What Does the Lord Require
In our basic training post at Fort Sam in San Antonio, all of us in Company D-3 were conscientious objectors to be trained as Army Medics. Before going on to our medic training, we went through an 8-week course.
Usually in the evening if we didn’t have much homework or Army busywork, we’d head over to the PX and have some beer and pizza. One of our fellows was a Buddhist named Holderbaum. One night someone asked him, how with a German name like that, was he a Buddhist.
He said that to be given conscientious objector status he had to be some religion. He knew he couldn’t be a Christian because they can’t drink or have sex. He knew he wasn’t a Catholic because he didn’t believe in the pope and all the saints mumbo jumbo. By elimination, that must have left Buddhist.
Yes, some of us starchy, legalistic Protestant types are a bit over the top in our understanding of Jesus’s basic message. We get caught up in the jots and tittles, neglecting the weightier part of the message: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Today’s gospel passage also contains the basics of the Christian-Judeo faith.
It is eloquently summed up in Matthew’s Beatitudes. You know them — ”Blessed are those who” – fill in the blank
If these are used as a legalistic standard, imposed in a ridged way, who could possibly be saved? Holderbaum’s right. No mortal could live up to them in an exacting way. In some congregations they are “weaponized” to beat others over the head — doing incredible spiritual and psychic damage.
I decided to look in the Trump Bible to see how modern man has approached these injunctions. I wasn’t going to give him one red cent – he’s already monetized the presidency for some $1.4 billion[1] and counting — so I snuck a free peak.
The modern ethical version goes something like this.
Blessed are those who use the public trust of elected office to run a grift of hundreds of millions of dollars, for they shall have many friends.
Blessed are those who appoint the least qualified to office, for no one will confront you with embarrassing “alternative facts.”
Blessed are those who trash our immigrant neighbors by sending armies of undisciplined goons into the streets of our cities, for they will imagine themselves safer when might makes right.
Blessed are those who ignore the laws and statutes of their nation, for they shall not be inconvenienced by legal niceties and pesky lawyers.
These are Caesar’s beatitudes. And the spiritual warfare with Caeser yet rages full on in the Book of John’s Revelations. The mark of the beast, 666, is firmly stamped on this administration’s “banality of evil.”[2] It has become normalized, cavalierly dismissed.
Not quite the ethic of the Jesus Movement that I learned in Sunday school or seminary. Or you either. No, we as members of that saving movement are held to a higher standard. “To do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God.”
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
These beatitudes are the goal for which we would strive. Yet, being far from perfect, we will mostly miss the mark. They are the hallmark of a mature spirituality.
This Easter, Luther James Forney will be baptized.
I was in a quandary as to how to assist Christopher and Alexis in fulfilling their baptismal vows made on Luther’s behalf.
One book that came immediately to mind was Bishop Budde’s book, How We Learn to be Brave.[3] It was occasioned by her interview on CNN after Trump and an entourage of cabinet officers and military generals proceeded to St. John’s to hold up a Bible upside down.
This was a desecration of our scriptures and a place of worship under Bishop Budde’s jurisdiction. “I had to say something,” was her stance. Later, came the blowback she received after she had had the temerity to ask the president for mercy for those being hurt by his policies.
Courage is the character of a mature person of faith, regardless the religion. Courage to change what can be changed. This I would hope for young Luther as he grows into his personhood.
I passed along also Dag Hammarskjöld’s book, Markings.[4] This volume of meditations reflects the mature spirituality of one of our most notable UN Secretaries General.
In Markings a most courageous Swedish diplomat wrestles with his purpose of existence as he enters some of the most harrowing sites of conflict on the planet. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld would be killed in a small aircraft crash while on a dangerous mission into the heart of Africa.
In the introduction by W.H. Auden, there is Hammarskjöld’s introduction for an interview on CNN.
“I found in the writings of hose medieval mystics for whom ‘self-surrender’ had been the way to self-realization, and who in ‘singleness of mind’ and ‘inwardness’ had found strength to say Yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbors made them face, and to say Yes also to every fate life had in store for them.”
“Love…for them meant simply an overflowing of the strength with which they felt themselves filled when living in true self-oblivion. …love found natural expression in an unhesitant fulfillment of duty and an unreserved acceptance of life, whatever it brought them personally of toil, suffering—or happiness.”[5]
I would hope for young Luther that he would have the spiritual strength and courage to wrestle with life in this same way. That he would realize that truly living would be found in a task greater than himself. That he would find where the needs of the world met his innate gifts and interests, there would be his vocation – his true calling as did Dag Hammarskjöld.
In Mitch Albom’s book, Tuesdays with Morrie,[6] I found a delightful and most poignant story of a former student spending time with his dying professor. It is graced with compassion and deep understanding. It is a master class in the Beatitudes.
Mitch had promised upon graduation to keep in touch with this favorite professor. But, of course, work and family and a hundred other things got in the way.
Flipping through the channels late one night he inadvertently comes across an interview with Ted Koppel on his program “Nightline.” There was his professor, Morrie Schwartz.
Koppel had been alerted earlier on by a friend to a headline in the Boston Globe: “A Professor’s Final Course: His Own Death.” The professor had recently received a diagnosis of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease. A slow wasting disease inexorably leading to death, beginning with a wasting of the muscles of the legs and proceeding up the trunk of the body.
Cameramen and sound equipment were situated in Morrie’s living room. But before Morrie would let Koppel proceed, Morrie said he would first needed to “check him out.” One of Morrie’s friends quipped, “I hope Ted goes easy on Morrie.” Another replied, “I hope Morrie goes easy on Ted.”
The door closed and Ted and Morrie were left alone inside Morrie’s office. Morrie began, “Tell me something close to your heart.”
“‘My heart?’ Koppel studied the old man. ‘All right,’ he said cautiously, and he spoke about his children. They were close to his heart, weren’t they?”
“Good.” Morrie said. “Now tell me something about your faith.”
When Ted demurred, saying that he didn’t often talk about such things with strangers, Morrie interjected, “Ted, I’m dying,” peering over his glasses. “I don’t have a lot of time here.”
Once they were back in the living room with cameras rolling, towards the end of the interview, the reporter asked Morrie a question: what did Morrie dread most about his slow decay.
“Morrie paused. He asked if he could say this certain thing on television.”
“Koppel said go ahead.”
“Morrie looked straight into the eyes of the most famous interviewer in America. ‘Well, Ted, one day soon, someone’s gonna have to wipe my ass.’”
A thousand miles away Mitch, the professor’s old student. heard Koppel intone, “’Who is Morrie Schwartz…and why, by the end of the night, are so many of you going to care about him?’”
Mitch Alom’s precious book, which has sold in the millions, came into being out of that late night happenstance before his TV.
The compassion displayed by Mitch as week after week he sat with his dying professor is the entire summation of the Beatitudes.
These brief injunctions are the door to eternal life, yet a blessedness possible in some measure right now in this life. This is the gentle spirituality I also would hope for Luther James as we baptize him in April.
Such compassion is the most courageous act in these disjointed and inhumane times. It is the mark of our full humanity.
And like Morrie, we don’t have a lot of time here, so what we do have, let’s use to the Glory of God and for the love of our neighbor. Amen.
[1] The Editorial Board, “Trump’s Cash Grab Undermines our Republic, The New York Times, January 25, 2026.
[2] Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963). Arendt makes the point that the evil Eichman spawned seemed so benign that ordinary Germans would dismiss as well as participate in it. It became normalized in the culture of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Here, a matter of degree, not kind.
[3] Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (New York: Avery, Penguin Random House, 2023)
[4] Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).
[5] Op. Cit., viii.
[6] Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson (New York: Doubleday, 2007) 18-23.
February 1, 2026
Epiphany 4
Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15
I Corinthians 1:18-31; Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
“What Does the Lord Require?”
We’ve Been to the Mountain Top
It was a cold and rainy night in Memphis, Tennessee. As the sanitation workers were given no provision to get out of that weather, two Black workers had taken refuge in the bin at the back of their truck.
Inadvertently, they were crushed to death when the compactor mechanism was triggered.
It was that incident and the strike that followed that prompted Dr. King to head to that troubled city. Many of his followers had advised against the trip, but Dr. King resolutely set his face to Memphis. Why, for just a bunch of garbage collectors? Why? King set his face for Memphis in steely resolve despite their counsel.
That night, after his arrival, a congregation gathered at the Mason Temple. It was a hot, sweltering crowd that packed the sanctuary as Dr. King addressed the congregation. We should all remember that stirring line that came towards the end of his sermon. “I’ve been to the Mountaintop.” I’ve been to the Mountaintop.
This, it so happened. would be the culmination of that marvelous life, for in the morning a shot would ring out at the Lorraine Motel as Dr. King stood on a balcony for some fresh air and conversation with colleagues.
In his witness to the dignity of all people, he not only made it to the mountaintop, but he took this nation with him.
I had the experience of hearing him talk in person. It was in Lincoln Nebraska at a conference for some 5000 United Methodist students and pastors from all across the U.S. He was the keynote speaker for the last day of that event.
I didn’t know that much about him at the time. I did know he was famous and he had led a bus boycott in the south.
But when I heard him that evening, he took me to the mountaintop. I said to myself, if this is the church, INCLUDE ME IN.
It was a rebirth of my faith. It made all those lessons in my early Sunday school years come to life – cohere into a faith I could claim as a young college student. King opened up an entire new world for me.
I grew up in a very conservative, prejudiced family. Cloistered in an upper-middle class neighborhood of Long Beach, California. My parents made very clear to me who “our people” were and who they weren’t.
They weren’t blacks, though that’s not what my father called them. They weren’t Mexicans. They weren’t Jews. On my mother’s side, in addition to all these, they also weren’t Okies and Arkies.
These last two had come into the San Joaquin Valley in the 20s, fleeing the desperation of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. They are the characters of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family, poor as dirt.
The struggle for economic and racial equality in Black theology is grounded in Moses’ experience in a wasteland when a burning bush catches his eye.
The message of God to him, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters…So come, I will send you to Pharoah to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’”
“Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land,
tell old Pharaoh: Let my people go.”
The image of Dr. King’s mountaintop in his final sermon in Memphis comes out of the Book of Deuteronomy. God told Moses, “This is the land I promised… I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you will not cross into it” Moses from the top of Mount Nebo could overlook that Promised Land, but would not make it himself, but his people would.
Dr. King had been to the mountaintop. Though he was not sure if he would make it to that promised land of equality, opportunity and respect, he had absolute faith that God would lead his people, and by extension all people to that land.
Yes, the promises of our creeds and Constitution had not been fulfilled.
My dad, a dentist had a number of Black patients, but in the way he spoke of them, it was clear to me he didn’t respect them. Somewhere in the category of the Cadillac Welfare Queen.
BUT, BUT, BUT…the transformation King wrought over my lifetime was nothing I could have imagined. Our entire nation (or at least a lot of us) were taken to that mountaintop of brotherly and sisterly love – and something had happened in my dad’s heart.
Late in life, he began to realize that if this nation didn’t work for everybody, it wasn’t going to work for much of anybody. That included his former Black patients.
One morning when I showed up at the office when I was working with him to run our family construction company, he greeted me, “John, how’s Al Gore doing?”
“What do you care about him,” I responded. Puzzled that this life-long Republican cared a wit about this Democratic candidate.”
“I always thought, as a dentist running a small business that the Republicans were the party of small business. They don’t give a damn about small business, nor much of anyone else unless they have a ton of money. It’s all about the money. And Bush is an idiot – he’s destroying the country.”
An EPIPHANY!
He went for quite a bit more of a rant about how the Republicans were ruining the country and everybody was getting poorer and poorer.
My father had had an entire change of heart and mind about who counted in America. It was the “little people” – people like him and many of his patients on welfare. He was even now okay with unions. They’re the only ones standing up for the average worker.
Dr. King has indeed taken this entire nation to the mountaintop and we have seen a shining promised land of harmony and opportunity for all.
I also realized a moment of closure. In our “nice” – read “white” –neighborhood a Black dentist and his family had purchased a house down the street from us. I still remember moving day when I and some of my playmates went down to see what was happening as the van unloaded furniture and lots of boxes.
The mother served us up some cups of lemonade. Their boy seemed like he’d fit into our group.
Several weeks later, while they were on a vacation, one of their neighbors ran their garden hose through the second floor and turned on the water. It must have run for almost a week, completely ruining the house. Shortly afterward, they moved out.
There was only some hush-hush talk about what had happened. This to my young mind seemed so unfair. Completely contrary to what we had learned in Sunday school about Jesus. AND our church said absolutely NOTHING. NOTHING!
For me, Dr. King brought some resolution to the guilt and pain I had felt over that incident. Things would not be perfect, but I could now see a time coming when this hateful act would be condemned. Publically condemned. And some of our white neighbors would rally around this anguished family.
The memory of that incident was front and center in my first ministry out of seminary. I and another seminarian founded a fair housing organization in the San Gabriel Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles. We and our committee of volunteers would work against injustice in the housing and apartment market. And irony of ironies, our first client? He was an Italian man. This one landlady hated Italians.
Yeah, we got him his apartment once she knew the consequences of violating California’s fair housing law.
As we now have government ICE goons beating and shooting people in Minnesota, we must rise up against a new Pharoah. We must march together, sing together, pray together. It will be a long struggle against the most vindictive president this nation has ever had.
But, as in Memphis, we can see a way ahead. We will take care of one another. Ada Limón reminds us, “Caring for each other is a form of radical survival that we don’t always take into account.”
With Dr. King, we have all – America has been to the mountaintop and looked over. That evening at the conclusion of his sermon, this was Dr. King’s message:
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to ive a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”[1]
Amen.
[1] Martin Luther King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968.
January 11, 2026
Epiphany 2
Martin Luther King Sunday
Exodus 3:7-12; Psalm 77:11-20
Letter from a Birmingham Jail; Gospel: Luke 6:27-36
“We’ve Been to the Mountain Top”
Our Baptismal Vows
I vividly remember a critical moment in our confirmation class when I served a medium-sized United Methodist Church out in Ridgecrest. As in the Episcopal Church, confirmation is that ritual wherein one claims for oneself the baptismal vows they made, or were made on their behalf if they were infants
I had arrived a little late and Kay our secretary had already let the class of about 8 into my office. I made my apology for being a few minutes late and moved to get the class going. “Alright, guys, lets get our books out and get started,” I urged. At this point one of the girls corrected me, “Hey, we’re not all guys.” At that point, the wise guy in the room blurted out, “Well, you’re sure flat enough.”
Instant thermonuclear explosion. Alicia jumped up in tears and stormed out of the room. I rushed out after her as she ran into the arms of Pete, our associate pastor, who just happened to be coming to my office to drop something off. I asked him to deal with distraught Alicia while I went back to the class.
Absolute quiet. The silence was an acknowledgement that a social rule had been violated to devastating effect.
I realized that the lesson for that day was out the window. Instead, I told them we were going to talk about community, what makes it and what rips it apart. I asked them to share what they were feeling at the moment. Of course, all comments were directed to the boy, Warren.
When they had had a while to share their thoughts and feelings, I asked them, what would it take to restore community of our class. Sheepishly, Warren quietly mumbled, “I guess I have to say I’m sorry.” At which point the entire class as a chorus erupted, “Yeah, Warren!”
Later that day, Warren did in fact apologize and the next week the class was able to resume according to schedule. As devastating as that incident was, in a strange way working through it as a group, we developed a much closer bond. And no one will ever forget that lesson of sin, repentance, making amends and grace.
I could have never devised such a powerful and lasting lesson on my own.
After confirmation, a good number of the kids drifted away from the church. For them and their families, confirmation was the end of the faith journey. So, it is with many of our mainline churches. Confirmation is the graduation ceremony right out the back door.
We might see them again at a few significant moments, the baptism of a child, marriage or when six strong men have carried them through the door at the end of their journey. As one wit put it, the church is significant if at all on three occasions: hatched, matched and dispatched.
If we look at Jesus baptism and commissioning, it is not a culmination, but a beginning.
Personally, I compare it to my induction into the U.S. Army. I had registered as a conscientious objector willing to go into the medics. I wasn’t willing to shoot anyone over what I considered an illegal and immoral war but I was willing to patch up anyone who got shot or worse.
I remember reporting at the induction station in downtown Los Angeles early on a dreary, overcast morning. My mood matched the weather.
A primary thing I learned about the Army would repeat itself throughout my two-year stint. After the first minutes of going through that door it was hurry up and wait. And wait. And wait.
Finally, someone assembled us in a loose formation and we were herded off to a battery of tests. We were tested, inspected and injected. And yelled at a whole lot as we went through this process.
Finally, in groups we were lined up before a white line on the floor. We were given the oath to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.” One step over that white line and we belonged to Uncle Sam for the next two years.
Flawed as it is, our Constitution is the covenant that unites us together. The defense of it is what each of us, in our own specialty would be doing. I was trained as an electroencephalograph technician. I stuck pins in peoples’ heads for the next two years.
The other lesson I learned, take care of the colonel and he’ll take care of you. After my two years I was discharged as an E5, the equivalent of sergeant.
Likewise, we in our baptism are also commissioned. We are called, through word and action to respect the dignity and worth of all persons. How we each do that will vary over the course of our life’s journey.
From Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ baptism:
“And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”
And for all who follow, God’s honest truth holds: You are beloved, in you I am well pleased. You are commissioned. Go forth and be of good courage.
Bishop Mariann Budde lives out this commission in Washington, D.C. where she serves as the bishop of that diocese. She has written a wonderful book; How We Learn to be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith.[1] In it she explores what bravery means in light of our baptismal vow. In part this pledge is: “to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.”
“The decisive moments in life are those pivot points when we’re called to push past our fears and act with strength.”[2] And I would add, push past our lethargy.
Through several life choices, like the decision to leave friends and move across the country at the age of 17 when her family fell apart – to leave an alcoholic and clinically depressed father and a step-mother who resented her, Mariann had displayed moments of bravery.
Bishop Budde had begun receiving phone calls about President Trump having assembled a group of top cabinet members and top military brass at Lafyette Park, across the street from the White House which then the whole entourage marched the short distance where Trump stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal church. There he held up a Bible upside down for a photo op and mentioned what a great country this is.
On CNN the Bishop was moved to say:
“Let me be clear: the president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches in my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence. We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”[3]
Her words, after the massive nation-wide protests over the George Floyd murder, captured the moment and spread throughout the airwaves.
Leading up to that point, the bishop’s essential work had been with clergy and congregations in her diocese. Definitely not on the national stage. But as phone calls flooded in after the incident, she arrived at that decisive moment where she knew she had to say something. This is what bravery looks like.
Many new beginnings are fraught with the call for bravery, for leaving our comfort zone. A new job can be quite a baptism into the unknown.
My friend Kep, having a Stanford masters degree in engineering, tells me of his first job with an oil company in Texas. Before he knew it, he was in a small boat being tossed about by a choppy sea. They were headed for an oil rig hundreds of miles out in the middle of the ocean. Everyone was getting seasick and Kep was wondering what he had gotten himself into.
But even the terror of getting on that flimsy contraption to hoist them up some nine stories, swinging over open ocean water to the living quarters of that rig. Even this was better than staying in that small boat retching over the rail feeding the fish.
Out of his comfort zone? You bet! A heart-in-his-throat moment for a city boy to be sure. No small degree of bravery is involved in some new beginnings. For Kep, a baptism by water, a lot of salt water.
I opened the paper on Friday to the headline: “Trump Asserts His Global Power Has One Limit: Himself.” Further: “My own morality. My own mind, It’s the only thing that stop me.”[4] This from one who has all the impulse control of a two-year-old.
The royal pronouncement of Louis XIV: L’État, c’est moi (I am the state) was given to his parliament in the assertion of complete and absolute authority. Well, Mr. Trump, we have no need of such royal rubbish. The last time we had a king, we had to kill an awful lot of British soldiers to get rid of him, and we aren’t about to go back now to any such subjugation. We’re not going back!
In his interview with the New York Times, Trump has abrogated the entire international order crafted following WWII. Tossed it all aside. It’s now Darwin’s rule, the law of the strongest. The United Nations may as well as fold up shop if it’s okay for any powerful nation to gobble up a weaker neighbor. A clear signal to Putin that Ukraine is up for grabs – along with any NATO country he might want — Lithuania or Latvia, or, maybe even, Poland. Yours for the taking.
Such sentiments are a reckless dismissal of the constitutional order that has guided our nation, for good or ill, for over two hundred fifty years. Lawless it is! The day after November 3rd must be Impeachment Day.
As our own Bishop Taylor urged in a recent Facebook post, we need all of us out in the streets on January 20 for the next No Kings Day.
I know some brave souls who have confessed that this was something they never thought they’d do. Be out in the streets with a sign protesting.
Their bravery is what our baptismal vows look like. The forthright statements of our religious leaders – that is what our baptismal vows look like.
Unfortunately, like some in my first confirmation class, too many Christians have come up from the baptismal waters stillborn. A lot of to-do to no noticeable effect.
That’s why our church believes that baptism is a public event wherein the community of faith pledges over the long haul to nurture the baptized in a life of faith that is courageous.
When we step up, screw up our courage to stand for the right thing, it is contagious. Our singular example gives others to follow the impulse to bravery, to join us. Yes, it will take not only a village but an entire nation risen up to rid ourselves of this tyranny. As someone said, they can’t kill us all.
As the nationally known gardener Paul Avellino asserts: “The point of standing together isn’t to change something overnight. It’s to become the lighthouse that reminds others there’s still a way through the storm.[5]
Remember your baptism and be thankful. Thankful for the most expansive journey opening up your days and years to come. And through that door lies eternity. Be thankful. Amen.
[1] Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (New York: Avery, 2023.
[2] Op cit., book jacket.
[3] Op cit., xviii.
[4] Katie Rogers, “Trump Asserts His Global Power Has One Limit: Himself,” New York Times, January 9, 2026.
[5] Paul Avellino, quoted in Bits and Pieces, January, 2025.
January 11, 2026
Epiphany 1
The Baptism of Our Lord
Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43; Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17
“Our Baptismal Vows”
Let Your Love-Light Shine
The story goes in Matthew that there was an anomaly in the sky, something ajar. More than a shooting star caught their attention. In a world beset by a great malaise, a wonder to behold.
In that “bleak midwinter frosty wind made moan.” And moans yet today in the souls of the dispossessed. A very bleak midwinter for those on the streets or sleeping in their cars.
Let me tell you of one such woman, a woman who works at a tough, thankless job and yet found herself and her family homeless. Priced out of her apartment in Atlanta, Georgia.
Cokethia Goodman and her children have been homeless for several months when the author of Working and Homeless in America[1], Brian Goldstone, came upon her.
The road to ruin began when she noticed a letter from the landlord in her mailbox on the afternoon of August 2018. The terse letter informed her that the property had been sold and that she would have to move out.
She and her children had lived in that quiet Atlanta neighborhood over the past year. The apartment was near her kids’ schools and a nice playground.
That was it. The property had been sold and her lease would not be renewed. Time to cash out in this gentrifying neighborhood.
After frantically looking for anything nearby, she settled in a dilapidated dump in Forest Park, on the city’s outskirts. A dump, and for $50 more a month.
After two weeks in the place, she heard a scream from her twelve-year-old son. Running the water, he had received a bad electrical shock. She called code enforcement and the place was condemned. The family was without housing again. Nowhere left to go. For a while they holed up in a squalid hotel, but soon couldn’t afford that.
All the time she was working fulltime as a home health aide. She was working, doing everything she was supposed to do and they were out on the streets. How could this be? She thought homelessness and a job were mutually exclusive. This didn’t add up.
In her job she had been taking care of men and women in her city of Atlanta, and now she and her kids were homeless? There she was in her blue scrubs checking to see if any of the shelters had room for her and her children.[2]
This is America, for God’s sake! The wealthiest nation in the world and this is how we reward people who play by the rules and do everything in their power to support themselves?
Jesus, let your love light shine down on this humbled family. Let the Epiphany Star of Promise shine down on Cokethia and her children.
It is a bleary, depressing landscape over which the Epiphany Star will shine in many of our cities and in our rural areas.
The citizens of Willows, California, are in a state of shock as the only medical center for miles and miles around is being forced to close. Yes, that “One Big Beautiful Bill” has done them in.
Like countless other small rural communities, Willows has lost its only medical care facility. Glenn Medical Center in Willows closed Oct. 21 after losing “critical access” status for being 3 miles closer to the nearest hospital than rules require.
This rural outpost has treated residents wounded in accidents along with countless victims of car crashes on nearby Interstate 5 and a surprising number of crop-duster pilots — all done on Oct. 21
As hospital staff carted away medical equipment from emptied patient rooms, Theresa McNabb, 74, roused herself and painstakingly applied make-up for the first time in weeks.
“’I feel a little anxiety,’ McNabb said. She was still taking multiple intravenous antibiotics for the massive infection that had almost killed her, was unsteady on her feet and was unsure how she was going to manage shopping and cooking food for herself once she returned to her apartment after six weeks in the hospital.”[3]
This was in a county that voted over 60% for Trump. What did they expect when Johnson and his marauders cut over $900 billion out of Medicare. That’s Billion with a capital B. And slashed Medicaid payments to the states by hundreds of millions?
Oh, that the Light of Epiphany might brighten our wits to understand that elections have consequences. The Orange Felon has done exactly what he said he would do – slash government to the bone. Except for his rich buddies and fellow grifters. And your New Year’s present? Exploding health premiums. But no sweat for Congress – they’re on extended vacation and have wonderful taxpayer-supported, gold-plated health care.
Jesus, let your Love Light shine on those abandoned folks in Willows, California. Let your Light of Compassion and Enlightenment shine on their choices this coming November. Let it shine!
Dr. King reminds us that we’re all part of an “inescapable network of mutuality” where one person’s fate is tied to that of everyone. As American citizens we have a shared destiny.
We learned this in our churches, our mosques, our temples and in our synagogues. Now, let’s vote like it. Take your concern, prayers and thoughts right into the polling place. Be the Light!
Jesus, Let your Love-Light shine in our politics, the darkest of places right now.
Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG) has had an epiphany. A Damascus Road Moment. Maybe so the residents of Willows, California. Rugged individualism is a lie, not the ethic of the Jesus Movement.[4]
MTG had gone so far as to accuse Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of treasonous conduct, adding that treason was punishable by imprisonment or death.
After the death of Charlie Kirk, she has now suddenly lost all appetite for vengeance. She later told a friend, who confirmed the exchange: “After Charlie died, I realized that I’m part of this toxic culture. I really started looking at my faith. I wanted to be more like Christ.”[5]
Jesus, let your Love-Light shine on Marjorie Taylor Green and her spiritual awakening.
Sister Simone Campbell, the lead Nun on the Bus of several years ago has a new book out on the spirituality that undergirds her work and helps her be fit for human consumption.
Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, notes in her Forward, “If there’s one governing mantra of Simone’s life, it is this: get in there close with people on the margins of society and allow your heart to be broken open. It’s in the breaking open to raw human need of real people that is for Simone the fire at the heart of her passion for justice.”[6]
Sister Simone is a splinter of this Epiphany Love-Light. Her recent book will be our Lenten study if I can find enough copies.
The Epiphany Star reveals reality to us. As it revealed the Christ Child to the traveling sages, it also revealed through a dream the wicked intent of Herod.
The Love-Light of that star also reveals bitter reality, past and present, but also reveals those merciful souls who acknowledge the wrongs of their people and in some small way make amends.
Timothy Snyder, in his book, On Freedom,[7] tells the story of taking his children to school in Vienna, Austria. While they waited for the bus for kindergarten, his son became fascinated by the construction machines operating across the street.
As the workers spread new asphalt for the sidewalk, they were preparing to install Stolpersteine, “stumbling stones.” These are markers denoting the houses where Jews once lived before the Holocaust.
“The information they carry – names, addresses, sites of death – give us a chance to rehumanize, to restore, at least in imagination, what they lost”[8]
“Before the Jews were killed, they were stripped of everything: first their property, then their clothes.”[9]
Jesus, let your Love-Light enfold those repentant souls willing to acknowledge the past. Let it gently shine and embolden. Embolden historians like Timothy Snider who are willing to write the truth that it may warn us of what we are capable of in the future.
May we in America have the same courage to acknowledge the dark moments of our past where we have inflicted incredible suffering.
Let your Love-Light shine on our willingness to make amends and move forward in to this eternal Light of Promise, the Light of a New Day.
If you have a chance, catch Rachel Maddow’s new podcast, “Burn Order.” It’s about our roundup and incarceration of thousands of American citizens solely because of race – our Japanese-Americans. Folks who had absolutely nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. These citizens lost virtually everything. New evidence shows the underlying avarice of those wanting their farms that was behind the racist accusations of treason.
On her recent program introducing this podcast, Rachel had three Japanese-American scholars, some who had been incarcerated in these camps. This truth-telling is Love-Light brightly shining. Jesus, let your Love-Light shine on Rachel and all intrepid reporters who would inform us on what is really going down in 2026.
Jesus, keep your Love-Light shining that we learn from our past, the good and the bad. Keep your Love-Light shining on those stalwart souls who continue to forge a better way forward. And warn of dangerous curves ahead.
Jesus, keep you Love-Light shining on those who would be victimized by the worst of us – for our Somali immigrants, for the Haitians — for the destitute immigrants seeking work at Home Depot stores, for those who can no longer afford the steep, new premium increases for their health care — or even groceries or rent, for God’s sake.
Jesus, keep your Love=Light shining today, tomorrow and all through 2026, for renewed days of promise and for the Love of God. Keep it shining. This we urgently pray. Amen.
[1] Brian Goldstone, There’s No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (New York: Crown, 2025).
[2] Ibid, xv-xvii.
[3] Jessica Garrison, “This rural hospital closed, putting lives at risk. Is it the start of a ‘tidal wave’?” Los Angeles Times, November 26, 2025.
[4] Robert Draper, “‘I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump,” New York Times Magazine, December 29, 2025.
[5] Op.cit.
[6] Sr. Simone Campbell, Hunger for Hope (New York: Orbis Books, 2020), Forward by Sr. Helen Prejean, ix.
[7]Timothy Snyder, On Freedom (New York, Crown, 2024), 24.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
January 4, 2026
Epiphany Sunday
Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12; Gospel: Matthew 2:1-12
“Let Your Love-Light Shine”
Do Not be Afraid
We live in a fearful age. “Precarious” describes the situation of many folk these days. Many of us think the country is headed in the wrong direction, with a sociopathological narcisist at the helm. Heroid incarnate.
Destitution is everywhere. On the streets you can smell it, the oder of urine and feces wafts from the sidewalk encampments of the dispossed. This season many families are food insecure.
Pregnant immigrant women are held in detention even though it’s against federal policy. ICE dosen’t care. “Screw the courts,” Stephen Miller and his crew retort, or words to that effect which are inappropriate from the pulpit. The present day Madonna now pregnant in a holding facility, lies shackled to her bed. Terrified, she remained tied to her bed as she miscarried.[1] Outrageous!
Undocumented mothers are separated from their children – the descending gloom of our national disgrace. A palpable fear seeps in through such misery and torture. A fear not of one but of many. The fear of those judged only to have the wrong skin color. How dark the night in today’s Bethelhem.
And on Christmas Day someone will win a Powerball jackpot of $1.7 billion. In the midst of so much want, that amount of money for just one person is obscene. Who needs $1.7 BILLION? That’s right, folks billion with a capital B. How dark this night!
Heroid’s raging – his campaign of retribution and vengeance ever presses against this season of expectation and hope. Yet it is precisely into such a bleak winter that an unexpected Gloria in Excelsis breaks through. “Be ye not afraid.”
“Unto you. Unto you.” That is the ever present joy that yet seeps into this night. “Be ye not afraid.”
This is the world of those shepherds tending their flocks on that pitch dark and chilly night. They, like ninetynine percent their fellow inhabitants, lived on the margins. Cold, malnourished, at the whim of robbers, wolves and greedy taxmen.
As Luke tells the story of that wretched, freezing evening, how a most astounding, disrupting event burst through the skies above. And for this, we’ve just gotta have the King James version.
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, good will toward all.”[2]
What joyous words – “Fear not.“ Do Not Be Afraid
Calm, soothing words. The sort of comfort a parent would give a child who has been awakened by a terrifying nightmare. “It’s okay. It’s just a bad dream. Don’t be afraid. The same comfort our brused world seeks today.
Mary’s child is Good News to a fearful planet. Do not be afraid. In the birth of this tiny baby is the Good News of Salvation. Hope restored, In this message we are gently held. Yes, in a tiny, squalling baby born in ICE detention is also the promise of ages. His mother shackled to a bed without pain relief. Unseen, the multitude of the heavenly host attend that lowly birth. Gloria in Excelsis Deo the chorus.
On Christmas Day our Luther James will be exactly three months old. A sign of God’s favor. Best present ever! My Christmas prayer is a supplication for the other precious children of this world that they might have the same care, the same promise of our little Luther. I know this presently is not the case. Yet each newborn is a miraculus blessing, no matter how rude and impoverished the circumstances of their birth.
For this prayer to become sacramental reality — our political action, our open wallets, our ready credit cards, our raised voices, our gumption will be the tangible expression: In Gaza, in Sudan. In the Congo and in Ukraine – where wealthy nations make real their concern and care. Where we make real and visible our concern, our hope — our supplication becomes sacramental reality. Actual care delivered on the ground. Follow the money derect to Doctors Without Borders, to UNICEF, to Episcopal Relief and Development. Follow the money. Gloria in Excelsis. Yes, we are cooperators with the Spirit of Christmas for these others. Santa — if his visage means anything at all in our commercialized day.
As God brought forth Blessing and Salvation by way of an illiterate, impoverished pesant woman in Bethlehem, who knows that miracle lies hidden in any of the millions of children born in these war-torn lands, in impoverished America. With God, this Christmas, all is possible, for we of the Jesus Movement, God willing — we are the hands and feet of this Christmas promise. Gloria in Excelsis.
I close with a poem by John Core, “This Night the Music.”
“This night the music of the spheres is somehow disarranged;
with dissonant surprise one star un-tunes the sky, set heaven ajar;
the universe is changed.
…
“The shepherd’s narrow world grows vast as glorias begin;
while God’s own voice, wide as the sky, consricts itself into a cry
behind a crowded inn. Gloria. Gloria. Gloria – Goria in excelsis Deo. And with Tiny Tim I say, “God bless us everyone.” And a Merry Christmas to all. Amen.
[1] Karla Gachet, “Pregnant immigrants held for months in detention despite rules against it,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2025.
[2] Luke 1:8-14, KJV.
December 24, 2025
Christmas Eve
Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14; Gospel: Luke 2:1-14
“Do Not be Afraid”
