Holy Resilience
It is ever into a world torn asunder that faith is birthed. Isaiah speaks to a desolate people, brutally slaughtered, hauled off to exile. Sing us a song of Zion their captors taunted. “How can we sing the Lord’s song in this God-forsaken place,” they sobbed.” No, they sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept.
We, like them live in a time of exile. Death and destruction reign. You know the places: Gaza and the West Bank, Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine, the Congo, Russia, off the shores of Venezuela. Gazing upon the ruination of our nation, its laws, its customs, its civility. It has all been turned to an ash heap – reduced to a garish ballroom that dwarfs the People’s House – reduced to the lawless murder of hapless folks in small boats on the high seas in the Caribbean – reduced to our complicity in settler murder of Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank — reduced to a pastiche of our former constitutional order. All by the most ignorant man to have ever held the office of president, a doddering old fool who can barely stay awake during his own meetings. Attended by a corrupt, greedy and imbecilic cabal that is the laughing stock of much of the civilized world. Yes! Exile from all we have known and revered. Exile from the America of youthful ideal. Exile – strangers in our own land.
It Is into such distraught and barren times that Magnificat, the Song of Mary breaks through. As I’ve mentioned, in Luke’s telling of the episode Mary is not some coddled, mild young thing who meekly accepts this angelic outrageous greeting. It’s as if she takes one step back and tells that rude interloper, if this is the way it’s gonna be, hold my beer and watch this. She then cuts loose with one of the most radical prophecies in all of scripture.
Those on the top will soon find themselves on the bottom. Those who have grabbed up all the goodies, will walk away with empty hands. The powerful are confronted and confounded. No garish, monster ballroom for them. It will be the lame and the halt who will joyfully do-si-do to fiddle, banjo and mandolin out in the Rose Garden – the People’s Garden.
Yes, “He has showed with his arm;
he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
and hath exalted the humble and meek.”
I just love the language of the King James version for this canticle.
And finally…
“He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel,
as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.”
Mary, maybe a 12 or 14-year-old girl, the property of a father with the prerogative to marry her off to whomever and whatever age. Yet, in Luke’s, telling no shrinking violet she. No! Brimful with prophetic righteousness.
And she will persevere through the worst that life can deal out, eventually weeping at the foot of a tree of torture as her son succumbs to a most agonizing death. Holy Resilience, indeed.
Christmas each year is killed not by those radical liberals who want to banish it, but by saccharine sentimentality. Its message of Good News is NOT for the timid or the lazy, the willfully ignorant.
It’s about God feeding the people with the nourishment that builds the soul, true manna. Much more about manna than Macy’s. Yeah, manna like the veggies of St. Francis Garden of Hope. The sort of stuff that takes hard work.
It is into the desolate and rough places the actuality of hope breaks through. That’s the Baptizer’s, that’s Mary’s message. Hope, perceived through Holy Resilience. Yes, Lord, we stand ready to be “holpened.” NOW!
“Remarking on the occasion of Christmas, Thomas Merton once said, ‘Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him, Christ comes uninvited.’ So it is with the true message of Advent. The very life of God takes flesh among us. It is a scandal, an offense, a disruption to this world.”[1]
Mary is a part of that story of disruption to the very end, from the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Wedding at Cana, the Crucifixion and Resurrection appearances. It is difficult to imagine a mother bearing more sorrow than Mary, yet she is a most resilient of women. In the end, the disciple John is entrusted with Mary’s care, Jesus’ last wish from the cross.
Holy Resilience is a gift of the Spirit. It is what keeps the community of Faith true to it’s calling. It is our North Star. It’s easy for good intentions to dissipate under the pressures of modern tedium and annoyance. Let me tell you how.
The other day at Cardenas Market, I completely lost it in the checkout line. Some woman ahead of me was cashing in vouchers or something. She must have 20 or 30 or so of them, and for each one the clerk had to go through a big rigmarole with the register.
It was taking forever. We waited minutes and more minutes. Customers behind me began moving to the adjacent line. It seemed so inconsiderate that this woman should be wasting some 20 minutes of everybody’s time – no, change that – of MY time. I said a few snide things, huffed and puffed. Finally, we were checked out. I felt rather sheepish when, afterward, my home health aide Ileen told me that all those receipts and whatever were for a homeless project.
How long, O Lord, must we wait for peace to settle into our hearts, into MY heart? My resilience had completely evaporated in those few moments behind this woman doing a righteous deed for some destitute homeless folks.
Pastor Heidi Neumark, one of my favorites, tells of a girl’s birthday party around the time of Advent in New York City.[2]
By the time she arrived with her two children the festivities were already under way. When they entered the house, they were confronted by Tweety Birds, scores of them everywhere. On the napkins, on balloons, plates, the cake, and center stage, a big Tweety Bird piñata. Heidi had taken her children because the mother, Marta, was their favorite baby-sitter. It was the first birthday party for Marta’s baby and it was to be the baby’s baptism.
The children were crowding around the piñata, eager to take a whack at it. Eager to bash it to pieces and grab as much candy as they could hold in their small hands.
Marta’s one brother was absent, serving time in jail and no one had seen her other brother, 16-year-old Christian. Va y viene, he comes and goes.
In the middle of the chaos, Christian walks in, baggy red pants and a red sweatshirt. Hanging out of a back pocket was a red bandana. Christian had joined the Bloods and he was flashing their colors.
This family had for some time teetered on the edge. Their mother was strung out on drugs, and the three children had been raised by an elderly grandmother who could barely keep up with them.
When Christian’s own mother died of AIDS, he was 15. “He sat slouched with his face in his hands, crying uncontrollably through the entire funeral, Heidi recalls.” It was after that he had joined the Bloods.
Seeing Pastor Heidi, he comes over, gives her a hug and a kiss. In her arms he, always a slender boy, seemed so frail. That is why, now, he is most likely armed. “Young, dangerous and endangered,” she remembers thinking.[3]
It is soon time to leave. On the way home, Heidi and her children pass two groups of teenagers. They are walking towards a fight that’s about to explode between the two. She pulls her children in tighter and quickly walks around the kids. She doesn’t know the neighborhood and these are not kids she knows. Heidi and her children hurry to their car.
She notes, once they are safely home and the children in their beds, that tomorrow will be the first Sunday of Advent. After putting out the Advent decorations – calendars, the wreath of candles, the lion and lamb and a bowl of stars – each one bearing a prayer for the person named on it (Yes, Marta and her family are inscribed on one of those stars) – Heidi takes a few minutes to herself to reflect on the reading for that Sunday from Isaiah 40.
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain.”
In the stillness of the night, she wonders when this might be. In the daily grind of violence of her large city, God seems so absent. For people like Marta and her family, where are the signs of that promise?
Yet, in the resilience of Mary, in the resilience of all mothers like Marta, that the promise finds fulfillment. The testimony of the Mothers of the Desaparecidos in Chile and Argentine, their resilience each week in the central squares of those nations – their silent resilience is the sacramental sign of this hidden God’s presence. Their sorrow is the manger in which the Christ Child is born. Holy Resilience his swaddling. Where is this Christ born? His birth is in those places where we are weak and vulnerable. Those places where we are not so full of ourselves — those places, where in the silence of the night, unbidden prayer breaks through: O Come, O Come Emannuel. Enter into our brokenness. Come, O Advent Promise, and shine forth, burning brightly as once did that Epiphany Star, pointing the way. Enlightening our coming days, Marta’s coming days, and the coming days of a world that has sorely lost its way. Come quickly. Come, quickly, Lord Jesus. This we pray. Amen
[1] Jim Wallis, “The Low Estate of His Handmaiden,” Sojourners, December, 1976.
[2] Heidi Neumark, God’s Absence in Advent, Christian Century December 5, 2001.
[3] Ibid.
December 14, 2025
Third Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10 Psalm 146:4-9
The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55); Gospel: Matthew 11:2-11
Fire From an Old Stump
As a young boy I was immersed in our family’s history. Both sides. From my father’s side, it was West Virginia and the Forneys who had been on that land since 1804. There’s where the family graveyard sits, on a small portion of those180 acres. Grandpa Jonathan Forney taught at Bethany College there in the Northern Panhandle. There’s also, until it was recently replaced, a concrete bridge over Buffalo Creek that he built, or engineered. Dad never told me what he taught, but I’m guessing it wasn’t Shakespeare.
The thing Dad did stress was that Grandpa was a hard-driving man with definite expectations of my dad, an only child. Not strong on affection but stern on discipline. That was part of my heritage from my father’s side.
On my mother’s side we were a mix of the Gross and Howe families. Grandpa and Grandma Gross came from Iowa to California. I wouldn’t say with nothing as Grandpa had a degree from Julliard School of Music. He found a job as a letter carrier in Lodi where they’d settled. Over the years he worked his way up ladder and at the apex of his career was the postmaster of Lodi, California. His vocal talents were in great demand throughout the area and he sang at weddings, funerals, anniversaries, birthdays. He had a great sense of civic pride, nurtured by his membership in the Odd Fellows organization.
Grandma’s side gave us two famous Howe relatives, General William Howe, who I told my 8th grade classes, won the American Revolution by allowing General George Washington slip through his fingers three times.
Most exemplary in that lineage was Julia Ward Howe. Yes, the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” More notably, she authored the first Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Read it – it’s radical. She was a suffragist and an abolitionist. From her we get our activist roots. It’s in our DNA to raise hell against injustice.
Altogether a marvelous lineage. And what did I make of it? Growing up, absolutely nothing. I was so lost in my teen and early adult years, that all that heritage amounted to nothing. I was as useless as an old stump.
Isaish, proclaims that even from old stumps can come amazing new growth.
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
Out of a useless old stump, fire of new life shall come. Yes, even the useless old stump my life had become in those early years.
That fire was the appearance of John the Baptist, a voice crying in the wilderness to rouse up life in the House of Israel. Breathing fire, he minced no words concerning the corrupt leaders of the people. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
What preacher ever began Sunday’s sermon screaming at the congregation, “You brood of vipers…?” And kept his or her job?
It’s a parallel to John the Revelator chastising some of the do-nothing churches of his day. Yes, right there in chapter 3, he zeroes on the congregation at Laodicea, “I know your works, you are neither cold nor hot…so I will spit you out of my mouth.” A heritage gone for naught. An old dried stump of the Jesus Movement.
Truth is, those congregations that have lost their way through numbing complacency, probably won’t be spit out. They’ll just be ignored as irrelevant. Irreverent and as useless as a dead old stump.
And we who might take our ease in Zion, no sense of mission, no little light shining, might dwindle away to nothing. Much of that pitiful journey is the story of Mainline Protestantism.
But, sometimes, just sometimes we’re jolted out of our lethargy. A John the Baptizer comes along breathing fire on the dry stubble. A flame bursts forth and the Church is transformed into the Glory of God.
That’s the story of our patron saint, Francis of Assisi. He heard the voice of God calling him forth, “Build my church.”
That call of the Baptizer echoes down the ages, and fired-up leadership emerges, lay and clergy. Even a few bishops to boot.
It was a sermon that fired me up. Paul Tillich’s sermon, “You are Accepted.” It was a jolt from beyond the blue. Acceptance, welcome, is the first mission of the church. Acceptance, welcome, is the sacramental presence of the Grace of God.
Our St. Francis Garden of Hope is the visible sign of that as we are now providing huge amounts of fresh produce for those our economy has shut out. That produce and the canned goods distributed at St. John’s Food Bank, is the open door of acceptance. And though we might on the outside look like a withered old stump, the folks there are splendid new shoots. Sometimes shoots of fire as in the shrub Moses spied in his wilderness.
There’s a story of an old stump in England that is instructive. Liddy Barlow tells the story of some vandals whose criminal actions were the source of great sorrow and anger in a small English village.
“Nestled into Hadrian’s Wall at the northern edge of England, the elegant Sycamore Gap tree rose from a dip between two hills. Its dramatic setting made it one of the most photographed trees in the country, featured in calendars and guidebooks and postcards. Day hikers posed in front of the tree for selfies; couples said their vows beneath its branches; Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman strolled around it in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.”[1]
On a stormy night on September vandals took chainsaws to that tree and sawed it down, leaving only a stump. In the morning not only were many in that village mourning the tree, but the entire nation was gripped in sorrow and anger at the destruction of that iconic tree.
What had taken a century or so to grow was demolished in only a matter of minutes. Thousands poured out to mourn the loss. Such a treasure turned into sawdust and wood for what? A hobby, furniture, knickknacks? Only a stump left behind.
That following spring the Northumberland National Park Authority placed an amazing sign at the roped-off stump. “This tree stump is still alive,” followed by the hope, “If we leave it alone it might sprout new growth.” Passersby were warned to heed the admonition to respect the barrier.
And wonder of wonders that spring there were seven new shoots that had come forth.
Isaiah speaks to a nation that had a battle axe taken to it as families were split, killed and hauled into captivity. A nation as dried up and desiccated as an old stump. But out of the Torah heritage of what had once been a flourishing tree with strong limbs for birds to roost in, would come new life. Green shoots. As captivating as a burning bush in the middle of nowhere.
One would be sent and on him would rest the “spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”
John the Baptizer would proclaim his advent, breathing fire and thunder at those who had led the people of Israel astray. Offering an opportunity for repentance at the River Jordan.
And that old stump continues to produce wonderous growth, inviting all who would read and heed the summons. Yes, fire from an old stump – that was John’s summons.
And that fire yet lives on in the hearts of all who have signed up to follow that Prince of Peace, that Mighty Counselor, God with us.
I saw it in a very small way in the grocery checkout line as I waited with Ileen, my home health aide. We were behind a woman in one of those motorized shopping carts who was having great difficulty in getting her purchases out of the basket. Without saying a word, Ileen went around in front of her and asked if she might help. That customer was so grateful, it made my day.
But behind us was an elderly gentleman also in a motorized cart and there was Ileen in a flash helping him. In just a few minutes of kindness, all of us were chatting together like old friends. What an Advent delight. Ileen is the embodiment of her Catholic tradition with a strong social conscience.
A delightful green shoot from that tradition. A blazing spark of delight in what could have been a dead stump of a mind-numbing wait in a long line, listening to insipid Christmas elevator music.
President Obama was right when he counseled Americans on how to get through the deadness of a nation gone amiss in lies and repression. Be kind. Kindness is important, he advised. It will get us through. Its pedigree goes right back to the Prince of Peace. Ileen is most kind – an Advent harbinger.
Amy Frykholm in her interview with a genuine woman of peace brings to her reader the Straight Glory right out of Isaiah’s promise. Leymah Gbowee shares the amazing tale of an African woman caught up in the terror of Liberia under the dictatorship of the warlord Charles Taylor. And the price the women of that nation paid.[2]
During that savage reign of horror, Leymah was a terrified 18-year-old girl. As a result of the fighting between rebel forces led by Charles Taylor and the government, she and many others had taken refuge in a nearby Lutheran church compound, St. Peter’s in Monrovia.
Government forces, looking for food, attacked the church. After raping and killing the woman who held the keys to the church they proceeded to massacre most of those sheltering there. With knives, machetes, machine guns, they slaughtered more than 500 men, women and children.
Because Leymah’s uncle had lied to the soldiers, telling them that their family was of the same tribe as the soldiers, they had been released.
Traumatized by that incident, Leymah fell into a desolute life, entering into a relationship with a married man who was abusive. Giving birth to four children. She eventually moved back home to her family and reunited with that congregation at St. Peter’s. There the pastor recognized her unique gifts and her intelligence. He soon had her reading M.L. King, Gandhi and the Mennonite peace activist, John Howard Yoder.
One night she heard the summons, a call as distinct and clear as any ever heard by a prophet. In the midst of that turmoil, sleeping in a church office, she heard the ask. “Gather the women to pray for peace.”[3]
Some women overheard her sharing that call but she didn’t see herself as a religious leader.
“She was a single mother, never married, who had a complicated relationship with her church. ‘It was like hearing the voice of God, yes, but . . . that wasn’t possible,’ she writes in her memoir. ‘I drank too much. I fornicated! I was sleeping with a man who wasn’t my husband, who in fact was still legally married to someone else. If God was going to speak to someone in Liberia, it wouldn’t be me.’”[4]
A gentle shoot out of desiccated remains of a nation torn by violence, rape and famine. The few women who had overheard her sharing the vision of that night with a co-worker told her, “We need to pray.”
Some twenty women began to pray once a week, and this small green shoot became a national movement, “Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace.” It eventually was comprised of thousands, not just Christians, but Muslims, Jews and others – crossing all tribal, religious, educational levels, rural and urban.
Out of this Spiritual fire was born a new Liberia from the dead stump of a ruined nation. Under the soul force of these woman, warring parties were brought to heel and arms were laid down.
Out of the stump of Jesse, God continues to breathe new life into the People of the Covenant, the people of the Jesus Movement. And when that roll is called up yonder, I want my name to be there along with the wonderful folks of St. John’s and St. Francis in glorious array assembled.
This godly heritage, every bit as much as the familial backgrounds of each of us, yet bears the possibility of new life. If we but attend to and heed the promptings of the Advent Promise. Amen.
[1] Liddy Barlow, “More Life to Come,” Christian Century, December 6, 2025.
[2] Amy Frykholm, “To tell the truth: Nobel winner Leymah Gbowee,” Christian Century, November 16, 2011.
[3] Op cit.
[4] Op cit.
Farmer Miguel with some of Wednesday’s harvest, 12-3-25
A sermon you can see and taste!
December 7, 2025
Second Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
2nd Reading: Romans 15:4-13; Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12
“Fire From an Old Stump”
Instruction Shall Go Forth
“Johnny, don’t go beyond the curb,” my mother would admonish me when I asked to go outside. And if the ball goes out into the street, let someone go get it for you. All instructions to keep me safe.
Later there would be other instructions and advice. Like that from my father when I slacked on my homework or came home with terrible grades. I was told that I needed to get an education so I didn’t have to rely on my back to make a living.
My dad, growing up in West Virginia coal country, had seen the ravages of that industry on the men who moiled for that coal underground. Men whose bodies were spent before they were forty. Men with black lung disease slowly wasting away. Families consumed by poverty and despair as union rights were violated by the owners.
And some of that instruction sunk in. Even though my grades and diligence did not substantially improve, his admonition idled at the back of my thoughts. I knew he was right. His instruction had imbedded itself in my consciousness. And after I was married with a family, I finally had my nose to the grindstone.
Does anyone know how many “A”s it takes to redeem a 1.2 GPA. Yeah, I was a real academic screwup. I knew my mind was much better than my back.
Isaiah proclaims similar words of wisdom and enlightenment in today’s Advent reading.
“In the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills…Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the lord from Jerusalem.”
Instruction and wisdom, indeed! Torah Righteousness will find a new expression, a new embodiment. And his name shall be Mighty Counselor, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us.”
Matthew alerts us, that that day which no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, may happen in a flash. That day when the roll is called up yonder. Scientists tell us that that day is certain. Our sun will massively explode consuming all the neighboring planets. The universe will slowly expand into lifeless nothingness. All this apocalypse billions of years away. Here is one doctrine supported by science. Trust the science; but more, trust the Lord’s goodness to embrace us all in that end.
Yet in a sense, it is every day. Opportunities to enter the kin-dom of God present themselves, are revealed through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Let us each prepare a humble manger of our hearts that it might be born in us. The Spirit of Christmas Promise never sleeps – 24/7 she’s on duty seeking to rummage through our dreams and imaginations, bearing anew the Christ Child.
And how gentle is often his instruction, his guidance. Yes, sometimes he has to overturn the tables of our obstinacy and blindness. All to our own good. Don’t rush heedlessly into the traffic of evil this guidance compels.
Sometimes, it’s a word I resist. I’ve been reading Fr. Greg Boyle’s new book, Cherished Belonging,[1] a work revealing the gentleness of Christ on the streets of Los Angeles.
When someone at a retreat of his order was praised as “THAT is a good Jesuit,”[2] inwardly he instinctively rebelled. If there are “good” Jesuits then it is implied that there are “bad” Jesuits. It was the Christ within him crying out in that inner moment of protest. He states that he has never known a “bad” Jesuit. “I’ve met many broken Jesuits: traumatized, despondent; on the spectrum; wounded; stuck in shame, mental illness and crippling inferiority. I’ve known Jesuits who are strangers to themselves. But I’ve never met a bad one. Please don’t call me a good one.”[3]
The gift that Mary carries in her womb would instruct the world in such gentle, patient understanding. It’s called Grace. A sister of the Torah Righteousness that would instruct the life of her child to be born.
Now, I’m often so resistant to that gentle word of admonishment, that gentle word of Love. Out of the damage of my childhood, I want to nourish my hate for one who has wronged me, wronged our nation.
Perhaps, maybe this president is not evil as I would like to judge, but he is a very damaged person. And out of that damage he inflicts damage on the rest of us. Damage that in itself is evil.
Just as Jesus did not see a “loose” woman at the well in Samaria that day, he saw a precious child of God who had become lost in the trauma she had endured as a girl. Lost in the trauma of assault by similarly damaged men. Self-absorbed men having no regard for anyone but themselves.
It is the gift of Grace that would await us this Advent season, the gift of allowing us to get beyond ourselves, the gift of self-transcendence that allows us to enter a glorious Kin-dom of God’s full creation.
The Christmas gift for which we prepare is a spiritual reality clothed in flesh and foliage, other people, and yes, Ellen, the animals. Crickets and bees. Trees and lettuce, baobab trees and seaweed. St. Francis being a branch of that revelation.
We await further instruction each day to the splendid gift of this wonderful world. That is the Advent summons to our hearts and minds.
This instruction we would imbibe, would “read, learn, mark and inwardly digest.” It is the open door to a new way of living that Mary’s child will reveal.
It’s not for sissies, for in our days evil deeds are done by very deranged people. People whose actions we must resist with all the faith that is within us. Yes, these times call for “Holy Resistance.”
The pure, unadulterated Grace that awaits to be born in our lives is liberation from all that separates us from our true selves, men and women fully alive in the Glory of God. God has put a big, shiny bow on that in the work of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Innocence Project.
That Christ living in his work is a direct spiritual inheritance, root and branch, from his mother who lived it daily. The Advent gift we expectantly await in these divided, traumatized times.
Bryan Stevenson’s mother lived the beatitude of reconciliation. She was an Advent Beatitude, blessed to the core.
Blessedness restores broken relationships and enables life to go on. Bryan Stevenson tells of a lesson in saying you’re sorry his mother taught him that has stuck with him over the years. Sometimes the most embarrassing lessons are the ones that stick.
Blessed are those who say they’re sorry. Blessed are those who go the extra mile, those who seek to understand with the heart.
Bryan Stevenson’s mother is one tough lady, the sort of disciple Jesus will call. The sort he needs. You have to be tough sometimes to be a parent these days. She, and any parent on God’s green earth, knows, parenting is tough stuff – not at all for sissies or the unformed. There’s a reason sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t be having children.
For those who don’t know Bryan Stevenson, he is the Black lawyer who works on death penalty cases for indigent inmates awaiting execution in Montgomery, Alabama. As he listened to one inmate about to be led into the execution chamber who was having great difficulty in talking with Brian due to a severe stutter, Bryan had a flashback to an old memory from his childhood.
Bryan and some of his friends had been making fun of another boy with a speech impediment. As Bryan and his friends were laughing at this boy, he saw his mother looking at him with an expression he’d never seen before. Bryan continues his story in his book, Just Mercy:
It was a mix of horror, anger, and shame, all focused on me. I stopped my laughing instantly. I’d always felt adored by my mom, so I was unnerved when she called me over.
When I got to her, she was very angry with me. “What are you doing?”
What? I didn’t do…
Don’t you ever laugh at someone because they can’t get their words out right. Don’t you ever do that!”
“I’m sorry.” I was devastated to be reprimanded by my mom so harshly. “Mom, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“You should know better, Bryan.”
“I’m sorry. I thought…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Bryan. There is no excuse, and I’m very disappointed in you. Now, I want you to go back over there and tell that little boy that you’re sorry.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Then I want you to give that little boy a hug.”
“Huh?”
“Then I want you to tell him that you love him.” I looked up at her and, to my horror, saw that she was dead serious. I had reacted as apologetically as I possibly could, but this was way too much.
“Mom, I can’t go over and tell that boy I love him. People will—”
She gave me that look again. I somberly turned around and returned to my group of friends. They had obviously seen my mother’s scolding; I could tell because they were all staring at me. I went up to the little boy who had struggled to speak.
“Look, man, I’m sorry.”
I was genuinely apologetic for laughing and even more deeply regretful of the situation I had put myself in. I looked over at my mother who was still staring at me. I lunged at the boy to give him a very awkward hug. I think I startled him by grabbing him like that, but when he realized that I was trying to hug him, his body relaxed and he hugged me back.
My friends looked at me oddly as I spoke.
“Uh…also, uh…I love you!” I tried to say it as insincerely as I could get away with and half-smiled as I spoke. I was still hugging the boy, so he couldn’t see the disingenuous look on my youthful face.
It made me feel less weird to smile like it was a joke. But then the boy hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear. He spoke flawlessly, without a stutter and without hesitation.
“I love you, too.” There was such tenderness and earnestness in his voice, and just like that, I thought I would start crying.[4]
That day Bryan learned compassion. Now, that’s a BLESSED moment!
That is the glorious, new way of living that awaits us each under the Christmas tree, or my friend Bob’s Hannukah bush.
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and ransom us from a world gone awry, from ourselves gone awry. Reveal a greater Glory that awaits. With expectant hearts we stand by. This Advent we await with eagerness to be instructed in such Love. Amen.
[1] Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2024).
[2] Op. cit., 42.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, (New York, NY, Random House, 2000), p. 286,287.
November 30, 2025
First Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122;
2nd Reading: Romans 13:11-14; Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44
“Instruction Shall Go Forth”
The Day is Coming
At a student conference at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, I first encountered a mature, muscular understanding of the Christian faith I had received from Sunday school. The Rev. Joseph Wesley Matthews had been holding forth for several days on an understanding of the faith that led to intentional living, cruciform living for the world.
The energy level of those days was unbelievable. Methodist students from all over California had assembled for that week. And the air was electric with possibility, with hope. I remember on one break, several of us male students and their pastors had gathered around a piano singing “For All the Saints.” The bond of that male camaraderie was nothing like anything I had experienced in the church. Yes, “Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host.” Indeed, a taste of heavenly bliss.
As we broke for lunch, over the PA loudspeaker, boomed an urgent announcement, “Jim Donaldson, this is your eschatological moment!” Oh oh.
Eschatological — of final things. A moment of being called to account. Dealing with final judgement. Yes, we’d absorbed a lot of theological jargon in those few days.
But in a sense, that conference was an eschatological turning point, days of decision, for many of us. More than one that week began a journey leading to the ordained ministry. We were, in a way high on a conversion experience – a decision for a life of intentionality. I can say I’m here in the church because of that week in Stockton.
The prophet Malachi proclaims such an eschatological moment in the life of the people Israel. “See the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble, the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”
Out of this moment of crisis shall come a sprig of hope. “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”
One of my favorite hymns, “Once to Every Man and Nation,” speaks to such moments of decision, eschatological moments when our entire life is summoned before us. “Comes a moment to decide…for the good or evil side.”
While the theology might now be somewhat questionable and the imagery sexist, the truth of this hymn is that in the life of a person and nation, there are critical moments. Eschatological moments when it’s all on the line. As the old union song asks, “Which Side Are You On?”
America presently faces such a moment. As more and more of the Epstein files come to light, we now have three of Jeffrey Epstein emails attesting that Donald Trump knew all about the underaged girls being raped and trafficked by him and Maxwell. In fact, one avers that Trump had been alone with one of those girls in Epstein’s house for several hours. What was going on? I doubt he was helping her with her math homework. Certainly not a paper on morality!
In this critical moment of decision, who will we be as a people? Will we join with the MAGA cult to sweep this all under the rug? Ignore those brave women now coming out to testify to the horrors of their ordeal?
Amazingly, maybe we will. The House of Representatives has been away on vacation for seven weeks, in part to avoid seating a new representative who had pledged to sign a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the entire Epstein files. Yes, hiding in order to protect child rapists. And depriving children of their nutritional benefits only to protect these rapists. Depriving one in eight Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to protect these traffickers of girls? And a tawdry president attempting to cover it all up. Yes, what WAS he doing alone in that room for several hours with that underage girl?
Once to this nation can’t come soon enough the moment to decide. November, 2026 awaits our judgement of it all. Judgement of this corrupt administration and of all who have by their obfuscation and silence have countenanced this criminal sex trafficking ring.
Oh, and just why might Ghislane Maxwell now be ensconced in a country-club prison with room service? Of course, it wouldn’t have anything to do with her silence, would it? Or a presidential pardon?
This is America’s eschatological moment. We stand before the bar of history. Whose side are we on? The day is coming to decide.
The protectors of the world’s climate are now gathering in Belém, Brazil over these next few weeks for COP30. COP30 stands for the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. That’s a mouthful, but all stands for our collective effort to combat global warming.
Needless to say, the United States is absent, having pulled out of the Paris Accords under this anti-science administration. Yeah, “Drill, baby, drill” – “Dig, baby, dig.” What could possibly go wrong?
Well, plenty. Sarah Palin may have suggested that we don’t need all this “sciency stuff,” but what you don’t know can actually kill you, and the planet.
The Paris Accords, due to the temporizing position of the Obama administration, watered down a critical goal – to keep global warming at or under 1.5 degrees Celsius increase – an increase 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
Beyond that, we approach or exceed critical “tipping points,” beyond which there is no return. Climate disaster becomes a run-away freight train barreling through the coming centuries to the planet becoming a crispy critter.
Those pesky climate scientists warn us that we have already exceeded that goal and are on the way to a 2-degree Celsius increase – some even thinking that enough warming has already been stored in our oceans to take us to a 3-degree Celsius increase in warming.
The root cause driving all this, at the very bottom, is a predatory capitalist system demanding, “More, more, more.” As the economics professor Richard Parker said, “Only a fool or an economist would believe in the possibility of infinite growth in a finite system.” Our Mother Earth has its limits, and we’re exceeding them.
At a three degrees Celsius increase, what is the future? The Amazon, due to the shift in the jet stream, looses its rainfall, becoming as arid as the Gobi Desert. All gone. The great Amazon River with its piranha and fresh water porpoises. howler monkeys, spider monkeys and jaguars – all gone. Statuesque mahogany trees, Brazil nut trees, and the immense Kapok tree. And did I mention the cacao tree, yes, your Hershey’s chocolate bar gone to extinction. All the shifting sands of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl. And what about my coffee? Huh? – now, this is getting serious.[1]
And worst, all that carbon storage the Amazon provided. That jungle is truly the lungs of the planet. Our world is becoming a runaway freight train headed to oblivion as tipping point after tipping point is passed.
In the days of flood, drought, tornado, and wildfire comes the moment to decide. Our planet’s eschatological moment. Will we opt for a livable future or an unknown hellscape? Poor Luther James, we have dropped a very heavy load on his shoulders.
Luke’s gospel warns that those standing for what is right will be hauled before the authorities. Before ICE and the machinery of government weaponized against our citizens. We must be ready to give an account for ourselves who believe in Torah Righteousness and Gospel Goodness. In this contest, “you will gain your souls.”
I believe the evidence is in — that Malachi’s promise, Luke’s promise is worthy of our faith. “But for you who revere my name the sun of Righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” And power our future. This last November the American people rejected MAGA extremism and the starvation of our children as the cutoff of SNAP benefits was used to punish our most vulnerable. We will reject sexual predation of the most vulnerable. And Global Weirding.
This administration may not be present at the COP 30 conference, but our Governor Newsom has led a large delegation to place a marker down, that America will accept its responsibilities.[2] And, without the Trumpy folks present this time, just maybe this time we will accept a realistic goal for action. No more aspirational, pie-in-the-sky “hopium.” The delusional thinking of the past is a narcotic the planet can no longer afford. It is our eschatological moment to decide. The day is coming.
Bill McKibben, in his new book, Here Comes the Sun,[3] lays out the realistic possibility of a living future for our Mother Earth. We have it in our capacity to amend our ways. Much damage has been done, irreversible damage. But we can yet adopt to something like a 2-degree Celsius increase.
“In the US, something like 42 percent of the energy we use comes down to how we heat our air and water, cook our food, dry our clothes and drive our cars. That is to say, almost half of the emissions are the result of decisions we make around the proverbial kitchen table…a big part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was designed to push those decisions toward the clean and efficient appliances I’ve been describing” – heat pumps, induction stoves, bikes, electric vehicles.
Just ditching the gas stove can be done for an induction burner at $60.00 to $100. Of course, a full induction stove will cost around $2000 and you will probably need new cookware. But all this is possible.
In that legislation, the IRA, approximately a half trillion dollars was allocated to help America adapt. Until it was canceled under this administration of anti-science know nothings. It is up to us to chose the future we want. The tools are at hand. Yes, the day is coming – a day when we either burn the place down, as with the fires of last year, or we “cool it,” as the kids would say. The day is coming. Our moment to decide.
Momentum is building for solutions. Time magazine in its November 10th issue, featured a large number of activists, scientists, and others on the front lines working for solutions, and sounding the alarm – yes, that a five-alarm fire is in the making. Our climate crisis is finally getting front-and-center attention necessary to grab collective attention.[4]
And I believe the American people will choose wisely. As my friend Vern was wont to say, “Timing is everything.” The day IS coming.
I close with my favorite quote from James Baldwin on our collective responsibility, our pledge to one another, from his essay, “Nothing Personal.”
Listen to James Baldwin in this essay, he admonishes:
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; The earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”[5]
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, might we pray for the strength and wisdom to keep the Christ Light burning brightly now and, in the days to come, that we might not be found wanting of any good grace. Let us commend the faith that is in us. All to the “Glory of God and our neighbor’s good.” Amen.
[1] Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C., National Geographic, 2008), 140-143.
[2] Melody Gutierrez, “Climate Gives Newsom a World Stage,” Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2025
[3] Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun (New York: Norton, 2025).
[4] “Climate: The 100 Most Influential Leaders Driving Climate Action, Time Magazine, November 10, 2025.
[5] James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 393.
November 9, 2025
Pentecost 23, Proper 28
Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98;
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19
“The Day is Coming”
And My Eyes Shall Behold
I remember that as my father got older and began to decline, he would sometimes ask me that I thought happened to us after death. While he was not a church-going person, he had grown up in the cradle of what we now know as the Disciples of Christ denomination. Originally known as the Christian Church, and before that, named after their founder Thomas Campbell, as the Campbellites.
This is a rather austere form of the Jesus Movement. Baptism is valid only by full immersion. There is little to no use in speculative theology or the creeds. Their stance? “Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.”
Our family farm, outside of Bethany, is just down the street from where Thomas’ son began enlarging the family home to accommodate those coming to study. The first meeting house still stands, right across the highway from the Forney house in Bethany, West Virginia.
While my father had since rejected his mother’s austere, literal approach to the Bible and their pious keeping of the Sabbath, the roots of that background lurked deep in his soul. His mother, Grandma Bertha’s version of the religion was very, very strict – though not so much when it came to charity; she hoarded everything. I remember as a fifth grader, when she was living with us in Long Beach, she offered me a dollar to read the Bible. It was so boring, all the begats and begats – one generation leading to another, that after a while, I offered to give her back her dollar. Her version of the faith was all works righteousness. Her God was a punishing scorekeeper. One had to earn their way past the pearly gates and St. Peter’s scrutiny. Grandma Bertha’s personality did not commend the faith either. She was a complaining, embittered, rigid person with nothing much good to say about anyone.
She was convinced that no woman was good enough for her son, my father. All the time she lived with us she only referred to my mom as “That Woman.”
Even as a young person, I knew that her version of the faith wouldn’t get me anywhere worth going. Especially, after death.
Jesus, in our scripture lesson today, is confronted by a group of lawyers who set out to ridicule him, show he’s a fraud. Some lawyers will do that, you know. This group does not believe in any afterlife. So, they pose a most perplexing problem to ridicule Jesus and his after-life ideas about a Kingdom.
I can hear his detractors now – the same scoffers of religion today.
So, how high up is heaven? The Russian Youri Gegarian went up there in a spaceship, looked around and didn’t see anything, certainly not God. Yucka yucka, yuck.
And, wise teacher, what are people going to eat up there? Who’s gonna to be the bracero to pick the veggies? Who will brew the beer? You know, Fr. John’s not going if there’s no beer, or rhubarb.
Will there be sex? Is it the 70 virgins we’re promised?
Is there homework? No more homework, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks. Yea! And what about baseball? Will St. Peter umpire?
Who’s going to clear the tables after this feast in the sky? And do the dishes? Now they’re rolling around the ground in fts of laughter. Can’t catch their breath.
What will people do? Just sing Alleluia every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday singing Alleluia? Forever and ever, world without end? They’ll be bored out of their skulls.
The cynics, who have everything and know the value of nothing will be having a field day at Jesus expense.
For the “cultured despisers,” the skeptical in this modern era, much of religion is considered fluff, of no account. At worst, a delusion and laughing matter. And face it, some claims of the faith are highly dubious and utterly laughable at worst. Did the sun really stand still so Joshua could finish a slaughter on the battlefield?[1] And if same sex relations are an abomination punishable by death, so is eating shellfish. Should everyone eating clams be also stoned to death? Oh, yeah, then there was that relationship between David and Jonathan, which might have been problematical.
And when one considers how the Christian faith has been misused to promote toxic masculinity, promote wars, promote the worst sexist, racist and rightwing nationalist ideologies – not only is it risible, it’s downright dangerous. (As an aside, I say thanks be to God for our first woman Archbishop of Canterbury!).
Just as pernicious, ideas of heaven and hell are used to excuse and make us overlook the injustices of this world. The political realist would say that all that pious heaven-and-hell talk is a sedative, an opioid answer to the criminal avarice right under our eyes – the grift of do-nothing political hacks raking in billions.
As Dr. King said that all that talk about golden slippers, long white robes and such is fine, but I’m more interested in God’s people having a decent pair of shoes and a shirt on their back down here. Golden streets are fine, but what folks need down here is some change in their pockets, something to get a square meal and pay the rent.
Dr. King had no use for preachers who just focused on the afterlife and “pie in the sky” in the face of the poverty and misery of Jim Crow brutality. A lifetime of suffering endured by Black Americans would not be compensated by such rationalizations and pablum. What God demanded was folks actively working in this world to promote justice, dignity and community.
So here come these religious know-it-alls out to ridicule what they don’t understand, the Torah faith of inclusive community and right relations.
If a man is married and dies without children, according to the law his brother is to take the widow as wife so his brother would have, in a fashion, an inheritance. And just suppose, just suppose that that man dies, and she has to marry the next brother, and he dies…so on and so forth until at the end she has been married to seven of those brothers?
By this time the crowd is amused and many laughing up their sleeves.
So, then she dies, maybe of exhaustion. In the afterlife whose wife would she be? What is she going to do if there’s in fact a resurrection?
People edged closer, eager to hear how he’s going to handle this one. They winked at one another and shoved an elbow into a neighbor’s ribs. “This is gonna be good. What’s he going to say to this?”
Jesus will have none of this foolishness. God is not to be mocked.
Jesus turns the tables on them. Whatever the afterlife might be, it won’t be like here on earth. People won’t be married there. Whatever happens after death will be nothing at all, absolutely nothing at all like here. And as no one has returned to tell us about it, anything else is speculation. A distraction from what we’re to be about down here.
We use metaphor and poetry to express such yearning for eternal fulfillment. As to such final things, Jesus says, “You know neither the day nor the hour” when you will see your last sunset, dream your last dream. But, that Kingdom, that Kin-dom of God? It’s already here among you. Don’t you catch a smidgen, a brief glimpse of it from time to time? I do.
Jesus made it clear that the door to eternity is through the life we live in this world. It’s signs, wonders and markers are all about. NOW!
I have a cherished memory of a cold, cold night on the balcony of our home in Petersburg, Alaska. It was clear and frigid as I lay on the chaise lounge outside, bundled up in a heavy duty Kelty sleeping bag, looking up at the flickering of the northern lights. Pink, white, shades of blue and green they began to dance across the velvet black sky. Just as I was about to head back indoors — even in a heavy-duty sleeping bag I was freezing my butt off – just then it seemed as if all the lights of heaven gathered themselves over my head. In one burst of glorious energy, they exploded over my head. “Take me now, Lord,” I thought. “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Moments later I headed back inside suffused with a radiant glow. A little bit of heaven.
Yes, the wonders of nature, the beauty of the hills inspired more than one Psalm, inspired more than one poem, more than one quiet sigh of contentment.
Yes, in this life we get small glimpses of eternal joy and bliss. Glimpses of “undaunted courage.” To enter the life of another human being is such a door. Especially a life filled with unbearable pain. This week I began reading Elizabeth Guiffre’s book of the torment she endured at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislain Maxwell. The courage she displays in telling her story with all its horrific and dehumanizing detail – that courage is a smidgen of eternity. A door that opens the reader to her, his full humanity.[2] The Glory of God, a woman fully alive despite all the worst life had dished out.
Even her collaborator, Amy Wallace, had to take breaks from this sordid tale, over four years in the making. Her courage in being willing to immerse herself in the muck that was Epstein and Maxwell lifts my courage to stand for what is right. Amy’s listening and helping Elizabeth clarify her story is an overwhelming gift to other girls who have been assaulted and abused – you are not alone. There is help.
After hours of working on her book in Paris, Elizabeth needed some fresh air. Her lawyers had been grilling her for hours, wanting to maximize, to focus her testimony. She thought the Louvre might be the distraction she needed. Wandering through the galleries, looking for the Mona Lisa, she turned a corner and everything fell apart. Another flashback – fearsome flashbacks of shame that came unannounced at her most vulnerable moments. Flashbacks she could never banish from her waking days or nightly dreams of terror.
“I climbed a flight of stairs, turned a corner, and froze. I know this room, screamed a voice inside my head. I’d been in this precise spot before – two decades ago, when I was just seventeen.”
“The room I am in is painted bloodred and dominated by a large tapestry: a depiction of Louis XIV’s garish bed chamber. In 2001, when Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell took the teenage me into this room for the first time, they had been sexually abusing and trafficking me for months. Now I am a thirty-seven-year-old wife and mother…Still I can practically see him standing next to me, admiring the tapestry, whose dark palette he was determined to mimic in the décor of his opulent Manhattan townhouse. In my mind’s eye, I imagine Maxwell beside him, as always. A molester with posh manners and an aristocratic pedigree…played den mother to Epstein’s dysfunctional family of underage girls. I was one of those girls, and I spent more than twenty-five months in their house of shame.”[3]
Though Elizabeth exhibited great courage, resolve in the face of death threats to keep quiet, the devastation finally overwhelmed her, unable to escape the domestic violence in her own marriage, she took her own life at her remote farm in Australia.
In an email sent three weeks before her death, Elizabeth wrote, “In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that “Nobody’s Girl” is still released. I believe it has the potential to impact many lives and foster necessary discussions about these grave injustices.”
Elizabeth’s gift to the numerous and unknown victims of sexual predation is priceless. Inspired courage. A priceless moment of eternity.
How do put the whole matter that Jesus was confronted by that day as scoffers ridiculed him? First, there are some questions that can’t be directly answered by any living person with an absolute, literal answer. To the scoffers, any answer comes as one lives into the question, picks up their cross and put’s their shoulder to the wheel. In all finality, what I can say is, “We came as a gift from God and we return to God. Thanks be to God.” It’s all Grace – “What a Wonderful World” indeed! And as my friend John Cobb remarked when nearing death, “I waiting to be surprised.” Amen
[1] Joshua 10:12-14.
[2] Elizabeth Roberts Giuffre, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1925).
[3] Op. cit., xx-xxi.
November 9, 2025
Pentecost 22, Proper 27
Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 17:1-9;
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38
“And My Eyes Shall Behold”
