No Slouching
New beginnings are afoot for the Forneys. Our son has become engaged to a most delightful woman with a wedding planned a year or so down the road. When asked if she or her family came from any faith tradition, he answered that they were African Methodist Episcopal. That’s when we learned that Alexis was African-American. Definitely a new beginning.
She’s shared a couple of Christmas holidays with us, and our original assessment is correct. She’s most delightful. This June we go back East to meet her family. Ours compared to hers is rather tiny. Even though she was an only child, she has scads of aunts and uncles. We are definitely looking forward to an expanded and enriched family in the years ahead.
That is the beauty and wonder of new beginnings. That, and the fact they love each other dearly. New beginnings are a delight.
Over the years, they will learn what every couple must learn if they are to stay together. There will be differences of opinion, differences of values, differences of temperament and style. The bit about “the two shall become one flesh” can work splendidly on the physical level. At the beginning. But differences will emerge that need to be worked out. This is something so close to the heart that it can’t be faked. It takes work, not excuses. My parents always urged us to stand tall to the challenge. No slouching! My father hated slouching.
I’ve worked with more than one alcoholic whose refrain was, well, if you were stuck with my wife, it’d drive you to drink also. If that’s the case, all you end up with is a sad, sad “pity party.” A party friends and family soon want nothing to do with. You’ll be left all by your lonesome to count the cracks on the wall and drink yourself into oblivion. So sad, so sad. Pity Parties are a form of moral and spiritual slouching. Giving up.
I tell divorced persons, that unless they want to go through the same mess with their next partner, they ought to think about getting some professional counseling. Otherwise, the same passivity, the same rage, the same excuses will just as surely devour the next go around.
Or you can get a life. Make a life. No slouching.
The story is told in the Book of Joshua of when the band of Israelite wanderers camped at Gilgal, they celebrated the Passover. Instead of manna, for the first time, they “ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.”
As bountiful as the land is, as freely as it’s blessings flow, at some point the manna ceases and the garden needs tending. It’s sweat-of-the-brow time If one is going to reap a harvest. One needs to sow, do the weeding and cultivating.
Jesus tells a story of a young fellow who knows it all. No one can tell him what to do. Chores are for the stupid. “Move out now while you know it all and are the smartest gal or guy in the room.” No more of their stupid rules.
So, he demands his share of the family fortune and sets off for a promised land of good luck, women and high times. It all works for a while. It always does. But at some point, reality sets in. Especially when the money’s gone and friends begin to evaporate.
Yes, reality sets in. Isn’t reality inconvenient? Not much leeway. Not much slack. The hunger pangs become a big ache in the stomach. Cold, hard sidewalks don’t promote much sleep. The loneliness becomes unbearable.
It’s reality check time. How’s it all working out for you? Eventually the manna runs out. Good Times Charley is in his cups.
The excuses are legion. Everybody’s against me. The system’s rigged. Everyone’s corrupt, so why not? Slouching to the max.
As my friend Jim Rhoads says, “How do you know when an addict is lying? His lips are moving.” Fact is, there’s either recovery or there’s not. Excuses are a pretty poor diet. It is, as Yoda says in Star Wars, “Do or Not Do. There is no Try.”
Yes, DO or NOT DO. Excuses, resentment and blame are the putrefying dish served up to too many poor Whites in the South. “You may not be much. Your life may be going nowhere, but at least you’re better than… [fill in the blank] …” Jim Crow might momentarily satisfy, but in the end, it’s a pretty thin diet. Even for White Supremacists and their neo-Nazi buddies. Eventually, the politics of resentment do not satisfy. No slouching!
I love the story of the newly arrived preacher at a small country church. One day as he is walking down a dirt road, he spies a farmer out in his field — A most productive field. He hadn’t seen this fellow in church yet, so he ambles over to the wooden rail fence and calls out to the man.
“Hi, there. That’s a mighty fine farm you have there”. Indeed, the corn was as “high as an elephant’s eye” and ears were plump and almost ripe for the picking.
The preacher continued, “if I had a farm like that, I’d think I’d want to come to church and let God know how thankful I was.”
“Well,” drawled the farmer. “I want to tell you; the farm certainly didn’t look like this when God had it all to himself.’
St. Paul calls us to be “cooperators with God.”
The incredible, awful and renewing Grace of God is the moment of awakening. It’s Reality-Check Time. If we’re going to eat, the garden needs a whole lot of work. That’s what vocation is all about. The beauty of it is that we’re needed. And in useful work, we grow into the stature of Christ.
Over two hundred years ago our nation set out upon a new venture. The story is told — it may an apocryphal myth — that as Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention he was asked by a passing woman, “What sort of government have you gotten us, Mr. Franklin?” “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
Within only a short time, trouble as well as opportunity mounted. The disputations that would eventually tear the nation asunder, culminating in the Civil War, had their inception in what all thought to be the best possible compromise to be had. The best form of government humans could devise. We are still bedeviled by the flaws in that original design. That, and tragic choices early on. Problematic from the inception — read The 1619 Project.[1]
The remnants of a slave constitution linger, almost guaranteeing a fatal imbalance of power which allows for a minority government. With a Senate that gives disproportionate power to a minority, through gerrymandering, race hatred and voter suppression, this anti-democratic arrangement could likely be our undoing. Isn’t that what the January 6th Commission is all about? The makings of insurrection. Even during the Civil War, the Stars and Bars did never besmirch and disgrace the halls of the Capitol.
Malevolent forces have seized upon the internal contradictions.
It is time to tend our national garden. To renew our democracy. As in the story of the “Prodigal Son,” it’s time to wake up. To open our eyes. That is the moment of Awful, Sustaining Grace. That’s the moment a drunk comes to the realization that he or she is killing themselves — when they’ve hit bottom.
That’s the moment the drug addict realizes that he just might not have survived this last overdose. Fentanyl could really kill. It might be the one and same moment that she realizes that there is indeed something to live for. That someone dear loves them. With one fellow, it was the enlightenment that he actually could get a job. There was a purpose to his life. All that is the Grace of Hard Knocks and Splendid Opportunity. It’s what that Hebrew band realized at Gilgal. It’s what a son in a far country realized.
The voice of the Holy Spirit is urging diligence, productivity. No slouching. That’s what reality-check time is all about. A moment of awful, terrifying Grace. The moment for repentance and turning around.
In Obery Hendricks we have a prophet who does not sugar-coat the choice now before this nation. In his book, Christians Against Christianity, he lays out how a segment of the church has aided and abetted America’s descent into our recent moral and political disaster.[2] Theological slouching to be sure.
Obrey Hendricks, author of numerous books, professor at Columbia University, biblical scholar, and an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, comes thundering out of our national wilderness like a modern-day Jeremiah. His voice filled with the judgement and promise of God.
His message to America is God’s wake-up call. This is his thesis:
“A travesty, that’s how I would characterize Christianity in America today. A travesty, a brutal sham, tragic charade, a cynical deceit. Why? Because the loudest voices in American Christianity today – those of right-wing evangelicals—shamelessly spew a putrid stew of religious ignorance and political venom that is poisoning our society, making a mockery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Their rhetoric in the name of their Lord and Savior is mean-spirited, divisive, appallingly devoid of the love for their neighbors and outright demonizes those who do not accept their narrow views—even fellow Christians. Perhaps most shocking is their enthusiastic, almost cultish support for the cruel, hateful policies and pronouncements of President Donald Trump, whose words and deeds more often than not have been the very antithesis of the Christian faith.”
Too many Christians have sold their faith for this rancid mass of potage. The stench rises to the heavens.
This autocratic mindset and upchuck theology, hostile to the spirit of democracy, has through the perpetrating of a BIG LIE, sucked in all sorts of complicit malefactors.
Reading this week of Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – the expose` of her emails to Trump’s close advisor Mark Meadows, urging the overthrow of the 2020 election, actually, the overthrow of our government — this is nothing short of sedition. And Thomas was the only justice voting AGAINST allowing the January 6th Committee’s access to those e-mails. As Dan Rather asks: “What did he know, and when did he know it?”
Our moment of Grace is this Reality-Check Time for America. Is this the path we want to go down as a nation? In nation after nation, this is the path to unfreedom. The path to tyranny.
That we might rouse from our slumber, that we might tend to the flickering dim light of our democracy – that is Hendricks’ plea. Wake up, America. Wake up, Christians.
Obery’s loving Christian parents worked diligently to instill pride and ensure that their children “felt their God-given worth in a society that did not fully value children like us.”[3]
“No slouching.” That was his mother’s prescription for self-respect. “No slouching, they admonished; stand tall and proud and ‘act like somebody.’ Mumbling was unacceptable; we had to speak up and look the other in the eye.”[4]
No slouching. It’s now up to us. Will we be what Democracy looks like?
This is as good as any wake-up call we can expect — to the Church, to our nation. It’s all on the line: “No slouching.” God has need of each and every one of us. So does our nation. No slouching! This deafening claxon we now hear is the Awful, Liberating Grace of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Nikole Hannah-Jones, et al. ed., The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (New York: One World, 2021).
[2] Obery M. Hendricks, Jr., Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals are Destroying our Nation and our Faith (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2021).
[3] Hendricks, op.cit., p. xiv.
[4] Ibid.
March 27, 2022, Lent 4
“No Slouching”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney, St. Francis Episcopal Mission
Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21;
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
I began as a geology major in college, but in my senior year transferred to the psychology department. It seemed, more and more that studying rocks and the eons long ago of tree ferns and dinosaurs had little to do with the real-life problems all around me.
It may have been that the impetus was a search for why my own family was so off the rails. We couldn’t seem to get through a dinner without my parents ending up in a big family fight. I was too young to have any idea as to what the underlying issues were. More than once, Dad would just up and thew down his plate, breaking it into smithereens, food flying. Our dog, Skippy running for cover. Then in silence, he’d stomp out of the kitchen. Those of us remaining would quietly finish our dinner and leave the table. As quickly as possible.
I began to get an inkling that there could be some deep, underlying issues when in high school I took Mr. Stowe’s psychology class in my senior year. My girlfriend also was taking it and we’d discuss it over lunch.
Mr. Stowe was enamored by the weird behavior one encountered. A good portion of the semester was devoted to what is called “abnormal psychology.” From neuroses to psychoses, we went through quite a menu of aberrant behaviors – paranoia, schizophrenia, narcissism, sociopathy, depression, kleptomania, addiction – the entire gamut of the bizarre behaviors.
As Mr. Stowe would introduce the psychosis or neurosis of the week, my girlfriend would become very overwrought, wondering if she might have that problem. It usually took me several days to talk her down. “No, you aren’t crazy, we all do that in some small ways.” So, for another week I had her convinced that she probably wasn’t a homicidal maniac or something.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden was a very in-depth exploration into the limitations of what happens on the psychologist’s couch. It became a best seller as the psychotherapy movement became popular in America in the fifties and sixties. It is the semi-autobiographical novel of a young women who struggles for years through therapy with mental illness. Her life never becomes perfect. When she complains that it isn’t, her therapist responds that he “never promised her a rose garden.”
That’s what I discovered in my study of psychology. I gained some insight into our family dynamics. No magical reprieve, no rose garden. Our problems were still there.
As my pastoral psychology professor would later tell us, no matter what behavior people may be exhibiting, they’re doing about as good as they can in the moment. So do we all.
Our Covenant with God is, in like manner, not a Hollywood promise of roses and fluffy clouds either. No magical prancing unicorns or instant jackpots. As my son’s tee shirt says, “The lottery is a tax on people who are stupid at math.” Ed McMahon will most likely not be at your mailbox in the morning with your million-dollar check – or on any morning. That’s not the deal. There’s a reason Harrah’s in Las Vegas is bigger than your house. It’s calculated greed. They make their luck. No magic here at all.
“Abram. I am your shield; your reward shall be very great…Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them…I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.”
“As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces [of Abram’s sacrificial offering]. On that day the Lord made a Covenant with Abram.”
What happened in the darkness is an unfathomable mystery. And who can tell about the vision of the smoking pot and flaming sword. All the hoo-ha with the smoking pot and sword is the biblical writer’s way of assuring us that this is the Real Deal Promise. “Signed, sealed and delivered.”
However this happened, in a dream, a vision, or otherwise, Abram knew that this sealed the deal. He, Sarah, and all their descendants were forever bound to this One, to Being Itself, that had freed them from slavery in Egypt.
Read what follows for Moses and his band of trekkers. This is no picnic. Starvation, thirst, poisonous vipers, mass hysteria and superstition over a Golden Calf, total uncertainty, and enemies. It’s all there in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And it doesn’t stop there. Read through Joshua, Judges and First and Second Samuel. Kings and Chronicles — down through Jesus and then the early church. This Covenant business is no picnic. BUT you won’t be alone. There is guidance and comfort.
Part of this Covenant is the continued revelation of God through those who have become part of the journey. God’s goodness to us has been shared by parents, teachers and total strangers.
There’s a big dose of realism connected with this Covenant business.
For Abraham, God’s promise of presence is no magic bullet. Abraham will succumb to the worst sort of behavior. (And don’t we all from time to time?!)
Abraham, to save his own skin, tells a foreign king with a big army that, of course, he can have Sarah. She’s fobbed off as his sister. “I hardly know her. Isn’t she just the ‘coffee girl’ or something?” And in Genesis he does this, not once, but twice! What a stand-up guy! It’s all there in Genesis, chapter 20, verse 1. Read it yourself. And he does a repeat in verse 12 — she’s really my sister. Seriously! What a schmuck!
This is the sort of imperfection, duplicity and fallibility that God has to rely on. Both in Abraham and in the likes of us. That’s all God has to work with. Imperfection to the max. No rose garden here.
Our end of the Covenant, our part of the Deal, is not magical theology. When Satan leads Jesus up to the highest pinnacle of the temple and tells him that if he jumps, God’s angels will protect him, lest he dash his little pinkie against a stone, Jesus rightly responds, “Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.” If Jesus is unable to rely on magic, what makes us think we’re any better? No magical escape in the last reel.
Just as therapy is not magic, neither is faith. The gift we do receive is insight, courage and vision. We get clarity on what is the right thing to do and what enhances life. And in faith, we step forth.
Definitely, no magic in my college parking lot! I remember carpooling with a Catholic friend, rushing into Cal. State L.A., running late on most mornings. Freeway traffic, atrocious, as usual. By the time we arrived, five or ten minutes late, the parking lots were already full. Ron would begin his prayer, “Hail Mary full of grace help us find a parking place.” It hardly ever happened. My mantra was, “Never discount dumb luck.” Sometimes we did find a place. Actually, I don’t ever remember it working. And when we did find a place, it was way the heck out in the back forty.
Like Woody Allen, I can’t bring myself to believe in any deity with nothing better to do than go about finding parking places at a mall in Houston. Or Cal State LA for that matter. Not when children’s’ hospitals and maternity wards in Ukraine are being reduced to rubble by a psychopathic killer.
As sisters and brothers of God’s Covenant, this is what we can expect. If we work at it.
We will find companions along the way to share the burden and the sorrows. Those who will rejoice with us when we rejoice. This is playing out all over Ukraine these days. The bloody and broken injured are tenderly aided by total strangers. This is the impulse fortified by what they learned in catechism classes in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It’s the impulse taught by the imam in the mosque or the rabbi of the synagogue they attended. It’s in the air of the values of Western Civilization.
Yes, sometimes like Abraham, we will fall short. We, in a moment of moral amnesia, will lose sight of our duty even to those most beloved. But that is the standard to which Divine Wisdom calls us to return. Implanted in hearts and minds of all children of the Covenant.
The Covenant is about Trust. It’s like that trust of a young mother in Ukraine who put her young son on a train ride of over one thousand kilometers, all across Ukraine to Slovakia. Amidst the shelling and bombs in eastern Ukraine, this eleven-year-old boy, Hassan, traveled from Zaporizhzhia and crossed the border into Slovakia.[1]
He left with a mother’s kiss and hug and the trust that she and her husband had given him the character to make this arduous journey on his own. With a backpack, his passport into which she had slipped a note and with a phone number written in ink on his hand he set out.
The boy’s mother, Julia, sent Hassan to the safety of Slovakia to find relatives there while she remained behind to care for an elderly mother unable to travel and his father remained to fight off the Russian army. A tough choice made in the faith that they were doing the right thing to get their boy to safety.
That’s how it is with our Covenant with God in Christ. We are given basic instructions, some innate ability, some friends and strangers who assist along the way – and we set out on our journey of life. Also, in faith.
I’m sure amidst the doubt, the loneliness and longing for what he left back home – a love of his parents – this trip was no rose garden. His mother never promised such. Neither does God.
How many tears did this young boy shed as the kilometers passed by through the deep night? How severe the longing for the comfort of his mother’s caress? His father’s reassurance? All that sustained was a bond of absolute trust between this boy and his parents. In faith, he ventured into the unknown, into a foreign country.
“After completing a solo journey, the 11-year-old was hailed ‘a hero of the night’ by Slovakian authorities. In a Facebook statement, the Slovak Ministry of Interior said that the boy won over the officials ‘with his smile, fearlessness and determination, worthy of a true hero’”.[2]
“Volunteers took care of him, took him to a warm place and gave him food and drink,”
“With the piece of folded paper in his passport apart from the phone number on his hand, officials at the border were able to contact his relatives in the capital, Bratislava, and hand him over.”[3]
The mother profusely thanked the Slovak government and police for taking care of her son. “People with big hearts live in your small country. Please save our Ukrainian children.”
This might well be the plea of that nation to the peoples of the world in this moment.
Like Hassan, we in faith, and in God’s trust in us, embark on the journey of life. We trust, also, at the end, we too will be met with a Big Heart. No rose garden promised, only a Big Heart. That’s the Covenant and the Promise. In Christ’s love it shall be sufficient. Amen.
[1] Bhavya Sukheja, “’A true hero’: 11-year-old Ukrainian Boy Travels 1,000 Km Alone To Slovakia To Escape Russian Attack,” Republic on Telegram, March 7, 2022.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
March 13, 2022, Lent 2
“I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1;
Luke 13:31-1-9
Aliens in a Strange Land
We see the grim faces of mothers pushing strollers waiting in lines that stretch for hours. Hundreds, mostly women and children, seeking refuge from indiscriminate bombing. Many have had little sleep and little to eat. Sanitation facilities are in horrid shape or non-existent.
Husbands, older sons and other male relatives are left behind to defend their beloved homeland of Ukraine. To stand with their freely-elected president Zelensky – who is, more and more, looking like Churchill. We will all remember his refusal of the U.S. government’s offer to hustle him out of his battered city of Kiev. “I don’t need a ride. I need more ammunition.”
Remember, this is the man Trump attempted to corrupt by withholding aid as their country was being surrounded by hostile forces. He proved incorruptible, to Trumps shame. By the way – if you want the backstory on Ukraine, read Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum.
This should be your required Lenten reading this year.[1] Lent is our pilgrimage down the Mountain of Transfiguration into the misery and problems of the world. As the old spiritual says, “If you can’t bear the cross, then you can’t wear the crown.” By faith, sometimes little faith, we embark upon this pilgrimage.
No this is not a “feel good message.” It is a Gospel message. It is a message chock-a-block full of solidarity with all who are refugees, either in strange lands, or in their own strange country. But I digress.
These are the harried refugees pouring out of Ukraine. Fortunately, for them, arms are open and spread wide. Though, it seems, not if your skin is of a darker, African or Indian, hue. In Poland, Moldovia, Hungary and in most of the rest of Europe.
These people are leaving with little or nothing. They grabbed what papers and mementos they could of their past life. Now they’re on the run with little else and little knowledge of what awaits.
“My father was a wandering Aramean; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders he brought us to this place…”
As I survey our political landscape, I am disjointed, feeling out of place. I am an alien in the land of my birth. Our family was solidly Republican, firmly ensconced in the middle class – or maybe a little bit better. And while I frequently disagreed with my folks on such things as welfare, Watergate, and which party would be best for the economy – we held to the same values and verities.
Communism was bad. Fascism was bad, especially the Nazi variety. Knowledge and achieving high grades were good. Democrats were bad. A whole bunch of people we shouldn’t associate with were bad or at least questionable. BUT if someone sued my dad, THEN he wanted a Jewish lawyer! Our country, while not perfect, was perfectible – and close to perfect under Eisenhower. We supported United Way and our church.
We still didn’t mention FDR. He was THAT MAN who “fired your grandfather” – Grandpa had been the postmaster of Lodi, California, appointed by Herbert Hoover.
I can’t imagine in my wildest dreams my parents’ Republican friends supporting a Russian, former KGB tyrant. Our family was ready to go to the mat with the Soviets. Especially, my mom who was the founding president of the Signal Hill Women’s Republican Club. Dad seriously talked about constructing a bomb shelter in our front yard. We were definitely of the “Better Dead than Red” opinion
I find it appalling that Mitt Romney is the only party member with the moral compass to denounce the “treasonous” Kremlin mouthpieces in Congress. They and the entertainment wing of his party over at Fox News.
And it’s high time to cut off all Russian oil purchases. Yes, gas prices will go up. Can’t we sacrifice a little bit without whining? As my friend Debi would say, “Suck it up, buttercup.”
The Russian people are presently cut off from almost all reliable news. They have become captive to an unwell leader bent on total destruction. Not much different from the Trump cult of QAnon Republicans marshaled to storm the halls of Congress. A cult is a cult. And Trump’s people brook no more dissent than Putin. Yet these people continue to fawn over Putin. My parents must be rolling over in their niches at Forest Lawn.
Comrade Putin is now rounding up and arresting even children protesting the war – children as young as seven and eleven. What a mensch! He must now be very scared.[2]
Is Tucker Carlson okay with that? Really – the guy who calls Putin savvy. Talk about “useful idiot!” – Stalin’s dream child.
George Orwell nailed it. “War is peace and peace is war.” We find ourselves as aliens in the strangest of lands as we move into our midterm elections.
I hardly recognize my country at times like this. Those who side with decency, with truth – yes, we seem as aliens in a rather strange land. A very strange land. So, by faith we will travel as sojourners in this unrecognizable landscape.
Maybe, in standing with Ukrainians, we in some small way, might be able to do penance for all the slaughter we have committed over our own bloody history, beginning with the systemic massacre of the First Nations people and those under the lash of the slave master. That’s beyond my paygrade. We are where we are and we do what we can in the moment given us. It’s truly a leap of faith into this strange new world.
Lent is a period that demands what Otis Moss III, calls “Blue Note Preaching.” The Rev. Dr. Moss is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, one of the most influential pulpits in America. In his book, Blue Note Preaching, Moss brings metaphor and story to its proper place, the imagination. He is a most apt successor to Pastor Jeremiah Wright – a prophet in our time.
“What is this thing called the Blues? It is the roux of Black speech, the backbeat of American music…the curve of the Mississippi, the ghost of the South, the hypocrisy of the North.”
Blues addresses both the darkness and the light, the pain and the joy with hope. No sugar-coating. Through the moan, the stifled soul is freed[3]. And life goes on.
Blue Note preaching gets through a week of stormy Mondays. It’s getting it “REAL.” That is the message of Lent — just happy Sundays don’t do it. That’s surely not what the flock is getting in Kyiv today. They crave a message that will get them through this tragedy, and so do we. So, let’s not sugar coat Calvary. The cross is real. Uncertainty nags.
“The world is experiencing the Blues and pulpiteers are dispensing excessive doses on non-prescribed [opioid?] blather with serious “ecclesiastical and theological side effects.” Lent demands we all “keep it real.”
Lent demands we enter the suffering and dark places of the world, of ourselves. That land which is so often strange to us, that land where we find ourselves as alien sojourners.
We must address the woundedness of the world, of our very souls. Only then will the Spirit be able to debride those wounds, cure our soul-sickness. It’s singing those songs down by the Waters of Babylon – captives, yet free men and women.
We Christians must have a message that will “help you get out of bed in the morning…get up knowing you ain’t alone,” as the character Ma Rainey in August Wilson’s play insists.[4] It’s about finding God in the darkness.
Otis tells a wonderful story of being awakened (the Holy Spirit? – just listen on) – awakened in the middle of the night with noises through the house.
Otis remembers, having difficulty getting to sleep, after receiving bomb threats against his church. He was half awake, half asleep when his wife Monica punched him in the arm, “Get up. Check that out.
“So, I did. Just like a good preacher, I grabbed my rod and my staff to comfort me. I went walking through the house with my rod and staff that was made in Louisville with the name ‘Slugger’ on it.”
“I looked downstairs than heard the noise again, and I made my way back upstairs and peeked in my daughter’s room. There was a six-year-old girl dancing in the darkness…just spinning around, saying, ‘look at me, Daddy.’”
“I said, ‘Makayla, I need you to go to bed. It is 3:00 a.m. You need to go to bed.’”
“But she said, ‘No, look at me, Daddy, look at me.’”
“And she was spinning; barrettes going back and forth, pigtails going back and forth.”
“I was getting huffy and puffy wanting her to go to bed, but then God spoke to me at that moment and said, ‘Look at your daughter! She’s dancing in the dark. The darkness is all around her but not in her. But she’s dancing in the dark.’”
This season of both Lenten Ashes and the anticipation of Easter Joy, let’s take to heart a message that will keep us dancing through it all – sorrow and laughter.
We sing a soulful song and find the strength to move on, doing what we can. For as long as we can.
On Thursdays I bike with a group of friends in the morning, even when its only forty degrees out there. We head out to a small café in downtown La Verne for breakfast. Oatmeal, if I’m good about my diet. Corned beef hash and some other stuff, if I’m not.
In my car, this route looks pretty level. But once I start pedaling, it’s suddenly uphill – all the way back home. The last two-block stretch up Mountain Ave. is quite a steep challenge. I have to rest at the top of it. Every time I make it, I say to myself, “Well, you’ve made it this week,” knowing that sometime the ride will come when I don’t or can’t. But, today, I made it.
That is how life is as we approach it’s close. Lent is preparation for those days. A Blue Note Gospel will get us there. A fulsome message that accepts both the heights and depths of the challenges of this new, and strange land. Getting old is new territory.
In Lent is the assurance that as we complete the journey, it is not as aliens but as beloved sons and daughters of the Most High. Brothers and sisters of one another.
By the way, a love offering to assist with the Ukrainian refugees would surely be an acceptable gift to lay at the altar of the Almighty – just sayin.’ It might now be widow’s-mite time.
“If thou but trust in God to guide thee through the evil days. Who trusts in God’s unchanging love builds on a rock that nought can move.” That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Amen.
[1] Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (New York: Doubleday 2017).
[2] Sebastian Murdock, “Russian Police Reportedly Arrest, Jail Children Protesting War Against Ukraine,” Huffpost, March 2, 2022.
[3] Otis Moss III, Blue Note Preaching (Louisville, KY: John Knox Westminster Press, 2015).
[4] August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 1982. His play named after a popular dance in the 20s, the Black Bottom.
March 6, 2022, Lent 1
“Aliens in a Strange Land”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13
Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down
A rather unusual experience happened to me one sometime past at the grocery store. Our local store was in the process of being remodeled, and the location of virtually everything has been changed. I’m not sure why this was necessary, but I go in there and can’t find anything. I spend so much time and energy just looking for the items on my list that I can’t even impulse-shop anymore.
As I was searching up one aisle and then another for a household cleaner, I spied a young woman, a sort of plain looking person in what would seem to be her early twenties with two children hanging on her. She reminded me of someone from what my mother used to call “the projects.” Being as young as she was, she looked ill-kempt and tired. She turned around to see me hurriedly looking down the aisle for the next item on my list, and for some reason she seemed to think I was looking at her, while in reality I was straining to see past her.
I soon forgot the whole incident until, while standing in the check-out line, I sensed someone sidling up to me on the other side of the chrome bar. It was that young mother. She wanted to know if I could help out with some money for her groceries. As I started to speak, a tall, thin – an older woman in a shabby black dress, with her gray hair done up in a bun, from the next checkout stand over called out, “We’re thirteen dollars short.”
I was soon going home to a hearty meal, and my conscience began to nag, “Well, what would it hurt to help out a little bit? What did Jesus say? ‘Give to all who ask?’” Actually, I don’t know if Jesus said that or not. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to help out. I certainly could spare thirteen dollars for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of her family.
I was now approaching the cashier. Some people nearby were starting to stare at us, this older guy being importuned by this strange young woman. But I really didn’t mind. I was determined to help. One person behind me hissed, sotto voce to a friend, “you’ve gotta watch those kinda people.”
I really didn’t mind helping. I really didn’t. I was okay with it. Figure it was my good deed for the day. But it didn’t seem to end there.
As I paid the cashier and prepared to put my bags of groceries in my cart, there she was again, wondering if I could take her and her family home. They only lived a short distance away, right behind Home Depot. Her mother had difficulty walking, and it would be a big help if I would drive them. Well, I guess I could do a little more. Oh, and one more thing, could I give her a little money for the week. I pulled another five-dollar bill from my wallet. I turned my head just in time to see her step over to the line to buy a pack of cigarettes as her mother was asking where my car might be. Now, I was getting a little annoyed. While I didn’t mind paying for the family to have something to eat, I definitely wasn’t interested in helping her purchase a pack of “coffin sticks” so she could smoke herself and her family to death.
Getting into my car is something of an experience. This was back when I still had my old Buick. I’m really not set up for passengers. On the floor in the front is my stack of stuff for my construction business. In the back seat were some lamps for the church in big boxes. On the back floor on one side is a pile of papers for our youth group. In the trunk are all the paper goods like cups and napkins and stuff I need for youth group meetings (my mechanic actually wondered one day if I was living out of my car. Maybe he’d thought my wife had thrown me out. I suppose some days I wouldn’t blame her – but that’s another story). Then strewn around are some bottles of antacid, a plastic container of dental floss, an umbrella, some dead straws and a McDonald’s cup, and two very large church posters. My oldest son had the nerve one day to tell me that my car looked more like a motorized dumpster! He once asked, “Dad does the landfill company pay you to store their stuff in your trunk?”
Well, somehow, I made room for my newly found entourage with all their baggage, and yes, the cigarettes – that was still grating.
On the way home the grandmother, sitting in the front seat, is telling me about having lost her husband last year and how things have been very difficult. Her daughter in the back seat with the boy on her lap, next to the boxes of lamps and young woman is saying something about how maybe I could give her my phone number so she could call me sometimes during the week. We could see each other. She’d like that. I averred that that wouldn’t be such a good idea as I had my own life and she had her’s. By this time the mother was going on about what her daughter really needed was a boyfriend.
Whoa. Time out! As I held up my left hand, prominently pointing to my wedding ring, I assured them that I was already happily married. Moaned the daughter, “See, Mom, the good ones are always taken.”
We couldn’t have arrived any sooner, to my way of reckoning, to a run-down looking house with a dead lawn and the front door hanging open. As I helped the grandmother sort out her remaining bags of groceries from all my stuff in the trunk, she spotted my packages of napkins and paper plates. Maybe I could help out a little more. They could use some paper towels and things. “Sure,” I said, handing them to her and trying not to sound too annoyed. By this time I just wanted to get out of there before her daughter came back again. And maybe I could help out a little with the electric bill. “Why not,” I wearily responded. By this time the twenty–dollar bill I’d gotten for the week had evaporated.
As I drove off, finally glad to be rid of this very needy group of people, a woman suddenly drove up in front of me and abruptly stopped her car. It seems that she’d seen all that had gone on with us at the grocery store and had just wondered if I had gotten out of it without being mugged or anything. I thanked her for her solicitousness, assuring her that I really, really hadn’t minded helping.
On my way home, I thanked my lucky stars that I had married someone who was so sensible, and not a complete and utter flake.
But as I got to thinking more and more about this out-of-the-blue mini-adventure, I was forced to acknowledge those times in my life that I have been just as flaky, just as desperate, just as needy – maybe in a different sort of way. I began to reflect on how it is, ultimately, that we all come before God in not much better shape than this desperate and out-of-control young mother. Being, more sophisticated, I’m just better at hiding it. But, ultimately, you and I, we all come before God with very empty hands. As the song says, we all arrive at the throne of heaven with a “broken alleluia.”
On Ash Wednesday, that is what we at the bottom of it all, are here to acknowledge – our absolute, and utter need for God. That God-shaped hole in our lives, as Augustine calls it, that nothing, nothing but God can ultimately fill, though we so often attempt to fill it with all kinds of stuff or addictive behaviors.
We come to this rail in our common humanity, remembering that we are but dust, and to dust we do return. There are no do-overs. I, that young mother, her two kids and their grandmother, yes, poor and needy, we all come. Lord, have mercy upon us all. And we come hoping and trusting in our heart of hearts that there might be some saving mercy indeed, even for the likes of us. Even for those desperate souls in Ukraine. So begins our forty days wilderness journey of Lent. Amen.
March 2, 2022
Ash Wednesday
“Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:8-14; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
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
