What’s for Dinner?
Food is basic. Not only is it the staple of life, it is the culinary glue that binds cultures together. It is warm memories of satiation. It defines a culture. It is fellowship around the table, or, in some cases around the campfire. In short, life.
“What’s for dinner,” usually the first words out of my mouth as a boy returning from late afternoon play when the streetlights came on.
Many Americans who live in my neighborhood, have never questioned its availability. They’ve never known hunger. Not real hunger. Not starvation.
We may have had moments of stomach-growling hunger. Like the time our Boy Scout troop went to a big area-wide jamboree near San Diego.
The event was held on a huge military base. Each patrol was to spend weeks ahead of the event preparing. Unfortunately, upon joining the troop I was placed in a patrol with the least competent leader, a young boy a couple of ranks above “tenderfoot.”
And his parents didn’t sit in on our meetings to see if we were attending to all the necessary stuff. Like, maybe a balanced diet and sufficient food for the week of the camp-out.
When it came time to cook our first evening meal, we had already each packaged what was called “campfire stew.” That went fine. By the second meal things went downhill from there. No one got the fire ready. They had not even gathered sufficient firewood.
A kid the patrol leader sent out to gather firewood came back over an hour later, only to announce that he didn’t find any snakes. James was so fixated on catching snakes, snake obsessed, that he had forgotten what he’d been sent out for. All the while, there was wood lying all around our camp! Snakes, for the love of Pete! By this time our stomachs were growling. Disgruntlement ruled the campsite.
There was no time to cook the potatoes and carrots, so we ended up gnawing on them raw.
In the middle of the night, two boys in our pack raided the food supply and ate the link sausages raw, so there were none the next morning.
A most wonderful culinary week, indeed! Yes, our patrol spent much of the week hungry, though a couple of others gave us some food out of pity. And the scoutmaster told them to do it.
I totally get that a major complaint Moses had to face from his disgruntled band had to do with food.
“Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”
For their rebellion and grumbling, their failure to trust God, so the tradition goes, God sent a batch of poisonous snakes. Such would have served James and his band of supposed wood gathers right. But no snakes.
Incidentally, one of the advantages Robin Williams listed upon becoming an Episcopalian: no handling of dangerous serpents in church! But I digress.
Back to Moses and his poisonous reptiles – the remedy, according to the story, was to affix the image of a bronze serpent on a pole and whoever had been bitten, upon gazing up at the image would be healed.
This is not some magical operation. In gazing up at the image was the acknowledgement of the sin of mistrust of God’s providence and repentance. That contrition is what brought healing.
John’s gospel draws on this story from Numbers to make a similar but slightly different point.
Jesus in John is “Revealer.” As such, he opens a way of life that is eternal. A way of life overflowing with blessing, with joy and purpose. In John’s gospel, that blessing is expressed in various metaphors. But, for our purpose, juxtaposed to the bad food story out in the desert wanderings of Moses’s people, I want us to think of the saying: “I am Bread.”
And what is this, Bread? It is the nourishment of shalom, of humility, of justice, of forbearance and generosity. It is life laid down that deeper life be lifted up.
Our Lenten journey is to trod the same path, that Christ be lifted up in us. As is said, our lives may be the only Gospel some folks will ever encounter. As Christ is lifted up in us, as Shalom is lifted up. As Justice is lifted up. As Humility is lifted up – indeed God’s desire for all to live together in harmony takes root.
The other day, grocery shopping at Stater Brothers, the woman bagging my purchases noticed I was having a bit of difficulty. It was late in the afternoon and I wasn’t doing so well. She was a middle-aged Black woman who had the most infectious smile and warm personality. Robin was her name.
She asked me if she might help me take my groceries out to my car. Not wanting to put her to any trouble, I demurred. “No, thanks, I can get them.” She persisted and said she would just go out with me to take my cart back. Actually, she helped me get them all into the back seat.
She was an absolute joy that brightened up my entire day. In her, Christ was definitely lifted up, and I was refreshed just like Moses’s snake-bitten followers. I was so moved, I had a difficult time, through tears of gratitude telling Jai about her when I got home. Lifted up Christ was, in this delightful woman.
Lifted up, not as dogma or ritual, not as doctrine, but brought to life, present-day, in the warm-blooded living flesh of those who walk the Way. The only version of the Gospel that really counts in the end. That all who follow this Way might have Life Abundant, a small taste of eternity.
This is the True Bread, Wonder Bread, served up, baked fresh and steaming warm every day by those in the Jesus Movement. No snakes here! (Not even in the grass). The same Bread served up on the path from Nazareth all the way down to Golgotha, where it was elevated for all to behold. A Way of Life that all might be made whole.
As the question goes, “You may claim the mantle, ‘Christian,’ but would your church treasurer know it?” Would your checkbook, credit card, know it? Or your appointment calendar?
Unfortunately, around the world, most journeys do not conclude in such happiness as mine did this last afternoon. As most of ours do.
Dr. Nick Maynard tells of the torn bodies of those children arriving at the few remaining hospitals that have not yet been totally destroyed in Gaza. Yes, there is unspeakable tragedy all about.
The wilderness abounds with vipers and other deadly creatures – mostly humans. And while we have agency, the ability to bring change, to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice, we have our limitations.
IN THE MEANTIME, IN THE MEANTIME — if Christ be lifted up, there is Bread for the Journey. Cause for great rejoicing along the way. Spend a few moments in spiritual daydreaming before getting out of bed. It is quite likely, if Christ be lifted up in those seconds, you too will be overcome by an “attitude of gratitude,” joy beyond measure. Yes, REJOICE!
I have a wonderful wife who is adapting to my infirmities’, warm and toasty at night, and who cares for me, and I for her. Yes, again I say REJOICE. Love for fifty-seven years. REJOICE!
Our youngest son was named Christopher, meaning Christ-bearer. I am flooded with thankfulness when I witness the tender care he shows for his new wife Alexis, and the love she gives back to him. And the joy this couple brings to friends and family. That they are moving back here to be with us is a joy beyond measure. Yes, REJOICE!
Considering our team working on House of Hope in both West Virginia and San Bernardino, I am flooded with gratitude for their efforts and personal support. Especially, Jim and Verity. They’re the “Secret Sauce.” The venomous bites of the sidewinder of delay and toxic politicians who don’t give a rip, the Risen Christ in this team will overcome.
Though I’m told that dialysis is much, much sooner than I had hoped, and a big pain in the patoot, I’ll have plenty of time to read and write during it all. Another sting of the adder that the present-day Christ lifted up in my heart will allow me to transcend.
The other night I had a dream of wandering through some crowded urban landscape, coming to a dead end of this dirt road. When I looked to my right and took another byway, I had arrived at an ocean bay, a verdant marsh with a golden sun slowly setting on the horizon.
A sign, that when it’s my time to depart, I might hear, I pray, those words, “Servant, well done.” Christ lifted up — cause for ultimate rejoicing at the end-time feast. Always, that I might have been Bread for another’s Journey. Amen.
March 3, 2024
4 Lent
Laetare Sunday – the Pink Sunday
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22;
Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21
“What’s for Dinner?”
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
This last weekend after church, I drove over to Fullerton for a meeting hosted by CAIR – Council on American Islamic Relations. I was surprised by two things: the size of the crowd, and that it included a fair number of Christian allies.
I was also impressed by the quality of the three speakers. One of which was a woman activist from Brooklyn, Linda Sarsour. If ever there was a woman on fire, she was it!
The passion out of which she spoke was the result of having over seventy members of her extended family killed these past several weeks in Gaza. “This is a genocide we are witnessing. A genocide bought and paid for with our tax dollars. This is not something long ago in a history book. It’s happening now. It’s being reported live by the people being killed. Daily!”
As I took my morning pills this past Friday with a refreshing glass of cold ice water, my mind flashed to the images of those dying of thirst and hunger as the result of the Israeli policy of collective punishment of the people of Gaza.
Today, in our readings we turn to what are known as the Ten Commandments. Not the “ten suggestions,” as some of my secular friends would tag them.
Here is the reason we have this law code — to preserve the gift of freedom won for us from the hand of Pharoah. In the text, God makes very clear to Moses and those who would come after, “You didn’t do this. I DID! I parted the waters and led you out.”
If you go whoring after other sources of meaning and salvation – false gods – you will lose it all. You don’t need to steal, lie, covet, defame to have a good life. Don’t screw this up. I’ve already given you everything you need – the freedom to enjoy the blessings of life in community with one another. Don’t flush it down the toilet. Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing. In the words of that old spiritual, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.”
That is the order of God’s action. First Grace, then Law. The purpose of the Law is to “Keep our Eyes on the Prize.” Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.
It’s easy to become distracted, to go off chasing rabbits. Especially if you’re one who has attention deficit disorder as an adult. Runs in my family big time. When I get sidetracked, my friend Jim always reminds me, let’s keep the Main Thing the Main Thing – which is addiction recovery.
Now concerning Gospel Action, the Main Thing for those in the Jesus Movement it’s building the Beloved Community. That certainly begins with “the Least of These.”
You read of them every morning over coffee or tea. You see them on your TV screens in your living rooms. Right now, they’re in Gaza.
Linda Sarsour reported that her ten-year-old daughter every day – every single day – calls her congress representative before heading off to school to express her outrage at what we are doing to her people.
I felt guilt that I did not have my congresswoman Judy Chu’s number on my speed dial. This young girl knows what the Main Thing is for her people.
Her mother’s book, We are Not Meant to be Bystanders,[1] is an incredible read. It is the story of a life of consequence. As Michelle Alexander, writing in the New York Times, commented, “If you’re wondering what kind of activism holds the potential to free us all, this book offers an answer.”
Linda is no more a bystander than Simon of Cyrene, compelled from the side of the road to carry Christ’s cross to Golgotha on Good Friday. Each of us is likewise summoned to heft our cross, to engage a suffering world.
As I sat in that CAIR assembly, I thought, here are many Muslims bearing the Cross far, far better than many of us Christians soothed to sleep in a comforting land of plenty. Lulled to sleep with entertainment and sumptuous meals. A roof over our heads and gallons of cheap tap water.
Peace and quiet is not the Main Thing of our faith. Have I mentioned “Necessary Trouble?”
In John’s telling, Jesus chases the money changers out of the temple early on in his ministry. Making a bunch of money off people’s faith, he did not consider “The Main Thing.” In fact, the Wrong Thing, it was. This one incident would foreshadow Jesus’ entire journey to Golgotha in John’s telling of the story. God’s definitely “a-gon-na trouble the water.”
For the Main Thing, read Micah,[2] read the bit in our gospels about God’s demands. “And what does the Lord require? Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.” The Main Thing indeed! Not burnt offerings.
This conflict with ensconced, comfortable, self-serving authorities – this conflict over the Main Thing was what led to the Cross.
I hope our main takeaway this Lenten season is an awareness of our mutuality. As Dr. King was wont to say that all of us “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Do you remember the flack Elizabeth Warren got for telling a businessman that in fact, he didn’t build his company himself. “You didn’t do this,” she insisted.
When he took umbrage, she persisted, “You didn’t provide the schooling that educated your workers. You didn’t build the roads that transport your goods. You didn’t enact the laws that provide for a level playing field for fair dealing. YOU didn’t do this. You relied on others.”
As a vet, I took strenuous exception to the Former Guy’s dismissal of the sacrifice that those troops had made as he visited our national cemetery at Arlington and later in France, just off the beach of Normandy.
“What was in it for them?” What did they get out of it but “dead?” Utter foolishness as St. Paul would say.
Listen, Guy: what they got is something you will never understand; are incapable of understanding. A free and liberated Europe. I know of a ten-year-old girl who gets it. A Muslim girl who hoists her Cross every morning before class! She gets it.
As Alexei Navalny’s body was lowered in the ground this week, I thought: he understood the Main Thing. He knew the point of living — a Russia free for all. Led his people just like Moses. Though he spent the last three hundred days of his life in solitary confinement in a Siberian prison, he died a free man. The Main Thing. Again, something the Former Guy just doesn’t get.
As we approach the climax of our Lenten journey, arriving at the foot of the Cross, we too behold that Man of Sorrows, one who kept the Main Thing the Main Thing the entire journey long.
Have you stepped off the side of the road to help ease the load? Might you also stay awake and pray with him in the dark night of the soul of this world?
As the Gospel Freedom song proclaims, “Come and help me build a land where we all can live.” That’s what a ten-year-old girl is doing. Every morning!
“There’ll be singing in that land. Big gold bells a-ringing in that land. Gonna ask my sister, come along with me. If she says no, gonna go anyhow. Gonna ask my brother, come along with me. If he says no, gonna go anyhow. We’re on our way to build a Freedom Land where we all can live.” Amen
[1] Linda Sarsour, We are not Here to be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance (New York: 37 INK, 2020).
[2] Micah 6:6-8.
March 3, 2024
3 Lent
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Exodus 20:1-7; Psalm 19;
1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22
“Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing”
Followers, not Admirers
Back in the 60s, at the height of the Jesus Freak outbreak, all sorts of folks sported bumper stickers that read, “Honk if You Love Jesus.” Amid the cacophony of blaring horns, some wit came up with, “Tithe if You Love Jesus – Any Fool can Honk.”
As the Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it, “Jesus wants followers, not admirers.” The writer of Luke’s gospel also addresses the discrepancy, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?”
In Mark, always to begin our Lenten journey, we read of Jesus temptations in the Wilderness. Thought to be a vast empty void, hostile to all life forms but the most dangerous. Our minds immediately jump to the seemingly endless Sahara Desert of Africa or the Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. Some 250,000 square miles of sand.
Spiritually, those in distress, those who find hope a fragile thing, will look inward to their interior soul. The mind, the heart, can be every bit as much a dangerous void. A wilderness.
The uniquely American temptation in whatever wilderness in which we find ourselves, I believe is our individualism. The belief that we have to go it alone and be reliant on no one and responsible to no one. Some evangelicals imagine Jesus as a John Wayne character, the paragon of a corrupting individualism.[1] Christ created in our own image. This twisted mentality is killing us and polluting our faith.
This isolation and perverted individualism is at the heart of addiction and much of our mental illness.
We can’t even have a Super Bowl celebration without mass carnage. Our minds fog over with the enormity of it all. To the point where it just blurs into a meaningless statistic. Unfortunately, those killed and injured are real people. Our friends and neighbors, children we knew.
America has become a deadly wilderness of mass slaughter, denial, and pay-to-play politics. A virtual shooting gallery.
Thank you, NRA and your bought-and-paid-for toadies in Congress! And on the Supreme Court! Thank you.
The results of insular thinking, our “rugged individualism,” were on full display last November 30, 2021, when an emotionally disturbed young man, Ethan Crumbly, shot up his high school in Oxford, Michigan.
His sociopathic mother’s response to his aberrant behavior? “You’ve got to learn not to get caught.” Only this? – Only this when he was discovered at school making disturbing posts on his social media page. Only this, Mom? Don’t get caught? Really?
She was too busy to be a parent. Lining up new assignations in her swinger lifestyle. The ultimate result of the Ayn Rand mentality. Just do “your own thing,” mom. Kids will take care of themselves. A deadly wilderness of too many emotionally empty households.
Ethan’s rampage was only one in a long list of mass school shootings. In the following years, 2022 and 2023, there was no let-up – 82 students killed in 2023. The highest number in a three-year span. This does not include the hundreds of others wounded. Then, add in all the teachers and other school staff gunned down.
These are not just mindless numbers, a statistic. These are friends and family.
One of the four dead was a young freshman, Hana St. Juliana. A beloved sister and teammate. She was a star student athlete on her girls’ basketball team.
“’We will never forget your kind heart, silly personality, and passion for the game. Since 6th grade camp you have stayed dedicated to Oxford Basketball, soaking in the game,’ the team wrote in a post one day after the shooting. ‘Last night was your high school debut. This season we play for you Hana.’”[2]
Nice sentiments. That, and some memories are all that’s left. And a lot of sorrow. And an emptiness as vast as an Asian desert.
It is into the interiority of such places, down from the beauty of Christ’s Transfiguration that we are urged, our Lenten pilgrimage. The temptation we face is to cocoon ourselves away from all such unpleasantness. Yes, a “Path of Sorrows” our “Via Dolorosa.”
We don’t want to hear about another mass shooting. Certainly, don’t want to hear of those young victims cut down in their prime, before any of their dreams had come to pass. We’re numbed.
Our politics are about as sick as our mental health. Another empty wilderness. And as deadly.
Our Bishop John recently posted that we have two old guys running for president. One sometimes garbles the facts. The other is unaware of the facts – and has now been seriously fined for massive business fraud. A whopping $350 million judgement against him. And his family business. In fact, they’re outta business in New York. America, is this the best we can do?
And how was it that eighty-one percent of white evangelicals supported this “libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith?”[3]
Putting this insurrectionist and his supporters back in office would be a travesty. A permanent stain on Betsy Ross’s “Grand Ole Flag.” It’s depressing. A political wilderness if ever there was one.
That he should now be romping to the nomination of his party, is an absurdity I cannot fathom. The valley of the shadow of death threatening our republic.
An evil of ignorance and indifference – of malfeasance and greed stalks our land. O Lord, we pray, lead us not into the temptation to stick our heads in this sand. And pretend it’s not happening.
While we cannot solve all the world’s problems, that doesn’t mean we just throw up our hands and let the devil take the hindmost.
This is where followers step up – those who are true disciples following the path blazed by our Lord through his Lenten journey to Golgotha and the Cross.
Here’s the story of one group of students who entered the wilderness of mental anguish — helping their peers who are struggling with suffocating loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Reaching out to those experiencing inner rage which sometimes results in the mass violence on our campuses across our nation.
It’s the national Yellow Tulip Project. Last year at one high school, some students disturbed by the onslaught of reports of campus violence, decided to do something. They were not going to passively sit back and allow mental distress to consume their school.
To commemorate Mental Health Awareness Week, a group at Sacopee Valley High School in Hiram, Maine, created what they called a “Hope Board.” Shaped like a huge yellow tulip in the lobby, it was soon covered with scraps of paper on which students had posted their hopes, dreams and aspirations – ranging from the mundane, for their team to do well in the playoffs – to the slightly more serious, passing a driving license exam.
Some hoped that they would be less angry and more hopeful. One wrote, “I hope people are kinder and more mature.”
The leadership of this effort is what, most of all, gives me some assurance that our nation might do more than just muddle through. It is these young people willing to enter the wilderness of mental anguish. To bear the Cross. These are the true followers of the Way of the Jesus Movement. See Matthew 25.
Meet Elana, National Director of social media for the Yellow Tulip movement. A young, African-American woman who is whip-smart and dedicated to the mission.
Elana relies on the power of storytelling to bring people together. With a BA in English, focusing on Creative Writing, from The City College of New York and a minor in journalism, she gets the word out.
Her specialty is in audience engagement for digital newsrooms to develop social strategies and create content that educates and inspires. Her goal is to motivate young people to care for their mental well-being so that they can thrive. She believes education, awareness and empathy will reach beyond the stigma of mental illness and bring people to get the needed help.
This is the sort of young person us older folks are looking for to step into our shoes — the sort who are true followers, not just admirers of some imagined ideal.
She has a deep interest in studying mental health and believes that sharing information and resources about mental wellness can help smash the stigmas about mental illness.
In the grand scheme of things, perhaps not a big deal. But it surely matters to these students and those helped. And their school. And it just might prevent some unforeseen tragedy.
It’s all about being followers in the Jesus Movement, not passive admirers. Don’t honk. Roll up your sleeves.
We are here but a moment. In the meantime, our summons to engage the Journey has been laid out in a poem by a Jesuit brother, Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked.”
“We are simply asked to make gentle our bruised world,
To be compassionate of all, including oneself.
Then in the time left over to repeat the ancient tale,
And go the way of God’s foolish ones.”[4] Amen.
[1] Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright Publishing Co., 2020).
[2] Harriet Sokmensuer, “A Football Player, Bowler, Freshman and an Artist: Remembering the Oxford School Shooting Victims 2 Years Later, People Magazine, November 30, 2023/
[3] Op. cit., dust jacket.
[4] Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked” as set to music by Jim Strathdee, “Light of the World,” Caliche Records, Ridgecrest, CA, 1982. Words copyright 1976 by Peter Byrne, S.J. Music by Jim Strathdee, copyright 1981.
February 18, 2024
1 Lent
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9;
1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-5
“Followers, not Admirers”
A Lot of “Splaining to Do”
I suspect that like our family, yours also tuned in religiously to the “I Love Lucy” show with Lucile Ball and her husband, Ricky Ricardo. Time after time, when Ricky would come home from band practice – he led a Cuban dance band in the show – he would find out about some untimely misadventure that centered around his wife Lucy. Or discover some disaster Lucy and her friend Ethyl had tried to keep secret from their husbands.
Often the first words out of Ricky’s mouth in his Cuban accent when entering through the front door after work were, upon learning of Lucy’s daily disaster, “Lucy, you’ve got a lot of ‘splaining to do.” As Ethyl would scurry away.
As we contritely approach Lent this Ash Wednesday, the same could be said of us. “We’ve all got a lot of ‘splaining to do!”
Indeed, we have failed to do that which we ought to have done and done what we shouldn’t have. We’ve put our self-importance over the welfare of the planet.
Philip Roth wrote a novel set in the 1990s, The Human Stain, the last of a trilogy on American life. It looks at the messiness of human existence, and how, in finality, there are no complete remakes, no ultimate do-overs. The American myth of self-reinvention is just that – a myth. In many ways, we’re stuck with who we are.
I’m reminded of a high school friend telling me the story of his first and last motorcycle ride. Several of us were standing around at my good friend Jerry Weisner’s house talking big bikes when he told us why he didn’t ride one anymore.
He had come to a friend’s house to admire his new Harley Davison and the friend asked if he wanted to try it out. Of course, he knew how to ride it. What kind of sissy did his friend think he was, anyway? Of course, he knew! Though he did have some considerable trouble in getting it fired up.
As he listened to the rumble of its deep bass of the muffler, revving the engine, he popped the clutch accidentally. If a flash the bike shot across the street at very high speed. Jumped the curb and roared across a neighbor’s front lawn on the opposite corner. When he came to, he was lying sprawled out on the remnants of a coffee table in the front room. Cut to ribbons. Shards of broken glass of a plate glass window and lamps and other wreckage about. Did I mention blood? Lots of it.
When a hysterical woman ran in to her destroyed living room screaming, my friend said that all he could mumble was, “Lady, I’ve really screwed myself up.” Although “screwed” was not the word he used.
That disaster’s too often, too accurately, a picture of us and our world.
Got some big ‘splaining to do. We all do. Ashes to ashes we end.
We’re cooking the planet. We in America are awash in a sea of guns. Poverty stalks the streets of our cities and rural countryside. You know the litany. Got a lot of ‘splaining to do.
What’s left?
What’s left is “in the meantime.” Only to come before our Maker in the words of that old gospel song: “It’s me, It’s me, It’s me, O lord. Standing in the need of prayer.”
Answered with another hymn: “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy like the wideness of the sea.”
In and through faith we find restoration. We are lifted beyond the muck and clamoring voices that we might hear that Still, Small Voice. This is what a Holy Lent is all about.
We are raised up to serve, as shown in the exemplar, Peter’s mother-in-law. As we pray every Sunday, “It’s in giving that we receive, and in dying that we’re born to eternal life.” In the Christ let loose in creation, we also rise. Amen.
February 14, 2024
Ash Wednesday
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
“A Lot of ‘Splaining to Do”
Under Authority
I remember back to when I owned a trucking company, gathering with my trucker buddies early, early in the morning at the job site, waiting for the day’s work to begin.
We would stand about our rigs shooting the bull – I usually hauled sand, gravel, asphalt or dirt. Our group ran dump trucks. Yes, about ten years ago I finally gave up my Class-A license. As we would drink our coffee, we would often grouse about the pay or how long it took to get paid – often ninety-day money — or gripe about the truck boss on the job who scheduled our loads at the job site.
I still remember this one old guy, his name on the side door read “Grumpy.” He swore that if the truck boss on this one job complained about how slowly he was driving – we got paid by the hour – his response would be, “I’m not taking anymore time driving this rig than your company is taking in paying my freight bill.”
Another of his saying was, “No matter how stupid the boss…he’s still the boss.”
We’re all under some authority. Get used to it.
In the story from 2 Kings, we have the passing of authority from Elijah, one of the greatest prophets of Israel, harbinger of the End Time, one filled with God’s Spirit – as the prophetic office is passed onto Elisha. Of course, we should be humming in our minds, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
As astonished Elisha, the understudy, looks on, while in the middle of their stroll, “a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind of heaven.”
With smoke and fire, drama and wonder, authority is passed. The blessing of a “double share of Elijah’s spirit” is God’s seal on this transfer. The ultimate “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” There’s a new sheriff in town, indeed!
Likewise, on the Mountain of Transfiguration, authority is similarly transferred.
Jesus, Peter, James and John on a high mountain. And now comes the Ultimate Epiphany. Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.”
The frosting on this cake is the voice from the overshadowing cloud that had now come upon them, “This is my son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Again, the Ultimate Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval! “Listen to him!”
All of Torah wisdom, as represented by Moses, and all of Prophetic Righteousness and Truth, as represented by Elijah, are now bestowed upon those gathered there as benefactors of these traditions – Jesus, and by extension the disciples. And ultimately, down through the ages, the Church.
We, now, are under that very same authority. And, exercised properly, hold its power as “cooperators with God” to bring it into fruition. Day by day.
Like my friend Grumpy, we are under authority, even if we disagree and rebel against this authority much greater than ourselves.
In a lesser way, authority is passed from parents to growing children. The saying, “You can always tell a teenager…but you can’t tell them much,” rings true. Think back to when you were a know-it-all teenager. The rebellious retort, “well, all my friends get to do it.”
Unfortunately, too many parents have abdicated their authority prematurely. I remember the mother whose excuse for not bringing her son to Sunday School, but letting him zone out in front of the TV all morning was, “I want him to make up his own mind about religion.”
Fine, she would rather have him learn his core values as taught by the enticing hype of a cartoon tiger selling the latest frosted breakfast cereal on Sunday mornings? She’s okay with the exploitive predation of a soulless capitalism run amuck, teaching her child God-knows-what? As his breakfast food rots his teeth out and destroys the microbiome of his gut? Oh, did I mention an epidemic of youth obesity? Mom…you okay with all that?
Get a grip, lady. Exercise your authority!
In turn, each of us is under authority. If you don’t believe that, fail to pay your taxes this year. The IRS does not look kindly on such scofflaws.
Since the beginning, a thriving church, much as a thriving child has been under proper authority. And woe to any who abuse this authority. “It would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.”[1]
That is what I find so abhorrent and disconcerting about some of our televangelist frauds whose sole effort is to hype themselves and rake in the dough. Golden bathroom fixtures are the least of it. It’s the damage done to the message of the Gospel that is the real scandal. A stumbling block to the Word.
There’s the telling vignette as John Denver (playing a callow grocery clerk, Jerry Landers) and George Burns (who plays God) in the film, “Oh, God,” were walking by a rural country church out in the middle of nowhere. Denver’s character Jerry says, he often wonders what goes on in there, to which God replies, “I don’t know…I’ve never been able to get in.” A not-so-subtle dig at the white segregationist churches of the time. God had no authority in that place.
Such churches somehow didn’t understand a greater authority over their constricted beliefs and traditions of Jim Crow. Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker didn’t understand this. Neither did Jim Jones as he led his followers to utter disaster at Jonestown in the jungle of Guyana.
While, supposedly, he was under the authority of a mainline denomination, he went rogue — caught up in all sorts of spiritual flim-flam, founding a self-serving cult of sexual exploitation and unquestioning obedience to himself. No one exercising authority over this travesty. We all know how that ended. Gave Kool-Aid a bad name. That’s why we have bishops with the authority of oversight.
My Old Testament professor Dr. Rolf Knierim, was fond of reminding us of the reason for the success of Yahwehism over Baalism – “Yahweh had a house.” That is, an institution, which would later develop into rabbinic Judaism, of which we are a branch. Here is true and Godly authority – the authority of institutional oversight.
And as such, we of the Jesus Movement live under the spiritual authority of what took place on that Mount of Transfiguration. In the passing of prophetic authority from Elijah to Elisha. And down the line to Dr. King and Abraham Heshel. Now, to each of us.
No, we don’t get to luxuriate in the beauty and splendor of the vision. It’s not about building shrines or holy places in places of splendor.
It’s about going back down into the valley of strife, suffering, hunger. The shrine we are asked to build will be in the hearts of those lifted up, and in our own hearts as we engage the work. Any authority we have is validated as we give our lives to a Reality and Cause far greater than ourselves, Christ being our helper — yes, in taking some spiritual direction.
As J.B. Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English translates 2 Corinthians 6:1: “As cooperators with God Himself we beg you, then, not to fail to use the grace of God.” That is the true authority for what we do.[2]
When I get pushback from some well-meaning Christian folks on our addiction recovery work of House of Hope, I ask, “When it comes to recovery, what part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ did you NOT understand?”
Our authority is not grounded in fear — the fear of all the things that could possibly go wrong. But, trusting in Faith, for a better path to thriving.
Yes, recovery is hard. A most difficult life-long journey. “If this was easy, we’d already have done it,” as President Obama would often say. But it is possible. And it is Holy. Folks in recovery are in fact the living Glory of God. Their authority is transformed lives. Fruit of the Spirit that has its own authority.
Those in recovery know wondrous authority of such awakening. The epiphany that dawns, bringing them to the reality of their lives. And a saving alternative — that there is another path than that of self-destruction and degradation, isolation, loneliness, and ultimately, the death of their soul.
Fortunate are those who awaken to the potential of sobriety. A life-giving authority that assumes priority.
In his new novel, Martyr!,[3] Kaveh Akbar, a first-generation Iranian-American, narrates the journey of a young addict, Cyrus Shams, under the incipient authority of such a dawning epiphany — that his life has become unmanageable, going nowhere. This is a Godly authority. This novel is, incidentally, some of the most marvelous writing I have recently encountered.
“Maybe it was that Cyrus had done the wrong drugs in the right order, or the right drugs in the wrong order, but when God finally spoke back to him after twenty-seven years of silence, what Cyrus wanted more than anything else was a do-over. Clarification. Lying on his mattress that smelled like piss and Febreze, in his bedroom that smelled like piss and Febreze, Cyrus stared up at the room’s single light bulb, willing it to blink again, willing God to confirm that the bulb’s flicker had been a divine action and not just the old apartment’s trashy wiring.”[4]
As flimsy as that. Nothing more than the flicker of some decrepit wiring. A life-saving epiphany? A door to eternal life? Stranger things than this have happened.
In faith, he heeds the authority of that revelation. A Godly revelation, for the inchoate spiritual awakening it brought on wings of desperation. Like a drowning man, Cyrus reaches for this outstretched hand. The hand of God he finds? In what manor does your faith inform you of such wonders? Daily astonishment awaits, if we would but perceive it.
To what do you give authority? I give my loyalty to the vision of those guys and their Master upon that Holy Mountain of Transformation. For what they brought down from there, I have found to be most life-enhancing, life-changing. It has filled me brim-full, and sometimes broken me as well – but always, I have found it to be a saving vision.
John Wesley summed up the authority and goodliness of this Gospel mandate in this brief maxim:
With God’s help and Christ beside us, we can. ¡Sí se puede! Now, there’s an authority worth our allegiance. In this endeavor is Life Abundant. Amen.
[1] Matthew 18:6, NRSV.
[2] J.B. Philips, New Testament in Modern English (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958).
[3] Kaveh Akbar, Martyr! (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024).
[4] Op. cit., 3.
February 11, 2024
Last Sunday after the Epiphany
“Transfiguration Sunday”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6;
2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
“Under Authority”
