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”
A Balm in Gilead
I remember as my mother was coming toward the end of her life, her looking up from her sick bed and admonishing me, “John, don’t get old.”
What’s the alternative, I thought. I was saddened to see this woman I had known as vibrant and socially engaged, now looking so helpless. The only response I could muster was to silently hold her hand. And silently pray that she wouldn’t have to suffer much pain.
It was later that evening, around one o’clock in the morning that my father called to say we had lost her.
I know that when I awake in the morning feeling in my prime – at least as much as in the prime can be at eighty – I know the day is going to be fantastic. I’m going to conquer the world. Or at least accomplish what’s in my date book to do the day. And have a great time doing it.
In our reading from Mark, we have the story of much more than relief from a debilitating fever. Strap in now, we’re going to do a bit of hard-core Bible study here.
The word Mark uses to raise up Peter’s mother-in-law from her sick bed is, a rather rare word in the New Testament. Used to convey the Resurrection of our Lord. The very same word – egeiren – to raise from sleep or raise to life from the dead, referring to the Resurrection. Mark definitely did not use this word by chance. He wanted to say something much more profound.
All this is to say that we’re not talking about a simple palliative here, but something much deeper. It’s metaphor time!
This little vignette is to stand for the entire purpose of Christ and his followers. A foretaste of God’s intention to raise up all of creation to living life in its fullest. We’re talking about the purpose of entire Gospel Mission, the Whole Enchilada of God’s will for creation – thriving. A new heaven and a new earth — the ultimate Kaiser Permanente motto of thriving as a new reality. End-time joy is present NOW. A taste of the realized eschaton, Chardin’s “Omega Point.” Just a smidgen.
But wait, there’s more.
When Peter’s mother-in-law upon getting out of her sick bed begins to serve them.
This is not some male sexist take on the role of women. Though, truly, had a woman written this account, I suspect she would have given us the name of this woman, our first deacon. Sadly, the male writer considered her name of lesser importance. But I digress.
This restored soul responds to her new life by sharing it. She serves. The message is, “Go, thou, and do likewise.” Yeah, men, you too – grab the dishtowel. Find your purpose. Be an “Attitude of Gratitude” in action.
And, friends, that is the whole message of the Gospel. We find our life by giving it away to others. In and through Christ, we are given the power, the gumption, and the insight as how to do this.
We have a most important hint here in this brief story.
What does, Jesus do? He takes her by the hand. Hint, hint…it’s first of all about touch.
Many of our youth are suffering record bouts of depression. As we’ve learned from the recent hearings before Congress with social media moguls, the impersonal detachment of social media is killing our children.
Kids may report hundreds of Facebook friends, but not with a single one of them will they share touch. Half of them are most likely Russian bots or predators. There is nothing personally affirming here. No touch.
Despite having all these so-called “friends,” our children are suffering catastrophic loneliness. The more hours stuck in your phone, the less connected you’re likely to feel.
I find it absolutely abhorrent to look across a restaurant at a family at dinner, with the kids in their smart phones the entire time instead of plugged into their families. Dumb, not smart. I’m not talking about the kids but the parents who permit this destruction of their families right before their eyes!
The other day there was a news story of the Sesame Street Muppet, Elmo. Elmo did a check-in, wondering how everyone was doing out there in internet land.[1]
Elmo’s simple query raised a firestorm of reports of loneliness, depression, guilt. The collective answer, “We’re not doing well, Elmo. We’re not okay.”
“What transpired was an existential crisis by way of X users sharing their sense of overwhelming dread and anxiety — from the personal to the global — that got even the little red Muppet in his feelings. He probably did not expect the internet to unload its collective anguish in his replies — but that it did.”[2]
By Wednesday, the post on X had gotten 12,000 replies and 47,000 retweets. Elmo discovered a world in “high anxiety.” He hit a nerve.
Many responders were our youth expressing the loss of hope for much of any future.
Just the simple, “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” pulled back the covers of a very dark future.
“Every morning, I cannot wait to go back to sleep. Every Monday, I cannot wait for Friday to come. Every single day and every single week for life,” X user ContrarianGuild replied.
“The world is burning around us, Elmo,” wrote YouTuber Steven.
David Leavitt, a journalist wrote, “Elmo I’m suffering from existential dread over here.”
“elmo im depressed and broke,” wrote DatDaDatty.
“Elmo I just got laid off,” added another.
Among the thousands of replies and retweets were such as Dionne Warwick and President Biden, urging folks to check in on friends.
I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve followed a hunch about a friend and happened to have called at just the right moment when he or she needed a friend. Needed to hear a comforting voice. Needed to know that somebody cared. Gospel Joy, it was. You, I suspect, have also had that same experience. Surely, a “Balm in Gilead.”
Is there a balm in Gilead? Healing ointment for our sin-sick, weary souls? The Gospel answer today is a definite, “YES.”
Remember the rock opera of the sixties, “Tommy”?[3] In one poignant line from the work, Tommy pleads for connection,
“See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me
See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me…”
That is what we are all looking for. Someone to see us, feel us. Heal us.
And in that physical connection is healing, deep healing. And in that touch, we are raised into wholeness, new life. Resurrection, now.
Our teens are aching for such. We all are.
As my mother lay, semi-conscious, in silence I held her hand. Words escaped me.
Yes, she was soon gone. That very evening. And yet, very much present.
Yesterday, I went over to Jim and Helen’s to hear the newly restored piano. Helen sat down to play a piece. “Alice Blue Bonnet.” This is the song my mother would sing to me as a very young child, cradling me in her arms. Awakened was the memory of her tenderness and protective care for me. Helen’s playing definitely touched my heart strings.
Those moments are the gift we leave behind when this earthly life is over. That joy and love ring down through successive generations. Spiritual Balm that lives on. Resurrection. And all is made new, day by day.
Even those healed eventually leave us. We all have a short shelf life, some shorter than others. However, as we are taken by the hand and raised up to Gospel Joy and Purpose in this life, we find sufficient spiritual health to be part of the panoply of God’s Encompassing Grace, deacons of service. And, in faith, that shall be sufficient.
So, if you’re hesitant, visit that friend at their home, in the hospital or in hospice. You don’t need to know what to say. You may not need to say much of anything. Just hold them. Take a hand or a shoulder. In that moment you are the balm of God’s Grace. And trust that there is healing. And in that moment, you both shall be raised up as on the Last Day.
Trusting in simple touch and presence, we are transformed, the Balm in Gilead. Yes, there is a balm to heal all our sin-sick souls. A smidgen of the foretaste of “Glory Divine.” That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. And, thank you, Elmo, for the heads-up. Amen.
[1] Nardine Saad, “Elmo’s Innocent Check-in Takes a Dark Turn,” Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2024.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Who, “See Me,” overture, and last song from the rock opera, “Tommy,” 1969.
February 4, 2024
5 Epiphany
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c;
1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39 “A Balm in Gilead”
The Pathos of God
We in the modern, secular age aren’t quite sure how to talk about evil.
Over the past of our human history, we’ve thought of those actions and events destructive of the human enterprise and flourishing in many ways.
One of the earliest can be summed up in the word “chaos” — where dark, overwhelming forces consume all we value. One of the first of God’s Graces is to hem them in. The sea, the waters above are given their proper place that the dry land might be a haven for human life.
The Flood is the first punishment to be visited upon us for our transgressions and noise according to the biblical writers. Chaos let loose. Pestilence, invasion by foreign armies, famine, plague – all forms of chaos which would consume us.
With more sophistication, we would look at evil in more personal terms. Greed, mental illness, spiritual possession, blindness, disease. All not good. Contrary to flourishing.
So, it is in our gospel lesson from Matthew, that Jesus encounters a man possessed by an “unclean spirit.”
Our family knew this experience. My grandmother on my father’s side lived with us for several years while I was in my early teens. Grandma Bertha’s husband, Jonathan Forney, died when my father was around ten years old.
After living alone, with the onset of dementia, it became obvious by her neighbor’s calls from West Virginia, that she could no longer live by herself. Her home in Bethany was sold and she moved in with us.
Even as a young boy, I knew something was not quite right with Grandma in the head. She told us that she had a man who lived in her radio and kept bothering her with all sorts of nonsense that he whispered to her at all hours. Day and night.
My mother, who knew little about mental illness, would tell her, “Mom, just turn the radio off.” “Just turn it off!”
Mother thought that Grandma’s radio was actually on. She seemed to have no idea that the voice was only in Grandma’s head.
The biblical writer would have described Grandma’s torment as that of an “unclean spirit.”
Such spirits, demonic and canny, knew their opponents. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”
In our sophistication, we would poo-poo such simple ignorance as the superstition of an ignorant age. We, who know so much more now about mental illness and how to destroy the entire planet. Yes, tell us about mental illness!
And yet, the behaviors arising from such mental disorder can be every bit as destructive to life as floods, enemies, drugs and invading armies. A negation of all we value. Evil, in short.
In our house, Grandma lived down the walkway in living quarters Dad had built for her behind the garage. In the morning we could see her striding up the sloped walkway, jaw set, heading for breakfast.
After she had managed to get a huge family fight started by Mom and Dad, she would strut back to her room whistling a happy tune. Satisfied with herself. My family would be in turmoil for the rest of the day. When everybody was thoroughly miserable, she was happiest. She and the little man living in her radio.
An unclean spirit, indeed. Family chaos rampant.
We as a nation are alike possessed by an unclean spirit. Actually, several. Perhaps, legion!
Last week my friend, Carolfrances sent me an article on the case filed in the International Court of Justice against Israel for genocide. By our uncritical and total support of their prime minister Netanyahu, we are enablers of this wanton destruction of the whole people of Gaza.
Many evangelical Christians are complicit in the destruction in their belief that we must support Israel to reconquer all their former lands under the Davidic Dynasty of biblical times. Utter Rapture nonsense! This belief is heretical and demonic itself, in that it excuses this genocide. Spiritual trash! This belief aids, abets and covers up our role in this wanton carnage of the people of Gaza. Now going on thirty thousand, mostly women, children and the elderly.
The Heart of God aches. Such is the pathos of God. As Christ wept over Jerusalem and the daughters of Jerusalem, who were only to bear children for calamity, as God was in anguish over the slavery of the Hebrew people in Egypt, in Jim Crow South. And at Treblinka and Auschwitz, Babi Yar. God now weeps. As God surely wept along the Trail of Tears and at Wounded knee. Bitter tears of deep pathos, unremitting sorrow, over what we now do in this land called Holy.
The blood of Gaza is on our hands, President Biden’s hands. Shame to us all. An unclean, devouring spirit, roams our land. The maw of Hell.
What has this demonic spirit have to do with Jesus and the values he taught us, his followers, to live out? Everything! Might that this wretched spirit come out American politics, convulsing and with a loud voice! Might that we join together to exorcise this corruption from our midst. With power and authority!
This is a demonic spirit born of the idol of nationalism.
The fact is, WE the Church have been given full and plenary authority and power in Christ Jesus to expel, to utterly cast out this spirit of evil.
Authority? If not us, then who?
Power? Power as brilliant and as forceful as all the incandescent rays of the sun. Sunlight is the best disinfectant of this sort of evil. Sometimes takes a while to work. Apply often and continuously, like voting in Chicago. Wash, rinse, repeat.
One nation, a nation formerly complicit in crimes against humanity, South Africa, has now filed charges of genocide against Israel in the International Court.
Here’s what Carolfrances sent me – glorious sunlight. This is the crux of South Africa’s filing: “So is it Genocide?”
“Over the two days of hearings, South Africa has alleged that Israel has committed genocide by killing Palestinians, subjecting them to serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. It argues that this has been done by the ‘sustained bombardment, forced evacuation without adequate shelter in which they continue to be attacked, killed and harmed’, and by ‘failing to provide or ensure essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian people, which has pushed them to the brink of famine’”.[1]
Through our unconditional support, we are enablers of this wanton destruction and systemic starvation of the entire people of Gaza.
And how are we affected? Let me spell out one highly plausible scenario.
Millions of young people who find our actions of support abhorrent are planning to either sit out this election or write in Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or some other choice. Millions of Arab and Muslim citizens and their families planning to likewise sit out the election in crucial swing states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Places where Biden won only by tens of thousands.
It is quite possible that the Former Guy will be God’s chastisement for our complicity in this crime against humanity. For God is Truth. “Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so.”
A far-fetched scenario? This last Friday in the swing state of Michigan, Arab and Muslim leaders refused to meet with “Genocide Joe.” Canceled the meet-up.
And how will we prevail? Through our solidarity with one another. We will do the little things that preserve humanity and bring some small joy to life.
We will be agents of “necessary trouble,” raising a Holy Ruckus wherever possible. I write sermons. My wife writes postcards — for which I admire her. She in her activism is my pride and joy.
I write letters, I bet some of you do also. We are all part of God’s most powerful sunlight, as is my friend Carolfrances. As are the citizens of South Africa.
We are given all authority to raise our cry to the high heavens. And unbelievable power to do so. This carnage in Gaza would come to a quick halt if Uncle Sam just turns off the money faucet to Israel. Raises its righteous voice of indignation in the halls of the United Nations – and Congress.
Chris Hedges reports on the ruling of the International Court of Justice. “It’s genocide – but they won’t order a stop to it.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) “delivered a devastating blow to the foundational myth of Israel. Israel, which paints itself as eternally persecuted, has been credibly accused of committing genocide…A people, once in need of protection from genocide, are now potentially committing it.”[2]
Israel’s aims are crystal clear, the obliteration of the entire people of Gaza. “Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant on Monday also ordered a ‘complete siege’ of Gaza, and said he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel to the Palestinian enclave.”[3]
“’I have given an order – Gaza will be under complete siege,’ the minister said. ‘We are fighting barbarians and will respond accordingly.’”[4] Collective punishment is a war crime. Every bit as much a what Hamas did on October 6. Will an-eye-for-an-eye and a tooth-for-a-tooth mentality consume us all?
In the meantime, along with the people of South Africa and folk like Chris Hedges, WE are that Mosaic prophet promised in our reading from Deuteronomy. If not us, who?
Just as possession by opioids and heroin or gambling is possession, we know the way to freedom from this unclean spirit, from the resultant chaos in the families afflicted. We know the way to freedom — it is the path of recovery. Sunlight.
Stop the enabling. Stop the lies. Stop the “stinkin’ thinkin.’” It was your best thinking that got you a chair in this room. Now, listen up. Sunlight!
That first ray is the dawning realization: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives have become unmanageable.”[5] The unclean spirit that possesses America is our addiction to violence. And we would seem to be just as powerless over it. We shovel money into our military budget until it’s now half of all our spending. When is it enough?
As Stokley Carmichael inveighed, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”
Brilliant sunlight shed on this scourge of our unconditional support of Netanyahu will eventually have its effect. It will take a lot of post cards, phone calls, letters, emails…and not a few sermons. We have the full authority in Christ Jesus to say, we compel you — “Be silent, come out of us.” We, with full authority and power, my friends. WE! Amen.
[1] Asia News Network, “Why South Africa is leading the legal and moral charge against Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza,” January 16, 2023.
[2] Chris Hedges, “It May Be Genocide But it Won’t be Stopped,” The Chris Hedges Report, January 26, 2024.
[3] CNN News, October 9, 2023.
[4] Ibid.
[5] The first step of the twelve steps to recovery in AA and NA.
January 28, 2024
4 Epiphany
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111;
1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28 “The Pathos of God”
What’s My Line?
When I was a small child, maybe fourth or fifth grade, our family would gather around our old black-and-white TV to watch our favorite evening fare. It was still our original TV bought in 1949 or so. A little round screen and rabbit-ears antenna. Some of you remember those days.
Among our favorites were: “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Beany and Cecil” puppet show, “Father Knows Best” and a quiz show, “What’s My Line?”
Guests would sign in and the panel participants could ask various questions that could be answered only “yes” or “no.” Often the line of work was something obscure like wing walking, flaming sword swallower at the circus. You get the idea. Every now and then the guest would be so famous that the panelists would need to be blindfolded, but the audience would “ooh” and “aaaahhh” as the person signed in on the blackboard.
It is still the same, most of us are defined by our line of work.
In theological terms, this is known as vocation or calling. My wife knew as young as kindergarten that she was called to be an elementary school teacher. And she has done that faithfully for some forty years before retirement.
I’ve bounced around at several lines of work, always, since my Army discharge, centered around the church.
In our Old Testament story, Jonah’s line of work assigned by God is to go to Nineveh and shape those folks up – a seeming impossibility given their reputation as a bunch of debauched degenerates. An assignment worse than taking out the garbage.
And those “simple fishermen” were to be transformed into “fishers of men [and women].” Another new life-assignment.
Frederick Buechner eloquently defines vocation, “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”
Unfortunately, the church often does little in preparing young people to reflect on the spiritual dimension of that life choice. Mostly, we stumble into something.
Our first assignment as part of the Jesus Movement is to discern the answer to the question of vocation, I believe.
I had lunch this week with a husband wife couple in their sixties. His line, which got him in much trouble and caused much grief was Wilmington Gangbanger.
That was the route of most everybody in his family. Most were still addicts, a good number still in prison. Michael had spent over a decade in prison as a “lifer” for killing a person while high on PCP. He has been a consumer of California correctional services in some of the most wretched places imaginable.
Then he came to his senses. He got sober. He got with the addiction recovery program in prison and realized God was laying out a new path for him. All he had to do was walk through that door.
Meeting him and his wife Stephanie made my whole week. As I snapped a picture, I told the two that “you two are what recovery looks like.” Michael is now a year and a half into a course leading to a certificate in addiction recovery at Mt. SAC, a local community college.
He met his wife in high school, and they were married while he was still in prison, but then well on the road to recovery. He now has over fifty years of sobriety. Stephanie has a Master’s in business administration and oversees payroll for over one thousand employees in a large home building company. She, also, grew up in a drug-infested family, but managed to get clear of those problems.
Recovery is their line and it is a blessed gift to all they encounter. And could be for House of Hope. Michael is interested in doing some work helping to put in our newly donated fruit trees at the church and giving Miguel help with putting in the new drip irrigation system.
Barbara Brown Taylor is absolutely correct in describing how God, the Spirit, works through our intuition. Dreams, coincidences, a sidewards glance out of our peripheral vision. Pay attention.
I’ve told the story early on at my arrival at St. Francis of how God got my attention. And, because our congregation is about three times the size of what it was then, it may bear repeating.
When I was in junior high, we were living in a very upscale neighborhood in Long Beach, California, the Bixby Knowles area where many professionals lived – my father being a dentist who had done very well for the family.
One day, in the summer a moving van arrived at a house, about 6 or 7 lots down the street from us. I and a few of my playmates rode our bikes down there to see what was going on.
There on the sidewalk, watching furniture being hauled out of the trailer was a mother and two boys. A Black mother and two Black boys. As I had always been taught to be respectful, I started a conversation. The usual, “I’m John, what are your names?” Where are you from? What does your dad do?” I just assumed their mother was a stay-at-home mom like mine. The mother went back in the house and soon reappeared with glasses of lemonade for us all.
These were the first Black people I had ever seen. I had led a pretty sheltered, privileged life up to that point. And the boys just seemed like regular boys who would fit in with our neighborhood gang. Not at all like how my father would have referred to them.
Shortly after moving in, this family took a long vacation. While they were away, their fine Christian neighbors put a hose through the second story window and turned on the water which ran for over a week. Flooded them out completely.
What little talk there was in the neighborhood about the incident was very hush-hush, whispers and innuendo. My father’s take was that even though the man was a dentist like him, they had no business in buying that house.
What I found to be most spiritually damaging was that my church said nothing. Absolutely NOTHING about this horrendous evil which had taken place right under their nose.
Deep down, even at that young age, I felt this to be a cowardly betrayal of all we had been taught in Sunday school. It was about that time I dropped out of going. They were just a bunch of phonies. Several years later the conservative pastor came out publically against California’s fair housing law when it was on the ballot. I wrote the whole place off as a joke. A sick joke!
It would be a number of years later while attending a college Methodist group with a very progressive leader that he and his wife would convince me to attend a national student gathering over Easter vacation.
There, in Lincoln, Nebraska, with several thousand other college- aged students I had the good fortune to hear the keynote speaker, one Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I could have stayed home; I was short on funds. My father was definitely less than enthusiastic about my participation. But a number of friends were on our three chartered busses, including one girl I struck up a conversation with from Occidental College, Jai Handcock.
Dr. King’s talk that evening was balm to my terrible memory of what had happened to our Black neighbors down the street.
The Spirit must have been working overtime. First, after I had heard King, my spirit leapt. I thought, “If THIS is the church, include me in.” A healing of that searing memory came out of this newly discovered resolve. I could devote myself to helping Americans better understand each other. To work for equity and inclusion was a totally new direction from being a drifting, academic screw-up. In that moment my life found purpose and hope.
Secondly, Jai and I began seeing each other upon our return to Los Angeles. Before I was discharged from the Army we were married, and I knew I was headed to seminary to prepare for the ministry.
Yes, I’ve done many other things along the way. I still do. But I love the church with all its faults.
And what did I discover on this circuitous journey? The same thing Jonah did. Through hints and urges, happenstance — small as a mustard seed, God works wonders. This is “my line” and it has been a blessing beyond measure.
Just ask Michael and Stephanie. Just ask any whose lives have been changed through AA or NA. Ask any person of faith who spends the first part of the morning in prayer – what I refer to as “spiritual daydreaming.” Ask my wife and all who have found their true life’s calling. Wonders! I tell you.
As my friend Jim Strathdee’s song says in part, “If you follow and love, you’ll learn the mystery of what you were meant to do and be.”
That we might all find “…the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” That is the enduring, lifelong Grace of God. It’s never too late. “Today really is the first day of your life.” What are you being meant to do and be? Amen.
January 21, 2024
3 Epiphany
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:6-14;
1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
“What’s My Line?”
We Have Found Him
There’s a saying that comes out of the Buddhist tradition about encountering one who claims to be the Buddha. “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
Because he is not the genuine article, the Real McCoy. Nothing but a fake and an imposter – demonic.
Likewise, it is no wonder that Nathanael is quite skeptical when Andrew and Peter inform him that they have found the Messiah, the One of whom the prophets and writings testify.
With a feeble half shrug, he responds, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” A valid question.
Can anything so momentous come out of such an out-of-the-way, nowhere place? Out of such meager beginnings?
If your answer is “no,” you need a refresher course in the history of God and God’s people. For this is how it seems to work all the time. Just so that we don’t think that such wisdom came from our own cleverness or brilliant intuition. Inch by inch out of nothing.
It’s out of the seemingly trivial things that the biblical writer proclaims God’s mighty acts.
It was out of seemingly nothing that the Big Bang erupted into our known universe. From an infinitesimally small speck, entire galaxies, stars, planets, dark matter, centipedes and my lovely wife. And all of you. The whole shebang!
It was out of a meager group of hominoids in Africa, at one point on the brink of extinction themselves, that the entire human race has covered the planet, bringing most other lifeforms to extinction.
Welcome to the Anthropocene Era. Yes, indeed — what can come from such seemingly happenstance early genetic mutations on the African Velt? So long, long ago.
Look at that genealogy of the birth of the Messiah in Matthew.[1] This lineage traces the birth through the male line. Except! Four women are mentioned in all this begetting. All women considered to be of questionable morals or questionable pregnancies, women seemingly of no account.
Again, look at Matthew’s record of Jesus’ family tree.
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Mary. All women associated in gossipy minds as women of questionable character. Loose morals. Read of the scandal around Tamar, circulated by wagging tongues. It’s all there in Genesis 38. Likewise, with the other three women of this genealogy. All to show that God does wonders through those who in the eyes of the powerful are considered of little worth, no account. Out of little, a great blessing to all.
Yes, the men involved get off scot-free. Nothing is new under the sun here. Of course, these guys would question, could anything good come of any of this? Out of this sort of women?
Yet, WE, of little account, would boldly proclaim, “We have found Him.”
Mustafa Suleyman, in his new work, The Coming Wave, lays out how wave upon wave of technological achievement, often from what seems insignificant at the time, tends to mushroom into great promise or threat, often both.[2]
What he terms “proto-general-purpose technologies” – pervasive and engendering new, follow-on technologies, beginning from insignificance — have shaped and continue to shape humanity. The human animal is an “innately technological species.”[3] Start with fire, to coal extraction, to the Saturn rocket. Then, the stone ax.
Suleyman notes that “proliferation is the default.” One example, computers.
When mathematicians, mostly underpaid, unrecognized women began using a crude version at Bletchley Park in Britain in the 1940s to crack the German Enigma Code, the computer had its first rude use.
By 1945 a new generation called “ENIAC, an eight-foot-tall behemoth of eighteen thousand vacuum tubes capable of three hundred operations per second,” was crunching data.[4]
Then came the transistor, “comprising a paper clip, a scrap of gold foil and a crystal of germanium that could switch electronic signals.”[5] The birth of the digital age.
Finally, Moore’s law which proclaimed that every twenty-four months, the number of transistors on a chip would double. Now, a 10-million increase on one chip! Exponential growth beyond imagining — a seventeen-billion-fold improvement.
The then-president of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, was said to have predicted that the entire world would probably have no need for more than five or six computers. Now there are more computers than there are humans – in your ubiquitous smart phones. More computing power in your hand than those filling entire warehouses which were used to solve the first atomic equations. For better, and often worse.
Could anything good have come out of such a niche toy? Inch by inch, so it goes.
Can anything good come from the inklings of the Spirit that on most mornings awaken my heart?
Each day with the rising of the sun, I find just enough of Him in my heart to dispel the gloomy clouds of night. Just enough to pull back the covers in Hope that it is worth getting out of bed today.
And usually, this Spirit brings work to my mind before the end of that first cup of coffee. By late morning, all is rich with blessing beyond my poor imagining.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, Leaving Church,[6] describes listening to one’s primal intuition. All of which, led her to leave an insanely busy 80-hour-a-week schedule at a large, downtown Atlanta Episcopal parish for a position in a small, rural Georgia parish in the northern hill country of the state.
Listen to how she describes this leading of the Spirit.
“Intuition may be one way of speaking about how God does that – takes things from here to there, I mean…when I cannot sleep because the rational decision seems all wrong to me, I start paying attention to the gyroscope of my intuition, which operates below the radar of my reason. I pay attention to recurring dreams and interesting coincidences. I let my feelings off the leash and follow them around. When something moves in my peripheral vision. I leave the path to investigate, since it would be a shame to walk right by a burning bush. At this point reason is all but useless to me. All that remains is trust.”[7]
The decision for a move was a life-saver for both her health and sanity and that of her husband. They had arrived exhausted. In that move she found herself, her husband, and in new, unexpected ways, found Him whom she would serve as Lord of Life. New beginnings out of the scrap of a notion, she found.
As the song goes, “See him at the seaside, talking with the fishermen, making them disciples. Amen. Amen.” A seemingly insignificant, rather puny start. Yet, now — spiritual riches let loose for all humanity that would bind us together as one heart. An ethic of equity and mutual regard that is our Guiding Star.
Yes, we mostly fall short. A large part of the Jesus Movement has deserted and succumbed to one of the most corrupt men ever to attain to the American presidency. They gather around the Former Guy as if the leader of a cult. A total perversion of the Word Incarnate – a corruption doomed to pass away. We pray!
But the memory of that distant blessing by the Galilean Sea lingers till this day. It erupts from time to time in unbelievable grace and in incredible sacrifice. Grace upon Grace. Mustard seed Grace. And the hearts who have found Him are filled to overflowing with love and kindnesses for self and stranger. And for the Author of this Mystery.
Indeed, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Can anything come out of any of this, out of any of us? Where might your dreams be leading you? Let fear and hesitations off the leash. Taste and see for yourself. Into Epiphany Light, let God’s Holy Spirit lead you where it will. What do you find when you push back the covers? I find God’s whole people as the entire House of Hope, companions on the way.
My Evangelical friends are wont to say, “Name it and claim it!”
My friend Jim Strathdee’s riff on the summons in a Howard Thurman poem beckons:
“I am the Light of the World
You people come and follow me.
If you follow and love, You’ll learn the mystery
Of what you were meant to do and be.” Amen.
[1] Matthew 1:1-17, NRSV.
[2] Mustafa Suleyman, with Michael Bhaskar, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma (New York: Crown Publishing, 2023).
3 Ibid., 26.
[3] Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2006).
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid. 32
[6] Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: a memoir of faith (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2006).
[7] Ibid., 8.
January 14, 2024
2 Epiphany
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
1 Samuel 3:1-10, [11-20]; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17;
1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51 “We Have Found Him”
