House of Hope – Ohio Valley

It is most fortuitous that our Gospel lesson for today from John is the story of Jesus raising up Lazarus.  Mary attempting to dissuade him from having the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb, cautions, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.”

Our health, our economy, our equanimity – they have all been dead for over four days.  There is a great fear about in the land, not of one but of many.  Some of us aren’t sure from where our next meal is coming.  The vast majority of Americans could not some up with funds to meet a $500 emergency.

These fears are real.  And it stinks to high heaven.  We needn’t have been so ill prepared.  We needn’t have botched this.  But where we are, is where we are.  And it stinks, especially for those on the margin. 

But as Jesus reminds Mary, “Did I not tell you that you would see the glory of God?  And friends, that is exactly what we have seen.  Early on in the unfolding of this pestilence, a young woman pulled into a supermarket parking lot in Bend, Oregon.  As she left her car, she heard someone call out for help from her car.  “I walked over and found an elderly woman and her husband. She cracked her window open a bit more, and explained to me nearly in tears that they are afraid to go in the store.”[1]  Rebecca Mehra took the woman’s list and money.  As she did, the woman, her eyes welling up with tears, explained that she and her husband were in their 80s and very afraid that they would catch the virus. 

After Rebecca had returned with the couple’s groceries, the woman told her that they had sat in their car for over forty-five minutes, waiting for the “right person” to come along. 

Hold on, now – we’re getting to what my friend Ed Bacon calls a “Glory Attack.”

On arriving back home with her own items, Rebecca told her boyfriend what had happened at the store.  He urged her to write this up and send it out on Twitter.

“I know it’s a time of hysteria and nerves, but offer to help anyone you can,” Mehra tweeted as part of the viral thread. “Not everyone has people to turn to.”

By Monday, her story was just about everywhere. Her original post had been retweeted almost 107,000 times and she was featured on cable news and online outlets.[2]

And that, my friends is the full, unadulterated Glory of God!

There’s a lot about this virus that stinks.  And some of our bad behavior in the midst of at all reeks with self-centeredness.  Like the Fox News host, Ainsley Earhardt, who was so distressed that women couldn’t get their nails done during this lockdown. Woman, get over yourself.  There are people who have been evicted, Whole families, living on the street and you’re worried about your nails???  Let’s have a little self-transcendence.  This virus is not about you.

But back to Rebecca and that older couple waiting on the kindness of a stranger in a supermarket parking lot.

Beyond the stench of however many days this virus will have us sealed up in our tombs of quarantine, can’t you smell something beyond the rot?  Just a little?  Can’t you smell something that seems a bit like lilies?  Easter lilies, maybe?  If so, what you have a whiff of is the Glory of God.

And that’s what we bring in our days of waiting to one another.  Who knows how long we may be sealed up in this coronavirus tomb?  But I tell you, Easter is a coming. And when we can again see one another’s faces and hold each other close – that will be the best GLORY ATTACK ever.

John

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[1] Samantha Kubota, “Young Woman Helps ‘Terrified’ Elderly Couple Get Food, Inspires Others to Pitch In”, Today, Mach 17, 2020.

[2] Op. Cit.

Dear friends in Christ
March 29, 2020

The Rev. John C. Forney
John 11:1-44

In 1935 the British writer Graham Greene and his cousin Barbara Greene set off into the heart of Liberia, Africa.  As one might imagine, it was a rather harrowing journey with Graham almost dying as he neared its end.  His goal was to leave civilization and find “the heart of darkness.”  One of the maps he had consulted had a blank, empty space representing the interior of Liberia with the words written across it, “cannibals.”  He was forced to rely on local guides and porters to traverse this great unknown.  In 1938 he published his notes and memories as a book entitled, Journey Without Maps.

Journey without maps – a most intriguing description of the journey of faith.  Maybe most of our journeys – at least the ones that count.

You may remember my childhood friend Dan – yes, the one I got in trouble with for his comment about our balding junior high math teacher, Chrome Dome. 

I happened to run into Dan several years later at Cal. State Long Beach.  Dan had asked me how things were and did I have much of a love life.  Actually, I had broken up with a girl over a couple of years previous and had to admit that I was a little lonely.  He invited me to the Methodist student religious club on campus, but I told him that I had had it with the church.  Our local church had the most reactionary, egotistical pastor one could imagine.  I wasn’t going back.  Ever!

His response to my reaction?  “Well, we have some mighty fine-looking women who attend.”  Throwing aside all scruples, I responded, “Oh?  What time do they meet?  Where?”

That conversation began a deep dive into the Christian journey I had abandoned when I dropped out of my fourth grade Sunday school class.  Soon the campus pastor had introduced me to some of the twentieth century giants of the faith:  Bultmann, Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother Richard.  Also, the great Jewish mystic Martin Buber.  Later, that spring break, in Lincoln, Nebraska, I would encounter Martin Luther King, Jr. at a student conference. 

That campus fellowship, long, long ago, has been the beginning of a life-long journey.  Certainly a “journey without maps.”  Now that I’m approaching the end of my journey, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.  In the process I’ve found spiritual meaning that has given shape to my life.  I’ve acquired probably more books than our local library.  There was that minor detour as an Army medic, stationed in San Francisco.  Along the way, I met a wonderful wife and now have two fine sons.  One of whom has started me on my new venture to begin an opioid recovery center.  Certainly, a journey without maps. 

Sometimes, though, a twist of fate opens up a journey we would never have chosen.  I read in the paper this morning of the devastation that has overtaken Tennessee as tornadoes swept through the state. 

On Tuesday morning 73-year-old Jean Gregory was sleeping soundly in her bed.  Suddenly her husband yanked her to the floor and flung himself on top of her as their entire house began to shake.  For six, maybe seven minutes the deafening roar blotted out consciousness of her surroundings.  Later, when they emerged from the wreckage of their house, they discovered that many of their neighbors had it much worse.  Their entire neighborhood of trailers and modest homes was devastated.  One tornado that cut a swath of destructor through the middle of the state had remained on the ground for some fifty-five miles, ripping through the center of Nashville.  Multiple tornadoes struck elsewhere.  For the people of Tennessee, this is indeed a most fearsome journey without maps.  Where to pick up the pieces?  Ahead are days of shock and numbness as rescuers search the wreckage.

One of the oldest confessions of faith is found in the book of Deuteronomy: “A wandering Aramean was my father; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien.” On the day Abraham packed up the station wagon and left with Lot and the rest of the clan, he had not a clue as to where he was going.  All he could tell Sarah was that God had told him to pack up and leave this land and your kindred.  I’m sure, her thought had been, “What have you been smoking?”  He’d said crazy stuff before but this beat all.  If ever there was a journey without maps, this was it.

I still remember that call which came around 4:30 in the morning.  “Hello, is this John Forney??”

I’m Ed Stanton, the United Methodist Superintendent of Alaska.  Are you still wanting to come up to Alaska?”  All I could think of was to stammer, “I think I’d better talk to my wife.”  And so, began a most wondrous journey without maps.

Today, each of us sitting here in church because of a journey of faith that probably began years earlier.  At our age, no one is making us come to church.  Those days of fourth grade mandatory Sunday school are long past.

I remember the church planner Lyle Schaller at a conference noting that much of the white he saw from the plane window as they descended into Anchorage was not snow.  He said that all the white he saw on the mountains was actually torn up letters of church transfer that people had thrown out the plane windows as they approached the Anchorage International Airport. 

Alaska had one of the lowest church attendance rates of any state in the union.  In Alaska, no one has a mother or father looking over a shoulder to make sure they don’t miss church.  At least if you are an adult, if you’re sitting in a pew, it’s because you wanted to be a part the community of faith.  You are there as a result of a journey begun much earlier in life.  Even if you came to the faith later in life – it’s voluntary.  When your journey of faith began, something drew you in — as had that campus minister and his wife drawn me into that student community of faith.  Coming from a pretty dysfunctional family, I came out of the “dark night of the soul.”

In our story of Nicodemus, the gospel of John presents the tale of one who has grown up in the religious community.  He is an esteemed scholar and revered teacher.  But something is missing in his life. Not wanting to be seen associating with this disreputable rabbi, he approaches Jesus in the dead of night. 

An aside – all significant spiritual truths are revealed in the still of darkest night.  Always.  As with Nicodemus, the spiritual journey is from Darkness to Light.  We all begin in darkness.  Like Nicodemus, we know nothing.  We come in our darkest night.  Out of our deepest need.

Nicodemus, attempting to flatter Jesus, acknowledges that the things Jesus is reputed to be doing could only be the result of God’s presence with him.  Jesus brushes aside this flattery. 

Jesus then tells him the secret.  To perceive such things, one must be born from above.  That is, one must have a spiritual awakening.  Though Nicodemus, is reputed to be a great teacher, he answers, “Huh?”

Jesus tries again, and Nicodemus rebuts him, “How can one already old be born again?  Can he reenter his mother’s womb?”  As the discussion progresses, it would seem that Nicodemus becomes more obtuse.  He understands NOTHING.  And he is a such a renowned teacher?

Is this not the beginning of each of our spiritual journeys?  From the bare rudiments of faith, from those stories we learned in Sunday school, or at our mother’s knee, we begin a grand journey.   Or our venture is still-born, only, perhaps, to be born again later in life.  It is always a journey without maps.  Sometimes it’s begun with a call at 4:30 in the morning.  Sometimes begun with an invitation to a campus religious group that may have some “good-looking women.”  Or it may have begin with a spiritual search that begins at midnight.  No maps, but always moving towards the Light. 

Maybe it was an inchoate summons to pick up and leave familiar surroundings and clan.  That’s how the Forneys ended up coming through the Port of Philadelphia in 1767 from Germany.  That’s the chance one of my mother’s ancestors took when she up and married a Jewish peddler who had come through a small Iowa town with his wagon of sundries, pots and pans.

However the journey begins, it is not necessarily destiny.  When begun in disaster and trauma, people who care can make a difference.  We can promote programs that hold out promise for those who have lost their way.  We, in the Christian community, can either be part of the problem, mere bystanders, or part of the solution.  Christ continually invites us into the Light.

The way I look at it, we’re only here but for the twinkling of an eye.  Living to the full, making a difference, means walking with others on their journeys.  Sharing the load.  Speaking words of wisdom and encouragement.  And sometimes warning.

Towards the end of their book Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn tell the journey of Drew Goff, son of Ricochet (since deceased), a citizen of Yamhill who had seriously lost his way through alcohol and drugs.  Maybe no cannibals, but every bit as perilous a journey.

Sheryl and Nick had kept up with Drew even during the years he had served time in prison.  But now he was out on probation and avoiding drugs.  Though he had lost custody of his two other children, he was caring for his infant son Ashtyn.

He had been an addict since the age of twelve when he began using alcohol, pot and crank, a cheap form of methamphetamine  He swears that though he loved his father, he didn’t want to end up like him.  But, like his father, he had been in and out of prison.  He had now grown tired of that life – sick and tired.  It held nothing for him anymore.  No future at all – he had achieved a record of over twenty convictions.

What changed for Drew was a program, “Provoking Hope”.  It had given him a foundation of friends who surrounded him with sobriety.  He hasn’t touched drugs in over a year – the longest he has been sober since when he was twelve.  He now has a relationship with his young son Ashtyn and does not want to jeopardize that.   He absolutely loves that little boy.  He plays with him, talks with him so he will learn words.  Drew reports that the parenting classes he has received through Provoking Hope have made him a decent dad – the sort of dad he didn’t have.  He says that he and Ashtyn are now shooting for two hundred words.

Judge Collins, of Yamhill County, who sees many in his court like Drew and Ricochet, empathizes that it is such mentorship that can break the intergenerational cycle of drug use and crime. Programs like Provoking Hope and Friends of the Children can “make a huge difference, because at-risk young people often come from dysfunctional families without a good role model.”[1]

Ricochet had been pushed out of school in the eighth grade by a principal annoyed by his truancy.  Years later, his son Drew, was also expelled in the eighth grade.  And even when kids like Ricochet and Drew attend class, they often go to weak schools with no access to vocational training.  Even with a diploma, many cannot pass the qualifying exam for the armed forces.  Without a high school diploma, these young adults are destined for sporadic employment in marginal jobs.  Low pay, erratic hours, no benefits, first fired.

This is the challenge before us, America.  If we are to be in any sense “Great,” we need to bring along all our people.  We cannot keep failing our own.  Superintendent Cline of the Yamhill Carlton School district says they are getting more and more kindergarteners whom he would describe as “feral.”  One principal says more kids are “biting, screaming, kicking and throwing things.”  Superintendent Cline knows what these kids are going through.  His father spent three years in the state penitentiary for drug abuse.  It was only the military that provided an escape.  After his chaotic home life of neglect and abuse, basic training felt like a “vacation.” 

Each of us can make a difference, as a teacher, a grandparent, a mentor.  I remember going to the “Renewal of Vows” service to which our bishops invite all clergy during Lent.  Afterwards, there is often a side meeting for retired clergy.  While I usually avoid those things like the plague, I decided one year to attend.  There were about forty or so of us in a circle eating our lunch.  So many spoke of being bereft of anything meaningful to occupy their days now that they had no sermons to write or parishioners to visit.  They were completely at loose ends.

After a dozen or spoke of the emptiness of their lives — I thought, “My God, are there no children to read to?  Are there no teachers needing some help in their classrooms?  What gives, here?”  I wondered if I should pass around a sign-up sheet and put them to work.  There are Big Sister and Big Brother organizations just begging for some folks with the training clergy have.  Urban re-foresting organizations?  The local food bank?  Meals on Wheels?  Folks, your journey is not yet done.  Let’s get to work!

I remember the young people who flocked to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  I would imagine that hundreds will now again be heading in droves to Tennessee to join folks like Jean Gregory and her husband.  They will need encouragement and accompaniment as, late in life, they embark on a new “journey without maps,” seeking to rebuild from the rubble.  Young and old, all are invited.  And they will heed the summons.  Many of those heading to join the Gregorys and the other victims of this disaster will be people acting out of the best values of their faith traditions.  I would hope that some might also be a few of my retired colleagues in the clergy.

The most important journeys we take are “without maps.”  Look back at the twists and turns of your life.   As in a jazz riff, we are forced to improvise.  But if we keep with the beat and mind our step, we seize the blessing to be had.  We find a God ever willing to walk, to dance, with us.  The journey into neighbor is the journey into God.

That is what my haphazard journey has taught me.  It’s not over until it’s over. Friends and guides along the way are essential.  Yes, there be dangers ahead.  A motto of the twelve-step movement is key: “Make a friend.  Be a friend.”  And your journey along the way will be blessed – as will another’s journey.  Amen.

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[1] Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Tightrope (New York: Knopf, 2020), 239.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

March 8, 2020

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 3:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

First Sunday in Lent The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

I remember walking behind our junior high math teacher who had absolutely no hair.  I didn’t think we were that close.  Neither did my friend Dan who said something about “Chrome Dome.”  Apparently, Mr. Brodeur heard him and the next thing I knew, we were both in big trouble.  Him for saying it and me for laughing.  Dan’s inappropriate comment got us both a week in after-school detention in his math class.  And a stern dressing down.  That was back in the good old days when there was actually discipline in school.  We knew we had really screwed up.  There was no magic “get-out-of-jail-free” card.

Well, as adults we know that there are mistakes that a lot more consequential.  There are dire challenges to be faced and there’s no wishing them away.  We have a pandemic about to wash up on our shores and we’ve fired or cut back spending for most of the scientists and medical staff at the federal level who could actually help us fight the corona virus.  And the other night at a rally, attendees were told that any critique of the effort to fight the corona virus was a hoax.  Just a hoax — what the Democrats were making of it.  There are only fifteen victims and they are all getting better – except one older woman.  Soon there’ll be only two or three.  Then none.   Nothing to see here, folks.  Just move along.

And who’s now in charge of our coordinated national response?  A doctor?  An epidemiologist?  A scientist?  No!  Who’s now in charge?  A politician named Pence who once had substituted his ill-informed judgement for science during the AIDS epidemic in Indiana.  That call consigned many young men to death in his state.   Rather than consult Indiana’s finest medical staff and epidemiologists, he substituted his own religious prejudices for sound public policy – and people died.  This is who’s in charge — the Virus Czar. 

This is the Virus Czar under whose watch, crewmembers and passengers coming off the quarantined cruise ship were allowed to fly home with other passengers – all mixed up together.   Then, they were all released back into the U.S with no special precautions taken.  And now corona virus is popping up all over.  Isn’t Pence the guy who said that smoking was not harmful.  After all, he reasoned, not everyone who smokes dies. To put him in charge of the Corona Virus Brigade is definitely magical thinking.  A stroke of pure genius.

Magical thinking — Jesus rejected it.  And so, should we.  Gravity always wins.  Fame’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

Rush Limbaugh, this week, said that the corona virus is just like a common cold.  That’s right — nothing more than a “common cold” blown out of proportion by the media to take down the president.     “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. … Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”[1]  Listen to that magical thinking and more of us will be just plain dead.

What medical school did he graduate from?   With what grades?  Contradicting himself seconds later, Rush also asserted the virus was a “bioweapon” created by China in a laboratory.  Seigh…

Theology is not magic!  That is what the passage from Matthew of the desert temptations would teach.  Sure, we would all like bread without labor.  Jesus rejects this.  “We do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  There is no magic. 

Faithfulness to the Word of God is life.  Not cheap tricks and hokum.

When our two boys were in grade school, we had a wood burning furnace in Alaska that would heat the water for the baseboard heaters upstairs.  I would go out to a fellow in the church who operated a portable sawmill.  At Norm’s I would get the rounds from the stump end of the tree he could not use, and split them up to burn.  The boys would carry them into the furnace room to dry – or at least one boy was up for this. 

The other boy?  ‘I ain’t carrying no wood,” said our oldest.  “That’s okay,” I told him.  “Don’t worry about it a bit when the ice sickles are on the inside of the window instead of the outside.  We’ll just turn the heat off in your room.  No need to carry any wood.  Don’t worry about it at all.”  After the realization sank in that it could get pretty cold, and no one was going to do his share for him – the next time I saw him, there he was with an armload of wood headed for the furnace room.  No magic was going to heat his room.

Ignorance and wish fulfillment are not how God set up the deal.  Conspiracy theories and the blame games do not produce bread.  They won’t mend our bones should we decide to jump off high buildings.  All the kingdoms in the world are not worth the Beloved Community.  No magic.  No shortcuts.  What you sow, you get.  Gravity always wins.  Sorry, Harry and Hermione.

Magical thinking won’t protect us from folly or ignorance.  Conspiracy theories – another form of magical thinking – won’t let us skate through life unharmed. 

Real life takes actual work.  Jesus taught and healed and prayed.  No shortcuts.  Real ministry takes work and sacrifice.  We had that church, St. John’s, in Anchorage only because those parishioners worked very hard to make it a reality.  The first building was an old, unused school house that the guys had bought and moved down the hill from Upper O’Malley Road.  I remember Bob and Henrietta, a middle-aged couple who were the back bone of that small congregation.  Though they owned a mom-and-pop laundry downtown, and didn’t make a lot – proportionally, they gave much more in time, effort and dollars than many of our well-healed top management oil execs.  No magical thinking for Bob and Henrietta.  Just a good, sound, wholesome family that loved their Lord and lived their values.  Bob was the one who pushed me to get a Korean congregation going.  And pushed.  And pushed.   And we did!

To insist that it is all depends on God is theological fantasy.  As the saying goes, “without God, we can’t.  Without us, God won’t.”  God didn’t skimp in putting together creation, and there are no shortcuts for us either.

Bob and Henrietta were definitely God’s hands at St. John United Methodist in Anchorage, Alaska.  Not so much another couple who each earned six figures, yet faithfully put their miserly five dollars in the plate every Sunday.  Everyone knew what these two made:  he was head of all Health and Human Services for the State of Alaska and she was head of State Personnel.  Their salaries were published each year in the paper.  And this guy had actually been a pastor!  Again, how badly do we really want a church?  Or is this only a hobby?

Being a Christian takes a bit of doing.  Often, a lot of doing.  No cheap grace.  The pattern was set at Calvary, at the foot of the Cross.

Forgiveness requires a bit of a death, as well.  It’s hard to let go of resentment or justifiable anger.  Sacrifice is part of the Lenten journey, if we are honest with ourselves – and with God.

Let me share the story Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn tell in their book, Tightrope.[2]  They tell the story of Debbie Baigrie, the twenty-eight-year-old daughter of an Orthodox Jewish cantor, who was out celebrating with friends one evening in New York.  An acquaintance, who also happened to be at the restaurant, offered to walk her to her car, as this was a somewhat dangerous neighborhood.

As they neared her car, they were approached by a small group of boys, one of which pointed a gun at her face.  He demanded that she give up her purse, and before she could react, he pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore through her jaw and passed out her cheek.  Bleeding profusely, she managed to stumble down the street, bullets whizzing past, and back into the restaurant.

“Help me!’ she shouted.  I’ve been shot!  Is my face gone?”[3]

Debbie has since gone through years of painful reconstructive oral surgery.  She still can’t eat an apple and her face is permanently scarred. 

A few days after the incident, while police were still hunting for the unknown shooter, they happened to arrest a group of boys in a stolen car.  As one young boy waited for his mom to pick him up at the station, he matter-of-factly mentioned to an officer, “’You know that woman who was shot in the face the other day?’ he asked. ‘I did that.’”  Ian Manuel was the thirteen-year-old gunman.

As you can imagine, the city went ballistic.  On one hand, here was a most sympathetic victim, and on the other, Ian, a young thug whose life was going nowhere, a vicious criminal, who had not for a second given a thought about the value of another human life.  The papers and other media, branded him as the poster child for all the city’s sociopaths — for all the crime and mayhem which had been terrorizing its citizens.  It was Ian’s face!

Though only thirteen, the judge determined to make an object lesson of him and sentenced Ian as an adult.  As she pronounced a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the court’s judgement began to register in his mind.  “I’m going to die in prison,” he thought.

In prison, Ian was bullied by both prisoners and guards alike.  Because he fought back, he spent many weeks in solitary.  When uncooperative, he was teargassed and injected with psychotropic drugs.

Growing up in prison, Ian Manuel, one day found himself an ally beyond belief.  That day, Debbie answered her phone to hear an operator ask if she would accept a collect call from Ian Manuel.

         “Ian who?” she asked.

         “Ian Manuel, he told the operator.

         Out of morbid curiosity, Debbie accepted the charges.

         “I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas,” he said, a bit

          sheepishly.

         “Ian,” she asked, “why did you shoot me?”

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said heavily, and there was a long pause.  “It was a mistake.  It just happened so quickly.  I’m sorry.”

Debbie was moved by Ian’s youth and contrition.  “I felt guilty,” she recalled.  “I felt I had taken his life away.  He didn’t kill me but I killed him.”[4]

Debbie was aware that Ian was a kid who had grown up surrounded by violence, drugs, and gangs.  He probably never had much of any adult supervision and certainly no school counselor who might have provided support.  For Ian, his daily existence was a rerun of Lord of the Flies.

With that call, began a most bizarre, and for Debbie, a life-changing correspondence.  Depending on the day and how excruciating the pain, Debbie vacillated between anger and the impulse to forgive.  On another day she would think, “He’s just a kid.  When you’re thirteen, you do stupid stuff.”

Ian was in prison when he received the news that his mother had died of AIDS.  This was one of the absolute worst days in his life there.  His only connection on the outside other than Debbie had been cut off. 

Then an absolute fluke.  Ian had used his time behind bars to read and get an education.  Because the guards in the prison would punish their charges by turning the dayroom TV to PBS, Ian happened to hear a documentary, To Be Heard, a program about a poetry class in the Bronx.  He began writing poetry in his cell.  It became his outlet for expressing his bottled-up emotions.

Sometime thereafter, he also happened to receive a letter from the renowned lawyer and activist, Brian Stevenson, who had started a program, “Equal Justice.”  Brian was looking for a juvenile who was serving a life sentence without parole.  His lawsuit would argue that such punishment was unconstitutional. 

The Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of Ian, who would be resentenced.

Debbie testified at that resentencing hearing, asking for leniency for Ian. 

Reading from Nick’s and Sheryl’s book:

In 2016, after twenty-six years behind bars, Ian was released for time served – and celebrated with Debbie Baigrie.  They exchanged hugs.  Nobody watching would think that Ian had once shot Debbie; he called her his “guardian angel” and “second mom.”  They moved on to an Italian restaurant for a dinner of pizza and soda not far from where he had shot her in 1990.[5]

Being a person of faith requires effort.  There’s nothing magical about the wresting with the conflicting emotions that Debbie struggled through.  It was costly.  Her divorce was partly the result of the bitter arguments she had had with her husband over her reconciliation with Ian. 

Jesus refused any conjuring tricks to produce bread.  He refused to jump from the temple roof.  He realized that all the kingdoms of this world could not compare with the vision he served.  Get thee behind me, Father of all Lies.  Your way is not the way of God.  It will not build the Beloved Community.  That will take blood and sweat.

We sang a marvelous gospel song the other night during vespers at Pilgrim Place, “I’m Gonna Live So, God Can Use Me.”  In part, it goes:

         I’m gonna live so, God can use me

         Any where, Lord, any time.

         I’m gonna live so, God can use me,

any where, Lord, any time

Let this be our Lenten hymn.  This Lent, let us lean into honest, bold, adventurous living so that God might put each of us to some earthly use.  For our sakes and for the sake of young men like Ian Manuel.   No magic thinking here.  Any life worth living is the whole reality show.  The key word being “REALITY.”  What we do, counts.  Any where, Lord.  Any time.  Amen.

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[1] Allyson Chiu, Washington Post, Feb. 25, 2020

[2] Nicholas Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, Tightrope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020)

[3] Op cit., 176.

[4] Op cit., 181.

[5] Op cit., 187.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

March 1, 2020

Genesis 2:15-17; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

First Sunday in Lent

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Most of our days are lived in the humdrum of just getting through the day.  Each day has its share of muck and mire.  There’s often enough drudgery to mess up any possibility of joy.

When I returned home from West Virginia, out raising money for House of Hope, here on my desk was a copy of our local newspaper, the Claremont Courier.  In the opening pages, is Matthew Bramlett’s column, “Police Blotter.”

This section contains essentially the log of the calls that came into the dispatcher that week with a bit of narrative.  On Tuesday, January 21, Officers arrested a certain Michael Turner who had been drunk and disorderly.  While in the officer’s patrol car, the suspect kicked out one of the windows in the back seat. 

I can just imagine this officer, not only having to deal with such disagreeable folks but now having to waste a bunch of time filling out the paperwork to his car fixed, cleaning up vomit on the floor of his car, and having to calm down from the undeserved verbal abuse from some of our finer citizens he has the honor of hauling into the station.  Where’s the Light in all this?  Where’s the Glory?  Is this the glamor that was depicted on that recruiting pamphlet he read as a senior in high school?  Is this mess really what he imagined when he considered a career of “helping people?”

Much of life is in the muck and mire of just getting through the day.

And it must have been so many days of those who were part of the Jesus Movement.  It’s not easy living off the land.  Sickness from bad food.  Aching bones and sore muscles from having slept out in a dusty field in the bitter cold.  Thirst.  Ridicule from some of the local townspeople.  Not easy indeed.

In the church, it’s not all that different.  One morning I received a call from our administrator, Faith, about the damage she discovered upon opening up the office.  Someone had kicked in the door of the janitor’s supply room.  To what purpose??  I have no idea?  The men’s room was out of paper towels?   Who knows?  Some Sundays, just getting out of bed and getting ready is a real chore.  Running off the bulletin, going through the phone messages?  Having to deal with the county weed abatement notice??  It’s not all glamor and raa-raa enthusiasm.  Faith will tell you.

But, as our selection from Matthew’s gospel relates — now and then, some most amazing, glorious events spring forth.  Through all the filth and disappointment light breaks forth.  Matthew begins, “Six days later.”  Later from what?  From more wandering and rejection?  Through days of busted out windows and the stench of stale vomit?  Six days later from curses and insults?  Six days later from WHAT???

Six days from dusty roads and parched throats Jesus takes some of his little band of followers, Peter, James and John, up on a high mountain.  There they stop to pray.

As they are praying, Jesus’ appearance dissolves into a dazzling radiance.  He shimmers and shines like a hundred brilliant suns.  He is indeed “Christ of the shining mountains, True and transfigured king.”  “Christ, Whose Glory fills the sky.”  Then and there he is the true and only light.

And in the midst of it all are Elijah and Moses, talking to Jesus.  Elijah and Moses, harbingers of the Messianic age.  These two, when they appear, that’s all there is folks.  Time’s up. The roll is called up yonder. 

The disciples’ minds earlier had been consumed by Jesus’ end.  That day the talk on the road had been of Jesus’ coming departure from this world — the deadly confrontation with the powers and principalities of this world, to be accomplished in Jerusalem.

But now this!   It’s way, way too much for the three followers, and though they are weighed down with sleep, they manage to see Jesus shrouded in brilliant luminosity with two men. 

Dreamily, poor Peter really has no idea of what to make of it all.  He is consumed by the experience.  He might as well be in paradise.  He’s as disoriented as someone coming off a bad LSD trip.  He doesn’t know what to say.  He’s like a little boy hauled in before the principal, afraid and stammering.    So finally, he simply blurts out, “Wow, this is great.  Let’s make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  But, of course, he has no idea what he is saying.  His incoherence is as bizarre as a tweet coming out of the White House at three in the morning.

These are strictly Old Testament rumblings:  the mountain, the cloud, the voice, the luminescence, and Moses and Elijah.  The glory of God fully manifest in Jesus as the culmination of revelation.

Spiritually, this is the mountain Moses ascended to receive the Law.  Just as Moses entered into the very presence of God – smoke, fire – a luminosity beyond what sight could bear, Jesus shone with that same divine luminosity – the shekinah — the virtual dwelling of God — far beyond anything that might be conjured up in a Steven Spielberg, film, a brilliance no eye could behold.

Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1939 novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, describes the aftereffects of Moses encounter with God on Mount Sinai.  “With flakes of light still clinging to his face, Moses turned to where Joshua waited for him, ‘Joshua, I have laws.  Israel is going to know peace and justice.’” [1]

“With flakes of light still clinging to his face.”  What an incredible image of the afterglow of a divine encounter.  “Flakes of light.”  I imagine that this metaphor might describe Jesus and his three disciples as they came off the Mountain of Transfiguration.  “Flakes of light” clinging to their faces.

Isn’t this the glow, the beatific aura that envelopes a new mother as she receives her baby from the attending nurse?  Isn’t this the glow that hangs over new lovers who have just found one another?  Sometimes this luminosity is known by a young person coming down to the altar to make her profession of faith in Jesus Christ as her personal savior.

I’ve seen it at a church service as an alcoholic shared his journey to sobriety and recovery. 

But eventually, it is time to leave the mountain.  And for what?  The alcoholic knows that sobriety and recovery can only be lived as they are given away.  That’s the twelfth step.  It is back into the swamp of addiction that the man or woman in recovery goes to take the message of hope and sobriety.  And as it is given to another, the presence of God – that holy cloud of compassion – envelopes the conversation.

All who have been touched by the glory of Christ have come off the mountain with “flakes of light” still clinging to their faces.  In its best moments the Church is adorned with the same “flakes of light.”  And the afterglow remains only as it’s passed along.

The same is also the case for our democracy.  Those men and women who created this nation seem like larger-than-life figures, so shrouded in legend and myth are they.  Much they got wrong.  They were human beings confronted by the contingencies and prejudices of their day.  But in their finer moments, yes!  They come out of Independence Hall with “flakes of light” clinging to them.

You’ve all seen that iconic painting in your grade school history books by John Trumbull of the Declaration of Independence being presented to Congress for signing.  Pure myth.  But an origin story encapsulating the promise of one of the most radical of new beginnings.  A people charts a course from servitude to citizenship.  Something astonishingly new in the annals of history.  Trumbull got it right.  He captured the “flakes of light” of that unique moment.

And we citizens, many generations later, as we give ourselves to the promise of that original vision – we exit that Independence Hall adorned with “flakes of light.”  Their original vision has expanded to include the original inhabitants of this continent as well as those brought here in chains.  Yes, indeed, “flakes of light.”  The guarantee of the promise primordial is the continual expanding promise of liberty.  To all.

This past week of reprehensible pardons of the worst of the worst swamp creatures.  Men who had cheated and duped their fellows, treasonous scoundrels who have sold out the promise of this nation to a hostile foreign power – I began to doubt that there is any saving legacy of that distant convention at Independence Hall.  I grew quite cynical.  Is all for sale?  Do we have nothing of value to pass along to the next generation?

In the midst of dour gloom, I felt I needed a sanity break.  I went over to Barnes and Nobel Booksellers to see if the new book by Robert Reich had hit the shelves.

While I was scanning the “current affairs” shelf, I spotted a book about a Holocaust refugee’s secret mission to defeat the Nazis.  Not many escaped those camps to tell about it, let alone to to work against Hitler’s war machine.

As I leaned against the shelves and began reading, I realized that I was definitely in the company of a patriot.  The “flakes of light” that clung to Freddy, even through the pages of this book, were restorative to my soul.

The book by Eric Lichtblau, author also of The Nazis Next Door, tells the story of Freddy Mayer, a Eastern European Jewish refugee who immigrated to the United States, fleeing the ever repressive Nazi regime.  When the Nuremburg Laws were passed and the Germans invaded Austria, the family knew it was time to get out.  Unfortunately, for most Jews, the door was permanently shut shortly after their ship sailed for America.[2]

Practicing American style capitalism, Freddy found that his German training as a Diesel mechanic enabled him to get better and better jobs in his new home.  But news from the Old Country continued to haunt him.  Only eight months after the family’s arrival, came news of Kristallnacht, the orgy of violence Joseph Goebbels unleashed on the Jewish community.  Thousands of businesses, synagogues and homes were destroyed.  Over one hundred Jews were killed and the roundup began.  Notable industrialists in America like Henry Ford enthusiastically supported Hitler and his program.  Colonel Charles Lindberg denounced the Jews, as did the KKK.

After Pearl Harbor and the Declaration of War, thousands of eager young boys rushed off to recruiting stations to defend their country, Freddy among them.  

Lady Liberty “had ushered him into the country three years earlier when he fled Nazi Germany, and now she was beckoning him once again – this time to fight for his new homeland.”[3]  Unfortunately, Freddy was rejected as being an “enemy alien.”

Eventually Washington realized that it would need every able-bodied man and woman available.  Restrictions were eased and Freddy joined up.  Though a mechanic, his assignment, in the grand wisdom of the Army, was permanent KP – kitchen police – scrubbing pots and pans.

Out in the California desert, under General George Patton, Freddy was finally able to show his stuff.  He volunteered for the “Wildcat” Rangers and rose to “first scout” on training missions.  A general whom Freddy had taken “prisoner” in a training exercise, the next day called him in.  Not for a reprimand, but to offer him an opportunity to join the OSS – an opportunity for foreign-speaking men from Europe to penetrate enemy lines on secret espionage missions.  Freddy would now be working for “Wild Bill” Donovan.

Freddy would later parachute on a moon lit night into Austria as part of a three-person team.  Even after capture by the Nazis and after having been savagely tortured, almost losing his life, Freddy agreed to speak with the Gestapo officer in charge of Innsbruck to spare the city.  Freddy convinced him that any further resistance was futile.  With the Allies were closing in, that despised Nazi officer realized that Innsbruck was completely surrounded. He also realized that this American captive held out his only hope of averting more waste of life. He enlisted Freddy to approach the American lines with a white flag.  What could have been a bloody battle costing many lives was averted, and it was Private Freddy Mayer who arranged terms of surrender.  What a glorious immigrant! 

Looking back, now at ninety-four in his West Virginia cabin, with his trademark shrug (as if to say What’s the big deal?), Freddy remarked to the author, “What more is there to say?”[4]

Freddy was wrong.  It was a very big deal.  There’s a lot more to say, and that story is not finished. 

All those men and women, who were part of the “Greatest Generation,” came back from those battlefields adorned with Flakes of Light from Old Glory, Flakes of Light from that founding vision at Independence Hall. 

The idea they fought for, the proposition that each is a person of worth, the idea that no one should be forced to live under the tyranny of an autocrat, is derivative of the shekinah, the dwelling of God, upon the Mount of Revelation.

Freddy and his team of agents, Lt. Colonel Vindman, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and countless unnamed loyal civil servants — those who spoke truth at great personal risk to career and livelihood, are in that hallowed line of patriots, Flakes of Light from 1776 upon their faces.

These citizens have done their constitutional duty.  Like Moses, they have come down out of secure government jobs into the muck and mire of the Swamp.  They have given testimony to the enduring values we weakly strive to embody – to the vision of a nation under law, ever in the process of perfection.  The glory of our highest aspirations and values is transfigured in their service to our nation.  Glorious Flakes of Light.  These ideals are indeed godly.

Transfiguration is not some biblical oddity of long ago.  I see it Sunday after Sunday as faithful followers of our Lord kneel at the rail to receive the Eucharist.  I see it in the fresh coat of paint in former Sunday school rooms being prepared for outpatient care for House of Hope – San Bernardino.  I see it in those lovely hands preparing a bag of food for a visiting stranger.  Yes, the Church of Jesus Christ daily descends into the fray bearing “Flakes of Light” on its face.

By the time I had finished reading about Freddy Mayer — when I glanced down at my watch, I noticed that almost two hours had passed.  What a glorious browsing of a bookshelf.

Amen.

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[1] Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain (New York:HarperCollins, 1991) p. 233.

[2] Eric Lichtblau, Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York, 2019), 27.

       [3] Op. cit., 27.

[4] Op.cit., xii

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

February 23, 2020

Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter1:1-16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

Transfiguration Sunday

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”  How many have had this insight after suffering the consequences of a really dumb choice.  Or maybe we just didn’t think at all.  Obviously, I wasn’t thinking too hard about my academic success while spending late nights in the pool hall.  And my grades in physics and calculus were what you may have suspected. After two years in the Army, my thinking improved.  By then I definitely knew what I did NOT want to spend the rest of my life doing.  I would leave that choice to such honorable men as Col. Vindman and others.

I remember coming back to our construction yard during the time when i was running our family’s contracting business to find some very expensive aluminum scaffolding all crumpled up by the back fence.  A crew had been working that day taking off a chimney as part of getting rid of a fireplace at one of our projects.  I called the foreman Paul over and asked him what had happened to our scaffolding.  He told me that instead of dismantling the chimney brick by brick, they thought it might be easier to just lever the thing up whole and shove it off the roof.  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”  And here was four or five hundred dollars of crumpled up scaffolding that the whole thing hit on its way down to the ground.  What could possibly go wrong?

After that costly mistake I would ask the crews every morning before they left the yard to consider any plan they might be unsure of.  Ask yourselves, I would counsel, “What could possibly go wrong?”  Remember Murphy’s Law.  If it could possibly go wrong, it most likely will.  And remember the corollary to Murphy’s law.  “Everything that hits the fan is not equally distributed.”  ‘Nough said.

On a more serious note, we all need to be asking that question of ourselves as American citizens.  If we disparage the foundations of our democracy, what could possibly go wrong?  If we trash the news media, if we neglect to adequately educate our children – if we fail to support those institutions that are bastions of our communitarian life – our churches, and temples, our service clubs, the PTAs and all the rest – what could possibly go wrong?   If we jigger the tax code so all the benefits go to the top five percent – what could possibly go wrong?  And some businesses like Amazon, Wells Fargo and Google pay hardly anything or nothing at all…?  Go wrong???

Plenty, it would seem.  We become deadly cynical and give up on democracy.

This is the point of our lesson from Deuteronomy put in the starkest terms:  There are the ways of life.  There are the ways of death. 

As the Hebrews were about to enter the promised land Moses is reputed to have gathered the tribes together and instructed them.[1]

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.  If you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God that I am commanding you, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.”

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…”[2]

There are ways that lead to life abundant and ways that lead to dissolution, to life squandered.  St. Paul, over and over, reminds his community to choose LIFE.  You know, the part about love being patient and kind, not boastful.

Now, let me digress for a moment.  There’s the false notion some Christians have that the Old Testament being the book of Law.  It’s the book of EAT YOUR SPINICH.  Or whatever food you detested as a child.  For me it was tomato aspic – bluck!  AND the New Testament being Gospel — the book of God’s grace and love.

Those who believe this, I would aver, have read neither, Old or New.  There’s both gospel and law in the Old Testament as there is gospel and law in the New Testament.  In fact, we must understand the law as also a blessing.  The purpose of the law in scripture was to retain the blessings of God’s freedom won for us at great price from Pharaoh. 

How can we enjoy the benefits of civil society if no one can trust that the weights are not manipulated or that testimony given in court is truthful?  It is because, and only because, we have agreed to keep to certain standards and a basic trust in one another that life can flourish.  Thus, these basic laws are solely to maintain and secure these blessings to ourselves and our children.  That’s the entire purpose of the law – to keep the freedom God has won for us from all that would oppress.

Down through the ages, the understanding of law, or Torah, has changed.  Jesus reinterpreted the legal inheritance passed down to him in our lesson from Matthew.  When law fails to secure the blessings of God’s providence, we are not under its demands.  Seriously, is anyone going to hell from eating shrimp???  St. Paul certainly reinterpreted the law.  That is why we have several different injunctions concerning divorce.

The bottom line of our faith is that the glory of God is a woman, a man fully alive.  We need a little discipline and self-transcendence to keep this godly gift.  That’s the sole purpose of the Law, and that’s why the law is indeed a blessing.  The dissolute life is definitely NOT a blessing, though it may feel good at the time.

A Presbyterian clergy friend was telling me the other day how excited he was about the eager youth in his confirmation class.  They were really ready to explore in depth the faith they had received as children.  Unfortunately, too many Christians are left with a fourth grade Sunday school understanding of the faith.  Confirmation classes offer the opportunity to go deeper.

I was taken down memory lane to one of my confirmation classes.  I had come into my office a bit late and apologized for my tardiness.  And I moved to get the class focused, “Okay, guys, lets get started.”  Angie protested, “We’re not all guys.”  Before I could say another word, macho Tom interjected, “Well, you’re sure flat enough.”  This was definitely NOT what you tell a junior high girl!  Angie jumped up in tears and stormed out the door.  I quickly followed her as she almost ran into the arms of our associate pastor, who had been coming up the walkway.  While Peter took charge of comforting Angie, I returned to the class.  

Complete silence.  More silence. After I believed that we had taken in what had just transpired, I finally told them that today’s lesson had just changed.  Today, the lesson would be about what creates community and what kills community.  Slowly, a few began to speak.  Finally, Tom said, “I guess I have to apologize,” at which point the entire class like a massive Greek chorus intoned, “YEAH, TOM.”

Set before us are the ways of life and the ways of death.  If the operating ethic is solely ME FIRST???   What could possibly go wrong?  YEAH, TOM!  Set before us are the ways of life and the ways of death.  Choose life, Tom.

I found out that later that week Tom had in fact apologized.  Angie had accepted his remorse and the following week we gathered back as a group.   A summation of what we call the Ten Commandments could be the title of that Aretha Franklin song: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.  Respect your life.  Respect your neighbor.  Respect your community.  And above all, respect the Mystery that brought you and everything else into being.  That’s the sole purpose of the Law.   When we neglect the duty of R-E-S-P-E-C-T what could possibly go wrong?  Most likely, everything.  Ask Tom.

Robert Fulghum, a Unitarian pastor, wrote a wildly popular book some time ago, All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten.  This is just another iteration of the laws which make for human community.  In the pages of that book were common sense guidelines for playing nicely in the sandbox.  You remember some of the rules.  Law, if you will —

 Share everything.
 Play fair.
 Don’t hit people.
 Put things back where you found them.
 Clean up your own mess.
 Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
 Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

 Wash your hands before you eat.
 Flush.

All of which add up to RESPECT.  They are the sort of guidelines that make for kindergarten being a fun place, a good experience.  I also found out that it also helps if you can sit quietly in story circle.  And keep your hands to yourself.  Do these things and kindergarten will be a blessing.

But sometimes folks don’t keep their hands to themselves.  Just can’t.  Some folks grow up in homes that are so damaging they don’t have a chance of success.  In their homes, alcoholism, sexual violation, violence and anger destroy for generations.   They are bound to failure as tightly as Ulysses was bound to the mast of his ship.

Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, a husband-and-wife pair of Pulitzer Prize winning authors, in their new book, Tightrope, tell the stories of Yamhill, Oregon, the small logging community in which Nick grew up.  Almost forty percent of those with whom he rode the number six bus to school every day are gone – gone to drugs and alcohol, gone to incarceration, gone to suicide, victims of sexual abuse and family violence, gone to accidents caused by risky behavior, gone to disease from poor lifestyle choices.

Reading through their book, following some of the families, chapter after chapter – depression set in.  Lack of employment and poor schools, lives of poor health choices.  So many lived lives of desperation.  America has ignored these people.  The result has been death.  The death of a huge swath of our nation.

But in chapter ten, a burst of sunshine floods the pages of their book.  Nicholas and Sheryl tell the story of “Women in Recovery.”  This is a two-year residential diversion program for non-violent drug offenders.  It is a program in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that is helping “shattered people rebuild their lives and families.”  Second changes are the ways of LIFE.

In these pages I encountered women and children who, by ordinary odds, would not have had a chance of escaping the fateful trajectories of their lives.  Called junkie, they die junkies.  But with the blessing of enlightened division programs, many are now taking charge of their lives.  They choose LIFE.  America, choose LIFE!

In the opening pages of that chapter I was invited to a graduation ceremony of seventeen women of “Women in Recovery.”  There they were in their finery with hair and nails done to a tee.  No longer called junkies and whores, these women are proud tax payers, productive workers, and moms.   They had cheated, lied and stolen from most of the hundred or so in the crowd who came to celebrate their accomplishment.  “And in the front row sat a number of the very judges who had sentenced them applauding enthusiastically.  They stood proudly to raucous cheers from family members and even police officers who previously had arrested and scorned them.” 

The attorney general of Oklahoma was one of the graduation speakers.  He called these woman “heroes.” 

“I thought we’d be planning a funeral instead,” said one audience member whose younger sister had started using meth at age twelve and was now graduating at thirty-five.[3]

This is what happens when a society chooses the ways of LIFE – chooses the way of a second chance for those bound for failure.  It is what happens when women such as these take responsibility for their bad choices and seize the opportunity for LIFE.  To conclude:

At the end of the ceremony there was another standing ovation.  Then these women themselves shouted, “Thank you, judges,” and gave a return standing ovation to the judges  The giddy scene offered a crucial lesson that the rest of the country hasn’t appreciated:  there is hope even for people with addictions whom society has given up on—if they get the right help.[4]

Through the hopefulness and the generosity of spirit of those who create and support such programs as Women in Recovery, God offers life abundant.  Such programs make the offer real to the drug offenders that society has given up on – choose LIFE.

These women have weighed, through lives of misery and degradation, those two choices.  Through the grace of God, they have chosen LIFE — as have the police and drug court judges who are the backbone of Women in Recovery.  As has the state of Oklahoma.

Through another innovative program in New York public schools I met a homeless young immigrant from Nigeria, Tani, and his family.

This homeless boy worked his way through an innovative school chess program to take back trophy after trophy to the homeless shelter in which his family was living.  Up until then, Tani had never seen a chess board.  His chess teacher, looking at Tani’s progress remarked.  “One year to get to this level, to climb a mountain and be the best of the best, without family resources…I’ve never seen it.”[5]  Tani worked more chess puzzles than his teacher ever remembered any other student doing.  Tani won the New York state championship for his age group.  That’s God-given freedom to shine like the sun.  LIFE!

America, what could possibly go wrong when we deny opportunity to our people?   Plenty.  We see it in the hollowed-out eyes of those we have given up on.

BUT — here’s what can go gloriously right when we serve up opportunity in huge dollops.  Followed with responsibility and respect.

America, choose Life that your inhabitants and future generations may enjoy the blessings of liberty.   Choose opportunity!  I set before you the ways of life and death.  Choose LIFE.  Amen.

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[1] Deuteronomy 30:15-17, RSV

[2] Ibid, 30:19

[3] Ibid, p. 124.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Nicholas Kristoff, Sheryl WuDunn, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2020), chapter 10, “Interventions that Work.”

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission, San Bernardino

February 16, 2020

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; I Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney