A comfort at memorial services for many is the 23rd Psalm. It speaks tenderly of God’s gracious intention for us all. It speaks to our deepest yearning for an existence that has meaning and significance.
Indeed, we have been granted a cornucopia of plenty. We have a planet that is just right for human habitation – in what scientists call the “Goldilocks Zone.” It abounds with fields of grain and lush forests of game. The seas team with a multitude of fish and clams, lobsters and squid.
Isaiah celebrates God’s gracious munificence.
“For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heart with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled. On this mountain the lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.”
Now that I have lost quite a bit of my taste – old age or COVID, I can’t say which – food does not have that much appeal, though somethings I can taste quite well, like coffee, spinach and beer.
One of my favorites has been lima bean soup and ham hocks. I learned to make this from my roommate’s mom who came from Texas. It was a favorite with Dan and myself.
So, back in the day when I was in medic training in the Army, we were out on bivouac for several days. What was served up at the end of a long, very hot slog through woods were K-rations. They came in a small olive-drab can and you heated up your selection over a small camp stove.
There were a number of choices and as I pawed through the box of them, I was delighted to find one that said lima beans and ham. Wow! I had hit the jackpot.
I heated up my can, and opened it to great disappointment. There, floating in a sea of grease was one, ONE lima bean.
The vendor of that product should have been hauled up before a firing squad, was my thought in that moment. Or at least sent to jail for fraud.
I delight in this lavish picture of the end-time feast. But we are the despoilers of this paradise. We have fouled our nest. We have turned that fabled feast into one lima floating in a sea of grease.
I worry most about what we are leaving my little grandson Luther. But the calamity will likely strike during the lifespan of my children.
I have previously mentioned the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC). Yeah, I didn’t expect anyone to remember.
Well, catastrophe is now upon us[1]. Perhaps in my lifetime. Certainly, in the lifespan of my children. Definitely while Luther is still alive.
Okay, what is it. Here’s the refresher. It is that circulating current that brings the warm Gulf Stream up along America’s east coast. Onward along Labrador and New Finland, splitting off to the east coast of Greenland. In bringing warm water to Europe, it keeps things seasonably warm, even in winter.
It then dives down to the ocean floor and cycles back to the Gulf of Mexico in an entire journey of some 1,000 years – yes, Mexico, not Gulf of America!
We are now discovering that this crucial ocean current is approaching a tipping point where it will slow substantially, or perhaps even shut down completely.
What happens next? Europe and northern Asia, Canada and Alaska will enter another ice age. Just as much of the northern climes of planet earth were covered by a mile or so in solid ice.
Not much commerce takes place under such conditions. And we will have a refugee crisis like none in historical memory. Such a disaster would undermine global food supplies, millions starving. In the breakdown of civil societies, only the meanest SOBs with the most guns would reign. Yes, millions of refugees – all coming to America. What will we do? Shoot them all at the border? If so, don’t get powder burns on your pinafore.
Like most natural phenomena, scientists cannot predict with any certainty. Scientists have been sounding the alarm for some 40 years, yet, since it seemed so far off, the political class has not listened.
The near-term effects, coming soon, will be drier summers, fueling more devastating wildfires. Diminishing food production and bringing more sudden winter storms with torrential rains and flooding. Yes, fouled our nest have we.
One lima bean floating in a sea of grease is a fitting metaphor for where we’re heading. This is not God’s intention.
But it’s not too late to avoid the worst. The Truth will be our salvation. It will set us free. But as my friend Ed Bacon is wont to say, “But first it will hurt like Hell.”
In our Advent study book for this year, we will be reading Dancing in the Darkness by Otis Moss III.[2] Otis is an African-American heading one of the most vibrant, mostly Black UCC congregations in Chicago. In his book Otis shares a letter he wrote to his young son. In part it reads:
“Dear Elijah,
“What shall I tell you?
“Shall I tell you that your rights are protected, and racism is a scourge now banished from society?
“Shall I tell you that in this country, you are entitled to act and live as any other teenage boy, to dance playfully with minor mischief, and to speak with a quick, immature tongue?
“Shall I tell you that your body is safe, your mind valued, your future free?
“If I tell you these things, my words will be perjury before God and an assault upon the memory of our ancestors. So today I must share a hard truth with you.”
Yes, hard truths. The same truths I must leave for my grandson Luther, for he, too, will not be valued as that other white child in his classroom, on his job application, in his college admission prospects, in his profession. Or on most any job.
Yet, that is not God’s intention for any child.
Some will say, well, what can we do? It’s all in God’s hands. And in some measure that is true. True because God’s hands are OUR hands.
We are blessed with reason and skill. We have agency, beginning with spiritual resilience. Most important, we have been granted a vision of what might be. A spiritual vision wherein all thrive. Where our planet has a chance of remaining habitable.
America may be traveling through a time of deep darkness. Climate denial. Racism and political violence. Thousands upon thousands living in the street, food insecure.
During such a time Otis Moss recounts in the darkness of the evening in his house he thought he heard a suspicious noise. Obama was running for president and a fear of racial violence was not unrealistic for a Black family.
He grabbed a baseball bat to confront an intruder. When he opened the door to his daughter’s room he found the source of the noise. His little girl was simply practicing for a ballet recital the next day. There, dancing in the darkness.
But the darkness had been in Otis. “The intruder was within himself. Caught in a cycle of worry and anger.”[3] He had allowed the darkness of that night to penetrate his soul.
Inspired by that moment, came a sermon based on Psalm 30. “You have turned my mourning into dancing.” That sermon became our Advent study book. Advent is a proclamation of Light coming into the darkness. Into our darkness that we might go dancing through the dark night of the soul. Moving imperceptibly, inexorably toward the Joy at a manger.
We are a part of that holy procession. We have agency as God’s hands and feet. God’s mind and heart. Agency! God-given spiritual power in Christ to make a difference.
I close with a thought from the great playwright August Wilson.
“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”[4] May we have the willingness to wrestle with the demons of this nation. The rife ignorance of our leadership, the racism, the denial of the destructiveness of our own history. May we have the willingness. Then, the better angels of America will sing a Hallelujah Chorus. And so will we. Maybe November 3rd? Dancing all the way to the polls. Amen.
[1] Alec Luhn, “Trouble at Sea: A crucial ocean current is at risk of shutting down. How close is this disaster and what happens next asks Alec Luhn” New Scientist, September 2, 2026.
[2] Otis Moss III, Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023).
[3] Op. Cit., the front cover flyleaf, as is the entirety of that story.
[4]Op. Cit., August Wilson, quoted in the introduction, p.1.
Where’s the ham?
October 11, 2026
Pentecost 20, Proper 23
“All Good Things”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 25:1-9; Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14
