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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An outrageous Story of Wonder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

June 15, 2025
Trinity Sunday

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

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

“Stories of Wonder”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And ready to go with audacious courage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further…

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

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

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

Not quite fired up?  Not by a long shot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[2] Ibid.

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

[4] Ibid.

June 8, 2025
Day of Pentecost

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

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

“Great Balls of Fire”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Scent of Heaven

Spreading it Deep

Working on a sermon that can be seen.

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

[2] Ibid.

June 1, 2025
Easter 7

Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 148;

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

“Easter Blessing”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God help us all.  New Rules —

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Now, where’s that Emoluments Clause?

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

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

New Rules – Greed is out.  Compassion is in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was most distressing for those communities ravaged by fires in Los Angeles these past months to see the baren hills and flat lands.  Mile after mile of charred skeletons of houses and businesses – what many had spent a lifetime building only to see it go up in flames.  Some of the many landmarks communities grieved over were the loss of many of places of worship.

These hallowed landmarks were places of deep joy and sorrow, places of desperate prayer and joyful song.  Now, all gone.

The first church I served in the upper Mojave Desert had gone through a similar experience, though many years ago.

Soon after I arrived, I began visiting the three small communities, Randsburg, Johannesburg and Red Mountain that were served by this old United Methodist congregations.  Since the former pastor was so shy and introverted, he hardly visited anyone.  With a little effort the place began to grow.  The woman next door who had been a member long ago, wrote one of the former pastors, now living in Ohio.  Mother Carrie, as she was affectionately known by the other Methodist clergy, was the first woman in that conference to pastor a church.

A most amazing thing then transpired.  Mother Carrie wrote me a wonderful letter concerning her time out there in the 30s through the 50s serving that congregation and another close by in Inyokern.

Her husband, John Oval had been the pastor, arriving in the late 20’s.  Shortly before he died his brother had come to visit – his brother with a serious drinking problem.  One night he fell asleep drunk with a cigarette still burning.  A fire began in the parsonage, which was attached to the wooden church.  The whole thing went up in flames.  I still have a picture of that tragedy that someone had taken.  Fortunately, everyone, including the brother, escaped unharmed.  But the church was a total loss.

Not long after that, Pastor John died.  Carrie had been going through the conference course for lay preachers, so she asked to be appointed in her husband’s place.  Mother Carrie was not without her detractors; in fact there were many.  Not at all used to a woman preacher.

Mother Carie soon organized a rebuilding effort while the congregation met in the VFW hall.  This church would not be of wood.  Mother Carrie had managed to get hold of some concrete block making machines.  These were third-world devices operated by hand.

Every evening as the miners came out of the mines she had them organized to begin making concrete blocks.  The women would arrive to cook dinner and they would work late into the night.  After many, many months, through a joint effort of church members and many others not connected to that congregation, a Resurrected church arose.

It wasn’t long after completion that one of the usual fierce desert winds came up and tore a good chunk of the metal roof off the new church.  Some of Mother Carrie’s detractors wrote the superintendant down in Pasadena, “We told you not to send this woman preacher out here.  Now God has taken matters in his own hands.  Soon, we will have nothing again.”

Mother Carie wrote me of that message to the superintendent with the follow up, “And I was reappointed for another year.”  And many more years to follow.

Today we celebrate such mothers, whose fierce love for us has made us who we are.  A blessing to ourselves and many others.  And they didn’t do it all themselves.  They organized the necessary resources to keep going.

When we read the Resurrection story in Acts of Tabitha (known as Dorcas in the Greek), it’s essentially a community effort.  After she died, the attending widows, having washed her for burial, sent two men from Joppa to Lydda, having “heard that Peter was there with the request, ‘Please come to us without delay.’ So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs.  All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing him all the tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them.  Peter put all of them outside, and then knelt down and prayed.  He turned to the body and said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’”

Peter, with Resurrection Power, awakened the woman. In our hyper individualistic culture, we tend to focus only on Peter – one individual.  But it wasn’t just Peter.  This Resurrection of their lost Dorcas was a community effort — God in them, they in God. The entire community is endowed with Resurrection Power.

The entire community, using all the spiritual resources at their command is empowered.  Facing their tragedy, just like Mother Carrie, this little band of the faithful used all the resources available.  They shed tears; they prayed, they hoped together.  They summoned help.  they waited in expectation.  It took many to summon Resurrection Power.

It will take many to summon the Resurrection of the democracy of our nation.  The call has gone out, in many cases led by strong women, many of whom are mothers who know what’s at stake as programs like Head Start, Women Infants and Children (WIC), Planned Parenthood, and the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, and Medicaid are all on the chopping block to provide gigantic tax cuts for the richest ten percent.  Mothers know what’s at stake.

Sarah Palin was right about one thing concerning a mother’s fierce love: “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull – the lipstick.”

At a corner demonstration, widows in their 70s and 80s, even one in her 90s know what’s at stake when the Veteran’s Administration is eviscerated and benefits cut.  Where’s the “Thank you for your service” here?  Yet that small monthly survivor’s check along with SSI is the meager amount that pays the rent, provides heat, cover medical expenses and puts food on the table.

All across the country Resurrection Power is in the hands of us ordinary folk, mass gatherings in the unlikely places as Utah, Alaska – did I mention that I saw a picture of our former hometown of Petersburg – Idaho and Montana, Alabama and Mississippi.  Resurrection Power amplified through our common strength.  Mama pit bull love.

It was a distant relative of our family, Julia Ward Howe – Grandma’s lineage on my mother’s side), who summoned up the strength of our mothers in her first Mother’s Day Proclamation.  She was a feminist, a Suffragist, an activist for the woman’s vote, an abolitionist — I close with that.  Maybe that’s where I get my activist genes – a goodly heritage indeed!

Mother’s Day Proclamation – Boston, 1870

“Arise, then… women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!  Say firmly:  We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.  Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.  Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.  We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.  It says:  Disarm, Disarm!  The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.  Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession.  As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.  Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.“

~ Julia Ward Howe

And I tell you what – This sure beats the hell out of the simpering Hallmark sentimentality found on our supermarket card racks.  Today we celebrate the Resurrection Power inherent in all those pit bull women who have fiercely loved us and passionately cared for this nation.  Yes, these women of the Spirit knew – it always takes a village.  Amen.

May 11, 2025
Easter 4

Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23;

Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

“Entrusted with Resurrection Power”

This last week, Resurrection was evident in the labor of love that put in the first of 30 vegetable beds at St. Francis.  Work began early with Barbara opening the gates and unlocking the church.  By 9:00 a.m. we had several members — Joseph, William, and yours truly — laying out the chicken wire to prevent gophers dining on our new plants.  Miguel, our paid farmer, was also on the job.

We had approximately nine beds laid out by the time the first truck arrived from Burrtec with 30 cubic yards of mulch that Christopher had arranged for free.   The aromatic odor wafting across the field of woodchips was definitely the smell of Resurrection.  Wonderful to sniff.

We ended with a break for pizza that Barbara provided with some delicious root beer and Pepsi.  And the satisfaction of having done a righteous deed.

As I previously mentioned.  A great Anglican divine once wrote that if Resurrection was only a one-off historical curiosity, it would have been of minor significance – UNLESS it is lived as a daily reality, Christ raised in our hearts and minds.  And I would add, also in our date books, wallets and credit cards.  And in the voting booths.  Yes, let us pray for the insight and wisdom to notice Resurrection as a daily event in our lives.

Saul, bent on destruction of the incipient Jesus Movement, breathing threats as he heads to Damascus, is struck down.  “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”  Saul, raised from the ground, welcomed into the home of some of Jesus’ followers becomes a new man, Paul.  Raised from the deadened life of hatred.  Resurrection to be sure!

Resurrection is vibrantly alive in the daily work of those in recovery.  Arlie Hochschild, in her new book, Stolen Pride, has some marvelous stories of how some in Appalachia have discovered Resurrection in lives ruined by poverty, despair and drugs.[1]

James had just arrived in an emergency room after his fourth heroin overdose.  His sister Ashley, a student at the University of Tennessee, after three calls from a hospital, dreaded that next call would be “the call – James is dead.”[2]

It wasn’t too long before James’ sister’s worst fear came true. One day she received a call from the paramedics.  James had been found without a heartbeat.  After some effort with CPR the paramedics brought him back.

First, Ashley just sobbed.  Then she realized she had to do something. “I took a breath, got online and spoke to James: ‘James, are you ready this time?’”[3]

Yes, he was ready.  Ashley had found the best recovery program in eastern Kentucky, Southgate.  And while they usually only accepted clients referred through the criminal-justice system, they made an exception for James.  Ashley got the costs covered by a special grant.  There, James bonded with one of the counselors over their love of punk rock bands. 

There, James hit rock bottom.  Soon after arrival, he was sitting out in the yard feeling sorry for himself – that his life had gone nowhere, that he had lost everything, that he had messed up his family and had no self-respect left.

As he sat on a bench, he noticed at his feet a line of ants.  They were scurrying along, carrying bits of food, grains of sand.  He noticed one ant carrying a dead ant.  The light went on.  That dead ant being carried was him.

James understood in a flash that his counselor, Tom Ratliff “became the carrier ant willing to carry the dead – or nearly dead – ant, me.  The man saved my life.”[4]  Resurrection!  Fresh from the grave.

Through this program, James became alive to his own emotions, feelings he had stuffed and buried through drugs.  Shame and pride.

He inwardly made the decision to work at his recovery, no matter the pain of realizing what he had lost – because the vision of what he had to gain was so alluring, so life-giving.  That is Resurrection becoming reality.

James, looking at that line of ants had made the decision to be a carrier ant.  He no longer wanted to be carried as a dead, desiccated man.  Resurrection!

Through the stuff of ordinary life, beautiful sunrises, gardens, family, the daily work given to our hearts and minds, lies Resurrection joy and possibility.  Within our very selves we have all the makings of a miracle.

Cassie Chambers – It’s the family name of a most wonderful, extended family throughout Appalachia, one of whose shirt-tail members runs the little market in Bethany, Chambers General Store, just down the road from the Forney Family Farm we now own – and did I mention the most wonderful sandwiches Mr. Chambers makes while you wait.  I even dreamed the other night of standing in front of the refrigerated case of cheeses and meats ordering my favorite bologna sandwich with lettuce, tomato, Swiss cheese, mustard and mayo. And make those slices of bologna extra thick, Bob.  Total delight – a veritable taste of Resurrection.

But I digress.  Cassie Chambers, in her book, Hill Women,[5] tells of one of the influencers in her life.  In the midst of the poverty of Owsley County, Kentucky, in which she grew up, there was always Granny.  And family.

Cassie tells the story of sitting one evening and watching TV in the living room, and the importance of family just being together.

Her father, Orlando, wanted to watch a University of Kentucky basketball game.  Her mother, Wilma, not that interested in sports, tried to get Granny to go watch a movie in another room.

“Granny, a serious look in her eye, scolded her, ‘Orlando has been at work all day.  I’m goin’ to sit right here and spend time with him.  I reckon you best do the same.’   Granny and Wilma joined Orlando to watch the game.  Granny didn’t know anything about basketball, but she cheered enthusiastically.  It was a particularly physical game; at one point she jumped from her seat and shouted with venom, ‘you ain’t nothin’ but a big bully – take your tail end home.’  My parents looked at each other in shock.”[6]

The joy of family – a small moment of Resurrection.  The same delight and pride I took in our son Christopher as he reported on his efforts to repair a drawer at his unit in the triplex my brother had left me in Loma Linda.  A tiny spark of Resurrection joy.

With eyes to see and ears to hear, Resurrection’s all around.  In the Risen Christ I continue to believe that I can make a difference.  I can be a carrier ant.  WE can make a difference – we ARE making a difference – carrier ants.  Resurrection is awakened gratitude for the new life that blooms all about each day.

I opened the paper and noticed an article in the New York Times on the disastrous, chaotic, corrupt first 100 days of this presidency.  More about that in sermons to come, in letters to the editor to come.  But I had an overwhelming sense of joy for the reporters, for their truth-telling.  That truth come to light is Resurrection.

As I look towards my next trip to West Virginia, I drool as I think of my bologna sandwich purchased at the counter of Chambers General Store.  A small bit of Resurrection delight. 

With that sort of nourishment, fueled with coffee, and in the Risen Christ, we go forth with the audacity to believe that today and tomorrow, we can make a difference – carrier ants.  St. Francis folk, how does your garden grow?  Wonderfully well, with peas and carrots, kale and lettuce, plums, tomatoes and peaches  – wonderfully well.  Let it be ever so. The smell of Resurrection.  Amen.

---

[1] Arlie Russell Hochschild, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right (New York: the New Press, 2024).

[2] Op cit., 147.

[3] Op cit., 148.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Cassie Chambers, Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains (New York: Ballantine Books, 2020).

[6] Op Cit., 83.

May 4, 2025
Easter 3

Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30;

Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

“Resurrection – Present Day”

An air of gloom and anxiety pervades the room as Jesus’ friends began to situate themselves around the table.  It was the Passover, the feast of liberation from slavery and oppression.  Yet something more was at stake.  They couldn’t quite grasp the backstory, couldn’t put their finger on the cause for dread.

It was not until Jesus said the liberating word when he explained the meaning.  He was their true freedom as he offered up his physical self for the necessary healing.  “This is my body.  This is the cup of my blood poured out for the redemption of the world.  As long as you break the bread and share this cup, remember.  Remember me.”  Remember what we are all about – tikkun olam, the mending of the world.

That sacrifice, that humility, opens the door to true liberation.  In John’s gospel, the story gathers additional significance as Jesus gathers a sponge and kneels at a basin to wash the feet of his disciples.  Of course, Peter will have none of it.  He considers himself unworthy.  Yet, Jesus insists, “Unless I wash you, you will have no share with me.”  Such humility, such love indeed opens the door to eternity.  To true liberation from all that enslaves.  Especially for pompous egos and notions of self-importance, for false humility.  “I am your liberation,” says the Master.  Jesus, in actions proclaims, “My example is your true freedom.” 

And so it is, as difficult, as impossible as it so often seems at the moment.

After the searing events that led to the Black Lives Matter in St. Louis, Missouri, the former rector of All Saints, Pasadena shares this story.

The Rev. Mike Kinman recalls entering the pain of St. Louis and being confronted by the anguish of Black Lives Matter movement.  He relates an experience of five years ago, yet still as vivid in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. 

“I feel you. Do you feel me?”  That was the raised voice of Pastor Traci Blackmon as she grasped the shoulders of VonDerrit Meyers, Sr., the father of a young black youth who had been shot six times in the back on the streets of St. Louis on October 8, 2014.  Mike continues the story:

I can still hear the Rev. Traci Blackmon’s voice ringing in my ears.

I can still see her face against his, hands on his shoulders, eyes piercing into his eyes.

It was near midnight on October 8, 2014, and a few hours before, 18-year old VonDerrit Myers, Jr. had been shot eight times – six in the back – and killed by an off-duty St. Louis City Police Officer.  A crowd gathers at the scene and when they begin to move, the clergy who are there split up. Some go with the crowd. Others – Traci and I – we go with Vonderrit Myers, Sr. to the city morgue to be with him as he identifies the body of his son.

We stand outside for what seems like an eternity until the father emerges, the nightmare he had lived with since the day his son was born slowly becoming real.  Head hanging to the ground, he almost whispers the words we already know:

“It’s him.”

And then… the pain begins to turn to rage.  I could see it happen. He begins to fume … and tremble. What begins as a cry becomes a wail.  What starts as a murmur grows into a shout as he says:

“It’s him.  It’s my son.  Somebody is going to pay for this. I’ve got a gun, and somebody is going to pay for him tonight!”

I am paralyzed.  I cannot imagine his rage and know he has every right to it.  I will not tell him to calm down. And… this is headed nowhere good.  Not only do I not know what to do, I know whatever it is, I’m not the one who can do it.

And then Traci steps up to him. Traci steps up to him and grabs him by his shoulders, and puts her face right up to his face … her eyes to his eyes.
He is trembling.  And she is trembling.  And she holds him.  And he looks at her and she says:

“I feel you. I feel you. I feel you. OK?”

He nods.

“Now I need you to feel me.”

His eyes are glued to hers.

“You have a job right now.  You have to be a husband tonight.  Your wife has lost her son, and she needs her husband.  No one can do that but you.  You have to go be with her.  That’s where you have to be tonight.  She needs you.”

“And tomorrow morning, I’m going to be at your house first thing.  I’m going to be there and I’m going to stay there with you for as long as it takes.”

Tears fill the father’s eyes.
Tears fill Traci’s eyes.
And she says again.

“I feel you.  Do you feel me?”

VonDerrit Myers, Sr. nods his head, and they embrace.  And they cry.  And then VonDerrit Myers, Sr. leaves the body of his son and goes to spend the longest night of his life at home with his wife.

And first thing the next morning, Traci is there. And she stays until they don’t need her to stay any more.[1]

To enter the anguish of St. Louis that night, to enter Gaza, to enter any Jerusalem on this planet is to enter into any of our distressed urban areas, and pray to God, pray, like Pastor Traci, to have the mind of Christ in you. 

Such humility is the true nourishment of the meal we share this day.  The liberating nourishment we share on any given Sunday.  Liberation in the midst of the most excruciating pain and loss.  He in us and we in him.  Présenté.

In city after city, in village and in township, Christ is crucified anew.  Crucified as an eighteen-year-old black kid gunned down on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri.  Crucified in the deadened hopes of the homeless man who used to sleep on the back porch of our office in Claremont – or the lost hopes of those who used to sleep down the block from our church at the Del Rosa and Date Street encampment. Crucified in our hospital emergency rooms as doctors and nurses struggle to save the life of yet another overdose victim.

Yet, in the midst of such crucifying pain, in this simple meal of bread and wine, in the remembrance of a foot-washing, we have the audacity to assert that the world is mended back together.  And in the participation, we also find our healing and true liberation.  We are mended, knitted together in an eternal love.  Amen.

---

[1]Mike Kinman, “The Power of Extravagant Love”, Sermon preached at All Saints, Pasadena, April 7, 2019.

April 17, 2025
Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17

1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“A Love that Mends the World”

Anyone should know that the verdict was fixed before the trial even began.  Sham trial that it was.  And while the charge was sedition, claiming a kingship over Cesar, the real problem was compassion.  The minute Jesus was hauled before Pilate, he was a “dead man walking.”  The fix was in.

How did we get here?

It might have been that fickle mob that gathered along the dusty road into Jerusalem.  All the hoopla and waving of tree branches.  A notorious rabbi and healer entering the city on a donkey with his followers in tow.  Children running ahead, darting in and out of the procession.  The crowd, hoping he would overthrow the Roman tyranny kept shouting, “Hosanna, Hosanna.”  Treating him as if king.

It was all too much for the Roman authorities and their puppets, Herod and Pilate.  It smacked of insurrection for sure.  Not to be tolerated.

That fickle crowd was easily manipulated, as are folks today.  They didn’t want any trouble.  Go along to get along.  And how quickly they turned.

Don’t ever trust the mob.  With threats, bribes and propaganda they will sell your soul down the river in a New York minute.

It happened in Germany in 1933.  It happened in Russia in 1918.  It happened in Rwanda, in Srebrenica.  It happened in America along the Trail of Tears.  It happened throughout the 20^th century in Jim Crow America.  It’s happening now in Gaza and in Sudan.  History is replete with massacre and genocide.  Don’t trust the mob.  For temporary security, they’ll toss away all their rights.

We in America now stand on the verge of a police state.  And a good number of us would willingly have it so.  People are snatched off the street by unidentified thugs in ski masks, soon to be deported to hell-hole prisons in far away countries.  No due process.  Not even the sham show-trial Jesus got. This is a Stalinesque nightmare beyond belief.

Masha Gessen[1] writes in their New York Times op-ed piece (an aside — being nonbinary, Masha uses the pronouns “they/them”):

“It is the catastrophic interruption of daily life, as when a Tufts University graduate student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was grabbed on a suburban street by half a dozen plainclothes agents, most of the them masked.  The security camera video of that arrest shows Öztürk walking, looking at her phone, perhaps to check the address where she was supposed to meet her friends for dinner that night, when an agent appears in front of her.  She says something – asks something – struggling to control her voice, and within seconds she is handcuffed and placed in an unmarked car.”

Folks are being “imprisoned indefinitely, without due process…It’s the growing irrelevance of the law and the helplessness of judges and lawyers.”[2]  Though courts have issued rulings prohibiting the transfer of those arrested without warrant, without any process – even though a federal judge forbade the government to deport, without notice, Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University medical school professor – even though another judge prohibited moving Rümeysa Öztürk from Massachusetts without notice.   The executive branch has ignored all these rulings.  We now are in an extra-Constitutional order.  There is no rule of law

The same as was justice in Stalinist Russia, the same as in that kangaroo trial in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.  “The secret lists and student arrests are dreadfully familiar.”[3]  Jesus betrayed in the dead of night with a kiss and hauled off to torture.

The psychiatrist-activist, Robert Jay Lifton, documents the pervasive PTSD caused by such calamities.[4]  For days, maybe years, the victims of such catastrophes are stunned into inaction, into silence.  As were the survivors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Hitler’s death camps and Jim Crow lynchings. 

Stunned, as were those followers who witnessed Jesus’ torture and brutal crucifixion.  Finally cowering in an Upper Room.  As many of us might be, watching the impending death knell of our democracy here in America; witnessing the mass firings and destruction of our government.  We all may be suffering some degree of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder.

At the moment, we can only huddle in silence, as did those brave women who stayed behind near the cross.  As did that brave doctor who had the courage to listen to the victims of such tragedies – the survivors of the atom bombs, the hibakusha (the explosion-affected persons).  He had the courage to enter their pain and suffering, as did those women who stayed by Jesus.

We, at the moment, gather in silence, before the genocide committed in our name, and with our tax dollars in Gaza – grateful to a courageous Jew, Peter Beinart, having courage of steel to honestly reflect on that tragedy as a Jew.[5]

In solidarity with those who grieve, we, too, will gather.  We will hold on to one another.  And we will trust in God’s Grace to bring new life out of the “imprint of death.”[6]

Do not trust the wisdom of the crowd.  The abiding Grace of God is that we have one another.  And the Spirit of encouragement.  Listen to her.

To quote Paul Tillich – at these moments of crucifixion, gulag and genocide, as we await, stunned to silence — all the while, God abides, obscured in the wings of mysterious darkness with an abounding Grace of New Life and Acceptance.  Hear Tillich’s wisdom:

“You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”[7]

Let us patiently abide our time.  Take the moments needed for the Holy Spirit to gather us together, to gather our courage into action.

That’s the glorious mystery that awaits after the three fraught days.

In time all shall be redeemed, yes, even if it does take three days to work the transformation from death to Life.

So, in our waiting, might we sing:

“Keep, O keep us, Savior dear, ever constant by thy side; that with thee we may appear at the eternal Eastertide.”[8]  Amen.

---

[1] M. Gessen, “America’s Police State Has Arrived,” New York Times, “Columns & Commentary,” April 6, 2025.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Robert Jay Lifton, Surviving our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the Covid-19 Pandemic (New York: The New Press, 2023).

[5] Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2025).

[6] Lifton, op. cit., 27.

[7] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948).

[8] George Hunt Smyttan (1822-1870).  The Hymnal (New York, Church Publishing Co. 1985), #150, 5^th verse.

April 13, 2025
Palm Sunday

Luke 19:28-40 (processional reading);

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16;

Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

“Dead Man Walking”

A while back there was a news story about how to cook turkeys for Thanksgiving.  This woman had a Butterball Turkey in her freezer and called the Butterball Talk-Line to find out how long to defrost it.

The fellow on the line asked her how long it had been in her freezer and she told him that the date on it was 1987 – it had been in the freezer some 16 years.  There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

“Ahhh, just a minute.  I think I need to consult my supervisor,” the fellow said.  When he came back on the line, he told her that a turkey frozen this long – well, the company didn’t recommend serving it to anyone.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said.  “It’s just for the church.”  Good enough for God!  No extravagance here.  Devoid of all compassion – just unloading an unwanted turkey (in both senses of the word).

Our lesson this morning is about the extravagance of divine compassion. 

It takes place at a dinner, always symbolic of God’s bounty and also a Last Supper with the disciples.  Among the guests is Lazarus, Mary’s brother whom Jesus raised from the dead, giving us the foreboding of more death to come. 

Remember, that in the gospel of John no detail is by happenstance.  All is freighted with meaning.  The evening overflows with expectation and mystery.

Then, on the most extravagant impulse, pure compassion, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with the costliest perfume, it’s scent soon filling the entire house.  She ends this generosity by wiping his feet with her hair.  There is a sumptuousness about the act as the scent continues to pervade the corners, nooks and crannies of the abode.

Of the acts to follow in the coming days, climaxing at Golgotha and following through three days later – it’s the culmination and sign of God’s extravagant compassion to all.

We now live in a nation run by a White House where compassion, empathy, are dirty words.  America is suffering through a lack of empathy, devoid of compassion, from the Orange Felon on down.  Empathy is a dirty word for Christian nationalists.

David French, in an opinion piece, reveals the new animus of Christian Nationalists to empathy.[1]

Once, the focus of Christian evangelicals was on the defense of liberty and the prerogatives of the faith community.  Now it’s all about power, imposing their will, their specific ideology and theology on the rest of us.

A part of this is defunding faith organizations of which they disapprove, even if they are of the evangelical community.  Catholic charities have received substantial cuts, especially to programs showing empathy and compassion to immigrants.  Cuts that have been characterized as “catastrophic, ruthless and chaotic.”[2]

Often these unilateral decisions are taken unlawfully against Christian organizations serving the poor and marginalized.

In defunding, actually in destroying USAID, lifesaving aid worldwide has been cut off to the most vulnerable – the starving, the unsheltered, those with HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.  Not a scintilla of empathy for these.

Sarah McCammon, in her “Weekend Edition” on religion reports on how “empathy” has become a bad word for one group of Christians.[3]  The Ayn Rand crowd I suspect, with a few John Birchers thrown in.

A soundbite from the “Joe Rogan Experience,” podcast features Elon Musk on the danger of empathy, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”  Nice, for a multi-billionaire who has absolutely no idea on how ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world lives.  Nice.

Musk continues, “There’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself” – to which Rogan responds, “Yeah.”

Musk: “So that – we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.”

In a soundbite of the podcast, “Stronger Men Nation,” the Evangelical pastor, John McPherson, asserts, “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.”  Whereupon two other pastors on the program join in, “It does.”  “Yes.”

Pastor McPherson’s conclusion?  “Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.”

In his podcast, “Thinking in Public,” Joe Rigney asserts that empathy is harmful, and because it seems so nice, it is one of the most “destructive tactics” of the devil.

Yet, that is stuff of what God is ever about – compassion, empathy.  Such is a life leading to the door of eternity.  The scripture is full of such stories – the woman with the hemorrhage, the leprous man along a dusty highway, the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus stoops and listens.

Listens even to his blockheaded disciples who often get it wrong. Understanding nothing.  Yeah, stoops also to bless and heal us blockheaded disciples who so often screw up the message.

David Warbrick writes a most tender article in Christian Century about one of the best gifts he ever gave his father.  A gift of pure compassion.

His father with Parkinson’s disease, now living apart from his wife due to being confined to a nursing home, had very few material needs.  That Christmas, David gave his father a small bottle of fragrant bath essence.

The nursing home staff would occasionally “take him to the bathroom, lift his painfully thin frame into the warm water, and leave him and Mum in private so that she can help him bathe.”

Normally, given his illness, his father is mostly surrounded by noisy machines and many interruptions by medical staff.

As his father and mother were forced by Parkinson’s to live separately, bath time is one of the few, precious times they have alone.

David continues, “The bath time is the most intimate time and touch possible for them. After 50 years of marriage my dad’s hands—which once painted stunning pictures and caressed his wife—are so translucent that you can see all their workings. He draws in the air with them sometimes now. He has a tremor. Bath time allows him gentle, distant echoes of the power of his youthful touch. It’s my parents’ least mediated, least frustrating communication. It’s a place where Mum can be wife instead of caregiver.”[4]

It is their precious time together at bath, husband and wife, that is the extravagance of God’s grace.

While the world peddles a transactional economy based on greed, Mary’s economy is pure, unlimited extravagance as she breaks open the jar and lavishes precious ointment over Jesus’ feet.

That’s a sign of Jesus’ extravagant compassion for creation, bending near to touch hearts and minds of all he encounters.  Something, Judas cannot comprehend.  Something the Orange Felon, Musk and their minions seem not to comprehend.

Yet, as Pascal said, “The heart has reasons of its own which reason comprehendeth not.”

If empathy and compassion are sins, then with Luther I say, “Sin boldly.” 

Someone said that Judas, in a way, was 100 percent right, but, without empathy, he ended up 100 percent alone.  Not that Judas ever cared a wit about the poor.

In the end, I suspect, this self-serving administration will also, eventually, end up alone.  Deserted by most all Americans, including many of those in the MAGA crowd.

So, back to Grace — Don’t be a turkey: Break out the ointment of generosity, break out your most precious gifts only you have to offer the world.  Break out an attitude of pure, unmerited extravagance.  Live dangerously in God’s Grace.

I close with Mother Teresa on Grace – Grace as embodied in the extravagance of Mary, Grace as in the extravagance of God:

              People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

            If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

            If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

           If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

            What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

            If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

            The good you do today will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

         Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

         In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

Amen.

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[1] David French, “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy,” New York Times, February 13, 2025.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Sarah McCammon, NPR Weekend Edition, March 22, 2025.

[4] Ibid.

April 6, 2025
Lent 5

Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126;

Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

“A Divine Extravagance”

Mothering Sunday is an English and Irish tradition that began in the 16^th century.  It was originally to honor and give thanks for the Virgin Mary — Mother Mary.  It was a day for Christians to return to their “mother church,” a day of family celebration and giving thanks for our mothers.

Welcome Home is the spirit.  Yes, “there’s no place like home.” 

I remember a driving trip Jai and I took through Mexico.  We drove down the east coast all the way to the Yucatan Peninsula, arriving in Chetumal shortly after a hurricane had torn most of the city apart.  I wanted to drive to British Honduras, now known as Belize, but we didn’t have a multiple-entry permit for the car. 

The guy at the border crossing said we could mail in our single-entry permit and wait for new papers.  Remembering how it took a postcard four weeks to get to my mom, I decided to forego the offer.

When we finally got back to Mexico City a couple of weeks later, we were exhausted.  We spied a Denny’s as we navigated our way along this huge nerve-wracking thoroughfare with seven or eight lanes in each direction.  No one paying any attention to the lane markings.  We were so homesick for some American food that we pulled right into that Denny’s parking lot.  It was a big disappointment.  Our hamburgers didn’t at all taste like what we got in Los Angeles.  Definitely no place like home.

Jesus tells a parable to answer the objection of the religious authorities concerning his hobnobbing with notorious sinners.  People who should be cast out of their common religious home.

You know it.  About a father with two sons, one who thought life would be better on his own.  So, he took his share of the inheritance and set off for a far country.

Things didn’t work out as he had hoped.  Especially after he had wasted all his money on high living and loose women.  He’s soon wished to be dining with the pigs, sharing their seed pods.

And you know the end of the story.  As the father spies his returning, bedraggled son far down the road, he opens his arms, running to meet him.  “My son was once lost but now is found!”  Joy and merriment broke out that night.  And of course, we remember how the elder, dutiful brother felt about this homecoming reception.  But that’s another sermon.

Home, for most all of us, has special memories and significance.  It’s a place of last refuge.   As Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.”

Unfortunately, many have found themselves far from home.  Not of their own choice.  Not due to their own wandering, but because they had never been fully admitted in the first place.  Our history is replete with those locked out and shut out.

Recently, I stumbled upon a documentary of a group of people whose full personhood had never found a home in the American Dream – stewardesses.  The documentary, Fly With Me, records the history of the first women cabin attendants in aviation.

This is the story of girls coming into full womanhood by dint of their own efforts.  Every step a struggle against male, piggy exploitation.

It was a chronicle of the first ground-breaking women who opened the door for their sisters in aviation.  It all began when Ellen Church convinced Boeing that having nurses aboard flights would put passengers at ease.  As planes were not pressurized, they were limited to 10,000 feet.  This resulted in a lot of turbulence, and most passengers were predisposed to be nervous about flying to begin with.

Soon, airlines began to realize that “sex sells.”  Stewardesses’ uniforms became skimpier and skimpier, demeaning the women as sexpots and Barbie Dolls.  Finally, degrading to “hot pants.”  Really!

Glamor was the ticket.  And a pleasing, compliant personality.  The women must be petite – 100 to 118 pounds, max.  They would be weighed at the bottom of the aircraft stairs every time they disembarked the plane.  One pound over and you’re gone.  You couldn’t have a waistline over 38 inches.  This was just the start of the harsh employment guidelines.

You had to be 22 to 26 years-old to be considered.  Couldn’t be married and must leave or be fired when you reached the age of 32, later 34.  And you must be white.  There were four physical exams required every year.  Pregnancy was instant cause for dismissal.

Did the men have to abide by such standards?  Heck, no.

Fly With Me is the film that records the struggles of a growing cadre of women in a most demanding profession to achieve, and be paid, for their invaluable contribution to the airline industry.  You can see it on YouTube.

Soon, most major airlines were running training schools, lasting in the range of seven or eight weeks, sarcastically known as “Charm Farms” by the women.

Ann Hood, a stewardess – and later a writer, but more about that later – writes a wonderful memoir, Fly Girl: A Memoir[1], revealing all.

Ann notes that on her opening day at the TWA school, Breech Academy in Kansas City, they were tested mathematically, physically, mentally, given drug tests, and divided up into teams to test cooperative and personality skills.

On that first day, their instructor told the seated group, “It’s easier to get into Harvard than to sit in your seat.”  Out of 14,000 applicants only 550 would be hired.  Yes, they were special.

Not special enough to merit a decent salary and humane working conditions, however.  As the country became socially aware in the activist 60s and 70s, these women, and soon a few men, discovered the power of unions.  Through their collective organizing they finally did make a home for themselves in the American dream. 

Many of the sexist standards fell by the wayside, replaced by decent pay, ability to work until retirement age, same as the pilots, and a pension.  They could marry and have a family.  Full womanhood in a profession most of them loved.  They made a home for themselves. 

Fly With Me is a heartwarming story, as is Ann’s book.

Oh yes, I mentioned “more about that later” referring to Ann Hood as a writer.  Some sexist man on the board of one of these airlines expressed the sentiment of many of his colleagues when he opined, “These women have the looks but they have absolutely no brains.”

Au contraire.  Many of these talented women went on to have second careers as authors, teachers, lawyers and highly-placed government workers.  Many went into business or started their own businesses.  No brains?  Give me a break!  Ann has written ten books.  What?  No brains?

No place like home.  And that is our obligation as members of the Jesus Movement, to lay out the welcome mat of full inclusion for all.  And shelter the shunned and those given no chance.

We are now told that ICE is going only after “the worst of the worst.”  Not true.

In the Los Angeles Times there was an article on an Orange County couple who had been living peacefully in the U.S. for decades.  They had three grown daughters, American citizens, living here.

ICE grabbed them up when they reported to their routine check- in as per their agreement to remain in the country.  This happened on February 21, and within hours they were on a deportation flight to Columbia.

Yes, the couple had tried numerous times to gain citizenship, but ultimately the 9^th Circuit Court denied them. 

This couple was law-abiding, hard-working, raising a family and never missed a check-in appointment.

One of their daughters said that “This cruel and unjust situation has shattered our family emotionally and financially.”[2]  Aren’t these exactly the sort of people we should be welcoming?

What happened to welcome the stranger, shelter the foreigner?  All part of Torah Righteousness and Gospel Goodness. 

By the way, how does one know when this administration is lying?  Their lips are moving. 

Like the Loving Father in Jesus’ story, through the prompting of the Spirit, we stretch our arms wide to welcome all home – the foreigner, the disparaged and locked out, the addicted and incarcerated, the shunned. Yes, even the sinner!   And in the doing, there is more joy than in heaven.  “Olly, olly oxen free, free, free.” All home.

Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty nailed it — sentiments straight from this parable.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

Can we all say a big AMEN?

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[1] Ann Hood, Fly Girl: A Memoir (New York: Norton, 2022).

[2] Ruben Vives, “An O.C. Couple’s Sudden Deportation Sends Shock waves,” Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2025.

March 30, 2025
Lent 4 – Mothering Sunday


Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32;
2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“Welcome Home”