Some Fundamental Respect Needed Now
I remember driving from Ridgecrest out through the desert to our church in Randsburg, just off Highway 395.
It was not an infrequent sight to see in the distance a group of buzzards circling over what I presumed to be their lunch, As I got closer, I could see them fighting over the scraps of Br’er Rabbit, or whatever was left of some unfortunate road kill. These buzzards were a tenacious lot. It wouldn’t be until the last moment when I was about to run over the lot of them, that they would hop away or take to the air.
From time immemorial, these scavengers have been a warning to desert travelers that this forbidding terrain could be deadly to the lost and unprepared. Fatal to those who scoff at the precautions of survival. Or just the plain stupid. Yeah, what you don’t know can easily kill you out there. With temperatures of one hundred twelve and higher, one does not last long without water and shade. Besides the heat, hazards lurk under rocks. Unseen mine shafts await the unwary. That circling group of birds is your stark warning. You may end up dinner, with a few scraps left over for their breakfast in the morning.
Those circling birds are indeed a timely warning for the desert traveler. Every bit as sharp and urgent as Amos’s prophecy to the nation Israel. And now, to the nation America.
The purpose for this is exactly the same as that warning from your mother about the hot stove or the rushing traffic on a busy street. It’s the skull and cross bones on that little green bottle in the back of the kitchen cabinet. Its purpose is that you might “live long and prosper.” That you might not be removed from the gene pool at a tender young age. Or at any age.
For his nation, Amos’s warning was so that its people might keep and enjoy the freedom won by God when they had crossed the Red Sea before Pharoah’s horses and chariots. Exodus was Freedom. It would be hard to keep.
No nation can sustain itself for long when it is riddled by corruption and fraud. More on that later. Corruption has set in, so this is the law suit that God has brought against the nation of Israel. Court is called to order at the city gate, the seat of judgement. God is present to hear the case and pronounce judgement.
Here’s the opening summons:
“Seek the Lord and live, or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire…Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground…
Now come the particulars of God’s indictment against the House of Israel:
“They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth (read, “but we have Alternative Facts”). Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain …you take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.”
Finally, the summation and judgement:
“Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said. Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of the people.”
It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to a righteous remnant – that’s the earnest and desired purpose. Blessedness and Righteousness will kiss each other in your dealings — that’s the intent.
The purpose of it all is an amendment of one’s ways. Repent, which simply means to turn around and head in a new direction – a saving direction, the direction of national solidarity and wholeness.
God doesn’t want that we should feel sad or guilty; the purpose here is that we should thrive. It is that the nation should be a realm of justice and equity so that we dwell in peace with one another, and the sojourner who also lives in the land.
This is a warning about the path you are on which is leading to ruin and destruction.
Apart from God’s corrective word, our hearts are idol factories. How quickly we lose the purpose of it all. The prophets, running all the way from Moses to Zechariah to Jesus and to Dr. Martin Luther King are the corrective to our self-serving, destructive rationalizations.
Under the category of self-serving revelations: Jai came across televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who told his congregation that airline vaccine mandates were “the mark of the Beast,” and another reason why they should buy him a private Jet.
No, pastor. God doesn’t want you to have a jet and lots of bling. God wants you to be a decent human being and faithful to the gospel you pledged allegiance to upon your ordination. God wants you to be an upright citizen in the land.
Perhaps a more contemporary warning and revelation has come from one of our conservative columnists, Robert Kagen — not an alarmist, but a deeply ethical foreign policy analyst who served in the U.S. State Department in the 80’s.
He sounds a warning to us Americans that our democracy is on the brink. “The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance of over the next three to four years on incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves”
The warning signs are obscured by the theatrics of Trump and his supporters, the January 6th insurrection, the pandemic, the economic malaise and flat-out “wishful thinking.” But the evidence is right out in the open. In front of God and everyone.
Bogus charges of election fraud only serve to diminish our faith in constitutional order. Even in California, one of the leading candidates to replace Governor Gavin Newsom in our recent recall election, began claiming that the election was rigged before a single vote was in.
Election laws are being perpetrated across over a dozen states that would limit the franchise, reinforce gerrymandered districts and permit legislatures in Red states to overturn the results of any election they don’t like. No matter what a secretary of state has certified. “We just don’t like your electors. Take ours!”
A local, John Eastman, a product of our very own Claremont McKenna College…that’s right, our own home-grown, a Claremont educated seditionist, provided Trump with the road map necessary to overturn the 2020 election.[1]
This is how it was to work. I know, it’s “in the weeds.” But this is how democracies die.
Trump gets enough states like Arizona and others to have their Republican legislators submit alternative slates of electors – alternative to those previously certified by their secretaries of state. All V.P. Pence needed to do was to void both slates of electors from those states, then declare that because were not enough valid electors for either candidate, and throw election into the House of Representatives. There the number of small, sparsely populated red states would overwhelm the rest, and then declare Trump re-elected. Warm up the Marine Corps Band for one more chorus of “Hail to the Chief.”
More realistic and far more dangerous than the delusional fantasies of Mr. Pillow Guy. This week I came across the headline from Salon, the internet magazine: “Mike Lindell’s new genius plan: Knock on your door and ask whether you’re dead. The pillow maven’s last-ditch effort centers around sending out canvassers to neighborhoods across the nation.”[2]
Maybe on Halloween such a canvasser might get a “yes” to that inquiry.
When fraud and lies and fantasy prevail, no nation can long endure. “Stop the Steal” and insurrection are dead ends for the promise of America.
Kagan, in preface to his essay quotes James Madison, author of much of our Constitution: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation.”
Whether it be bribery, theft, cronyism, nepotism, or just plain idiocy…a nation governed on such a foundation cannot long endure. That was the judgment of the prophets. That was the judgement of earliest Americans who founded the Iroquois Confederacy, and those who met at Independence Hall in 1776. That is the lesson of all nations down through history.
What can we then do? We are not helpless. We have a sacred right and responsibility. We the moral obligation of agency as citizens in this republic. An obligation that goes far beyond simply voting every two or four years.
Become informed and involved. Yeah, newspapers are sometimes boring. Books are long and definitely more difficult than Facebook or Snapchat. If we want our children and grandchildren to have a chance at a decent life in a free society, it will take a bit of effort. Actually, a lot of effort.
This is not the of heroics as storming the beaches of Normandy or conducting undercover operations behind enemy lines. Won’t get you a Presidential Medal of Freedom or your name on that marble wall at the CIA headquarters. But it just might help us keep our democracy.
To raise these issues might be unpopular in some circles. But all it takes for tyranny to overtake us is for good men and women to say nothing, do nothing. Just keep quiet.
It maybe it is you who is appointed as the Paul Revere of this moment. You may be the one to trip the alarm. Wake us up to the fire on our doorstep. Or just urge your neighbor to vote.
Everyday in our morning news, faithful reporters and newscasters inform us of the rot in the Ship of State. The timbers are compromised. Wood borers have eaten through much of the structure. The sails mildew. The malnourished crew is exhausted. The ship is adrift. David Brooks, Robert Kagin and others are sounding the alarm. Just as Amos did for his nation.
DO NOT DESPAIR. Warnings are given that we might right the ship before it’s swamped. Before malefactors have scuttled it.
Warnings are given that all might enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Their aim is that we all might live in peace, each secure in their own home, under their own fig tree.
Choose the better way and prosper. To flourish is the will of God, in harmony with all others and all living things on this “earth, our island home.”
“Seek good and not evil, that you may live…”
There are critical steps we can take now to preserve the inheritance of this land. Before it looks like Putin’s Russia, Kim Jong-un’s North Korea.
Push for the inclusion of all. Conservative and former Republican, David Brooks, a guiding light on the communal ethic necessary for our survival as a democracy, now urges not 3.5 trillion, but — GET THIS – 4 TRILLION in the Build Back Better legislation presently mired in congressional deadlock. This from our conservative friend! Why?
Like Amos and the 8th century Prophets, David Brooks knows that no country, no economy is sustainable if over half the people are left out. Left in hopeless destitution. And that’s how they feel. Jessie Jackson is right in his summons, “Keep HOPE alive.”
These people need a real champion, not a fraud who mainly cares only about himself and is too busy with mass rallies of adulation. That was Mussolini and Papa Doc in Haiti. That’s the old “bread and circuses” ploy of dictators.
“Seek good and not evil, that you may live…” That’s active citizenship.
Do your bit to help on election day. I never had so much satisfaction as when driving those without transportation to the polls. Join a service club. Subscribe to a local paper. Support a philanthropic organization. Maybe all you can do is send in a few dollars a month to a charity. Remember, it’s not just you. The money of us all adds up. Support your local school board. Many board members and teachers are presently under vicious attack.
You have opportunities at your disposal Amos did not have. This is how we create the beloved community. These are the building blocks of the New Jerusalem, the New San Bernardino, the New Highland, the New Claremont, the New West Virginia.
Truth is the cornerstone. Love is the password. Open are the city’s Gates of Justice. It is all meant to be glorious in the Lord’s sight.
None of this work is glamorous. Face it, meetings can be flat-out boring. But this IS the work of DEMOCRACY. It’s what you signed up for when you first put your hand over your heart in the third grade and learned the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s what you signed up for when you were first allowed to hold your very own sparkler on a magical Fourth of July night. It’s what you signed up for when you entered the voting booth that first time.
“Seek good and not evil, that you may live…” Amen.
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066248-eastman-memo.
[2] Zachary Petrizzo, “Mike Lindell’s Genius Plan: Knock On Your Door and Ask Whether You’re Dead,” Salon, October 5, 2021.
St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach
Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Pentecost 19, October 10, 2021
Proper 23
“Some Fundamental Respect Needed Now”
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; Psalm 90:12-17;
Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
A Single Garment of Destiny
In one of Martin Luther King’s most poignant writings, written from a city jail in 1963, Dr., King spoke of our common fate in America. We are one people tied up in a bond of interconnectedness.
“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” [1]
This sage warning is no more apropos of our survival than today, when we consider our society’s response to COVID-19 and a myriad of other present challenges. It is most relevant to our texts from Genesis and Mark considering marriage. And…wait…wait for this….it ties into our celebration of St. Francis and our patronal feast day this Sunday.
First, on marriage and this rolling pandemic.
St Francis is the saint of interrelatedness. He believed that all creation is a seamless work of mutuality. All – humans, plants – even the sun and the moon – the physicality of it all, living and non-living. And this is indeed true because in the end, you see, we are all stardust. Precious in the being of God, stardust.
For most of us, in this mortal life, our family is the most immediate expression of the reality of our mutuality. Marriage is the sacrament of transforming mutuality. Somewhere, theologian and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor said marriage is our “one opportunity to grow up.”
“But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh’ So they are no longer two. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Down through the ages peoples of all faiths have been very wary of infringing on this relationship between man and woman. It is most precious and holy – except when it hasn’t been. Since the days of slavery, families were torn asunder on the auction block with no regard to the sanctity of the marriage vows. Just as they were most recently at our southern border. All justified and excused by the supporters of our previous president and his party of so-called Family Values. Heart-wrenching, the scenes were.
As our knowledge of human relationships and genetics has grown, society now can acknowledge that Ed and Steve can live in the same bond of wedded bliss as John and Alice, or Jane and Joan. And do raise well-adjusted and successful children. The point is – it is through the intimate mutuality of the family that most of us will find our greatest satisfaction and love in life.
I had a cynical high school teacher whose take on marriage equality was, “why shouldn’t they suffer just like the rest of us?” Now it might have been that Mr. Coulson’s relationship could have used a touch of family counseling.
Given that some of us come out of damaged and damaging family relationships, the ideal doesn’t always work out. Sometimes addiction and mental illness are challenges too big to overcome. Sadly, divorce is the better option.
For some, especially as we grow older, deep and abiding friendships provide that love and support. As especially for the aging who may have earlier lost life partners.
Growing up in Signal Hill we had neighbors who had know my family for years. The wife had actually been the baby sitter for my brother and me when she was a teenager. When they moved down to the ocean, one of their sons and his partner moved in to the house. My father, especially, was intolerant of what he called their “lifestyle.” He wouldn’t have anything to do with them and called them names you’d have gotten thrown out of school for using.
But over the years, a good number of years, Dad mellowed. He grew beyond his West Virginia provincialism and prejudice – actually, ignorance. Eventually, they were just Fred and George. Two wonderful neighbors who helped him with some of his chores as he grew less able to do for himself. And after Mom died, they became close companions.
That is the sort of “web of mutuality” of which Dr. King speaks — the interconnectedness of creation of which our beloved St. Francis lived.
Secondly, we also form those bonds with our non-human companions. I still miss having our son’s two cats that lived with us for well over a year while he was in Spain and Morocco working on his dissertation – yeah, he’s still working on it! I keep telling him, as in the old Grey Poupon mustard TV commercial, “While we’re young, Christopher, while we’re young.”
But back to these cats — It would only be seconds after I got back home that they’d be curled up on the sofa with me watching the news. Brian and Larry, I was so glad to see them when we went back to New Haven to visit. It’s like we hadn’t missed each other a day as Brian curled up in my lap.
This past week we lost another beloved sister at St. Francis. Covid and pneumonia took Diane from us, even though she had had her “jab.” Departed, but still living on in the memories of those who loved her, she remains a part of our blessed, unbroken circle. Diane, presente!
All life about us is precious without measure. Let us cherish one another every day.
As the planet warms, much more than Brian and Larry will we all be missing. Last week when I opened the Los Angeles Times, the accompanying picture to an article on the diminishing Salton Sea, as we rob it of water, was the photo of a magnificent great egret taking flight. The wing span of that bird was breathtakingly beautiful as it began to gain altitude. It’s long neck so graceful in takeoff. In Spirit I am a part of that bird, and it is part of me. I knew this reality deep in my soul as I sat transfixed, mesmerized by that picture. We are blessed with one woman at our church with a tender heart who understands such relationships. Sister egret, we cherish you – precious gift of our Creator. Just as St. Francis taught us. If we destroy your habitat, it will be a spiritual loss to our souls, to the soul of all creation.
Should we use up all the water from the Colorado river and dry up the Salton Sea, we humans have the power to drive these splendid creatures into extinction. At least here in California. Remember, we must, the old Beatles song from their White Album, “Hey, hey, Bungalo Bill – what have you killed today?” That’s us.
Don’t forget the millions upon millions of passenger pigeons, so numerous they once darkened the skies over America. Don’t forget the “Good God Almighty” woodpecker whose last, dying cry long ago echoed through the old forests of Arkansas and Tennessee.[2] A cry and a sight that astounded all who ever witnessed it.
Thank you for the warning, Dr. King, Thank you for the warning, St. Francis. Extinction is forever.
Back in college, several of us guys would pack up most every summer and go camping in Yosemite. Most mornings we would hike up to Vernal Falls from the valley floor, and once or twice, to the top of Half Dome. Often, as we would begin our climb up the trail to the falls, an old guy – I mean, a really old guy, all muscle and bone, would pass us, running up the trail. By the time we would be about two thirds of the way up, huffing and puffing, he’d greet us on his way back down. Today, I’m not in his shape, but do still envy his stamina. Face it – I was NEVER in his shape. He, too, was every bit a part of St. Francis’ amazing web of interconnectedness, as was Half Dome and the rush of Vernal Falls. Thank you, King and Francis, for the reminder.
Those invigorating summer days were a life-saving reconnection back to God’s splendid, restorative creation.
One year us guys decided to go to see the Big Trees in Sequoia National Park — not all that far from Yosemite. I had never seen anything so awesome. Staring up into the heavens to where the treetops soared, was a spiritual experience. Some of these 3,000-year-old giants were over three hundred feet tall. With trunks larger than six feet in diameter. St Francis would surely be one with these magnificent specimens. I surely was. In fact, on first arriving, all us guys got very quiet as we beheld their majesty. I remember us jumping out of the car and just staring up into the clouds and treetops. WOW!
| Now, we could lose it all to fire. These magnificent trees, the Ancient Ones, as known by Native Americans — have stood for centuries – from the time of the Prophets, Amos and Hosea — from the time of Jesus and the Roman Empire. From the time of tramping boots of conquerors: Charlamagne, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan. From the time of George Washington, Mozart, John Muir and John Donne… from the moment of that very first Fourth of July at Independence Hall…Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea… Harriot Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger – these trees have witnessed it all. Count the tree rings. |
They now urgently summon us to face the catastrophe of Global Warming.
These lofty Ancients of Days have been on the minds of many of us lately as infernos now rage about them.
The Sequoia National Monument lies partly on the Tule River Reservation. Many of those devastated by the fire damage, and those who care for these trees, are First Americans. But these trees are precious to all who’ve ever been transfixed by their majesty.
A forest ecologist with “Save the Redwoods,” Linnea Hedlund, remembers the first time she saw one of these trees. “My 7-year-old brain could not fathom it was real. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, she recalled.”[3]
Sequoyah Quinton, a member of the Cherokee Nation and a storm chaser, had been named after his grandfather, “who was named for Sequoyah, who had created a written form of the Cherokee language in the early 19th century, felt his heart break as he watched firefighters wrap the base of the Sherman tree in aluminum foil. The morning the fire approached the sacred grove, Sequoyah dropped to his knees and prayed for something to stop the destruction of the sequoia trees.”[4]
Together, we are one blessed gift of God, bound up in an “inescapable web of mutuality” — Husband, wife, lovers, children, companions – Brian, Larry, First Americans, and old man running. Sequoias and Half Dome. All that shares being itself with us.
The first gift of Grace, the first gift of Creation, is the simple blessing that there is Something at all. Instead of Nothing. “It is not fitting that man and woman should be alone.” We are not. We are all One in the Spirit of the Great Creator.
Thank you, St. Francis; thank you Dr. King, for this reminder. In the splendor of all creation, “Soon and very soon, we shall see the King.”
Pray, God, we learn to take care of one another while there’s still time.
Now, let’s go bless the animals. Amen.
.
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham jail,” April 16, 1963
[2] Ed Bradley, “Finding the Good Lord Bird,” 60 Minutes, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/finding-the-lord-god-bird/
[3] Diana Marcum, “Making a Stand for the Giants,” Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2021.
[4] Ibid.
St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach
Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Pentecost 19, October 3, 2021
Proper 22
“A Single Garment of Destiny”
Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8;
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
A More Excellent Way
“Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.” How many times have the words gotten out of our mouths before we wish we could take them back?
In the heat of argument, the insult, the half-truth, the jibe at another’s expense – those words come back to haunt us.
As a political pugilist I confess I have called those on the opposite side of an argument things one wouldn’t want to print in a sermon. Definitely not flattering, life-enhancing descriptors. So, I write this sermon to myself as much to anyone else.
The counsel from the book of James is a corrective. James urges a more excellent way: “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth…Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from cravings that are at war within you?”[1]
Envy, ego, malice – they rear their ugly heads at one time or another in most any congregation, making a most foul-tasting broth. The author of the book of James was very aware of social and disordered spiritual dynamics of his flock.
Every bit as much as much as St. Paul. See first and second Corinthians. Things get said that would have been better off left unsaid.
As a newly arrived pastor on one congregation, I was soon met by several women on the altar guild. They were tired, they complained. They had been doing this forever. Couldn’t some of the younger folks take this over.
I spent several weeks talking with some of those younger folks about how they could assume their responsibilities for our common life. Eventually a couple or so agreed to join the altar guild.
Things seemingly went fine – for a couple of weeks. Then I encountered one of these women who told me she was needing to quit. When I asked what was the matter, she said that what the existing members really wanted was newcomers who would do things exactly as they had done them – done them for years!
They wanted clones of themselves with no new ideas and were somewhat rude in letting the newcomers know their place. Definitely, not a more excellent way. My way or the highway!
One of my associates was always fond of quoting Luke 6:5, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” And fisticuffs fly. And feelings are bent out of shape.
Avarice, competition, envy, guilt – they are so often reflected in our lame excuses. Even to the point that the coverup become ludicrous.
One day, as young students were walking up the hill from their elementary school there was a very loud explosion. Then yells and screams. When one of the teachers arrived on the scene, she discovered a boy with some badly burned fingers. It turned out that he had brought a packet of gunpowder he had taken from his father’s reloading operation to school. As he was bragging about it and what he could do with it, it went off.
Caught red-handed, or black-handed in this case, he told the teacher, “I don’t know where it came from. It just dropped down out of the sky and I picked it up.” That’s certainly much more inventive than, “The dog ate my homework.”
Is this any more risible than the Wells Fargo’s lie to cover up bilking thousands of customers out of millions and millions of fake fees for opening bogus accounts in their names? “The branch employees did it.” Oh, really? In branches all across the nation – all at once? Hmmmmm.
Such lies and half-truths may bring forth a chuckle. But repeated in full blossom, they can wreak havoc in any church, in society. Did I tell you about the January 6th damage inflicted on our nation by the BIG LIE?
Jesus is said to have brought forth a little child, suggesting that his career- climbing disciples should be as selfless as that young one. If so, I don’t think Jesus knew much about children. We learn deceit and treachery at a very young age.
Taking the child into his arms, he said that whoever welcomes such a one, welcomes me and the One who sent me. But be under no illusions. We are born for trouble as the sparks fly upward – Job 5:7.
I remember rushing to the aid of our youngest one day, who was crying his eyes out. It turns out that his brother had bit him. Hard enough to leave teeth marks.
As I attempted to reason with our oldest, that it was much better to use words if you didn’t like what someone said or did, his response was, “Well, if they don’t agree with you, you just have to bite them.” Here we are just at second grade and ready to wage war World War III. Out of the abundance of the heart comes all sorts of vile and nasty stuff. Teeth marks included.
“Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom” – it takes a lifetime to absorb this advice.
Yes, take that young person into your arms, and train her up in the way she should go and she shall not depart from it. The beginnings of that “excellent way.”
Definitely, there is a more excellent way. The purpose of James advice is to preserve the gift of community. Martin Luther King called it the Beloved Community. It is Gospel Spirit that urges our hearts to yearn for such companionship. It is the call that comes in darkest night.
My grandmother’s advice is appropriate here. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
Similar is the Four Way Test in Rotary of the things we say:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build good will and better friendships?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Sometimes a hard truth is appropriate to the moment, but spoken without the personal attack, it might be heard. Danger, abuse, racism must be called out, yet Dr. King knew this could be done without the demeaning ad hominem, the personal insult.
When Mrs. Reiner called me in after class to talk about the homework I was not turning in and my lack of preparation for her high school English class, she did it in such a way that I really wanted to do better. And I did. She had an investment in my succeeding, an investment in me, and communicated that with a generous spirit. It is testimony to her active concern that today I still remember her fondly. That is the more excellent way commended to our hearts.
Through friends, parents, teachers and mentors – those who want us to succeed — God reaches down to the best in us — instills in our hearts the power to choose for the more excellent way, the “way born of wisdom.”
“Be perfect as your Father/Mother in heaven is perfect.” When we are urged to be perfect in Matthew 5:48, what is being urged is not some sort of compulsive perfectionism. The Greek here means grow towards the end to which you are intended. To grow into your full and true self, your full potential. This is exactly what Mrs. Reiner was urging. As with a more “excellent way,” this takes a lifetime of seasoning.
As my Methodist friends are wont to say, “I’m going on to perfection.” Still a long way to go for me.
In a remarkable op ed piece in the New York Times, Venus Williams gives testimony to the wisdom she received from her mother as she began her remarkable tennis career. Physical strength was certainly important. But equally so, psychological and spiritual balance. This is irreplaceable motherly wisdom passed down from generation to generation.
At the age of fourteen, Venus was beginning to move into the professional level of tennis. She had traveled with her mom to an important tournament in Oakland, and was entering a new level of her young career. There would be pressure beyond what she until then had known.
That day in Oakland, her mom took her aside to warn her of the intense scrutiny and demands she would now be under as she advanced.
The wise counsel her mother gave her was that this sport was not just about being tough with a well-honed body. It wasn’t about how hard she hit the ball. It was about the balance of a complete life.
“What my mom was telling me that day in Oakland was that none of those elements of winning would work unless I also tended to my mental health. I needed to have a balanced life and not identify myself solely as a tennis player. Even though I was beginning to have success as a young pro, I had to remain committed to my education, stay connected to my religion and enjoy the experience of improvement — not be so driven that I would miss it all.”[2]
That gift of love, bestowed by a wise mother, has carried Venus through tough years when she discovered she had an autoimmune disease. It has carried her through upset and disappointment. It has carried her through triumph with poise and humility. Her mom and her faith have given Venus the gift of a “gentleness born of wisdom.”
For those who have followed her career down through the years, Venus has been an example of perseverance and generosity. Always tending towards what God has intended her to be. Venus has chosen a more excellent way. So may it be with each of us – that we grow into the fullness of our authentic, God-intended, selves. Amen.
[1] James 3:13 ff., New Revised Version.
[2] Venus Williams, “Being Tough Means Taking Care of My Whole Self,” New York Times, Opinion, September 13, 2021.
St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach
Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Pentecost 17, September 19, 2021
Proper 20
“A More Excellent Way”
Jeremiah 11:18-20; Psalm 54;
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37
Called to be a Movement
“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” So began a most bizarre adventure for a little girl and her dog in the aftermath of a fearsome tornado. An adventure that would charm both adults and children for generations.
That might be fine for a film narrative, but it’s all too real and all too devastating for many abandoned Americans as the summer comes to a close. We’re not in the usual, comfortable America anymore.
The sleepy little town of Fair Bluff sits on the banks of the Lumber River in North Carolina. Like many small rural towns, it is facing its demise. Battered by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and then again by Hurricane Florence in 2018, there’s little left to wash away. The threat had become existential when their main industry, a factory producing vinyl products, had shut its doors and left after Matthew tore through.
Towns like Fair Bluff throughout the South and Northeast lie in sodden devastation. Many residents have either died, or if fortunate, relocated.
“On a recent afternoon, the sidewalks were empty and the storefronts abandoned, their interiors smashed up and littered with trash, doors ajar. The roof of one building had collapsed, a battered American flag stuck in the debris; inside other buildings were ransacked shelves, plastic containers full of Christmas decorations, an upside-down tricycle. Speakers on a Methodist church played recorded hymns for no one.”[1]
Further south, New Orleans seemed on the verge of a comeback in the waning days of August. And then Hurricane Ida hit — the coup de grace to this year’s tourist season. Hotels had been completely booked. Bartenders and restauranteurs were looking for a big Labor Day weekend that might help them catch up. Lots of tips. Now one manager had to let their guests know that storm damage had closed the hotel. Much of the “Big Easy” swelters in unbearable heat, no electric power to be had for a couple more weeks. No water either.
In California much of the state appears as an apocalyptic inferno straight out of hell. In spite of super-human efforts, the Caldor Fire creeps ever steadily towards the resort community of Lake Tahoe — erratic winds driving the blaze from treetop to treetop. The tourist season is up in smoke.
What an end to a summer. All the while, the delta valiant rages and fills emergency rooms and ICUs to overflowing. Our schools are opening. But will they stay open? We now have a pandemic of the unvaccinated!
The caldron of suffering and death is nothing new to the Christian community. Remember those who hid Jews from Hitler. As Jesus and his disciples traveled from town to town, he did not sugarcoat their immediate prospects. He labored under no illusions.
“Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed…If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
This is not a journey for the fainthearted or the sunshine disciple. Not for the lackadaisical or those seeking certainty or the self-congratulatory seeking redemption in worn-out dogma. The fires rage, the winds howl, making it real. No escape for the pious. Jesus warned his followers that the only path of faithful discipleship was through the toils and the sufferings of humanity. With some joy and respite along the way. That joy we would discover in one another’s company as we pass through it all.
That is why we are called by our presiding bishop Michael Curry to turn the Jesus club into the Jesus Movement. Jesus does not need admirers and disputatious folks who argue over who he is.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Get that cross off your lapel, from around your neck and onto your back. Jesus is calling people who will do what he does – heal the sick, feed the hungry and visit those in prison, hold a hand of the troubled. That is also the call of Bishop William Barber, leader of Moral Mondays—his summons to today’s communities of faith — to be a MOVEMENT.[2]
We, indeed, are called to be a MOVEMENT of joy and hope in the midst of our battered nation.
No one may be attending to the hymns broadcast form the United Methodist church in Fair Bluff, but there yet remains a community of the faithful who pays the electric bill. These are the ones who will do welfare checks on their neighbors. These will show up with a covered dish for those whose home has been devastated. These people will watch your children while you stand in line to complete forms for rebuilding at the emergency shelter. These are Spirit-empowered folks in it for the long haul. In it for the journey to Jerusalem and beyond.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
As one chef grilling hamburgers in downtown New Orleans for hurricane survivors said when asked by a reporter, “This is what we do here for one another.” This is what we do. Sounds like the beginnings of a movement to me.
Bishop Barber identifies the “ghetto of Nazareth” as the origin of this movement. A movement led by those made poor by systems of exploitation – that is the context of “ptokos”[3] – the impoverished.
Out of this backwater, this impoverished village, this place not unlike Fair Bluff, or any of the myriad abandoned communities scattered across America comes a stirring.
“In Caesar’s world, where narcissistic leaders only cared about the grand and the greedy, the pompous and the pretentious, Jesus announces a revival led by and among the rejected. Caesar, who loved to put his face on money and buildings; Caesar, who catered to the greedy and led by fear and political shenanigans.”[4]
The Jesus mission is a clarion call to the broken and the lost, to those who will never receive an invite to Mar-a-Lago or much of anywhere else. To those in disbelief, staring at their sodden belongings in a flooded home, comes a summons.
Into that world of stratospheric wealth and power, Jesus inaugurates a movement out of literally, “nowhere.” And through “nobodies.” A Movement of the unlettered, the disenfranchised, both men and women, the lowly – in sum, the poor.
On this weekend anniversary of 9/11, most of us remember exactly where we were when those planes hit the towers.
I remember Jonathan calling from school, asking if I had the TV on. “Go turn it on, Dad. Planes just crashed into the World Trade Tower in New York. This is bad. I don’t think we can’t let this one slide. Gotta get to class,” and with that, he was gone.
Mesmerized, I stared disbelieving at the screen — transfixed by the enormity of the tragedy. One of the first thoughts that entered my mind after I started processing this reality was: “Can’t let this one slide? Now, I suspect we are going to do something very stupid.”
Looking back at our exit from Afghanistan last week, that’s exactly what we did. Not one, but two very stupid decisions. That’s the assessment of two significant foreign policy scholars, both with combat experience: Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America. Also Col. Andrew Bacevich (ret.), who served in the Vietnam War. Both, published authors and professors. Andrew lost a son in the Iraq war. Read their writings. “Chasing Ghosts”[5] and “After the Apocalypse.”[6]
Twenty years later, we still remember those first responders clambering over “the pile” desperately searching for any survivors. The pictures of fire fighters, covered with ash and dust, sleeping on the pews of St. Paul’s chapel down the street. Exhausted beyond endurance. The names posted on pictures and notes tied to the fence of that house of worship inquiring as to the whereabouts of family members and friends. Lit at night by a sea of votive candles. And hovering about it all, unseen, the prayers of a nation.
Looking back on the tragedy of 9/11, the Covid scourge tearing at our nation – the multitude of problems we face – we need a grounded community of Hope. We need a Spirit Movement.
As I watched, probably the most compelling narrative of the events of 9/11 and twenty years forward, I was most grateful to the two film makers who put together “Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11.” Record it, stream it. It’s available in multiple showings on MSNBC. And get a box of Kleenex. The gift of this film is of the same kind as that of the Jesus Movement. Chock-a-block Spirit-filled compassion. And HOPE.
The Church at it’s best nurtures that Spirit. Is a habitation for that Spirit. But that same Spirit moves through and among those daily building the Beloved Community. Some Christian, some Jewish and Muslim. Some “Nones” whose faith alone is known to God.
On this anniversary of 9/11, surrounded yet by a sea of pandemic, we are not a people without Hope.
I share a story from my friend Dick Bunce – shamelessly stolen from the sermon he preached to the Unitarians this last week.
From Dick I quote:
“Here’s a brief clip from a recent issue of a news magazine. A Michigan judge, Bruce Morrow, gave Edward Martell, a drug dealer, probation instead of a prison sentence of many years. This changed Martell’s life.
Judge Morrow said: Mr. Martell, I believe you have greatness within you. I sentence you to probation and challenge you to become the CEO of a fortune 500 company.
Martell worked his way up, first enrolling in a community college, then graduating from undergraduate and then from law school. All the while, Judge Morrow stayed in contact with Martell, and Martell with the judge.
Martell had many obstacles to overcome. Recently, now 43, he stood before the judge again, this time to be sworn in for the practice of law.
Martell says he cried like a baby. I doubt that the judge had dry eyes as well.
Wow. What if this could become widespread? What if a whole city could become known as a city of compassion? “
A nation of Compassion. A nation of Justice. A nation of Peace. A nation of Generosity. A nation of Equity and Opportunity. That is the movement Rev. Barber is summoning us to. Jesus summons us to.
This coming week, we lay to rest the mortal remains of a sister who over the years has been a faithful member of St. Francis, Sally Mayock Hartley. With these words we in thanksgiving return her to her maker:
“Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Sally Mayock Hartley. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, and the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints of light.”
Might we also live into the reality of this prayer. At the end of this mortal journey might we be accounted a member of that Blessed Community. “Servant, well done.” Until then, may we daily strive to be staunch and steadfast members of the Jesus Movement. Amen.
[1] Christopher Flavelle, “Battered Bottom Line in Towns Climate Change Has Come For”, New York Times, September 4, 2021.
[2] William J. Barber, II, We are Called to Be a Movement (New York: Workman Publishing Co., Inc., 2020).
[3] Op Cit, 11.
[4] Op. cit., 11-12.
[5] Paul Rieckhoff, Chasing Ghosts: Failures and Facades in Iraq: A Soldier’s Perspective (New York: New American Library – Caliber, 2006}.
[6] Andrew Bacevich, After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2021).
St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach
Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Pentecost 16, September 12, 2021
Proper 19
“Called to be a Movement”
A Woman on a Mission
“You are not a horse. You are not at cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” This was the tweet from the FDA on why you should not use Ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. Desperation is raging through our nation, rampaging like Hurricane Ida, along with this pandemic[1].
Feed stores all across the country are reporting that sales of this drug to deworm horses and cattle have skyrocketed. Tucker Carlson and others on Fox News have been censured for promoting this drug as a cure for COVID-19. Groups on Facebook are promoting it as a treatment. Sales reaching 88,000 prescriptions of this dewormer per week. Texas, alone, reporting a 550% spike in poison calls from the ingestion of this drug. Filling scarce ICU beds needed for Covid patients. And so useless. Almost 90% of these folks were unvaccinated. “Y’all stop it!”
This takes us back to the Bad Old Days when a group of quack doctors and Trump were promoting hydroxychloroquine as a new miracle cure. You remember the bogus group, America’s Frontline Doctors. These were the first to promote the hydroxychloroquine cure. Their spokeswoman was that very same doctor who had been asserting that ovarian cysts were caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. You know — the same woman who said the government was run in part by humans and “reptilians and other aliens.”
And this group of crazy even got a hearing before the president and vice president. “I thought she was still very impressive,” the Donald concluded after the visit. Reptilian overlords and all.
And all the while, a safe, effective cure has been available. Free. At CVS or Walgreens.
But many, for ideological reasons, peer pressure or ignorance, (who knows?) won’t take the vaccine. So, out of shear desperation they’ve turned to snake oil. “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
I guess the upside to this quack cure is, if you had worms, you don’t now.
Desperation drives all sorts of behavior. Some well founded. Some absolutely off the charts. It was out of such desperation that a foreigner approached Jesus concerning her daughter’s demon possession. Women in that place and time did not approach men. It was unseemly. Especially for a foreigner, a Syrophoenician. We have our ways. You best mind them. Stay in your place, woman.
When asked for healing for her daughter, Jesus’ response is a slap across the face. “One does not give the children’s food to the dogs.” At this she should have slunk quietly away, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
But this woman persists. “Even the dogs are allowed to gather the scraps under the table.” She’s got him there. She was a first century Molly Ivins, Katie Porter, Barbara Jordan, Liz Chaney and Elizabeth Warren – all rolled up into one. Nasty Woman on a mission!
This interchange opens a whole raft of possible questions about Jesus. We don’t usually associate snarky with him. But then, we don’t associate violence with him either – like beating the hell out of a bunch of greedy money changers at the temple doorstep.
So, let’s leave the theological speculation aside and accept the story as we have it. This woman was the prod to widen his vision. Grace, healing, compassion – these are boundless. Not the property of any one tribe. Her mission to save her daughter enlarged his vision. A moment of Grace.
Like Dr. Seuss’s Grinch, Jesus’ heart grew one size lager. Out of the desperation of this mother, comes a great religious epiphany. ALL means ALL. That’s the whole story about Divine Love.
It is out of this gospel compassion that many worked tirelessly amid danger to evacuate U.S. personnel and Afghans at Kabul. Though the danger was palpable, these folks put their lives on the line. Literally, it turns out for thirteen of our service members.
Behind the scenes, in desperation, many more stateside worked untold hours to save Afghan friends and colleagues. The same desperation as that of the Syrophoenician mother with a demon possessed daughter. That airlift effort was of a kind with the Great Compassion embodied in today’s gospel lesson. Once finally organized, it was a phenomenal achievement.
Sadly, we didn’t reach all our friends. We failed to save many of the most vulnerable: women and girls facing a bleak future of forced servitude and a waste of talents. Many stories of heartbreak I find troubling. The former president even blocked the processing of visas for these allies for months on end. Stephen Miller and his ilk are still ranting about letting these folks in – “they’re going to kill us all.” The very same desperate people, many of whom saved our butts at great risk to their own lives. Go figure!
I read the anonymous email of one Afghan man[2] and his family attempting to make it through the crush at airport gates. Syavash, an Afghan journalist for over fifteen years, his wife, Sarah, “one of the first women to attend medical school after the fall of the Taliban in her province of Parwan” – she was.one of the first woman doctors in Afghanistan. They and their two sons, finally gave up after thirteen hours in the most inhuman conditions – wading through sewage that flooded the street, enduring the insults and beatings of Taliban security, the scorching heat and dust. It finally became too much.
“My wife was hit with a stick several times and so were numerous other people. They threw water on us and repeatedly said, ‘Your owners, your masters, the Westerners abandoned you.’
“My wife, who suffers from severe back pain was hit so many times and I could only beg, ‘Please don’t hit her. She is a woman and she is sick.’
“Pasoon may only be 7 years old but he knows what is going on around him. He kept saying, ‘Let’s go home. I will tell the Taliban to take two of my toy cars and don’t hurt my father and mother.’”
The Spirit, moving through this family’s desperation, can move us here, we who can do something helpful. Might even move the Taliban to recognize our bond of a common humanity. I hear that they have in secret been working with the CIA to continue to spirit Americans to the Hamid Karzai International Airport, even past the August deadline.
It was out of this same Great Compassion that many were led to save and shelter these vulnerable Afghans. It is who we are at our best. Spirit incarnated.
Yet even Jesus could not feed or heal everyone. Nor could we extract everyone in those past several weeks at that besieged airport. In these last hours of desperation, we failed ourselves. We failed many friends — and we’re just not in His class.
Left with “thoughts and prayers,” we are not helpless – if that same Great Compassion which moves through these prayers, is emboldened and enfleshed, Spirit empowered, these “thoughts and prayers” can work healing and welcome. As my friend David often quotes Alfred North Whitehead, “Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them.”
I called my friend Anne, another woman on a mission, who is part of Newcomers Access Center,[3] working to get these refugees safely resettled here in America, asking her how we at Pilgrim Place might be of help. “Of course, money always helps,” she quickly responded. But we can do more. Much more.
We can tutor these folks in English, our women can take Afghan women shopping and to other appointments. We can help in finding housing – hopefully at our almost empty United Methodist seminary in Claremont.
You can donate a car in good running condition. You can be a long-term friend of an Afghan family. Contact them twice a week or so, plan a picnic. And definitely practice English all the time.
Money, for certain, always helps, and you can donate through the Newcomers Access website. – http://www.newcomersaccesscenter.org
Don’t worry, Anne’s making a list. If you live outside Southern California, we can connect you with groups working in your local area to welcome these new neighbors. Most churches have a connection to an organization in their denomination that is responding to the needs of these new refugees.
If the One of Great Compassion touches your heart deep down to where your mojo is, do what the Spirit is whispering to you. Now.
Just as Jesus grew in Spirit in the instant of that mother’s rejoinder — grew to include those not of his tribe or religious clique, so might we. Eternally, he comes to us in the face of the dispossessed seeking refuge. As a refugee in Egypt fleeing Herod’s wrath. So, now he does here in America.
James Baldwin put it this way about the bond of our common humanity — about the working of that Great Compassion among us:
“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.”[4] Amen.
[1] U.S. FDA tweet, @US FDA, August 21, 2021.
[2] Anonymous, “What it’s like for an Afghan family trying to make it to the Kabul airport,” Yahoo News, August 29, 2021.
3 www.newcomeraccesscenter.org, (909) 455-3248, 401 N. Gibbs Street, Pomona, CA 91767.
[4] James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 393.
St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach
Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Pentecost 15, September 5, 2021
Proper 18
“A Woman on a Mission”
Isaiah 35:4-7; Psalm 146;
James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17; Mark 7:24-37
