all ICE detention facilities.

Raise hell.  Yes, raise hell because our immigrant neighbors are living in the lowest regions of hell.

Sign up for action alerts:  Church World Service, Faith in Action, SojoAction.  Access 5calls.org find sample scripts to use if you’re unsure what to say.

Folks, this is the time to leave it all on the Gospel-field of faith.  How will you know you’re in the right Gospel-groove?  You are feeling a bit uncomfortable, maybe a LOT uncomfortable.

Remember, if you are not ever being led outside your comfort and convenience zones, what you thought you thought was a long-distance call to your heart, was only the salve of local delusion and self-complacency.  Not the worship response Isaiah and Jesus are summoning us to.

Remember, in Christ Jesus YOU are the Light.  As that wonderful hymn puts it out there: “Shine, Jesus, Shine.”  And your brightness in whatever deeds you can muster in His name will shine forth as the noonday sun.  I guarantee it!  Amen.

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[1] ICUC – Inland Congregations United for Change.

February 8, 2026

Epiphany 5 – Migration With Dignity Sunday

Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-9
I Corinthians 2:1-16; Gospel: Matthew 5:13-20
“Light Shining in ICE Darkness”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The modern ethical version goes something like this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Easter, Luther James Forney will be baptized.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Koppel said go ahead.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[5] Op. Cit., viii.

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

February 1, 2026

Epiphany 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An EPIPHANY! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

---

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

January 11, 2026

Epiphany 2
Martin Luther King Sunday

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

“We’ve Been to the Mountain Top”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ baptism:

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

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

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

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

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

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

On CNN the Bishop was moved to say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

[2] Op cit., book jacket.

[3] Op cit., xviii.

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

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

January 11, 2026

Epiphany 1
The Baptism of Our Lord

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

“Our Baptismal Vows”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

[2] Ibid, xv-xvii.

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

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

[5] Op.cit.

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

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

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

January 4, 2026

Epiphany Sunday

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

“Let Your Love-Light Shine”