I remember that as my father got older and began to decline, he would sometimes ask me that I thought happened to us after death.  While he was not a church-going person, he had grown up in the cradle of what we now know as the Disciples of Christ denomination.  Originally known as the Christian Church, and before that, named after their founder Thomas Campbell, as the Campbellites. 

This is a rather austere form of the Jesus Movement.  Baptism is valid only by full immersion.  There is little to no use in speculative theology or the creeds.  Their stance?  “Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.”

Our family farm, outside of Bethany, is just down the street from where Thomas’ son began enlarging the family home to accommodate those coming to study.  The first meeting house still stands, right across the highway from the Forney house in Bethany, West Virginia.

While my father had since rejected his mother’s austere, literal approach to the Bible and their pious keeping of the Sabbath, the roots of that background lurked deep in his soul.  His mother, Grandma Bertha’s version of the religion was very, very strict – though not so much when it came to charity; she hoarded everything.   I remember as a fifth grader, when she was living with us in Long Beach, she offered me a dollar to read the Bible.  It was so boring, all the begats and begats – one generation leading to another, that after a while, I offered to give her back her dollar.  Her version of the faith was all works righteousness.  Her God was a punishing scorekeeper.  One had to earn their way past the pearly gates and St. Peter’s scrutiny.   Grandma Bertha’s personality did not commend the faith either.  She was a complaining, embittered, rigid person with nothing much good to say about anyone.

She was convinced that no woman was good enough for her son, my father.  All the time she lived with us she only referred to my mom as “That Woman.”

Even as a young person, I knew that her version of the faith wouldn’t get me anywhere worth going.  Especially, after death.

Jesus, in our scripture lesson today, is confronted by a group of lawyers who set out to ridicule him, show he’s a fraud.  Some lawyers will do that, you know.  This group does not believe in any afterlife.  So, they pose a most perplexing problem to ridicule Jesus and his after-life ideas about a Kingdom.

I can hear his detractors now – the same scoffers of religion today.

So, how high up is heaven?  The Russian Youri Gegarian went up there in a spaceship, looked around and didn’t see anything, certainly not God.  Yucka yucka, yuck.

And, wise teacher, what are people going to eat up there?  Who’s gonna to be the bracero to pick the veggies?  Who will brew the beer?  You know, Fr. John’s not going if there’s no beer, or rhubarb.

Will there be sex?  Is it the 70 virgins we’re promised?

Is there homework?  No more homework, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks.  Yea!  And what about baseball?  Will St. Peter umpire?

Who’s going to clear the tables after this feast in the sky?  And do the dishes?  Now they’re rolling around the ground in fts of laughter.  Can’t catch their breath.

What will people do?  Just sing Alleluia every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday singing Alleluia?  Forever and ever, world without end?  They’ll be bored out of their skulls.

The cynics, who have everything and know the value of nothing will be having a field day at Jesus expense.

For the “cultured despisers,” the skeptical in this modern era, much of religion is considered fluff, of no account.  At worst, a delusion and laughing matter. And face it, some claims of the faith are highly dubious and utterly laughable at worst.  Did the sun really stand still so Joshua could finish a slaughter on the battlefield?[1]  And if same sex relations are an abomination punishable by death, so is eating shellfish.  Should everyone eating clams be also stoned to death?  Oh, yeah, then there was that relationship between David and Jonathan, which might have been problematical.

And when one considers how the Christian faith has been misused to promote toxic masculinity, promote wars, promote the worst sexist, racist and rightwing nationalist ideologies – not only is it risible, it’s downright dangerous.  (As an aside, I say thanks be to God for our first woman Archbishop of Canterbury!).

Just as pernicious, ideas of heaven and hell are used to excuse and make us overlook the injustices of this world.  The political realist would say that all that pious heaven-and-hell talk is a sedative, an opioid answer to the criminal avarice right under our eyes – the grift of do-nothing political hacks raking in billions.

As Dr. King said that all that talk about golden slippers, long white robes and such is fine, but I’m more interested in God’s people having a decent pair of shoes and a shirt on their back down here.  Golden streets are fine, but what folks need down here is some change in their pockets, something to get a square meal and pay the rent.

Dr. King had no use for preachers who just focused on the afterlife and “pie in the sky” in the face of the poverty and misery of Jim Crow brutality.  A lifetime of suffering endured by Black Americans would not be compensated by such rationalizations and pablum.  What God demanded was folks actively working in this world to promote justice, dignity and community.

So here come these religious know-it-alls out to ridicule what they don’t understand, the Torah faith of inclusive community and right relations.

If a man is married and dies without children, according to the law his brother is to take the widow as wife so his brother would have, in a fashion, an inheritance.  And just suppose, just suppose that that man dies, and she has to marry the next brother, and he dies…so on and so forth until at the end she has been married to seven of those brothers?

By this time the crowd is amused and many laughing up their sleeves.

So, then she dies, maybe of exhaustion.  In the afterlife whose wife would she be?  What is she going to do if there’s in fact a resurrection?

People edged closer, eager to hear how he’s going to handle this one.  They winked at one another and shoved an elbow into a neighbor’s ribs.  “This is gonna be good.  What’s he going to say to this?”

Jesus will have none of this foolishness.  God is not to be mocked.

Jesus turns the tables on them.  Whatever the afterlife might be, it won’t be like here on earth.  People won’t be married there.  Whatever happens after death will be nothing at all, absolutely nothing at all like here.  And as no one has returned to tell us about it, anything else is speculation.  A distraction from what we’re to be about down here.

We use metaphor and poetry to express such yearning for eternal fulfillment.  As to such final things, Jesus says, “You know neither the day nor the hour” when you will see your last sunset, dream your last dream.  But, that Kingdom, that Kin-dom of God?  It’s already here among you.  Don’t you catch a smidgen, a brief glimpse of it from time to time?  I do.

Jesus made it clear that the door to eternity is through the life we live in this world.  It’s signs, wonders and markers are all about.  NOW!

I have a cherished memory of a cold, cold night on the balcony of our home in Petersburg, Alaska.  It was clear and frigid as I lay on the chaise lounge outside, bundled up in a heavy duty Kelty sleeping bag, looking up at the flickering of the northern lights. Pink, white, shades of blue and green they began to dance across the velvet black sky.  Just as I was about to head back indoors —  even in a heavy-duty sleeping bag I was freezing my butt off – just then it seemed as if all the lights of heaven gathered themselves over my head.  In one burst of glorious energy, they exploded over my head.  “Take me now, Lord,” I thought.  “It doesn’t get any better than this.”  Moments later I headed back inside suffused with a radiant glow.  A little bit of heaven.

Yes, the wonders of nature, the beauty of the hills inspired more than one Psalm, inspired more than one poem, more than one quiet sigh of contentment.

Yes, in this life we get small glimpses of eternal joy and bliss.  Glimpses of “undaunted courage.” To enter the life of another human being is such a door.  Especially a life filled with unbearable pain.  This week I began reading Elizabeth Guiffre’s book of the torment she endured at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislain Maxwell.  The courage she displays in telling her story with all its horrific and dehumanizing detail – that courage is a smidgen of eternity.  A door that opens the reader to her, his full humanity.[2]  The Glory of God, a woman fully alive despite all the worst life had dished out.

Even her collaborator, Amy Wallace, had to take breaks from this sordid tale, over four years in the making.  Her courage in being willing to immerse herself in the muck that was Epstein and Maxwell lifts my courage to stand for what is right.  Amy’s listening and helping Elizabeth clarify her story is an overwhelming gift to other girls who have been assaulted and abused – you are not alone.  There is help.

After hours of working on her book in Paris, Elizabeth needed some fresh air.  Her lawyers had been grilling her for hours, wanting to maximize, to focus her testimony.  She thought the Louvre might be the distraction she needed.  Wandering through the galleries, looking for the Mona Lisa, she turned a corner and everything fell apart.  Another flashback – fearsome flashbacks of shame that came unannounced at her most vulnerable moments.  Flashbacks she could never banish from her waking days or nightly dreams of terror.

“I climbed a flight of stairs, turned a corner, and froze.  I know this room, screamed a voice inside my head.  I’d been in this precise spot before – two decades ago, when I was just seventeen.”

“The room I am in is painted bloodred and dominated by a large tapestry: a depiction of Louis XIV’s garish bed chamber.  In 2001, when Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell took the teenage me into this room for the first time, they had been sexually abusing and trafficking me for months.  Now I am a thirty-seven-year-old wife and mother…Still I can practically see him standing next to me, admiring the tapestry, whose dark palette he was determined to mimic in the décor of his opulent Manhattan townhouse.  In my mind’s eye, I imagine Maxwell beside him, as always.  A molester with posh manners and an aristocratic pedigree…played den mother to Epstein’s dysfunctional family of underage girls.  I was one of those girls, and I spent more than twenty-five months in their house of shame.”[3]

Though Elizabeth exhibited great courage, resolve in the face of death threats to keep quiet, the devastation finally overwhelmed her, unable to escape the domestic violence in her own marriage, she took her own life at her remote farm in Australia.

In an email sent three weeks before her death, Elizabeth wrote, “In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that “Nobody’s Girl” is still released.  I believe it has the potential to impact many lives and foster necessary discussions about these grave injustices.” 

Elizabeth’s gift to the numerous and unknown victims of sexual predation is priceless.  Inspired courage.  A priceless moment of eternity.

How do put the whole matter that Jesus was confronted by that day as scoffers ridiculed him?  First, there are some questions that can’t be directly answered by any living person with an absolute, literal answer.  To the scoffers, any answer comes as one lives into the question, picks up their cross and put’s their shoulder to the wheel.  In all finality, what I can say is, “We came as a gift from God and we return to God.  Thanks be to God.”  It’s all Grace – “What a Wonderful World” indeed!  And as my friend John Cobb remarked when nearing death, “I waiting to be surprised.”  Amen

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[1] Joshua 10:12-14.

[2] Elizabeth Roberts Giuffre, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1925).

[3] Op. cit., xx-xxi.

November 9, 2025

Pentecost 22, Proper 27

Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 17:1-9;
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38

“And My Eyes Shall Behold”

If there’s somethin’ strange in your neighborhood · Who you gon’ call? (Ghostbusters!) If there’s somethin’ weird, and it don’t look good. Who you gon’ call? (Ghostbusters!). 

Well Halloween’s over and the vampires, skeletons and ghosts have put their costumes away for another year.  But we continue to live in frightful times.  A lot of scary stuff is out and about – a lot worse than a fantastical 200-foot-tall Pillsbury Dough Boy phantom roaming the neighborhood.

Tyranny stalks the land.  And we’re led by a low-information president with the impulse control of a two-year-old and twisted heart bent on revenge.

President Zelensky comes calling in search of what he needs to defend his country and halt Russian bombardment.  What he gets is a harangue about “making nice” to Putin.  And how much land he will have to cede to the Bear.
I say, let’s give ‘em Florida and call it even; and their soldiers can just go back home to Russia.  Oh, and they can pay for all the damage they did.

Just a fortnight ago Zelensky was told that “you can win this.” In a Face the Nation interview of September 23 Trump says Ukraine can take all their land back from Russia.  Talk about attention deficit disorder. 

Meanwhile the average Ukrainian is being bombed and frozen.  And yet, through steadfast caring for the bereaved, the wounded and the displaced, burying the dead, these Ukrainians endure.  Steadfast in God’s Grace, caring for one another.  They endure.  They abide.  Saints alive!

In America, as SNAP benefits (food stamps) are being cut off, our poor are being starved.  With health care supplements being cut off and the cost of insurance premiums doubling, families are being denied health care.  Even middle-class families, not to mention those barely scraping by.   And not to mention one source of nutrition for our poorest children being cut, free school lunches and the end of Head Start.

Who’s to blame?  What’s the cause of all this catastrophe?  While I don’t believe that any human is absolute evil, some do the most horrid and inhuman things.  In my blessing at the end of the service, along with blessing those present, those they love, those they serve; I also ask a blessing on “those we must resist.”

In today’s Old Testament lesson Daniel reports a dream.  A vision in the midst of the captivity under the reign of King Belshazzar of Babylon. In the precarity of captivity, most dire straits, Daniel has a dream.  “A vision softly creeping.”

Dreams are voices of our unconscious, sometimes of the Spirit, in the midst of the night when our psychological defenses are down.  Sometimes of warning, often the face of night terrors, or sometimes pondering a situation we are facing, sometimes of fond hope we cherish.

With Daniel’s dream, it’s a vision of terror.

“I Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another.  As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me.”  Now let’s get this straight, this vision scared the crap out of him.  “…the visions of my head terrified me.”  Daniel approached one of the attendants of this dream asking of those four horrific beasts.  “As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth.  But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.”

Yes, among us perfidious, horrid persons will arise and do evil things.  And I suspect, looking at our contemporary political and economic landscape, we all have our candidates for “the worst person in the world,” as Keith Olbermann would label such.

My mother always told me that you will be judged by the company you keep; or in Putin’s case, shelter.

In a recent article on the missing enforcers of Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria, it turns out that many have found refuge in Russia.  These are the “the worst of the worst.”  Scores of them safely living with impunity for the most barbaric of crimes against humanity.  Just at random, to take a few:  Qahtan Khalil, an officer in the Air Force Intelligence, the murderer of hundreds of peaceful anti-government protesters.[1] The worst of the worst. One we must resist.

Yassin Dahi, Head of Branch 235, a secret arm of the Asaad regime.  He was responsible for the torture and execution and disappearance of civilians.  The worst of the worst.  There are scores more.  Another we must resist.

They have all vanished into nothing thanks to Putin, who continues to hide most of these war criminals.  Putin, a tyrant the entire world must resist.  As my mom would say, you lie down with dogs, you don’t get a chocolate malt!  Or something like that.  Certainly not a Lvivske beer.

Yes, Syria has endured horrific catastrophe under a brutal dictator, but they are surviving.  When in my Arabic classes we were taught about the fellaheen, the people of the soil, the farmers who tend the land.  They endure.  Today they survive the worst atrocities imaginable.  They persist when the harvest is good and when the rain doesn’t come.  They are the people Jesus preached the Good News to. Here today, here for centuries.  They endure.  And so will we.  Their steadfast caring for the land, their families, their communities is God’s Grace Incarnate.  These fellaheen are the Saints of God enduring, abiding.  Because of them Syria will endure.

These next few days many will lose the very food required to say alive.  They will lose medical benefits.  Their children risk losing Head Start and the meals provided there.  Oh, did I mention the kids who had received free lunches in the cafeteria line?  Gone.  No spaghetti or even tasteless meatloaf for them.  Sorry, kids.

I remember the cartoon of one inner-city kid in a cafeteria line eyeing the glop and smelling the horrid odors wafting from the pots, noting a dead cat sticking out of one of one – he remarked to the slovenly, unkempt cafeteria server: “No thanks.  I think I’ll take my chances with the drive-by shootings.”

No, they won’t even be getting those delicacies.

Good bye, Meals on Wheels for many.  This is “Let them eat cake” politics.  Shut down all because Republicans don’t wish to make medical care affordable for our people.  Get this, the House under Speaker Johnson has been on vacation for five weeks, not wanting to face the music.  Our people are enduring hunger and gross uncertainty, and they’re luxuriating at home on vacation!  Absent because avoiding a vote on releasing the Epstein files.  Your tax dollars at work.

That is why it is absolutely essential that in California we pass proposition 50 this November to win back the House of Representatives — to bring a check to this incompetent, cruel, vengeful and lawless administration.

Marjorie Taylor Green is the last person I thought I would be in agreement with – not in all my born days.  Yet, we’re in perfect alignment on the need for affordable health care.  The other day she ripped Johnson to shreds, saying he is a disaster on health.  He shuts the government down over health care subsidies, yet he has ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN OF HIS OWN!  You go, girl!  God raises up the most unlikely allies.

And, somehow…somehow the American people will get through all this.  Like we always have: watching out for one another and opening our hearts and wallets.  Saints steadfast to the end — we will be the tangible Glory of God for these children and their families.

Just like the fellaheen of the Middle East, we will endure by joining together in deeds of Love.  We tend the land in St. Francis Garden of Hope.  This past Tuesday some six students with their teacher from Aquinas High School came across the street to harvest lettuce, kale, bok choy, and cilantro.  Their teacher Chris Burrows helped organize things and our farmer, Miguel Bonila, with over 40 years’ experience in urban farming, supervised the harvesting.  He was great with the students.  I ask you; how many other Episcopal churches hire a farmer?

A great team led by Peggy Dub-Lutz organized the kitchen crew and kept us on track.  Last Tuesday, my caregiver, Ileen, noted, “What a great team you have here.”  Yes, we do.  Saints of God abiding.  Steadfast for sure!

Our garden is a living sermon you can see, touch and taste.  And. as scripture says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Good indeed, manifest in the hearts, minds, wallets, hands, and aching backs of all that make all this happen.  Saints alive!  Saints abiding, right here on Sterling Avenue, San Bernardino!

I love All Saints Day for it is dedicated to the best impulses in humanity.  It celebrates the God-spark in common, ordinary folks who tend creation and bring into realty the Beloved Community.  And unlike Christmas, Easter and All Hallows Eve, our vulture capitalist system has not yet figured out how to monetize it.

Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jain, non-of-the-above — that God-spark resides in each, though sometimes very deeply hidden.  We are commissioned to bring it forth, that all might Taste and See that the Lord is Good.

I close with a quote from a man who dared to get involved, to be in the arena, Theodore Roosebelt.  Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but never the less, he gave it all the good he had in him.  Left nothing on the field.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming.[2]”

Yes, we, imperfect as we are, with soiled faces, aching backs and sometimes tears — you, we, at St. Francis have chosen to be in the arena, making it happen.  Along with our colleagues from Aquinas High.  Steadfast Saints of God abiding, “For the Glory of God and my neighbor’s good,” as Helen’s Church of the Brethren would proclaim it.  Amen.

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[1] Devon Lum, Neil Coller, Christoph Koetti, Muhsen Al Mustafa, “The Vanishing Act,” New York Times, October 19, 2025.

[2] “Citizenship in a Republic“, delivered by Theodore Roosevelt in Paris on April 23, 1910.

November 2, 2025

All Saints Sunday

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149;
Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31

“Saints Steadfast to the End”

It has oft been said that there are no atheists in foxholes.  When shells are bursting all around, the air is rife with prayer every bit as with smoke.  Deafening explosions and smell of cordite bring forth from the human breast desperate sighs and moans of petition to the Almighty.

I still remember, safe as it was, our live-fire drill in the Army.  As Sarge briefed us on what we would endure and warned us not to stand, for the live glowing tracers would be streaking not that far over out heads.  At conclusion of his talk, someone suggested maybe a chorus of “Nearer My God to Thee.” 

Extreme times elicit prayer, spoken and unspoken – the sighs of the inner Spirit.  And as long as there are tests in school there are prayers “without ceasing.”  I remember blankly staring at my physics test, not able to remember a single formula, traumatized, silently praying, hoping, “Just get me out of this with a ‘C.’”  And, of course, desperate prayer is no substitute for diligent preparation.  The results were far worse than a C.

In Luke’s gospel we have the Parable of the Unjust Judge, the teaching that most remember when it comes to prayer and persistence.

“In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’”  You know the rest.  Though he would not respond to her urgent pleas, she persisted, knocking on his door at all hours of the night — night after night until she wore him down.  Out of exasperation, or maybe due to too many sleepless nights, he gave in.

We are enjoined to be just as persistent in our prayer.  Now comes the content of her prayer.  She prayed for justice.

This past week at a Chicago ICE raid, a Presbyterian pastor, inspired by the injustice of these raids, stood in prayer at an ICE enforcement action.  Arms outstretched in supplication for justice, he was shot in the head by a pepper ball from a rooftop ICE sentry.  As he crumpled to the ground he was swarmed by well-wishers.

Later that week in an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show, he brushed aside concerns about his health.  He said if folks were moved by what they saw, their concern should be for those harassed and abused by ICE and our unjust immigration policies.  These victims should be the recipients of our care and concern, not he himself.  His prayer was for justice for the victims of ICE mistreatment.  And, yes, many of them are U.S. citizens.

Prayer, urgent, soul-wrenching prayer is a cry from the depths of the God-spark deep within, crying out in supplication for justice, mercy.  It is fervent prayer moving to action.  The kind of urgency that takes one outside of their comfort zone.

Though we are in distress, at a loss for words, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”[1]

It is such prayerful concern, spoken and unspoken, maybe only a nudge that has propelled many to sign up for our No Kings Day demonstrations all across the nation.  Millions upon millions, the largest demonstrations we have ever seen on one day.  Those impelling prayers are born out of dire concern for our democracy.  Born of fear of what we are becoming as a nation, a people.

And the answer to those prayers bubbling up from deep within from so many across the nation?  As the poster in my office of folks at voting booths says, “Bring your thoughts and prayers here.”  Prayer, earnest prayer leads to agency – active care for others, for the planet.

Prayer, deep-down prayer from the core of the soul enables us to hear the pain of others.

 JoAnn A. Post in Christian Century tells a story of concern for the pain of her dog as it became quite ill.[2]

Her dog, Ginger, a golden retriever, suddenly began losing weight.  Her coat began to thin and her appetite failed.  She no longer scoured the floor looking for dropped scraps of food.  She had no interest, becoming skinnier and skinnier.

A trip to the vet confirmed the worst fears.  She was slowly dying from untreatable liver cancer.  The most that could be done was to make her as comfortable as possible.

JoAnn vividly remembers those last few days.  She writes:

“Will she be in pain? How will we know if she hurts?”

“You may not,” he admitted. We were to watch for sleeplessness, pacing, a change in temperament—but dogs can’t tell you when they hurt. Or what they need.

A few days before she died, I lay beside her on the floor, stroking her soft fur, whispering in her floppy ear, “Do you hurt, Ginger? Are you sad? What do you need? Please tell me.”

“Ginger was silent. I wept.”[3]

JoAnn takes from this experience an important lesson on pain, the pain of others.  It is possible to be forgiven from recognizing the pain of another who cannot speak, who cannot give voice to their own distress or sadness.

It is unforgivable to turn away and choose not to hear of another’s pain.  Prayer, urgent, sincere prayer attunes our ears to hear and hopefully our hearts to respond.  And maybe our feet, hands, wallets and whatever. 

It is out of such an outpouring of national pain, that so many of us will have been out in the streets this October 18 protesting the pain of so many, many “least of us.”

And, as Elizabeth Warren has discovered, persistence pays off, just as in this parable of a wronged widow in Jesus’ story.

In our church, for centuries and centuries, women have been shut out.  They’ve not had their gifts and contributions recognized.  For many years a woman couldn’t even be on the vestry or serve as a delegate to convention, let alone be a priest, or, heaven forefend a bishop.  How many urgent prayers it took before those first “irregular” ordinations of the first women priests in our church.  Fervent prayers impelling to action these women and a courageous bishop who presided at the ceremony.

Let us remember our own shameful neglect and discounting of the gifts woman yearned to bring to the priesthood.

The General Convention in1973 voted to reject women’s ordination.  That was a signal for many that the time had come to work outside the legislative system. Suzanne Hiatt, who had hoped to be ordained, recalled, “I realized […] that my vocation was not to continue to ask for permission to be a priest, but to be a priest.” Women deacons turned to civil disobedience in their attempts to fulfill their call to the priesthood.[4]

In New York, five qualified female deacons silently presented themselves alongside their male counterparts to Bishop Paul Moore for ordination.  They were not ordained.  

Later in Philadelphia, eleven women were ordained at the Church of the Advocate on July 29, 1974 by bishops Daniel Corrigan, Robert DeWitt, and Edward Welles II.  Let us remember those trail blazers: Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeanette Piccard, Betty Bone Schiess, Katrina Welles Swanson, and Nancy Wittig.  And we never looked back.  These and so many more women to come have deepened and blessed our understanding of the ordained ministry.

I thought we had arrived when we consecrated our first woman bishop here in America.  But these women had greater aspirations.

And this fall, October 3^rd, we chose the first woman as Archbishop of Canterbury, the titular head of the entire Anglican worldwide communion.  And does she have the “right stuff!”  Yes, persistence, persistence, persistence.

Such prayer is dangerous business, you never know where it will get you.

The Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London has been chosen as the 106^th Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to serve in that office since St. Augustine arrived in Kent in 597 to plant the church in England.  A glorious day for our dear Church.[5]

Bishop Mullally will take office on January 28, 2026, when her ceremonial election by the canons of Canterbury Cathedral will be confirmed at a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. She will be formally installed on the Throne of St. Augustine at a service in Canterbury Cathedral next March.

Though brought up in an evangelical congregation, she represents what might be know as the “broad church.”  She has been instrumental in enabling the church to address sexual abuse.  She has been at the forefront of an inclusive church that welcomes the LGBT community.  Though quiet in promoting her own views, she has been a moderating force to move the church to the next steps in changing the rite of the Church of England to full marriage inclusion.

Early on, she implemented a series of changes, including a proposal to allow clergy to bless same-sex unions within the context of regular church services, which was narrowly endorsed by the church’s General Synod in November 2023.  On this issue, we in the Episcopal church in the U.S. have been further ahead in proclaiming that “All Means All.”  And acting on it.

She is a process person, making sure all are heard and included.  One of her fellow bishops, the Rt. Rev. Jonathan Baker, says of her ministry, she “has always shown the greatest respect for the different theological traditions which coexist within the Church of England. In London in particular, she has generously supported my ministry and enabled the flourishing of traditional Catholic parishes and clergy across the Diocese.”[6]

Yes, the fervent prayers of many come to full fruition in her selection.  “Pray without ceasing,” and you never know where that might lead – justice, gratitude, full inclusion, redress of wrongs, solidarity with those in pain, a profound sense of acceptance, of being loved.  And definitely outside our comfort zones.

I heard a speaker once say that if prayer is not leading you outside your comfort zone, you are not doing it right, not listening or perhaps praying for the wrong things.  I’ve found that deep down listening opens me to the pain of others, to injustice.  Prayer of that sort is 90% listening.

As we share the matters that weigh heavily on our hearts and minds, let us always, always pray without ceasing.  The results might astound.  In Christ, we might just astound ourselves.

As my dear departed friend Rabbi Leonard Beerman was wont to say, “My prayers are my marching feet.”

Get those marching shoes on – and see you out on the streets and at the voting booth.   Or maybe in St. Francis Garden of Hope?  Amen.

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[1] Romans 8:26.

[2] JoAnn A. Post, “Injustice comes with so many alibis and aliases,” Christian Century, October 9, 2019.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Mark Michael, “First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury,” The Living Church, October 3, 2025.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

October 19, 2025

Pentecost 19, Proper 23

Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121;
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

“An Eruption of Prayer”

In 1985 the noted Columbian novelist, Gabriel García Márquez wrote Love in the Time of Cholera.  The story is set in an un-named, steamy South American country at the time beset by multiple outbreaks of cholera.[1]

The main characters are caught up in tempestuous love affairs.  To say their lives are messy is an understatement.  Like cholera which slowly drains the body, these relationships drain the psyche.  The main character, Florentino, is love-sick with the consuming symptoms paralleling those of cholera.  At the end of the novel, the yellow cholera flag on a passing ship plying the river docks at port symbolizing complete surrender – to love and to the disease.[2]

We live in a diseased time, a leprous time.  We denounce our opponents as “unclean,” evil, despicable.  The actions of our government, subtle and not so subtle, are dark and deadly in our diseased society.  We’re waging a running war on science.  We concoct “alternate facts” to sanitize our history.  We pray, in the words of Kierkegaard, that this is not a “sickness unto death.”  A soul sickness of us all.

As ICE raids terrorize our populace, the yellow flag would not be inappropriate. 

This last week, the Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker, lambasted ICE agents who stormed an apartment in Chicago.  He decried this raid carried out by “jack-booted thugs” in the middle of the night.  An invasion of his state and the city of Chicago. 

Early on October 6th, landing on the roof, agents swarmed the apartments, kicking in doors, discharging flash-bang grenades, rousting people, naked, out of their beds, terrified kids screaming as they’re ripped from their parent’s arms.

Pertissue Fisher is still recovering from being detained by the storm troopers who burst into her South Shore apartment and pulled her out of bed. 

“’An agent put a gun in her face’ she said.  Another placed her in handcuffs tight enough to leave bruises.”[3]  Though Fisher and the other victims are U.S. citizens. they were held for hours.  At 54, she is terrified to think what would have happened to her family if they had shot her.  “I have kids, I have grandkids, and if I would have [gotten] killed, who gonna answer for it?  Nobody.” [4]

U.S. citizens, for God’s sake!  Never in my born days would I have imagined such terror being inflicted upon decent, law-abiding citizens.  And with impunity.  Not what we were taught in 8^th grade U.S. history.

We live in a time of great sickness.  Possibly a sickness unto death as this democracy slides into totalitarianism and its demise?  The vestiges of our civil society are leprous indeed. Unclean.  Stinking to high heaven.

And yet it is in such times – precisely in such times — that the miracle of Jesus healing power is made manifest.  Yes, even amidst broken doors, tear gas, flashbang smoke and terrified, screaming and crying children.  In this chaotic dark night of national despair, we need Christ’s healing word, his healing touch.

You know the story.  “On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.  As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him.  Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’  When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’  And as they went, they were made clean.”

Now the story takes a surprising turn.  One of the cleansed lepers turns back.  Praising Jesus, he fell to the ground.  Yes, you guessed it, the hated Samaritan, a despised foreigner.  Out of the ten, only one showed gratitude for his release from that dreaded, disfiguring disease.  The Samaritan!

Incredulous, Jesus asks, “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Gratitude here is the remedy.  Just as urged in the 12-step movement, what’s needed to get you through life — “An attitude of gratitude.” That and “Brats, Cheese and Beer.”

Yes, my Wisconsin friends have a slogan for their political work; it’s on my coffee cup: “Brats, Cheese and Beer can save Democracy.”  Now, for sure there’s magic in brats, cheese and beer, but the real magic is that other ingredient – ALL of US.  That’s all of us coming together to work for a more just, more humane society through the sharing of those delectables.

Good food and justice work go together like none other.  They are the grease in the machinery of gratitude.  Why do you think Jesus was always feeding people?  All that is the antivenom to this leprous, diseased time.  And in the midst of our disease, we will make love.  And justice is what love looks like in the public square.

It begins with gratitude and goes from there.  No one gives back like our teachers acting out their thankfulness for what had been passed on to them.  Their vocation is an entire life of gratitude. It’s certainly not about the pay. And if it’s only one out of ten, through God’s power working for good, that shall suffice.

In the ACLU magazine for the fall, I came across one teacher preparing his students to live in this diseased world of racism and entitlement.[5]

Starting with the leadership of a principal, Jaime Cook, whose school reflects the values of inclusion.  “We’re constantly striving to keep all of our students free from fear.”  And down into the classroom.

When ICE raids threatened students at Sackets Harbor, (NY) teachers and parents organized public demonstrations.  When one family was ripped from their community in the dead of night, teachers and parents at that school organized larger rallies protesting ICE in their community.  The news of which got Governor Kathy Hochul’s attention.

The New York governor could not think of “any public safety justification for ICE agents to rip an innocent family, including a child in the third grade from their Sackets Harbor home.”  On April 7, the principal, Jaime Cook, learned that the combined pressure of the governor and the local citizenry had ended up in freeing this family.

Teachers and students organized a warm welcome back for the third-grader who had been taken.  Students made cards.  A huge welcome sign to hang in the classroom.  Yes, cookies and punch – no, brats. cheese, and definitely no beer.  

Principal Cook gave her teachers full support in making their school community a place that practices what they teach.

“We’re teaching about what it means to live your morals…You gotta walk the talk, otherwise you’re not a very good teacher.”  Further, “When one of your best friends is taken in the night, that ripples through a classroom…When we look out for one of our students, we’re really looking out for all of them.”

An attitude of gratitude in action!

That caring by a community is the best remedy for what ails us — our leprous politics.  Our leprous polarization shall not have the last word.  At heart, at our best, we Americans are better than our disease.  Yes, in a time of cholera we will make justice, for that indeed is what love looks like in the public square.

In ways big and small, gratitude for what we have finds expression in various ways.  At St. Francis this past week at the meeting of Inland Congregations United for Change, we organized to get “know your rights” cards out to families in our area.  A small thing, but it sends a loud and clear message to our immigrant neighbors, we have your back.  You belong.  This is your America.  “Live long and prosper.”

I’ve found that those immigrant families generally show much more gratitude for their new life in America than most of us who are native-born.  We take so much for granted. 

And while some of us are a little embarrassed by all the flag waving, stop and think what that flag means to those new arrivals – a new life of opportunity, an education for their children, a decent job.  Yes, a whole new life. 

Sure, it’s messy.  We don’t always live up to that promise.  Just like love in real life, in a time of pestilence, is often messy.  Or as one of my married friends says of her marriage, “It’s complicated.”  That’s the given.  And that’s the glory.

This past September 15^th, we noted the anniversary of the 1963 bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Bermingham, Alabama.  By that Sunday night, Dr. Martin Luther King had arrived by air.

Following that outrage, Dr. King urged his hearers in his eulogy for three of those innocent girls killed in that savage bombing – he urged them to hear what those girls had to say to the rest of us in their deaths.  In part, this is what King urged:

“They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution.  They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.  Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.”

In gratitude, that is the ongoing work we the living are privileged to continue.  All “to the Glory of God and our neighbor’s good.”  Amen.

---

[1] Gabriel García Márquez, Love in a Time of Cholera (New York: Vintage Books, 1988)

[2] Op. cit., 340.

[3] Mary Norkol, “After military-style raid on South Shore, apartments, Congressmembers rally around residents,” Chicago Sun Times, October 6, 2025.

[4] Ibid.

[5] ACLU Magazine, Fall 2025.

October 12, 2025

Pentecost 18, Proper 23 – Jon Braveroff Memorial BBQ
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c Psalm 111;
2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

“Love in A Leprous Time”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

[3] Ibid.

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

“On Keeping the Main Thing, the Main Thing”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, to find these lost and lonely souls?

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

One girl who has come out of electronic addiction recounts:

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

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

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

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

To find the lost and lonely, ever the goal.

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

Parents need to support each other, stick together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

[3] Ibid.

[4] Op cit., 6.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Op cit., 222.

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

“To Seek the Lost and Lonely”

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

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

The action required is choice. 

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

To choose life is to choose Truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America, these women will restore our national soul.

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

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

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

Never mind any of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

Intentional Soul Making

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

[2] Op cit., 30.

[3] Op cit., 32.

[4] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

The little vignette in Luke is all about attention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

July 20, 2025
Pentecost 6, Proper 10

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

“May I Have Your Attention”

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

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

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

As Neil Diamond belts it out, “America.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These are the real essential workers of America. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

July 6, 2025
A Celebration of Our Nation

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

“Made for You and Me”