Bright and Shiny Church
This Sunday we wind up the liturgical season of Epiphany. Most of our readings have been about the revelation of the Holy in Christ and God’s presence as manifest in the Church – the Body of Christ (see the book of Acts). Our readings reveal Jesus’ presence that turns daily living into the finest wine, and the calling of many to be part of a new faith journey that lives out the Gospel ethic of the Jesus Movement.
I thought I had this sermon well in hand when on Wednesday evening it was abruptly upended. That’s what sometimes happens when the world’s agenda overtakes what one has written on paper, especially when events are of such enormity.
On a personal level, as I contemplated all the dazzle and sparkle of the Transfiguration, I had to face it. In light of the Russian invasion, the detonations and the air raid sirens going off in the background of news reports from Kiev, I’m not feeling much sparkle. This invasion will be a complete and utter disaster for millions.
Putin has threatened to undo all the Post WW II security arrangements and national borders. He trashes the international rule of law that has kept the peace in Europe for over seventy-five years. There will be millions of refugees flooding into the rest of Europe. Hundreds of thousands will perish in Ukraine.
The Russian invaders are already committing atrocities and war crimes in Odessa. The invasion itself is a violation of the Geneva Convention, making Putin a war criminal. The economic costs are mounting, and soon will be staggering. Only “shock and awe.” No dazzle. No sparkle. Just grunge and devastation.
As one of my sons said on the morning of 9/11, “Dad, I don’t think we can let this one slide”.
Consequences for all will be enormous. What will become of Ukraine? Will Putin stop there? Will sanctions make a whit of difference? Or just amount to a petty annoyance.
We as Americans must gladly bear the costs of sanctions and must be resolute in using all the soft power at our command to bring Putin to the table. We must bear in mind the alternative – a possible wider war throughout Europe with nukes. And whatever happens in Europe won’t stay in Europe.
The efforts of peacemakers will be the radiant transfigured face of those who follow the Way. And if it works, and let’s hope to God it does, my face will be a little brighter. Meanwhile, our hearts and prayers, and all the aid we can muster, must be with the Ukrainian people and those brave Russians protesting this insanity. The insanity of one man!
But for now, we’re betwixt and between. I feel we’re somewhat like Peter in the Transfiguration story – gobsmacked.
Jesus’ appearance is suddenly dazzling. He shimmers and shines like that first star which led the Eastern Sages to Bethlehem. It is indeed “Christ of the shining mountains, True and transfigured King.” God speaks almost the same words which began Jesus’ ministry at baptism, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”
And in the midst of it all are Elijah and Moses, talking to Jesus. Elijah and Moses, harbingers of the Messianic Age. When they appear, a new day is at hand. Better than the Age of Aquarius. Freedom and solidarity will reign in the land.
And poor Peter, he has no idea what to make of it all. He, obviously, skipped Bible class. He is consumed by the experience. He might as well be in paradise. He doesn’t know what to say. He’s like a little boy hauled in before the principal, afraid and stammering.” Finally, he blurts out, “Wow, this is great. Let’s make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Again, he has absolutely no idea what he is saying.
These are strictly Old Testament rumblings: the mountain, the cloud, the voice, the light show, Moses and Elijah. The glory of God is fully manifest in Jesus as culmination of deliverance and justice.
Elijah is the sign of God’s solidarity with us, the prophetic tradition of just dealings and God’s preferential option for the poor and defenseless. When we see Elijah, the time of fulfillment is near and very near.
Moses is the figure of deliverance from all that binds and holds us down from the full stature God intends for men and women.
It was not coincidence that those escaping the bondage of slavery referred to Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, as Moses.
Time and again, despite the floggings and vicious dogs, she led hundreds to freedom up North. Following the Drinking Gourd. It was the North Star of that constellation which would lead them to freedom. She was one of the most successful conductors and best known on the Underground Railroad
Yes, go down Moses and lead us all to Freedom Land where all God’s children can sparkle. Go down Moses
Jesus in this revelatory episode, is the embodiment of these two traditions. God’s will that we all sparkle like bright shiny beads – that we and all who follow become the Transfigured Christ. That’s the divine plan, told down through the ages in both Old and New Testaments.
It is God’s will that we, the Church, reflect that same radiant face of Christ upon the Mount of Revelation. God working through us to effect exactly the very same brilliance of Moses as he came down Mount Sinai. As Jesus upon the mount.
And sometimes Transfiguration takes place in the most unlikely of persons. Yeah, people like you and me. People like Fannie Lou Hamer and those of Freedom Summer down in Mississippi in the sixties.
Several Sundays ago I briefly mentioned Fannie Lou Hamer. She was a poor Mississippi sharecropper who, like Harriet Tubman, was also a conductor on the road to freedom as she led her people to the voting booth. She stood powerfully in a prophetic tradition where all count.
Let me tell you how this impoverished woman, with no more than a sixth-grade education, showed up the hypocrisy of a president of the United States and the Democratic Party. I don’t say she brought him low. President Johnson did that all by himself. As did a cowardly convention. That convention’s own racist behavior in expelling the Mississippi Freedom delegation was its own abject shame.
As King said, “It is always the right time to do the right thing.” The power structure of the party failed.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) delegates, seeking to unseat the regulars on the floor of convention, maintained that they, an interracial delegation, under the provisions of the Constitution, had the right to those seats.
Johnson, and the Democratic establishment was worried that Fannie Lou and her rump group would alienate their White southern, segregationist voters.
Party power brokers threatened, they tried to bribe, they promised all sorts of programs for Mississippi — if Fannie Lou and her people would just go back home, or at least accept a compromise.
Hubert Humphrey, whose spot on the ticket as VP was contingent upon getting the MFDP group to accept a compromise, pleaded for her understanding on the floor of convention. The compromise would be just two seats out of the sixty-eight allotted Mississippi. And mind you, neither of those two could be Fannie Lou Hamer. That was the deal, just two seats and no Fannie Lou Hamer. Definitely, not THAT woman!
Fannie Lou was aglow with Gospel radiance, Christ-like radiance. She was delivering her people into a new future. Johnson and the Democratic Party had no comprehension of the force they faced.
Fannie Lou was proving to be a most righteous sword of justice that God was wielding through our segregationist laws and racist attitudes, both South and North. Cutting a wide swath of Freedom.
She told Humphry that if this compromise was the price to be paid for getting all his promised benefits for Mississippi, that he, in the end, would get none of it. The entire MFDP delegation backed her.
When Fannie Lou gave her testimony before the Credentials Committee, her story of what she had endured to be accorded the basic rights of a First-Class American, the right to register and vote – the beatings, the humiliation, the sexual molestation at the hands of deputies and police back home, Johnson realized he was losing the ballgame.
President Johnson called an impromptu press conference in the middle of her testimony. And while the media attention swung to the White House for Johnson’s presser, which was a big “nothing burger.” Never even mentioned Humphrey, whom most thought would be introduced as his VP choice.
All the while, in Atlantic City, the TV cameras kept rolling. Recording every bit of what Fannie Lou had to say on behalf of her delegation of sixty-eight. Every word. And the ovation which followed. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room except for the “regulars,” who sat in stony-faced silence during her presentation. Shaking their heads in disgust.
President Johnson thought he had averted a whole bunch of bad publicity. He was wrong. That evening the nightly news programs put out her witness before all of America.
But wait, it gets worse.
Every delegate of the Mississippi regulars, rather than even accepting this minimal compromise, walked out en masse and went home, leaving a block of seats on the floor cordoned off by ropes.
Many delegates, supportive of Fannie Lou and her group, gave floor passes to the Freedom Delegation which, the next morning went under the ropes and occupied that block of seats.
The following day, the MFDP found that all those seats had been unbolted from the floor and taken away. So, Fannie Lou and her group just sat on the floor — made Johnson and the party regulars look like the chumps they were.
Fannie Lou may have lost her battle for those seats. But that evening on the six o’clock news, she overwhelmingly won the hearts of the American public.
Through it all, with her freedom songs, testimony, Bible references, and encouragement, she reflected back divine, Transfiguration. Her face shone and glittered with Gospel goodness. As did the faces of her delegation. True and Transfigured!
Now this was a Glory Attack if ever there was one!
This story of Transfiguration was preserved not as just a weird, one-off miracle. It is the destiny of God’s people. Our destiny. Yes, we, the Church.
Martin Luther King would berate the Church and its leadership for being the taillight of history. We are meant to be the headlight. A true and transfigured hundred-thousand-watt headlight.
Fannie Lou and all who have followed in her footsteps, those murdered volunteers buried in Mississippi’s swamps and lagoons, they are the True and Transfigured image of Christ. This is the glory God intends for us. We have but a few days. How shall we use them? To what end?
In San Bernardino, West Virginia and Ohio, that is the destiny of the House of Hope. A transfigured hundred-thousand-watt headlight.
I don’t know exactly what happened up on that mountain with those befuddled disciples. I wasn’t there. What sort of miracle or apparition they might have seen — I have no idea.
But I do know about the miracle of some transfigured souls who have come through the tribulation of addiction. They are the living testimony to “once was blind but now I see.” I have witnessed their sparkle and shine, eyes wide awake, as they delight in a new rebirth. I have seen that miracle with my own eyes
They, through their recovery, are splinters of light off that same True and Transfigured Christ. We, through our faithfulness, are Transfiguration.
This is the vision. This is the journey’s end. What we call sanctified. Now, as we prepare to enter our Lenten journey, let us keep our eyes on this Gospel prize.
And may we do all we can to support our sisters and brothers in Ukraine. And pray for the antiwar marchers in Russia. Blessed are the feet of those Messengers of Peace. Amen
February 27, 2022, Epiphany – Last
Transfiguration Sunday
“Bright and Shiny Church”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36
Blessed Are…
In the days of another former president, I would some days wake up, and after listening to the morning news think, “I could do better than that.” With some presidents, that was a more frequent thought than with others.
Mumbling about idiotic decisions and crony appointments, my wife knew it was safer not to say anything. Just let him rant and rave. Even presidents I had voted for often disappointed. How many times was I fuming over Obama’s boneheaded Middle East wars! I was probably the best Monday Morning Quarterback any president could have ever had.
As President Biden frequently says, “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the other guy” (or woman). My standards were tough – except for myself. We all disappoint. I know I have.
Jeremiah offers wise counsel here:
“Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out roots by the stream.”
“Trust in the Lord” is not some empty phrase. It means to heed the wisdom given to your heart and mind and soul. Heed the wisdom that builds community and binds us together and to the earth. Heed the wisdom that is tested by life experience and community reflection. You can even find some in the Bible.
We are given this because God has implanted agency within us. We can choose – for the better, and not the worse. Choose LIFE. That’s always the summons. Choose LIFE.
This trust is mentioned again in Psalm 1. The people who trust in the Lord are those wise who do not run with the wrong crowd or sit in the seat of the scoffers. The righteous, the tzaddikim, are in solidarity with neighbor and stranger, with creation – for solidarity is a better translation than “righteous.” This is a woman, a man, you can count on. These are people who know deep down they are loved and that same love just bubbles out of them. They’re people you want to be around. For lack of a better word, we call them saints. But that is the vocation of each who is called to follow the Way.
Take up with those who have followed that path, like Bryan Stevenson and Fannie Lou Hamer. They have been so tested and purified that they have become windows to God. As they lived out this wisdom they draw others in. Spirit just oozes out of them. They are tokens of God’s solidarity with us.
Luke in the Beatitudes enumerates the qualities of the tzaddikim:
“Blessed are you…” These blessings are about the so called “little people,” those without pretension.
Then follow the “woes.” Woe to you who are satiated with good things. Woe to you who hoard up more than you know what to do with. How is it that just three gazillionaires own more than half of all Americans? When did “enough” become “filthy rich?” Three people! Life is not about “whoever dies with the most toys wins.” Woe to the puffed up and self-important. You will always be searching if this is where you’re looking. Take the off-ramp. Choose LIFE.
When I drove plastic bottles in a big rig at night down to the Coke bottling plant in Los Angeles, several of us would be lined up in the street waiting to be unloaded. A Black fellow poorly dressed and quite odiferous would often approach our trucks looking for a handout.
After a few encounters, he would engage me in more extended conversation. I didn’t want to just give him a dollar or two, as if I was some superior, benevolent person – which I wasn’t. So,it came to be that I would carry some rags and chrome polish with me in the cab. I’d tell him that If he polished the bumper or the chrome on the wheels, I’d be worth five dollars to me.
When I asked him his name all he’d tell me was that it was “Can Man.” That’s all I ever got out of him.Obviously — that was what his shopping cart was full of, cans to be recycled for a little extra.
Several others would offer to help, so each night I’d make sure I had some extra cash with me. I figured that this small offering was the price of doing business in the big city. My encounters with Can Man always made my day. He was a blessing each night. I prayed I might have been as well.
When my youngest son, living in Cairo, mentioned that he would feel badly, seeing all the beggars in the street or at the entrances to mosques or churches, I told him about my approach to the destitute in Los Angeles.
Just take some extra coins in your pocket, each large enough that a person might use it to get something to eat from a street vendor. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. Whatever you can afford to part with.
Just remember, even Jesus didn’t feed everyone, didn’t heal everyone. And you ain’t in his class.
What counts is that everyone counts. What counts is that out of the abundance of our lives, we share what we can. And a bit more. Without judgment. Without expectation.
The Beatitudes are not a new law, not a way of earning divine favor. Rather, they serve as a direction as to where life is to be found. It’s about “seek and ye shall find” – more abundance than you ever counted on.” It is more about the sentiment of the heart than any notion of perfection or earning one’s heavenly brownie points. That’s already been taken care of when the Spirit touched mind and heart.
Blessed is not the same as “happy.” “Happy” is a transient superficial emotion. One can get “happy” from a bottle of Jim Beam.
To be BLESSED is to be grounded deep down in God’s goodness. It’s to be so grounded that goodness spills out of you and overflows into all you do, all that you are. BLESSED doesn’t depend on the approval of others. BLESSED just IS.
Bryan Stevenson’s mother lived the beatitude of reconciliation.
Blessedness restores broken relationships and enables life to go on. Bryan Stevenson tells of a lesson in saying you’re sorry his mother taught him that has stuck with him over the years. Sometimes the most embarrassing lessons are the ones that stick.
Blessed are those who say they’re sorry. Blessed are those who go the extra mile, those who seek to understand with the heart.
Bryan Stevenson’s mother is one tough lady, the sort of disciple Jesus needs. You have to be tough sometimes to be a parent these days. She, and any parent on God’s green earth knows, parenting is tough stuff – not at all for sissies or the unformed. There’s a reason sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t be having children.
For those who don’t know Bryan Stevenson, he is the Black lawyer who works on death penalty cases for indigent inmates awaiting execution in Montgomery, Alabama. As he listened to one inmate about to be led into the execution chamber who was having great difficulty in talking with Brian due to a severe stutter, Bryan had a flashback to an old memory from his childhood.
Bryan and some of his friends had been making fun of another boy with a speech impediment. As Bryan and his friends were laughing at this boy, he saw his mother looking at him with an expression he’d never seen before. Bryan continues his story in his book, Just Mercy:
It was a mix of horror, anger, and shame, all focused on me. I stopped my laughing instantly. I’d always felt adored by my mom, so I was unnerved when she called me over.
When I got to her, she was very angry with me. “What are you doing?”
“What? I didn’t do…”
“Don’t you ever laugh at someone because they can’t get their words out right. Don’t you ever do that!”
“I’m sorry.” I was devastated to be reprimanded by my mom so harshly. “Mom, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“You should know better, Bryan.”
“I’m sorry. I thought…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Bryan. There is no excuse, and I’m very disappointed in you. Now, I want you to go back over there and tell that little boy that you’re sorry.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Then I want you to give that little boy a hug.”
“Huh?”
“Then I want you to tell him that you love him.” I looked up at her and, to my horror, saw that she was dead serious. I had reacted as apologetically as I possibly could, but this was way too much.
“Mom, I can’t go over and tell that boy I love him. People will—”
She gave me that look again. I somberly turned around and returned to my group of friends. They had obviously seen my mother’s scolding; I could tell because they were all staring at me. I went up to the little boy who had struggled to speak.
“Look, man, I’m sorry.”
I was genuinely apologetic for laughing and even more deeply regretful of the situation I had put myself in. I looked over at my mother who was still staring at me. I lunged at the boy to give him a very awkward hug. I think I startled him by grabbing him like that, but when he realized that I was trying to hug him, his body relaxed and he hugged me back.
My friends looked at me oddly as I spoke.
“Uh…also, uh…I love you!” I tried to say it as insincerely as I could get away with and half-smiled as I spoke. I was still hugging the boy, so he couldn’t see the disingenuous look on my youthful face.
It made me feel less weird to smile like it was a joke. But then the boy hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear. He spoke flawlessly, without a stutter and without hesitation.
“I love you, too.” There was such tenderness and earnestness in his voice, and just like that, I thought I would start crying.[1]
That day Bryan learned compassion. Now, that’s a BLESSED moment!
Out of the tough love of such a Gospel-Soaked mother, Bryan grew to be the man he is today. She was a living, breathing Beatitude. Through her persistence of, Jesus would raise up a man who would end up devoting his life to serving the most despised and discarded. Those of you who are mothers know exactly what I am talking about.
This godly wisdom is the door to all that is holy, all that is true, all that is just. It is the open door to an abundant life. Trust this, and you will have put your hand in the hand of the Man from Galilee, The Man who stills the rough waters of life. What a Friend you will have – trust in him. This, my friends, is BLESSED.
Amen.
[1] Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, (New York, NY, Random House, 2000), p. 286,287.
February 13, 2022, Epiphany 6
“Blessed Are…”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20;
Luke 6:17-26
Exceeds All Expectations
Every spring our little church in Petersburg would host what was called “Soup and Sandwiches.” This was an opportunity for cannery workers who lived in what was known as “Tent City” an opportunity for a good meal and fellowship. Most of the churches in town participated.
And many years there was the discussion around the question, “Why should we always do this?”
One year I distinctly remember the answer of our junior warden, “Well, isn’t this what Jesus would want us to do?”
The quick rejoinder, “Is he going to pay for it?”
I’m thinking, pay what? We’re out a bit of electricity and heating oil. No big deal. Then the answer came to me.
“Yes, he’s going to pay for it. Jesus is going to use my wallet and any other wallet and checkbook here that’s been through the waters of baptism and he’s going to foot the bill.” And, again that year, he more than paid for it. In abundance.
That’s because “Abundance” is the hallmark of his ministry. Not scarcity. Jesus came to announce God’s Abundance. This guy EXCEEDS ALL EXPECTATIONS.
Exactly the abundance that issued from the call of Isaiah. As the temple filled with smoke and supernal visages soared through the chaos, Isaiah trembled in fear. A cosmic extravaganza worthy of a Superbowl halftime. He was not up to whatever was going on. This was time for a 911 call into Ghostbusters. The space-time continuum was coming unstuck. Seraphs and whole host of God-knows-what-else materialized out of the noxious cloud.
Throughout it all reverberated the earsplitting, “Holy, holy, holy,” of the phantasmagoric scene. Mega boom-box sound turned to the max.
“And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of Hosts!”
Actually, that’s probably not what he really said. It was more like, “HOLY CRAP!” AM I SCREWED!!! WE’RE ALL SCREWED.
Yes, we all are. Terminally, abysmally ignorant of what makes for any kind of life, any kind of society. We’re in deep stuff.
“Then I heard a voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”
Now, I don’t know about the physicality of that vision, if this stuff really, really happened, the temple being filled with a Fourth of July fireworks production; or if what had transpired was solely between Isaiah’s two ears. But whatever it was, God had Isaiah’s complete and undivided attention.
It was either respond or just give up – lie down and die – a do-or-not-do moment.
In all the smoke and din Isaiah had a choice. And don’t we all?
Isaiah chose LIFE and ABUNDANCE – a more excellent way. He chose to be a servant of that Word given him. His answer to that call would exceed all expectations. That’s always God’s call to each of us. And in our acceptance, might we catch a faint echo of that haunting refrain, “Holy, holy, holy.”
In an instant, not only Isaiah’s wallet, but his entire life was baptized in that fire and smoke. Imagine! And all this time I thought it was about the car, the chicks and the loudest boom box on the stereo system. Was I ever out to lunch! Clueless.
I don’t know about an unclean people, but in the midst of this raging pandemic we’re surely reading about a whole bunch of deluded, thoughtless people. As our football season draws to a close, several teams are headed for the playoffs and it’s all on the line. How many fans will be crowded together cheek by jowl without any masks? We may or may not be a people of unclean lips, but certainly a people of little sense. It’s into this imbecility God’s call comes. That’s how it found each of us. Not always in our brightest moments.
For all who answer, God’s will is to exceed our expectations. Those who answer are called from the kitchen, from cotton fields, university classrooms. They are called from long lines of preachers. They are called from mind-numbing work in Amazon fulfillment centers and post offices. Called from union halls and corporate executive suites, or off the factory floor. Called to exceed all expectations.
I caught the vision at a speech by Dr. King. We are all here because of some event, some vision, some nudge. My Methodist friends call this prevenient grace – grace that goes before us, directing us to where Life is to be had.
One of my Pilgrim Place friends posted the story of the fortuitous intersection between one of God’s servants, Martin Luther King, Jr. and a young boy.
This was an eleven-year-old white boy living in the black section of Kentucky, living for the fall of 1969 with his mom, both guests of Dr. Abbie Clement Jackson, his mom’s best friend and a national leader in the AME Zion Church. Abbie became over that fall his adopted grandma. David Russell, a relative of one of the Pilgrims here at Pilgrim Place, shares his remembrance of the in-the-flesh Good News of healing and restoration:[1]
“One Saturday morning, Grandma Abbie asked me to wait by the front door to greet her ‘escort’ and let her know he was here to walk her down to the AME church conference where Grandma was the keynote speaker that day. Her ‘escort’ was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He was already becoming well known and I was excited!
“Later that afternoon, King, Jr. and [the boy’s] parents came back to the house for tea, coffee, treats and conversation with Grandma, Mom and me. At one point, Martin Luther King Jr. turned to me and asked: “David what is it like being the only white boy in an all-Negro school?” I thought for a moment about my friends Cecil and Ellis, my Scout troop, my church and I said… “It’s normal”.
“The ‘Beloved Community’ begins when we can feel comfortable in our own skins and respect the skin of the person next to us. When we look into each other’s eyes and begin to see a Child of God, then being together in community begins to be ‘normal.’”
This was a journey that summer exceeding all expectations.
The vision of what might be, what ought to be, came to Fanny Lou Hamer, a little girl with no more than a sixth-grade education who toiled in the cotton fields of Mississippi to help support her impoverished family.
Fannie Lou was raised up to be one of the most powerful women in the civil rights movement of the sixties, a giant for justice.
Kate Larson, in her new biography of Fannie Lou, Walk with Me[2], brings this amazing woman’s story to life. Fannie’s moment comes as a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Freedom Delegation to the Democratic National Convention in 1964. They were demanding to be seated in place of the all-white segregationist, official slate of delegates, from that state.
Here’s Fannie’s story as told by her biographer:
“She wore a borrowed dress, one suitable for such an important occasion. A Mississippi sharecropper, she never had new things. Used, reused, patched, and patched again—these defined the fabric of her everyday experience. Someone loaned her white shoes and a white purse, too. From her seat at the table at the front of a packed hearing room, she scanned the faces of the men and women waiting to hear her testimony. The din of the conversations and rustling papers and creaking chairs muffled the notice of whirring television cameras. She folded her hands to steady herself. A man to her right gave her the cue to start.
“’Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland and Senator Stennis. It was the thirty-first of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.’ Her white landlord, she said, evicted her when she returned home that night from Indianola because he told her, ‘We are not ready for that in Mississippi.’”
Fannie Lou and more than sixty other Mississippians had gone to Atlantic City, site of the convention, to press their case to unseat the white segregationist delegation.
“It was late in the afternoon and the summer humidity seeped into the crowded room. Hamer’s brown skin glistened with sweat. The committee members shifted and settled in their seats, and the chatter in the room subsided into a few whispers. The white Mississippi delegates shook their heads to disgust while she spoke. Without notes, from memory, from her heart, Hamer recounted the struggles, terror, and violence she had endured trying to do the most basic thing a citizen of any county can do: register to vote.
“Her Mississippi drawl ebbed and flowed through her words, giving them a cadence that drew the audience in. She described the death threats and gunshots that had rewarded her demands for civil rights. The room grew quiet. When she recounted how brutally the police had beaten her one day for standing up, eyes welled with tears.
“Her eight-minute plea ended with a question that haunted many for years afterward. ‘Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives are threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?’
President Johnson, fearing he might lose that white segregationist vote, fearing the attention Fannie’s address to the convention was getting, to distract the national attention, called an impromptu press conference. A conference called on the spot, right in the middle of Fannie’s address, succeeded in capturing the media for three and a half minutes.
“Johnson miscalculated, however. The television cameras had kept rolling through her speech, capturing her every word, and the evening news programs replayed her testimony and the ovation that followed. The whole nation watched as a dirt-poor Mississippi sharecropper with a sixth-grade education shamed them into acknowledging how deeply and profoundly broken American democracy had become. That day, Fannie Lou Hamer called on Americans to walk with her toward equality and justice for all.[3]
Certainly exceeded President Johnson’s expectations.
This, a Gospel Journey that has exceeded all expectations. And there are still miles to go. This work is not done. And so it is with us here at St. Francis.
As with the call of Isaiah, as with the summons of Jesus that morning to those on a fishing excursion. Fished all night caught nary a minnow. Jesus instructed them, instructs us, to keep at it. Lower your nets a little deeper. That’s what Jesus tells his disciples. “Lower your nets a bit deeper.” God alone knows what’s in the offing. Who knows what that effort will surface? Just might be beyond our puny expectations.
This morning each of us might have been in a dozen other places. But we’ve chosen to be here. Let’s hope and pray and see what God might do with us. The results just might astound. Exceed all expectations. So, here we are, O Lord. Here we are. Send us. Amen
[1] David, Russell, “Little Blessings,” Shared by sister-in-law Marry Russell in the Pilgrim Place Google Group (with permission) January 17, 2022.
[2] Kate Clifford Larson, Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).
[3] Op. cit., 1-2.
February 6, 2022, Epiphany 5
“Exceeds All Expectations”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13); Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11;
Luke 5:1-11
The Life of the Party
I was in my office at our little church in Petersburg, Alaska, when I received a call from my friend Fr. Gary, the priest at St. John’s in Ketchikan. There they had a Seaman’s Center connected to the church, a not-unusual ministry for Episcopal churches in port towns. There men (and back then, they were all men) could get a warm bed, play cards or watch TV, wash clothes and get a good meal during the few days their ship was in port.
Gary wanted to know if it might be possible that I knew of any place their manager (I’ll call him Bob) could stay while the state ferry was docked in our town for a day or so. Sure, I told him we had a foldout sofa in my office that made into a bed exactly for such purposes.
So, Bob, a fellow in his late fifties, and I connected by phone and I told him where we were located, but he needed to know that in the early evening
he’d have to keep to himself because on Thursday nights we hosted an AA meeting. “Great,” said Bob. “I can make my meeting.”
Well, Bob came and went. Made his meeting, I supposed, and was on the ferry the next morning to Juneau. I’d met him before when I was down at St. John’s, and he seemed like a nice fellow. I was glad we could help.
The next Sunday, one of the women on our altar guild caught me in the hallway with a question. “I don’t drink wine, but somehow when I got things setup for communion, what I poured out of the bottle didn’t smell like wine.” I took a taste. Charlotte was right – it wasn’t wine. It was water.
Our overnight guest had turned the wine to water.
I later told Fr. Gary that we’d have to look into his seminary degree. And maybe look over his ordination exams. He’d led poor Bob astray. I wondered if Bob had actually made his meeting that night.
“On the third day” – in scripture the most amazing things always seem to happen on the third day – “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’”
You know the rest of the story. Gallons of water are turned into wine so the feasting can continue for the normal seventeen days of a wedding. Not only were Jesus and his disciples present. The entire town was present. This wedding would have been the bash of the year. Indeed, a good time was had by all.
Eastern Christianity celebrates this miracle as the Epiphany, not the star and the arrival of wisemen. It is through this occurrence that Jesus’ divinity is perceived. When Jesus is at the party, there is joy and good times in abundance.
If this is so, how is it that many too often leave our churches feeling so beat down and worse for the wear? Or even worse, bored out of their skulls.
The one take-away from this story is, God wants us to thrive, to be joyful. As Jesus provided such fine wine, he was the Life of the Party.
How is it that we have too often taken the joyous fine wine of the Gospel of Good News and turned it into scolding, or the flat, stale water of irrelevance?
How is it that our country which springs from lofty Promise, has turned the dream of America into the polluted river of Jim Crow? Turned it into banishment to reservations and impoverishment? Turned it into insurrection and quack nostrums hawked at the highest level?
I got the news this Monday that our supervising doctor in West Virginia for House of Hope had died of COVID-19. He was an anti-vaxer. He’d fallen for the junk science spread by the former president and Fox News.
Now we have some senators and other politicians comparing a COVID-19 mandate to the Holocaust. Racial hate seems to be endless with these people. No fine wine here, only rank pollution.
“Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) on Wednesday joined that growing number of elected Republicans who have compared COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the horrors imposed on Jewish people by Nazis during the Holocaust.”[1]
“Numerous 2022 Republican House candidates, Republican members of state legislatures and conservative media personalities have also invoked Nazi Germany in criticizing mask and vaccine rules.”[2]
As no members of that party have called out these people for this racist trope, they must be okay with it. Have they and their party lost all sensitivity to how this sounds to our Jewish brothers and sisters? Have they no shame? The Proud Boys and the Three Percenters would be just fine with such trash.
I can still picture the grimace and wince of Dr. Birx as she sat at a press conference while Dr. Trump expounded on the miracle cures of bleach and ultraviolet lights. Then, on to horse-dewormer and herd “mentality.” The fine wine of our best science and medical knowledge turned into putrefying
ignorance. Yes — the transformation of the fine wine of learning transformed into lies and propaganda. And for too many, with this raging pandemic, the party’s over. Over 800,000 Americans dead. For them the party is permanently over. No life here.
Here was the offering of the miracle of our best science, and it was squandered – poured down the drain. Fine wine gone to waste. And people died.
This coming Monday we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King. He was a prophet for the ages who took our sordid history of racism and transformed it into promise. A foundational promise born from Gospel Joy. All are welcome. All flourish. It’s the content of character that counts. Not any outward appearance. Not class, learning, or color. Nobility IS character.
As the 1619 Project demonstrates, for many this promise was stillborn. Slaves were part of the story from the inception. And, within a generation we had banished to starvation some of the same people invited to the mythic first Thanksgiving.
As my new, favorite poet, Joyce Chisale of Mawali says, “Little by little.” Little by little does our nation move into this promise. But we have so far to go. So far.
But when one encounters the sewage spewed by ignorant and hateful minds, I grow tired of it all. When we encounter our inability to deal with voter suppression and election corruption, we all grow tired. Sick and tired of being sick and tired!
So enough with the garbage already. Let’s look at the beckoning promise. Let’s taste a sip of some of the fine wine brought to our democracy party around the Liberty Tree.
My friend, Martha Morales, a pastor at Claremont United Methodist Church, spoke to that promise in a sermon recently on the Methodist tradition of the Watch Night Service, held on New Years eve. The Watch Night of which she spoke was held on the eve of the day the Emancipation Proclamation was to take effect.[3]
Pastor Martha writes of the Methodist tradition of the Watch Night Service — that she’d “come to know the Watch Night Service from another vantage point, that of the African American Church. This is from the African American lectionary:
“As close as it can be historically pinpointed, the initial observance of the Watch Night Service in the African American church began on December 31, 1862, when the service was referred to as “Freedom’s Eve.” On that cold December evening thousands of enslaved descendants from Africa gathered in churches and private homes to pray and praise God, anxiously awaiting the news that the Emancipation Proclamation had become law. Prior to this evening, rumors had circulated that at the stroke of midnight, January 1, 1863, all slaves in the Confederate States would be declared legally free, as a result of the new laws set in motion by President Abraham Lincoln. When the declaration of their human independence was affirmed, the freed slaves shouted, sang songs of joy, and fell to their knees with thankful hearts for the new era of freedom that had come their way. After this occurrence African Americans continued to gather annually to commemorate their independence and praise God for bringing them safely through another year and the promise of a new era of freedom on the horizon. This was the beginning of a tradition that still remains.”[4]
This tradition is of the finest of wines our nation has produced, enriching the souls of all. Medicine for healing. A good remembrance for tomorrow’s celebration of Dr. King. The work is far from done, but “little by little…”
Having read Martha’s words, Juneteenth will have a richer, deeper meaning this year. You remember, June 19 – Juneteenth – is the date that former slaves in Texas belatedly learned of their emancipation.
In the midst of sedition, lies and subversion, there is one Republican who gets the Profiles-in-Courage award, and he gets the Last Word, or close to it.
This Last Word today goes to Mitt Romney who had the moral courage to stand up in the well of the senate and say, “Enough!” Enough of the lies, the grift and corruption.
Here is part of his speech as he cast his vote to convict on the impeachment charges in Trump’s Senate trial:
This is what Senator Romney said:
“As a Senator juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is part of who I am…I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.”[5]
After pausing to collect himself and reviewing the charges – asking a foreign government to investigate a political rival (make up dirt), Sen. Romney continued:
“The president withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so. The president delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders. The president’s purpose was personal and political. Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust. What he did was not ‘perfect.’ No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office I can imagine.”
“Were he [Romney] to ignore the evidence and what he believed his oath and the Constitution required, it would expose his character ‘to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.’”[6]
In a stagnant cesspool of pollution, his words were a flowing spring of finest wine for our democracy, genuine refreshment of our liberties.
On Monday, we celebrate one whose words and actions have watered the Tree of Liberty. As the Senate moves on to consider the John Lewis Voting Rights act, many of my fellow partisans would blame solely two senators if this fails to pass.
But they are wrong.
In years past, senators on the both sides of the aisle have time and again voted nearly unanimously to renew this legislation. Where are they now? Senators, this is your Patrick Henry moment. Your Dr. King moment. Your John Lewis moment.
In Atlanta this week Our president put the existential question to America:
“So, I ask every elected official in America: How do you want to be remembered? The consequential moments in history, they present a choice. Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”[7]
For me and my house, I say, let’s pour out the fine wine of equity, opportunity, fair play, unity and solidarity. Let’s go for a FAIR VOTE. Let’s raise glasses of the finest vintage of democracy to Dr. King tomorrow. The fine wine of full inclusion of ALL. That’s the Life of the only Party that counts. Amen.
[1] Josephine Harvey, “Another GOP Lawmaker Compares Vaccine Mandates to the Holocaust,” Huffpost, January 12, 2022.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Martha Morales, “Freedom’s Eve,” a sermon preached at Claremont United Methodist Church, January 2, 2022.
[4] “A Watch Night Celebration: New Year’s Eve.” See Behold a New Thing for “Ideas for Celebrating a Service of Watch Nigh; The Tradition of Watch Night; How to Explore Watch Night.” Online location: http://www.ucc.org/worship/worship-ways/pdfs/2007/07Behold -A-New-hing.pdf. accessed 21 July 2011 See also Kachun, Mitch. Festivals of Freedom: Memory and meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations. 1808-1915. Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.; Williams, William H. O Freedom! Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1987.; Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1963; reprint edition, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1995. Also see the Cultural Resource unit for Watch Night 2011 in Brandon Thomas Crowley, guest lectionary commentator, The African American Lectionary, http://www.theafricanamericanlectionary.org/PopupLectionaryReading.asp?LRID=246
[5] Adam Schiff, Midnight in Washington (New York: Random House, 2021), 421.
[6] Op.cit., 422.
[7] Joseph R. Biden, quoted in Jackson Richman. “Biden Challenges Republicans in Fiery Speech: ‘Do You Want to be on the Side of Dr. King or George Wallace?’”, ’Mediaite+, Jan 11th, 2022,
January 16, 2022, Epiphany 2
“The Life of the Party”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 62:1-6; Psalm 36:5-10; “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”;
John 2:1-11
When Through the Deep Waters
Water, the stuff of life or dangerous, and swift the river. The staff of life or chaos and death.
It is the stuff of our baptism into a new life – a new life offering companionship and also the danger of where that life might lead.
I find it fitting, and intriguing, that the story of Jesus baptism is paired in our lectionary readings with the creation of Israel as it passes through the River Jordan to become a new people.
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;”
But let me get there with a story from my early childhood.
As a young boy, one of my favorite stories was about a little tug boat, “Little Toot.” Little Toot was the most rambunctious screw-up in New York harbor. Up to mischief of one sort or another. He had no sense of propriety. Just like boys my age. His father’s constant refrain, “Won’t you ever grow up?” Sounds like a parent, doesn’t it?
Well, the little boat finally goes one prank too far and is escorted by stern police boats out of the harbor and banished. Out there alone at night, out on the high seas as a storm gathers itself. Soon waves are crashing all around. Lightening streaks through the skies. Thunder deafens the ear.
Amidst mountainous waves, completely dwarfing the small tug, Little Toot spies a S.O.S. flare high up in the sky. The story ends most satisfactorily as Little Toot rescues a distressed ocean liner and, as clouds part to sunshine, brings the ship safely into harbor to his father’s praise.
I had been given a record of this story. With all the terrifying sound effects of the raging storm and towering waves, that’s where my mind froze. In my imagination I can still hear the fog horn, the music swelling as Little Toot was lifted on one gigantic wave, only to plummet down the other side.
It may be that I identified our family’s dysfunction with Little Toot’s predicament. My father’s volatile moods and temper were that storm that crashed around helpless Little Toot. At most any evening meal, the tension in our family was like waiting for the first thunder clap of that story.
In the second-grade room of our Sunday school, one morning a fellow came in asking for me. I was to follow him into the church. My teacher said it was okay and there I met my brother and another adult from his class and we were led up the aisle of this huge sanctuary of the Methodist church our family attended in Compton, California.
I remember the minister in a black robe saying some things, then sprinkling water on my head. Afterwards, I was led back to my Sunday School room.
That might have been the end of it except our family continued to attend church up until I was in junior high school.
Over the years, I now realize that no matter the storm, my baptism has always pointed my small boat towards a safe harbor where there is welcome.
After we stopped attending church as a family, I continued because my girlfriend went. Church was a short walk about six blocks up the main street behind our house. She lived across the street from me and we’d walk up together holding hands.
Later, I would be invited to the college group on campus by my roommate – Wesley Foundation. At that point I had pretty much dropped out of church. Our new pastor was so conservative he opposed fair housing, equal rights for Black people. Women’s rights hadn’t even appeared on the scene yet, but he would have been against that, too.
It was plain to me that either Jesus loved all people – and we should as well – or he didn’t matter much at all. I was on the didn’t-matter-much-at-all end of that argument. Our church affirmed the upper crust, not so much others. Jesus seemed irrelevant to their plight. Of course, our family didn’t know any of these in the Willowbrook section of town.
Our college group had chartered, along with other college Wesley Foundations in Southern California, a bus to the quadrennial national conference of Methodist college students to Lincoln, Nebraska. We had been talking up this event for some time in our group. It was the in-thing to do.
The keynote speaker was one Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I’d never really heard of him, but when I actually heard him speak on the closing night, I said to myself, “If this is what the church is about, sign me up.”
At which point, that mysterious journey up the central aisle of my church in Compton became real. I was a part of THAT club, THAT family. I had found a taste of that Beloved Community where ALL did matter. This is what Jesus was talking about.
I met Black students from the South there who told me of their lives. The scales fell from my eyes. I had known nothing of the KKK and night riders, of segregation and lynching. Or separate and unequal, or just lack of opportunity.
All this newfound knowledge was dangerous. My Republican, conservative parents were not ready at all for this Epiphany. This was dangerous, my father told me. I should just let these things be. Fair housing would just run-down property values. Our only responsibility to Black people was “don’t say the N word” and just be “nice.” Whatever that meant. Be “nice.” Obviously, nothing about being just or finding out what they’ve endured. Talk about “deep waters.” My dad was soon convinced that a communist cult had taken me in. Maybe worse, a cabal of Democrats. For a number of years, we didn’t talk.
As I began to read the adult church curriculum of Bultmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, and King’s writings, I discovered that my baptism had now led me far beyond simple Sunday school platitudes. Or maybe it was that these writers had put meat on those basic Sunday school bones. My new learning and experiences were definitely an Epiphany. A whole new world of the Spirit opened up. Joe Wesley Matthews of the Ecumenical Institute presented a muscular vision for my newly developing faith. Not for the timid.
Later, as a medic in the army, my education in diversity continued, serving alongside folks of all sorts. Some, their word you could take to the bank, others were best avoided. People are just people; you take them as they come. Race, class, background – seemed to make little difference. I ended up friends with people I never would have imagined encountering. I met my first Buddhist friend. Another Epiphany. God works through all sorts.
I wonder if that’s something of what happened with Jesus as he emerged from the waters, or was it the desert time? Was he baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire? Did all this happen suddenly like a thunder clap, or smolder in him slowly as he lived into his ministry.
I have had Spirit-filled mentors along the way who enlarged the promise of my baptism. By word and example, they were “Little Christs” to me. They were seeds of hope. By their steadfast persistence and belief in what I could become, they kept that hope alive, even when I had lost it.
Later in Los Angeles, I found a church community that did affirm a generosity of welcome – to ALL. Many a Sunday as we closed worship, me on the string bass, with that raucous song, “Let the Sun Shine In,” from the musical “Hair,” I knew I stood on holy ground.
All the while living amidst the hustle and bustle, sometimes the chaos of life. I figure my baptism is my general orders for living in chaos. In the military, general orders enumerated one’s duties should, in the midst of chaos, you become separated from your unit or from command authority. Or taken prisoner. Such things as render aid to those around you, secure government property, work with others to restore order. By our baptism, we all have holy orders, both lay and clergy – the same – live into the Beloved Community and welcome ALL.
Our nation is presently in CHAOS, with forty-some percent believing that Joe
Biden is not a legitimate president, and a good number in denial about the insurrection on January 6th – just a normal tour group of visitors to the capital.
The mandate of baptism is to continue to work for a nation in which ALL are included, have a say and a chance for sharing in the bounty of America. In Caesar’s time Christians did not have this privilege, but we do.
Baptism is entered into as a life process. Even Jesus was said to have grown in wisdom. He grew to understand that even a Syrophoenician woman was included in God’s embrace.
We work in an imperfect system with imperfect people. I trust the Holy Spirit which descended on Jesus at his baptism to continue to mingle amongst us, bringing out our best. Lincoln referred to this happy outcome as the “better angels of our nature” taking hold.
These days, chaos swirls about us and about our nation as much as it ever did around Little Toot. What we are promised is that there is a welcoming harbor – a place of refuge.
As we are reminded of the chaotic scenes on the one-year anniversary of January 6th insurrection, equally distressing scenes flood in from our nation’s hospital emergency entrances. Images flash across our TV screen of utterly exhausted medical staff as the Omicron variant lays America low. The camera lens catches nurses scrambling to find one more bed. Struggling to resuscitate another patient. Again, gift shops and lunch rooms are repurposed to accommodate the sickest. Hallways are in utter disorder. Staff rushing to critical patients with IV lines and bottles as various monitors beep a cacophony of alarms. Doctors flipping frantically through charts of the newly admitted. Chaos. Exhaustion.
When through the deep waters…we will hold on to one another. We will keep faith. Our baptismal holy orders.
“Weeping may endure the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Though a deep darkness has settled over our nation, as Tony Judt put it, though “Ill fares the land,” there remains yet another, a newer chapter, to be written in the history books. The content of that chapter is up to us.
We continue the work to strengthen and uphold one another. All working on the House of Hope in both the Ohio Valley and in San Bernardino, we press forward towards the goal. Funding is now in sight.
WE HAVE SO MUCH MORE WORK awaiting us in the days ahead. The problems we face are legion: racism, voter suppression, the unleashed forces of sedition, a right-wing disinformation media complex, addiction, apathy, hunger and homelessness in our streets. AND, not the least, a still-raging pandemic.
It’s like housework – it’s never done. But as St. Paul proclaims, “Here we are. Alive.”
That is the full meaning of our baptism into the Jesus Movement, the Beloved Community.
Yet, in Christ, here we are, ALIVE! Amen.
January 9, 2022, The Baptism of our Lord
“When Through the Deep Waters”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8:14-17;
Luke 3:15-17; 21-22
