We’re Coming to America
Some will remember that “Hot August Night” when Neil Diamond stepped out onto the stage. The orchestra began with a winsome prelude that slowly crescendoed to a pulsing beat. Then began the first strains of that ballad that so aptly celebrates the promise of this nation for millions around the world, “We’re coming to America.” Neil Diamond in an iridescent blue shirt with flashing blue lights spangled about it, and the joyous crowd responding, “Today. Today. Today.” The camera does a slow pan across the audience and comes to rest on the face of an old guy about my age with tears streaming down his face. “Today. Today. Today.”
This is the America I grew up with as a young boy. In school we made Pilgrim hats and the white shoulder coverings those early pioneers wore. We read of that almost deified, mythical Thanksgiving feast. We learned of the colonists rising up and throwing British tea into Boston harbor made up as Indians. And watching over all, Divine Providence.
Yes, actually, historically, some of those things happened. There were a few heroes in all this. But the reality is much more complicated. And not quite as divine.
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise.”
Unfortunately, that so-called Promised Land has been too much promised. So, with America. Other than the first inhabitants, all the rest of us arrived to find it already taken. And, don’t forget, even those first inhabitants drove much of the original wildlife into extinction. All of us have blood on our hands.
Yet by faith, generation after generation, we persevere. The original promise continues to unfold, but we all stand in the need of Grace.
To put it into the passive exonerative voice, “Mistakes were made.” Many. You know them. We’re still making them. I wouldn’t have been sad at all to see the statue of Andrew Jackson toppled in Lafayette Park in D.C. the other night. You remember that president, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” His expulsion of some sixty thousand Native Americans from the Southeastern United States today would have been considered a war crime. If this bit of our history escapes you mind – maybe you weren’t paying attention in your eighth-grade history class. Oh, you say it wasn’t in your history book. Well, that’s not a surprise. The victors write the history. Don’t remember? The Cherokee, Seminole and Choctaw – they remember. Ask one of their people. If you’re ready to listen respectively, with a heart ready to be wounded – maybe one of them will share the story of the “Trail of Tears.” Mistakes were made. In abundance.
So here we are. With the exception of those original inhabitants – and while we all came in different boats – we’re all in the same boat now. America is adrift and pestilence stalks the land.
And yet, and yet…by Faith… “They’re Coming to America.”
The first came to escape tyranny and the oppression of kings and Church. We didn’t believe in the freedom of religion in these scattered colonies much more than the king believed in it in Mother England. Here, we ended up with so many different religious traditions on these shores, we were forced to come to an accommodation. People leaving Europe were exhausted by religious wars. If you can find that in your old, musty history book. These stories are there. Start under, “Thirty Years War.” It left some eight million dead. All over whether Jesus was actually in the piece of bread at the altar, or whether he was present in our celebration of his presence in the reality of those who gathered in the memory of his name. Eight million souls gone to wherever over a theological disputation – and a few other things. For sure, politics and nationalism and other stuff were mixed in. As they say, it’s complicated.
The genius of this new land is that we have found a better way (not that we always heed it). As Winston Churchill noted about us, “Americans always do the right thing. After they’ve tried everything else.” Eventually, we made progress. A Catholic could be president. Recently, a Jew did almost win the Democratic nomination twice. Jews, Catholics, Protestants serve on the Supreme Court and in Congress with their Muslim brothers and sisters. Don’t forget our first black president, EVER. In the twenty-first century, gay, straight and trans, we elect them. And not a few atheists. Yes, God loves atheists, too. Or what part of “ALL” didn’t you understand?
By faith we till the soil of this Promised Land. We hold an expansive vision for all.
For those who might be a little squeamish or put off about this last assertion, I refer you to Calvin (also in your history book). Think Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregationalist. “Man does not have the authority to decide whom God will save.” Nor does woman. Any of us, flawed as we are, can be an instrument for Good under the power of the One who created the heavens and earth.
“We’re Coming to America.” Today. Today. “By Faith…”
What is that ineffable quality about this land that others find so compelling? Listen to the stories of those Jews fleeing the shtetls of Russia and Poland in the eighteen-hundreds. Those Orthodox village communities that had known stable communal life for hundreds of years were beset by famine and pogroms. Thousands were killed by czarist mobs and driven off their lands.
“We’re Coming to America.” Today. Today. “By Faith…”
The Forneys, originally French Huguenots fleeing papist mobs in France, first settled in Switzerland and then in Germany. Looking for a better life, we landed in the Port of Philadelphia in 1767 or there abouts. Between my father’s and mother’s families we are a mix of French, German and English. Throw in a Jewish peddler who married into the family in Iowa and gave my mother’s side the surname, Gross. Her mother was a Howe. Yes, in our lineage Julia Ward Howe – think the first Mother’s Day Proclamation. Also General Howe, the British general who proved so inept as to let George Washington slip through his fingers three times. He was finally sent home back to England. But, apparently, not all the Howes.
We’re coming to America. Sweet Land of Liberty. Today. Today. Today. “By Faith…”
We all came in separate boats, but now we’re all in the same boat. Today, virtually every one reading this — your family — came from somewhere. By boat, on foot or, lately, by plane.
As immigrants, our ethic should be formed by Torah values, as explicated in the book of Deuteronomy.
“The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great the mighty, and terrible God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner therefore; for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
You should love and cleave to God, “…who has done for you these great and terrible things which your eyes have seen.”
This ethic, passed down from Abraham in the Torah to the Prophets, and enshrined in the teachings of Jesus is the heart of who we are created to be as an immigrant nation. This ethic is the cornerstone of the Declaration and Constitution. It was in the mind of Lincoln when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. This ethic tore at the hearts of Congress when, shamefacedly, they issued a formal apology to Japanese-Americans interned in concentration camps during WWII.
And what amends will we make to generations of African-Americans who built much of this place? Built the very White House itself and laid out the boundaries of our nation’s capital. Look up Benjamin Banneker, surveyor, astronomer, and farmer. He calculated the solar eclipse of 1789 well before other, more famous astronomers. He worked to set those boundary markers.
What reparations will we make to the people of Greenwood? Who built the section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, stormed by white mobs in some of the worst violence our nation has known? What reparations? “Black Wall Street” burnt to the ground, the pride of generations of Tulsa’s Black citizens? They’re still waiting for an answer.
What amends will we make to the First Nations people from whom we stole Mt. Rushmore and so much more? Impoverished on neglected reservations.
Th e miracle is that we have survived thus far and somehow managed to keep the country together after some fashion.
This ethic reverberates in the agonized plea of Rodney King, “…can we all JUST get along? Can we get along?”
So, listen up, Sweet Land of Liberty, we’re at a new beginning. As M.L. King wrote, “…tomorrow is today.”
“By Faith…”
Read the opinion section by Caroline Randall Williams, “You want a Confederate Monument? My body is a Confederate Monument. The black people I came from were raped by the white people I came from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?” [1]
Yes, read it. The mere fact that such a searing story could be printed at all is evidence that God has graced this land. True greatness begins with truth-telling, repentance. And at some point, hopefully, absolution. Absolution, not ours to demand, but a mark of God’s grace that grows out of honest, heartfelt conversation with those harmed. Freely offered, not ours to demand. Ultimately, a gift of God’s Grace.
“Among the apologists for the Southern cause and for its monuments, there are those who dismiss the hardships of the past. They imagine a world of benevolent masters, and speak with misty eyes of gentility and honor and the land. They deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred.”
“To those people it is my privilege to say, I am the proof. I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.”[2]
The fact that Ms. Williams’s story could even be told — and read — and hopefully absorbed with empathy by a white audience, is a mark of God’s grace. Freedom begins with truthful story telling. She, and all who have survived such a shameful legacy – they are the true heroes of the South. They are its righteous legacy. So, also with those of the southern branch of the Forney family.”
If America is ever to be Great Again,” it would only be when we disenthrall ourselves of our made-up, high school sanitized history. With the Rev. Al Sharpton, we must acknowledge that any greatness will only begin when we honestly ask, “Great for whom?” Great for whom? And prayfully listen for an answer. The Spirit will speak to an open and contrite heart.
Any greatness will begin with an honest assessment of who we are and from where we have traveled. As my mother always said, “Handsome is as handsome does.” I think I now know what she meant.
“By Faith Abraham…” By Faith, each one of us embarks on a new journey, sojourners in a land every bit as strange and as foreign as it was to those first people who crossed the Bearing Strait eons ago. Every bit as foreign as it was to those first Pilgrims. As it was to those who disembarked from fetid slave ships. Every bit as foreign as were the streets of New York that opened to hundreds of Suffragette women marching for their personhood to be acknowledged at the ballot box. Every bit as foreign as to those who on Bloody Sunday crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge — named after a Grand Dragon of the KKK. Every bit as foreign as America now is to all of us in this new era of #BlackLivesMatter, COVID-19 lockdown, and the beginning of an economic collapse unlike any since the Great Depression. “By Faith…”
“By Faith…” Might we be receptive on this July 4th to the stirring of God’s Holy Spirit. Indeed, “The times, they are a changing.” Might this nation embrace this fresh opportunity to live out its creeds and promises. A new birth of common purpose.
“By Faith….” let each take hold of the opportunity to begin anew. Then, and only then, do we embark on a journey towards greatness – a destination never reached, but approached from afar with starry eyes.
“By Faith…” We’re still Coming to America. Today. Today. Today.
Amen.
[1] Caroline Randall Williams, New York Times, “Sunday Review,” June 28, 2020., p. 4.
[2] Ibid.
Dear friends in Christ
July 5, 2020
Independence Day Weekend
“We’re Coming to America”
The Rev. John C. Forney
Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Hebrews 11:8-16; Matthew 5:43-48
If This Stuff was Easy…
My first parish assignment at a little town in the upper Mojave Dessert. There I met a number of wonderful, faithful Christians. Yes, the town was little. My wife would have said infinitesimal. When we first arrived to be interviewed, in all of about one minute we had passed through the entire downtown section and crossed the railroad tracks back into open desert. My tearful wife said with a quaver in her voice, “Is this all there is?” Later she would tell friends that we were centrally located, “One hundred fifty miles from nowhere.” She was certain that the End of the Earth was only four blocks past the local schoolhouse. Or was it two?
One of the wonderful members of that church was Bill, our Lay Leader. Bill’s father had been a Methodist pastor, and it was his father’s example that led Bill to strongly insist that the church should be involved in its community.
One day Bill told me the story of his father’s involvement in the early Civil Rights struggles in Florida. Tensions had been building and Bill’s father had an idea of how the church might bridge the gap and promote understanding. He went across town to see an acquaintance who was pastor of a Black Baptist church. He proposed a plan whereby the two children’s choirs might do an exchange on an upcoming Sunday. The two pastors agreed on a date. The Baptist kids would spend Saturday night over at Bill’s father’s church, getting to know their kids. Then, on Sunday morning they would preform a couple of numbers for the eleven o’clock service. Bill’s father had decided that since race relations were so raw, he ought to spend the night at his church with the kids and their chaperones.
Around 9:00 p.m. there was a banging on the church door, and when the pastor opened it, he was confronted by an armed mob of fifty or sixty. A man with a shotgun stepped forward, “Preacher, you best send those kids out here now.” Bill’s father told the man in no uncertain terms, “They aren’t coming out. And if you want them, you’re only get to them over my dead body.”
Everybody got really quiet. After what seemed like an hour, Bill’s dad being silhouetted by the light of the open doorway and the belligerent armed men facing him, there was the faint sound of shuffling feet. A few around the edges began to peel away, then others. Sounds of some more car doors closing and engines starting up. After a few more minutes most had gotten back in their cars. The mob had quietly dispersed. They’d gone home.
That is an indelible story Bill would take to his grave. It is a story of Christian courage and discipleship when it was all on the line. The Baptist kids remained unaware of what had happened that evening as they sang to the delight of that Methodist congregation Sunday morning. Given the emotionally charged experience, so fraught with potential for tragedy, the Methodist kids never made their reciprocal visit to the Baptist church across town.
In our passage from John’s gospel, we are given fair notice that this Jesus Movement stuff will not be a walk in the park. Most everybody will hate and despise you. Your ways are foolishness. Un American. Communist! Jesus’ way will tear up families. If daughters-in-law were not be getting along all that well with the in-laws, Gospel values will make things exponentially worse. This is going to go way beyond kitchen turf conflicts and how to raise the grandkids. And who makes the best meatloaf.
One’s not going to need to heed Civil Rights leader, Congressman John Lewis’s call to get into, “good trouble, necessary trouble.” It’s going to come knocking at your doorstep. In spades! Neighbors will shun you. You will be beaten in city streets by hostile policing authorities. Some of your neighbors will burn down your church. Tear gas, pepper spray. It’s all coming at you. I can testify from personal experience. You are about a most inconvenient truth THEY don’t want to hear. You will be fired and sidelined if you work for a government agency. Your career’s toast. Nobody wants to hear it. Go away.
During the recent mass rallies, the Los Angeles Times has reported on the ugliness peaceful demonstrators have encountered in rural, mostly white, California. Protestors encountered pure ugliness. They were beset upon by threats of violence and malicious rumors. Two teenagers from Angels Camp spoke of horrible abuse. Angels Camp – remember the home of the “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain.[1] That Angels Camp.
One seventeen-year-old Black student in rural Quincy has been spat on by white students at her school and called the N-word. The torment got so bad, she finally had to transfer to another school — a move that would cost her a scholarship and the captain position of the cheer squad. God may love all, but not so much some of the residents of Quincy.
In Tuolumne County some angry folks threatened to bring guns and dogs into town. Large dogs.
In Shasta County an unauthorized “militia” of armed men in tactical gear threatened to show up at the protest at Oakdale. Not at all what local law authorities wanted. The word the sheriff used? “Counterproductive.”
One mixed race citizen, Camereon Medico, began a one-man protest with a sign board in Susanville. He was assaulted with racial slurs and curses, “We don’t like your kind around here.” And “Black lives don’t matter.” Some on Facebook denizens threatened to bring guns and “run over” protesters. In spite of the hate and threats, a white neighbor and then others soon joined the man’s protest. Yes, there’s going to be “trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.”
Standing for justice and equity – standing for the ideals Jesus preached is not easy. “If this stuff was easy, we’d have already done it a long time ago,” President Obama is fond of saying. It this stuff was easy, Jesus would have had it wrapped up during his earthly ministry.
My first work while in seminary was in community organizing. Trained seminary interns in teams of two were sent to clusters of churches who had invited them in to help them work on white racism. Vic and I ended up at Temple City, California, hosted by a cluster of five congregations. We called it Project Understanding, though there often wasn’t an abundance of understanding.
Our work there took shape as an ecumenical fair housing council. Temple City was a bedroom community for Los Angeles and it was in housing patterns that racism was expressed. Talk about lack of understanding! I remember our first meeting with the city manager. His opening words, “This is a nice, peaceful (read white) community and I intend to keep it that way.” Our first client was Italian. For some reason, the owner of this rental property hated Italians. Why? Go figure.
Members of our project were sent out to investigate, or check out complaints, to confront hostile apartment managers and owners. To secure the just rights of minority clients, they were often castigated as “trouble makers” and worse. Called all sorts of names. Jesus was right. His message of love put into action would not be popular. Justice is the public form of love, and it’s not often popular because it means giving up power.
The last time I visited the church that had hosted our office, was on the occasion of a memorial service for the woman who had followed me as director of Project Understanding, Now, Temple City was overwhelmingly Asian. Communities change. But it was “nice and peaceful.”
“They will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake…” Tough stuff. Not easy, indeed!
“Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” Yes, indeed if this stuff was easy, we’d have done it a long time ago. And, if you try — yes, you too, will end up in deep doo-doo.
“What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…”
Cinch up your belt. Get your game face on. There’s work to do if we’re going to build a Promised Land. It’s about the risk to love.
Dante Stewart alerts us to risk as the costly expression of faith. “Sympathy feels bad about a situation. Solidarity joins in as a co-laborer to change the situation. Sympathy calls for love without risk. Solidarity calls for risk as love. Sympathy centers the comfort and timetable of those who benefit from a system of difference. Solidarity calls for a revolution of value in a system in which we build a loving and just common life together.”[2]
Solidarity, as corporate love, is costly. It demands something. It demands risk. It is easy to march with thousands of like-minded people in Los Angeles or in any other large, mostly progressive city. To make that witness in a small, rural setting is costly. One will quickly reach the “unrepentant heart.” Fearful and damaged persons will react out of that fear and reject you and your message. The challenge then, is how might one creatively engage and disarm that fear. Move beyond it. I can’t say we interns in Temple City were often that successful. Too green, most of the time.
But understanding is possible. Or maybe just tolerance. We did have some small victories. We did host a number of community symposiums on the fair housing laws and how to follow them. When managers and owners heard that if a Black family would rent a unit, the rest of the tenants would not move out. Why? Because people hate to move. If the new family could afford the same rent the others were paying, they would keep up their unit in pretty much the same fashion. And this was the case. Most people want to do the right thing. Soon neighbors got to know one another and the neighborhood’s heart grew one size bigger. In the years I ran the project, we never actually had to sue anyone.
For those brave Catholics, Methodists, Quakers, Presbyterians and Disciples of Christ members of Project Understanding, this was costly love. Faith, being put to the test, grew beyond measure. In the work, Jesus became real like he had never been for many of our investigators. They tasted a smidgen of Life Eternal.
Our nation, we sense, is at a crossroads. The Rev. William Barber calls our time a Third Reconstruction. Lately I have been moved to pick up a book of Martin Luther King, Jr., Where do we Go from Here: Chaos or Community?[3]
In one of his last works, Dr. King lays out his hopes for a better America. It is a vision firmly rooted in the promise of our Constitution and founding documents. But he knew that the continued pressure of mass demonstrations, supported with strategic organizing and policy proposals would be essential. Just as now.
Love, if it is to amount to anything in the public sphere, must be disciplined and tenacious. Just as now.
“Mass nonviolent demonstrations will not be enough. They must be supplemented by a continuing job of organization. To produce change, people must be organized to work together in units of power.[4]
Building up what King called “The Beloved Community” is tough stuff. It’s about changing the power dynamic. And power makes no concessions.
If this stuff was easy, it would have been done a long time ago. It is sort of like of weeding or housework. It’s never done. Those of us who marched in the sixties thought we’d gotten voting rights, civil rights, fair housing, LGBT rights, women’s rights and a city worthy of the Beloved Community.
Far too many of us rested on the accomplishments of a past day. When we awoke, we woke to racism and discrimination every bit as virulent as when we had begun so many years ago. We woke up to intolerance, economic despair and voter suppression. Crap schools and dilapidated housing. Thousands sleeping on the streets and rampant addiction. Gangs and disaster neighborhoods. Did I mention global warming, mass incarceration and a pandemic? And an America with no direction, a nation adrift?
I’ll give Dr. King the last word here before we pull the covers up over our heads.
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with lost opportunity…We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.”[5]
“I set before you the ways of life and death,” says God. “Choose life.”
Thousands, Black and White marching in solidarity through America’s streets, are choosing life. Two brave teenage protestors in Angels Camp, California, are choosing life. City mayors and police department chiefs confronting legacies of abuse and misconduct are choosing life.
Tough stuff indeed, but more precious than much fine gold!
As Anne Lamott has written in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, “Hope begins in the dark…”
Amen.
[1] Brittny Mejia, Hailey Branson-Potts, “Some in Rural California take up racial justice cause,” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2020.
[2] Dante Stewart, “Verse and Voice,” Sojourners, June 16, 2020.
[3] Martin Luther King, Jr., Where do we go From Here: Chaos or Community?, (Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 2010).
[4] Ibid, p. 139.
[5] Ibid, 202.
Dear friends in Christ
June 21, 2020
Pentecost 3, Proper 7
“If This Stuff was Easy…”
The Rev. John C. Forney
John 9:35-10:8
Inducted
Over fifty years ago I distinctly remember being lined up with a bunch of other guys in a dingy, depressing room, downtown L.A., and raising my right hand and swearing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. We then stepped across a line painted on the floor and, instantly, I was no longer a civilian. For the next two years I would be a U.S. Army medic.”
As part of that induction ceremony, we all were given a list of “General Orders.” These were the duties we are to be about if there is no officer to direct us, if we got separated from our unit. “General Orders” are the common sense actions one would take in any emergency: secure government property, protect life, report to the first officer that one might encounter.
You are part of the Church because you have been inducted into the Jesus Movement. In this day and age, no one is making you be here. You are here because you were Spirit-called. In the Jesus Movement our General Orders are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, and your Neighbor as yourself.” That simple. Common sense. Gospel sense. Gospel orders.
At the beginning there were twelve inductees. “…first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.”
Then he sent them out. Their mission? To heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay.” And why? “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” And travel light. Common sense General Orders.
The “Kingdom of Heaven” – what our brother Martin Luther King called “the Beloved Community” is at hand. This is the inbreaking reality where all are valued for who they are. Sort of like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. We’re here as citizens to fulfill its promise and celebrate its joys.
But there are those who would pain the Beloved Community. Do it great harm. And we are called to action. General Orders time.
This week, the summons came through those agonized words: “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
In today’s world the first assignment to those of the Jesus Movement is to remove the knee. Communities of color need to breathe. The scab has been ripped off four hundred years of oppression in America. As George had a knee on his neck, we all have a knee on our necks. Remove the knee! None of us can breathe. It begins with #BlackLivesMatter.
To those disbelieving souls who would object, “Well, don’t all lives matter.” There are some who just don’t get it. Some who don’t know our American history. Some having an appalling lack of empathy. Back to the Penalty Box. You’re not ready for this discussion if the first words out of your mouth are, if your first thought is, “Yes, but…” Best sit down, be quiet and listen. “I can’t breathe.” Do you hear him? Listen to the agony. Humility is the order of the day for you. Those are your “General Orders.”
In another sense, yes, you are right. For the forty percent of Americans who live in poverty and near poverty, your lives matter every bit as much. The lives of the impoverished and left out do indeed matter. Those who live day by day working a gig job with no future, laid off at an economic whim – your life matters. Those downsized, outsourced and abandoned — your communities matter.
Some insight into our common economic and political disenfranchisement might, hopefully, lead you to realize that at the root, you have much more in common than you think with your sisters and brothers of color. Maybe that’s why the crowds in the streets these past weeks are so diverse. Everyone’s marching. We all have a stake in this. The knee on George Floyd’s neck is also on yours. And on your children’s.
The call to us in the Jesus Movement is to tend the sick, lift up the downtrodden, and give hope to those abandoned by this idolatrous, so-called Free Market. Folks, there’s a big fat thumb on the scale. A thumb larded up with billions and billions in bribes to the political elite. This is not partisan. Both parties are equal opportunity grifters. That’s one thing Mr. Trump got right. The system’s rigged.
We can’t breathe. We need a platoon of disciples from the Jesus Movement to remove the\knee. George Floyd couldn’t breathe. Trayvon Martin couldn’t breathe. Folks in abandoned communities all across America can’t breathe. The citizens of the Inland Empire who have suffered decades of political corruption can’t breathe.
Our charge is to remove the knee. We are now all George Floyd. “I can’t breathe,” is our desperate cry. Maybe our dying cry.
While a citizen army of hundreds of thousands mobilized in the streets and boulevards of our cities all across the land, too many of our elected officials mobilized to be scarce.
“I’m not going to criticize other people,” was the lame excuse of one. “I’m late to lunch,” the response of several. Silence. Crickets, the response from others as they passed by reporter Kasie Hunt on the “Walk of Shame” to the Senate Dining Room. Remind me again, what are we paying these folks a salary for?
Unfortunately, a criminal element, we now know, was organizing to use these massive demonstrations for their own nefarious purposes — outright looters and arsonists. Others were acting out of their varied pathologies. And a few were political subversives – yes, we have evidence of their being egged on by the same malefactors who conspired to manipulate our elections in 2016 to great effect. What a delight the internet can be. For fun, profit, organizing, and election rigging.
The best, the majority inducted into these marches and rallies across the land, they were exemplary of the values of the Jesus Movement – Spirit recruited,
What gives me hope this time, what is different from the demonstrations of the ‘60s of my era is the portrait of this crowd. This is the most diverse group of people ever to come out into the streets of our nation. Those standing in solidarity with George Floyd’s family, those raising the cry for decency, sisterhood and brotherhood – those called to good purpose have been the most diverse group of Americans ever to take to the streets to say, “Enough.” We can’t breathe. They could be Peter, John, son of Zebedee and Bartholomew. Or Alice, Manuel, Serena, Jamil, or Alex. And cast out demons, do they ever! We’ve got whole new batch of ugly demons to confront in American: racism, poverty, dysfunctional politics, a decrepit health care system, hate, a collapsed economy – just to name a few.
We don’t need to worry about boredom and nothing to do. Did I mention a raging pandemic? People dying like flies? Another of our ills needing healing.
The work of those in the Jesus Movement is most contagious. We saw multiple scenes of members of the police, even chiefs and mayors taking a knee in solidarity. It is said that Hope is the evidence of things unseen. We’ve seen some beautiful evidence of Hope on the streets of America.
In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 82% of Americans support the peaceful protests as a legitimate response to what has happened. Retired generals and admirals have finally spoken up against use of the military against peaceful protesters. The military is not a plaything. It is not a collection of toy soldiers that can be shuffled about as in a game.
All this protest is born of the values and teachings of the Jesus and the prophets. These enduring values are enshrined in our Constitution and common norms of decency.
We are inducted to raise our voices to high heaven over the injustice and oppression done to the “least of these.”
Because we are not bystanders in this democracy, but have power as citizens, it is up to each of us to pull our nation back to our higher ideals. It is up to all of us, in the face of the travesty of justice done to George Floyd to raise his voice, ‘I CAN’T BREATHE.” To raise the voices of all in the face of pandemic, racism, economic collapse and in the threat of a politicized military: “WE CAN’T BREATHE.” That is the commission of our induction into the Jesus Movement.
At the conclusion of his eulogy for George Floyd, the Rev. Al Sharpton asked the question. If time’s up for injustice, what are we going to do with the time left to each of us? Will we fritter it away with sitcoms and mindless consumerism? Will we just go to sleep or indulge in various addictions? Or expend it for that which endures? Kingdom building.
Will we use it to perfect our fragile union? Will we use it in acts of unselfish solidarity? For a cause greater than ourselves?
After I completed my service as a medic I became a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I received my copy of their paper, The Veteran with updates on events, reunions, and projects. Often included are articles on the early history of the organization and the early protest against that war. Laurel Krause wrote of her sister Allison, one of the four students killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State on May 4, 1970 – fifty years ago this month..
One piece that caught my eye as I skimmed the paper. “The Little Girl at My Door.” On his way from Landing Zone Andy into the Vietnamese army base at An Loc, Jack Mallory noticed a group of several children.
“Something wasn’t right, and I told my jeep driver to head over there. Half a dozen kids were gathered around a young girl, maybe 10 years old, lying under a tree. She wasn’t visibly injured, but pale, motionless and dead.”
“Through my interpreter, her friends told me she’d been up in the tree gathering branches for firewood. She had triggered a booby trap set up by the local Viet Cong. A grenade, without pin, had been placed in a tin can with a wire strung across the road. They had hoped that the antenna on an American vehicle would hit the wire, yank the grenade from the can, detonate it over the vehicle. A few minutes earlier, however, the little girl had detonated the grenade herself. She was apparently untouched, except for a small hole not much bigger than my thumb nail, right in the center of her chest. She had bled out internally. Not my fault. Not, directly, our fault.”[1]
No not our fault, directly. Much of the racist history in America, not our fault, directly. Most do not scream racial slurs or expressly oppress. We would be horrified to have thought that it was our knee on the neck of another, snuffing out the last remaining seconds of life. Surely, we would have reacted to those dying words, “I can’t breathe.” This is what we learned as inductees into the Jesus Movement. It’s what we would have been taught in most any of the great religions of the world. Yet, collectively, our knee has snuffed out the breath of too many. Like that tragic event around a tree in a Vietnamese countryside, blame for the tragedy of that war is complicated.
Regardless of fault, and the American foreign policy of that time was surely complicit, how do we move on?
Vietnam Veterans Against the War’s answer has been to build links of people-to-people connection with the citizens of Vietnam. Approval has recently been received from the headmaster of a village school, Binh Thanh, to begin he construction of a future VVAW library. Many of us have donated to its construction. This last March was the organizer, Chuck Theusch’s fifty-third trip on behalf of VVAW.
Will this library bring back that little girl? Will our efforts to transform policing and our criminal justice system bring back George Floyd? No, that pain will endure — but goodwill and friendship can triumph over evil and death. Empathy and amends are tokens of Grace.
We are the incarnation of love that trumps hate. We in the Jesus Movement, by the power of the Pentecost Spirit, we usher into reality a New Heaven and a New Earth. “On earth as in heaven,” are our orders.
Just how did we get signed up? Over what line did we cross into this Jesus Mission? It was when the Holy Spirit got into our hearts and grabbed up our imagination. In that instant, we knew that Love is the Answer. My friend Ed Bacon says that each morning we wake up, we have a choice. Will we live in the House of Love or the House of Fear? The Spirit prompts our better angels. Most of us. Most of the time.
Presbyterian pastor and writer, Frederick Buechner, tells us of our duty in the Jesus Movement, in the Life Movement – it is our Vocation. Which is?
“Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”
For many our vocation has been to be out in the streets. Wearing your facemask. Keeping proper social distance. It has been to labor in crowded hospitals tending to the sickest of the sick. It has been in a newsroom. It has been keeping folks safe on the streets (Yes, there are good police who actually care). It is that teacher attempting to figure out technology in order to reach out to her students. It has been to mourn George Floyd.
Our vocation is where we are placed. It is where “our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” It is our commission.
Our commission is to speak truth in a time of lies and violence.
When peaceful demonstrators were summarily rousted by clouds of teargas, chemical agents and flash bang grenades from Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, for a militaristic photo op, while our Secretary of Defense thought they might be walking to the park only to “inspect the restrooms,” some of the better angels of our retired military saw the danger of this spectacle. They found their voices. Senator Mitt Romney, unlike so many other senators, was not out to lunch. When our president made a travesty of our Christian heritage, waving about a Bible as if hawking a frozen steak on the Home Shopping Network –desecrating our church — religious leaders, the Catholic Archbishop and my bishop, spoke out against this tawdry spectacle – even the Rev. Pat Robertson and other Evangelicals – leaders often quiet on political matters, raised their voices. Our vocation is often to speak out, to exorcise the demons of racism, of hate and the perversion of Jesus message of peace. God is not a plaything.
In the end, our commission, our vocation, General Orders if you will, is summed up in a poem by the Jesuit brother Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked.”
We are simply asked to make gentle our bruised world,
To be compassionate of all, including oneself.
Then in the time left over to repeat the ancient tale,
And go the way of God’s foolish ones.[2]
Amen.
[1] Jack Mallory, “The Little Girl at My Door,” The Veteran, Spring 2020.
[2] Peter Byrne, “We are Simply Asked” as set to music by Jim Strathdee, “Light of the World,” Caliche Records, Ridgecrest, CA, 1982. Words copyright 1976 by Peter Byrne, S.J. Music by Jim Strathdee, copyright 1981.
June 14, 2020
Pentecost 2, Proper 6
The Rev. John C. Forney
John 9:35-10:8 Inducted
Fired Up. Ready to Go.
Four bishops gathered over the five days of the Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in Southern California. From various local denominations, Episcopal, Roman Catholic and African Methodist Episcopal churches, they were invited to speak at the United Methodist Bishop Charles Golden’s, maiden Annual Conference that year in Southern California. On a hot, stifling afternoon, the Episcopal Bishop Fred Borsch was the first.
As the body quieted as Bishop Borsch settled into the pulpit, an air of expectancy filled the cavernous chapel at the University of Redlands. Fred took one last glance at his notes and waited until he knew he had the attention of all.
“Fire, Fire, Fire, everywhere. Except in the hearts of Episcopalians,” he began. For a second, I feared we might have a stampede out the doors, but Fred quickly continued. Yes, indeed! He certainly had our attention. “Fire everywhere except in the hearts of Episcopalians.”
Fire! I had thought a few days ago that my sermon was well on its way to competition. Add in some bits to carry the theme through the text, maybe a humorous story to keep interest alive, and I would be done. Ready to send it in to Faith, our Administrator at St. Francis, have her mail it out for those not having internet.
Fire! They say be careful what you wish for.
Now the whole country seems of fire – literally, as well as metaphorically. I’m taken back to the tragic days in Los Angeles after the assignation of Dr. King. I was a young deacon at an inner-city church in the Pico-Union Neighborhood. Not a one of us was untouched by the grief of our community. Fortunately, in our community, cooler heads prevailed. We gathered in the church for prayers, singing, the sharing of memories and outrage. And when it seemed that what needed to be said, the anger and grief expressed, when the tears had been choked back, we all drifted back to our homes. Each wondering if hope could ever be restored.
St. Augustine of Hippo said, “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”
If we are going to heal this nation, we must first address the anger. Some are angry at those looting, burning and causing wanton mayhem. I get that. There is the 10-80-10 rule that pertains to disasters.
Ten percent of those affected will step up. Their minds will be focused on what needs to be done. They are the ones who will begin immediately, once their safety is secured, to look after their families and then their neighbors. They provide the necessary leadership for recovery.
Eighty percent, whether in shock, or by natural inclination, will wait for leadership to emerge and then pitch in. They will begin taking neighbors to medical facilities, they will grab their chainsaws and begin removing fallen trees to clear the streets for emergency vehicles.
And then there are the remaining ten percent. These folks will use most any calamity to act out their sickness and perversion. They are the arsonists that went from store to store with containers of gasoline and matches. These are the ones who are the profiteers. And I hope they are stuck with boxes and boxes of worthless toilet paper when all is said and done. These are the rumor mongers, those spreading the lie that some of the officers were wearing “Make America White Again” hats. These are the people that necessitate the summoning of the national guard.
Our nation now needs that first ten percent and the next eighty percent. We need these folks fired up with compassion and clear minds, strong arms and open wallets.
This morning when we look around and gather our wits, there is much to do. First, we need to get a grip. We need those disciplined national guardswomen and men to clear the streets. To send everybody home. Arrest, if need be,, that last ten percent who will use the killing of George Floyd for their own demented ends.
We need our houses of worship and spiritual leadership to help us mourn and express our grief about all that has happened.
The righteous anger folks felt upon watching the life slowly being choked out of George Floyd needs to be acknowledged. We need to realize that this anger did not materialize overnight. This nation has witnessed black men and women disrespected and murdered under the cover of state authority now for years. Some would say four hundred years in America. It was only one generation after that fabled first Thanksgiving that the sons of those first Pilgrims were committing genocide on the same people their mothers and fathers had broken bread with. Now we are only left with a trail of tears and broken promises.
The anger of Broken Knee, Watts, the James Pettis Bridge, Ferguson…and Minneapolis…We need to get our arms around it all and grieve with those who grieve. We need to cry, to scream and shout, to hug one another – to do what ever is necessary to give voice to the pain we feel.
Tweets of bluster and threat do not improve the situation. They will not heal. We need an adult in the room who can acknowledge our collective grief and hurt. We need leadership to point a way forward out of this present chaotic, helpless moment, if our nation is to have any chance of healing.
That beautiful daughter of anger needs to be heard. Her voice is cleansing fire that will weld us back as one.
“We all feel as if there’s a knee on our neck,” mourned Andrea Jenkins, vice president of the Minneapolis City Council last night. There is a knee on our collective neck, but is not just the knee of police authority.
This pandemic has been a window to another knee on the neck of America. Those who have gotten sickest, those who have died are not distributed randomly across our cities and nation. The dead are the poorest, those with no health care. They were already the sickest because their diabetes and coronary issues were left untreated. These victims of coronavirus are a window to the stifling poverty stalking our land.
These victims are those who never received any PPP check. Nothing! Because all the Big Boys cut the line at our large banks. Their anger has been festering since the 2008 Great Recession. They are the discarded and ignored. Of course they’re mad. As always, almost all the recovery went to the top one percent, the top one tenth of one percent. They are the ones who still had to pay when the bankruptcy laws were jiggered and those who owned towers in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., got bailed out and stiffed their workers.
Yes, we need healing and consolation. We need each other to wrap our hands around one another, to remind one another how we have gotten through such national trauma before. That is what our faith is about. It’s also about this second beautiful daughter of hope. The courage to change.
That is the entire lesson for the Day of Pentecost. We must acknowledge the fire that burns in so many disrespected hearts, in our hearts. And we must remind one another of the courage and hope inspired through our walk with Christ. Courage as infectious in the Jesus Movement as that of a virus on our unmasked streets and grocery stores. Every bit as infectious.
This is our scriptural heritage. It is the testimony of those who have gone before us.
If ever the Church needed a wake up call from the Holy Spirit, now is the time. But what is the nature of this summons. Our three texts appointed for today are spot on. Tell the story! Tell that old, old story!
There was a sound like the rush of a mighty wind. The tongues as of fire appeared on the heads of the disciples and they began to speak in the languages of the gathered crowd. Partians, Elimates, Cappadocians – they all understood. Those from Medes, Pontus and Cyrene and visitors from Rome. They all understood, each in their own language.
Where did we have the referent of this story? Come on, biblical scholars, here’s a hint – Genesis. Okay, another – the word babel. Oh, you’re getting warmer. Yes! That’s it. The confusion of languages of those building the Tower of Babel. The end result of such hubris was that no one understood any of their coworkers anymore. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? That chaos looked like that of the streets of Minneapolis and some of our other major cities last Thursday night.
The miracle is that out of confusion and chaos God’s will is for reunion and understanding. Unity over tragic division is the miracle. And what do they all hear? What is the life-giving Word? Love one another as I have loved you.
Paul speaks of the many gifts of the Spirit, all working together to bind us into one. This is also Pentecost Fire. Unity out of diversity. To each is the suitable gift for building up the whole, each one needed. All are baptized into the Body of Christ. All Christians are given this one same Spirit and charge.
In the Gospel of John, the words of the Risen Lord with the gift of the Anointing Spirit are, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And then this enigmatic charge, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Friends, we are not meant to luxuriate in these sins. We are meant to forgive them. We are meant to be “repairers of the breech.” To bind up the sorrowful and lend a hand up to the fallen.
On the Day of Pentecost, the Church is commissioned to be the body of restoration. It is to be the repairer of the breach. And if you forgive the sins of any? Folks, that is our job. Sin is separation Our job is to forgive, to restore. That is our power we have in Christ. That is the Pentecost miracle.
Looking at where we are now, I think the best we can say is that this commission is a work in progress. We’re so far from it. In many ways.
Last Sunday, the New York Times featured on the entire first page one thousand of the nearly hundred thousand lost to the coronavirus. One commentator would give voice to the sadness in his spirit, “Jesus wept.”
Accompanying each of the names was a short piece: Audrey Malone, 68, Chicago, sang gospel music as a member of the Malone Sisters. Clara Louise Bennett, 91, Albany, Georgia, sang her grandchildren a song of the first day of school each year. William Helmreich, 74, Great Neck, N.Y., sociologist who walked New York City. Johnnie D. Veasley, 76, Country Club Hills, Illinois, teacher’s aide.[1] Would that the tragedy of this disease might have pulled us together. The opposite has been the result. This scourge has become so politicized. We’ve substituted opinion for science, rumor and conspiracy theory for facts. Wishful thinking for action. Jesus wept indeed. Unity is the gift of the Spirit. Unity in respect – wearing facemasks, in social distancing, in following our God-given intellect. Follow the science. God gave us a brain, let us use it to the God’s glory, for heaven’s sake!
All this death needn’t have been so. Had we begun, even one or two weeks earlier, taking the necessary measures rather than blaming and denying, upwards of some 60,000 names might not have been on this list.
O Lord, give us the courage for the needed change. Cast aside our hesitations. Cast aside the battalions of lobbyists we willingly suffer with suitcases stuffed with money (campaign contributions). Give us righteous anger at our pay-to-play politics of greed. Give us courage for change. So many deaths needn’t have been so. So many.
The tragic truth is that the fire has gone out of too many of our churches. Pierre Burton wrote much earlier, in 1965 a damning indictment of comfortable, laid-back Christianity, The Comfortable Pew. If ever we needed that strong voice and example of unified purpose from our faith leaders, this is the time. Fired-up moral leadership is what we need from our faith communities. Like the Rev. Dr. Barber of “Moral Mondays” down in Goldsborough, North Carolina. Like our friends at Urban Mission in Pomona, California.
There’s a story told of the 2008 presidential primary. It comes out of Greenwood, South Carolina. On an uncomfortable sultry evening, rain pouring down, the dispirited and weary Obama campaign pulled into the parking lot of the civic center. As then Senator Obama and the campaign staff slogged through the downpour into the center there was a small bedraggled group of about thirty who had come out to hear the candidate.
When the grandmotherly, African-American organizer, Edith Childs, saw the downcast look on the candidate’s face, she belted out, “Fired up.” And the room came to life. “Fired up,” echoed back the response. Edith continued, “Ready to go.” Again, the chorus responded in full voice, “Ready to go.” In future rallies, with thousands in various auditoriums across the country, this became the signature chant of the campaign. “Fired up.” “Ready to go.” Now and then, Edith would be invited onto the stage to lead the crowd.
Christians, we would do well to appropriate that chant. The world needs us fired up and ready to go. This nation needs that fire in our hearts and minds. Though the night be long and oppressive, it yearns for folks fired up for unity, fired up for common cause, fired up for justice. And ready to go. Our nation needs us ready to go right now.
Some have been in the trenches for weeks battling this virus. In hospitals and food distribution lines, in prisons and in community centers. Fired up? We’re needed. Ready to go? It’s time for the second team to get in the game.
The new Scientific American arrived in the mail the other day. The entire issue is devoted to various aspects of this pandemic. One section featured the stories of those healers on the front lines in our overcrowded hospitals.
Most exemplify the dedication of many who went into the health professions. Though many have been beaten down by the inhuman hours and incessant days of duty, a subdued idealism is still driving these people.
Roxy, an emergency room nurse from Dallas, Texas, talks about how the stress and worry has consumed her. She is torn in her conflict between the duty to her nursing vocation and the duty to her family. “It was so hard to stay away from my family and even harder to stay away from my work, which I love. It felt like punishment, like I was losing my mind. I’ll admit that I was drinking more than I ever do. In early April I decided to start staying in a hotel so not to accidentally bring the virus home to my husband and two kids, who could also spread it to my immunocompromised dad, who helps with child care.” [2]
Where Sin did abound, Grace did much more abound. Yes, as George Floyd’s life was snuffed out and the pandemic death toll passed one hundred thousand, Eric Trump could tweet, “GREAT DAY FOR THE DOW!!” To which one of America’s compassionate souls responded, “Not a great day for the 100,000 Americans who died of coronavirus.” Sin and Folly does ever abound.
Not a great day for the citizens of Minneapolis. Not a great day for the meat packers stuffed in contagion-filled plants in Sioux Falls, South Dakota or Perry, Iowa. Not a great day by a long shot.
Each is given a gift of the Spirit to heal, to restore. To come to our senses. It’s all in that prayer repeated meeting after meeting in twelve-step recovery groups – the Serenity Prayer.
God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.
This prayer leads us to those two lovely daughters of HOPE: Anger and Courage. Straight from the heart of God this prayer comes. A blessed Day of Pentecost to you and those you care for, those you serve. And don’t forget RED. It’s Pentecost Sunday! Amen.
[1] New York Times, “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss,” Sunday, May 24, 2020.
[2] Jillian Mock and Jen Schwartz, “How the Healers Feel,” Scientific America, June 2020, p. 38.
Dear friends in Christ
May 31, 2020
Day of Pentecost
The Rev. John C. Forney
John 20:19-23, Acts 2:1-11, I Corinthians 12:4-13
Fired Up. Ready to Go.
Spirit of Truth
Well, You Didn’t Get it Here!
George Regas is fond of telling the story of a man who, one Sunday, wanders into a large, cavernous Episcopal sanctuary. Think of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. You’ve seen it. It is where many state funerals are held. You saw all of the living presidents assembled on the front pew at the service for President George H. W. Bush. The music was solemn, the liturgy stately. Iridescent light filtered from the majestic stained-glass windows played over the assembled congregation. The guys are all wearing ties and many women have hats on. Its business formal attire for both men and women.
The scene is set. You’ve got the picture of our High-Church Episcopal tribe. A visitor who has ambled in, takes a seat on the center aisle. He’s not well dressed, but acceptable. This is Southern California, remember. He seems not very versed with the prayer book and is unfamiliar with any of the hymns. Remember this is an Episcopal service. We have aerobics at worship. Stand. Sit. Kneel – but no push-ups necessary.
As the preacher moves into his sermon, the fellow perks up. This preacher knows how to hold a congregation. A few minutes into the sermon the visitor is responding, “Amen, brother. Preach it.” Heads are beginning to turn as people wonder who this unseemly fellow is, who it is that’s carrying on so. Soon, an usher discretely taps him on the shoulder and quietly whispers, “Sir, you need to be quiet.” The visitor says he’ll try to restrain himself. “Sorry,” he mutters.
The preacher hasn’t gotten much further before the visitor again, is unable to sit quietly and blurts out, “Amen. Lord have mercy. Sweet Jesus have mercy.” He’s half way out of his seat. Again, heads are turning and some nearby are shushing him. This time the usher is a bit more forceful in his admonishment to maintain decorum. And again, the visitor assures him that he’ll try to restrain himself.
A third time into the sermon, the visitor is completely overcome and jumps up, shouting, “Praise Jesus. Praise his name. You preach it brother. You’re on the glory road.” This time a very stern usher tells him in no uncertain terms that he will have to be still or leave. To which the visitor responds, “Sir, I just can’t help it. I’ve got the Spirit.” “Well,” the usher huffs, “You certainly didn’t get it here.”
Episcopalians, you know, the Frozen Chosen, have always been a bit skittish about emotion in our services. If any is to have a divine revelation, they best do it quietly. Especially in the National Cathedral.
Some of us used to get a bit edgy as the church moved into Pentecost Sunday. Please, no carrying on for us. With this Sunday’s appointed gospel reading from John, we move ever closer to the Day of Pentecost as Jesus promises to send a Guide, an Advocate, the Spirit of Truth. Remember, these are Jesus’ farewell instructions to his followers.
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees or knows him…I will not leave your orphaned…”
It is said that Truth is the first casualty of war. It seems to also have been a casualty of this pandemic. Truth certainly seems in short supply as we move through this national coronavirus debacle – every state for itself.
For those of us in “shelter-in-place” orders, or “lockdown” as we call it, the reality of this virus has been a very “Inconvenient Truth.” I’m reminded of an Ed Bacon quote, “Yes, the Truth will set you free, but first it’s going to hurt like hell.”
We Americans have great difficulty with such stubborn realities. We are not an overly patient people. After the Civil War the North quickly tired of Reconstruction. The many signs of progress for both whites and African-Americans were soon short lived. The KKK which had its origin shortly after the surrender at Appomattox, had spread through the Old South by 1870. By the 1920s and ‘30s it was active in many northern and some western states.
The KKK had virtually taken over the Democratic Party. Jim Crow laws stripped rights from not only African Americans but others. The KKK didn’t like Jews or Catholics all that much either. FDR was unable to get a national anti-lynching law through the Democratically controlled congress. This last May 14, America acknowledged the stain on Old Glory of voter suppression — on that day in 1955 NAACP member, the Rev. George Lee, was fatally shot by a member of an angry white mob for attempting to register to vote in Mississippi. On May 15, 1916 a mob of whites burned alive African American teenager Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas. The History of Racial Injustice Calendar reminds us on virtuallly a daily basis just how far we have to yet come for many Americans to redeem the promise of citizenship — a promissory note, as M.L. King said, that has been returned marked, “insufficient funds.” These are the most egregious inconvenient Truths. They hurt like hell. For too many attempting to exercise the promises of democracy, they are turned away with the rebuttal, “Well, you didn’t get it here.” And this is not just a blot on the Old South. A few years ago at All Saints, that congregation was besieged by a howling mob of so-called Christians hurling insults and profanities at those attending a day long conference sponsored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. If Jesus had behaved like these people, nobody would have been saved.
This Spirit of Truth was sent to bolster up those of the Jesus Movement to keep his teachings. And the core of those teachings? Love of God and Love of Neighbor – NO EXCEPTIONS. One and the same. Remember, “God is Love and those who abide in Love abide in God and God in them.”
The work of this Spirit of Truth is the power to acknowledge and heed the challenges of our time. It is to come to grips with the difficulties of living together and to claim the blessing that comes through active love. This Spirit of Truth moves us through the trials and difficulties. It has nothing to do with magical avoidance of inconvenient realities. No, this virus will not just “magically go away.”
The Spirit of Truth leads in this time of COVID-19 beyond the bunkum conspiracies swirling around our current health crisis. No, COVID-19 was not a made-up story to hurt Trump. No, it’s not some Chinese bioweapon. No, COVID-19 deaths are not FAKE News. Some internet personalities have gone so far as to urge their followers to take cameras into hospitals to film the empty rooms. To show that there are no real patients. Nobody’s dying.
The Spirit of Truth will guide us out of this conspiratorial fog into the sunlight of reality. Unfortunately, it takes a while. And for some folks, it will hurt like hell. As the adage goes, “A lie will have gone halfway around the world before truth has its pants on.” These theories are stubborn, like devil grass.
But, eventually, truth will out. No, the moon landing was not a hoax filmed in somebody’s garage. The Spirit of Truth upholds competent social scientists like Professor Joseph Uscinski, the epidemiologists, and medical experts like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx.[1]
Aw, you mean nothing really happened at Roswell? There’s no spaceship? But I have my top secret parking permit for Area 54. I like my space alien friends, my space chums. Next, you’re going to tell me that Bigfoot is also a made-up story. But there are sightings! I saw it on the internet. Agent Scully and Mulder were on the trail. Don’t forget Obamagate – “a slogan in search of a scandal,” as one commentator quipped.
Enough, okay. It’s time to hear it for the Spirit of Truth and Politifact. Yeah, I guess — the “X-Files” is only a TV show. So, please, debunk with sympathy and kindness.
The Spirit of Truth leads us into “engaged compassion” and to healing justice. It allows people of faith to confess the reality of sin and repent. Old fashioned words for some, yes… Sin is our separation from God, from one another, and within ourselves. The acts we call “sins” are what flow from that tragic separation, from our insecurities. This separation is part of the burden of being human. It is our existential condition. As certain as “the sparks fly upward.”
This was the great enlightenment of theologian Paul Tillich.
But Tillich didn’t stop there. He went on to elucidate another, stronger reality, Grace. As St. Paul proclaims in Romans: “Where sin did abound, Grace did much more abound.” Dr King put it this way, “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Jesus, to those hapless disciples who all ran away in the end – the men, that is – to them he sends an Advocate, the Spirit of Truth to lead and to guide. Grace always trumps fear.
These past weeks we have been overwhelmed by the tokens of Grace breaking through the fear and hate engendered by this pandemic. We can’t go through a day without a newsflash of sacrificial love, neighbor caring for neighbor. This is the work of the Spirit. Just turn on the TV. Open the paper. Look at the pictures of those staffing testing stations and stocking shelves at food banks. And out in the streets, this Spirit is most contagious. These days it may wear a face mask, which is to say, I care enough about you that I’ll risk looking maybe a bit silly, I’m willing to endure some inconvenience, so I don’t make you sick. Such compassion is a highly contagious truth that saves lives. I hope you did get that Spirit here.
In most any church you can catch that Spirit. It may lead to spontaneous outbursts of affirmation. Now even acceptable and encouraged in some Episcopal Churches. But more than that, this Spirit of Truth will grab you up by the hand and lead you into gospel service. Some of us it may need to grab the scruff of the collar – but by whatever means, this Spirit moves to get us into gospel action. As our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, it’s to “turn the Jesus Club into the Jesus Movement.”
Another reality of the Spirit of Truth is that we are not left comfortless. Through neighbor, spouse, child, grace – Love – does abound. Where factions abound, the Spirit of Democracy has the power to bind together.
As bad as racial hatred and strife became after the Civil War – a war still being waged in many hearts – it was both black and white together who waged the Second Reconstruction to mend the rent in our national fabric. Both black and white were set upon by angry mobs at lunch counters in both North and South. It was blacks and whites who joined in chorus on long bus rides and in Montgomery jails singing “We Shall Overcome.” It was both blacks and whites whose tortured, mutilated bodies were found in shallow graves throughout backwoods fetid swamps. Black and white together, they died. Now joined by Mexican immigrants and Native Americans == the incarcerated, the aged, veterans, the homeless, all disproportionately killed by COVID-19 — all victims of a failing health system, evidence that our racial and income disparities remain deadly. First, the Truth will hurt like hell before it sets free. America, it’s “mend-thine-every-flaw” time. Overdue!
Let our prayer be that this mighty Spirit of Truth blow through our ravaged land to make new, to make us a more generous people, a more unified people.
This Spirt of Truth is a mighty friend, not a false friend that flatters. Not a fickle friend that sugar-coats reality. This friend does not abet conspiracy theories and lame excuses. It is a genuine friend that fortifies. Yes, with facts and sound reason.
The Spirit of Truth is the sort of friend that sends companions to guide us on the way through this perilous infection. It is a comfort to the bereaved. It has the power to bring out our best. This friend has the power to restore. It has the power to inspire repentance and amendment of ways. It has the power to cause us to see the stranger as our neighbor, as a friend. It’s motto? “Get over yourself – life is at hand.” In its most Inconvenient truth, you’ve got a friend.
Randy Newman, got it right in that great gospel hymn that could be sung of the Spirit of Truth, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me:”
You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me
When the road looks rough ahead
And you’re miles and miles
From your nice warm bed
Just remember what your old pal said
Boy, you’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got troubles, well I’ve got ’em too
There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you
We stick together and we see it through
You’ve got a friend in me
You’ve got a friend in me…[2]
If it’s not in your hymnal, it ought to be. It’s about the kind of friend this Spirit is. You can get it most anyplace. Seek and it will find you.
It is said of this one and same Spirit, it’s like the wind. You hear the sound of it but it blows where it blows. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. Yeah, you might even catch it in a stogey Episcopal Church or in a church of some other flavor. But God’s too savvy to place all the money on the church. It’s let loose, out there. This Spirit of Truth often is highly inconvenient. Can hurt like hell and then some. AND, regardless the pain, this Spirit of Truth is Life and Blessing. It is Restoration. It’s for our guidance and edification. It’s what will make us suitable for human consumption. It frees from the penalty box. It bridges the tragic separation of the races and the sexes. It’s Baby Baluga in the deep blue sea, counting on you and me – our vital connection to the natural world. It makes of us “repairers of the breech.”
In this time of COVID-19 may the Spirit of all Truth bend the national arc of these challenging times towards justice. This Spirit of Truth — I pray to God we all get it in the days ahead. We need it. America needs it. We’ve got a friend,
Amen.
[1] Joseph Uscinski, Conspiracy Theories: A Primer (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, 2020).
[2] Randy Newman, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” from Toy Story 4, Walt Disney, Pixar Films, April 12, 1996
May 17, 2020
6 Easter
The Rev. John C. Forney
John 14:15-21
