Mostly Silence
In matters of the heart, when it comes to what deeply counts for the soul, Advent is mostly a season of Silence. Oh, there is much background noise, grey noise.
Like the traffic outside my hotel room in New York City at night – easily tuned out. A minor distraction.
Sometimes the news breaks through, but only a story which leads us into the deep silence of an unspoken prayer, maybe deep longing, perhaps a regret. This is the holy silence of Advent. If we truly are attuned to it.
I came home this last Sunday to a story of homelessness among college students.[1] I wasn’t aware of how many of our impoverished students are living in their cars in order to afford an education. In order to do better than their parents’ generation.
“Living in their cars, for God’s sake?” I thought. Is this the best we all can do for these students working sometimes two jobs and at night typing up their assignments at night in a van.
It was a story of a group of students unable to afford campus housing finding community in a campus parking lot, G11, at Cal Poly Humboldt in Northern California. Finding community until the school ordered them off campus.
The president of the college refused to meet with any of them, closing off any possible discussion of alternative solutions. “Just be gone – we don’t care where,” was the official message.
With this, my Advent silence was filled with deep shame. That we, the richest nation in the world, this is how we treat the “least of us?” Shame and sadness overcame me. The angel of Annunciation must be weeping. Our hearts are nowhere prepared to receive the Prince of Peace. “Love Divine” is far. With the author of Isaiah in today’s reading, our lives are rent with sorrow and longing.
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—as when[2] fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name know to your adversaries, so that nations might tremble at your presence!”
Silence. Waiting.
And in the meantime, we have much to answer for. We’ve made hash of our priorities and a mess of the planet.
The other day at our common meal at Pilgrim Place, our friend Helen Dwyer read for the noon meditation a poem by another of our Pilgrims, Renny Golden, of her hometown Chicago and its river. It is a tale of the deep stain we humans have left across the land.[3]
We’ve come with shovels, dynamite, and bulldozers. We’ve polluted with run-off oil from our streets, plastic bags and who-knows-what-else. We’ve dammed and drained until the fish are gone, and only a fool would now eat any pulled from the muck.
And from that river, it could be mostly any river in America, silence. And in our hearts, in our soul of souls, a silent yearning for what might have been. What once was. And if we have any humanity left at all – deep silence within.
“I spoke to the Chicago River today the way
I talk to God. Not begging. Grateful
as Potawatomi mothers dipping water gourds
“in dawn light, a nod to thank the river.
Who, what were you, I asked the river,
when you were tribal, pure, a companion?
“Silence, like God’s, not even a whisper.
We came with muskets, then shovels, then dynamite.
I asked forgiveness. The dog we kids let out
“near traffic. Its hind legs crippled.
This mutt river wounded with sewage,
oil, crop poison. Same sorrow.
Advent is of two messages – judgement, the need of repentance and the promise of restoration. The babe in the manger grows up, and, if we’re fortunate, so do we in our spirituality.
The words of Isaiah, the promise of End Time Reckoning – this is far beyond nasal chipmunks singing happy Winterfest songs.
In this life not every participant gets a gold medal just for showing up. To the degree we despoil God’s creation, we are all losers. There may be no do-overs. In the damage we do to one another, we are all losers. With tears of repentance and forgiveness, sometimes a do-over.
The ersatz spirituality of shopping mall speakers blaired across aisles stacked with Christmas specials is no substitute for the biblical Advent message folks will hopefully hear in many of our churches. If they have chosen wisely.
In his book, What is Vital in Religion, Harry Emmerson Fosdick relates the story of one man who has seen it all, one for whom the platitudes of an easy faith are an insult to the conscience and to the integrity of experience. I fear this fellow speaks for much of modernity:
“I don’t know what I believe, but I don’t believe all this God is love stuff. I have been in two world wars. I have been unemployed eighteen months on end. I have seen the Missus die of cancer. Now I am waiting for the atom bombs to fall. All that stuff about Jesus is no help.” [4]
The wanton slaughter of Palestinian civilians – women, children, the elderly — picks up pace again this morning. An eerie silence from piles of rubble until we hear the shrieks of horror and sirens.
Truly, the dark night of the soul. Silence shrouds our fears, the misery we nightly witness. Repentance is the only authentic response possible. The beginning of any authentic Advent journey.
These past weeks a friend, a former pastor of Downey First Christian Church, asked me to write a review for his recently published book, Acres of Oak.[5] The title is taken from a quip by the senior pastor of a church he briefly served as an associate, Pilgrim Congregational Church in Pomona, referring to the rows of empty pews in many of our churches. In his book, Pastor Rich narrates his story of his entering the ordained ministry and the congregations he has served,
Pilgrim Church is a very large edifice with a good number of Sunday school rooms, all built with the expectation that when the kids left the Sunday school door, they would enter the sanctuary door. Instead, they just migrated out the door, and shortly after, their parents followed.[6]
In his pilgrimage he has seen the mainline church become a mere vestige of what it once was in its former glory days. One congregation he served in San Gabriel, Mayflower Congregational, founded by three breakaway splinter groups grew to over 900 in the 1960s. Then with amazing rapidity the bottom fell out.
By the 1980s the membership had dropped some 600 members. In 1984 the church had a remnant of only 52 pledging units. Acres of oak, indeed. And high maintenance demands. The world seems to presently have little need of what we once offered.
Even seemingly healthy mega evangelical churches are being rent asunder by conflicting loyalties – to the Former Guy, or to our Lord Jesus Christ. Their youth leaving in droves over this conflict.
These are tough times. Our world, like that of Herrod, is in great anguish. The birth pangs of what we cannot yet fathom.
Expectancy mixed with dread fills the silence of our souls as we scan the morning papers over coffee. No easy answers. Certainly not from happy Jesus music or holiday extravaganzas.
This Advent, at St. Francis, we will gather once more, read the ancient texts, await fulfillment in the silence of passing days. Or maybe join in plaintive hymn: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here…” And we will work for a better tomorrow for the “least of these.”
But we sing our hymns together in solidarity; and in that I find hope. Hope as small and as powerful as in a tiny baby laid in a manger. Amen.
[1] Debbie Truong, “Living in their Cars to Afford College,” Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2023
[2] Isaiah 64:1-2, NRSV.
[3] Renny Golden, The Music of Her Rivers (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2019), 77.
[4] Harry Emmerson Fosdick, What is Vital in Religion (New York: Harpers Brothers, 1955), 1.
[5] Richard Kurrasch, Acres of Oak: A Pastor Rethinks Church in the 21st Century (Chicago: Windy City Publishers, 2023).
[6] Op. cit., 61-62.
December 3, 2023
Advent 1
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18;
“What the River Said;” Mark 13:24-37
“Mostly Silence”
A Vision Glorious
If you’re my age, you know where you were. You know where you were when JFK was shot in that motorcade in Dallas, Texas. You know where you were when Dr. King was gunned down on that balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. You know where you were when those planes flew into the World Trade Tower in New York City on September 11th.
Some tragedies indelibly are etched in memory, living with us throughout the rest of our natural lives. The pictures at times unexpectedly flashing before our eyes, unbeckoned. Blindsiding us in moments of vulnerability.
Sometimes it’s a private, family tragedy, like the day my mom called to tell me my father had had another heart attack and was now in Long Beach Memorial Hospital. He had somehow survived that one; it was his fourth.
“No, don’t fly back here, he’s recovering. The doctors say he’ll make it.”
“Be sure and call us every day, and if he takes a turn for the worse, “I’ll be there.”
Mom had waited a few days to call. Like many families, ours did not do well with bad news.
There are times, public and private, when the bottom just drops out. Hope dies. With bated breath time stands still. When just getting out of bed seems an insurmountable obligation of the day.
It is on those days we desperately long for a way forward. A word of hope. The message of faith that this is not the end.
This past week, at a preaching conference put on by our Episcopal magazine, the “Living Church,” a group of a little over a hundred of us, clergy and lay, wrestled with our most difficult of assignments – preaching the Word of God.
We had three bishops at the conference. One of those, on being introduced from Saskatchewan, gave the following advice: “The best way to accommodate a bishop in ceremonial functions is to assume he’s blind, he can’t hear, he smells, and he doesn’t know what’s going on.”
Now, Jai said that this story doesn’t really fit in here, but it’s too good to pass up – a preacher’s prerogative.
Preaching today — on the face of it, how presumptuous! To speak for God!? Especially in a secular age, when such seems most irrelevant. A task so inconsequential as the world rushes on. Often, from one catastrophe to another.
And THAT’S exactly why our task is so utterly important – to bring a message of hope and redemption. To speak to the heart and the mind. To bring a message that binds up and renews!
Our minds, our hearts, as of late have been transfixed by the calamity unfolding in Gaza and Israel. Every evening on our TV screens, tragic, sorrowful remnants of families are interviewed, asked to go through their loss one more time. “How was it in the midst of that music festival, running for your life as all about you your friends were being slaughtered by Hamas gunmen?” “What do you want to say to those who have kidnapped your three-year old daughter?” One more day of disaster porn.
Images of total and absolute destruction of Gaza flash on the screen over and over. Paramedics rushing hopeless cases through piles of rubble, gray with the settling dust of an overnight bombing. Scenes of distraught survivors picking through mounds of broken concrete, desperately hunting for lost loved ones.
For families on both sides, the End of the World. Waiting for news that never comes.
And we who watch this unfolding tragedy from across an ocean, from miles away – yes, we’re caught up in the sorrow as well. If we have any heart at all. If we haven’t lost our soul.
And we who watch this serial disaster unfold, we wonder, what of our complicity? Will we find our nation before the World Court, forced to answer for our role in this slaughter of innocents?
Honest contemplation forces us to consider the seeds of this disaster. It was years in the making. Since the founding of the State of Israel. The foundation for some and the nakba, the catastrophe, for others. As one writer has put it, “The Too-Much Promised Land.” So many hopes pinned on one small piece of real estate.
How does one preach a word of hope in such a world? Let alone the Word of God?
A young seminarian is said to have asked the great theologian Karl Barth: what could be preached after the news came of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany. What saving word was there to be said? Barth responded, “Preach as if nothing happened.”
God’s Word transcends the daily setbacks with a Vision Glorious – the enduring Word of God’s purpose for a restored world, restored relationships. Take this message to Herr Hitler.
Coming out of Babylonian captivity, the Psalmist could proclaim:
“Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.”
Such vision has pulled us through the muck and mire of daily tragedy. Even decades-long disaster.
Reading of those Conductors on the Underground Railroad, they were guided by such hope. Cold, wet, terrified. Leading small bands on the journey from slavery, with the baying of vicious dogs of the trackers on their heels. Follow the Drinking Gourd. Following that constellation to a dreamt of future. No guarantees, only keep one foot going in front of the other. Breath searing aching lungs.
And what inspired them? it was the faith of a Risen Christ proclaimed and put into action. A gospel literally with feet. It was the belief that human beings are meant for something better than drudgery and degradation. Recited at church Sunday after Sunday, in prayer meetings, and in the hymns your mother sang while at her daily chores about the house or in the field.
And here’s the secret – we all get there together. On that Last Day, on that “Great Getting Up Day in the Morning,” gathered into glory, only one question – did you give your sister, your brother a helping hand? That’s the only question on your Final Exam. Did you give a care for the very least?
Today we celebrate the consummation of what this whole Christianity thing is all about – The Reign of Christ. We celebrate a Vision Glorious where all will be seated at the Table of God’s Plenitude. A seat for all. Yes, ALL MEANS ALL!
Each one of us who follows that crucified carpenter from Nazareth is commissioned to be a Conductor on this Railroad of Freedom, this Railroad of Promise. “Get on board, little chillun.”
It is this vision, this hope, shared with friend, family and stranger that daily sustains. This is what, on our best days, we would preach. And in this Vision is Salvation. Amen.
November 26, 2023
Last Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 29
Christ our Sovereign
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 95:1-7a;
Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46
“A Vision Glorious”
One Lord, One People
As I often say, I especially love All Saints Day because with grateful hearts we receive the blessings of God through the lives of so many who have built us up. These are the ones who’ve helped us to thrive. Or like my 11th grade English teacher Mrs. Reiner who did her darnedest on my behalf.
George Regas called these folks his “balcony people” — those living and those who cheer us on from beyond the grave. They urge us to pull out our best stuff. They instill confidence and expect that we will strive always to do the honorable thing. Even when the cost is high. These are the people who have invested in us. Because of them we are far better than we might have been, left to our own devices. These are the Saints of God, a few of whom I want to highlight.
In short, the Saints are those who have brought us along with them that we might thrive. Their victories are our victories. They are testimony to the basic truth: We are all One.
You’ve known them – a parent or other family member who believed in you. A teacher or maybe a scout leader. It might have been a neighbor down the street. Or someone at work.
I want to mention Ruth Jean Simmons. Ruth, born in 1945, grew up in a Black East Texas sharecropping family. The last of twelve, the baby of the family. She not only rose far beyond what life expected of her, but returned that gift to her many students later on.[1]
Her family’s house — actually, “shack,” — in Daly, not much more than a wide spot in the road, had no running water, the only heat being provided by the woodburning stove in the kitchen.
She worked in the cotton fields, beginning at the age of six. The work was backbreaking and consumed most of her waking days and those of her other family members. Restricted to purchasing at the company store on the farm, families would sink further and further into debt.
This is what life had laid out for Ruth Jean Simmons. Her foreseeable future, until she would die. A life of unending toil, dwelling in a land of ignorance and Jim Crow racism.
Her hope for something better came from her church and the hymns they sang. They resonated with the promise of something better than endless toil and hardship.
Recitations were one activity young Ruth delighted in. The passages she memorized for this activity, especially the verses about the Passion and Resurrection embodied hope.
“Come and see the place where he lay,” was an invitation to the imagination to conger up a time of liberation of Blacks from their earthly burdens.
“Even as a child, I understood that these passages gave hope to all of us who sought signs of change from segregation and discrimination. When churches staged programs and gave us the opportunity to recite stories of deliverance, I understood that these performances were giving sustenance and meaning to many of the famers attending the services.”[2]
It was her Sunday school teachers that opened up the meaning of the Bible to her, and the sermons she heard. It was the hymns which gave comfort and promise of a better future.
These comforting hymns her mother often sang through the weekdays of her unremitting toil. “In the Garden,” “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” and “Jesus, keep me near the Cross,” were among her favorites.
Because she lived on a school-bus line on Highway 19 after the family moved to Latexo and truancy laws were more strictly enforced, Ruth, unlike her siblings, regularly attended school.
There she encountered one teacher who would set her on the path to an unimaginable future: Miss Ida Mae Henderson.
“Accustomed to my family calling me ‘you ole big-eyed girl!’ I found it remarkable that this woman greeted me with ‘Hello, precious!’ or ‘good morning, baby!’ By telling me that I was valued and speaking to me in this way, she invited me into a world of mystery and magic.”[3]
Ruth remembers the classroom as something special, from the brilliant lighting that was unaffordable in her home to the order of all the desks in a neat row. More importantly, she had her own desk, her own private space just for her. And laid out on that desk were all the materials to begin her education. The whole setup indicated that something very important was to happen here. This room seemed like magic to a child coming from a house where there was not enough furniture for everyone to have a place to sit.
She recounts, “Everything seemed possible with Miss Ida Mae.” From that teacher Ruth received the first praise she had known as a child. “Her words made me feel like a unique person rather than an appendage to my family.”[4]
Much later in life Ruth Simmons would be invited back to the little community of Grapeland, the home of that first school. The invitation came from one of the prominent white churches, a church that back in the day allowed no Blacks in Sunday worship. This for a program held in her honor.
And up came a very frail Miss Ida Mae. “I was overwhelmed to see this woman who had set me on the path to a career in education. She had introduced me to the simple premise that the life and exercise of the mind bestowed enormous power and promise. She provided me a beacon that guided me toward achievement through education.”
“She was the incarnation of all that it means to be a teacher, a mentor, a guide. Ever hopeful about what human beings can achieve through learning.”[5]
Saints Alive! If you were fortunate, you also remember a teacher like Miss Ida Mae Henderson. Or you had a mother like Ruth’s who sacrificed to make sure you had the basic necessities for school. But more than that, a mother who taught you discernment. Ruth, as a young girl, would aspire to “be able, like Mama, to be as observant or as discerning.”
Years later at a ceremony at Harvard, where she had earned her PhD in Romance Languages and Literature, Ruth sat on the stage listening to the encomiums lauding her accomplishments as president of Smith College and later Brown University — the first Black woman to have ever reached this pinnacle of academic achievement, wondering how on earth she got there. “How did I end up here?”
There she sat, musing about the “improbability of the moment.” It was through a life’s journey graced with saints galore who sped her along the way. Saints who had paved the way through their own accomplishments and perseverance, and then given back.
As I sat in Decker Auditorium on All Saints Day as we at Pilgrim Place celebrated the lives of those saints in our midst who are now no longer with us in body, gratitude welled up in my soul as candles were processed up the aisle for those who had nurtured us along the way. My old ethics professor Joe Hough, an iconoclastic hero who taught me community organizing. Dean Freudenberger, an agricultural missionary in Africa who returned to teach those skills at my seminary. Saints galore flooded my being as tears flooded my eyes.
We celebrate those family and friends who have been part of our common life here at St. Francis. Testifying that we all are One, in the benevolent embrace of one Lord. Amen.
[1] Ruth J. Simmons, Up Home: One Girl’s Journey (New York: Random House, 2023).
[2] Op.cit., 43.
[3] Op.cit, 68
[4] Op. Cit., 69.
[5] Op.cit. 72.
November 5, 2023
All Saints Sunday
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 22:15-22
“One Lord, One People”
Whose Head is on this Coin?
Again, I’m amazed at how uncanny it is that the Holy Spirit seems to continue to be working in overdrive. This past week I just got our taxes in under the wire – with all that was going on we absolutely had to get an extension. So, October 18 was the bewitching hour.
I remember back to when I had taken over much of the financial aspects of my parent’s construction and real estate company. I had opened a letter from the California State Franchise Board. Mail from these people is never good.
It turned out that Dad owed them around three hundred dollars and some odd change. This was for his share of the employees overhead for about two years previous. Dad was absolutely insistent that this was all a mistake. Their mistake!
I would spend hours on interminable hold attempting to contact someone so this issue could be resolved. Dad would not be mollified until every last stone was turned over.
We went down to their regional office in Long Beach and spent, I can’t tell you how many hours, while Dad attempted to convince the woman at the counter that he was right. He really didn’t owe them anything.
It’s no wonder that the Plexiglas window was one inch thick. They probably get a lot of irate taxpayers like my father.
Finally, after we got home, he somewhat settled down. My arguments forecasting impending doom and confiscation made an impression. I had reminded him of the adage of our high school government teacher, Mr. Marchek, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” And how dictatorships have most effectively used this mechanism to eliminate their opponents. This was one fight he was not going to win.
Grudgingly, though he wasn’t going to pay this “unfair and outrageous” tax bill and penalties, he would acquiesce to my writing the company check to satisfy the “greedy so-and-sos.”
Matthew tells the story of religious authorities coming to Jesus with the question about the obligation to pay taxes off to Rome, the colonizing power of their land. This was a highly provocative question for two reasons. First, given the brutality of Roman occupation, any payment or cooperation with their demands would be seen as collaboration with a hated enemy. Second, the face on the Roman coin to pay the tax was that of an infidel who claimed to be divine, who claimed the titles of divinity proper to a god. To handle this coin was to become ritually unclean. Haram! Definitely not kosher.
So here come these pompous leaders thinking to trap Jesus. Hypocrisy dripping from their lips like honey:
“’Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what do you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’”
“But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’”
And you know the rest. “Give to Caesar the things that are Caeser’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
Just whose face is on that coin?
In a democracy it’s all our faces. All of us!
My friend at lunch the other day said, “If it’s true that it takes a village, then it’s up to all of us to make sure the streets are swept and in good repair, that the sewage and water systems are functioning and that there are decent schools to educate our children.”
Community is a gift of God. It is up to us to exercise good stewardship of our common life together – paying the bills. That, in part, means providing the necessary financial as well as the political support. It means behaving in a civil manner towards one another and accepting our obligations to participate in the process. It means constructive criticism – and causing “Necessary Trouble” as a last resort.
When serving on the Planning Commission of our town of Ridgecrest, CA, for a number of meetings we were dealing with the owner of a lumber yard. He didn’t want to adhere to the zoning regulations or pay the required fees for operating his business.
At the last meeting dealing with this obstreperous fellow and his refusal to pay the required fees, our city councilwoman, Florence Green, in exasperation said, “Listen we’ve got to run the city one way or another; which pocket do you want us to take it out of?”
It’s up to us. It’s our face on that coin.
And I consider it a blessing to pay taxes – it means I’m making money. Look at it that way if you don’t accept theological persuasion.
Through our common civic endeavors, sometimes amazing excellence breaks out.
I attended an inner-city high school in Long Beach, California, Poly High. “The Home of Scholars and Champions.” It was located in one of the poorest, most racially diverse parts of town.
And while our sports teams took home more than their fair share of CIF state victories, a new principal arrived on the scene who academically made all the difference.
She developed within that high school a magnet school for science and math. That endeavor allowed, and still allows, Poly to send more students to UCLA than any other school in California. This, from the poorest section of town!
This degree of academic excellence has been underwritten by our taxes and civic support. Sometimes, we get what we pay for.
Driving through the roads of Connecticut this past week, I noted that they all looked like they had been freshly paved. No potholes and the lane markings were fresh. Even on country roads way out of town. Not anything like our disastrous roads in California which are one big pothole. Yes, their taxes are a bit higher. Again, you get what you pay for.
We are Caesar in a democracy. It’s not only our face on that coin, but it’s our schools and highways, our government services from fire, police to post offices and senior citizen centers. After-school programs and decent jails, prisons and reintegration programs for those being released.
Our faces on that coin. All to be counted a blessing.
Should we pay taxes?
As one businessman has said, “I don’t mind giving fifty percent of what I make back to the American people because they give me one hundred percent of what I earn.”
But of course, we need to monitor as to how our money is spent. And sometimes we get it flat-out wrong. Like investing in a possible candidate for Speaker of the House of Representatives who has no accomplishments to his name except vituperation. A person who authored only four bills in some sixteen years and not a one of them has been enacted into law. Someone who in that brief trip from an assistant wrestling coach is now worth over $30 million. And for all that, what we got was election denial and the support of an insurrection against the U.S. government! This, the would-be leader of the Chaos Caucus. So, for weeks to come, and for weeks into the foreseeable future NOTHING GETS DONE!
A pretty poor result for his hefty congressional salary and whatever funds he can grift off his campaign coffers. We’ve got to watch the purse. It’s our head on that coin, and this man would represent us.
No more million-dollar toilets in Air Force jets, or hammers costing hundreds of dollars. The fact that the Pentagon budget has not been, and apparently cannot, be audited ought to in itself raise red flags about fiscal responsibility. As I said several Sundays ago, quoting Reagan, “Trust BUT verify.” It’s our head on that coin. It’s our money. It’s our future at stake.
Yes, there will be mistakes. I’ve made my share of them. But God’s gift to us is each other and the common endeavor we share. Always to perfect and renew.
I close with James Baldwin’s take on our responsibility to one another. That’s a Torah gift and a Gospel demand. That we can work it out together is both a Gospel gift and a Gospel obligation.
Listen to Baldwin in his essay, “Nothing Personal.” He says:
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.[1]
As St. Paul enjoins those of us in the Jesus Movement, “Rejoice with those who rejoice” …and, to paraphrase Tom Bodet’s Motel 6 commercial, “We’ll keep the lights on for you.” Amen.
[1] James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 393.
October 22, 2023
21 Pentecost, Proper 24 The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 45:1-7; Psalm 96:1-9
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-
Just Who Let You in Here?
It is uncanny how the Holy Spirit sometimes seems to be working in overdrive. This past week Jai and I flew East to Connecticut so that I might officiate at our younger son Christopher and Alexis’s wedding.
Jai and I headed out a few days early so as not to be caught in the same sort of massive airlines schedule kerfuffle as we encountered when we attempted to fly to Vancouver for our Alaskan cruise with these two.
We drove out to the venue, the Waveny House in New Canaan, a huge mansion built by the Lapham family in 1912, sited on three hundred acres.
As we drove up a long drive to this massive edifice, it had its intended effect – we were most impressed. On the day of the wedding, we had arrived as the catering crew was wheeling in huge round tables and setting up chairs. We made our way upstairs to the bride’s room and the groom’s suite.
There was Christopher and some eight or nine groomsmen and one groomswoman, Erin. She and her brother had grown up in Alaska with our two boys beginning in preschool. She is part of the family.
This was shaping up to be a most joyous occasion.
The same as in Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding as told in our gospel lesson for today from Matthew. This was another story to illustrate the mysteries of the Reign of God at the end time.
All sorts were invited but many proved unworthy. They ignored the invitation. They made silly excuses. Some even mistreated and killed the messengers.
So, as all was ready and the fated lamb slaughtered, this king again sent out messengers to invite any and everyone they encountered. As the guests assembled, there was this one fellow not wearing the customary wedding robe. A party crasher perhaps?
“’Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
There’s lots of scholarly commentary on this lack of a proper wedding robe. What I take it to be is evidence of a piss-poor attitude. At such joyous celebrations no Debbie Downers or Bobby Bummers are needed, thank you. Definitely not ready to join Kool and the Gang, “Celebrate Good Times, Come On!!!” If not the outer darkness, at least the penalty box with him!
No rain needed on this parade. Though someone forgot to tell this to the weather forecaster. A tropical storm blew into New England and our rehearsal started off with a deluge.
While the outdoor site for the ceremony was a huge, covered porch able to fit the hundred or so guests, it was still cold and a bit windy. The women with their bare arms and shoulders were definitely chilled.
Finally, the moment arrived. I walked up the aisle followed by Christopher. Then Jai on the arm of our oldest, Jonathan. Then all these wonderful young men and women of the wedding party. Splendid in their formal attire. These young kids, previously in jeans and sweats, clean up real nicely!
As Alexis approached on the arm of her father, I noticed a lump already forming in my throat. Their smiles were radiant. Though the sky was overcast and still drizzly, she sparkled like the sun. Christopher’s face was incandescent.
I knew I had to keep remarks short. Days earlier when I had told Bishop John that I was given five to eight minutes, he commented, “John, I’ve never known your sermons to be anywhere that short.”
So, I began, “Friends and family, we are gathered in the Name of All that is Holy to join this man and woman in marriage.”
I was mostly keeping it together. Though I told them of my wife’s admonition about some of my sermon stories, “You can’t tell that.” “Why not?” I asked. “You’ll cry.” “They’re used to that,” I would respond.
I told them, that though they thought they knew each other pretty well – actually they had been together about five years – there would still be some surprises ahead.
I recounted that soon after Jai and I were married, asking her what she knew how to cook. After a pause, she offered, “I can make tuna salad sandwiches.”
“That’s all?” I thought. “That’s all!?”
We’re going to have tuna sandwiches until death do us part?
Meanwhile, Jai, as she gazed upon several piles of dirty clothes strewn about the floor was wondering, “What did his mother tell him?” “John, don’t put your dirty clothes in the clothes hamper! Leave them on the floor, otherwise what will your wife have to do?”
Is that what his mother taught him? No Prince Charming here! Piles of dirty clothes unto death do us part?
Surprises there will be. Count on it.
I reminded the couple that their new relationship will reveal the divine mysteries of human existence. When Martin Luther abolished the monasteries in the 1500s, the monks asked him, that without the regular hours of monastic prayer, how would they now know the will of God?”
“Go get married,” he told them. “Your wives will tell you what God wants you to know.” And likewise, we might add, your husbands. Holy insight will be born of this new relationship as in no other. That is your gift to the other.
By the time each had said their written vows to one another, we were all a bit choked up.
I followed with the traditional vows.
“Forsaking all others, Alexis, do you take this man to be your wedded husband…?” Yes, then Christopher, “Do you take this woman…?” Yes, “To love, honor, and cherish in sickness and health. For richer or poorer?”
After pronouncing them husband and wife, before I had a chance to say you may kiss the bride, they were locked in a tight embrace. John Ford Coley got it right, “Love is the Answer.”
I closed with words from 1 Corinthians on love. I told all assembled that this was for them as well, these words on love. It is patient, kind. Does not insist on its own way. Bears all. Forgives all. It is the glue to our humanity. Among all that passes away, it alone endures. I think this is what I said. By this time all three of us were quite emotional. And there was not a dry eye in the house.
I introduced to the assemblage, Christopher and Alexis Forney, and we then we all smartly proceeded back down the aisle.
For my toast after dinner, I mentioned that in Greek Orthodox weddings crowns are sometimes placed over the heads of the couple to signify that they are now king and queen of a new creation.
They are joined to create a new family rooted in the love and values they bring to their marriage. They are creating a whole new reality to be a blessing to each other and to their families.
I mentioned that I had seen a coffee cup that said, “I don’t have any favorites among my children…but if I did, it would be my daughter-in-law.”
Not only are we creating a totally new reality, but the gifts and talents they bring to this relationship they bring to their community. To America. They are creating a family that looks like America.
To that agonized question, “People can’t we all get along?” I told all that the faces in this room were the answer to that plea. A resounding YES. Here is now a new family that looks like America. And I am blessed and proud to be a part of what is being created today. Right here in this room.
So off they go, “side by side, singing their song.” God bless ‘em.
Indeed, this is a foretaste of that divine “Kin-dom.” No Debbie Downers, no Bobbie Bummers, PLEASE! You come with attitude…to the penalty box with you!
Marriage is understood as a sacrament because it is through such union that we have the opportunity to grow into our fullest selves. To grow up. These days our understanding of this union is much more capacious than back in my day. With marriage equality, this blessing is extended to all.
They’re now off in the Catskill Mountains of New York enjoying a brief honeymoon. You do know what the honeymoon sandwich is, don’t you? Lettuce Alone!
I still remember the hate and vituperation at All Saints, Pasadena, when one of Jai’s best friends, Mark, was joined with his male partner, Phil, in a ceremony of commitment (same sex marriage was not yet permitted in California). Yet, despite all the outrage, their union, and later, marriage, lasted far longer than many straight marriages. Sadly, years later, it ended in “unto death do us part.”
The joy of deep human companionship, especially through marriage, is a picture of eternal life. Our congregations should reflect the same blessings. If your church does not, you’re in the wrong church.
Find a church that challenges, informs, celebrates good times, lifts your heart. I believe that’s a good part of what we do here at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach. Sunday after Sunday. And often midweek.
I have been richly blessed to have shared in this transcendent moment, this taste of “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” with my wife Jai, Christopher and Alexis and a whole new family. With scattered friends across this nation. And with you here at St. Francis. Proof positive that God is Good…All the time! Amen.
The Newlyweds Toasted
The families with the newlyweds – the next day
October 15, 2023
20 Pentecost, Proper 23
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 25:1-9; Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:15-22
“Just Who Let You in Here?”
