Entrusted with Resurrection Power
It was most distressing for those communities ravaged by fires in Los Angeles these past months to see the baren hills and flat lands. Mile after mile of charred skeletons of houses and businesses – what many had spent a lifetime building only to see it go up in flames. Some of the many landmarks communities grieved over were the loss of many of places of worship.
These hallowed landmarks were places of deep joy and sorrow, places of desperate prayer and joyful song. Now, all gone.
The first church I served in the upper Mojave Desert had gone through a similar experience, though many years ago.
Soon after I arrived, I began visiting the three small communities, Randsburg, Johannesburg and Red Mountain that were served by this old United Methodist congregations. Since the former pastor was so shy and introverted, he hardly visited anyone. With a little effort the place began to grow. The woman next door who had been a member long ago, wrote one of the former pastors, now living in Ohio. Mother Carrie, as she was affectionately known by the other Methodist clergy, was the first woman in that conference to pastor a church.
A most amazing thing then transpired. Mother Carrie wrote me a wonderful letter concerning her time out there in the 30s through the 50s serving that congregation and another close by in Inyokern.
Her husband, John Oval had been the pastor, arriving in the late 20’s. Shortly before he died his brother had come to visit – his brother with a serious drinking problem. One night he fell asleep drunk with a cigarette still burning. A fire began in the parsonage, which was attached to the wooden church. The whole thing went up in flames. I still have a picture of that tragedy that someone had taken. Fortunately, everyone, including the brother, escaped unharmed. But the church was a total loss.
Not long after that, Pastor John died. Carrie had been going through the conference course for lay preachers, so she asked to be appointed in her husband’s place. Mother Carrie was not without her detractors; in fact there were many. Not at all used to a woman preacher.
Mother Carie soon organized a rebuilding effort while the congregation met in the VFW hall. This church would not be of wood. Mother Carrie had managed to get hold of some concrete block making machines. These were third-world devices operated by hand.
Every evening as the miners came out of the mines she had them organized to begin making concrete blocks. The women would arrive to cook dinner and they would work late into the night. After many, many months, through a joint effort of church members and many others not connected to that congregation, a Resurrected church arose.
It wasn’t long after completion that one of the usual fierce desert winds came up and tore a good chunk of the metal roof off the new church. Some of Mother Carrie’s detractors wrote the superintendant down in Pasadena, “We told you not to send this woman preacher out here. Now God has taken matters in his own hands. Soon, we will have nothing again.”
Mother Carie wrote me of that message to the superintendent with the follow up, “And I was reappointed for another year.” And many more years to follow.
Today we celebrate such mothers, whose fierce love for us has made us who we are. A blessing to ourselves and many others. And they didn’t do it all themselves. They organized the necessary resources to keep going.
When we read the Resurrection story in Acts of Tabitha (known as Dorcas in the Greek), it’s essentially a community effort. After she died, the attending widows, having washed her for burial, sent two men from Joppa to Lydda, having “heard that Peter was there with the request, ‘Please come to us without delay.’ So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing him all the tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’”
Peter, with Resurrection Power, awakened the woman. In our hyper individualistic culture, we tend to focus only on Peter – one individual. But it wasn’t just Peter. This Resurrection of their lost Dorcas was a community effort — God in them, they in God. The entire community is endowed with Resurrection Power.
The entire community, using all the spiritual resources at their command is empowered. Facing their tragedy, just like Mother Carrie, this little band of the faithful used all the resources available. They shed tears; they prayed, they hoped together. They summoned help. they waited in expectation. It took many to summon Resurrection Power.
It will take many to summon the Resurrection of the democracy of our nation. The call has gone out, in many cases led by strong women, many of whom are mothers who know what’s at stake as programs like Head Start, Women Infants and Children (WIC), Planned Parenthood, and the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, and Medicaid are all on the chopping block to provide gigantic tax cuts for the richest ten percent. Mothers know what’s at stake.
Sarah Palin was right about one thing concerning a mother’s fierce love: “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull – the lipstick.”
At a corner demonstration, widows in their 70s and 80s, even one in her 90s know what’s at stake when the Veteran’s Administration is eviscerated and benefits cut. Where’s the “Thank you for your service” here? Yet that small monthly survivor’s check along with SSI is the meager amount that pays the rent, provides heat, cover medical expenses and puts food on the table.
All across the country Resurrection Power is in the hands of us ordinary folk, mass gatherings in the unlikely places as Utah, Alaska – did I mention that I saw a picture of our former hometown of Petersburg – Idaho and Montana, Alabama and Mississippi. Resurrection Power amplified through our common strength. Mama pit bull love.
It was a distant relative of our family, Julia Ward Howe – Grandma’s lineage on my mother’s side), who summoned up the strength of our mothers in her first Mother’s Day Proclamation. She was a feminist, a Suffragist, an activist for the woman’s vote, an abolitionist — I close with that. Maybe that’s where I get my activist genes – a goodly heritage indeed!
Mother’s Day Proclamation – Boston, 1870
“Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.“
~ Julia Ward Howe
And I tell you what – This sure beats the hell out of the simpering Hallmark sentimentality found on our supermarket card racks. Today we celebrate the Resurrection Power inherent in all those pit bull women who have fiercely loved us and passionately cared for this nation. Yes, these women of the Spirit knew – it always takes a village. Amen.
May 11, 2025
Easter 4
Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23;
Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30
“Entrusted with Resurrection Power”
Resurrection – Present Day
This last week, Resurrection was evident in the labor of love that put in the first of 30 vegetable beds at St. Francis. Work began early with Barbara opening the gates and unlocking the church. By 9:00 a.m. we had several members — Joseph, William, and yours truly — laying out the chicken wire to prevent gophers dining on our new plants. Miguel, our paid farmer, was also on the job.
We had approximately nine beds laid out by the time the first truck arrived from Burrtec with 30 cubic yards of mulch that Christopher had arranged for free. The aromatic odor wafting across the field of woodchips was definitely the smell of Resurrection. Wonderful to sniff.
We ended with a break for pizza that Barbara provided with some delicious root beer and Pepsi. And the satisfaction of having done a righteous deed.
As I previously mentioned. A great Anglican divine once wrote that if Resurrection was only a one-off historical curiosity, it would have been of minor significance – UNLESS it is lived as a daily reality, Christ raised in our hearts and minds. And I would add, also in our date books, wallets and credit cards. And in the voting booths. Yes, let us pray for the insight and wisdom to notice Resurrection as a daily event in our lives.
Saul, bent on destruction of the incipient Jesus Movement, breathing threats as he heads to Damascus, is struck down. “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’” Saul, raised from the ground, welcomed into the home of some of Jesus’ followers becomes a new man, Paul. Raised from the deadened life of hatred. Resurrection to be sure!
Resurrection is vibrantly alive in the daily work of those in recovery. Arlie Hochschild, in her new book, Stolen Pride, has some marvelous stories of how some in Appalachia have discovered Resurrection in lives ruined by poverty, despair and drugs.[1]
James had just arrived in an emergency room after his fourth heroin overdose. His sister Ashley, a student at the University of Tennessee, after three calls from a hospital, dreaded that next call would be “the call – James is dead.”[2]
It wasn’t too long before James’ sister’s worst fear came true. One day she received a call from the paramedics. James had been found without a heartbeat. After some effort with CPR the paramedics brought him back.
First, Ashley just sobbed. Then she realized she had to do something. “I took a breath, got online and spoke to James: ‘James, are you ready this time?’”[3]
Yes, he was ready. Ashley had found the best recovery program in eastern Kentucky, Southgate. And while they usually only accepted clients referred through the criminal-justice system, they made an exception for James. Ashley got the costs covered by a special grant. There, James bonded with one of the counselors over their love of punk rock bands.
There, James hit rock bottom. Soon after arrival, he was sitting out in the yard feeling sorry for himself – that his life had gone nowhere, that he had lost everything, that he had messed up his family and had no self-respect left.
As he sat on a bench, he noticed at his feet a line of ants. They were scurrying along, carrying bits of food, grains of sand. He noticed one ant carrying a dead ant. The light went on. That dead ant being carried was him.
James understood in a flash that his counselor, Tom Ratliff “became the carrier ant willing to carry the dead – or nearly dead – ant, me. The man saved my life.”[4] Resurrection! Fresh from the grave.
Through this program, James became alive to his own emotions, feelings he had stuffed and buried through drugs. Shame and pride.
He inwardly made the decision to work at his recovery, no matter the pain of realizing what he had lost – because the vision of what he had to gain was so alluring, so life-giving. That is Resurrection becoming reality.
James, looking at that line of ants had made the decision to be a carrier ant. He no longer wanted to be carried as a dead, desiccated man. Resurrection!
Through the stuff of ordinary life, beautiful sunrises, gardens, family, the daily work given to our hearts and minds, lies Resurrection joy and possibility. Within our very selves we have all the makings of a miracle.
Cassie Chambers – It’s the family name of a most wonderful, extended family throughout Appalachia, one of whose shirt-tail members runs the little market in Bethany, Chambers General Store, just down the road from the Forney Family Farm we now own – and did I mention the most wonderful sandwiches Mr. Chambers makes while you wait. I even dreamed the other night of standing in front of the refrigerated case of cheeses and meats ordering my favorite bologna sandwich with lettuce, tomato, Swiss cheese, mustard and mayo. And make those slices of bologna extra thick, Bob. Total delight – a veritable taste of Resurrection.
But I digress. Cassie Chambers, in her book, Hill Women,[5] tells of one of the influencers in her life. In the midst of the poverty of Owsley County, Kentucky, in which she grew up, there was always Granny. And family.
Cassie tells the story of sitting one evening and watching TV in the living room, and the importance of family just being together.
Her father, Orlando, wanted to watch a University of Kentucky basketball game. Her mother, Wilma, not that interested in sports, tried to get Granny to go watch a movie in another room.
“Granny, a serious look in her eye, scolded her, ‘Orlando has been at work all day. I’m goin’ to sit right here and spend time with him. I reckon you best do the same.’ Granny and Wilma joined Orlando to watch the game. Granny didn’t know anything about basketball, but she cheered enthusiastically. It was a particularly physical game; at one point she jumped from her seat and shouted with venom, ‘you ain’t nothin’ but a big bully – take your tail end home.’ My parents looked at each other in shock.”[6]
The joy of family – a small moment of Resurrection. The same delight and pride I took in our son Christopher as he reported on his efforts to repair a drawer at his unit in the triplex my brother had left me in Loma Linda. A tiny spark of Resurrection joy.
With eyes to see and ears to hear, Resurrection’s all around. In the Risen Christ I continue to believe that I can make a difference. I can be a carrier ant. WE can make a difference – we ARE making a difference – carrier ants. Resurrection is awakened gratitude for the new life that blooms all about each day.
I opened the paper and noticed an article in the New York Times on the disastrous, chaotic, corrupt first 100 days of this presidency. More about that in sermons to come, in letters to the editor to come. But I had an overwhelming sense of joy for the reporters, for their truth-telling. That truth come to light is Resurrection.
As I look towards my next trip to West Virginia, I drool as I think of my bologna sandwich purchased at the counter of Chambers General Store. A small bit of Resurrection delight.
With that sort of nourishment, fueled with coffee, and in the Risen Christ, we go forth with the audacity to believe that today and tomorrow, we can make a difference – carrier ants. St. Francis folk, how does your garden grow? Wonderfully well, with peas and carrots, kale and lettuce, plums, tomatoes and peaches – wonderfully well. Let it be ever so. The smell of Resurrection. Amen.
[1] Arlie Russell Hochschild, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right (New York: the New Press, 2024).
[2] Op cit., 147.
[3] Op cit., 148.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Cassie Chambers, Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains (New York: Ballantine Books, 2020).
[6] Op Cit., 83.
May 4, 2025
Easter 3
Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30;
Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19
“Resurrection – Present Day”
A Love that Mends the World
An air of gloom and anxiety pervades the room as Jesus’ friends began to situate themselves around the table. It was the Passover, the feast of liberation from slavery and oppression. Yet something more was at stake. They couldn’t quite grasp the backstory, couldn’t put their finger on the cause for dread.
It was not until Jesus said the liberating word when he explained the meaning. He was their true freedom as he offered up his physical self for the necessary healing. “This is my body. This is the cup of my blood poured out for the redemption of the world. As long as you break the bread and share this cup, remember. Remember me.” Remember what we are all about – tikkun olam, the mending of the world.
That sacrifice, that humility, opens the door to true liberation. In John’s gospel, the story gathers additional significance as Jesus gathers a sponge and kneels at a basin to wash the feet of his disciples. Of course, Peter will have none of it. He considers himself unworthy. Yet, Jesus insists, “Unless I wash you, you will have no share with me.” Such humility, such love indeed opens the door to eternity. To true liberation from all that enslaves. Especially for pompous egos and notions of self-importance, for false humility. “I am your liberation,” says the Master. Jesus, in actions proclaims, “My example is your true freedom.”
And so it is, as difficult, as impossible as it so often seems at the moment.
After the searing events that led to the Black Lives Matter in St. Louis, Missouri, the former rector of All Saints, Pasadena shares this story.
The Rev. Mike Kinman recalls entering the pain of St. Louis and being confronted by the anguish of Black Lives Matter movement. He relates an experience of five years ago, yet still as vivid in his mind as if it had happened yesterday.
“I feel you. Do you feel me?” That was the raised voice of Pastor Traci Blackmon as she grasped the shoulders of VonDerrit Meyers, Sr., the father of a young black youth who had been shot six times in the back on the streets of St. Louis on October 8, 2014. Mike continues the story:
I can still hear the Rev. Traci Blackmon’s voice ringing in my ears.
I can still see her face against his, hands on his shoulders, eyes piercing into his eyes.
It was near midnight on October 8, 2014, and a few hours before, 18-year old VonDerrit Myers, Jr. had been shot eight times – six in the back – and killed by an off-duty St. Louis City Police Officer. A crowd gathers at the scene and when they begin to move, the clergy who are there split up. Some go with the crowd. Others – Traci and I – we go with Vonderrit Myers, Sr. to the city morgue to be with him as he identifies the body of his son.
We stand outside for what seems like an eternity until the father emerges, the nightmare he had lived with since the day his son was born slowly becoming real. Head hanging to the ground, he almost whispers the words we already know:
“It’s him.”
And then… the pain begins to turn to rage. I could see it happen. He begins to fume … and tremble. What begins as a cry becomes a wail. What starts as a murmur grows into a shout as he says:
“It’s him. It’s my son. Somebody is going to pay for this. I’ve got a gun, and somebody is going to pay for him tonight!”
I am paralyzed. I cannot imagine his rage and know he has every right to it. I will not tell him to calm down. And… this is headed nowhere good. Not only do I not know what to do, I know whatever it is, I’m not the one who can do it.
And then Traci steps up to him. Traci steps up to him and grabs him by his shoulders, and puts her face right up to his face … her eyes to his eyes.
He is trembling. And she is trembling. And she holds him. And he looks at her and she says:
“I feel you. I feel you. I feel you. OK?”
He nods.
“Now I need you to feel me.”
His eyes are glued to hers.
“You have a job right now. You have to be a husband tonight. Your wife has lost her son, and she needs her husband. No one can do that but you. You have to go be with her. That’s where you have to be tonight. She needs you.”
“And tomorrow morning, I’m going to be at your house first thing. I’m going to be there and I’m going to stay there with you for as long as it takes.”
Tears fill the father’s eyes.
Tears fill Traci’s eyes.
And she says again.
“I feel you. Do you feel me?”
VonDerrit Myers, Sr. nods his head, and they embrace. And they cry. And then VonDerrit Myers, Sr. leaves the body of his son and goes to spend the longest night of his life at home with his wife.
And first thing the next morning, Traci is there. And she stays until they don’t need her to stay any more.[1]
To enter the anguish of St. Louis that night, to enter Gaza, to enter any Jerusalem on this planet is to enter into any of our distressed urban areas, and pray to God, pray, like Pastor Traci, to have the mind of Christ in you.
Such humility is the true nourishment of the meal we share this day. The liberating nourishment we share on any given Sunday. Liberation in the midst of the most excruciating pain and loss. He in us and we in him. Présenté.
In city after city, in village and in township, Christ is crucified anew. Crucified as an eighteen-year-old black kid gunned down on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. Crucified in the deadened hopes of the homeless man who used to sleep on the back porch of our office in Claremont – or the lost hopes of those who used to sleep down the block from our church at the Del Rosa and Date Street encampment. Crucified in our hospital emergency rooms as doctors and nurses struggle to save the life of yet another overdose victim.
Yet, in the midst of such crucifying pain, in this simple meal of bread and wine, in the remembrance of a foot-washing, we have the audacity to assert that the world is mended back together. And in the participation, we also find our healing and true liberation. We are mended, knitted together in an eternal love. Amen.
[1]Mike Kinman, “The Power of Extravagant Love”, Sermon preached at All Saints, Pasadena, April 7, 2019.
April 17, 2025
Maundy Thursday
Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
“A Love that Mends the World”
Dead Man Walking
Anyone should know that the verdict was fixed before the trial even began. Sham trial that it was. And while the charge was sedition, claiming a kingship over Cesar, the real problem was compassion. The minute Jesus was hauled before Pilate, he was a “dead man walking.” The fix was in.
How did we get here?
It might have been that fickle mob that gathered along the dusty road into Jerusalem. All the hoopla and waving of tree branches. A notorious rabbi and healer entering the city on a donkey with his followers in tow. Children running ahead, darting in and out of the procession. The crowd, hoping he would overthrow the Roman tyranny kept shouting, “Hosanna, Hosanna.” Treating him as if king.
It was all too much for the Roman authorities and their puppets, Herod and Pilate. It smacked of insurrection for sure. Not to be tolerated.
That fickle crowd was easily manipulated, as are folks today. They didn’t want any trouble. Go along to get along. And how quickly they turned.
Don’t ever trust the mob. With threats, bribes and propaganda they will sell your soul down the river in a New York minute.
It happened in Germany in 1933. It happened in Russia in 1918. It happened in Rwanda, in Srebrenica. It happened in America along the Trail of Tears. It happened throughout the 20th century in Jim Crow America. It’s happening now in Gaza and in Sudan. History is replete with massacre and genocide. Don’t trust the mob. For temporary security, they’ll toss away all their rights.
We in America now stand on the verge of a police state. And a good number of us would willingly have it so. People are snatched off the street by unidentified thugs in ski masks, soon to be deported to hell-hole prisons in far away countries. No due process. Not even the sham show-trial Jesus got. This is a Stalinesque nightmare beyond belief.
Masha Gessen[1] writes in their New York Times op-ed piece (an aside — being nonbinary, Masha uses the pronouns “they/them”):
“It is the catastrophic interruption of daily life, as when a Tufts University graduate student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was grabbed on a suburban street by half a dozen plainclothes agents, most of the them masked. The security camera video of that arrest shows Öztürk walking, looking at her phone, perhaps to check the address where she was supposed to meet her friends for dinner that night, when an agent appears in front of her. She says something – asks something – struggling to control her voice, and within seconds she is handcuffed and placed in an unmarked car.”
Folks are being “imprisoned indefinitely, without due process…It’s the growing irrelevance of the law and the helplessness of judges and lawyers.”[2] Though courts have issued rulings prohibiting the transfer of those arrested without warrant, without any process – even though a federal judge forbade the government to deport, without notice, Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University medical school professor – even though another judge prohibited moving Rümeysa Öztürk from Massachusetts without notice. The executive branch has ignored all these rulings. We now are in an extra-Constitutional order. There is no rule of law
The same as was justice in Stalinist Russia, the same as in that kangaroo trial in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. “The secret lists and student arrests are dreadfully familiar.”[3] Jesus betrayed in the dead of night with a kiss and hauled off to torture.
The psychiatrist-activist, Robert Jay Lifton, documents the pervasive PTSD caused by such calamities.[4] For days, maybe years, the victims of such catastrophes are stunned into inaction, into silence. As were the survivors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Hitler’s death camps and Jim Crow lynchings.
Stunned, as were those followers who witnessed Jesus’ torture and brutal crucifixion. Finally cowering in an Upper Room. As many of us might be, watching the impending death knell of our democracy here in America; witnessing the mass firings and destruction of our government. We all may be suffering some degree of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder.
At the moment, we can only huddle in silence, as did those brave women who stayed behind near the cross. As did that brave doctor who had the courage to listen to the victims of such tragedies – the survivors of the atom bombs, the hibakusha (the explosion-affected persons). He had the courage to enter their pain and suffering, as did those women who stayed by Jesus.
We, at the moment, gather in silence, before the genocide committed in our name, and with our tax dollars in Gaza – grateful to a courageous Jew, Peter Beinart, having courage of steel to honestly reflect on that tragedy as a Jew.[5]
In solidarity with those who grieve, we, too, will gather. We will hold on to one another. And we will trust in God’s Grace to bring new life out of the “imprint of death.”[6]
Do not trust the wisdom of the crowd. The abiding Grace of God is that we have one another. And the Spirit of encouragement. Listen to her.
To quote Paul Tillich – at these moments of crucifixion, gulag and genocide, as we await, stunned to silence — all the while, God abides, obscured in the wings of mysterious darkness with an abounding Grace of New Life and Acceptance. Hear Tillich’s wisdom:
“You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”[7]
Let us patiently abide our time. Take the moments needed for the Holy Spirit to gather us together, to gather our courage into action.
That’s the glorious mystery that awaits after the three fraught days.
In time all shall be redeemed, yes, even if it does take three days to work the transformation from death to Life.
So, in our waiting, might we sing:
“Keep, O keep us, Savior dear, ever constant by thy side; that with thee we may appear at the eternal Eastertide.”[8] Amen.
[1] M. Gessen, “America’s Police State Has Arrived,” New York Times, “Columns & Commentary,” April 6, 2025.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Robert Jay Lifton, Surviving our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the Covid-19 Pandemic (New York: The New Press, 2023).
[5] Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2025).
[6] Lifton, op. cit., 27.
[7] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948).
[8] George Hunt Smyttan (1822-1870). The Hymnal (New York, Church Publishing Co. 1985), #150, 5th verse.
April 13, 2025
Palm Sunday
Luke 19:28-40 (processional reading);
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16;
Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56
“Dead Man Walking”
A Divine Extravagance
A while back there was a news story about how to cook turkeys for Thanksgiving. This woman had a Butterball Turkey in her freezer and called the Butterball Talk-Line to find out how long to defrost it.
The fellow on the line asked her how long it had been in her freezer and she told him that the date on it was 1987 – it had been in the freezer some 16 years. There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
“Ahhh, just a minute. I think I need to consult my supervisor,” the fellow said. When he came back on the line, he told her that a turkey frozen this long – well, the company didn’t recommend serving it to anyone.
“Oh, that’s okay,” she said. “It’s just for the church.” Good enough for God! No extravagance here. Devoid of all compassion – just unloading an unwanted turkey (in both senses of the word).
Our lesson this morning is about the extravagance of divine compassion.
It takes place at a dinner, always symbolic of God’s bounty and also a Last Supper with the disciples. Among the guests is Lazarus, Mary’s brother whom Jesus raised from the dead, giving us the foreboding of more death to come.
Remember, that in the gospel of John no detail is by happenstance. All is freighted with meaning. The evening overflows with expectation and mystery.
Then, on the most extravagant impulse, pure compassion, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with the costliest perfume, it’s scent soon filling the entire house. She ends this generosity by wiping his feet with her hair. There is a sumptuousness about the act as the scent continues to pervade the corners, nooks and crannies of the abode.
Of the acts to follow in the coming days, climaxing at Golgotha and following through three days later – it’s the culmination and sign of God’s extravagant compassion to all.
We now live in a nation run by a White House where compassion, empathy, are dirty words. America is suffering through a lack of empathy, devoid of compassion, from the Orange Felon on down. Empathy is a dirty word for Christian nationalists.
David French, in an opinion piece, reveals the new animus of Christian Nationalists to empathy.[1]
Once, the focus of Christian evangelicals was on the defense of liberty and the prerogatives of the faith community. Now it’s all about power, imposing their will, their specific ideology and theology on the rest of us.
A part of this is defunding faith organizations of which they disapprove, even if they are of the evangelical community. Catholic charities have received substantial cuts, especially to programs showing empathy and compassion to immigrants. Cuts that have been characterized as “catastrophic, ruthless and chaotic.”[2]
Often these unilateral decisions are taken unlawfully against Christian organizations serving the poor and marginalized.
In defunding, actually in destroying USAID, lifesaving aid worldwide has been cut off to the most vulnerable – the starving, the unsheltered, those with HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases. Not a scintilla of empathy for these.
Sarah McCammon, in her “Weekend Edition” on religion reports on how “empathy” has become a bad word for one group of Christians.[3] The Ayn Rand crowd I suspect, with a few John Birchers thrown in.
A soundbite from the “Joe Rogan Experience,” podcast features Elon Musk on the danger of empathy, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Nice, for a multi-billionaire who has absolutely no idea on how ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world lives. Nice.
Musk continues, “There’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself” – to which Rogan responds, “Yeah.”
Musk: “So that – we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.”
In a soundbite of the podcast, “Stronger Men Nation,” the Evangelical pastor, John McPherson, asserts, “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.” Whereupon two other pastors on the program join in, “It does.” “Yes.”
Pastor McPherson’s conclusion? “Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.”
In his podcast, “Thinking in Public,” Joe Rigney asserts that empathy is harmful, and because it seems so nice, it is one of the most “destructive tactics” of the devil.
Yet, that is stuff of what God is ever about – compassion, empathy. Such is a life leading to the door of eternity. The scripture is full of such stories – the woman with the hemorrhage, the leprous man along a dusty highway, the woman caught in adultery. Jesus stoops and listens.
Listens even to his blockheaded disciples who often get it wrong. Understanding nothing. Yeah, stoops also to bless and heal us blockheaded disciples who so often screw up the message.
David Warbrick writes a most tender article in Christian Century about one of the best gifts he ever gave his father. A gift of pure compassion.
His father with Parkinson’s disease, now living apart from his wife due to being confined to a nursing home, had very few material needs. That Christmas, David gave his father a small bottle of fragrant bath essence.
The nursing home staff would occasionally “take him to the bathroom, lift his painfully thin frame into the warm water, and leave him and Mum in private so that she can help him bathe.”
Normally, given his illness, his father is mostly surrounded by noisy machines and many interruptions by medical staff.
As his father and mother were forced by Parkinson’s to live separately, bath time is one of the few, precious times they have alone.
David continues, “The bath time is the most intimate time and touch possible for them. After 50 years of marriage my dad’s hands—which once painted stunning pictures and caressed his wife—are so translucent that you can see all their workings. He draws in the air with them sometimes now. He has a tremor. Bath time allows him gentle, distant echoes of the power of his youthful touch. It’s my parents’ least mediated, least frustrating communication. It’s a place where Mum can be wife instead of caregiver.”[4]
It is their precious time together at bath, husband and wife, that is the extravagance of God’s grace.
While the world peddles a transactional economy based on greed, Mary’s economy is pure, unlimited extravagance as she breaks open the jar and lavishes precious ointment over Jesus’ feet.
That’s a sign of Jesus’ extravagant compassion for creation, bending near to touch hearts and minds of all he encounters. Something, Judas cannot comprehend. Something the Orange Felon, Musk and their minions seem not to comprehend.
Yet, as Pascal said, “The heart has reasons of its own which reason comprehendeth not.”
If empathy and compassion are sins, then with Luther I say, “Sin boldly.”
Someone said that Judas, in a way, was 100 percent right, but, without empathy, he ended up 100 percent alone. Not that Judas ever cared a wit about the poor.
In the end, I suspect, this self-serving administration will also, eventually, end up alone. Deserted by most all Americans, including many of those in the MAGA crowd.
So, back to Grace — Don’t be a turkey: Break out the ointment of generosity, break out your most precious gifts only you have to offer the world. Break out an attitude of pure, unmerited extravagance. Live dangerously in God’s Grace.
I close with Mother Teresa on Grace – Grace as embodied in the extravagance of Mary, Grace as in the extravagance of God:
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.
Amen.
[1] David French, “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy,” New York Times, February 13, 2025.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Sarah McCammon, NPR Weekend Edition, March 22, 2025.
[4] Ibid.
April 6, 2025
Lent 5
Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126;
Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8
“A Divine Extravagance”
