On Sunday morning I woke up with a racing heart and a sense of dread.  I had just come back to consciousness from a terrible dream – a nightmare, really.

In this dream I was seated in my vestments ready to take the pulpit as a visiting preacher in this huge downtown Presbyterian church.  Reflecting back, it looked like the huge sanctuary of Immanuel Presbyterian Church on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles.  When I got to the pulpit, looking over the rows of pews, mostly filled, I realized that I didn’t have my sermon.

I looked around the surface of the pulpit desk but it was nowhere to be seen.  Not even on the floor.  Well, I thought to myself, I ought to be able to remember enough of it to get by.  After all, I had labored over it all week.  But, nothing.  I couldn’t remember what the scripture passage was.  I couldn’t even remember a single story. 

I began with a little patter about how honored I was to have been invited and told a lame joke (the kind my boys say I usually tell), hoping that something might come back to mind as I vamped.  The next thing I knew, there was a woman standing next to me with an offering plate.  This was the signal that I was done.   Yeah, really DONE.  At the same moment, the entire sermon came back to mind.  But it was too late.  Done.  Really Done, as in Toast.

At that moment another thing occurred.  I woke up.

I wonder if it is just Presbyterians that cause so much anxiety.  Starchy Calvinism can mess with the mind.  Or was something deeper going on?

The basic undercurrent of this dream is: Forney, you don’t measure up.  You’re a fraud.  Isn’t that the message we get from so much of society?  You’ve got to measure up.  We’ve got standards and, well…you’re out of your league.

Paul tells the church at Rome that the standards the world beats us over the head with are bogus hogwash.  “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of the world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your heart.”  Then you’ll be in alignment with God, the power that set the planets in their courses and also cares for even the tiny sparrow. 

The world said that, as a teenage boy, if I ever hoped to attract a girlfriend, I needed to have a souped up, chopped and customized Chevy.  Chrome exhaust pipes, metallic paint job with pin striping that gave off a deep throated VAROOOOM when I stomped on it.  I had a hand-me-down 1950 Studebaker.

I never measured up.  The problem with the “standards of this world” is that none of us can ever measure up.  And in just trying to do so, many of us will be ground to dust. Trying to earn your self-worth is futile.  There’s never enough.  You’ll never be good enough.  That’s just how it is with the world’s standards.

The world’s standards are spiritual death.  Sometimes actual, real, dead death.

Look at the COVID-19 wards across the country.  They’re full of so many of society’s discards.

You want to see the flotsam of the standards of this world?  Look at the recent economic indicators.

In the June business section, when the pandemic in the U.S. was just beginning to kick into high gear, I spied an article on bankruptcy.  Many companies, reeling from massive losses were heading to the  courts for relief.

I read that, while bankruptcy is usually devastating for workers and investors, it often works out just fine for CEOs. 

Here is the true skinny on corporate bankruptcy.  Companies get rid of debt; they stiff their investors and get relieved of burdensome union contracts and healthcare obligations to their workers.  They leave their suppliers and subcontractors high and dry.   AND, AND. The CEO’s walk away with full wallets. 

Whiting Petroleum sought protection from the courts, it’s CEO walked away with $6.4 million in bonuses and perks.  In closing 154 stores across the country, J.C. Penny managed to find enough pocket change to pay their outgoing CEO Jill Soltau $4.5 million.  I wonder how all the store clerks and the cleaning crew made out.  The standards of the world work out pretty well for some.

Chesapeake Energy paid out a raft of bonuses to senior employees right before filing for bankruptcy.  The same with Hertz.  These are the standards of the world.[1]  Do not conform yourselves to them.  They are the path of dehumanization and death.

Tuesday the S&P Dow Jones hit record highs.  And more and more wound up living on the streets.  Our friend in Charleston, WV, told me that city parks are overrun with the homeless and drug addicted.  But the top five percent are doing very well, thank you.  One analyst, looking at the disparity can’t believe the numbers, “This market is nuts,” said Howard Silverblatt.[2]  The “standards of this world,” they’re nuts.

This is the judgement of the world.  These standards are death to the aspirations and dreams of many.  Most of us can never measure up to them.  We will never be rich enough, thin enough, educated enough.  Most of us will not have the right car, the right trophy spouse, the right house or the right attitudes.  So, don’t conform yourself to these standards. They are death.

But be transformed.  Inwardly, by a complete change of your mind.

Transformation begins with opening our eyes, opening our hearts and minds to what is really real within ourselves and the world around us.  It begins with a real assessment.  That’s the beginning of the 12-step journey to recovery.  A moral inventory of who you are. 

It’s like the mess I make in the kitchen.  I look at it and ask myself, now why should I expect someone else to clean this up?  Then I hunt for the sponge and soap.  Why would they have more fun doing it than I?

That’s the beginning of the journey of healing for our nation.  Transformation is listening — listening to those we have harmed and neglected.  Like a formerly enslaved woman, Isabella Gibbons, working as a cook at the University of Virginia.  This is the campus designed by Thomas Jefferson, author of those inspiring words in the Declaration of Independence, “all men equal.”

From this woman, who would later by 1867 become a teacher of a Black elementary school, “Can we forget  the crack of the whip, cowhide, whipping-post, the auction block, the handcuffs, the spaniels, the iron collar, the negro-trader tearing the young child from its mother’s breast as a whelp from the lioness?  Have we forgotten that by these horrible cruelties, hundreds of our race have been killed?  No, we have not, or will.”[3]

God begins that inward transformation in the moment we acknowledge our brokenness.  As with an individual, so also with a nation or institution. In acknowledging untold pain and suffering, in acknowledging the black lives taken advantage of and shamefully used, the University of Virginia has embarked on the journey of inward transformation as an institution.  They are listening to the pain echoing down the centuries of broken black bodies and spirits.

Those who never feel the need for contrition, those who never experience the need to apologize – they will not be healed.  They will remain stuck in frozen attitudes.   All joy sucked out of life.

Transformation is real, but painful.  Like my friend Ed Bacon is fond of saying, “The TRUTH will set you free.  But first it will hurt like hell.”  In the fellowship of God’s Beloved Community, none of us has to take that journey alone.  Transformation is about having a heart big enough for others than just oneself, as a security guard said this week of Joe Biden.  Let “God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.”.  It will enlarge your heart.

Transformed by God – these are the healthy, life-giving people.  Folks you want to be around because they bring out the best in you.  They cheer you on rather than drag you down.  Don Thomas is one of those people. 

I recently received an e-mail from my friend Dr. Don Thomas who works in Malawi providing medical services and raising funds for schools and community organization.  He’s as old as I and yet still makes it back and forth from Pasadena to Africa. 

He shares the most marvelous, life-affirming stories of a village and it’s people.  One young African woman, Ida Puliwa, the founder of Othakarhaka Foundation, was the first female from her village to graduate college.  Her transformed soul has transformed her village.[4]

Even with COVID-19 shutting the school in her village, Ida has organized the older girls to tutor the younger students so their progress is not lost.  “The girls are fulfilling their commitment to “pass on the kindness”, carrying forth Ida’s unique, original goal for Othakarhaka.  Each village volunteer of every age gives of their time each week to ‘pass on the kindness.’”

My friend, Fr. Doug, had a dream one night – no not about forgetting his sermon.  This night visitation was surely an encounter with the divine.  The voice he heard said, “Go help my people in Africa.”  Over the years, he has done that indeed.  He even roped me into the effort.

His work funded through United Charity Endowment for Africa, has developed clean drinking water projects in coastal villages of Ghana and in the interior rain forest at the St. Anselm’s Anglican cathedral at Sunyani.  He, as of late has worked with Ghanaians to rescue young boys sold into slavery for the fishing industry.  Upon rescue the boys are provided social services and education.

From Doug’s transformed heart and mind has come transformation for many others.  That’s how it is with Spirit Transformation.  Can’t help itself. 

This work is the spiritual fruit of one whose life is evidence of inward transformation.  Out of it flows, peace, patience, kindness, forbearance, freedom, sobriety, generosity – all the rest of it.

The world doesn’t understand such.  By the standards of the powerful, such is “weakness, foolishness.”   Such things are beneath them.  The world shouts back, “Loser!”

“But let God transform you, inwardly by a complete change of your mind.  Then you will be able to do the will of God.”  And that will be your delight.

Mother Teresa’s poem, “Anyway,” makes it all so clear – what gives life and what reeks of death.  Her poem speaks to the depth of the transformed heart and mind.  And the freedom of being inner directed  “Let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.”

Mother Teresa’s Anyway Poem

Sister gets the “Last Word.”   Amen.

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[1] Peter Eavis, “Bankruptcy?  For the C.E.O.s, It’s a Bonus,” New York Times, Business Section, June 24, 2020.

[2] Matt Phillips, “’This Market is Nuts’: Stocks Defy a Recession,” New York Times, August 19, 2020

[3] Quoted in Holland Cotter, “Where ‘Horrible Cruelties’ Can No Longer Hide,” New York Times, August 17, 2020.

[4] https://www.idemandaccess.org/

August 23, 2020, Pentecost 12, Proper 16

The Rev. John C. Forney

Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

“Do Not Conform – Be Transformed”

We moved to a new neighborhood when I was in my second year of high school.  Now, I must confess that pretty much all through junior high and into my first year of high school, school was a social disaster.  And an academic disaster.  But moving to Lakewood didn’t help matters one bit.

Exclusion was no more apparent than when lunch hour rolled around.  I took my lunch and over by the walkway was a group of tables at the edge of one wing of classrooms where the popular kids ate.  There were the football players and their girlfriends.  The cheerleaders and some popular band kids – an inner circle of popularity all ate there.  To think that any of us mere mortals might sit at one of those tables was to risk abject scorn.  This was the Cool Kids table.  They had the right clothes, the right cars, the right girlfriends and boyfriends.  I was definitely not in the class of the “Cool Kids,” nor were any of the few friends I had.  We sort of hung around on the edges of school.  We definitely did not have the “right stuff.”

I’m not sure when I first heard the story of the unwanted Canaanite woman.  But I had no difficulty in identifying with her.  Matthew tells of this woman who begins following Jesus and his disciples on the road in the district of Tyre and Sidon.  Definitely, the people of this district were outsiders, certainly “not cool.” These outsiders were excluded from the God’s Covenant with the House of Israel.  She implores Jesus for her daughter’s sake.  “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

It’s like that stray dog which began following me home from school one day.  No matter how much I tried to shoo it away into a vacant lot, it wouldn’t leave.   It would back up a few feet and again resume following me as soon as I took a few steps. 

That’s how Jesus and his little band regarded this woman.  The disciples kept urging Jesus to shoo her away.  She was not their kind.  They refused to recognize her humanity.  She was a nuisance, a pest.

She was like that telemarketing phone call.  The caller first asks your name and how are you like they’re juiced on six cups of coffee. Before you can get a word in edgewise, this marketing monster is off on their sales pitch.  Just a big bother and waste of time.  I’m thinking, “If I really needed this as much as you say, I would have already purchased it.”  Get out of here!  Most often, only rudeness will get them get them out of your hair. 

“Send her away,” the disciples urge, keeping her all the time at arm’s length.  She smells.  She talks funny.  They had no time for this ragged, unkempt woman.  “Send her away.”  She definitely does not belong at the Cool Kids table.

But she persists. 

I remember another woman who more recently persisted.  When Elizabeth Warren insisted on interjecting a letter from Coretta Scott King into the proceedings on the Senate floor, Mitch McConnell would have none of it.  In explaining the Senate’s censure of her on the floor, “She was warned.  It was explained to her.  Nevertheless, she persisted.”  Another “Nasty Woman” not knowing her place.  And this ragged woman yelling and carrying on about her daughter does not know her place.

Finally, Jesus, exasperated, wheels on the woman right there in the middle of the road and explains it to her.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  But again, she persists, “Lord help me.”  Finally, he snaps, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

For most women, for most of us who do not belong at the “Cool Kids” table, the matter would have been dropped.  Embarrassed and dejected, we would have retreated into silence and slunk away. 

That is what happens to too many of those marginalized in our society.  These were the immigrants and foreigners then living in Israel in Jesus’ day.  Presently, these are the families seeking asylum from drug gangs in Mexico and Central America – fleeing ruthless dictators in Honduras and Guatemala (tyrants we quietly prop up with American dollars and troops).  These are the children yanked from their parents and locked in cages at our southern border.  They’re just a nuisance.  So what if they all get COVID-19 and die.  Not our responsibility.  No sign here about the “huddled masses,” or “tempest-tossed.”  “GO AWAY,” the sign reads. 

Not many years ago, that is what the “Chinese Exclusion Act was about – what the restrictive covenants in property deeds were about, what “red-lining” was about.  You don’t belong here at the Cool Kids table.

Recently, in the Science section of the Times, I read how much more subtly we communicate the same message in so-called “polite” society.  It was about the not-so-subtle indignities that minorities in science and medicine daily endure, especially women of color.

The new term for such pernicious and not-so-subtle putdowns is “micro-aggressions.”  These are comments, many unthinking, which communicate to another that they don’t belong.  They are not welcome at the Cool Kids table – any more than was that desperate woman.  She was not suitable material for the Jesus Movement.

Oh yes, we sing “In Christ there is no East of West, in him no North or South.”  But c’mon.  That’s nice in theory. But not when a black dentist moves in down the street as happened in my neighborhood when I was a kid. 

Definitely not cool.  So not cool that some of their neighbors gave that family the message loud and clear when the ran a garden hose through their second-floor window and set it to running while the family was on vacation. That song’s a nice sentiment, but not when property values are at stake.

This is the exclusion that especially women of color face in medicine.  Dr. Onyeka Otugo shares of her experiences when training in emergency medicine in Chicago and Detroit.  As she would enter a patient’s room, the comment was sometimes, “When is the doctor coming in?”  This after she had already introduced herself as a doctor.   None of her white male colleagues ever had to face such indignity. 

Patients would let her know where the trash was so she could take it out, or that the sink needed attending to.  These “put downs” were often “subtle, stunning, often automatic, and non-vocalized exchanges.”  Dr. Chester Pierce, a psychiatrist refers to them as “micro aggressions.”  Not “micro” because of their corrosive impact on the other, but because of their routine frequency. 

Many doctors of color, especially women though, report the high frequency of such derogatory comments.  Or having been addressed as “sweetie” or “honey.”[1]  Even by their male colleagues on the hospital staff.

I can understand the racism behind such behavior.  If you grew up in a largely white society as I did, You may have never encountered any professionals who were not white.  I remember the first time I took our oldest to Kaiser to have his asthma checked out.  We had sat in a small office sometime before the doctor finally appeared. 

When Dr. Pham entered, I had to check my racial stereotypes right there and then.  I wondered, “What kind of training did this doctor from Cambodia have?”  Is he licensed?  Would he be as qualified as another, as a real doctor – read “white” doctor?  As this thought raced through my head, a sense of shame filled me.  Of course, he’s qualified.  He’s had to pass the same exams that all doctors pass – again, read “white” doctors.  Kaiser wouldn’t have hired him otherwise.  Now I’m thinking, “Forney, you jerk.  Get a grip.”

Of course, Dr. Pham was excellent.  He thoroughly explained where our son was with his asthma and which course of treatment would be best.  His manner with Jonathan was kind and thoughtful.  He explained to him in language he could understand what was happening and how they were going to make him well.

Right then and there, I received a master class in race relations.  I left the doctor’s office with some new insights about myself and how easily I, an educated, “enlightened” white liberal, could pigeonhole and dismiss that man.  Dismiss him as Other. I consoled myself with the thought that, at least, I didn’t think he was the janitor!

Dr. Sheryl Heron, a black professor of emergency medicine at Emory, says that these microaggressions can take a terrible toll.  “After the twelve-thousandth time, it starts to impede your ability to be successful…”[2]  The burn-out rate among emergency medical personnel is already extraordinarily high without this crap.  Self-doubt eats at one’s sense of worth and one’s sense of vocation.

Back to the region around Tyre and Sidon.  After having been told that one doesn’t take the children’s food and fling it to the dogs, we pick up the story.  And, yes, we know the term for a female dog – that is what he called her indirectly.  That’s the sort of word that gets your mouth washed out with soap.  So, let’s pick up the story.

This Syro-Phoenician woman — this most original of “nasty women” — had the hutzpah to retort, “Even the dogs gather up the scraps from under the master’s table.”  EVEN THE DOGS!  Say what?

Silence.  Crickets.  More silence.  Shuffling of feet in the dust.

Instantaneously, in a heartbeat, Jesus’ heart grew one size larger. “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And there was healing.  Not only for the daughter but for Jesus and all those around.  Healing reaching down through the ages, in hearts of all touched by the retelling of that exchange.  Surely, on that day another was welcomed into that marvelous, Spirit-filled band, the Jesus Movement. 

Nothing is set in stone.  Even the most hardened hearts can be softened like butter in the microwave. 

I realize that, not all those considered unfit for the Cool Kids table, will be able to speak up for themselves as did this bedraggled women Jesus encountered.  So many have been beat down for so long that all persistence has wrung out of them.  It is up to those of privilege, especially white male privilege, to hold wide the doors of inclusion, of success.  It’s always about a “hand up.”

That’s what we, the Church, are called to be.  A glorious welcome home party. 

I can still remember that cartoon in one of our Anglican magazines depicting folks exiting a church after the service.  One snooty woman with blue hair piled high on her head, dressed in furs and bling, indignantly demanded of the priest as she glared at the church sign board proclaiming “Decade of Evangelism.”  “What is this Decade of Evangelism?” she demanded with haughty distain. “I thought everyone who was supposed to be an Episcopalian already was one!”

What is evangelism?  It’s simply the good news that there’s a place for all at the Cool Kids Table — for, in the end, it is the Lord’s table.  That’s what we proclaim each and every Sunday.  At least back in the old days when we were still able to gather in person for worship.

In Christ we are still learning what it means that all are invited to the Cool Kids table.  And such a feast that is spread.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.

That is the message of the House of Hope.  In God’s Kindom there are do-overs.  Redemption is our business, God willing.  ALL means ALL.  We may lose the patience,  We may lack the strength to persist.  But God doesn’t!

O Lord, give us, your Church, a heart many sizes larger than it would have had if left to our own devices.  Make of us a joyful welcome party for all to the Cool Kids table.  For all are TOTALLY COOL in your sight.  Amen.

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[1] Emma Goldbert, “It can Cause You to Shrink,” New York Times, Science Section, August 11, 2020

[2] Ibid.

August 16, 2020, Pentecost 11

The Rev. John C. Forney

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

“The Cool Kids’ Table”

As July rolls into August, high seas and ferocious winds threaten to swamp the Ship of State.  Huge surges of new waves of coronavirus inundate hospital emergency rooms.  This week one of our own at St. Francis has been hospitalized with COVID-19 (she is slowly recuperating).  Nationally, we are experiencing over one thousand deaths daily.  California, Florida and Arizona have surpassed previous records for their daily death rates.

Then comes the presidential retweet promoting a doctor who claims that wearing face masks is of no help, hydroxychloroquine is a potential cure for COVID’19, AND gynecological problems are the result of sex with demons and witches in dreams — oh, did I mention that she asserts there’s a medicine in the works that incorporates alien DNA?  This is about as wackadoodle crazy as it can get.  The republic is sinking in ignorance and folly.  What’s worse, whole bunches of people believe this nonsense.

Is it any wonder that much of Europe has contained the virus while in America it continues to surge out of control?  We are floundering. It’s time for an SOS.

The account from Matthew of Jesus on the storm-tossed sea brings perspective.  In the images from this story, the church drew guidance for the turbulent age in which it came into being.  This was an era of tyrants, privation and disease.

In this account, Jesus’ disciples are headed for the opposite shore of the Sea of Galilee.  This lake was notorious for the fearsome storms that could arise at a moment’s notice.  Evening came – we all know that fearsome things and enlightening spiritual moments always happen at night.  So, don’t you know it.  Their little boat is soon battered by towering waves.  They are far from land and the wind is against them.  If that were not terrifying in itself, they see a spectral form coming towards them.  “It’s a ghost,” they shriek.  But as the apparition becomes clearer, they recognize their teacher, Jesus, walking over the waves.  Impetuous Peter is beside himself.  “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  And so, Jesus obliged, giving the command.  But as Peter stepped out of the boar, he looked down and noticed the fearsome sea, the howling wind.  And he began to sink.  His courage shrank and he began to go under.  Peter, is an original Lone Ranger.  He’s the American ethic – I’ll do this myself.  Don’t need your help, thank you. 

Now we can understand Churchill’s not-so-gentle chiding to Americans when the country was faced with the onslaught of Hitler’s Wehrmacht in the late 30s.  “Americans always do the right thing.  After they’ve tried everything else.”  Same with Peter.  At last, in desperation, he calls out to the one who is their Rock, “Lord, save me!”

As the tempestuous sea of COVID-19, a pandemic out of control – an economy in collapse – and our citizens trust in their government in the basement.  With systemic racism and age-old racial disparities in housing, education and in our economic life, threatening national unity, we cry out in despair.  Chaos is winning. Fear seizes hearts and minds.

We blame our health professionals.  Recently, state and county health epidemiologists and doctors have been assaulted by mobs of the irrational and fearful.  For many, the stress has led to resignations.  We would rather trust our luck to politicians who preach happy talk and willful ignorance.  Yeah, if you’d rather trust some pol who’s got no more than a mail-order M.D. from the School of his own Imagining – if you’d rather trust your children to this abysmal ignorance than a Dr. Fauci, or your accredited county health official – well, good luck with that.  No wonder the daily death rate in the U.S. is averaging over one thousand per day, while the daily death rate in places like Germany and Taiwan is zero!  So many are sore afraid that they vent their anger on those who might lead us out of this thicket.

Our stormy heritage of racial intolerance has come back to confront the brutality of our society with the unassailable demand for justice.  Reports on systemic racism and misconduct in our nation’s police departments come as huge waves crashing down upon our frail race relations.  Trust evaporates.

The Los Angeles Times reports the costs of misdeeds by secret gangs of sheriff’s deputies.  They have cost the County of Los Angeles twenty-one million dollars over the past ten years alone.

These rogue bands go by such names as “Vikings,” “Regulators, “3000 Boys” and “The Banditos,” operating with impunity for decades.  In the County Jail sheriff guards forced inmates into the most brutal fights.  On the streets law abiding citizens are abused and humiliated.  Tell me what part of “protect and serve” these outrages cover. The ocean of criminality here seems without limit.

Out of the brutality of a fatal shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, comes the national moment of reckoning – #blacklives matter.  With the loss of so many, it’s enough to cause one to lose heart.  But it is the agonizing eight minutes and forty-six seconds of slow death of George Floyd we all witnessed, live and in vivid color, that galvanizes a nation.  Finally, white folks experience some of the same reality that our citizens of color have endured for generations.  White America is finally WOKE.  At least, enough are.  Many of us begin to experience in our gut the waves of injustice that crash over too many of our precious brothers and sisters of color.  Finally!  Some of white America are being pulled under with them.  Trayvon Martin is now our son, our brother.   Breonna Taylor is now our daughter, our sister.

“Say the names,” the sign demanded.  “Say the names.’’  George Floyd is only one of the latest.  Breonna Taylor.  Atatiana Jefferson.  Freddie Gray.  And the list goes on.  And on.  Far too many gone. 

We make the theological connection.  These heretofore unknown faces are the very face of the Christ in our midst.  We behold the wounds, know the anguish.  Until George Floyd was family to us, we just didn’t get it.

Something indeed has changed in America.  Something fundamental.  You catch sight of it out in the streets all across this nation.  What I see is the sacramental presence of Christ in these young and old, black, brown and white together.  Right up from Torah ethics personified in the prophets – Isaiah, Amos, Hosea. 

Running straight as an arrow right to and through the heart of Jesus of Nazareth was this one and same Spirit.  It was embodied in the One who bent down to include a small child.  And it rose up in righteous anger, lambasting the holier-than-thou crowd with stones in their hands and murder in their eyes as they encircled a cowering woman.  This is the same spiritual heritage flowing through Peter and Paul, through the Reformers Luther and Wesley, and, in our later day resting on the shoulders of those who integrated lunch counters and joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.  It tenderly cradled our brother Martin as that shot rang out and he slumped to the floor of that balcony of the Lorraine Hotel amidst shrieks of horror. 

This very, this one and same Lord was in the midst of those who on Bloody Sunday crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge with our brother John Lewis, our sister Diane Nash — with all those unnamed souls who fell beneath the nightstick and bled that day.  This weeping Spirit stood watch as James Lawson and others simply asking for service at a Woolworths lunch counter suffered the indignities of racial slurs and the blows of fists – their food dumped over their heads.  This heritage of martyrs and prophets, gentle servants, mothers, students and glorious trouble makers – this is our Rock.  These are the vanguard, the sacramental courage, that summons us forth from our storm-tossed bark.  “Fear not,” they cry.

Amidst the tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets, we recognize this Christ in the faces of those who stand for the ones who can no longer stand for themselves.  There is our Lord, crossing the storm-tossed, the blood-soaked story of this nation.  Right up to our time.  These are the ones who now surround us a great cloud of witnesses.  The “balcony people” who cheer us on.

They now call us to venture forth from our tiny boat, to step out like Peter.  If we but keep our eyes on this true and steady vision, this Gospel Truth, we find that we walk.  If we but steady our gaze on our companions in the struggle, we perceive not a ghost in the swirling chaos, but the very Rock of Salvation, the Lord of all Creation.  We are steadied.  Though the wind howl and the waves breach ancient certainties, we find strength.  We persist and we persevere.  We hear that far off voice which whispers in the lull of din and strife, “Be still and know that I am God.” 

Closer to home, I rejoice even in this time of pestilence and upheaval my shipmates on another voyage, the voyage of hope for those addicted.  We are the ones who, God willing, will bring birth to a House of Hope.

In these days of August, we approach some critical funding benchmarks for the House of Hope, both in the Ohio Valley and in San Bernardino.  Our hopes are high.  May our small craft be guided safely to the shores of full funding of this vision.  I sense the Spirit of Christ in my companions on this mutual journey.  No, there aren’t crashing waves or shrieking winds.  That’s not what I fear.  It’s the tedium of one Zoom meeting after another.  It’s tired eyes that glaze over, perusing an endless stream of forms and attached instructions.  It’s chasing down one lead after another.  It’s the distraction of a hundred and one other things.  It’s the mild depression that creeps up unawares when others don’t see our vision, don’t catch the dream. 

I used to think that the biggest obstacle to the mission of the church was our culture of disbelief.  Perhaps ambivalence, or possibly the L.A. Dodgers losing streak.  No, none of these.  We would not succumb to any of this.  No, It’s death by mimeograph machine. It’s the mind-numbing daily routine of stuff that kills the dream, dilutes the vision.  That’s what I felt running off the Sunday bulletin when the mimeograph machine just chewed up the last five or six of them.  Now it’s people who don’t return phone calls.  It’s trying to spy out the few important e-mails among the hundreds that came in during day.  In the midst of all this, true saints are found.

Yet our little band of House of Hope visionaries, through disappointment and tedium – we make that one more call.  We earnestly pitch another potential funder.  We write that letter and scan that grant application.  We pump up our joy as we explain to one more shopper in the checkout line at Stater Brothers what we are about.  All the while, knowing that the dream is sound and that God is faithful.

This is the divine presence.  It is sacramental in the flesh of the faces and voices of those who labor with us.  It is redemptive in their laughter and encouragement.  It is the substance of Hope in those who answer, “How can I help?”

There’s an old Sunday school song I sang with those gathered in a circle when we actually had children in the church. “With Christ in the Boat We can Smile at the Storm.”  Now, as those young people have grown to adults, I’m sure that they’ve found that it’s a bit more complicated than that delightful song.  Life is messy.  Yet, the message still holds.  With a Centering Presence, with a Rock to cling to – we do endure.  We claim the blessing as surely as did Jacob who wrestled with God in the desert waste.  “Hearts are brave again and arms are strong.”

I used to poo-poo what I considered simplistic, feel-good environmental actions.  Like changing lightbulbs or turning down the heat.  I derisively called it eco-pietism.  Actions that made us feel good, but were negligible when compared to the frightening scale of global warming. 

Then someone wised me up.  They explained that such small, symbolic actions often lead to real commitment.  That lightbulb changed is transformed to involvement in significant, sustained climate action.  It mutates into political action to actually make a difference.  One ends up starting a new chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby (yeah, Google it).

Maybe such is the case with discipleship.  St. Augustine put it this way: “Faithfulness in the little things is a big thing.”  Kindness counts.  Make your bed. Respect is key.  It all can draw one into something far deeper.  Draw you into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble – John Lewis sort of trouble.  Every parent knows the truth of example. 

Start small, if necessary.

Tip your server.  Return your shopping cart.  Pick up a piece of trash.  Hold the door for the person behind you.  Let someone into your lane. Talk about “we” instead of “I.”  Small acts can have a ripple effect.  That’s how change begins.

If you’re fortunate, you may find your heart opened to the ache of the world, to the hope of the world.  The waves won’t seem so high or the wind so strong.  You might possibly find yourself on the threshold of life eternal as you meet One coming towards you out of the tempest.   Blessing beyond measure.  

Now…could I get another chorus of “With Christ in the Boat?”

Amen

August 9, 2020, Pentecost 10

The Rev. John C. Forney

Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

“Demon Seed and Alien DNA”

 I must be doing something wrong.  But I am perplexed as to what it could be.  This spring, as last spring, I went to my garden and scattered some seeds.  Sweet Alyssum, Nasturtium, California Poppy.  And what came up?  Nothing.  Just like last year.  Even with lots of rain.

We scattered packets of seeds of California Poppies around the statue of St. Francis at church.  And what came up?  Nothing.  Just like last year. Even with lots of rain.

Actually, there might have been a few new sweet alyssum plants among the leftovers from previous seasons.  Hard to tell. Lots of weeds, but that was last week’s parable.

Needless to say, I’ve become a bit skeptical when it comes to biblical stories about seeds.  Even that fabled mustard seed.  No birds are going to nest in anything I’ve planted.  Oh, there was one exception.  One year I was so late in purchasing a Christmas tree that I had to settle for a small living tree in a pot.  The boys never let me live that down.

After Christmas, I took it outside and planted it in the place where before had been a plum tree.  It had died and the yards-men came, cut it down, and hauled away the stump.  So, I figured that our little pine would be a suitable replacement.  That tree is now over fifteen feet high.  Yes, there are birds in its branches.

That little tiny tree five years ago I so lovingly planted, I wouldn’t have given you a nickel for its chances.  Surely the lawnmower guys or something else would have gotten it.  This luxurious pine tree by the garage is my substitute mustard seed.        And nasturtium seed. And poppy seed. And alyssum seed.

“Another parable Jesus put before the crowds, saying “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his fields; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”[1]   

This week we have witnessed a beautiful flowering of the Tree of Liberty in the life of Representative John Lewis.  Several years ago, he had written a graphic novel March, in three volumes covering the civil rights struggle he so deeply was involved in.

To watch that historic footage of the march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday when John was almost killed by rampaging sheriff deputies is still heart wrenching.  Regardless of how many times I view it. 

Marchers were trampled by mounted horsemen.  They were bloodied by deputies’ batons.  They were arrested.  Most anyone else would have quit after such a rout. But not John Lewis.  Not the women and men who led that contingent of marchers.  They were not quitters.  For them, the promises of this nation were on the line.  This was existential survival for them.

“We do not k now how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”  These are the sighs and groans of those left injured on the side of the road that horrific morning.[2]

After the TV footage hit the 6:00 o’clock news and phones began ringing at the White House and in newsrooms across the country.  And a call went out across America.  Come march with us.  Stand with us.  President Johnson had told those leaders that he didn’t have the power to get the necessary civil rights legislation passed.  Martin Luther and Jessie Jackson said that they would “just have to get him that power.”  That led to the March to Montgomery. King, Jackson and Lewis decided they would have to drop the problem of white racism right on Governor George Wallace’s doorstep at the capitol.

Pastors, nuns, rabbis, priests – Christians, lay and ordained, came to heed the call.  Johnson realized he would have to send federal troops to protect the marchers.  The nation had been outraged by the brutality of the response by sheriffs.  As a result of those heroic marchers, Johnson now had the power.

Mighty seeds and marvelous stories have been passed down to us out of those struggles.  Another story, this a sports story is for you fans of the Clippers.

In the Sports section of the Sunday paper there was an item on the Clippers coach, Doc Rivers.  Coach Rivers told of a campaign trip with Andrew Young and John Lewis.  At the time Young was running for governor of Georgia.  Doc was then playing for the Atlanta Hawks. 

On this campaign trip, Andrew had given a speech at an all-white congregation.  Afterwards, as the party was boarding the plane for home, Andrew asked how they had thought speech went. 

It was a great speech.  The crowd went wild.  Andrew asked Doc, “And I jokingly said, ‘Well, Mr. Young, I thought the speech was great, but I don’t think you’re gonna get one vote from that church.’ And everybody started laughing.

“And John Lewis, he says, ‘Well, we’re not trying to get all of them.  We’re just trying to get one at a time.  And, eventually, it will be all of them.’  I thought that was just one powerful statement.”

John Lewis knew that politics was a game of addition.  About continuing to build on what was possible.[3]  It is as a seedling patiently unfolding at first two leaves. And that’s how resistance would melt away.  “Nearer and nearer draws the time…”

That little Seed of Hope, the Kindom of God, had its birth with John Lewis organizing sit-ins at lunch counters – that little seed grew into a great tree of accomplishment.  It was watered by Gospel values and Gospel hope.  At the Capital, John Lewis will rest in state, the “Conscience of the House.”  A man who was the offspring of share croppers.  He was a man noted by friend and foe as a Christian gentleman — a strong man who never compromised his values, and in the process did not demean others.

John Lewis’s well-lived life has become a mighty oak under whose shade we all, black and white, can briefly find refreshment, until it is time to pick up and resume that march towards Freedom Land.  Always processing toward a greater equality, a greater freedom and a greater compassion.  God has surely nurtured the seed that was John’s being and life, and inspires today. That is the Kindom of God –  as my friend, the Rev. Mike Kinman, aptly terms it.  It’s about the birth of a community in the Spirit where all are kin.

Recently, featured on “Morning Joe,” was Jennifer Palmieri, introducing her new book, She Proclaims: Our Declaration of Independence from a Man’s World.

She begins the prologue by recounting the small beginning of the Women’s Movement.  A seed planted, if you will that would eventually grow into such a mighty plant.  The Vote.  The right of independently owning property, Title IX, careers in science, politics and mathematics.  And to think that a previous presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church was a woman.  Not just any woman, Catherine Jefferts Shori is a PhD marine biologist.  It’s marvelous we have had such women’s leadership.  Through the struggle for full personhood, God has given life and breath to this movement.  The flourishing of these women is the Kindom of God,

It’s about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez standing up for herself and all women as she called out the despicable behavior, the piggish sexism of Republican Congressman Ted Yoho.  The vulgarities he spat at her on the steps of the House, she read into the Congressional Record.  Her assertion of her God-given dignity and the dignity of all women members of the body was a cultural earthquake. These women are going to take no more…stuff…from the lewd and crude crowd.  And the stars in heaven rejoiced.  This is an astounding moment in God’s unfolding Kindom.  And from Ted’s fellow Republicans, silence.  Crickets.  The Kindom is grounded in RESPECT.[4]  My God, are we ever at a new day, and it is glorious to behold!  For women and men alike.  Fathers, take care in how you raise your sons.  And for the Ted Yohos of the world – women and their supporters will remember your behavior on November 3^rd.  Just sayin…

Look at those amazing women mathematicians, those unrecognized women who calculated the trajectories of the first trips to the Moon. Only recently have they received the accolades due their accomplishments.  We’re talking of the dark ages back in the time of slide rules.  I bet many reading this haven’t a clue as to what a slide rule or a log table is, let alone what to do with them.  They’re now in the Museum of Science and Industry.

In Alaska I knew a woman who had been part of the corps of female pilots who transported military aircraft from factories to air bases.  The flew the largest aircraft for delivery, maintenance and modification.  They flew them across the Atlantic to bases in England.  They trained the men who would become fighter pilots. These were the members of W.A.S.P. – Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.  Sometimes, flippantly called the “Fly Girls,” these women pilots quickly proved their mettle.

“In 1944, during the graduation ceremony for the last WASP training class, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry “Hap” Arnold, said that when the program started, he wasn’t sure “whether a slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 in heavy weather.”

“Now in 1944, it is on the record that women can fly as well as men,” Arnold said.[5]

I believe what those first ordained women in my denomination asserted early on, “If a woman was fit to bear our Lord’s body at birth and to receive his body from the cross, she is certainly fit to bear his body at the altar.” Of course, I didn’t start out with such a view.  I believe I was the stupid jerk who said, “I’m all in favor of women’s liberation – as long as I don’t have to change.”  Fortunately, some kind, and some not-so-kind, women quickly disabused me of that notion.  I’m still a work in progress.  Ask my wife.

Ms. Palmieri tells of the very early beginnings of the women’s movement.Early on, a small innocuous beginning, a very small seedling sprang forth on July 1848 when “four women sat at Mary Ann M’Clintock’s kitchen table in upstate New York to draft the Declaration of Sentiments and accompanying resolutions that were to be presented at the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls later that month.”  In that august group were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Ann’s two grown daughters Elizabeth and Mary Ann.[6]

This dream was put to paper in a time when women had absolutely no legal or political power. Women’s suffrage was even considered by many women as perhaps a step too far.

God gave force and power to that seedling, for with in each human breast is the movement toward fulfilment.  This was a force that could not be squelched. This drive to fulfillment is God’s mighty power moving towards completion of what each person, each woman, each man is meant to become. It is what Paul means by “perfection.”  The unfolding and renewing of God’s Kindom.  “Nearer and nearer…”

This incipient movement is a seed that has become the largest coterie of women ever to serve in congress.  It has blossomed into the many who offered their candidacy for the presidency on our nation.  These women let loose in our world are like that song, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.”  You can find them in labs pulpits, and in cockpits.  You can find them in congressional offices – yes find them elected.  You can find them in class rooms and find them with stethoscopes.  You can find them most any place you’d care to look   And, we are all the better for it.

God’s power budding forth in each, brings forth a miracle. To paraphrase a line from a favorite hymn, “nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.”[7]

Every evening I look forward to the PBS News Hour with Judy Woodruff. (Did I mention that she is a national treasure?  But that’s another sermon).  At the end of the newscast she has a segment devoted to those we have lost as a result of COVID-19. 

I find Judy’s stories are precious seeds in my soul packing a wallop. They are motivation I need to get up and do whatever I can do to stop this pandemic where I live.

Here are a couple of their stories:

“Postal worker Jesus Collazos was known for taking the time to greet every neighbor along his mail route in Arlington, Virginia.  The 67-year-old spent over two decades with the U.S. Postal Service, after immigrating from Colombia in 1978.  Jesus and his wife raised his two children in a home he first discovered along his route.

“The proud grandfather loved posting family photos on social media always with the simple caption: “Life is good.”[8]

“Lynika Strozier never gave up on her dream to become a biologist.  As a child, she was diagnosed with a severe learning disability, but went on to earn two master’s degrees in biology and science education.  She became a researcher of plant DNA at the world-renowned Field Museum in Chicago, and a science professor at Malcolm X College.

“Fun-loving and friendly, Lynika was at home in the lab as she was out with friends, or watching horror movies with her grandmother, Sharon, who raised her.  Lynika was 35 years old.[9]

As I allow these stories, these seeds budding forth with abounding Grace, to rest in my heart, watered by prayers of gratitude, they blossom into the desire to do my part, to be a faithful citizen ot this grand Republic. Wear my mask.  Remind others gently to wear their masks. Social distance. Stay home as possible.

I lift up in my Facebook posts – diatribes and urgent pleas — the urgency of combatting the COVID-19 scourge that has taken so many precious lives.  And simply give thanks for the lives that those they have touched.  And their memory is a reminder to give thanks for each morning that I still have an opportunity to sally forth into the struggle.  Always a happy warrior.

I now close, giving Rep. John Lewis the “Last Word.” It’s called “Necessary Trouble.”  Our Lord would have known all about “Necessary Trouble,” as would his followers down through the ages. John Lewis has been a marvelous scion sprung from the Tree of Liberty.  For his life and sacrifice our nation is greatly indebted.  Never, never discount the power of God welling up in the human breast.  Look at the mighty miracle that was, and that lives on, in John Lewis’s testimony.  And what a mighty tree it continues to be.  We all, black and white, first nations folk and those who have come lately – we all can rest in those branches.  The glorious Kindom of God.”HH    JJJJKK

Necessary Trouble

This is the way another generation did it, and you too can follow that path, studying the way of peace, love and nonviolence, and finding a way to get in the way.  Finding a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.

With all sainted troublemakers down through the ages, let us say, AMEN.

---

[1] Matthew 13:31, Revised Standard Version.

[2] Romans 8:26, Revised Standard Version.

[3] Mirjam Swanson, “Rivers reflects on civil rights icon, politician Rep. Lewis,” The Inland Valley Daily News, Sports Section, p. 2.

[4] Luke Broadwater and Catie Edmondson, “Ocasio-Cortez Defies Sexism by Shaming It on House Floor,” New York Times, July 24, 2020.

[5] Susan Stamberg, “Female WWII Pilots: The Original Fly Girls,” Morning Edition, NPR, March 9, 2010.

 

[6] Jennifer Palmieri, She Proclaims: our Declaration of Independence from a Man’s World (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2020) 2.

[7] Arthur Cambell Ainger, The Hymnal 1982, “God is Working His Purpose Out” (New York: Church Hymnal Corp.)   534.

[8] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/in-memory-of-5-more-u-s-victims-of-the-coronavirus.

[9] Ibid.

July 26, 2020

Pentecost 8, Proper 12

“With Sighs Too Deep for Words – Seeds of Hope” The Rev. John C. Forney

The congregation was dumbstruck that Sunday morning as Jai and I stood before the altar during the time of announcements to announce that we were expecting.  Yes, Abraham and Sarah, in our old age, expecting our first.

I still remember one of the congregation busybodies taking me aside after the service to express her relief.  “I’m so glad to hear your announcement.  I just thought Jai was letting herself go.”

Having come from a family with not the best example of fatherhood, I was pretty insecure about my nurturing ability.  As the day drew near, waiting over two days of contractions, my nerves didn’t settle down.  After the third trip to the hospital, the midwife suggested we call in medical expertise. 

In came two people, I remember the names exactly – they were classic – Emerson and Newton.  No. I’m not kidding.  And they both looked like they were only a year or two out of high school.  By this time, we were looking at a caesarian section.  I thought to myself, “These two kids are going to cut up my wife?”

Was Jai in travail?  No, she was pumped full of happy juice.  Not feeling any pain, or much else.  As the hospital had a policy that fathers could be present for the birth, there I was as Dr. Newton made the incision.  Biting my fingernails.  Though I had been an Army Medic and had seen lots of blood, I was never related to any of these patients. You might say, I was the one in travail. 

When a boy was delivered, it didn’t help my anxiety to hear several loud slaps and our pediatrician, Dr. Clint, yelling, “Breathe, damnit.  Breathe!”  Finally, there was a reassuring piercing cry and I knew the worst was over.  Talk about “high anxiety!”

Paul, in his letter to the Christians at Rome speaks to such times as “high anxiety.” 

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our bodies.” 

“But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

Remember the old TV show, “Kung Fu?”  “Patience, young grasshopper.”  As the old master would seek to settle his young novice.

We are in the midst of a contagion unlike anything our generation has ever seen.  We have suffered more death than twice the casualty rate of the Vietnam War.  We are sick and tired of being shut in.  We are even sicker when we come across people not wearing masks in public – those, who through their carelessness, through just not giving a rip, who through their dismissive attitude, continue to put the rest of us at risk.  And prolong the shutdown we all are sick and tired of.  As Fanny Lou Hamer was fond of saying, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

And that goes double if we have young children at home.

With COVID-19, we’re all in travail. 

We wonder how much education our children will lose.  This week the Claremont Unified School Board went back into emergency session to reverse its decision of a week previous.  Now, there will be no face-to-face school in session.  All teaching will be by internet.  I’m sure parents are groaning in great travail.  And patience for grasshoppers, or much of any other creature, is in short supply.  The only hopes parents had for respite have been dashed. 

Paul can talk about hope.  Well and good for him.  He didn’t have a cooped-up seven-year-old and a junior higher to deal with!  Yeah, “…we wait for it with patience!”  Right.

All creation groans in COVID-19 travail. 

For people of faith, our usual support is lacking or somewhat anemic.  We at St. Francis miss each other terribly.  We long for a hug.  We long for that familiar face.  With the reoccurrence of massive infections, our bishop John counselled patience and forbearance.  It may not be until September or later before we can safely resume worship on site.

One wit remarked, “When this is all over one half of us will be excellent cooks and the other half alcoholics.”

Uncertainty and deprivation bring out the worst AND the best in many.  The parable of the seeds explained in Matthew 13 indicates, amongst the church folk, there is some variation.  Some look like followers of Jesus, and some – we’re not quite sure WHO they are following.  But it sure doesn’t look like Jesus.  In such situations, folks were tempted to judge.  Divide the congregation up into First Class Christians and Second (or Fifth or Tenth) Class Christians. 

I remember as a young child our family attended a Presbyterian Church.  Faithfully.  I knew my father must have had a large pledge because one Sunday morning my teacher whispered into my hear that she so appreciated the large financial support our family gave the church.”  I wasn’t old enough to know that such a comment was out of place.  But I did feel a bit embarrassed for having been singled out.

Well the day came when our old pastor retired and we got a new fellow.  A number of weeks afterward we stopped attending.  When I finally had the nerve to ask my dad what was wrong, he told me the issue.  This new pastor believed in the Calvinist doctrine of Predestination.  He, in sermon after sermon, let those sitting in the pews know where they were predestined to end up.  And where he was predestined to go.  And they weren’t the same place.  Eventually, my parents, and a number of others, got tired of hearing that they were unalterably bound for perdition.  Hellfire is not a very good selling strategy for the love of Christ.

Such is the situation in Jesus parable of the seeds.  Don’t condemn.  Don’t shun or cast out.  Let God sort ‘em out in the end.  It’s beyond our pay grade.

And if we are honest, brutally honest, with ourselves, each of us is a mix of good wheat and weeds.  Some of us filled with a lot of devil grass and puncture vines

You look how this pandemic has brought out the best and the worst. 

Sometimes it is just a little act of kindness that makes my day.  Like the image of a young fellow helping an elderly woman get her shopping cart of groceries out of the bus as she was exiting the door.  A priceless, simple act of kindness.

Yes, there are inconsiderate, narcissistic people who will not wear a mask, but there are so many who do.  It was such a climate of common consideration that enabled Taiwan, which has a little over one tenth the population of the United States to get through their experience with COVID-19 with only seven deaths.  Seven deaths in the whole country!  Just imagine.  If we had been as proportionally successful as Taiwan, we would by now only have about 97 deaths – instead of 138,000.  And counting. It’s all about leadership and consideration.

We might also note, incidentally, that the countries that have come through this pandemic intact — Taiwan, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Iceland – they all have one thing in common.  They’re all lead by women.  Causes one to ponder.  Could it be that too much testosterone is an impediment to doing the right thing, the bright thing?  Just sayin’…

As our bishop John says, WWJD?  “Wear a mask.”

Yes, in spite of the travail and struggle, there is yet much joy to be had.  The people I meet on my walk, almost all are wearing masks.

I turned on my Facebook site and came across the most post someone had left me, an orchestra playing on the streets of Havana, Cuba.  Rondo alla Mambo’ by Sarah Willis and the Havana Lyceum Orchestra.  Rhythm. Bodies swaying.  Smiles on the old faces of folks peering out of second floor windows.  Check it out.  It will delight your heart and warm your soul.

Travail, yes.  But in solidarity we move through COVID-19.  Bowed but not broken. Knowing discouragement, yet immersed in the joy of solidarity from common support.  Surrounded ever by that glorious company of saints, those living and those having gone on before – in them I rejoice.

Travail, yes.  BUT, JOY IN THE MORNING!

I also rejoice in this Spirit-filled meditation by a Lutheran pastor serving an Episcopal congregation, Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Darlington, Maryland.  The Rev/ Nadia Bolz-Weber:

I do not know when we can gather together again in worship, Lord.

So, for now I just ask that:

When I sing along in my kitchen to each song on Stevie Wonder’s Songs in The Key of Life Album, that it be counted as praise.

And that when I read the news and my heart tightens in my chest, may it be counted as a Kyrie.

And that when my eyes brighten in a smile behind my mask as I thank the cashier may it be counted as passing the peace.

And that when I water my plants and wash my dishes and take a shower may it be counted as remembering my baptism.

And that when the tears come and my shoulders shake and my breathing falters, may it be counted as prayer.

And that when I stumble upon a Tabitha Brown video and hear her grace and love of you may it be counted as a hearing a homily.

And that as I sit at that table in my apartment, and eat one more homemade meal, slowly, joyfully, with nothing else demanding my time or attention, may it be counted as communion.

The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber

She gets the “Last Word.”

Amen.

July 19, 2020

Pentecost 7, Proper 11

“As in Travail”

The Rev. John C. Forney
Isaiah 44:6-8, Romans 8:18-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43