Nothing signifies abundance like a church potluck.  In the downtown United Methodist Congregation I served as a young deacon, we had a wonderfully diverse congregation:  black, white, Salvadoran, Asian, Mexican – all of which enriched our culinary experience at our potlucks. 

It was Sr. Aguilar who taught me to make authentic Mexican rice.  We would have everything from Southern fried chicken, tamales and spring rolls to refritos and Mexican stew.  And there was so much, there were always lots of leftovers.

Just as in the story from 2^nd Kings we read today – an extravagance of God’s unbounded generosity – as found in this morning’s psalm.

“The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord, and you give them their food in due season.  You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living thing.”[1]

In our gospel reading from the book of John we have a retelling of the miracle of the feeding of the multitudes found in the three synoptic gospels which preceded John’s gospel by well over thirty to forty years (Matthew, Mark, Luke).[2]  

John even mentions a seemingly small detail of abundance, “Now there was a great deal of grass in the place…” – another sign of the lushness of God and what was to transpire.

The point here is that God’s abundance was so great, even when beginning with not much of anything – five barley loaves and two fish – like our church potlucks, there was enough from the banquet Jesus served up that the leftovers from the fish and bread were enough to fill twelve baskets!

When I was a little boy, I remember asking Grandma why aren’t there miracles anymore.  One commentator’s answer: to see a miracle, just look at what you now have, little or much – that right there is enough to make a miracle.

The gift of creation is the everlasting Kingdom of God.  And its abundance is meant for all.  Its beauty is all about, even in the tiniest of creatures.

After our Friday gathering, “Suds on the Deck,” at our house, I caught out of my peripheral vision some small movement.  There on my pant leg was a small jumping spider.  Now, you may not know that jumping spiders are among the most intelligent of the arachnid family, with very good eyesight.  I carefully brushed it off and returned it to the deck.

I was enthralled to watch her tentatively explore her new surroundings.  I say “her” because by this time of year most males would have fulfilled their biological purpose and would have passed on.  She, then jumped well over twenty times her quarter of an inch length to the leg of one of the chairs.  I must have sat there some twenty minutes mesmerized by this wondrous creature – more evidence of the expansiveness of the unmerited gift of creation.  God’s bounty is all about.

When two lovers are drawn together, by chance or fate, the miracle is that they find a way to love each other in this often-tragic world.  Christopher and Alexis met on line.  Of all the possibilities, one combination in millions, maybe billions.  And they are so suited for each other!  We absolutely delight in seeing then together.  Jai and I met on a bus heading to Lincoln, Nebraska.  She was sitting on the seat behind me.  What are the odds?  The love and long-distance phone calls, letters and all – signs of God’s gracious bounty.

Wonder at it all is certainly in order.  So is gratitude and our loving response.  We are called to have a theology of abundance, not scarcity.

As we head into November’s election, the American people are presented with two stark visions: one of the expansiveness of the Founder’s vision and one of retribution, vengeance and scarcity.  Will we live into the vision of a republic of equality and opportunity, or will we reserve all the goodies for only the “right” people, the “deserving” people.  Does America mean “all,” or just some?

To those who have trouble with DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion — you’re cutting out a huge swath of the voting public.  You’re cutting out my daughter-in-law and all other women of color.  To demean our vice president as simply a DEI hire is beyond the pale.  Such racist misogyny is not the “politics of addition” that my favorite commentator Mark Shields always talked about.  Not the theology of abundance.

I trust that those who are so cavalierly dismissed will return the favor in November.

Will we cherish the created order and address global warming?  Or how hot has it got to get before we wake from our slumber, from our ignorance?  Of course, we could call it something else.  The wit Andy Borowitz suggested an alternative, “The world’s going to burn to a crisp and then we’re all gonna die.”

God’s faithfulness is seen in the majestic wingspan of a golden eagle.  Still fresh in my memory is a float trip I took with friends through the interior of Alaska.  To be out there in that wilderness is totally renewing.  The bounty is beyond our imagining.  One day, as we drifted around a bend in the river, we startled a golden eagle at its lunch.  It launched from a branch overhanging the river then silently soared just feet over our heads.  I think we let out a collective gasp in amazement at the beauty of it’s majestic eight-foot wing span.  Such is the “glory” of God’s wonders – beauty that is fitting praise to the Lord.

On that trip, of course we had packed adequate food, but most of those freeze-dried packages went unopened.  We caught so many Dolly Varden, an ocean-going trout, that for every meal we had fresh fish.  These were so large, I had to cut them in half to get them to fit in my ten-inch frying pan.  They can be huge, with some getting up to twenty-seven pounds.  God’s free bounty, indeed!

At night the northern lights would dance over our heads, filling the sky with a splendor beyond belief.  Yes, “All your works praise you, O Lord,” and we your servants are transfixed in wide-eyed and open-mouthed amazement.

Certainly, gratitude and respect are in order – as well as care.

Some biblical scholars explain the feeding of the five thousand as a miracle of sharing.  Once the loaves and fishes were divided up and passed around, others opened their hearts and shared what they had brought, resulting in enough to go all around with sumptuous leftovers.  In our greedy, materialistic, self-centered culture, such sharing alone would be considered a miracle.  However it happened, the Gospel of John refers to it as a sign of God’s gracious extravagance.  This is how God rolls — enough for all.  Sharing can be our only response.

All this is God’s gracious gift of something out of nothing – creation ex nihilo.  We didn’t make it.  Any heart pumping warm blood can only respond in gratitude.

This November will we vote to revere this gift, or just pave it over?  Will it be about our common life together or about whoever-dies-with-the-most-toys wins?  As our president said in his Wednesday address to the nation, the idea of America rests with its people, you and me.

What’s your money, time and enthusiasm on?

When it comes to a choice between the politics of greed, vengeance and retribution, or the politics of “God’s free bounty,” my money’s on that soaring golden eagle.  Amen.

---

[1] Psalm 145:16-17.

[2] Matt. 14:13-21; Mk. 6:32-44; Lk. 9:10-17,

July 28, 2024
Pentecost 10, Proper 12

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145: 10-19;
Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21 “A Generous Extravagance

When I was stationed at Letterman Hospital, San Francisco, I served in the Neurology Department.  There I was trained as an encephalograph tech, the brain wave test. Initially we had an NCO in the EEG lab, an E-5 Specialist Monroe, who was senor to both of us two trainees.

Shortly after my arrival, specialist Monroe was court martialed and busted down to corporal.  This wasn’t the first time he had been demoted.  When we asked him what happened, from the bruises on his face it should have been evident.

Over the weekend he had been in another bar fight.  The word that came back through the scuttlebutt was not good.  Apparently, he and his combatants had pretty well torn the place up – furniture broken, shattered windows, broken beer bottles everywhere – the place was trashed.  Hundreds of dollars in damages.  What a weekend.  Finally, the MPs arrived to break it up and Monroe ended up in the stockade for a spell.

Monroe had little recollection of what had happened, but word came back that the more he drank, the more belligerent, the mouthier he got.  And from there, it was off to the races as chaos ensued while fists flew, along with chairs, ash trays and glasses.

This was the second or third time he had been busted in rank.  The colonel, chief of our neurology service, had had enough.  Monroe was out of there. Assigned to the worst job possible, laundry duty.

I was promoted to E-5 and became senior enlisted staff. 

I had seen Monroe at our barracks after work and asked him, why did he frequent these bars which were just trouble for him.  He really had no answer, except that he had been barred from the enlisted officer’s club.  I didn’t have to ask the reason.

Poor choices, but there were alternatives – like maybe dealing with his drinking problem, like staying in the barracks and watching TV – oodles of alternatives come to mind.  But no – poor choices was all he seemed capable of.

Amos tells the story of poor choices.  His prophecy is a warning, much like my mother’s, “Johnny, look both ways before running out into the street.”

“This is what the Lord God showed me:  the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.  And the Lord said to me.  ‘Amos what do you see?’  And I said, ‘A plumb line.’  Then the Lord said, ‘See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’”

A plumb line is used to determine if a wall is 90 degrees vertical to the ground or a people morally straight by Amos’ reckoning.  The plumb line never lies.

Apparently, Jeroboam’s sin was the revolt he led against Solomon’s son Rehoboam which split the Davidic kingdom in two – Judah in the south and Israel in the north with Jeroboam as it’s king.  Further, he designed a religion to cater to his whims, building two temples with golden calves.  Idolatry, in other words.  He chose poorly.  There was an alternative — the God of the Torah, the plumb line of righteousness and equity.

Today, out of nowhere, in Mark we get the story of Herod having had John the Baptist beheaded at the whim of his wife.  John had railed against Herodias, for she had been his brother Philip’s wife, and it was not lawful to have one’s brother’s wife.  It was score-settling time.

One commentator avers that there is not a word of grace to be found in this story, which seems like an incidental one-off.

Herod, like too many guys basking in their power, thought he had to play the big man, testosterone-fueled.  Yet, there was an alternative tugging at his soul.  He knew John was a righteous and holy man.  While greatly perplexed by John’s utterances, he liked to listen to him. 

This request by his step-daughter he could have refused, but it would have cost him dearly in the esteem of his guests.  So, John’s head was served up on a platter as the trophy for her dancing.  Poor choice, even though he knew in his heart that this was wrong.  As Dieterich Bonhoeffer would call the alternative, “Costly Grace.”  Requiring a huge helping of humble pie.

That is the grace I see in Amos’ prophecy and Herod’s dilemma.  There is a choice, an alternative – as difficult as that may have been — Costly Grace in the form of repentance.

Of course, Amos’ desire is to warn the people of Israel of the destructive path they are on, his purpose is exactly to get repentance.  The path they were following as a society would implode upon itself.  Out of their weakness, they would have no resources or wisdom to deal with outside threats such as the Babylonian army, soon to be at their gates.

The forced exile to follow, the prophet attributed as their just deserts for their debauchery and crushing the poor in their midst.  My Buddhist friends would chalk it up to Bad Karma.  What goes around comes around.  The logical results for violating the moral structure of the universe and Torah ethics.  As my junior high coach would warn, “You’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’.”

Amos’ purpose?  To get his hearers to amend their ways.  To turn from self-destruction – to turn around, a complete change of mind — the meaning of metanoia, repentance. It’s all about changing behavior, not about feeling sorry or remorseful.  As the hymn puts it, “Turn back, O mortal, quit thy foolish ways.”

And as one verse of “How Firm a Foundation” puts it, “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace all sufficient, shall be thy supply; the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.”

Unfortunately, how often we grasp for the easy solution, not the costly alternative.  American foreign policy is littered with such poor choices.

I’ve been recently reading of one the worst episodes of our venture into the Philippines after we seized them as a result of the Spanish American War, 1898, Massacre in the Clouds by Kim A. Wagner.

The story opens with a photograph of a gristly massacre received by W. E. Du Bois.  It depicts an open pit filled with the bodies of defenseless men, women and children – some one thousand in all.  On the rim of the killing grounds, American soldiers are shown standing nonchalantly by.  No evidence at all of shame.

This tragedy was the result of an expedition up a dormant volcano by Major General Leonard Wood and his men on March 1906, who for hours would fire indiscriminately upon those who had taken refuge in the crater of that volcano, the so-called Moros, American slang for the Muslims of the southern islands of that nation.

The incident became know as the “Battle of Bud Dajo.”  Not a battle at all but the wanton killing of trapped unarmed men, women and children.  This atrocity was bigger than either Wounded Knee or My Lai and would have slipped into the mists of history except for that one photograph.[1]

U.S. military authorities tried to bury the story.  When that became impossible, it was claimed as “a brilliant feat of arms,” according to President Theodore Roosevelt.                                

We have little or no recollection of that horrific day.  But they do!  They remember as if it were yesterday.

The only three of note who spoke against the atrocity were W. E. B. Du Bois, Mark Twain and Moorfield Story, president of the Anti-Imperialist League.  Virtually every American paper heralded it as a courageous action.  Medals were to be passed out to those participating in the tragedy, many participants promoted for what now would be called a “war crime.”

Fortunately, through the diligent efforts of Kim Wagner over years, the story has come to light.

There was never any expression of remorse from the killers because the victims had been completely dehumanized – just vermin, savages.  General Wood summed up the operating ethic in a report from Manila, “They will probably have to be exterminated.”[2]

Why must we remember such sordid and ghastly events of the past?  Because there is no healing possible without telling the truth of these events.  That is the only path to healing.  In our remembrance is the grace of costly alternatives.

Incidentally, I wondered as I made my way through this book, did any of these soldiers ever learn a counter narrative from their Sunday school teachers or the sermons they might have heard?  They certainly would not have found such in their history books, which to this day glorify American expansionism and whitewash its crimes.  I wonder, did ever an inkling of a costly alternative cross those soldier’s minds as they fired upon those hapless victims?

That we have this story is sheer unbounded grace, for its truth may someday set us free – get us to reconsider our role as a nation.  As my friend Ed Bacon was wont to say, “The truth will set you free, but first it will hurt like hell.”

As Amos concludes his short book of dire prophecy on a note of hope, “On that day I will raise up a booth for David that is fallen and repair its branches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, says the Lord who does this.”

 With repentance, this is “that day.”  With repentance, costly and saving alternatives spring to mind and heart.

“The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”  Amen

---

[1] Kim A. Wagne, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2024)/

[2] Op. cit., 86.

July 14, 2024
Proper 10

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13;
Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14:29

“Poor Choices and Costly Alternatives”

Early on in my ministry I encountered a woman with an excruciating tale of abuse.  No, not her.  Her daughter was being sexually abused by her father.  She told of having fled in the middle of the night while he was off carousing.  She and her daughter had holed up in a cheap motel.  As the long shadows of that night darkened her soul, she grew more and more desperate.

She, finally, in the wee hours of the morning decided to turn to God.  Her situation was so pitiful and desperate she reasoned that only God could help her.  She had no inner resources left.  She was running on empty.

She found the Gideon Bible in one of the drawers of the dresser and thought that if she just opened it, just opened it anywhere, God would provide an answer.  She laid it on the bed, opened it with a finger and put it to a passage on the facing page.  “They conspired to kill Paul,” it read.

Was this the message God meant for her, that maybe she should kill herself?  Fortunately, good sense prevailed and she did not heed that message.

We had a notice on our church at the door leading into the worship service, “We know you often talk with God – but probably not on your cell phone.  Please silence it before worship.”

So, how would you know if you had received a message from God?  In what manner might it have come? 

Have you ever known with absolute certainty that the message was directed to the core of your being from the creative force at the center of all existence?

This is the experience of Ezekiel.  He relates his commission from God in our lectionary reading:

“’O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.’  And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me.  He said to me, ‘Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day.  The descendants are impudent and stubborn.  I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’”

Two things here.  First the commission is absolute.  You SHALL say to them.  Second, it’s not going to be a walk in the park.  Ezekiel’s being sent to a tough crowd, dead set in their ways.  Obdurate and recalcitrant.

This is exactly the same crowd Jesus encounters, folks who could not believe that any saving message could come from their own midst.  Just us chickens here.  No one else.

This Jesus fellow?  How’s he so special?  Where did he get all this?  Don’t we know his family?  He’s just the carpenter’s son.  As Nathaniel asks in John’s gospel, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?”  His hometown folks could not accept that a redeeming message could come from their midst.  The result of his visit was bupkis.  Nothing!

“And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.  And he was amazed at their unbelief.”

“So, he then left and went among the villages teaching.  He sent the twelve out, two by two, giving them authority over unclean spirits.”  Travel lightly, he instructed them.

The twelve, who were they?  Just ordinary fishermen he encountered along his walk.  No impressive credentials, just plain folks.  As my mom would say, “Just us chickens.”  No one special.

Yesterday I delighted in watching the PBS special, “A Capital Fourth.”  Sure, it was an over-the-top celebration of America.  But it wasn’t all the pomp and circumstance, or the military hoo-ha that was the source of my pride.  It was the crowd.

This was a good, diverse cross section of America, “just us chickens” –average folks out having a good time together.  Yes, there were a few exceptional “chickens” present.  Present was one of the original “Rosie the Riveters” who put together bombers to defeat the forces of tyranny during WWII.  These Rosies were just ordinary people who answered the call to duty when it came.

These were the people who returned from work to tend “victory gardens” and save metal and rubber.  They watched over one another’s kids and supported good schools.  “Just us chickens.” 

And that’s who Jesus sends out to spread the good news.  Yes, there are a few folks who need to amend their ways, as we all do from time to time.  But the overwhelming message is that God is good and so is the life we are given to live.

Take a look at what some of us ordinary folks are called to do.  Most of us will raise up the next generation to be self-sufficient, caring adults.  No mean feat in these troubled times with rampant drugs and cell phone addiction while immersed in a culture where “greed is good.”  Most will be of a generous heart and hold to the norms of respect and honest dealings. 

Most of us, like those twelve Jesus set out on “Mission Impossible” come from rather ordinary backgrounds.

This past week we lost one of baseball’s greats, Willie Mays.  His background was rather ordinary.  He grew up in a mostly Black industrial town in Alabama, Westfield.  His parents, never married, separated when he was three.  He was subsequently raised by his father and two aunts, with a good foundation from his AME church.

When he was only five, he and his father would play catch out in the yard.  By high school, he was showing evidence of his mother’s athletic ability.  He signed his first professional contract with a Negro League team before he was out of high school at seventeen.  And you know the rest of the story – one of baseball’s greats.

His nickname, the “Say Hey Kid,” stuck early on from how he would greet his team mates.  After a few home runs for the New York Giants, one sports writer Jimmy Cannon, would write, “There goes the Say Hey Kid.”

His over-the-shoulder catch in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series is one of the most famous baseball plays of all time.  Known as “The Catch,” hundreds of young aspiring baseball players would grow up practicing “The Catch.”  Famous as he was, he was not above playing stick ball with kids of his old neighborhood on visits back home.

Just one of us chickens, who with a bit of talent and lot of hard work became a very notable chicken.  Just like Peter and John and some of the others Jesus sent out.  Just like you and me, sent out to do the best we can, making our witness where opportunity opens up.  In our families, in our jobs and in our free time.

Let me tell you another story of some very ordinary chickens doing an extraordinary thing.  Have you ever heard of the “Wide Awake” movement?  Neither had I.  It was a forgotten force for ending slavery and getting Lincoln elected president.[1]  Jon Grinspan, curator of political history at the Smithsonian Museum has dug deeply into the forgotten past to bring us an amazing story.  Read his book, Wide Awake.

The story begins with an episode of mob violence following the presentation of an abolitionist speaker in Wheeling, West Virginia.  The mob howled, “The speakers! The speakers!  The northern dogs! Let us have them!”  James Brisbin, one of the speakers, could hear the shouting and hissing.

His only hope was to get out of town unnoticed, to get across the Wheeling Bridge across the Ohio River back into Ohio.  During his presentation an angry crowd had grown outside the lecture hall.

As rain poured down and the carriage rocked on the uneven road, passing the plaza before the bridge leading to the Wheeling Island, a large crowd blocked the path.  Brisbin, clearly identified as a northerner by his clothing, his white hat and long brown hair, was clearly identifiable as an outsider.

He’d have to run for it.  No choice.

“Then Brisbin was out of the carriage, trying to move briskly but inconspicuously through the crowds.  But his outfit gave him away.  Just as he neared the great bridge’s iron toll gate, a hand yanked him by his long hair.  Another grasped his shawl.  Brisbin sprang forward, losing a fistful of hair and breaking his shawl’s fastener.  He wheeled halfway around and struck one of his pursuers in the face.  Then, certain he was going to die, dashed for the bridge.”[2]

As he pounded down the wooden planks, a strange sight emerged in his field of vision.  He slowly made out a squadron of men, dressed in black, eighty strong.  At their head, a veteran officer kept them in a tight martial column.  “Some held banners with their stark symbol: an open and unblinking eye.”  Many held torches and some, revolvers.  These were the Wide Awakes.

This was a sight never before seen in American politics.

Later Brisbin would tell his Virginia hosts that he had marched into Wheeling with these “Wide Awakes and I would return with them dead or alive.”[3]

Who were these men?  And why do we know so little about their movement.  Most likely, they have escaped the pages of history because we write about the giants of our national story.  None of those assembled that night were notable.  The Wide Awakes were a grass roots phenomenon founded by a group of tailors on the spur of the moment. Their original purpose was to protect abolitionist speakers.  It would soon mushroom into hundreds of chapters with millions of adherents in most cities across the nation.  Just ordinary folks, livery stable boys, store clerks, handymen, farm laborers and assorted others.  Just us chickens, no one special.  Yet, they became one of the major forces propelling Lincoln to the presidency.  They were bound and determined that a group of some 600,000 slave holders in the South would not seal the fate of the American promise.  Read the book, Wide Awake, it’s a most amazing story.

Just average folks, much like those gathered out on the National Mall this past Fourth of July, doing their best to be good citizens and watch out for their neighbors, raise decent kids.  Much like those simple fishermen sent out to proclaim a new day of hope.  “Now is the moment of salvation.”  Stand on your feet and announce it to the hills and hollers, countryside and city: “God is doing a new thing.”  Join in.  This is our moment.  Yes, just us chickens.  We will save this democracy.  “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Amen.

---

[1] Jon Grinspan, Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and spurred the Civil War (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024).

[2] Op. cit., x.

[3] Ibid.

July 7, 2024
Propers 9

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Ezekiel 2:1-5; Psalm 123;
2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

“Just Us Chickens”

One of my favorite films is “Blues Brothers,” released in 1980.  It featured a star-studded cast of cameo performances.

The film’s plot centers around the tale of redemption of two paroled convicts Jake, played by John Belushi, and his brother Elwood, played by Dan Aykroyd.

The Mother Superior of the orphanage in which they were raised sets the two out on a “Mission from God” to raise funds to save it from foreclosure.  It is a madcap adventure involving neo-Nazis and a frantic and relentless police chase throughout.  It featured cameo performances by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker and Cab Calloway, among others.

One of my favorite performances is by Aretha Franklin, “Queen of Soul,” as she belts out the crowd-pleaser “R E S P E C T.”

Our two appointed lessons for the occasion of our Independence Day give substance to Franklin’s song.  They’re about an ethic of respect, which is meant to be the hallmark of our covenant with one another as Americans.  It is also meant to guide our nation in its affairs with the global community.

Recently, we lost a Giant of Justice, The Rev. James Lawson.  He was a good friend and colleague of mine when he served at Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles and I was serving that denomination.

More than that, he was one of the chief strategists and leading nonviolence theorist, working with Dr. M. L. King in the sixties.

Jim began his activism while still in high school in the 1940s.  He organized his first sit-in at a Massillon, Ohio, restaurant, a diner that refused to serve Black people.  The owner finally served him but told him never to return.[1]

Jim did not start out with pacifist leanings.  One day at school a white boy was taunting him with racial slurs and obscenities.  Jim hauled off and smacked him good.  While there were no repercussions at school, it was different when he arrived home and told his mother what had happened.

His father had always told him to defend himself, not so his mother. “Jimmy,” his mother scolded, “what good did that do?  There must be a better way.”  Her words stung like needles.  She refused to even look at him as she admonished his behavior.

Jim remembered thinking that his world “just sort of stopped.”  He heard himself saying in the depths of his being, “I will find that better way.”

While in college he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group committed to change through nonviolence.  He later refused to serve in the military during the Korean Conflict, serving 14 months in prison.

He was recruited by Dr. King to organize weekly workshops on nonviolent action while serving as a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee.  He trained many who would become leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In 1953 he joined a Methodist mission to India where he became aware of Ghandi’s nonviolence resistance methods.  While in India he came upon a newspaper article covering the Montgomery bus boycott.  He reports “shouting for joy.”  He returned from studying Gandhian methods of civil disobedience and enrolled in Oberlin College, later transferring to Vanderbilt’s divinity program in Nashville.

There he began holding workshops in nonviolence, soon organizing sit-ins at lunch counters.  He relied on role playing, teaching others how to ignore taunts and slurs; showing them how to use their bodies to absorb the blows of hate and use self-restraint.

He knew these students must be disciplined and highly organized.  Fellows must wear suit coats and ties, the women in dresses and heels.  They would occupy stools at the lunch counters in shifts and maintain eye contact with their assailants.

Sit-ins spread.  A “’non-violent army’ of about 500 strong, drawn from Fisk University and other local colleges – leaped into action occupying three downtown Nashville lunch counters.  Over the next three months more establishments were targeted, to include bus terminals and major department stores.”[2]

After a group of 81 students were attacked by a white mob, Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt, causing many faculty to resign.

Lawson remembers, “We had a very disciplined movement…with students as our primary energy.”

Three weeks later, an attorney who had been representing the demonstrators had his house bombed.  This triggered a yet larger march.  The boycott of white businesses spread.  Finally, the mayor issued an appeal to the white citizens of Nashville to end their discrimination.

Soon afterward, lunch counters began serving Black customers, reinforcing Lawson’s belief that nonviolent direct action was far more effective in ending Jim Crow than lawsuits which were seen as “’middle-class conventional, halfway efforts to deal with grave social injustice.”

SNCC continued to organize voter registration drives, becoming the militant arm of the movement.  After the first “Freedom Ride” was stopped by a white mob attacking the bus, a small group trained by Lawson, completed the trip.

Finally, TV coverage of white brutality and law enforcement violence did what all the lawsuits could not accomplish.  The revulsion they engendered throughout the nation caused President Johnson to move off dead center, ending his temporizing and silence.  Soon he would deliver a speech to Congress, closing with the famous line, “We shall overcome.”  Legislation was passed enshrining the right to vote and be free of discrimination in accommodations serving interstate travel – bus and rail lines, hotels and restaurants.  This legislation was the beginning of real democracy in America. 

This is a heritage worth celebrating.  Yes, much remains to be done.  The forces of racism continue to weaken and roll back this landmark civil rights legislation.  It’s like weeding in St. Francis Garden – our work to preserve these rights and others is never done.  The force for Evil is relentless, and so must we be as well.

Lawson was relentless to the end of his days, being arrested several times protesting the police killing of Eula Love in 1979 and for participating in demonstrations protesting US military involvement in El Salvador.  Later he risked a church trial for blessing the relationship of a lesbian couple in 2000.

He served as the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Leadership Conference.  He was an important voice in the founding of ICUJP, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.  Along with three former presidents of the United States, Jim delivered a most eloquent eulogy at the service for Representative John Lewis, exhorting Americans to “practice the politics of the preamble to the Constitution” as a way to honor Lewis’ life.

Respect was the loadstone of Jim’s journey, the center of his public and private ministry.

R E S P E C T – the only glue that will hold our nation together in these perilous times.  Our democracy hangs in the balance.  As the revolutionary slogan of 1776 cautioned, we must “hang together or we will hang separately.”

We serve a God who “executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.”  Remember, “you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  R E S P E C T is our praise, our way of “paying it forward.” 

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father, [your Mother], in heaven; for God makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”[3]  Try as we may, we poor, fallible humans will most often fall short.  But among us there are some exemplars who come close.  The Rev. Jim Lawson was one who did.  For his life and for his witness to a Living Gospel with feet, we say, “Thanks be to God.”  Amen.

---

[1] Elaine Woo, “Civil Rights Era’s ‘Leading Nonviolence Theorist: 1928 – 2924,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2024.  (This and the following are from that article.)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Matthew 5:45b, NRSV.

June 30, 2024
6th Sunday after Pentecost
Propers for Independence Day

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Psalm 145;
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”; Matthew 5:43-48 “E Pluribus Unum”

One activity still possible while in a hospital bed is reading.  I’ve consumed quite a few newspapers and periodicals.  In the science section on one weekly, I came across the limitations of our technology – the Google machine, to be specific.

If you had ever wondered how to keep the cheese on your pizza while eating it — use glue.  That was Google’s handy household hint.  Use glue.  I, suppose it might have been a little more helpful if it had suggested a brand.  Now, left to my own devices, I might have used duct tape in error.  Big mistake.

That story just goes to show that there are some things, like “common sense,” for instance, that humans will always be better at than AI or any other whiz-bang invention.

The coming wave of modern technology will astound but none of it will ever be a stand-in for a real father’s wisdom and love.

In Ezekiel we find the promise and wisdom of nourishment.  “Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out.  I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twig; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain.  On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar.  Under it every kind of bird will live…”

This is what a good father, what a good husband does, he nourishes productivity and coaxes from the land a good life for his family.  In short, brings home the bacon.

Before our children were born, given my family of origin’s poor dynamics, I had serious doubts about my ability to be a good father.  It wasn’t until I came across the title of a book on parenting that I began to loosen up a bit.  The book’s title?  “Good Enough.”  I realized that I didn’t have to get everything right, that I would make mistakes.  I just had to be good enough.

Mark’s gospel puts the teaching in another light.  “Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then he full grain in the head…’”

These past weeks, with the 80^th anniversary of the Landing at Normandy, we honored those men who were asked to rise to the defense of our civilized society.  They were asked to do something they had never been trained or wished to do, to kill another human being.

Many were fathers with established lives.  Growing up, most envisioned a future as having a good job, marrying their sweetheart, raising a family and contributing to their communities.  In the end, awaiting the golden years of retirement.  Unfortunately, such a dreamt of future was denied to many of our citizens of color at the time.

My father’s generation has been labeled the “Greatest Generation” by newscaster Tom Brokaw in his book by the same name.  After war was declared by Congress, hundreds of thousands flooded the recruiting stations to fight against the Axis Powers – Germany, Italy and Japan.

My father served in the dental corps in Okinawa.  Jai’s father served in Germany, running the motor pool.  He went in as a private and was discharged as a lieutenant with a battlefield commission.

Contrary, to the Former Guy who dodged the draft, these men were not “suckers.”  They were patriots, many of whom paid the ultimate price.  This from an unfit felon who had the audacity to ask his then-chief of staff John Kelly: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.  What was in it for them?” 

Have you no respect?  As a veteran myself, I highly resent the disparagement that felonious draft dodger casts on those who did serve.  But enough of him!  (Had to get that off my chest).

The story of WWII is a story of thousands of individual stories of men like our fathers, like your fathers, who had left shop and farm, left the comforts of home and family, to report for duty when called.  As I read of the first paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines, as I read of the men struggling up the cliffs to get off the killing grounds of those beaches through confusion, withering machine-gun fire and heavy bombardment, my eyes welled up with tears.  These were stories of sacrifice, bravery and solidarity with the people of Normandy.  These were our fathers.

In the early hours of June 6^th, just after midnight, thousands of U.S. paratroopers came drifting out of the skies near the village of Ste.-Mere-Eglise, France.  That was the first town to be liberated. 

One of its residents vividly recalls that day.  “One parachute floated right down into a trench dug in Georgette Flais’ backyard, where she huddled with her parents and a neighbor.  Attached to it was Cliff Maugham.  Ms. Flais refers to him as ‘our American.’”[1]

The German soldier billeted at her house ran out, pointing his rifle at the trench, threatening to shoot.  Ms. Flais’ father jumped up and begged the German not to shoot.  Amazingly, he agreed.  Soon afterward the German soldier realized that the war was over and surrendered to the American, who calmly handed out chewing gum, cigarettes and chocolate.

“The American then curled up for a nap,” she remembers.  Afterward, “we kissed him warmly goodbye.”  He then headed off at early light to the battle.  A lasting friendship was born that morning.[2]

By 1984 Ms. Flais was teaching Greek and Latin some 140 miles away when June 6^th rolled around.  She was watching TV when she caught the glimpse of an American soldier who had come back for the festivities.  “He was broader and wore a baseball hat instead of a helmet.  But he had the same laid-back demeanor.   She jumped in the car and rushed back to her childhood town.

“It was my American,” she said.  “We fell into one another’s arms.”[3]

Year after year, fewer veterans are able to return to Ste. Mere-Eglise.  Townspeople volunteer driving them around as they seek significant places attached to that dark early morning.  It may have been where they lost a friend, were wounded, or first landed.

For the town’s first annual celebration, while the war still raged in Europe, Maj. Gen. James Gavin sent over 30 American soldiers stationed in Germany for the event.

The bond between the citizens of that small town and their American visitors these days is palpable.  One photographer, Jacques Villain, who has been documenting the annual celebrations remarked, “There is a sense of welcome here that’s nothing like anything else in the region.”

In the motion picture, “The Longest Day,” one memorable scene depicts the American paratrooper, John Steele, who had the misfortune of getting hung-up on the pinnacle of the church’s steeple.  Today, a mannequin of Mr. Steele hangs from that church steeple.

This is what our fathers did and endured for a cause greater than themselves, a cause every bit as prone to failure as a farmer’s labors.

Before the day of the battle, Gen. Eisenhower had written two letters – one in case of total disaster and the other in case of success.  Until the end of that day, he didn’t know which he would be releasing to the news media.

I remember vaguely the day my father returned from the war.  Around the house things were awkward and uncomfortable.  He tried to be a good father and I had no idea of the inner demons that pulled at his soul.

One event I still remember, years after his return, was a vacation trip we took to Ensenada, Mexico.  I was a reluctant camper because it was over my birthday.  I must have been ten or eleven.

My mother had asked me what I might like to do for my birthday.  After thinking a minute, my mind lit up with an idea.  I had remembered seeing all the fishing boats tied up at the docks as we drove through town.  “Fishing,” I exclaimed.  “I want to go fishing.”

I had no idea that my dad got terribly seasick.  As the boat pulled off into the open ocean, I remember him telling me at the rail, “Don’t look down at the water; look at the horizon – that way you won’t get seasick.”

I had all kinds of help from the crewmembers who took me under their wing, baiting my hook and helping me pull in fish after fish.  I think they were seabass.  Dad had gone down to the cabin to rest, not feeling well.

When we got back to shore, I ran up the gangplank with a crewmember behind me hauling my gunnysack full of fish.  Dad staggered up, looking three shades of green.  I exclaimed to my mother, this was the greatest birthday ever, but Dad looked down at the water and got sick.

On the way back to our rented cottage we passed several run-down shacks.  Dad stopped the car and gave away most of my fish.  When I objected, he said that those people needed them more than we did.  A lesson I never forgot.

As we celebrate Father’s Day today, these men in our lives who sacrificed and nurtured us – they are tokens of God’s grace.  They protect, guide and support us through infancy and the rest of our lives.  Like God’s promise in Ezekiel, they are sacramental representations of generativity proclaimed to a desolate Israel by a gracious God.

Indeed, God will take a twig and “plant it on a lofty mountain where it will produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar.”  That twig is a Father’s love. That is exactly a good father’s hope for his children.

We are the soil on which their guidance, hopes and dreams are scattered, fed by their care and wisdom, and today we celebrate the fathers who have been the sacramental presence of such unbounded love – most, not perfect, but “good enough.”   They have loved us from the first and to the end.  For that gift of grace, we say, “Thanks be to God.”  Amen.

---

[1] Catherine Porter, “First Town Liberated by the Allies Still Remembers, With Gusto,” New York Times, June 8, 2024

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

June 16, 2024
4th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 6

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92:1-4,11-14;
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17; Mark 4:26-34 “We Plow the Fields and Scatter the Good Seed on the Land”

It was late in the day.  Folks were tired and getting cranky.  It was the second day of our church convention in Juneau.  Many of us could barely keep our eyelids propped open.  This is when Fr. Bob decided to bring up — and go on and on about — an obscure clause in the Nicene Creed.  Whether the Spirit is descendent through God, the Father only, or through both Father and Son – what is known as the filioque clause implying that the Son is co-equal with the Father.

It was this language that was at the root of the separation between Western and Eastern Christianity.

Now, I ask you; isn’t this your most pressing concern?  With a world in tatters and with rents and grocery prices soaring towards the stratosphere – and this is what we’re going to use our time on?  Really???

After ten minutes of Fr. Bob’s monologue, our convention secretary, Holly, had had enough.  Right then and there, she interrupted his speechifying and blurted out in a loud enough voice for all to hear, “Bob, put a sock in it!”  Whereupon the room broke out in scattered applause.  Apparently, she wasn’t the only one sick and tired of the whole thing.  Fr. Bob’s motion was summarily dismissed by a motion to table.  Yes, Bob – give it a rest.

Rest is what many of us need and yearn for in this go-go, 24/7, hyperactive society.  It is said that even God needed a rest after completing the six days of creation.

In our gospel lesson we encounter Jesus in a contentious argument with the religious authorities over the sabbath commandment to rest.  We quibble over obscure fine points of religious dogma and miss the entire meaning of it all.

Back when I ran our Emmaus Center church camp over in Kupreanof Island, right after lunch we would have “Crash Time.”  Everyone in their bunks.  No electronic games.  You could read or nap.  No talking.

As I herded folks to their beds, one of our young campers turned to me and remarked, “Crash time’s really for you, isn’t it?  Not us.”  I said he was exactly right, “Now, into your bunk.”  It always amazed me how many of our campers were sound asleep when the alarm sounded ending Crash Time.

The same with sabbath rest, it’s really for us.  A time to replenish.   Another benefit of running the Emmaus Center was a change-up in the pace of things.  We were dependent on the tides as to when we could come and go.  You might just as well as throw away your watch.

The Bible talks about two kinds of time – Chronos, as told by a clock; and Kairos, sometimes translated as the ‘fitting or due season.”  A qualitative sense of time, when time is ripe with possibility.

To truly enter sabbath rest is to enter Kairos time.  It’s that liminal space where the Holy Spirit has half-a-chance of getting ahold of us.  Of inspiring, of encouraging, of focusing us.

What is the purpose of it all, then?  It’s found in Micah 6.  “…and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

All obscure theological disputations and liturgical controversies pale in comparison.  They are but a clanging, noisy cymbal – of little consequence.  “Sound and fury signifying nothing.”   Got that, Fr. Bob?

All our theologizing should be about the good life God intends for all.  The sabbath is made for us.  For doing good.  Not about abstruse matters no one cares much about at 3:00 in the afternoon when we’re nodding off and everybody wants to go home.  It’s with this understanding that Jesus tells the palsied man, “Stretch out your hand.”

As John Wesley said, “If your heart is as my heart in, take my hand.”

This week, in the June issue of “Christian Century,” I came across an ad for a conference, “Hearing Christ: The Gospel for an Exhausted World.”  Many clergy I know are feeling some sense of exhaustion: trying to make budgets work with unmet overhead expenses, diminishing Sunday attendance, more deaths than baptisms.

Unfortunately, most of us clergy, when things are not going well, feel that the only solution is to work harder.  More ideas, more meetings.  More exhaustion and more burn-out.

It’s the same with our natural world – it’s coming close to exhaustion.   It may well be time to give Mother Nature a rest.  We’ve imposed far too great a burden on her.

There on the front page of the Los Angeles Times a while ago was a deep-sea picture of a fifty-five-gallon drum oozing some of the nastiest stuff around.  DDT – toxins we thought we had gotten rid of years ago.  Now, these zombie chemicals were coming after us.[1]

Decades ago, hundreds of tons of DDT were disposed of by dumping them into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California.  Out of sight, out of mind – right?  Well, like the Terminator, they’re back again.

Are you up for a refresher course in oceanography?  You may remember, our former Presiding Bishop, the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, has her PhD in oceanography.

This will be a “deep dive” – pun intended, so fasten your seat belt.

When scientists began collecting, dissecting and analyzing, one particular fish, the myctophids, also known as lanternfish, caused much concern because they migrate from the depths to the surface and travel great distances.  Moreover, these little critters make up “roughly sixty-five percent of all deep-sea biomass on Earth.”[2] 

They’re among the most abundant creatures on the planet.  Yeah, I’ve never heard of them either.

“The findings have been sobering: Wherever they looked, they found DDT. Even the ‘control’ samples they tried to collect — as a way to compare what a normal fish sample farther away from the known dumping area might look like — ended up riddled with DDT.”[3]

To boot, this toxin has traveled right up the food chain.  It’s now showing up in “dolphins, and coastal-feeding condors (and a recent study by another team even connected an aggressive cancer in sea lions to DDT).”[4]

Oh, did I mention all the other nasty stuff the scientists found – hundreds of tons of discarded munitions left over from WW II?  And don’t forget the ubiquitous “forever chemicals” and tons of microplastics.

Indeed, Give It a Rest!  And clean up this mess. 

What can one do?  Plenty!

Become informed.  Every day follow your browser to a science web site.  I highly recommend “Science Daily.”  It’s free and has a multitude of peer-reviewed articles on health and the environment.   Only takes a few minutes of our time.

Read the “Science News” section of the NY Times.  A digital subscription costs little.

Bring up the topic with friends and family.  The ignorant say “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”  No!  What we collectively don’t know is killing the planet.

Engage in what my friend, Sister Simone Campbell – head Nun on the Bus – calls “check-out line evangelism.”  Ask those waiting with you at the grocery store what they think about the legacy we are leaving to their children and grandchildren.  Encourage even small, baby steps – for they often lead to more significant action.

March!  In my day an entire generation of young people put an end to a ruinous war in Vietnam.  It’s time to strap on your shoes for a healthy planet.  As Rabbi Beerman was fond of saying, “My marching feet are my prayers.”

And while you’re getting your sneakers on, think about marching for a ceasefire in Gaza.  That war is devastating our environment every bit as much as the worst pollutant.  Time to cut off the money.  Time to cut off the weapons.  As we proclaimed in the sixties, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” 

Most importantly, vote for candidates who share your concern for the planet.  Unfortunately, too many politicians of both major parties are owned “lock, stock and barrel” by our vulture capitalist system of greed.  Do your research, see where their major funding is coming from.  That, too, only takes a bit of your time.

Thomas Jefferson warned us that only an informed citizenry can save democracy — and also the planet.

Use your sabbath time to do good – to remember that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof – from the heavens above to the waters below.”  We’re standing on Holy Ground.   Let’s take off our shoes and Give it a Rest.  Amen.

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[1] Rosanna Xia, “’Nothing is Untouched’: DDT found in deep-sea fish raises troubling concerns for food web,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2024.

[2] Op. cit.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

June 2, 2024
2^nd Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 4

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47;
Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53 “Give it a Rest

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I ran my family’s construction and real estate company.  At first, I took over the bookkeeping from my mom.  I converted it from a paper-and-pencil system to Quickbooks.  That meant the first purchase of an up-to-date computer.  

After my father passed, I got my general contractor’s license.  Among our various projects were three houses we remodeled at Lake Arrowhead.  It was quite a drive up there, bscott@livingchurch.org but I made it several times a week to keep track of the progress and arrange for inspections.

One day, early on, I showed up at the site of a house we had gutted and were completely remodeling.  It was right on the golf course lake with a turret and waterfall we had put in.  As I neared the job site, I heard no hammers or saws.  I found the crew just standing around.

When I asked them why, the foreman Paulo explained that they were waiting for materials to arrive.

I told them that I didn’t have a pay category for “standing around.”  Further, there’s not a construction site that doesn’t need picking up and swept up.  “Let’s get to work.”  They got the hint and brooms and dustpans were engaged.  By the time the lumber arrived the job site looked well-tended.

In the Book of Acts, we have a similar story of standing around.

Of course, the disciples might rightly have cause to be staring into the clouds if this is how the story actually happened.  You would too.

However it unfolded, the purpose of this account was to say that the gracious reality of Jesus could no longer constrained to time and place, but, as the Risen Christ let loose in all creation.

Luke concludes his gospel with the charge to Jesus’ followers: “You are witnesses of these things.  And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

The reality of this glorious story is to proclaim that we, indeed, have been clothed in power, divine power.  In the Risen Christ we are given agency – agency to participate in building the Beloved Community where all count, all are valued.  That means that I count!  This is a saving story with each invited to be a “cooperator with God.”

A long while ago, I was sharing my rudimentary understanding of this story, leading from Creation through Abraham and Sarah to the prophets and finally to Jesus.  And the marvel of it all, here was I.  Also, a part of the story.  That revelation was the Christmas present I received that year.  Our campus pastor asked if I might share that revelation at our Christmas meeting that coming week.  I did – my first homily, if you could call it that.  It wasn’t that great, as I remember it.

So let me attempt a reprise on my thoughts on the glorious heritage into which we are enfolded in Christ.

I find myself blessed to be a part of a culture informed by the “better angels” of this saga – lives infused with purpose and meaning beyond our stunted selves – a greater story drawing us into that reality we call Christ.

We sing an Easter hymn with the line, “Christ whose glory fills the skies.”  That’s wonderful, sublime poetry, but I am more concerned that this glory fills the hopes and promise of all here who below on earth do dwell.

It’s about the humility to be thankful to only play a small, mostly insignificant role.  Take making amends.

I opened my newspaper from my veterans’ organization, “Vietnam Veterans Against the War” this week and there on the front page was an article on the library and learning center sponsored and built by our organization.

One of our Vietnamese partners wrote:  “Thanks to the Vietnam Veterans Against the War grant, we are now building a library at An Nghia…The kids are all over the place, excited by the prospect of the new VVAW library sponsored by an American NGO.”[1]

This, where once we had carpet bombed the entire province, killing thousands of men, women and children.  Amends, allowing our two peoples to see and honor the humanity in one another.  Christ, whose glory fills the hearts of us, his flawed followers – is a more glorious story of making amends and of forgiveness.

Christ whose glory fills the aspirations of the shoved-out and pushed aside.  It’s a glorious thing when these folks realize their God-given power from on high.  Or from deep within.

One of the books I had ordered as a possible Lenten study book this year, Sacred Belonging by Kat Armas caught my attention from the stack of books on my desk a little while ago.

Kat is a “recovering Evangelical,” as I would term it.  She has found in reading the Scripture with fresh eyes and heart, a path beyond the confines of the narrow, stultifying religiosity of her youth.

She recounts a seminal incident wherein she had confronted the senior pastor of her church over the issue of women’s leadership in the community of faith, an eye-opening moment.[2]

Her pastor had asked for a meeting over the matter of her “role” and “place” in the congregation.  Apparently, he was unable to affirm her full humanity as a Cuban woman.

He had been telling the congregation that she was “unsubmissive” because she had gathered with other women in the church for Bible study without his permission.

In fear and trembling, not trusting in her own abilities, a “Spirit came over me.”  Right there in the coffee shop, in front of God and everyone, Kat opened her Bible to Matthew 28 and slammed it down hard on the table.  She now had everyone’s attention. Reading, she added, “All authority has been given to Jesus, NOT you.”

That very day she realized her empowerment by the Spirit.  A most liberating moment.  Christ’s glory filled all of Kat’s being brim-full, from her tippy toes to the crown of her head. 

Kat has since grown in stature as a renowned author and Biblical Scholar where she highlights the stories of women of color, known for her “fierce truth-telling and compelling story-sharing,” frequently writing for Sojourners Magazine among others.

That’s the work we’re given to.  So, let’s get busy.  Christ’s glory is spread all abroad that the likes of you and me are given our place and assignments in his glory here on earth, trusting in Power from On High – and from Deep Within.  What we do and who we are matters.  Matters to God and to one another.

By the way, I rejoice that the United Methodists have recently extended an invitation to us Episcopalians to heal the breach between us which opened over two hundred years ago when Bishop Seabury refused to recognize Francis Asbury’s consecration for work as bishop among the people called Methodists.

I close with Fr. John Wesley’s admonition to his followers:

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

That’s our charge.  You’ve got the vision.  You’ve got the power.  Let’s get to work.  Glory awaits!  Amen.

---

[1] Khoi Tran, “New VVAW Library and Learning Center,” The Veteran, Spring 2023.

[2] Kat Armas, Sacred Belonging: a 40-Day Devotional on the Liberating Heart of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI, Brazos Press, 2023), 59-60.

May 12, 2024
Ascension Sunday

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47;
Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

“Get to Work”

Let me begin by saying that after a three-week bout of pneumonia and extended recovery here at home, it is a joy to my heart to be back again with you.  I rejoiced weekly in that period of convalescence over the reports I heard from you.

When I first came out of the fog in the Kaiser-Ontario Hospital, the first thought that came to my mind was, how am I going to get a sermon done for this Sunday?  Then the reality of my hospital bed hit – there’s no way in God’s green earth I would be in any shape to be in the pulpit that coming Sunday.

Shortly, only perhaps a half an hour later, Faith called.  I fumbled through the blankets to find my phone.  When I expressed my concern, she cheerfully responded, “Don’t worry, Rev. Forney, we’ve got six years of your sermons on file here.  One will work.”  And, it did.  Barbara read it.  Ellen made sure the altar was properly set up. Deacon Pat officiated at Deacon’s Mass.  Joseph as acolyte ensured that things went smoothly.  Beth stepped up to provide the music.  Faith made sure the welcome and announcements were read, and you all showed up and carried on splendidly.  And during that week, you oversaw the planting of forty donated bareroot fruit trees in the orchard area of the church grounds.  Fresh fruit in two years for our food distribution program.  A Resurrection People you are indeed!

Shortly after, Christopher arrived on the scene from Brooklyn, New York, to stay with Jai to provide moral support and assist in the immediate needs of caring for me.  Bishop John stopped by my room with the Eucharist and prayer.  Many other visitors followed.

Last Friday, after a trip of several weeks seeing our vast and beautiful country, Christopher, Alexis, Brian the Cat, and Cookie the dog arrived in Claremont after a month-long cross-country road trip.  They had been in Texas to view the eclipse with friends, visited my old Army stomping ground in San Antonio to appreciate the River Walk, Carlsbad Caverns, and then the Grand Canyon – all sights Alexis had never seen.

They are now ensconced in a triplex in Loma Linda.  This past week they’ve been spending hours upon hours assembling Ikea furniture.  I say that if any marriage can survive that ordeal, it’s bound to last.  To boot, Christopher has volunteered during their stay there while the condo in Anaheim is under renovation, to teach English as a second language here at St. Francis for adults in the evenings – a task for which he’s uniquely gifted.  Alexis will finish our church’s website after they settle in and she returns from a brief visit back to New York to be with family and assist an ailing mother. 

Life is good, and it’s all about Love.  All Joy.

This is the bond of care and concern, sacrifice for the good of one another that is at the heart of John’s gospel. It’s his understanding of the core of the faith.  “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”

And from the same community of faith comes the First Letter of John.  “God is Love and those who abide in Love abide in God, and God abides in them…”[1]

This Love is sacramental, which is to say it finds visible tokens of expression in our daily lives.

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my Love, just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his Love.”

You know these commandments from Jesus reply to an obnoxious lawyer who was testing him in Matthew’s gospel.  Jesus’ reply? — quoting the Torah from Deuteronomy – “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  You know these commandments.  “On these two hang all the Law and the Prophets.”[2]

And the purpose of these teachings?  “I have said these things to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” [3]

Unfortunately, much of the religion that far too many have grown up with was legalistic and punitive – about avoiding damnation and hell-fire.  Toxic.

Far too many have rejected faith as a life-affirming option due to the trauma they bear, often for their remaining days.

I think of my friend in basic training some fifty years ago; he had only a negative understanding of Christianity.  As I was a conscientious objector being trained as a medic in the Army, so were all those in our company,

D-3.  Most were Seventh-Day Adventists, who got the designation automatically along with a few Jehovah’s Witnesses adherents.  And some of us were standard brand Protestants.  Maybe one or two Roman Catholics. 

Then, there was Holderbaum, a Buddhist.  When I asked him, with his last name, how was it that he was Buddhist, he responded: “Well I knew that I wasn’t a Protestant because they can’t drink, have sex or go to movies.  Or have fun.  I knew I wasn’t a Catholic because I didn’t believe in the Pope.  So, that must have left Buddhist.”  So, a Buddhist monk led him through filling out his application for conscientious objector status.  In any case, like me, he was against killing people in the Vietnam War.

The purpose of the faith in Christ is to experience Joy.  Teilhard de Chardin somewhere, I remember, said that “Joy is the most profound evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit.” 

The faith is not about worrying about God’s wrath, it’s about entering into the blessedness of a way of life that affirms all creation, including oneself.  St. Augustine put it this way: “Love God and do what you will,” for those who truly are centered in God will naturally do that which is life affirming.  They can’t help it.

As Mel White wrote in his book, fear leads to “religion gone bad.”[4]  In the opening preface he recounts the gristly torture and murder of a young man solely because he was gay. 

The reason the perpetrators gave for their crime?  “I had to obey God’s law rather than man’s law.  I didn’t want to do this.  I felt I was supposed to…I have followed a higher law…My brother and I are incarcerated for our work of cleansing a sick society…I just plan to defend myself from the Scriptures.”  [5]

All in the name of a perverted and blasphemous version of the Christian faith.  Definitely NOT what Jesus lived and preached.  Definitely, religion gone bad!

Deeply grounded faith in and through the Jesus Movement brings not only Joy but amazing acts of courage.  Acts one might think to be unlikely until the moment arises. 

I think back to my first church I served fifty years ago out in the high desert off Hwy. 395 in Inyokern.  Our lay leader, Bill White, once told me a most amazing story of his father who was a Methodist pastor in Florida.

It was in the time of the sixties, and Bill’s father had begun thinking about how his all-white congregation might learn about their Black neighbors across town.  He thought a girls children’s choir should be pretty non-threatening.  Wrong!

The children arrived at his father’s church that Saturday afternoon to rehearse and spend the night before Sunday’s service.  Around 9:00 PM a group of hostile whites began to gather at the church – many of whom were armed.  Suspecting there might be trouble, Bill’s dad had decided to spend the night at the church with the girls and their chaperones.

When he heard the shouts and looked outside to see the crowd with their torches and weapons, Bill’s dad went outside to meet the gathering, now some fifty in number.  One fellow, holding a shotgun, demanded, “I want you to send those girls outside now.”  To which Bill’s father responded, “If you want those kids, you going to have to come through me.”

A long silence was followed by some scuffling of feet as some of the mob began to melt away.  And then more.  More silence and some whispers as even more left.  Finally, the guy with the shotgun lowered it, shamefacedly turned and left also.

This is the sort of courage his faith gave him.  The next day, those kids gave a marvelous performance, singing their two anthems.  They were not the wiser as to what had transpired the evening before.  The courage of that moment and the joy of that children’s choir lives on through the ages in the retelling.  It’s the sacramental presence of God’s Grace.

It was with a most joyful heart that Bill recounted this event to me.  When I ran an ecumenical fair housing program in the San Gabriel Valley, this was the same joy I would witness as our fair housing volunteers returned after having secured a rental apartment for a prospective tenant of color from a hostile owner or manager – an act of courage to be sure.  Like the anthem proclaims, “There’ll be Joy in the Morning” — for every day holds the promise of Easter Joy.  That’s sort of our thing as members of the Jesus Movement.

It has been said that there are two, and only two, most important days in your life: the day you were born and the day you figured out why.  All the rest flows from the “why,” and living in to that realization usually takes a lifetime.  The novelist Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, writes, “There are a thousand reasons to live this life; every one of them is sufficient.”  Most of us grow into that understanding.

I close with my favorite quote from James Baldwin from his essay, “Nothing Personal”:

         For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; The earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.  The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.[6]

In this duty, and yes, in the courage, is divine Joy — a doorway to the eternal.  Amen.

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[1] 1 John 4:15b, NRSV.

[2] Matthew 22:37-40, NRSV.

[3] John 15:11, NRSV.

[4] Mel White, Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), xiii – xiv.

[5] Ibid.

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

May 5, 2024
6 Easter

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98;
1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17 “God is Love”

Food is basic.  Not only is it the staple of life, it is the culinary glue that binds cultures together.  It is warm memories of satiation.  It defines a culture. It is fellowship around the table, or, in some cases around the campfire.  In short, life.

“What’s for dinner,” usually the first words out of my mouth as a boy returning from late afternoon play when the streetlights came on.

Many Americans who live in my neighborhood, have never questioned its availability.  They’ve never known hunger.  Not real hunger.  Not starvation.

We may have had moments of stomach-growling hunger.  Like the time our Boy Scout troop went to a big area-wide jamboree near San Diego.

The event was held on a huge military base.  Each patrol was to spend weeks ahead of the event preparing.  Unfortunately, upon joining the troop I was placed in a patrol with the least competent leader, a young boy a couple of ranks above “tenderfoot.”

And his parents didn’t sit in on our meetings to see if we were attending to all the necessary stuff.  Like, maybe a balanced diet and sufficient food for the week of the camp-out.

When it came time to cook our first evening meal, we had already each packaged what was called “campfire stew.”  That went fine.  By the second meal things went downhill from there.  No one got the fire ready.  They had not even gathered sufficient firewood.

A kid the patrol leader sent out to gather firewood came back over an hour later, only to announce that he didn’t find any snakes.  James was so fixated on catching snakes, snake obsessed, that he had forgotten what he’d been sent out for.  All the while, there was wood lying all around our camp!  Snakes, for the love of Pete!  By this time our stomachs were growling.  Disgruntlement ruled the campsite.

There was no time to cook the potatoes and carrots, so we ended up gnawing on them raw. 

In the middle of the night, two boys in our pack raided the food supply and ate the link sausages raw, so there were none the next morning. 

A most wonderful culinary week, indeed!  Yes, our patrol spent much of the week hungry, though a couple of others gave us some food out of pity.  And the scoutmaster told them to do it.

I totally get that a major complaint Moses had to face from his disgruntled band had to do with food.

“Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”

For their rebellion and grumbling, their failure to trust God, so the tradition goes, God sent a batch of poisonous snakes.  Such would have served James and his band of supposed wood gathers right.  But no snakes.

Incidentally, one of the advantages Robin Williams listed upon becoming an Episcopalian: no handling of dangerous serpents in church!  But I digress.

Back to Moses and his poisonous reptiles – the remedy, according to the story, was to affix the image of a bronze serpent on a pole and whoever had been bitten, upon gazing up at the image would be healed.

This is not some magical operation.  In gazing up at the image was the acknowledgement of the sin of mistrust of God’s providence and repentance.  That contrition is what brought healing.

John’s gospel draws on this story from Numbers to make a similar but slightly different point.

Jesus in John is “Revealer.”  As such, he opens a way of life that is eternal.  A way of life overflowing with blessing, with joy and purpose.  In John’s gospel, that blessing is expressed in various metaphors.  But, for our purpose, juxtaposed to the bad food story out in the desert wanderings of Moses’s people, I want us to think of the saying: “I am Bread.”

And what is this, Bread?  It is the nourishment of shalom, of humility, of justice, of forbearance and generosity.  It is life laid down that deeper life be lifted up.

Our Lenten journey is to trod the same path, that Christ be lifted up in us.  As is said, our lives may be the only Gospel some folks will ever encounter.  As Christ is lifted up in us, as Shalom is lifted up.  As Justice is lifted up.  As Humility is lifted up – indeed God’s desire for all to live together in harmony takes root.

The other day, grocery shopping at Stater Brothers, the woman bagging my purchases noticed I was having a bit of difficulty.  It was late in the afternoon and I wasn’t doing so well.  She was a middle-aged Black woman who had the most infectious smile and warm personality.  Robin was her name.

She asked me if she might help me take my groceries out to my car.  Not wanting to put her to any trouble, I demurred.  “No, thanks, I can get them.”  She persisted and said she would just go out with me to take my cart back.  Actually, she helped me get them all into the back seat. 

She was an absolute joy that brightened up my entire day.  In her, Christ was definitely lifted up, and I was refreshed just like Moses’s snake-bitten followers.  I was so moved, I had a difficult time, through tears of gratitude telling Jai about her when I got home.  Lifted up Christ was, in this delightful woman.

Lifted up, not as dogma or ritual, not as doctrine, but brought to life, present-day, in the warm-blooded living flesh of those who walk the Way.  The only version of the Gospel that really counts in the end.  That all who follow this Way might have Life Abundant, a small taste of eternity.

This is the True Bread, Wonder Bread, served up, baked fresh and steaming warm every day by those in the Jesus Movement.  No snakes here!  (Not even in the grass).  The same Bread served up on the path from Nazareth all the way down to Golgotha, where it was elevated for all to behold.  A Way of Life that all might be made whole.

As the question goes, “You may claim the mantle, ‘Christian,’ but would your church treasurer know it?”  Would your checkbook, credit card, know it?  Or your appointment calendar?

Unfortunately, around the world, most journeys do not conclude in such happiness as mine did this last afternoon.  As most of ours do.

Dr. Nick Maynard tells of the torn bodies of those children arriving at the few remaining hospitals that have not yet been totally destroyed in Gaza.  Yes, there is unspeakable tragedy all about.

The wilderness abounds with vipers and other deadly creatures – mostly humans.  And while we have agency, the ability to bring change, to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice, we have our limitations.

IN THE MEANTIME, IN THE MEANTIME — if Christ be lifted up, there is Bread for the Journey.  Cause for great rejoicing along the way.  Spend a few moments in spiritual daydreaming before getting out of bed.  It is quite likely, if Christ be lifted up in those seconds, you too will be overcome by an “attitude of gratitude,” joy beyond measure.  Yes, REJOICE!

I have a wonderful wife who is adapting to my infirmities’, warm and toasty at night, and who cares for me, and I for her.  Yes, again I say REJOICE.  Love for fifty-seven years.  REJOICE!

Our youngest son was named Christopher, meaning Christ-bearer.  I am flooded with thankfulness when I witness the tender care he shows for his new wife Alexis, and the love she gives back to him.  And the joy this couple brings to friends and family.  That they are moving back here to be with us is a joy beyond measure.  Yes, REJOICE!

Considering our team working on House of Hope in both West Virginia and San Bernardino, I am flooded with gratitude for their efforts and personal support.  Especially, Jim and Verity.  They’re the “Secret Sauce.”  The venomous bites of the sidewinder of delay and toxic politicians who don’t give a rip, the Risen Christ in this team will overcome.

Though I’m told that dialysis is much, much sooner than I had hoped, and a big pain in the patoot, I’ll have plenty of time to read and write during it all.  Another sting of the adder that the present-day Christ lifted up in my heart will allow me to transcend.

The other night I had a dream of wandering through some crowded urban landscape, coming to a dead end of this dirt road.  When I looked to my right and took another byway, I had arrived at an ocean bay, a verdant marsh with a golden sun slowly setting on the horizon.

A sign, that when it’s my time to depart, I might hear, I pray, those words, “Servant, well done.”  Christ lifted up — cause for ultimate rejoicing at the end-time feast.   Always, that I might have been Bread for another’s Journey.  Amen.

March 3, 2024
4 Lent
Laetare Sunday – the Pink Sunday

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22;
Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

“What’s for Dinner?”

This last weekend after church, I drove over to Fullerton for a meeting hosted by CAIR – Council on American Islamic Relations.  I was surprised by two things: the size of the crowd, and that it included a fair number of Christian allies.

I was also impressed by the quality of the three speakers.  One of which was a woman activist from Brooklyn, Linda Sarsour.  If ever there was a woman on fire, she was it!

The passion out of which she spoke was the result of having over seventy members of her extended family killed these past several weeks in Gaza.  “This is a genocide we are witnessing.  A genocide bought and paid for with our tax dollars.  This is not something long ago in a history book.  It’s happening now.  It’s being reported live by the people being killed.  Daily!”

As I took my morning pills this past Friday with a refreshing glass of cold ice water, my mind flashed to the images of those dying of thirst and hunger as the result of the Israeli policy of collective punishment of the people of Gaza.

Today, in our readings we turn to what are known as the Ten Commandments.  Not the “ten suggestions,” as some of my secular friends would tag them.

Here is the reason we have this law code — to preserve the gift of freedom won for us from the hand of Pharoah.   In the text, God makes very clear to Moses and those who would come after, “You didn’t do this.  I DID!  I parted the waters and led you out.”

If you go whoring after other sources of meaning and salvation – false gods – you will lose it all.  You don’t need to steal, lie, covet, defame to have a good life.  Don’t screw this up. I’ve already given you everything you need – the freedom to enjoy the blessings of life in community with one another.  Don’t flush it down the toilet.  Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing.   In the words of that old spiritual, “Free at last.  Free at last.  Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.”

That is the order of God’s action.  First Grace, then Law.  The purpose of the Law is to “Keep our Eyes on the Prize.”  Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.

It’s easy to become distracted, to go off chasing rabbits.  Especially if you’re one who has attention deficit disorder as an adult.  Runs in my family big time.  When I get sidetracked, my friend Jim always reminds me, let’s keep the Main Thing the Main Thing – which is addiction recovery. 

Now concerning Gospel Action, the Main Thing for those in the Jesus Movement it’s building the Beloved Community.  That certainly begins with “the Least of These.”

You read of them every morning over coffee or tea.  You see them on your TV screens in your living rooms.  Right now, they’re in Gaza.

Linda Sarsour reported that her ten-year-old daughter every day – every single day – calls her congress representative before heading off to school to express her outrage at what we are doing to her people.

I felt guilt that I did not have my congresswoman Judy Chu’s number on my speed dial.  This young girl knows what the Main Thing is for her people.

Her mother’s book, We are Not Meant to be Bystanders,[1] is an incredible read.  It is the story of a life of consequence.  As Michelle Alexander, writing in the New York Times, commented, “If you’re wondering what kind of activism holds the potential to free us all, this book offers an answer.”

Linda is no more a bystander than Simon of Cyrene, compelled from the side of the road to carry Christ’s cross to Golgotha on Good Friday.  Each of us is likewise summoned to heft our cross, to engage a suffering world.

As I sat in that CAIR assembly, I thought, here are many Muslims bearing the Cross far, far better than many of us Christians soothed to sleep in a comforting land of plenty.  Lulled to sleep with entertainment and sumptuous meals.  A roof over our heads and gallons of cheap tap water.

Peace and quiet is not the Main Thing of our faith.  Have I mentioned “Necessary Trouble?”

In John’s telling, Jesus chases the money changers out of the temple early on in his ministry.  Making a bunch of money off people’s faith, he did not consider “The Main Thing.”  In fact, the Wrong Thing, it was.  This one incident would foreshadow Jesus’ entire journey to Golgotha in John’s telling of the story.  God’s definitely “a-gon-na trouble the water.”

For the Main Thing, read Micah,[2] read the bit in our gospels about God’s demands.  “And what does the Lord require?  Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.”  The Main Thing indeed!  Not burnt offerings.

This conflict with ensconced, comfortable, self-serving authorities – this conflict over the Main Thing was what led to the Cross.

I hope our main takeaway this Lenten season is an awareness of our mutuality.  As Dr. King was wont to say that all of us “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Do you remember the flack Elizabeth Warren got for telling a businessman that in fact, he didn’t build his company himself.  “You didn’t do this,” she insisted.

When he took umbrage, she persisted, “You didn’t provide the schooling that educated your workers.  You didn’t build the roads that transport your goods.  You didn’t enact the laws that provide for a level playing field for fair dealing.  YOU didn’t do this.  You relied on others.”

As a vet, I took strenuous exception to the Former Guy’s dismissal of the sacrifice that those troops had made as he visited our national cemetery at Arlington and later in France, just off the beach of Normandy. 

“What was in it for them?”  What did they get out of it but “dead?”  Utter foolishness as St. Paul would say.

Listen, Guy: what they got is something you will never understand; are incapable of understanding.  A free and liberated Europe.  I know of a ten-year-old girl who gets it.  A Muslim girl who hoists her Cross every morning before class!  She gets it.

As Alexei Navalny’s body was lowered in the ground this week, I thought: he understood the Main Thing.  He knew the point of living — a Russia free for all.  Led his people just like Moses.  Though he spent the last three hundred days of his life in solitary confinement in a Siberian prison, he died a free man.  The Main Thing.  Again, something the Former Guy just doesn’t get.

As we approach the climax of our Lenten journey, arriving at the foot of the Cross, we too behold that Man of Sorrows, one who kept the Main Thing the Main Thing the entire journey long. 

Have you stepped off the side of the road to help ease the load?  Might you also stay awake and pray with him in the dark night of the soul of this world? 

As the Gospel Freedom song proclaims, “Come and help me build a land where we all can live.”  That’s what a ten-year-old girl is doing.  Every morning! 

“There’ll be singing in that land.  Big gold bells a-ringing in that land.  Gonna ask my sister, come along with me.  If she says no, gonna go anyhow.  Gonna ask my brother, come along with me.  If he says no, gonna go anyhow.  We’re on our way to build a Freedom Land where we all can live.”  Amen

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[1] Linda Sarsour, We are not Here to be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance (New York: 37 INK, 2020).

[2] Micah 6:6-8.

March 3, 2024
3 Lent

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Exodus 20:1-7; Psalm 19;
1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

“Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing”