House of Hope – San Bernardino

There’s an old freedom song from the 60s we used to sing.  Sometimes, still, I hear it today.  When I read todays passage from Luke’s gospel, that old song bubbled right up in my mind.

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me ‘round,

Turn me round, turn me ‘round.

Ain't gonna let nobody, turn me ‘round.

I'm gonna keep on a walkin', keep on a talkin',

Walkin' into freedom land.

Those were heady days when we thought America was on the verge of a new birth of freedom.  Working in Los Angeles, our church was right smack dab in the middle of that birthing.  The Pico Union Neighborhood was alive with bustle and we had our eyes on the prize.  If you wanted slacker Christianity, if you wanted your ease in Zion, there would be no rest for you here.  Yes, you had to let go of the old stuff.  Let go of old attitudes.  Let go of old priorities.  Our parents couldn’t understand why we would ever want to work in such a vermin, such a gang, such a poverty infected neighborhood.  All who worked at our church had some version of that discussion with parents.  Yet we kept on marchin, kept on talking all the way into a new freedom land.

And because that congregation in very real ways worked to live up to both the mandate and the promise of the gospel, it was a most joyful place.  Most every Sunday church would conclude with the music group and choir rocking out to that song from the musical “Hair.”   “Let the sun shine in, let the sun shine in, the sun shine in.”  And off we’d all go, energized and focused for another week.  And we made a difference.

I can still remember that old Latina who one evening a week taught some of the neighborhood girls cooking.  Many of these girls came from homes where mothers were sometimes working two and three jobs just to keep it together.  So, we taught cooking.  But that wise old Latina taught much more than cooking.  She held out the promise of a future for these girls.  If nothing else, they picked up the message that their whole existence didn’t depend on any boyfriend.  These girls held the future of being women of promise.  You want to be a teacher?  You want to be a nurse or a doctor?  You want to be a sheriff?  Follow your dream.  The last thing you need right now is to have some parasite boyfriend get you pregnant and then disappear.  You need to graduate.  You need education.

That is the same singlemindedness Jesus urges in today’s gospel reading.

My wife thinks I sometimes exaggerate, blow up a story for dramatic effect.  Yeah, I can sympathize with poor Joe Biden.  Sometimes the story gets away from those of us who make our living with our mouths.

But we don’t hold a candle to Jesus on this account.  He was the master of hyperbole, exaggeration for dramatic effect.  As we move through the long green season of the church year, more and more the lessons focus on the “Cost of Discipleship.”  “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  Tough stuff indeed. 

This is an echo of the summons from Deuteronomy.  As the community of faith gathered at the Jordan River, about to enter the so-called Promised Land, they were instructed by Moses, “See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil…that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life…that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God…”  Choose life.  Stay in school. Get your education.  Graduate.  Become that doctor, that teacher.

This stark choice is front and center in the two antithetical life modalities the writer lays out in the first Psalm.  “Blessed are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scoffers…They are like trees planted by streams of water.”   “It is not so with the wicked, they are like chaff which the wind blows away.”  Choose this day, life or death.  Keep your eyes on the prize.  Marching into Freedom Land.

Talk about a sharp morality tale!  The ways of healthy religion are the ways that lead to life abundant.  They lead to a life worth living.  And they require a conscious choice.  A decision.  A decision for a life of sisterhood, brotherhood.   A life where all are invited to the table. 

The ways of the world are not the ways of the Gospel.  Au contraire, Gordon Gekko, greed is NOT good.  Do not leave your chances to the Snake.  With the Snake, there’s absolutely no future for any Garden of Eden.  The way of the Snake is paved-over cities choked with pollution and rates of childhood asthma that are stratospheric.  Greed is definitely NOT good.  Ask the homeless family living in a tent on Wilshire Blvd. who couldn’t make the last increase in rent.

We all, each and every day, have a choice set before us.  The ways of life and the ways of death.  Each and every day America stands before the same fateful choice.  Will we learn to live together as brothers and sisters?  Or will we perish as fools – and take the planet with us?

The ways of Jesus’ gospel require self-transcendence.  As the kids would say, “Get over yourself.”  Survival is not an individual project.  It is a “we” project.

The other morning, I heard our back doorbell ring.  There was my neighbor Sue with some disturbing news.  She was there to inform me that I had a dead rat out on our side lawn.  I made a facile quip as to which political party this rat might have belonged to before recalling a book I am currently reading, Love Your Enemies.[1]

This is the sort of book I would normally pass over with hardly a second glance.  But as how I had mentioned several Sundays ago from the pulpit that this Jesus stuff was a pretty difficult challenge – like loving your enemies – I thought I should at least pick it up and see what Mr. Brooks had to say.

Then I noted on the back cover that it had been given a promo by a couple of folks I respected: David Axelrod and Deepak Chopra.  What I discovered was a book which, if put into practice, could help heal our national conversation across the political divide.  This approach seemed to be an echo of what Jesus had in mind.  It could be a choice for life over evil and death.  I picked it up and kept reading.  The author got me with a story, and what a story!

He begins the book by relating an event at a Trump rally.  The usual battle lines were drawn up.  On one side, the folks with the red MAGA hats and on the other, a group from Black Lives Matter. 

As the two sides traded insults and curses the situation grew more combustible.  Hawk Newsome had recently arrived nursing an injury from Charlottesville, Virginia.  A white supremist had thrown a brick which had hit him in the face.  Hawk and his team were ready for battle.  He approached the Trump supporters with the same distain he had held for those white nationalists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.  The Trump supporters responded in kind. 

Then the most amazing thing happened.  The leader of the Trump rally, Tommy Hodges, invited Hawk Newsome onto the stage. “We’re going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out.”  Tommy added, that Hawk shouldn’t be concerned with whether the Trump supporters agreed or disagreed with his message, “It’s the fact that you have a right to have the message.”

As Hawk accepted the invitation and mounted the stage with no little trepidation, he flashed back to what a little old white lady had told him as he had been prepared to throw a rock in Charlottesville, “Your mouth is your most powerful weapon.  You don’t need anything but that.”  As a Christian, Hawk said a brief, silent prayer as he took the mic.  In that moment a voice in his heart told him to just let them know who he was.

“My name is Hawk Newsome.  I am the president of Black Lives Matter New York.  I am an American.”

He had the crowd’s attention, and he continued. “And the beauty of America is that when you see something broken in your country, you can mobilize to fix it,” he said.

To his utter surprise, the crowd burst into applause.  Emboldened, he said, “So you ask why there’s a Black Lives Matter?  Because you can watch a black man die and be choked to death on television and nothing happened.  We need to address that.”

“That was a criminal,” someone yelled, as boos started emanating from the crowd.

Hawk pressed on. “We’re not anti-cop.”

“Yes you are!” someone yelled.

“We’re anti-bad cop,” Hawk countered.  “we say if a cop is bad, he needs to get fired like a bad plumber, like a bad lawyer, like a bad…politician.”

At this the crowd began cheering again. 

These days, there’s nothing political ralliers hate more than bad politicians.

“I said that I am an American.  Secondly, I am a Christian,” Hawk said, once again connecting with his audience.  “We don’t want handouts.  We don’t want anything that’s yours.  We want our God-given right to freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

The crowd erupted in cheers.

Then someone shouted, “All lives matter!”

“You’re right, my brother, you’re right.  You are so right,” Hawk said.  “All lives matter, right?  But when a black life is lost, we get no justice.  That is why we say black lives matter.”

As Hawk prepared to step off the stage, his two minutes over, he left the crowd with one passing thought, “Listen, I want to leave you with this, and I’m gone.  If we really want to make America great, we do it together.”

The crowd roared.

To the amazement of many, including Hawk himself, he was mobbed by well-wishers who embraced him.  A member of a four-thousand-man militia upon noticing that Hawk had cut himself took out a medical aid packet and began bandaging up his finger.  Another fellow from a group called Bikers for Trump approached Hawk and told him, “Your speech was amazing.  I’d be honored if you meet my son.”  The biker introduced his son Jacob and asked Hawk to pick up the boy so they could have a picture together. [2]

Yes, it cost Hawk something.  Some in his group called him a “KKK-loving Trump supporter.”  Another said what he did was treasonous.  It costs us all something, it might cost us to give up what Arthur Brooks calls our “addiction to hate.”  But, oh, the benefit!   The video of the event on social media has had over fifty-seven million views.  Look at it yourself.  What does Democracy look like?  This is what Democracy looks like.  What does the Gospel look like?  You got it!

Keep on marching. Keep on talking.  Marching on to Freedom Land.  No turning back here!

This Jesus stuff is tough.  But it is redemptive.  Choose Life, indeed!  Now, before you think I’ve gotten all sappy and am ignoring the real values that do, in fact, matter – yes stay strong and hold fast to those values – AND…and, we can also have political discourse that doesn’t demonize and is not contemptuous of the opponent. 

Yes, lets struggle together.  Let us fight it out at the ballot box and in public hearings.  But as Hawk said, let’s remember that if we are to make America great, we will have to do it together.  It’s a “we” project.

And should we get a bit raucous and rambunctious, let’s pray God sends us the stern John Bercow, Speaker of the British House of Commons, crying above the bedlam, “Ohduhr, Ohduhr. Ohduhr.”  You can see it all on YouTube.[3]  Marvelous to behold.

If our nation pursues the path of respect, of truth, of decency, of fairness, we will have chosen life.  Might that sacred Tree of Liberty be planted by an ever-flowing stream of righteousness.  Choose life and goodness. 

Now, in the past it was said that the Tree of Liberty was watered by the blood of the patriots and tyrants.  I say, let the Tree of Liberty be watered by the deeds of the righteous.  Let it be watered by the faithfulness of all those who have kept their eyes on the prize.  Let it be watered by a vision of unity where all are invited to the feast.  All of us — walking into Freedom Land.

Those wonderful women in our midst working to prepare a food pantry – they’re taking us all by the hand.  Walking into Freedom Land.  The faithful who prepare each Sunday, week after week, that our worship might be an act of praise and recommitment – they’re taking us all by the hand – walking into Freedom Land.

Yes, those folks who put their pledge without fail into the collection plate.  They keep the promise alive that St. Francis might remain a bold expression of God’s gracious will and abundance here in this little corner of San Bernardino.  Yes, indeed – they’re taking us all by the hand — Walking into Freedom Land.

The faithful six who month after month make the trip into Los Angeles to be a part of the diocesan Episcopal Enterprise Academy, dreaming the vision of a House of Hope – San Bernardino – they’re taking us all by the hand — Walking into Freedom Land.

Let our motto at St. Francis ever be: “Whoever you are, and wherever you are on your journey of faith, there’s a place for you here.  Come right in.   Sit right down.  ‘Cause…  ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.  Turn us around.  Turn us around.   Aint gonna let nobody turn us around.  Keep on walkin’.  Keep on talkin’.  Walkin’ into Freedom Land.  Amen.

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[1] Arthur Brooks, Love Your Enemies (New York: Broadside Books, 2019).

[2] Ibid, 5-6.

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7EIZl4raY

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-21;

Luke 14:25-33

Proper 18, Year C, September 8, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Strive to enter the narrow gate.  That sounds like a lot of work.  Actual effort.  I must confess that my early college career was not stellar by any sense of the word.  I can still hear my kindly German teacher, Frau Bluske, telling me in front of the entire class one afternoon after I had to admit that I hadn’t done my homework, “Herr Forney, wenn sie nicht studieren, sie will durchfallen.”  Translation:  “Mr. Forney, if you don’t study, you will flunk.”  The narrow door was a much more difficult operation than hanging with the guys the night before in the pool hall drinking a beer.  Enter the narrow gate, indeed!

And I still shudder when I remember that physics exam on electricity.  The only question I could answer with any certainty was the one that asked, “name.”  Not my finest moment.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t much better at pool.

The reality is, that if one’s Christian faith is to amount to anything, it takes a bit of doing.  Sometimes this Jesus stuff is downright hard. And the results are not always going to be what we had in mind.  There’s no guarantee of success.

It has not been that long ago that the Episcopal Church had a bit of a reputation for being the “party church.”  You’ve probably heard the line:  Where two or three Episcopalians are gathered together, there’s usually a fifth.  We have been a part of that “wide door” the world holds open.  Hopefully, that’s not so much the case anymore – back in the day when our church was known as the “status church” of the upper classes.

To the extent that we come to church “for solace only and not for renewal,” as the communion prayer puts it, we may be coming to just a party church.  Church as entertainment.  And all we will get is junk food religion.  Lots of sugar and calories but no nutrition.  As the grandma in the Wendy’s commercial demanded to know, “Where’s the beef?”

If we’re prone to take our ease in Zion, today we get a warning shot across the bow from our Lord.  When asked who would be saved, Jesus answers, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying ‘Lord, open to us.’  He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’”

That the road through the narrow door is difficult and the path ahead is unclear, is no excuse.  Jesus didn’t give up, and his narrow door led to the cross.  One friend said about extravagant discipleship, “There’s two possibilities.  There’s success and there’s a learning experience.” 

Now, some are wont to say upon hearing such dyspeptic talk, “Well, I don’t agree.  The real Jesus would never say anything like that.  I come to church for comfort, not to be riled up.”  I don’t remember Jesus promising comfort.

Don’t discount what Bonhoeffer calls “the cost of discipleship.”  And what was all this talk we had last week about Jesus bringing a sword.  Pretty tough stuff.  His message is sure to cause great consternation.  It asks of us something difficult like loving our enemies and forgiveness.  It is about struggle, it’s about spiritual warfare, if you will.  The ethic of the Jesus Movement is not the ethic of the world. 

My friend Wesley knows that he needs a big kick in the pants at times.  He needs challenge.  His frequent prayer upon entering the church door is, “Jesus, dropkick me through the goal posts of life.”  He wants the whole gospel, not fast food spirituality.  Where’s the narrow door.  Point me there, he asks of the preacher.

I suspect that Jesus was a pretty radical fellow who put his marker very far out there, knowing that we couldn’t possibly reach it in all likelihood.  But we would enter into life abundant in the trying.  We need such a holy goad because it’s so easy to get distracted by all the stuff out there which does not nourish.

Jesus might be sort of like my old chemistry professor.  She was a tough old bird who told us all on that first day of class in that huge lecture hall to look at the person on either side of us, because by the time the course had finished, one of us wouldn’t be there.  She was right.  Talk about the narrow door!

Now, she didn’t want people to flunk out, but she knew that for those folks who didn’t keep step, who idled in the pool hall, that they would soon fall by the wayside.  She was indeed right.  Far less than one half the class was left by the time the final rolled by.  I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth.

“Strive to enter at the narrow gate,” Jesus admonishes.  It’s easy to get lost.  Durchfallen doesn’t require much effort at all (remember Frau Bluske).  As Dante writes in the opening pages of the Inferno:

       Midway in the journey of our life

       I came to myself in a dark wood,

       For the straight way was lost…

       How I came there I cannot really tell,

       I was so full of sleep

       when I forsook the one true way.

That the “true way” could so easily be lost on the road to the pool hall, I’m here to tell you.  The world offers a plastic religion – all sorts of things that will make life worthwhile.  Indeed, there are a jillion things out there that promise life abundant.  If you only have the right car, the right trophy wife or husband, the right toothpaste, the right hair, or at my age, if you have any hair at all!  And so much of this hype is aimed right at our youth and young adults.

One of my friends had a Porsche, another had a chopped and souped up Olds.  The girl across the street got a new Thunderbird with those little porthole windows on the sides.  But I was in teenage agony.  I didn’t have a car.  I had a hand-me-down 1950 Studebaker!  You remember the ones of the early 50’s with the curved back window, so you really couldn’t tell whether the thing was going backwards or forwards.  It had a chrome bullet nose and was sort of a pukey dark green.  Even the name sounded horrible – like rutabaga, or cauliflower.  Bleah!  It’s a wonder they ever sold any of them.

My dad the dentist was the only one I ever knew who bought one, because it was cheap.  Cheep!  Not cool.  Cheep.  My dad didn’t understand cool.  I don’t think most dentists do.  Not another family in the entire neighborhood had one.  So, it was a miracle I ever got any dates at all with that car.  I was convinced that my whole career as a teenager was being severely stunted by this ugly car.  No telling how many years I might have to spend in therapy working through the psychic damage.  (Looking back on things, I did get a pretty good wife — but probably not because of the car.)

Now, as my hair has turned quite grey in my latter years (my wife says “white”), perhaps a bit of God’s wisdom has finally sunk in.  “Strive to enter at the narrow door,” says our Lord.  It will never be about the car, the toothpaste, or any of the rest of it.  It is about a tradition that nourishes.  It is about a God who redeems.  Yes, even through the difficult sayings and hard lessons of life – God redeems.  It is about a spirituality that is mature enough for the long haul.

Fortunately, I believe the party days are mostly bygone for our beloved Episcopal Church.  The period of cultural captivity of our church has been slowly coming to an end.  Reality check time.

When the church came out foursquare against the Vietnam War, it took on a tough issue.  Just as it had over slavery.  When the church came out for women’s ordination, it knew we would lose some folks.  The same as for LGBT inclusion.  Yes, God does love everyone!   When we elected our first woman bishop…well, can you imagine the uproar in some quarters.  And then a woman presiding bishop.  Yes, there was hate mail.

I can still remember my friend Bob up in Sitka one day announcing, “Well, I finally figured out why God wanted us to have women priests.”  Knowing Bob’s unrelenting opposition to women clergy, in amazement I asked, “Why’s that, Bob?”  “To show us that it couldn’t possibly ever work!”  he said, banging his fist on the desk.  Yes, we lost members.

When you drove or walked up to church this morning, you surely didn’t see any “Golden Arches.”  No junk food spirituality offered here. Here you get a meal here which lasts for the long haul.  It is this same rich and deep Anglican spirituality that has nourished so many faithful souls who have gone on before.  That’s what we’re about at St. Francis.

In the New York Times this week I came across an article about a nun, a doctor and a lawyer…now, now, I know.  You’re thinking that this is leading to some bar joke…a nun, a doctor and a lawyer walked into a bar…   Well, that’s not the case.  Actually, it’s all about the narrow door.

What these three stalwart people did was to walk right into the face of big pharma, Purdue Pharma, to be exact — in Pennington Gap, Virginia. This Catholic nun, this doctor and this lawyer were present at the beginning of the opioid epidemic in Appalachia.  In sounding the alarm, these three entered through a narrow door they hoped would prevent a lot of misery.

They inspired “a burst of local activism against Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin’s maker, that the company ultimately crushed.[1] Their failed effort was a missed opportunity to stem the onslaught of addiction to opioids and the drugs they quickly led to — fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine.”

Sister Beth Davies had known an epidemic was on the way.  She witnessed it’s unfolding in their little town of nineteen hundred people in the southwest corner of Virginia.  The journalist covering the story, Berry Meier, had come to that part of Appalachia about twenty years ago.   Out of the activism of Sister Davis, Dr. Van Zee, and Ms. Kobak, Barry Meier also witnessed the inception of the scourge.  These three would become the central cast of the reporter’s book, Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic.[2]

Dr. Zee urged Purdue to change the way it was marketing OxyContin but to no avail.  He and the others launched a recall petition to the FDA to have the drug taken off the market.  Purdue countered by threatening to publish a full-page ad in the local paper attacking the recall drive, and offered $100,000 to the group to drop the recall drive.  They refused.

Things looked up when the Justice Department finally announced felony criminal indictments against Purdue Pharma and it’s three top executives.  The charge?  Deceptive marketing.  Purdue said the stuff was harmless.

Victory was short lived.  Department officials negotiated a plea deal under which the executives would cop to minor charges and no jail time.  There would be no right of discovery.  No chance to see all the emails documenting the nefarious plot to cover up the work of this addiction factory.

“In the years that followed, executives of other opioid makers and distributers kept shipping millions of addictive pain pills into towns like this one apparently without fear of serious penalties.”[3]  Dr. Zee is convinced that had the Justice Department not reversed course, the outcome would have been completely different.  Appalachia might have avoided so much needless death and misery.  The malefactors would have been in prison.

Recently, Dr. Van Zee and Ms. Sue Ella Kobak flew to Oklahoma to testify in its lawsuit against Purdue.  They continue the fight.  Sr. Beth, standing outside a courtroom in the rain, still remembers her bitter disappointment in the Justice Department’s settlement of the case against Purdue.  All three continue to insist that these pill-pushers face scrutiny and be held accountable for the untold lives they have ruined and the communities they have destroyed in Appalachia. 

These three activists indeed entered through the narrow door of our criminal justice system.  And though the door of justice was slammed in their faces, yet they persisted.  The tide is changing.  I hope they know the satisfaction of having alerted all of us to this disaster now facing America.  I’m sure our Lord is saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”  Indeed, strive to enter the reign of God through the narrow door.

When it comes time for me to lay my life down on God’s altar, I would like to be able to offer something like the work of those fearless Appalachian activists: Sr. Beth Davis, Counselor Sue Ella Kobak, and Dr. Van Zee.  Oh, that our lives might be laid upon God’s altar, if only as a pale likeness of their gift. 

That it might be said of each of us — as I believe the Lord must regard the unblemished gift of a nun, a doctor and a lawyer from Pennington Gap, Virginia — they have striven to enter at the narrow door, and it has made – it still does make — all the difference in the world.  Blessed are they indeed.  Amen.

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[1] Barry Meier, “Ruling Lost Chances to Stem the Opioid Crisis They Saw Coming,” The New York Times, August 19, 2019, p. A13.

[2] Barry Meier, Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic (NewYork: Random House, 2003).

[3] Barry Meier, New York Times. op.cit.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews12:18-29;

Luke 13:22-30

Proper 16, Year C, August 25, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

It has been said that the past is never past.  Our history, for good or ill continues to live in and through us.  When I was in the Army, stationed at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, I discovered that my U.S. history teacher was greatly misinformed.  I discovered that we, the North, didn’t win the Civil War, called by many locals the “War of Northern Aggression.”  In fact, the Civil War wasn’t even over.  It was still being fought, only with different weapons and strategies.  And so it continues down through Jim Crow and Nixon’s Southern Strategy, down to this very day.  Our racial differences have become weaponized and are tearing the country apart.  William Faulkner has said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”  This truism runs like the trajectory of a bullet straight through his novels and through our politics.

In the same way, our ancestors and others continue to live through us, even to this day.  I can surely see parts of my parents in myself.  I can see a few of my former teachers in myself.  A scoutmaster as well.

The early Christians understood that we were surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  My friend George Regas speaks of two sorts of witnesses – Balcony People and Basement People. 

You know the basement people in your life.  They are the folks ever dissatisfied with life.  Nothing is good enough.  Everyone is against them.  They are hidebound rule followers who delight in beating our hopes to death with the rule book.  They are the glass-half-empty folks.  They always have a “BUT” ready to dash any good idea or dream.  But it will never work.  But nobody will want to do it.  But.  But.  But.   A beat-it-into-the-ground-and-stomp-on-it BUT.  They’re like Joe Btfsplk in the Li’l Abner cartoon who walks about with a thundercloud over his head.  Anyone coming in contact with him is permanently jinxed.  He’s the ultimate bad news.  You know these people.    Basement people can infest your life like plague of cockroaches.  If you let them.

Those in the balcony we might visualize as beaming faces benevolently looking down on us, cheering us on as we run the race of life.  The biblical writer was thinking of Balcony People, those of gladsome tidings.

Balcony people cheer us on as we go forth to live out the joyful message of God’s radical love.  They are the ones who push us to pull out our best stuff, to go the extra mile, to get to our “A” game.   They are the ones who don’t give up on us, even when we’ve made a total mess of things and have given up on ourselves.  They are the ones who shout in my ear, “John, wake up.   Wake up.  Get out of bed.  The day’s a-wasting.” 

My balcony people are those whom the hymn, “For all the Saints” conjures up: “And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.”  These are the brave hearts in our lives, whose strong arms we depend upon. These people persist.  They endure. 

I cannot run the race without such folks cheering me on.  This Cloud of Witnesses lives in our hearts and minds.  They are the absolute sign of God’s presence with us.  As I and my co-workers working on House of Hope have found, this stuff that Jesus has put into our hearts to do is not easy.  Sometimes it gets downright discouraging, especially when those you thought ought to be with you turn out to be lazy, self-indulgent, hostile and territorial. 

Even when one tries to do the right thing, division will arise.  The malevolent forces of NIMBYism and greed will raise their ugly heads.  Thank God for those balcony people who cheer us on in spite of fearful and wrongheaded opposition.  In our minds and hearts, our balcony people bring a smile.  They are our fortitude.

Like this past week in West Virginia working to round up allies and friends.  Our development officer called up one newly established opioid treatment centers to learn what they might  have to teach us from starting up their facility.  My colleague hadn’t gotten very far into the conversation when the woman on the other end of the line stopped him.

“Where are you located?

“In Wellsburg.”

“Wellsburg, that’s district 1… You’re going to steal my patients; you’re going to take my beds.  Why would I help you?”

“I thought we were all working together to help people.”

“Well, yes, BUT…  Well, of course, we are, but, but…you’re going to steal my clients.”

Oy veh…  Sigh.

Later that day when we met with one of those marvelous bureaucrats (and there really are wonderful, dedicated civil servants in state government offices) our host stated that he was well aware of us and our project.

“I already know about you.  I’ve had calls about you.”

Our development officer Jim responded, “I know who called you.”

“You spoke to (name deleted to protect the insecure).”

The fellow had a good laugh.  “Because of you folks, I missed my lunch.  This woman went on and on and on for some forty-five minutes.  You guys are going to steal her clients.”  We all chuckled some more.

This wonderful public servant is truly a balcony person, a gift of God, to cheer on House of Hope and our efforts to “do something” about opioid addiction in the state of West Virginia.  That he controls some of the state funding for programs like ours is only an additional plus.

In my mind, I could see all those who, down through my life have given me the strength and resilience to withstand the nay-sayers.  Even when I was the nay-sayer.  Those nay-sayers who might like the idea of an opioid recovery center somewhere – just not near them.  Not in their back yard.  No!   We need balcony people – that great cloud of witnesses who cheer us on.  People like my dad who was persistence personified.  People like an English teacher in high school who believed in my abilities far more than I did.  A college professor who taught optical mineralogy.  A campus minister.  Various parishioners.  A United Methodist superintendent.  A bishop or two.  We need that great cloud of witnesses.  All members of the glorious company of saints calling me to bring out my best effort.  To persevere and run the good race. 

Jesus has warned us that his message of compassion, his message of justice and deliverance would bring opposition.  Families will be divided as will communities.  They had NIMBYism even back then.

I came into adulthood at the beginning of the Vietnam war – a time when our country was most divided.  I was counter culture personified.  My family was divided.  I don’t think my dad and I spoke for over two years as a result of my opposition to that war.  Unfortunately, many of us displaced our anger to that war.  We blamed returning soldiers rather than the misguided government that had sent them into a corrupted, no-win situation.  That is why the slogan of Vietnam Vets Against the War is “Honor the warrior, not the war.”

Before I left on this last trip to West Virginia, I received my copy of The Veteran. the biannual publication of VVAW.  Featured was an article about the library being built in a Vietnam city by our members.  That, after all the animosity and pain coming out of that war, we should now be building and furnishing a library warmed my heart.  That the Vietnamese would be receptive to such a gesture – well, it brought a tear to my eyes and a check from my checkbook.  The people involved in this project from both nations are indeed balcony people.  They are the sign primordial that grace trumps evil.  Even the evil of a most divisive war that destroyed both our nations.  Hate may last for a day, but not forever.  Balcony people eventually will have the last word.  And the world is better for them.  Indeed, they are tokens of the grace of God.  It brought joy to my heart that I could be a small part of that project in Vietnam.  A great cloud of witnesses indeed!

Our recovery facility in West Virginia will not only be treating opioid addiction, but PTSD as well, for both our current vets and our first responders.  All involved in this effort are a part of today’s great cloud of witnesses to hope.  It’s about paying it forward.  It’s what the twelve-step folks call “an attitude of gratitude.”  It’s the Jesus movement in action.

Our nation could presently use a few balcony people.  We are presently two or three, or more Americas.  Our politics are at the breaking point.  We are a nation of haves and (mostly) have-nots.  Income and wealth inequality, since the first days of slavery, poison our national discourse.  With the demise of unions and many good jobs, the politics of resentment now feeds on itself. 

However, there are hopeful voices of sanity.  Often the political fabric of America can be much better discerned and unraveled through the art of the novelist.  We’ve had facts heaped upon facts.  We’ve had expose and commissions until we’re numb.  Mueller has testified.  Trials have been held.  Some guilty have been sent packing off to jail.  Yet none of it has seemed to have grabbed the national conscience.  Maybe, as Shakespeare is oft quoted, “The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”  But in a pinch, a good story or a novel will do.

Lately I have come across Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, a story of both the worst and the best of our national politics.  Written in 1959, it captured the silent generation that came to power during the Eisenhower years and the McCarthy period.  In Drury’s frank and compelling narrative, we find those qualities of character that rise above the moral quagmire of Washington’s political scene.  Drury explores the enduring themes that have always been the material of great literature:  tragedy, sacrifice, sex and power – the great themes of Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Melville, Hawthorne and scripture.  Drury has become one of my balcony people, as he has told a great tale that captures both the triumph and the pathos of that fateful time, our fateful time.  His use of the English language is mesmerizing.  I can see why it is that he received a Pulitzer Prize and I didn’t.  Speaking of the ethos of the Eisenhower years – and might we say the pathos of our years — he writes:

The great age of the Shoddy came upon America after the war, and Everybody Wants His became the guiding principle for far too many.  With it came the Age of the Shrug, the time when it was too hard and too difficult and too bothersome to worry about tomorrow, or even very much about today, when the problems of world leadership were too large and too insistent and too frightening to be grasped and so everybody would rather sigh and shrug and concentrate instead on bigger and bigger cars and shinier and shinier appliances and longer and longer vacations in a sort of helpless blind seeking after Nirvana that soothed them but unfortunately only encouraged their enemies.

A dry rot had affected America in these recent years and every sensitive American knew it.[1]

Marvelous writing.  Drury speaks to our ethos, and his story telling is riveting.  No, I don’t have any stock in Doubleday, but I heartily recommend Advise and Consent for the hopeful vision of his writing. In the midst of “the Shoddy,” Drury congers up fully fleshed out, multi-dimensional characters worthy of the story he would tell.  This is the sort of writing that elucidates and gives perspective on our dissolute days.  Drury indeed knows us and our politics.  Read any of his rewarding books.  They’re at your local library, or available on line.  Allen Drury is definitely one of my balcony people.  You most likely have similar authors you’d recommend, authors who know our hearts and our times.  Definitely balcony people.  Authors such as Allen Drury are God’s gift to us.

Another of my balcony people was the dearest, sweetest pastor’s wife I have ever known.  In Long Beach our pastor was very near retirement.  He was a rather stern, austere man.  Difficult to know and not very approachable, especially for a young junior high boy.  But his wife, Nellie was another matter. 

Now, remember we were junior highers, full of energy and full of mischief.  We were awful – the stunts we would pull were beyond the pale.  Instead of having us sit through adult church, we gathered in the gymnasium for a brief worship period before we went to our classes.  The hymns and prayers and brief meditation were led by Nellie Hughes.  She seemed to know each of us by name and it was obvious that each one of us, yes, even us disruptive boys, had a place in her heart.  I would rather die than disappoint Mrs. Nellie Hughes.  And to have to be disciplined by her?  Unthinkable!  It was during those years that what little I learned of kindness and gratitude, I most likely learned from her.  I can still picture in my mind that diminutive, frail, old woman waiting at the mic in that cavernous room for us to settle down.  And settle we did.  Her smile could light the deepest darkness.  She was kindness personified. As a young boy, I knew that whatever Jesus might have looked like, my bet is that he looked an awful lot like Mrs. Nellie Hughes.  Nellie Hughes, you are indeed one of my balcony people.

It has been through the lives of these sorts of people that we catch the Christian faith.  Though there be controversies and disputations, the church endures through people like Nellie Hughes. I can’t recall anything she might have told us, yet she endures because of who she was, and who she is in my heart today.  Each of us is surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  People who, like Nellie Hughes, testify that love endures, and so can we. 

Though Jesus may be the source of division, though members of a household will be set upon one another over what it means to follow him, do not despair. Sometimes the church eats it’s young and destroys its prophets. The NIMBY crowd may endure for a season, but will not always have the final say.  While it may look in the heat of the moment as though fire has been cast down upon our best efforts, it will be the quiet folks like Nellie who endure and persevere.  Allen Drury assures us that in the morass of the D.C. swamp, it will be stateswomen and statesmen who will reach the needed compromises to carry the day forward for the common good. 

Yes, we give thanks for the balcony people in our lives, those of strong arm and stout heart.  They are the tokens of God’s grace incarnate.  “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aide every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…”[2] 

“And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.”[3]  Amen.

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1 Allen Drury, Advise and Consent (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1959) 483.

[2] Hebrews 12               

[3] William Walsham How, “For All the Saints Who from Their Labors Rest,” The Hymnal 1982 (The Church Pension Fund, New York) 287.  This is the hymnal of the Episcopal Church, however, many other denominational hymnals include this well-known hymn.

Jeremiah 23:23-29; Psalm 82; Hebrews 11:29-12:2;
 Luke 12:49-56

Year C, Proper 15, August 18, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

As we were preparing to leave for an errand, I opened the trunk of my old Buick and one of my sons looked in.  Shaking his head, he asked, “Dad, does the landfill company pay you rent to keep their stuff in your car?”  Or my wife might query, “Does the landfill company pay you to store their stuff in your office?” 

Yes, we have a well-expressed wiseguy gene in the Forney family.  We also have a very prominent packrat gene in the family.

I remember one breakfast when my wife Jai shared a dream she had had that evening.  She was defrosting the refrigerator and opened the freezer.  It was full of books in her dream.  After she finished recounting her dream, or was it a nightmare, I flippantly remarked that she was very fortunate to be married to a biblical scholar who could interpret her dream.

The meaning?  She needed to buy another refrigerator – so there’d be room for the food.  She had another solution in mind.

Stuff!  I do have a lot of it.  Now, I would not subscribe to the bumper sticker that proclaims: “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  I do know that accumulations can become all consuming.  It comes down to the question, Roberta Flack poses in her song, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” 

That is the question about a good life posed by the writer of Ecclesiastes.  The book speaks of a life of vain toil coming to the point of futility.  “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me; and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?”  In our reading from Luke we are again confronted with the question of acquisitiveness in the story of a rich man and abundance.  So much abundance that he is forced to keep pulling down his barns to build larger.  So much stuff!  And, after a life of laying up ample goods, after a life of ease and making merry, God confronts him late in the evening, “Fool!  This very night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” 

St. Paul provides alternative to a life of stuff.  If one is wont to accumulate, try accumulating such as “compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience.”  Is not that where true happiness lies?  Try “forgiveness and love.”  How about the “peace of Christ?”

David Brooks in his new book, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life[1], arrives at a similar place.  He identifies the “first mountain” as that effort to establish oneself.  It’s about acquiring the stuff of accomplishment:  a good education, a family, material possessions, the right circle of friends, respect of colleagues.  And let’s not discount these.  In some measure, all have their place.  As someone once said, “Poverty is not a disgrace.  Just damned inconvenient.  We all need certain things to live.  Basic stuff.  The psychologist Robert Maslow talks about the “hierarchy of needs” – usually portrayed as a pyramid. The basic needs form the base while the “nice-to-haves” are towards the top.  If one doesn’t have a roof over one’s head, you’re probably not worrying about buying the latest SUV you spied out on the dealer’s lot.  You’re probably not worrying about violin lessons for your kid.  Yes, we all need some basic stuff just to live.  And in our greed, we’re not very good at making sure everyone has a chance at the brass ring.  Most end up being thrown off the merry-go-round.

A recent Christian Century commentary on today’s lessons pokes fun at excessive stuff, car-trunk-filled stuff, through a monologue of the stand-up comedian George Carlin.  One of his few routines suitable for a “G-rated” audience:

You got your stuff with you?  I’ll bet you do.  Guys have stuff in their pockets; women have stuff in their purses…Stuff is important.  You gotta take care of your stuff.  You gotta have a place for your stuff.  That’s what life is all about, tryin’ to find a place for your stuff!  That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff.  If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house.  You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.  You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane.  You look down and see all the little piles of stuff.  Everybody’s got his own little pile of stuff.[2]

David Brooks says that there’s a second mountain, and between the two is often a devastating valley.  That valley might be an illness, a divorce or unemployment.  It may be a child addicted to drugs or one who has committed suicide.  It might be the subtle feeling of malaise.  I made it to the top and it’s not what it was cracked up to be.  Most of my associates were only fair-weather friends.  Let a slight bit of difficulty come up, and, poof! they’re gone.  No wonder President Truman was famously quoted as saying, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

At some point of disenchantment, we begin to approach that second mountain, the mountain of generativity.  This is the assent towards a greater fulfillment.  Those on that journey up the second mountain begin to learn the joy of being part of something greater than one’s self.  It is about riches gained from giving stuff away.  It is about the meaning of it all.  Indeed, “What’s it all about, Alfie?”  Certainly, not the biggest pile of toys at the end. 

Phillips Brooks, that famous Episcopal priest and bishop of the late 1800s, the lyricist of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” said something to the effect that the greatest tragedy in life is to have missed the opportunity to have been a part of something greater than one’s self.  To have missed that higher cause to which one has been called.  That higher cause is the second mountain.

Sometimes a greater cause finds you.  No need to seek it out.  A while back, when I was up in Portland visiting our oldest son, an article on the front page of The Oregonian had caught my eye.  It was about what is happening to our wounded veterans upon their return from combat.  Being a Vietnam era veteran who served as an Army medic, I have very sensitive antennae when it comes to how our vets are treated.  Now, mind you, I’m not an enthusiast about these wars, or war in general.  In fact, I’m already against the next one.   I do belong to a veteran’s group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.  Our motto is, “Honor the warrior, not the war.” 

The great patriot Thomas Paine understood the tragedy of war when he warned his countrymen: “He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

Yes, we do not honor the war, we honor those who have served.  And take care of them upon their return.  I believe that.  If someone goes off to risk life and limb for our nation, we have a binding obligation to do whatever it takes to make that person whole if they return to us wounded. 

But I digress.

Anyway, right there in the Oregonian was a story about a soldier, Mayer, who was serving in the Oregon National Guard and had returned home from Iraq suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.  The article talked of how Meyer tires easily, how his short-term memory problems make it nearly impossible for him to remember even the simplest tasks.  He cries easily as he struggles to get words out.  A grey confusion clouds his mind with the result that he cannot drive over 20 miles from home without getting lost.  Returning to his civilian job is not in the realm of possibility.  He could not hold down any job.

Mayer and his wife, Jeannette, know their life together will never be the same again.  They have a strong faith and they are committed to each other.  They are a couple that truly meant it when they promised, “in sickness and in health…”

But what they have found most distressing has been the treatment Mayer has received.  They have had to fight the Army every step of the way for the little care he did receive, and for his paltry disability payments.  The Army seemed much more interested in getting him off the payroll than in doing what is right.  He was prevented from getting into a specialized brain injury program through bureaucratic intransigence.  This was not bungling.  It was premeditated callousness.

Now I can see how one unfortunate soldier could become the victim of Army red tape.  I was in the Army.  I know red tape.

But it turns out, as I read further, that this is not about just one or two isolated cases.  It is about thousands who have been victimized by an adversarial system of rating disability.  How can anyone in such a mental fog negotiate this system, I ask you?  Mayer and his wife have tumbled into some Hieronymus Bosch version of hell.  Some demonic hall of mirrors where up is down and down is up.

As I continued to read, my blood was at a furious boil.  Prayer unbidden rose up within my breast.  My God, is there no justice?  No sense of decency?  What do these hypocrites, these cheapskate patriots, mean when they urge us, “Support the troops?”  And then they behave like this?  What could “support the troops” and a yellow ribbon bumper sticker possibly mean to Mayer and Jeanette with all they’ve been through?

My fervent prayers, and maybe even a few obscenities – yes, that also is unbidden prayer – the unspoken petitions of heart and soul shortly transformed themselves into action.  I wrote e-mails.  I sent in my donation for my veterans’ organization that they might continue to be a forceful advocate for our Vietnam vets.  I hectored my political representatives.

But we can do more.  Much more.  That’s where my friend Scott comes into the picture.

Scott, also a vet, also believes with all his heart that we need to care for those who served.  Scott is a colleague already up that second mountain, the mountain of service beyond self.  When he called one evening three years ago to ask about hosting a Wounded Warrior event on our farm outside of Bethany, West Virginia, I was all ears.

After telling me what he had in mind, of course I wished him all the best. “See what you can do,” I responded.  I had no idea that he was a crackerjack community organizer, so I was absolutely amazed when he later sent me back some pictures of his event.  Incredible!  I definitely vowed not to miss the second, and I didn’t. 

We’re now heading into the third this August 10^th.  I’ll be there along with our son Christopher.  We will also have the founder of Wounded Warriors, Brace, coming out again from Detroit.  Brace says that Scott’s weekend is one of the best run events for Wounded Warriors in the whole country. 

Parenthetically, it should not surprise anyone to discover that Scott is also our West Virginia point man for House of Hope – Ohio Valley.

We are indeed proud to be holding our third annual Wounded Warrior event this August on the Forney Farm.  Scott tells me this one will be bigger yet, with three bands playing.  We call our weekend “Mudding with the Warriors.”  It’s a thrill ride through one hundred eighty acres of abandoned back woods logging trails in off-road vehicles.  It’s definitely an “E” coupon ride.  Any of you old enough to have been at Disneyland in its early days knows that the “E” coupon rides were the fastest and the scariest. 

Once again, Scott has pulled together a good chunk of Bethany and Brooke County to give back to our vets — Brooke County’s finest to show a little love.  And I can absolutely bet that Dagmar will be bringing my favorite – hot German potato salad.  Scott and his gang are definitely well up that second mountain of giving back.  Scott, I thank you, and I know these vets thank you.  America, at its best pays it forward.

Right now, every day, an active duty service member takes his or her own life.  What is wrong with us that we have pushed them to such desperation?  We can do better.

The assent up that second mountain may drain the soul and tire the body, but for many of us nearing the end of our journeys, it’s the only trip worth taking.  It is, in Summerset Maugham’s words, “A summing up.”

Try the stuff of eternity – “compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience, forbearing one another…”  For this one needs no larger barns, no bigger car trunk.  Or even an extra bookcase.

As St. Paul would further exhort us this morning: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts.”  This is the climb towards eternity.  God in us and we in God.  And sing!  For God’s sake and for ours, SING!  For the sake of your own soul, SING!

Phillips Brooks preached a most joyful gospel.  He would remind us, it’s about the happiness and blessedness that second mountain. “Distrust your religion unless it is cheerful, unless it turns every act and deed to music and exults in attempts to catch the harmony of the new life.  Yes, indeed: SING!  Don’t mumble.  SING!

Speaking of blessedness, this week around the campfire at our farm, with good friends and food, I’ll be joining our vets and others in sweet harmony – in a spiritual song. “Country roads, take me home/To the place I belong/West Virginia, mountain mama/Take me home, country roads.”   Amen.

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[1] David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York: Random House, 2019)

[2] Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, “Living the Word,” The Christian Century, July 17, 2019.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11, Colossians 3:1-17;
Luke 12:13-21
Year C, Proper 13, August 4, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

The other day a young fellow came to the house to change the batteries in our pendants.  Those are the things given to us at Pilgrim Place to alert the staff should we fall and can’t get up.  Or worse yet, have an emergency medical issue.  An “incident,” as my cardiologist calls it.  The Mueller testimony was on the TV and I asked him what he thought about the revelations Mueller had to report to our nation.  He said, he doesn’t watch any news.  He said that none of our politics concerned him.  He just tunes it out.  Not his worry.

Fair enough.  I must confess that, frankly, some days I’m weary of it all as well.  The problems of our nation, our world, are just so overwhelming that I sometimes I just don’t even want to hear about it.  I want to pass over those stories in my morning newspaper.  Surely, what Mr. Mueller had to report was most distressing.  But as alarming as his findings were, what is even more distressing is the fact that the work of his office has settled nothing.  We Americans are still as divided as ever concerning the facts he and his team have reported.  And if we can’t agree on the facts, we certainly can’t agree as to their meaning.  We’re as divided as ever.  And so, we’re going to yell and scream at one another until the 2020 election?  And beyond?

When our boys were little, the remedy for antisocial behavior, for the violation of family rules, for fighting, was a “time out.”  When they were unfit for human consumption it was “chillout time.”  Fifteen minutes in the penalty box.  It’s as if our entire nation now needs a “time out.” 

In addition to the lies, to the duplicity, to a Russian attack on our elections — a thousand other civic and family tragedies have unfolded as well.  All overshadowed by the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Mueller Report.  In Los Angeles we had another mass gang shooting.  Six members of one family shot, four killed. One cannot drive down Wilshire but note the ever-increasing number of the tents of the homeless.  They’re all over McArthur Park.  Forty percent of our families are on the brink of eviction as rents skyrocket.  To boot, addicted people usually don’t have money for rent.  An emergency car repair or illness would drive many families right over the financial cliff.

Yes, we need a national time out.  A collective moment to calm ourselves, to take a deep breath and count to ten.  The words, “Let us pray,” come to mind.

Jesus’ disciples certainly must have been at their wits end from time to time, and had frequently observed our Lord at prayer.  One day, after observing him in solitude, they implored him, “As John had taught his disciples to pray, teach us to pray.”  And so he did.  “Our Father, who art in heaven…”  Thus, we received one of the most radical prayers known throughout the world.

In the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion this prayer is imbedded in the communion liturgy.  It is introduced by the words, “We are bold to say…”  But I believe it should be, “We are bold to pray!”  This is about being audacious!  In your face spirituality.

Bold?  Bold?  We Episcopalians don’t do “bold.”  We’re the quiet.  We’re the “frozen chosen.”  We mostly mumble through these familiar words on autopilot.  Not giving them or their import a thought.  And yet, this simple prayer is absolutely mind-blowing.  If one considers and takes seriously what our words actually are saying.  If one doesn’t mumble through it in a mind-numbing spiritual haze.  This prayer offers one humongous spiritual “time out.” 

The Lord’s Pray, taken to heart, is a cry from the heart and soul for a complete reordering of all that is.  It’s a plea for a far different world, where it’s not okay to lie, steal and cheat.  Where it’s not okay to sell your country out to a hostile foreign power.  It’s a cry for a world where murderous dictators are not considered “good people.” 

The Lord’s Prayer is a plea for a moment of sanity, wherein we might collect our wits.  Wherein we might recenter on what truly matters.  It is at the heart of all that church means and what we value.  It is a spiritual time out — a brief moment in even the most hellacious of weeks, to reorient our lives to what actually gives life.  Yes, that we might choose life!

In these simple words, words like “on earth as in heaven,” an entire new vista unfolds.  Time when spent with what truly matters, stands still.  Eternity opens up.  St. Paul’s words, “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.”  Heaven on earth.  Now.

A clergywoman friend of mind reported to her church that recently she had had an opportunity to visit a parishioner in hospice.  Now, hospice is certainly a “time out.”  A final time out.

Sally reported that this woman was given the gift of a complete reorientation of her priorities, her values.  She shared with Sally that one day the director of the hospice facility had asked her why she thought she was still alive.  This is how the woman responded:

“God knew I needed to become a better person while I’m still on this earth.  You see, I’ve cared about peace and justice all my life, and I’ve always known God loves every human being.  But I’ve never really gotten to know anyone outside of my own circle until I needed hospice care.  Now, interacting with my caregivers, hearing stories of their lives, I’ve gotten to know them.  I know their names and the names of their families.  Now when I hear the news, I’m not at a distance anymore.  I see faces that look like, and hear names that sound like these women that I have come to know and love, and it wrenches my heart.  Through these women, God has given me one last opportunity to become more of who God wants me to be.”

That’s the sort of time out these simple but powerful words of the Lord’s prayer offer us.  Let us ever be “BOLD TO PRAY” these words.  And pay attention to their meaning.”

That hospice director’s question ought to be before each of us every morning, right up front with that cup of coffee or OJ.  “Why do we think we’re still alive?”

My friend, Fr. Paul Clasper, used to say that if we had lost almost all of scripture but had just a bit remaining, just a smidgen – the story of the Good Samaritan, the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Lord’s Prayer – we would have enough.  We would have enough in these few spiritual snippets to get the whole thing.  The centerpiece being the Lord’s Prayer.  It is about the entire journey of life, beginning to ending.  What this dying parishioner has been learning in her latter days – it’s all grounded in the spirituality of that short prayer.  Let us not mumble through it.  Let us be “BOLD TO PRAY.”  For forgiveness for the wrong we do, for the inbreaking of God’s new order, for our daily bread.  For everything we need to enter into eternity.  It’s all there.

You won’t get this at Rotary or at City Hall.  You won’t get this out on the golf course or in the poolhall.  You won’t get this at college or in the union hall.  You got this in church, or at your mother’s knee – where she got it from church.  This is the spiritual treasure that this frail, earthen vessel — the church — contains.  More precious than much fine gold.  And it’s not for sale.  Freely given, it is.

The time out offered by this radical prayer leads both to internal solace and to daring works of justice.  Daring, life-on-the-line, acts of justice.  The Lord’s Prayer is, as John Lewis is wont to say, a call to get in trouble, “good trouble, necessary trouble” as it did those priests and nuns led away in handcuffs this last weekend protesting the horrific conditions faced by children crammed in cages on our southern border.  Ever let us be BOLD TO PRAY, our Father who art in heaven…  And let us be bold to attend to what we are actually saying as we pray.

Every month it seems another high-ranking administration appointee is hauled before one congressional committee or another to account for incompetency, corruption, lying.  Or sent to jail.

The world continues to heat up.  Drought stalks the land.  Al Gore was right, for all the good that seems to have done us.  We seem not to have the capacity to act on what we know.  Bill McKibben, the noted climate author writes in his latest book, Falter, “…as a team of scientists pointed out recently in Nature, the physical changes we’re currently making by warming the climate will ‘extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far.’”[1]

Might that we be BOLD TO PRAY…   We need a global time out.  We need a complete reorienting of our values.  Yes!  Our Father who art in heaven…restore us to our senses.

In the paper – the business section of all places – we read of the McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm to drug manufacturers.  The business model these wizards were advising their pill-pushing clients?  “Get more patients on higher doses of opioids,” and study the techniques “for keeping patients on opioids longer.”[2]  What could possibly go wrong?  Indeed!  This is definitely not the ethic they might have gotten from the Lord’s Prayer.  They didn’t learn this in Sunday school.  No, this is the sort of ethic they might have learned in most any business school.  Oh, not directly.  It would have been inhaled from the go-go ethic of the atmosphere of the place and of their fellow students.  It’s in the ethic of get it while you can.  Time’s a-wasting.

With big money in our politics, everything and everyone seems to have a price.  All is for sale.  Our democracy is so stretched beyond all recognition, to the point that would have poor Madison rolling over in his grave.  Money.  Money.  Money.  Where’s my commission?

Was Timothy Leary, the guru of my age, ultimately right?  Should we all just “Turn on. Tune in. And Drop Out”?  Don’t you sometimes find yourself in this sort of blue funk?  And a huge portion of our citizenry has tuned out.  Just like the pendant technician who came to our house the other morning.  There are days I would like to do that.  Just retire to some rural Elysian field and spend the rest of my days fishing, reading, and keeping up with friends and family. Drinking a brewski with the folks out at the farm.  Yes, “take me home, country roads.”  AND Let the country take care of itself.  But that’s not the ethic of the Lord’s Prayer.  This prayer shoves us back into the fray.   It is life-giving, not life-denying.

This simple and profound prayer recenters us in what really matters.  It recenters us in friendship and commitment.  Recenters us in truth.   It recenters us in the entire message of our Lord.  The whole enchilada!  Had McKinsey & Company grounded its ethic – had they been BOLD TO PRAY – they would have recommended a far better business plan to their drug company clients.

BOLD TO PRAY…That is the sort of prayer that might open one’s eyes to doing something about the McKinsey business plan.  It might move some to the Jesus business plan of bringing liberty to the captives of opioid addiction.  BOLD TO PRAY…it might even bring ordinary folks like you and me out to begin a rehabilitation clinic.  Clinics in West Virginia and San Bernardino.  Just saying…

This Jesus stuff could be dangerous to drug company business models.  Could put them out of business.  A time out in the spiritual penalty box.  Definitely – they’re unfit for human consumption!

Unspoken sobs, moans of the spirit, prayers through which God might move to bind up the hurt and sorrowful — prayers transcending the inexplicable, prayers ushering in the yearning of many hearts, prayers moving towards a new reality rooted “in heaven as on earth.”  Prayers awakening us to be co-creators with God, in and through the kick-ass power of the Holy Spirit.  Like the saying goes, “Without us, God won’t.  Without God, we can’t.”  It’s all there in the Lord’s Prayer.

Let us ever BE BOLD TO PRAY…  These few words of Jesus are an opening of our lives to God, that God might begin to work through our hands and feet, hearts and minds, checkbooks and datebooks.  Entering the Lord’s Prayer at its deepest level, it is ultimately not we who pray, but God praying in and through us.

What about the fallout from the Mueller Report?  What about the opioid crisis?  What about a terminally ill patient in hospice?  What about us gathered here as St. Francis’ spiritual heirs?  What about finding a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble?  Gospel trouble?  Jesus trouble?  The answer all begins with that brief, simple, and most radical prayer we all learned in Sunday school. 

Let us also BOLDLY PRAY for the comfortable – for us — that our consciences might be sorely afflicted by the Spirit of all that is holy.  Let us BOLDLY PRAY for an audacious spirituality that dares to build a House of Hope.

Let us BOLDLY PRAY for a generous spirituality that will strengthen our bond of affection that we might be up to the task.

Let us BOLDLY PRAY for a creative spirituality that will invite our neighbors to join with us in building House of Hope. 

WE ARE BOLD TO PRAY: “Our Father who art in heaven…”     Amen.

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[1] Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (New York: Henry Holt, 2019), p.15-16.

[2] Walt Bogdanich, “McKinsey Had Advice on Opioids,” New York Times, July 26, 2019

Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138, Colossians 2:6-15;
 Luke 11:1-13

Year C, Proper 12 July 28, 2019
Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach

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The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney