Get to Work
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”
God is Love
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.
[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”
What’s for Dinner?
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?”
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
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
[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”
Followers, not Admirers
Back in the 60s, at the height of the Jesus Freak outbreak, all sorts of folks sported bumper stickers that read, “Honk if You Love Jesus.” Amid the cacophony of blaring horns, some wit came up with, “Tithe if You Love Jesus – Any Fool can Honk.”
As the Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, “Jesus wants followers, not admirers.” The writer of Luke’s gospel also addresses the discrepancy, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?”
In Mark, always to begin our Lenten journey, we read of Jesus temptations in the Wilderness. Thought to be a vast empty void, hostile to all life forms but the most dangerous. Our minds immediately jump to the seemingly endless Sahara Desert of Africa or the Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. Some 250,000 square miles of sand.
Spiritually, those in distress, those who find hope a fragile thing, will look inward to their interior soul. The mind, the heart, can be every bit as much a dangerous void. A wilderness.
The uniquely American temptation in whatever wilderness in which we find ourselves, I believe is our individualism. The belief that we have to go it alone and be reliant on no one and responsible to no one. Some evangelicals imagine Jesus as a John Wayne character, the paragon of a corrupting individualism.[1] Christ created in our own image. This twisted mentality is killing us and polluting our faith.
This isolation and perverted individualism is at the heart of addiction and much of our mental illness.
We can’t even have a Super Bowl celebration without mass carnage. Our minds fog over with the enormity of it all. To the point where it just blurs into a meaningless statistic. Unfortunately, those killed and injured are real people. Our friends and neighbors, children we knew.
America has become a deadly wilderness of mass slaughter, denial, and pay-to-play politics. A virtual shooting gallery.
Thank you, NRA and your bought-and-paid-for toadies in Congress! And on the Supreme Court! Thank you.
The results of insular thinking, our “rugged individualism,” were on full display last November 30, 2021, when an emotionally disturbed young man, Ethan Crumbly, shot up his high school in Oxford, Michigan.
His sociopathic mother’s response to his aberrant behavior? “You’ve got to learn not to get caught.” Only this? – Only this when he was discovered at school making disturbing posts on his social media page. Only this, Mom? Don’t get caught? Really?
She was too busy to be a parent. Lining up new assignations in her swinger lifestyle. The ultimate result of the Ayn Rand mentality. Just do “your own thing,” mom. Kids will take care of themselves. A deadly wilderness of too many emotionally empty households.
Ethan’s rampage was only one in a long list of mass school shootings. In the following years, 2022 and 2023, there was no let-up – 82 students killed in 2023. The highest number in a three-year span. This does not include the hundreds of others wounded. Then, add in all the teachers and other school staff gunned down.
These are not just mindless numbers, a statistic. These are friends and family.
One of the four dead was a young freshman, Hana St. Juliana. A beloved sister and teammate. She was a star student athlete on her girls’ basketball team.
“’We will never forget your kind heart, silly personality, and passion for the game. Since 6th grade camp you have stayed dedicated to Oxford Basketball, soaking in the game,’ the team wrote in a post one day after the shooting. ‘Last night was your high school debut. This season we play for you Hana.’”[2]
Nice sentiments. That, and some memories are all that’s left. And a lot of sorrow. And an emptiness as vast as an Asian desert.
It is into the interiority of such places, down from the beauty of Christ’s Transfiguration that we are urged, our Lenten pilgrimage. The temptation we face is to cocoon ourselves away from all such unpleasantness. Yes, a “Path of Sorrows” our “Via Dolorosa.”
We don’t want to hear about another mass shooting. Certainly, don’t want to hear of those young victims cut down in their prime, before any of their dreams had come to pass. We’re numbed.
Our politics are about as sick as our mental health. Another empty wilderness. And as deadly.
Our Bishop John recently posted that we have two old guys running for president. One sometimes garbles the facts. The other is unaware of the facts – and has now been seriously fined for massive business fraud. A whopping $350 million judgement against him. And his family business. In fact, they’re outta business in New York. America, is this the best we can do?
And how was it that eighty-one percent of white evangelicals supported this “libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith?”[3]
Putting this insurrectionist and his supporters back in office would be a travesty. A permanent stain on Betsy Ross’s “Grand Ole Flag.” It’s depressing. A political wilderness if ever there was one.
That he should now be romping to the nomination of his party, is an absurdity I cannot fathom. The valley of the shadow of death threatening our republic.
An evil of ignorance and indifference – of malfeasance and greed stalks our land. O Lord, we pray, lead us not into the temptation to stick our heads in this sand. And pretend it’s not happening.
While we cannot solve all the world’s problems, that doesn’t mean we just throw up our hands and let the devil take the hindmost.
This is where followers step up – those who are true disciples following the path blazed by our Lord through his Lenten journey to Golgotha and the Cross.
Here’s the story of one group of students who entered the wilderness of mental anguish — helping their peers who are struggling with suffocating loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Reaching out to those experiencing inner rage which sometimes results in the mass violence on our campuses across our nation.
It’s the national Yellow Tulip Project. Last year at one high school, some students disturbed by the onslaught of reports of campus violence, decided to do something. They were not going to passively sit back and allow mental distress to consume their school.
To commemorate Mental Health Awareness Week, a group at Sacopee Valley High School in Hiram, Maine, created what they called a “Hope Board.” Shaped like a huge yellow tulip in the lobby, it was soon covered with scraps of paper on which students had posted their hopes, dreams and aspirations – ranging from the mundane, for their team to do well in the playoffs – to the slightly more serious, passing a driving license exam.
Some hoped that they would be less angry and more hopeful. One wrote, “I hope people are kinder and more mature.”
The leadership of this effort is what, most of all, gives me some assurance that our nation might do more than just muddle through. It is these young people willing to enter the wilderness of mental anguish. To bear the Cross. These are the true followers of the Way of the Jesus Movement. See Matthew 25.
Meet Elana, National Director of social media for the Yellow Tulip movement. A young, African-American woman who is whip-smart and dedicated to the mission.
Elana relies on the power of storytelling to bring people together. With a BA in English, focusing on Creative Writing, from The City College of New York and a minor in journalism, she gets the word out.
Her specialty is in audience engagement for digital newsrooms to develop social strategies and create content that educates and inspires. Her goal is to motivate young people to care for their mental well-being so that they can thrive. She believes education, awareness and empathy will reach beyond the stigma of mental illness and bring people to get the needed help.
This is the sort of young person us older folks are looking for to step into our shoes — the sort who are true followers, not just admirers of some imagined ideal.
She has a deep interest in studying mental health and believes that sharing information and resources about mental wellness can help smash the stigmas about mental illness.
In the grand scheme of things, perhaps not a big deal. But it surely matters to these students and those helped. And their school. And it just might prevent some unforeseen tragedy.
It’s all about being followers in the Jesus Movement, not passive admirers. Don’t honk. Roll up your sleeves.
We are here but a moment. In the meantime, our summons to engage the Journey has been laid out in a poem by a Jesuit brother, Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked.”
“We are simply asked to make gentle our bruised world,
To be compassionate of all, including oneself.
Then in the time left over to repeat the ancient tale,
And go the way of God’s foolish ones.”[4] Amen.
[1] Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright Publishing Co., 2020).
[2] Harriet Sokmensuer, “A Football Player, Bowler, Freshman and an Artist: Remembering the Oxford School Shooting Victims 2 Years Later, People Magazine, November 30, 2023/
[3] Op. cit., dust jacket.
[4] Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked” as set to music by Jim Strathdee, “Light of the World,” Caliche Records, Ridgecrest, CA, 1982. Words copyright 1976 by Peter Byrne, S.J. Music by Jim Strathdee, copyright 1981.
February 18, 2024
1 Lent
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9;
1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-5
“Followers, not Admirers”
