Intentional Soul Making
Last week when weighing in at the dialysis clinic I was chatting with some of the technicians who know I’m a clergyperson and always welcome me with the greeting, “Father.” They also know a little of our work with our Garden of Hope at St. Francis and ask me how the watermelons are coming along. “Haven’t planted them yet,” I reply. “The coyotes ate up some of our dripline irrigation.”
I mentioned that in our evening family prayer I often give thanks for how well they keep me in good health so I can be about my work. To which one of the older fellows responded, “Pray for my soul.” I told him that I would indeed pray that he, in cooperation with God, be about good soul-making work. Spiritual development is not a spectator sport. Not done by proxy.
The action required is choice.
The Torah injunction is to choose life. “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways and observing his commandments, decrees and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess…Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…”
To choose life is to choose Truth.
This week many of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell chose Life in speaking their truth of what they had endured.
These brave women, after hiding in years of shame and guilt spoke what this administration has gone to unbelievable lengths to cover up – the predations of Epstein and Maxwell, and their associates — and how it was all swept under the rug.
As one woman demanded, her voice quaking, how is it that she, Maxwell, is the only one in jail when hundreds of others were involved? How is she the only one answering for these crimes?
What is the sweetheart deal that kept the entire tawdry affair secret? Letting hundreds off the hook. After all, this was an international sex trafficking operation. Surely more than just two persons were involved. Who are they protecting? And now she’s in a “country club” jail – explicitly forbidden for sex offenders. How is that?
Her question is our question. And what are the House Republicans, the see-no-evil-hear-no-evil crowd, trying to hide by keeping the hundreds of thousands of pages of this episode, the video tapes, the FBI files, hidden?
That Trump’s Republican supporters have attempted to sweep this all under the rug and deny these women their voice, this is despicable. You might even say “deplorable.” They are complicit in these crimes in their cover-up. Most of all, the dismissive Rape President[1] who cries, “Hoax, hoax, hoax,” as these women recounted the horrors of their ordeal. Do the jobs of The Donald’s Republican sycophants in Congress count for more than their souls, than the soul of this nation?
By sharing their story, these victims, some as young as 14 when first abused, have chosen Life. And we who dare to listen, to “read, mark and inward digest” the testimony of these brave women have chosen Life. As painful as all this is to take in.
Elie Wiesel counsels, “Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”[2]
In hearing these women out, our nation is choosing the Truth of this perverse and corrupt presidency. And that Truth shall eventually set us free. Yes, it will be costly to have our tawdry laundry on full display to the derision of the civilized world. It will be a huge dish of humble pie. And we will have earned every mouthful.
To enter into the Truth of these women’s testimony is soul-making. Nowhere does scripture say that this is easy or fun.
Speaking of fun – consider the fun that deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislain Maxwell were having on the tape of his interview with her. Lawrence O’Donnell, on his Tuesday evening program, spoke of his disgust at the laughter from all in that room that filled much of the tape of that interview. They spent several hours yucking it up at the expense of the trauma Maxwell’s victims endured. Absolutely horrific! The banality of it all is astounding.
The disrespect for these women that this president and his administration, his Republican toadies in Congress, continue to display is nauseating. These abominations, the sexual abuse of children, reek to the highest heavens. To call their testimony a hoax is the most damnable lie yet of this wretched administration.
This presidency continues to drag our nation through the most putrefying of vile sewers. Once we come, or enough of us come; to realize the reality and extent of our Fall, Life will begin to shoot forth green sprouts. It presently is, thanks be to God.
America, these women will restore our national soul.
Never mind the utter incompetence of the appointees of this administration. Never mind that Republicans in states they control, they are banning schools, first in Florida, the requirement of vaccinations. That we are giving up on the fight against polio and pertussis, measles and Covid19. That stupidity seems not to register with Trump’s supporters.
Never mind that hundreds of notable, reputable scientists have castigated the most recent report on global warming coming out of EPA this past week. Denounced it as weak and dismissive of the existential crisis this planet faces – that climate tipping points have been reached and now crossed, leading to irreversible consequences for a habitable world.
Never mind that that the newest best buddies of this president are not our allies but the most notorious autocrats and murderous war criminals since the Axis of WWII. Never mind that Putin continues to bomb Ukraine with impunity while this president is in denial that he is being played for a chump.
Never mind any of that.
The Truth that will set us free of this corrupt, incompetent regime is the stories of these victims. It is the rage of these women who will bring down the whole rotten mess of this despicable government — and every single one of their cowardly apologists. Mark my words. And great will be the fall of it. Right around November, 2026.
When these women join together to assemble their own list of all the other perpetrators, the high and mighty, the foundations of this stale and rotten propriety will shake top to bottom. As Jesus in Luke counsels, propriety and secondary claims must be put in the context of the Gospel call to God’s love and justice. Yes, indeed, what are they trying to hide. Let these women count the ways!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer warns us that Grace of such Truth ??? can be quite costly. I discovered that early on in my college years when I lost a girlfriend over the fair housing issue. Her father owned apartments, and she couldn’t understand why I would be supporting “those people” in their rights to rent them.
What I lost was nothing. Absolutely nothing compared to what these women have sacrificed in coming forward – the reliving of the trauma of their ordeal all over again. Yet their testimony is God’s Liberation – Life itself.
The admonition is before us each and every day. Choose Life that you may live and your children after you.
On many days I fear for the world that we are leaving to my new grandson soon to be born in a couple of weeks (more or less). But when I heard these women speak on the “News Hour,” [or were you watchng The Last Word?] my spirit soared. I was filled with hope, and pride that we in America can still imbibe at the living fountain of such dangerous Truth. National soul-making.
What can you do? Call your representatives and demand transparency. Raise hell in the checkout line and wherever you have an impromptu audience. Write letters to the editor. Do not let the enormity of these crimes slide in casual conversations. No. they do not all do it! Donate to the opposition, those willing to stand for Truth. Take sides. This will be your soul-making.
As Lawrence O’Donnell typically closes his show, these women get “The Last Word.” The God’s Gospel Truth. We and our children and grandchildren will be blessed by its telling and retelling down through the generations. Amen.
[1] In the filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, he stated at Trump’s sentencing that while the jury did not explicitly convict the president of rape, his actions fit the definition of rape as most people would understand the term. The Washington Post, July 19, 2023.
[2] From Bits and Pieces, Chicago, IL, September 2025.
September 7, 2025
Pentecost 13, Proper 18
Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1;
Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33
Intentional Soul Making
Whose Seat?
We are creatures of habit. When I look around the church on any Sunday morning, I can pretty much predict where I will find everyone seated. We also are creatures of prerogative and entitlement. We know who belongs where.
There’s a story told of one of the first Black women who showed up for worship at All Saints in Pasadena. As she sat up toward front waiting for the service to begin, she overheard two women behind her speaking loudly enough so she would hear, “Why don’t they just go to their own church?” “What’s she doing here anyway?” the other commented.
She paid them no mind. She’d heard it all before.
After the service was over folks had stayed for coffee, conversation and the action tables out in the patio. Afterwards, she found her car and was leaving, driving past the front of the church. There she saw one of the two woman who had been sitting behind her out there on the standing at the curbside in the sweltering heat. She pulled over, leaned out the window and asked her if she needed a ride home.
That offer began a fifty-year friendship. Some days it’s all about who’s sitting where and coincidence, and where the Spirit plops us down.
We shouldn’t be so presumptuous about such things, the book of Sirach consuls its readers. “For the beginning of pride is sin, and the one who clings to it pours out abominations, Therefore the Lord brings upon them unheard of calamities and destroys them completely.”
Likewise, Luke. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place…’”
And if you’re throwing a party “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind and you will be blessed.” And they will have the best seats in the house.
So, who would you choose for those coveted seats? Who might God choose?
It might be thirty-six Mayan women who fought back, who refused to accept their degradation by government paramilitaries during Guatemala’s civil war. They were systematically raped and brutalized for months on end by these roving patrols of government-supported thugs.[1]
Because they lived in remote villages, these Achi Mayan women were at the mercy of these men looking for subversives and anyone cooperating with the other side. When rounded up, some of the victims were as young as 12 and 14, raped and held captive for weeks on end – the age of some of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s victims.
Four decades later, dozens of these women have come together to prosecute their attackers for crimes against humanity. These women, many in their 80s, now have a last chance to see these man brought to justice. The final case went to trial this past April.
Others have stepped forward to confront other crimes committed during that brutal civil war. A war conducted by the brutal dictator Efrain Rios Montt, supported by the U.S. as more then 200,000 were killed or disappeared, most civilians. U.S. foreign policy at its finest.
One of the survivors of a most notorious massacre, Jesús Tecú Osorio, then just a child, worked for months on a farm after being abducted by a patroller. In 1993 he led an effort by the survivors of the killings in their village to prosecute the perpetrators, including those who murdered his entire family.
While interviewing survivors, he came across those Achi Mayan women who had been abducted and raped by the patrollers and soldiers. Could these men be prosecuted for sexual violence as they had been for their role in the massacres?
He, working with many of these women, decided to try. With the legal aid society that Jesús had created, lawyers, also Mayan, began meeting with many of the women in Rabinal to build a case.
For years, these women had sheltered in anonymity, barely speaking of the horrors they had endured. Brutal assaults that left some pregnant. Many suffered miscarriages. One victim said she never even told her husband what had happened.
As they continued meeting, their courage grew. “I feel more like talking, because it isn’t just me.”[2]
In 2014 the first case went to trial. While only a few were named as plaintiffs, the case relied on the testimony of all 36.
One woman, Paulina Ixpatá Alvarado had been held 25 days at the barracks. She took the stand to describe to the judges how she and others had endured the nightly assaults.
After a landmark ruling in the women’s favor, another judge freed the imprisoned men, “finding the women’s testimonies insufficient, and dismissed the case.”[3]
Again, these strong women banded together and managed to get that judge removed.
“For years [Paulina’s] community had cautioned against speaking out, believing nothing would be done. ‘That’s why we have to persist,’ she said in an interview. ‘Because if we leave it be, it will stay like this – sealed away.’”[4]
These courageous women and their supporters, Jesús and his companions at the legal aid society he founded — these will have front row seats at the Banquet of Life. Serving has already begun.
And we are blessed by their courage and perseverance. In the face of the growing totalitarianism in our own nation, the Spirit has provided all patriots the courage to resist. How dare we, in the face of what these Guatemalan women have endured…how dare we stay silent!
Daily we have front row seats to the opportunity for involvement. The sign urges, “If you see something, say something.”
That’s what I do in the checkout line at the supermarket. My opening is there in the increase in grocery prices. In a very loud voice, I castigate the effects of Trump’s tariffs. How my coffee prices have gone up 20 percent. How we can barely afford hamburger anymore. “Is this what we voted for?” I ask those standing with me in a raised voice. Then I’m on to the Jeffery Epstein sex scandal, Trump’s buddy for 10 years. What did he know and when did he know it? And what are they hiding? Yes, by golly, by then I’m on a roll.
This is what Sister Simone Campbell of “Nuns on the Bus” calls “checkout line evangelism.” Helen asked me as I explained my method, “Is Jai kicking you in the ankle by now?”
Given what these Achi Mayan women have endured and their courage to come forth, my meager protest pales in comparison. Nothing on the order of Jeremiah’s dramatic diatribes. Or Elijah’s excoriations of King Ahab.
Like that old gospel hymn, “Down to the River to Pray” …”studying about that good old way and who shall wear the starry crown. Good Lord, show me the way.”
Like those Achi women who in their courage and fortitude now wear that starry crown, that’s where I want to be headed.
Like a young ten-year-old boy who threw himself on top of a classmate and took the bullet himself in a Minnesota mass shooting this past week at a Catholic school. That kid already wears that starry crown. And has a front row seat at the Lord’s table.
And when the heavenly banquet is served up, here are the seats of honor. Reserved for those who have washed their white robes in the blood of the slaughtered. Reserved for those who put stranger and friend first. Reserved for those who have endured unimaginable suffering in Guatemala and Gaza.
In the meantime, we lend our feeble efforts to building up the Kin-dom of God, the Beloved Community. Trusting that the Spirit will have a reserved seat for us at that table. Just as long as I get there before the coffee’s gone and the beer’s finished.
In the meantime, “studying about that good old way and who shall wear the starry crown. Good Lord, show me the way.” Good Lord, show me the way. Amen.
[1] Annie Corral, “The 36 Who Fought Back,” New York Times Magazine, August 10, 2025.
[2] Op cit., 30.
[3] Op cit., 32.
[4] Ibid.
August 31, 2025
Pentecost 12, Proper 17
Sirah 10:12-18; Psalm 112;
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
May I Have Your Attention
We are a distracted nation. I see folks walking down the sidewalk in front of my house, their faces in their phones. Having no idea of what’s going on around them.
Kids in restaurants with their parents, what might be quality family time, but in their phones. And sometimes it’s also the parents captivated by their phones.
We’re bombarded with hundreds of messages daily seeking to get our attention. Overwhelmed, I sometimes have several tens of thousands of e-mails awaiting my attention at my inbox.
With such competition, how can God possibly get a few moments of our undivided attention? Only when things get catastrophic, or unusually emotionally disturbing. Or sometimes so radiantly beautiful it knocks our socks off. Or when something so deeply speaks to our heart that we’re speechless.
The little vignette in Luke is all about attention.
Jesus is an itinerant, homeless street preacher who happens upon the home of two unmarried sisters. He’s tired and hungry and initially they must be overjoyed to have the change of routine this visitor presents.
Not only does Jesus violate custom by imposing on these two women, but he’s soon pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable. He soon fills the house with his presence, takes it over. He invites both women to “tremble forth into their souls” as he expounds on what makes for life – humility, generosity, patience, truth, justice among other matters.
But Martha is too busy with extraneous busyness. She is all about herself – me, me, me she proclaims three times. Jesus notes her distraction, and yet there she might be, before Holy Ground – at his feet.
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” In his rebuke, Jesus invites Martha to also sit as his feet also where Eternity is revealed.
In that moment, the presence of the Lord is asking both women, “May I have your attention?”
In the midst of our infernal busyness of phones and meetings, that voice still echoes, “May I have your attention?”
The summons comes through the excruciating pain of ICE raids. The stories of inhumanity cry out to the heavens. Pain our Lord embraces utterly and completely. Holy Ground.
Matilde, from Mexico, age 54 – not a threat to anyone, every day worked her taco cart, providing for herself in Pacoima. Every day, early in the morning she set up her business, selling tacos and tamales near Lowe’s.[1]
As ICE agents began swarming the parking lot, grabbing up anyone with dark skin, she began hastily taking down her stand.
One agent, no identification ran up to her, provided no warrant, never asked about her immigration status, but grabbed her from behind and held her in a suffocating bear hug. “I could feel his vest on my ear. ‘I told him I couldn’t breathe.’”
The agent pulled up her shirt exposing her bra. As she tried to pull her shirt down the agent applied more force.
Matilde can’t exactly remember what happened next because she fainted from lack of oxygen. She came to on the ground crying, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. “’My chest hurts.’
But they didn’t listen. They ignored me.”
“I looked up at the tree where I had a picture of the Virgin posted and began to pray, ‘Virgin Mary, please help me, don’t abandon me. I don’t want to die.”
Another agent came up who identified himself as a paramedic. She told him that she had high blood pressure and was a diabetic and that her chest was hurting.
Though someone dialed 911, they left her on the ground unattended. Videos taken by bystanders show her now on the ground unconscious.
One woman in the crowd screamed in Spanish at one agent, “You have Latino blood!” Another, “Does it feel good doing this?
When Matilde arrived at the hospital, the doctor told her she was fortunate that her veins weren’t too clogged. Otherwise, she would have to have been rushed into open heart surgery. She was told that she had had a minor heart attack.
In all 29 years she has lived in this country, she could never have imagined that America would have come to this.
She is now kept sleepless many nights from anxiety and pain. Because of the bruises on her arms and legs she can’t do much, not even cook.
She and her husband had come here for the opportunity and to send money back to relatives still in Mexico. They have raised a family, paid taxes and abided by the laws of their new home. Her 28-year-old daughter is a nurse and her 15-year-old son wants to go to college.
“We both suffered from our sacrifice…but we wanted a better future for our kids…we wanted things just to be better.”
To stand before both the pain and the hope of Matilde’s story is to stand on Holy Ground. If God doesn’t have your attention through the aching humanity of this story, you are as hopeless as Martha. Just flitting about, a complete flibbertigibbet.
And yet, I would imagine, Jesus still asks of the Martha in each one of us, “May I have your attention?”
While overwhelming sorrow and pain is the Holy Ground Jesus enfolds in his own being, so also is unimaginable beauty. Gaze upon the Milky Way and perceive the Holy asking, “May I have your attention?”
As the hymn proclaims in the second verse, “Lord, how thy wonders are displayed, where e’er I turn my eye, if I survey the ground I tread, or gaze upon the sky.”[2] Yes — may I have your attention?
This week I opened the science section of the New York Times and gazed upon spectacular beauty revealed in the photo covering the entire lead page, God had my complete and undivided attention. It was our universe; that’s right, the whole shebang laid out right before my eyes.[3]
With a new telescope in Chile, we will now be able to stitch together, photo by photo, the panorama of the entire universe in exquisite detail. Looking back almost to the time of the Big Bang.
Thousands of galaxies in this one small frame, dating back to almost the beginning of it all. Millions upon millions of galaxies we’ve never before seen. Imagine the billions of stars they must contain with multiples of planets orbiting most of them. It astounds with Glory.
This was a story of the Vera C. Rubin telescope perched high in the mountains in northern Chile. Dr. Rubin and her team were the ones to first postulate the presence of dark energy and dark matter. Dark matter is that mysterious energy propelling the ever- increasing expansion of the universe, gaining velocity with each passing second. Discoveries that would transform the study of astronomy. One of her colleagues commented, “She was the ultimate role model for women in astronomy in the generation after her.”[4]
Just as an aside, this, the Befuddled Administration, in their signature legislation passed this week – the Big Bodacious Boondoggle — reduced funding to the National Science Foundation by 56 percent – a significant reduction in any D.E.I. efforts. The sort of effort that would bring a stellar scientist (pun intended) like Dr. Vera Rubin to the fore. How crazy is that? But I digress.
And how many might have sentient life? Boggles the mind. The beauty of it all held me in rapt attention. All I could murmur was, “Thanks be to God” — “Gloria in Excelsis.”
With every new dawn our undivided attention is requested in a hundred different ways. It may be the invitation to dwell in the pain and distress of a fellow human being. It may be in the lingering beauty of an embrace. It may be in the anticipated birth of a baby. In it all, the summons of such, Eternity addresses our puny existence, “May I have your attention?” Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. And those with eyes to see, let them see. Amen.
[1] Ruben Vives, “Outrage and criticism over immigration sweeps,” The Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2025.
[2] “I Sing the Almighty Power of God,” The Hymnal 1982, No. 398 (New York: Church Hymnal Corp., 1985.
[3]Kenneth Chang, Katrina Miller, “Technological Marvel’s Stunning First Images, The New York Times, Science section, June 24, 2025.
[4] Katrina Miller, “A Powerful Telescope, with a Legacy to Match, The New York Times, Science section, June 24, 2025.
July 20, 2025
Pentecost 6, Proper 10
Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15;
Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42
“May I Have Your Attention”
Made for You and Me
On the Fourth we celebrate in all sorts of ways: some with downright jingoism, some with smoky barbecues, some with a sporting event, some just chillin in the park with friends and family. Oh, and don’t forget the fireworks.
July 4th is also a popular date for naturalization ceremonies wherein immigrants officially become US citizens — ceremonies often held in parks, courthouses, stadiums, or even historical sites.
America means many things to many people, but it’s especially precious to the many who have chosen to move here from far-away lands and make America their home. Precious to those who have seized the golden opportunity for a better life.
As Neil Diamond belts it out, “America.”
“On the boats and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again
They’re coming to America”
Coming to America is coming to the full promise of America. It’s about all men and women being created equal,”the existence of unalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It’s about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Sacred principles that must be fought for every single day.
That’s the reason they’re coming to America. Compared to the many places of corruption and dictatorship, oligarchy and rule by drug lords, for all our flaws – America, to much of the world, spells opportunity.
To my mind, the greatest tragedy is to miss the open doors of opportunity, to fail to make something of oneself, or contribute to a cause greater than self.
During college, when I worked in L.A. County Juvenile Hall, one of the saddest days of my experience there was one day on the night shift.
Mostly what we did at night was just to monitor those sleeping, and because of the overcrowding, many slept on mats on the floor. If a boy needed to use the restroom, we would accompany him down the hallway and unlock the restroom door, wait until he finished his business and then walk him back to his dorm.
This one evening, a young fellow who had made a life’s career of juvie hall over many of his twelve years or so, upon returning from the bathroom paused with me at my desk. I’ll never forget his words. He said, almost a prayer, “I wish I’d studied in school and listened to my Mom – so I wouldn’t be where I am now. I wish I’d been like you.”
For this young boy, the hope and promise of America was so, so far away. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Last Thursday I had lunch with a fellow who did listen to hope and promise beckoning.
Michael, a former gangbanger, a former inmate of California’s correctional system sent up for murder, at fifty-two, is a changed man.
Michael gave me a paper he had written for an English class on critial thinking. It told his life story.
Michael writes: “Growing up in a broken home, with my siblings all in gangs, it was all around me.” His father, his mother’s fourth husband, after an episode of domestic violence, left the family when Michael was three years-old. Michael was one of ten children, every one of whom was, or still is, in a gang.
Michael ended up in prison for murder, killing a man when he ran a red light while high on PCP. He was sentenced at the age of twenty-four to 19 years to life. Somewhere along the line in his despondant loneliness, the Spirit spoke. “Your life doesn’t have to be like this — an addict behind bars for the rest of your life with no future ahead but death.” In that bleak instant, Michael listened. “Your life doesn’t have to be like this.”
Michael has been released. He has turned his life around. Found sobriety – he’s been sober many years. Found a wonderful woman and made a family. He’s on the cusp of completing his A.A. degree and headed for a B.A. in addiction recovery. He now wants to work with those stil incarcerated, to let them know they have a better choice.
I must say, his GPA is far better than mine was in my first go around at college. Far better!
Michael is the promise of America. He is living proof that recovery works. Catching up with him over lunch, Michael reaffirms my hope in the work we do, and in the promise of our nation. He shines brighter than any sparkler that I’ve ever set off. Michael is the promise of America. This Fourth I celebrate him.
I need to hear again and again Michael’s story because it is easy to become discouraged and jaded by the chaos, brutality and lies of this government. His story gives me the courage I need to press on, doing whatever I can to “Keep Hope Alive.”
Michael focused on what was life-giving during his time in prison. That is what James Baldwin urges. The only fact for certain is death. The other fact is the choice we make to live a life worthy of the brief moment we each are given.
At the conclusion of this earthly drugery, there are no do-overs. But in the midst of it, the moment may be seized for a worthy life of self-respect, a life of true companionship with one’s neighbors, family and friends.
The question is ever and always: what is owed? And to whom?
In our lection for today, again Jesus’ opponents confront him with a ploy to trick him into sedition. “’Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’” Just an aside here – while such empty flattery usually works to sway the Orange Felon, Jesus has no patience for such hypocritical fawning. “’Bring me a denarius and let me see it….Whose head and title is on it?’ ‘The emporer’s,’ they answered. ‘Then give to the emporer the things that are the emporer’s and to God the things that are God’s.’”
This choice of allegiences is becoming abundantly clear to many Americans as we head into the sixth month of this incompetent, inhumane administration. The choice is becoming clear as we come together to celebrate the Fourth this year.
As we look at the human misery caused by this morally blind and shambolic administration, many are sorting out their allegiences to God and country. But above all, it’s the blatant cruelty that shocks most citizens.
In reporting by the Associated Press, there was a piece on the abhorrence of Americans to ICE raids.[1]
One fine day in San Diego, Adam Greenfield was nursing a cold when his girlfriend called to tell him that ICE was in the neighborhood conducting a raid.
Adam couldn’t be an unconcerned bystander. Grabbing his iPhone, he was still barefoot as he rushed out the front door of his house. By the time he got to the street, assembled were some seventy-five of his neighbors, resturant patrons, workers and others gathered around an ICE vehicle.
They were recording masked agents barging into a popular Italian eatery down the street in their upscale neighborhood. The crowd yelled for the agents to leave as they blocked the agents’ van.
“I couldn’t stay silent,” Greenfield said. “It was literally outside of my front door.”[2]
Continuing from the reporting: “More Americans are witnessing people being hauled off as they shop, exercise at the gym, dine out and otherwise go about their daily lives as President Donald Trump’s administration aggressively works to increase immigration arrests. As the raids touch the lives of people who aren’t immigrants themselves, many Americans who rarely, if ever, participated in civil disobedience are rushing out to record the actions on their phones and launch impromptu protests.”[3]
Finally, over the protests of the crowd and through a haze of smoke from flash bangs the agents rode off with four terrified workers.
Hauled off to where? To overcrowded, squalid and unsanitary holding pens. No due process whatsoever. Their grieving families not knowing whatever happened to their loved ones.
For Adam Greenfield, it was very clear where his allegiance lay — to God in standing up for these decent, hard-working immigrants just trying to provide for their families. Many of whom have peacefully lived among us 20, 30 years or more. Paying taxes and abiding by our laws. These are not the storied gangbangers, worst-of-the-worst criminals this administration claims to be targeting for deportation.
These are the real essential workers of America.
Our duty to the nation? To work the politics of our system to provide a pathway to citizenship for these unseen, unacknowledged heroes of our national life, essential workers of our communities, of our economy.
Essential workers! Whether washing dishes, picking vegetables or processing our meat – caring for our elderly in nursing homes, building our houses and highways, putting out linens in our hotel rooms or studying to better themselves. Essential workers all.
The worst of the worst? Ask yourself, how many gangbangers and criminal scumbags are out there toiling in one-hundred-degree scorching heat picking our cabbages?
Our duty to God is to stand up for their dignity, to honor and be grateful for their labor. To care for them and their families. Our duty to our country is to provide a path to citizenship so they can continue to enrich the fabric of this nation. To resist the cruelty of these raids. To open the opportunity for them to make their contribution to building this nation as have countless immigrants done before them.
They’re coming to America. Some from faraway places, some from the ghettos and barrios of our cities, some from addiction and prison cells – given a chance, they’re coming to America. Its promise and duties.
It’s children like a discouraged little boy in juvie hall, who, given half a chance would, I hope beyond hope, leap at that opportunity for a different life – that he might be coming to America.
It is folks like Michael, now making an incredible contribution to himself, his family and to this nation as he continues his journey through recovery. This Fourth — Coming to America. Coming to America. Coming to America.
That all who call this land home might seize the promise of America. This hope I celebrate with my barbecue, potato salad, cheese and beer, friends and family this Independence Day. Remember that Wisconsin saying, “With brats, cheese and beer, you can save the world.” Coming to America. Amen.
[1] Julie Watson, Jake Offenhartz and Claire Rush, “Many Americans are witnessing immigration arrests for the first time and reacting,” Associated Press, June 20, 2025.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
July 6, 2025
A Celebration of Our Nation
Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Psalm 145;
Hebrews 11:8-16; James Baldwin Reading;
Gospel: Mark 12:13-17
“Made for You and Me”
Stories of Wonder
Today the Church celebrates the only Sunday reserved for a doctrine, the doctrine of the Trinity.
All across the nation hapless preachers will stumble from one heresy to another in an attempt to explain what can’t be explained. For you see, it is the experience that comes first, then come our feeble attempts to put inadequate words to it.
When the first humanoid looked up at the sky, beholding the Milky Way, when astounded by the immensity of the sea, when she beheld the wonder of a newly birthed child, when a person painted in caves the first likenesses of the beasts of the fields that provided nourishment, these were moments of sheer awe. They may not have had words for the emotions that welled up in their being. But as they acquired language they told Stories of Wonder. Eventually, a sense of gratitude grew for the entire panoply of nature in which they were immersed. Stories of Wonder. Sacred Stories.
Gratitude to whom? To a Great Spirit, to a Birthing Mother, to the Holy of Holies, to a benevolent and sometimes terrifying diety? El Shaddai, Allah, Elohim, Yhwh? One whom my tribe calls Creator — Father/Mother, for lack of other words.
As our particular tribe unquely received this heritage through the person of Jesus, we saw the same Force within his very persona. A Force for healing and renewal. A Force for admonishment and entreaty. The life-giving parables he told, often against exclusionist ideologies and hateful antagonists. Restoration and wholeness.
Such folks often confronted him, seeking to diminish him in the eyes of the crowd. When told to love the neighbor, one such — a lawyer (and wouldn’t you have to just know it would be a lawyer) – arrogantly demanded, “Just who is my neighbor?” So, Jesus told a story.
There was a man on the road from Jerico to Jerusalem who was beset upon by robbers, highway men. They stole everything, beat him and left him for dead at the side of the road.
Several religious folk came upon him but didn’t want to get involved, get their hands dirty, and so they ignored his sighs and passed him by.
Finally one considered a despised outcast, a Samaritan, came upon him. He tended to his wounds, loaded him on his own donkey and brought him to a lodge in the next town along the way. He told the innkeeper to take care of the man, gave him some greenbacks and said he would reimburse him for any extra expenses on his return trip.
“Now, of all who came upon the unfortunate traveler, who was the neighbor?” Jesus asked.
Of course, the lawyer was cornered, for he knew the sympathies of that crowd of listeners. Trapped, like a rat. “The man who took care of the beaten and robbed man,” he reluctantly, and barely audibly answered. “Go, thou, and do likewise,” Jesus commanded. A Story of Wonder, indeed!
Through such compassion, Jesus followers and others began to believe that within himself, within his teachings, dwelt the Divine, a spark of Eternity. “Great High Priest,” “Son of God,” “Emmanuel,” “Messiah,” “Savior,” “Bread of Life,” “Light of the World,” and many more they called him. For in their experience of Jesus they beheld the Holy. In him the saw their beginning and the end to which they were drawn – the Alpha and the Omega.
That was their experience, and the experience of those of us who have followed him down through the ages. Incarnated in John the Revelator, St. Francis, and Hildegard of Bingen –Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, John Lewis – they also, through this tradition of the Jesus Movement, have revealed all that is Holy and Redemptive. His parables and teachings, his life, lived out down through the ages — a Story of Wonder.
And we have beheld the residue of that Glory. Working through imagination, working through daring impulses of courage, working through moments of utter surprise and delight, working through moments of fall-down laughing humor that puts all in grace-filled perspective. Undistilled Wonder!
When my wife Jai asked me recently how my day went, I told her of the five of us planting a bunch of bareroot persimmon trees that morning in St. Francis Garden of Hope.
Without missing a beat, she asked, “Did you plant them upside down?”
She was refering to a story I had told of my Army days in basic training. Since all of us in our Company D3 were conscientious objectors to be trained as medics, we didn’t have rifle practice and weapons training to attend. So, the Army thought of other ways to occupy our time.
One of these diversions was called “Area Beautification.” One Saturday morning before mail call, we were assigned to weed the bed of irises outside the orderly room. We were being supervised by one of our fellow draftees, elevated to acting corporal, Corporal Palmer.
As we were pulling weeds, separating the iris bulbs to replant them, my friend Bob Mead nudged me and whispered, “Just follow my lead.”
As Palmer strode over to see how the work was going, Bob began replanting the irises upside down. Palmer, in an accusatory voice, asked, “What are you doing?”
Mead responded, “Don’t you city boys know anything? You plant the leaves down so they rot and become fertilizer,” and with a dramatic swoop of his arm, he continued, “and the flower comes up here.” Palmer, most skeptical, responded, “What???”
Mead continuing, “If you don’t believe me, let’s go ask Sarge.” “Yeah, Sarge will know,” I chimed in, supporting Mead. Grabbing one of the plants, Bob strode up the stairs, Palmer in tow, and plopped the plant, dirt and all right on Sarge’s desk.
By this time we were all avidly listening at the open window. We heard Sarge yelling, “Stop. Your getting dirt all over my papers.” Bob was then going on with his explanation of how the flower grew up from the inverted iris plant.
Finally, in exaspiration, Sarge responded, “I don’t know anything about these plants, they’re the lieutenant’s flowers. Go ask him.” By this time we were rolling around on the ground in fits of laughter.
The answer from the lieutenant after hearing Palmer’s routine? “Maybe you should plant them rightside up so they all look the same.”
When Mead and Palmer returned from the orderly room to see us in gales of laughter, Palmer realized he had been had. Even he, too had to crack a smile.
An outrageous Story of Wonder.
Laughter that softens a boring, demeaning experience, we can surely call a gift of the Spirit of the Risen Jesus. Just as Sarah laughed at the incredible promise of the Three Strange Angels camped outside her tent. Laughed so hard she named that unexpected child Isaac, Yittzak, laughter in Hebrew.
Moments of unexpected insight, could only come from that Creative Force, an inspiring force those of the Jesus Movement connected with his promise to send a Comforter, a Guide, a sustaining Spirit.
Spirit — that Justice Force now prompting thousands across our nation to rise up in protest against the inhumane and unjust treatment of sojourners in our midst from ICE and and our own soldiers. Illegially dispatched, I might add. Would have been nice if President Mayhem had sent them out on January 6 when we experienced an actual insurrection. Just sayin’.
No, we did not plant the persimmon trees upside down that morning, but as I prepared to get in my car for a meeting, a monarch butterfly flitted past and then soared upwards in a current of wind.
The Spirit struck. She summoned, “Why not reserve one or two of these thirty beds for milkweed?”
Milkweed is the only plant monarch caterpillers will eat. That’s where they will lay their eggs. We can also, as cooperators with nature and God, provide food for this endangered species. Milkweed seeds are on order. Thanks, inspiring Spirit.
Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, aka. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s my story, the story of my tribe, and I’m sticking to it.
Amen.
June 15, 2025
Trinity Sunday
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Canticle 13;
Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
“Stories of Wonder”
