Journey into the Unknown
The beginnings of ambitious journeys are often beset by missteps and bad luck. Or sometimes splendid serendipity. Nothing certain here – that’s definitely the case with any Lenten journey taken in deep prayerful seriousness.
It was certainly the case for one man’s most ambitious journey to capture the presidency of the United States – a journey into the unknown.
It should have been a slam dunk. George H. W. Bush, a former pitcher in college, would be throwing out the first ball at Game One of the National Leage Championship Series. All he would have had to have done was to take a taxi to the game, buy his hot dog, walk out onto the pitcher’s mound and throw out the first ball at Game One on the National League Championship Series.
It would have been a friendly crowd of some 40,000 fans, many of whom would have been his fans as well. Seated with beers and hot dogs in hand at the Houston Astrodome – a solid GOP crowd of Bush’s hometown. Many more looking on through the magic of TV.[1]
BUT, NO!
Plans and arrangements are meticulous, byzantine even. Every moment scripted. A huge motorcade. A black, handsome book with the seal of the Vice President noted every event down to the minute with diagrams – from the seating on the plane, the order of cars in the motorcade, staffing, every division of the staffing party, their phone numbers, every word that Bush would speak. Everything. The whole enchilada – planned down to a T. Down to the minute. A cast of hundreds.
Everything accounted for. Except one thing.
It had been a loooong time since Bush had last thrown a ball. A long while – back when he had played for Yale.
In his windup he couldn’t get his arms over his head so they ended up in front of his face. “…he sort of swivels to his left, and his arm flies back—but it won’t go back, so he gets it back even with his shoulder, and starts forward while his right lace-up feels for the dirt on the downslope, and he can tell it’s short while the throw is still in his hand, and he’s trying to get that little extra with his hand, which ends up, fingers splayed, almost waving, as he lands on his right foot, and lists to the left, towards first-base line.”
The upshot? The ball bobbles, then lands in the dirt many feet from the catcher and slowly rolls into his mitt. All on nationwide TV.
One just never knows how it will turn out with such a shaky beginning. Definitely, nothing certain. Not in this case. Yet we all know how that race turned out.
This was the inauspicious beginning of the most improbable journey any man or woman might undertake – the journey to be elected president of the United States of America. For a man or woman to leap from the belief that he or she should be president to actually saying in the back of their mind, “I am going to be president,” is a most improbable journey, fraught with many chance moments of disaster, moments of glory, and moments of missed opportunity. A journey into a great unknown.
Abram and Sarai likewise embarked on a great, fraught adventure, a most improbable journey into an unknown future. No guarantee as to the outcome. Nothing certain, but by faith alone.
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…’ So, Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”
Went. Went to where? Literally, only God knows. Sarai must have been ready to institutionalize her husband. He and his little band could have easily perished following this phantom of his own mind. The wackadoodle voices of mental illness. Delusional promptings of an unwell mind. No one would have ever heard from him again – as tragic as the Donner Party that perished in 1846 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.
And yet, most unlikely, three of the world’s great religions – Jewish, Muslim, Christian — look to Abraham as a forefather of their faiths. And don’t forget Sarah, though the men left her out. Biblical note: Abram’s and Sarai’s names were changed in Genesis 17 to signify their acceptance of a new covenant with God.
Lent is also a time of journey, embracing an unknown and uncertain future. It’s in our face, right there as ICE pulls terrified immigrants from their houses, workplaces and cars. People whose perilous journeys to the US in search of safety or fleeing hunger or opportunity have led them to travel on foot thousands of miles.
This time of Lent invites us also to embark on such a incredible journey with all its perils and promise. A journey without maps as Graham Greene called it in 1936 – a travelogue based on his journey into the heart of Africa.
Instead of passively listening to the lessons of this Lenten season – what my boys would label as blizz-blaz, floating over distracted minds at 10,000 feet as it is read on any given Sunday morning. In our book of Lenten readings, focus on one or two passages that grab your mind. Or a hymn. Ask yourself in prayer, how does my life and my spiritual journey relate to the inner truth of this reading, this song?
What might it be saying to me personally? What might it be saying to my faith community? Finally, what might it be saying to the world? Trust that if this really is the Word of God, it has hidden power to restore, to change your life. Yes, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. It will feed your soul.
In open, unguarded prayer with that passage, you might discover some wonderful surprises. You might discover some needed correction. You might find opportunities to be part of something greater than yourself. All, an open door to eternity.
The unexamined, closed up and guarded life goes nowhere. I’ve been reading a new book on the life of Robert McNamara, McNamara at War.[2]
McNamara had been a whiz kid. He had a superior intellect that he believed could solve virtually anything he put his mind to, whether it was running the Ford Motor Company or the World Bank. And mostly, he had succeeded.
But when he served as Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, he came upon a problem that utterly confounded him.
At first, he thought that if he could just produce a high enough enemy body count, the numbers would vindicate his efforts. In his hubris he vastly underestimated his foe and their willingness to sacrifice for their own country. He also underestimated their inventiveness and the assistance they were getting from the Soviet Union and China.
We all know how that ill-fated journey ended. The authors of McNamara at War dramatically portray how the folly of Vietnam consumed Robert McNamara in guilt and self-reproach. It ate him alive.
Though at his life’s end he could confess his role in the many mistakes that led to the final debacle, with fleeing citizens scrambling to board helicopters taking off from the US embassy roof — many falling to their deaths, losing their finger-holds on the sides of those crafts as they became airborne – He could accept responsibility for all this, in the end he could not answer the primary question – why were we there in the first place?
The tragic end of McNamara’s life is portrayed as that of a doddering, disheveled old man, wandering the well-worn trek from donated office space to his Watergate apartment in Washington, D.C. Though some folks recognized that old man, when they greeted him, he kept his head down and plodded on. He no longer had that youthful powerwalk. “Some thought he looked more like “’Ichabod Crane,’ hunched over, old and shaky, wearing a shabby trench coat with is belt hanging down” [3]
McNamara’s ill-fated journey into that war was one unexamined by any deeper spiritual values. A journey emotionally kept bottled up inside his depressed, tormented psyche.
In the end, his second wife would recall, “Throughout his life he had surmounted almost every challenge he and encountered. But not this one ‘It was the big heavy albatross around his neck…and he couldn’t get rid of it. It was suffocating him. It was killing him.’”[4]
Such are the dangers of any life’s journey when wrapped up in oneself.
Any journey into the unknown is chockablock full of dangers and opportunities. Discernment is critical. As well as trusted companions who will speak the truth to you as well as encouragement. Unexamined through a lens of any lasting values, disaster often waits.
We begin our Lenten journey with the eternal guidance of the Word of God, the traditions of our church, and the companionship of a gathered community. Fed and nurtured by the Body of Christ and the Cup of Salvation, we do not stumble into the darkness of unexamined imaginings and folly.
While we do not know what the future holds, we do know who holds the future. With the Lord as our guide, as we step into a Lenten journey we step smack dab into the need of the world. And into our own deep inner spiritual needs.
As Fleetwood Mac sang, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Yesterday’s gone. Yesterday’s gone. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
We boldly step out into that tomorrow in faith, not knowing the twists and turns, but confident in the Promise. Amen.
[1] Richard Ben Cramer, What it Takes: The Way to the White House (New York: Random House, 1992), 3-29.
[2] Philip Taubman and William Taubman, McNamara at War: A New History (New York: Norton, 1925).
[3] Op. cit., 1.
[4] Op. cit., 2.
March 1, 2026
Lent 2
“Journey into the Unknown” The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121;
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
How is it With Your Soul?
Philip Roth wrote a novel set in the 1990s, The Human Stain, being 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. And this year we feel so stuck.
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 deep bass of the muffler, revving the engine, he popped the clutch accidentally. 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 and lamps all around. Did I mention blood? Lots of it.
When a hysterical woman ran in 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.
My friend’s plight vividly describes our situation, personally and nationally.
As Ricky Ricardo, upon coming home to the latest domestic disaster, would, in exasperation upbraid Lucy, “Lucy, you’ve got a lot of ‘splaining to do”. We all do. And life is short. Eventually, ashes to ashes we all end up.
O Lord, teach us to number our days that we might get a heart of wisdom.
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. And then there are our personal failings: lethargy, our half-truths, pretended helplessness, frivolity, cowardice — pretending that the evil all about us is none of our concern.
What’s left? What’s left is an opportune time for some deep soul searching. Taking a moral inventory.
As we receive these ashes, let us remember that we are but a moment of sunlight fading on the grass. In the passages we read in these forty days, we are again presented with the opportunity to allow them to sink deeply into our being.
During these forty days we are presented with the opportunity to allow the Spirit to move us beyond ourselves, to move us to something greater, something of eternity.
Time to take stock.
What’s left is “in the meantime.” Only to come before our Maker with 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 distracting voices that we might hear that “Still, Small Voice.” This is what a Holy Lent is all about.
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 shall rise. Amen.”
February 18, 2026
Ash Wednesday
“How is it With Your Soul?”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 103;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
A Love Affair
He is an organic part of the Torah tradition and in Elijah, a summation of the Word as spoken through the prophets.
As with Moses, the real purpose of it all is the work that awaits down off the mountain. The work of liberation.
But Peter cannot contain himself. In that sublime moment he lapses into foolishness. He thinks they can stay there forever. Much as I longed to stay at that church camp with that red-haired girl, holding hands.
Yet that sparkle of love from that camp, from my years in Sunday school, from hearing my father read to me from Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible took up a subtle residence in my soul. The luminosity grew in my encounter with a campus minister and his wife and in the close fellowship of the Wesley Foundation at Cal State Long Beach.
There I encountered the greats of the faith, Tillich, the Niebuhr brothers, Bonhoeffer, the Jewish theologian Martin Buber. Finally, Dr. Martin Luther King and César Chávez. Soon my wife and I had grape strike workers from Delano living with us during the Safeway Grape Boycott. Yes, Safeway finally came to the table. Jesus’ Transfiguring Light for worker justice burned brightly in my spirit through that work.
It was the same light I felt burning in my heart upon hearing of our Black neighbors down the street being flooded out of their home by the supposed “good Christian” white neighbors. And when my church down the street said absolutely NOTHING — a Transfiguring Fire burned in my bones. Shine, Jesus, Shine.
I had grown up in a staunch Republican household. I proudly wore my “I Like Ike” button to school every day in junior high. Still have it. You could say, I had a love affair with America. The smiling visage of my president was the confirmation that America liked me as well. Our family prospered and lived the good life. In the values and norms I revered, that Transfiguring Light shone. When I placed my hand over my heart for the Pledge of Allegiance, it was that generous, warm smile of my president that flooded into my being.
When President Eisenhower sent the troops into Little Rock to enforce the education rights of Black children, I was filled with pride that our country would side with the shoved aside, the dispossessed having to suffer with underfunded, dilapidated schools. I was proud of our president, my president. And of those brave students who ran a gauntlet of hate every day just to get an equal education. And the National Guard troops upholding their rights as Americans to equal treatment.
I saw that drama every night on our small black and white TV and in the newsreels shown at the movie theater matinees. In the courage of that president and those students and their teachers, Jesus’ luminosity shown as the blazing Sun of Righteousness. Yes, “Shine, Jesus, Shine.”
That Light shown ever brightly on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 on a warm, sunny day before millions, both in person and glued to their TVs around the world. “I have a Dream.” Tears rolled down my eyes from the joy of that promise. Transfiguring Light burning through the hatred and lethargy of those still on the sidelines. Shine, Jesus, Shine.
It could not be extinguished by the hate and terror inflicted on those peaceful marchers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge on their trek to Montgomery in 1965. Fire hoses, beatings, police dogs, the hate of snarling racists could not snuff out that Light. The Transfiguring Light of Liberty can never be finally extinguished. No darkness can ultimately overcome it. “Shine, Jesus, Shine.”
You see, our compact with one another is a great love affair that, through rocky times and moments of true heroism, has endured for neigh on 250 years. And through those values that we as a people hold dear, hold in common, Jesus Light yet shines – as we act on them.
And now the beams of that Light fall upon our soiled and troubled faces. Present to illuminate the way forward as members of the Jesus Movement.
I was delighted (pardon the pun) to receive the word that my church, the national Episcopal Church, would proclaim this last Sunday as Immigration with Dignity Sunday. Yes, in the leadership of our presiding bishop and our Bishop John, Jesus Transfiguring Light brightly burns, searing away the scorn of those who would dehumanize the sojourner in our midst.
I see reflections of that light in the witness of other faith leaders across this nation, especially in the unity of the faith leaders in Minneapolis. There the Transfiguring Light of Holy Resistance brightens the corners of injustice and terror.
And for a few who sometimes think I’m sometimes a little too far out there, they haven’t been reading the posts of our Bishop John Taylor on Facebook. Now, there’s some radical Gospel preaching. In his prophetic leadership – Shine, Jesus, Shine.
As the Mount of Revelation was illuminated by the Glory of God as Moses ascended it, as the visage of our Lord shone with the radiance of a hundred suns, yet we shall shine in some measure in our witness to the Gospel Truth – God’s love embraces all creation. The movement of the Spirit is to rouse up the greatness in each one of us.
As we gather round the Lord’s table each Sunday, in our affection and care for one another and the stranger, in the tough work in St. Francis Garden of Hope and the strained backs and arms moving pallets of food at the St. John’s Food Bank. In the fruition of our dreams for House of Hope — Yes, the luminosity of Divine Transfiguring Light. Today, tomorrow and in days to come – Shine, Jesus, Shine. All to the Glory of God and our neighbor’s good. Amen.
February 8, 2026
Epiphany, Last Sunday – Transfiguration Sunday
Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2
2 Peter1:16-21; Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9
“A Love Affair”
Light Shining in ICE Darkness
We’ve all seen the sickening TV coverage. ICE agents bursting into people’s houses. No warrant. Hauling out suspected immigrants in their underwear, forced to lie facedown in the snow. No warrant necessary. Car windows smashed as a disabled woman is jerked out of her car and body slammed into its side. And smirking ICE agents ridiculing her as she struggles for breath.
All with no warrant.
And Trump’s cavalier attitude toward such Constitutional niceties? In an interview with NPR’s Luke Garrett, it was evident when he glibly answered the question, did he need to uphold the Constitution, “I don’t know,” he dodged.
ICE is now his private army. Might makes right. And the courts be damned. Where are Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton? Jane Adams?
The most venerable of us, immigrants are the prime victims of this lawlessness.
This Sunday, the Episcopal Church, nationally, is honoring our immigrant neighbors. It is Migration with Dignity Sunday 2026.
It is most fitting that the Old Testament selection from Isaiah falls on this Sunday.
The religious folk in Isaiah’s time gathered with great gusto. Processions in the finest vestments. Incense wafted to the ceiling. Praise hymns echoed from wall to wall. A sermon would challenge no one. Platitude piled on platitude. No one walked out in the middle of the homily. No one was offended. They got what their itching ears longed to hear. You are the people of Abraham and Sarah – what could ever be amiss?
And the congregation that Sabbath left self-satisfied that in their solemn assembly they had fulfilled their minimal duty. Now, off to the marketplace to lie, cheat and steal. And get filthy rich. To sell the poor for a farthing.
BUT WAIT…WAIT. Isaiah’s shout interrupts the saccharine proceedings.
Your assemblies of song and holy smoke are to no avail. They amount to less than nothing. They are a hypocrisy. They are a blasphemy… Utterly useless to the Lord of all Compassion. UNLESS…UNLESS…
UNLESS you have consummated this spectacle in deeds of justice and mercy. Actions are the completion of your worship. The final “Amen.”
As Jesus warned, “Don’t say we have Abraham as our father. That will get you nowhere. If God wanted children of Abraham, he could make them from the stones on the ground and the cigarette butts trashing our highways. Same for daughters of Sarah.
Your fast??? “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly…”
This is the completion of your worship, its fruition. And in the midst of this ICE darkness your light shall shine as the brightest supernova.
And do our immigrant neighbors ever more need our Light than in this day of ICE terror!?
Here their stories.
I spoke with one of our ICUC[1] organizers who recently returned from the Coachella Valley where ICE has run rampant through the agricultural fields rounding up anybody with brown skin, anybody speaking the wrong language. Anybody working at the wrong job.
One mother told of finding a note from her four-year-old girl when she returned from a day of drudgery in the fields. “Dear Mommy, I love you so but I am afraid everyday when I come home from school you will be gone. And I will never see you again. Love (daughter’s name).”
No child should be subjected to such anxiety and mental trauma. No child!
Minneapolis is under a state of siege. The city is virtually shut down. Local merchants have borne the brunt of the economic chaos. Restaurants closed. School and church attendance slashed from fear. And the horrifying pictures of neighbors being brutalized by this army of masked thugs, sadistic federal agents, smirking and laughing at the plight of their hapless victims – it’s beyond the pale.
Is this the fast, the worship, the Lord requires? It is a travesty of our American values. A travesty of any nation purporting to be a so called “Christian” nation. We mock God. Blasphemy!
Have a heart. Have a heart, cries the Lord of Hosts. Then your light shall rise in darkness. Even ICE darkness. “You shall be as a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” That very same light shall blaze forth in the hearts of those we welcome.
Hear Paul’s story.
“I asked for asylum at the border station in Tijuana. That is what the law tells you to do. I started to worry when border patrol put us on a bus with blackened windows. When they shackled our hands and feet, I was terrified.”
“They but us on a plane and would not remove the shackles to let us eat or go to the bathroom. Why this humiliation? Were we going to jump out of the plane?
That was just be beginning of a regime of fear and torment. Yes, with this beast, cruelty is the point. This policy has the mark of the beast written all over it, 666. The Antichrist, antithetical to the Christ-affirming values of care and dignity. 666 from start to finish.
Consider the case of Junita who was just one of the many who have died in ICE custody due to neglect or murder.
Juanita is an asthmatic and was held in an isolation cell. Given no mattress, food with worms in it. The light on day and night, depriving her of any beneficial sleep. When she began to have difficulty breathing and complained, three guards wrestled her to the floor and held her there while life and breath were slowly drained from her limp, unconscious body. This, folks, is your taxpayer dollars at work. 666 written all over it.
She is just one of the 30-some in recent months who have died from such cruel neglect and torture.
The racism of this administration knows no bounds. In public and private he refers to our Somali neighbors as “garbage.” This weekend the Orange Felon posted images of the Obamas as chimpanzees or orangutans. We have become the shameful laughingstock of the world. The brand of this loathsome racism is 666.
We affirm in our blessing every Sunday that in Christ we can make a difference. We are that illuminating light that brightens every corner – even the most putrefying, inhumane ICE corner.
Sojourners lists a number of ways we can help the citizens of Minneapolis, and by extension every community besieged by this army of terror. These are the asks of faith leaders of that city:
Donate! Even small amounts make a big difference. They add up and strengthen the souls of the activists on the front lines. They are solidarity, an excellent translation for the biblical term, “righteousness.”
Go to Stand With Minnesota. That website lists numerous organizations that have been vetted and will efficiently use your dollar.
Wear your ICE whistle. You may find yourselves on the front line. You in that moment are being Spirit-called to be Holy Resistance.
Call your elected officials. ICE defunded and out until proper constitutional protections are in place for our immigrant neighbors and the activists who stand with them. Such essentials as: judicial warrants for any search or apprehension. Body cameras. Remove the masks. Identifying information on every ICE agent. Unhindered inspections by congressional leaders of any and all ICE detention facilities.
Raise hell. Yes, raise hell because our immigrant neighbors are living in the lowest regions of hell.
Sign up for action alerts: Church World Service, Faith in Action, SojoAction. Access 5calls.org find sample scripts to use if you’re unsure what to say.
Folks, this is the time to leave it all on the Gospel-field of faith. How will you know you’re in the right Gospel-groove? You are feeling a bit uncomfortable, maybe a LOT uncomfortable.
Remember, if you are not ever being led outside your comfort and convenience zones, what you thought you thought was a long-distance call to your heart, was only the salve of local delusion and self-complacency. Not the worship response Isaiah and Jesus are summoning us to.
Remember, in Christ Jesus YOU are the Light. As that wonderful hymn puts it out there: “Shine, Jesus, Shine.” And your brightness in whatever deeds you can muster in His name will shine forth as the noonday sun. I guarantee it! Amen.
[1] ICUC – Inland Congregations United for Change.
February 8, 2026
Epiphany 5 – Migration With Dignity Sunday
Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-9
I Corinthians 2:1-16; Gospel: Matthew 5:13-20
“Light Shining in ICE Darkness”
What Does the Lord Require
In our basic training post at Fort Sam in San Antonio, all of us in Company D-3 were conscientious objectors to be trained as Army Medics. Before going on to our medic training, we went through an 8-week course.
Usually in the evening if we didn’t have much homework or Army busywork, we’d head over to the PX and have some beer and pizza. One of our fellows was a Buddhist named Holderbaum. One night someone asked him, how with a German name like that, was he a Buddhist.
He said that to be given conscientious objector status he had to be some religion. He knew he couldn’t be a Christian because they can’t drink or have sex. He knew he wasn’t a Catholic because he didn’t believe in the pope and all the saints mumbo jumbo. By elimination, that must have left Buddhist.
Yes, some of us starchy, legalistic Protestant types are a bit over the top in our understanding of Jesus’s basic message. We get caught up in the jots and tittles, neglecting the weightier part of the message: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Today’s gospel passage also contains the basics of the Christian-Judeo faith.
It is eloquently summed up in Matthew’s Beatitudes. You know them — ”Blessed are those who” – fill in the blank
If these are used as a legalistic standard, imposed in a ridged way, who could possibly be saved? Holderbaum’s right. No mortal could live up to them in an exacting way. In some congregations they are “weaponized” to beat others over the head — doing incredible spiritual and psychic damage.
I decided to look in the Trump Bible to see how modern man has approached these injunctions. I wasn’t going to give him one red cent – he’s already monetized the presidency for some $1.4 billion[1] and counting — so I snuck a free peak.
The modern ethical version goes something like this.
Blessed are those who use the public trust of elected office to run a grift of hundreds of millions of dollars, for they shall have many friends.
Blessed are those who appoint the least qualified to office, for no one will confront you with embarrassing “alternative facts.”
Blessed are those who trash our immigrant neighbors by sending armies of undisciplined goons into the streets of our cities, for they will imagine themselves safer when might makes right.
Blessed are those who ignore the laws and statutes of their nation, for they shall not be inconvenienced by legal niceties and pesky lawyers.
These are Caesar’s beatitudes. And the spiritual warfare with Caeser yet rages full on in the Book of John’s Revelations. The mark of the beast, 666, is firmly stamped on this administration’s “banality of evil.”[2] It has become normalized, cavalierly dismissed.
Not quite the ethic of the Jesus Movement that I learned in Sunday school or seminary. Or you either. No, we as members of that saving movement are held to a higher standard. “To do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God.”
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
These beatitudes are the goal for which we would strive. Yet, being far from perfect, we will mostly miss the mark. They are the hallmark of a mature spirituality.
This Easter, Luther James Forney will be baptized.
I was in a quandary as to how to assist Christopher and Alexis in fulfilling their baptismal vows made on Luther’s behalf.
One book that came immediately to mind was Bishop Budde’s book, How We Learn to be Brave.[3] It was occasioned by her interview on CNN after Trump and an entourage of cabinet officers and military generals proceeded to St. John’s to hold up a Bible upside down.
This was a desecration of our scriptures and a place of worship under Bishop Budde’s jurisdiction. “I had to say something,” was her stance. Later, came the blowback she received after she had had the temerity to ask the president for mercy for those being hurt by his policies.
Courage is the character of a mature person of faith, regardless the religion. Courage to change what can be changed. This I would hope for young Luther as he grows into his personhood.
I passed along also Dag Hammarskjöld’s book, Markings.[4] This volume of meditations reflects the mature spirituality of one of our most notable UN Secretaries General.
In Markings a most courageous Swedish diplomat wrestles with his purpose of existence as he enters some of the most harrowing sites of conflict on the planet. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld would be killed in a small aircraft crash while on a dangerous mission into the heart of Africa.
In the introduction by W.H. Auden, there is Hammarskjöld’s introduction for an interview on CNN.
“I found in the writings of hose medieval mystics for whom ‘self-surrender’ had been the way to self-realization, and who in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found strength to say Yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbors made them face, and to say Yes also to every fate life had in store for them.”
“Love…for them meant simply an overflowing of the strength with which they felt themselves filled when living in true self-oblivion. …love found natural expression in an unhesitant fulfillment of duty and an unreserved acceptance of life, whatever it brought them personally of toil, suffering—or happiness.”[5]
I would hope for young Luther that he would have the spiritual strength and courage to wrestle with life in this same way. That he would realize that truly living would be found in a task greater than himself. That he would find where the needs of the world met his innate gifts and interests, there would be his vocation – his true calling as did Dag Hammarskjöld.
In Mitch Albom’s book, Tuesdays with Morrie,[6] I found a delightful and most poignant story of a former student spending time with his dying professor. It is graced with compassion and deep understanding. It is a master class in the Beatitudes.
Mitch had promised upon graduation to keep in touch with this favorite professor. But, of course, work and family and a hundred other things got in the way.
Flipping through the channels late one night he inadvertently comes across an interview with Ted Koppel on his program “Nightline.” There was his professor, Morrie Schwartz.
Koppel had been alerted earlier on by a friend to a headline in the Boston Globe: “A Professor’s Final Course: His Own Death.” The professor had recently received a diagnosis of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease. A slow wasting disease inexorably leading to death, beginning with a wasting of the muscles of the legs and proceeding up the trunk of the body.
Cameramen and sound equipment were situated in Morrie’s living room. But before Morrie would let Koppel proceed, Morrie said he would first needed to “check him out.” One of Morrie’s friends quipped, “I hope Ted goes easy on Morrie.” Another replied, “I hope Morrie goes easy on Ted.”
The door closed and Ted and Morrie were left alone inside Morrie’s office. Morrie began, “Tell me something close to your heart.”
“‘My heart?’ Koppel studied the old man. ‘All right,’ he said cautiously, and he spoke about his children. They were close to his heart, weren’t they?”
“Good.” Morrie said. “Now tell me something about your faith.”
When Ted demurred, saying that he didn’t often talk about such things with strangers, Morrie interjected, “Ted, I’m dying,” peering over his glasses. “I don’t have a lot of time here.”
Once they were back in the living room with cameras rolling, towards the end of the interview, the reporter asked Morrie a question: what did Morrie dread most about his slow decay.
“Morrie paused. He asked if he could say this certain thing on television.”
“Koppel said go ahead.”
“Morrie looked straight into the eyes of the most famous interviewer in America. ‘Well, Ted, one day soon, someone’s gonna have to wipe my ass.’”
A thousand miles away Mitch, the professor’s old student. heard Koppel intone, “’Who is Morrie Schwartz…and why, by the end of the night, are so many of you going to care about him?’”
Mitch Alom’s precious book, which has sold in the millions, came into being out of that late night happenstance before his TV.
The compassion displayed by Mitch as week after week he sat with his dying professor is the entire summation of the Beatitudes.
These brief injunctions are the door to eternal life, yet a blessedness possible in some measure right now in this life. This is the gentle spirituality I also would hope for Luther James as we baptize him in April.
Such compassion is the most courageous act in these disjointed and inhumane times. It is the mark of our full humanity.
And like Morrie, we don’t have a lot of time here, so what we do have, let’s use to the Glory of God and for the love of our neighbor. Amen.
[1] The Editorial Board, “Trump’s Cash Grab Undermines our Republic, The New York Times, January 25, 2026.
[2] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963). Arendt makes the point that the evil Eichman spawned seemed so benign that ordinary Germans would dismiss as well as participate in it. It became normalized in the culture of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Here, a matter of degree, not kind.
[3] Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (New York: Avery, Penguin Random House, 2023)
[4] Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).
[5] Op. Cit., viii.
[6] Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson (New York: Doubleday, 2007) 18-23.
February 1, 2026
Epiphany 4
Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15
I Corinthians 1:18-31; Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
“What Does the Lord Require?”
