House of Hope – Ohio Valley

This past week we all received a just and well-deserved scolding from a sixteen-year-old girl from Sweden.  Greta Thumberg at the United Nations Climate Action Summit.  

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction, and you can only talk about money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?[1]

Her warning is no different in kind than that of the prophet Habakkuk.  He castigates a political leadership that has distorted justice and perpetrated violence upon the land.  And for this reason the Chaldeans, the predatory nation to the north shall be God’s rod of chastisement.  Swift and terrible, they descend on Israel.

Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves; their horsemen press proudly on…They come for violence; terror of them goes before them.  They gather captives like sand.  At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. (vv. 1:6-10).

Every bit as urgent and as terrible as Habakkuk’s warning, Greta does not mince words in her message to the leaders of our day. 

You are failing us but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here and right now is where we draw the line.[2]

To reinforce Greta’s message, millions upon millions of young people and their friends and parents poured out into the streets in cities all around the globe.  Here in Claremont many gathered on Foothill and Indian Hill to sound the alarm.  To warn our politicians that the time for empty words and half measures is over. 

The science is clear.  More than clear, as we celebrated this past week the patron saint of Mother Earth – St. Francis.  Already we are in the middle of the Sixth Extinction, as many scientists refer to the great die-off presently taking place around the world.  America has lost one third of its birds.  Some 2.9 billion birds.[3]

Our oceans are in peril.  Acidification and ocean warming are proceeding at breakneck speed.  We run the risk of killing off the very plankton that produces some fifty to seventy percent of all the earth’s oxygen — some current research estimates it at eighty percent.  It’s not all trees that keep us alive, but little creatures in the trillions that we can’t even see with the naked eye.[4]  That study is now almost ten years old.  Has it gotten better in the meantime?  I highly doubt it.

And on and on it goes.  We have really fouled our nest.

So, what to do?  We might dismiss and ridicule such folks like Greta Thunberg and the scientists.  Fake news.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Just move along.  Or try vituperation as did our president on Twitter: “disturbingly redolent of a victim of a Maoist ‘re-education’ camp.”  Or like Laura Ingraham we can label Greta and her companions the pathetic victims of “climate hysteria.”  But no amount of ridicule will make this problem go away.

Or we can resort to complacent, magical theology, throw up our hands and proclaim that it’s now all in God’s hands.  There’s nothing we can do.  That option reminds me of a story of a country preacher walking along a dirt road when he spotted a farmer out in his field.  He hadn’t seen this guy in church since he’d been there.  He motioned the farmer over and noted that this was a mighty fine farm the fellow had.  “If I had a farm like that, I come to church and let God know how thankful I was.”  “Well, Sonny,” drawled the farmer, “I want to tell you — it certainly didn’t look like this when God had it all by himself.” 

When it comes to creation care, some stewardship activity is required on our part.  Further, as God did not poison the oceans or heat up the place, why should God take the rap for it?  God didn’t do this.  No, it is not all in God’s hands.

Peter W. Marty proposes another consideration.  Repentance and restitution.[5]

The other day he was surprised to receive a letter from his seventh-grade science teacher.  He hadn’t thought about Mr. Erickson in almost fifty years.  Included was an old photograph of the Amateur Radio Club with a few of its members.  There were the club officers in the front row with Mr. Erickson and off to the side in the back was a kid named Eric.  Eric was physically disabled with few social skills.  He had halting speech and a definite limp.  Needless to say, Eric was the laughing stock of his classmates.  Enthusiastic, but just not fitting in. 

Eric was on the receiving end of ridicule and insults.  Classmates lobbed nasty names at him and pushed textbooks from his arms.  They dumped his milk at lunch when he turned his back.  A few kids were practiced at bumping into him as he carried his food tray.  If he swatted back at those who teased him, they only bullied more.  This wasn’t just a small group of hooligans; it was a whole cadre of outwardly pleasant middle schoolers.[6]

As memories came flooding back, the most painful of all was the recollection that he had done absolutely nothing to stand up for Eric.  Yes, he sat with him occasionally and helped pick up the things the other boys knocked from his hands.  But Peter did nothing to really include Eric.  He never spoke up.  He never admonished those cruel classmates.  He never invited Eric to the cool kids table.  As he admits, his moral compass was frozen.  No compassion here.

Looking back on all those years, Peter realizes that there is no real way he can make his repentance meaningful in anyway to Eric.  Too much time has past and he has no idea what ever became of Eric.  So how does one make restitution at this late date?

Peter concludes that perhaps there is no real way to atone for past wrongs and shameful behavior.  But that doesn’t mean we must just wallow in the sins of our past. 

Confession can deepen compassion.  It can instill a greater kindness and promote understanding and empathy.  It can be the beginning of serious midcourse correction.  And that is what Greta would urge up on us adults in the room.

I used to scoff at what I took to be small, half-way measures to environmental remediation.  How could changing out lightbulbs be restitution for all the damage we have wrought?  What difference did recycling really make?  I derisively called it “eco-pietism.”

Then one day, I read that changing lightbulbs for more efficient versions really was important.  Not in the small amount of electricity saved and the less coal burned to produce that electricity.  No!   Changing out lightbulbs and other small actions was often the beginning for most people of a serious midcourse correction.  It led to other things – like walking more and riding one’s bike for local errands – taking the Metrolink into L.A. instead of sitting for hours in exhaust fumes on the 10 Freeway – joining a group like Citizens’ Climate Lobby or 350.org.  Changing that lightbulb, for many people, was a first step to an environmental sensitivity that could build the political will for change.  Repentance does not mean feeling sorry for past misdeeds.  It means turning around and amending your ways.

Like the Chaldean horsemen with rapier edged swords, CLIMATE CATASTRPHE will soon be upon us.  Few, if no prisoners will be taken.  Just ask the Pacific Islanders or the farmers of Bangladesh.  Devastation will be swift and complete.

In a past issue of Time magazine, Bill McKibben, the prominent writer on the threat that global warming portends, lays out a possible alternative future to impending disaster.[7]   In his piece, Bill writes as if from the year 2050.  He lays out a somewhat hopeful scenario.  Yes, we will still have to take our lumps for our past foolishness and inaction.  But he describes a future that, though tough, is livable.

My takeaway from his future world is that we will have survived by wising up and acting on what was easily done – the low hanging fruit.  Doing a bit more of what many are already doing, only much, much more rapidly.  We will have survived by educating ourselves and our children.  We will have survived by electing leaders at all levels of government who understood the existential threat to our planet and who acted.  No matter be they Republican or Democrat, the only qualification for office – were they willing to move on positive solutions.  And do it quickly before it was too late.

Yes, Greta, there are sincere people in both parties willing to join forces.  Citizens’ Climate Lobby has proved that.  CCL’s tax — they call it a fee because politicians do not get to spend it — on carbon is a plan that both Republicans and Democrats have endorsed.  It is a plan that reduces CO2, creates jobs, and does not grow the government.  This fee is returned in its entirety back to the American people less a small fraction for administrative costs.  Those at the bottom of the economic pile benefit the most – mainly because they consume less.  No airplanes or yachts for them.  No ten-thousand-square-foot McMansions for the destitute.  So, of course, the poor will come out ahead.  And if other nations cheat or refuse to tax their own carbon pollution, we can extract the tax at our shores.  It can be calculated relatively easily.  I’m sure Russia, China or India would rather collect the money themselves than have us do it – and keep it.

Mr. Habakkuk is correct in his warning of eminent danger.  I do not believe that God sends invading armies to punish wayward nations – we’re perfectly capable of punishing ourselves.  It’s called consequences.  Warnings are a means of grace.  They’re an opportunity to understand where our behavior is taking us, and to change.  Bill McKibben is a hopeful prophet in that he lays out a plausible future. 

Yes, we all have an impact on the planet.  Every time we turn on the stove or fill up our gas tank, we impact the planet.  Every time we board a plane.  None of us is pure.  Even Greta. But there are actions each one of us can each take.  Change that lightbulb.  But more than that, we can vote for political leadership that will allow us to take collective action on climate.  Folks, the government is not some evil behemoth out there.  It’s us.  The “Deep State” is the Constitution.

With faith as big as a mustard seed, we can move the climate mountain.  Maybe not move sycamore trees, but with mustard seed faith, you might be like that proverbial tree planted by a clear, ever-flowing stream.  A tree that bears its fruit in due season, a tree that prospers in all seasons.  And this is how we will save this earth, “our island home.”  Only needed is the mustard seed faith that I can make a difference.  That you can make a difference.  That we can make a difference.  Add water, sunshine and love.  Amen.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haewHZ8ubKA

[2] Ibid.

[3] Carl Zimmer, “Birds are Vanishing from North America, New York Times, September 19, 2019.

₄ Lauren Morello, “Phytoplankton Population Drops 40 Percent Since 1950,” Scientific American, July 29, 2010.

[5] Peter W Marty, “Dealing with Past Sins,” Christian Century, September 25, 2019, p. 3.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Bill McKibben, “How we Survived Climate Change,” Time, September 23, 2019.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Habakkuk, 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Psalm 37:1-10; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

Proper 22, Year C, October 6, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

We have here one of the most problematic parables that Jesus was ever said to have uttered.  It would have not been surprising, upon listing to this parable, for one of the disciples to have muttered, “Jerusalem, we have a problem.”  This teaching is unacceptable.  Completely!  This is not the ethic of the Beloved Community.

The Parable of the Unjust Steward is so morally reprehensible that the gospel writer concludes it with a number of possible interpretations in an attempt to clean it up.   Many of which are contradictory.  Taken together the parable and the following commentary looks like the word salad of some politician as to why they were caught for what they were caught doing – a bunch of words strung together without any sense or meaning.  Just words with no connection.  A refrigerator magnet poem put up by your second grader.

This parable would seem to counsel the sort of behavior that Reuters recently reported as getting several top FEMA presidential appointees indicted from criminal wrong doing.  The ethics of the swamp seem to be slowly permeating throughout all the ooze.  From top to bottom.

To wit, Reuters reports that a top FEMA official overseeing the rebuilding of Puerto Rico along with several others has been indicted by a grand jury for taking kickbacks to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid after Hurricane Maria.  Ahsha Tribble, who oversaw the reconstruction work for FEMA allegedly accepted gifts, including a forty-foot long catamaran boat and sack loads of money, to pressure the government of Puerto Rico to steer business to Donald Ellison and her benefactor’s firm, Cobra Acquisitions.

This, after a contract was previously jerked from a small company with only two employees in Montana – a company that had been awarded the contract to rebuild Puerto Rico’s entire grid.  Can you imagine, an outfit with only two employees getting this contract?  That would be like our administrative assistant Verity and I, strapping on equipment belts and just the two of us heading off to the devastation of Puerto Rico with nothing but billions of dollar bills in our pockets and absolutely no idea of which end of the wire to stick into the outlet.  Tell me, what’s that story about, if not massive corruption.  Just who’s benefiting somewhere out there in Montana?  Certainly not the people of Puerto Rico.  They’re still waiting for power in many places.  Is that the sort of business ethics Jesus is promoting in this parable?  The ethics of Eden’s snake?

And today, we hear that the leader of Ukraine is being pressured to turn over dirt on a potential political opponent in our upcoming 2020 election. 

Where does it end?  In the mire of this cesspool it would seem that everything we Americans hold dear is for sale to the highest bidder.  Any end justifies any means.  Maybe the hope is that the American people will just tire of the so much corruption and simply tune out.  Friends, we do that at the peril of our enduring values.  We do that in betrayal of what Americans have lived and died for.  I can’t believe that this is where Jesus’ teaching wants to take us.  What???  Rot is good?

Listen to Amos’s counsel:  Woe to those who ask when shall the Sabbath be over that we can make hay?  When we can jigger the weights and tweak the scales.  Make the ephah small and the shekel great?  How soon can we deal deceitfully and grind the poor into dust?  Money’s there for the making.

Amos warns that such a generation shall be cast adrift.  They shall be utterly lost.  To such a generation the Lord will send an intense hunger.  “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord God, “When I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.  They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.”[1] 

The denizens of the swamp shall prevail.  As Hobbs predicted, it will be a war of all against all.  And Gordon Gekko rings the opening bell of Wall Street trading every single day, even on the Sabbath.  That’s the dystopian future that derives from the business ethic of the Unjust Steward.  Jesus, is this your counsel?

These are consequences for a generation that has lost its mooring, that has lost its soul.   They are not like a tree planted by a living stream with deep roots, but like the chaff which the wind quickly blows to the four corners of the earth. 

Is this the business ethic Jesus is recommending to his followers?  If this is the course of action Jesus was suggesting through this story, it has certainly taken hold in our time with a vengeance.  In such a society no institution is exempt from the seeping mire.  A parent with a wad of cash can buy admittance to the most prestigious schools in the nation.  Bankers cheat their customers with fake accounts they concoct out of thin air in the middle of the night.  Even the church is not exempt.  We, too, are a very human community not exempt from temptation and malfeasance.  However, I can assure you that here at St. Francis we have no golden faucets or a huge bank account stashed away.   

No wonder the gospel writer was so perplexed.  No wonder Luke was hunting for any rational explanation for this parable. 

It happened that I was sitting at lunch last Thursday at Pilgrim Place with a noted biblical scholar.  I told Dennis what the upcoming lectionary selection from Luke was, and how on earth was the preacher to make any sense of the Parable of the Unjust Steward?  Was Jesus commending the ethics of a snake like Bernie Madoff to his followers?  Or was something else going on that I was missing?  Please, Dennis, give the preacher some help here!

Dennis suggested that there was indeed another way of understanding this problematic story.  Perhaps Jesus was telling his hearers that they should be just as wise and artful in doing good as those steeped in the corrupt ways of the world.  We were not to do as the Unjust Steward but were to be just as clever as he in building the Beloved Community.

Lift each other up with the same determination and the same foresight.  Not for evil, but to a different end.  Be wickedly smart in doing good, just as smart as that crooked steward.

Well, that makes sense.  Such sentiment warms the heart. Much better sense than that Jesus would be counseling us to loot, steal and cheat.  And sink into the mire of the swamp.

Listen to the wisdom of our biblical heritage: “Choose life that you and your children may live.”  And as the writer of 1 Timothy urges, we should commend all in prayer, even the vipers of the swamp, that “…we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.”  Despite all evidence to the contrary, we must hold out for the possibility of redemption – even for ourselves.

Yes, let us be adroit and canny in doing good.  Let us be persistent in such things as compassion.  We’re talking about patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness – the fruit of the Spirit.  The attitudes that make for life.  It’s the “attitude of gratitude,” as they say in the twelve-step movement.

And where does such a moral compass lead?  Here’s where such gifts of the Spirit lead us.  It’s a story I came across scrolling down through the AOL news one morning last week.  It is about a young, sixteen-year old high school girl named Whitney Kropp. 

Whitney has always been a fairly quiet girl, usually sitting in the back.  She wasn’t known for having many friends, and her family came from fairly modest means.  They were certainly not among the movers and shakers in their Michigan community.

Well, some of the school bullies — girls of the so-called “in” clique, as a prank, decided to put forth Whitney’s name for homecoming queen.  What a joke, they thought it would be, on such a nothing girl who wouldn’t have had a prayer for that honor.  Yuck it up, ladies.  Lots of fun at a nice person’s expense.  Of course, no one told Whitney.

Well, it turned out, the joke was on them.

As you can imagine, Whitney was flattered.  Flabbergasted, really.  Could it be that, after all those years of being the quiet girl in the background, high school life was finally opening up for her?  Maybe she wasn’t the ugly duckling after all.

Whitney soon became suspicious when, after the homecoming court was announced and she had heard her name over the speaker, that she happened to glance over at a group of kids laughing their heads off.   She noticed the group of the soch girls – you know the ones – the snooty, moneyed girls who think they’re better than everyone else — giggling and pointing at her.

However, she decided to ignore this.  Just pay no attention.  They’re of no account.  On the day of the announcement Whitney couldn’t wait to tell her family and friends.  One of her friends posted the news on Facebook.

As Whitney didn’t fit in well with her classmates, it began to make sense to her when she discovered that her nomination had been a cruel joke.  It was the work of this little group of school bullies.  To make matters worse, she discovered that many in her school had been in on the joke. 

Whitney was devastated, and her mind went to some very dark, destructive thoughts.  In her depression she even contemplated suicide.  She also discovered that one boy so did not want to be associated with her that he had rejected a nomination to homecoming court.  You can imagine how the news hit this vulnerable, young girl!  She began to feel like SHE was nothing but a big joke.  She didn’t belong.

When she finally mustered the courage to tell her family, of course, they were devastated.  But they encouraged their daughter to attend the homecoming game anyway.  It wasn’t going to be easy for this fragile girl whose confidence had been completely shaken, but they would have her back.  Myself?  I think I would have hidden in my closet and never come out.  But Whitney’s family was strong and Whitney discovered an inner strength from their support.  They would show these bullies what real family strength was.

Whitney’s sister started a Facebook group to support Whitney and inform the wider community what had happened.  In a flash this group exploded to thousands as the story spread.  And as community businesses learned of the recent events, they offered all sorts of support:  shoes and a new dress fit for a queen, a complete makeover by a local hairdresser, a homecoming dinner and a limousine for a ride in style to her coronation.

That night as Whitney walked across the field at halftime, under the glare of stadium lights, escorted by her proud father, she was still nervous.  And then she looked up.  She saw hundreds of folks in the stands cheering her as they stood in her honor.  They held signs and wore orange tee shirts to match her stunning, new, orange dress.  And there were the news teams.  Whitney, who had thought she was a big nothing, was overwhelmed by the awesome embrace of so, so many strangers who come out to honor her that night.

When being interviewed that evening by reporters, Whitney had a message for every girl in America, “The kids that are bullying you, do not let them bring you down.  Stand up for what you believe in and go with your heart and go with our gut.”

This is what happens when an entire community excels in doing good, when a family is wise in the ways of social media and reaching out, every bit as creative as those who had intended evil.  Just as clever as that Unjust Steward.  Every bit as cunning as that proverbial serpent.  Just as adroit as that reptile in its serpentine deceit, but this time, for doing good.  And in the doing, God was most highly honored that evening.

Gospel faithfulness is life indeed.  Whitney, her family, and entire community chose life.  What some self-absorbed and inconsiderate classmates intended for evil, they chose for good.

Friends, that’s my take on this most problematic of parables.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

St. Paul reminds us that the gifts of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law.”[2] 

That night, at the coronation of a radiant girl in a small, mid-western American town, all the gifts of the Spirit were let loose.  They gushed forth like an ever-flowing stream of righteousness.  Whitney and her clever Beloved Community chose life.  Life abundant.  Brimful and overflowing.   

As songster Jim Manley writes: “Did somebody say that you’d never be queen?  Send them our way and we’ll paint their nose green.”  Amen.

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[1] Amos 8:12, the RSV.

[2] Galatians 5:22-23.  RSV.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Amos 6:1a, 4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

Proper 19, Year C, September 22, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

We have all lost something from time to time.  I could sure identify with my dad this last month.  I remember that we would scour his bedroom hunting for a lost hearing aid.  The search would soon move into the bathroom, the kitchen and then encompass the entire house. 

Well, on my last trip to West Virginia, when I was on my connecting flight from the Denver Airport, heading back home to Ontario International, I realized that one of my hearing aids was missing.  The only thing I could think of was that I had been listening to a recorded book through my noise canceling headphones.  While waiting for our flight back to Ontario, I had received a call and took off the earphone on one side.  I must have pulled one of my hearing aid off in the process.  Back home, when I asked the hearing app to find my hearing aid, it duly displayed it on a map of the Denver International Airport. Unfortunately, no one at the airport had found it. 

To compound matters, it wasn’t but a few days later I lost the other one.  At this point I was ready to have myself committed to our memory care unit.  I shouldn’t be allowed out of the house with anything more expensive than a pencil or a paper towel.  However, on Saturday Jai found it…in a bedsheet she was removing from the washing machine.  Fortunately, grace abounds.  Or maybe just dumb luck.  When I installed a new battery, I couldn’t believe my good fortune.  It worked.  And is still working.  And maybe it’s a bit cleaner.  Maybe the grace is having such a wonderful wife who notices such things.

Of course, all of us have had much more serious losses.  Like the time Jonathan and Christopher decided to go on an “Explore” late one afternoon.  Behind our house in Petersburg, Alaska, it was all forest.  It was only when we called them to dinner that we realized that they were nowhere to be found.  As it became darker, our worry increased exponentially.  A friend had come over for dinner.  He, Jai and I were scouring the neighborhood and the forest behind the house.  Finally, I spotted them coming back on the walking path that led from the airport into town.  Fortunately, they had stayed together and were as relieved to see us as we them.  I can’t even begin to describe our relief.  I didn’t know whether to bawl them out for leaving like that or just to hug them and cry.  We all had a very grateful dinner, a bit late, a bit cold.  But the family was together.

Now this was serious loss.  The kind that drives parents and friends out of their minds.  I believe it must be as close as I can possibly imagine to the loss God must feel.  The only worse loss I can imagine would be that of a kidnapped child or the loss so many experienced on 9/11.

When I see pictures of the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian’s devastation, I am dumbstruck.  The section of the Bahamas called The Mud is where many undocumented Haitians had been living.  It is a jumble of splintered wood and crushed cars and other debris.  As far as the eye can see.  It’s hard to see how any searchers can even move through that pile of splintered wood and twisted metal.  The overpowering stench is witness to the many lives that must have been lost there — bodies that no one can get to until the water recedes.  And those who managed to survive?  They have no idea as to where their loved ones might be, or if they’re even still alive. 

But we, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave — we’re going to deny the stragglers from this hellish landscape entry into our country because they don’t have the proper papers?  Please, pray tell me — where are these poor souls with nothing but the ragged, filthy clothes on their backs – just how are they to obtain get proper documentation? 

God must be weeping a river of tears.  That magnificent Lady who bids wayfarers welcome out there in New York harbor – who offers sanctuary to the tempest tossed, she must be sick with grief.  A lot has died, not the least has been compassion.  America is being lost.  The Author of our sweet liberty must be so grievously hurt at what we have done with our promise.  Like a distraught woman hunting for a lost coin, God searches in vain for  a shred of decency in this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Such overwhelming loss is numbing.  Such loss blocks out any rational thought.  We’re overwhelmed in shock.  Unfortunately, one response to overwhelming loss is denial, or the resort to magical thinking. 

The children of Israel, left behind at Mt. Saini completely lose it when Moses fails to return.  They’re blaming Moses.  “Why didn’t you just leave us out there to die in Egypt.   Didn’t they have enough graves back there?”  They’re blaming God.  They decide, in the absence of Moses or God, to make their own god, a golden calf.  Just like we are prone to look to magical thinking when faced with disaster and loss.  Just as I resorted to irrational thought when I lost my second hearing aid, hunting in places where I’d hunted before, where I knew it couldn’t possibly be.  Magical thinking wouldn’t be too far back.

Like this poor woman seeking that coin, turning her house upside down, God is every bit as desperate and distressed at loss as are we.  How do we know that?  We know it because the God dwells within the human breast that heaves with such great sobs at loss and ruination is the same God who is as near to us as our beating hearts and the fleeting thought of mind.  Our anguish is God’s.  Whether it’s the loss of a child who’s wandered off or a loved one who’s drowned in the floodwaters of a storm.  This very one and same God who bears up our grief and cradles us in despair.  Like a shepherd seeking out a lost sheep, I imagine God searches through the wreckage of our loss.

This very same God is equally distressed when an entire people, an entire nation, has lost its way.  Lamentation is real.  God crying out from the distress of our people.  I fear we have desperately lost our way as a nation.  Is tragically divided.  Our farmers are committing suicide at unprecedented rates.  The average family is barely making it anymore.  We bury our pain in addiction. 

In the previous Atlantic Magazine, there was an incredible article on how some of our biggest businesses and their CEOs are gaming the system.  If anything is to destroy our capitalist system, it won’t be the likes of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, or my son and his girlfriend who are Democratic Socialists.  It will be the greed of the so-called captains of industry themselves.  I’m not talking about the Mom and Pop Grocery, but the huge multinational corporations that, though once American, have no loyalty to their workers here.  This outlandish, self-serving greed must surely cause a flood of tears to flow from the divine Author of our liberty.  We have lost our way.  God’s heart surely aches.

Here’s the story.  It’s not sexy.  It’s pretty into-the-weeds economics.  It’s junk-yard-dog ugly.  It’s not a story that would spark not a bit of interest from most of us.  Its far from our minds as we are concerned with getting to our usual morning chores, the stuff you have to do to get out of the house. 

The money we worry about is that little bit in our bank account that will, hopefully, get us through to the end of the month.  But as I’ve said, while we may vote at best once every two years, money votes every day.  BIG MONEY, that is.  Corporate money.

Someone has begun to look into the huge windfall many large companies have reaped from the recent tax till.  Oodles and oodles.  Take Home Depot, for instance.  Well, did their CEO, Craig Menear, share any of that bounty with those “what brung him to the dance?”  Did he give his employees any well-deserved raise?  Did Home Depot lower prices?  Did they build more factories and hire workers?  No.  None of these.

They bought back their own company’s stock.  So why should we care?  Let me connect the dots for us.  As a result of this buyback, the remaining shares on the market became worth more, much more it turns out.  There were now far fewer of them.  Basis econ 101.  The less there is of something, the more valuable it becomes.  Including the shares owned by a CEO, who often gets a big – a very big – chunk of their salary in company stock. 

Yeah, I bet you didn’t expect to get an econ lesson this morning.  In fact, one of the most frequent themes in scripture is the wise and just use of wealth and privilege. 

Soooooo.  To continue…This president and CEO of Home Depot, Craig Menear, went off on a buying spree of their own Home Depot stock – four billion dollars’ worth – 35 percent of all outstanding shares!  President Meanear’s stock, in the process, became worth a whole extra bunch and he promptly sold a lot and netted a nice $18 million.  Not bad for a day’s work.  To reward him, Home Depot turned around and gave him another gift of stock, over 24 thousand shares.  On the spot, he unloaded another batch of that payout.  And, KA-CHING!  He walked away with somewhere around $4.5 million.  It’s amazing what a little bit of hard work will get a fellow.  I’m sure president Menear’s worth every cent of it.

But what about his workers?  You know, the helpful folks with those orange aprons who are there to assist you in finding things and will check you out at the register?  What about these workers making only $23,000 a year?  What if that money, instead of being used to line the pockets of the very wealthy, had been used to provide a living wage for the folks what make Home Depot happen every single day?  The folks who struggle to pay rent and scrape together car payments.  Those who live on the ragged edge?  The ones who collect up the shopping carts we leave strewn about the parking lot?   What about them?   The Roosevelt Institute and the National Employment Law Project have calculated that every Home Depot worker would have an additional $18,000 a year in their paycheck IF Home Depot had made a different decision about their pile of cash.  IF – such a small word and such a big potential difference.

But the story doesn’t stop there.  One more dot to connect.  What do these folks do with this ill-gotten lucre.  They use it to corrupt our political system.  They invest that money in politicians at all levels of government.  And that is why the stuff the ordinary voter cares about never happens.  America, you are better than this.

As our democracy is increasingly financialized, I’m sure the Author of liberty must weep most grievously.  The idea of America is on the verge of being lost.  Sold out to the highest bidder. We should all weep.  With such disparity of opportunity, we have indeed lost our way.  Our workers are shoveled into impoverishment.  Addiction rates continue to climb.  God is saying to each one of us, “America, you are better than this.”

You ask, but what can we do?  Well, we can do something.  It may not be much, but if a lot of folks do it, it adds up to a lot.  We can vote for leaders with integrity.  Leaders who have a record of serving the public interest and not their own pocketbook.  We can pay attention.  Democracy is not a spectator sport! 

It’s time for all of us, for this nation to be WOKE.  It’s Mend-Thine-Every-Flaw time. 

Look how we got through another time of despair in our nation’s past.  People pulled together.  Churches and voluntary organizations pitched in.  We had political leadership.  And the Greatest Generation did get us through the Great Depression.

Different folks learned different lessons from that searing national experience.  My dad learned that a person could never have enough.  So, he saved up a huge pile of money.  My mom’s parents learned that, even if you weren’t personally struggling – Grandpa had a safe, pretty high-up job in the Lodi Post Office – there were a lot of desperate folks out there on the verge of starvation.  Give a care.

I heard the story growing up of how every evening Grandma would make an extra amount for dinner.  She would set it in a big pot with paper dishes and spoons for the destitute who wandered through their back alleyway. It wasn’t much, but she did what she could.  Grandpa, like thousands others, planted a Victory Garden during and gave away vegetables.

Hundreds and thousands of Americans did similar acts of charity all across the country.  Churches of every stripe and denomination pitched in.  Synagogues and mosques as well.  Grace abounded for the distressed.  The nation voted for political leadership that devised national recovery programs, putting its idled men back to work.

It is no coincidence that the leadership — that FDR — came right out of the of the church.  The Episcopal Church.  FDR served on the vestry, the ruling board of the congregation, and even through the duration of that war, he never missed a single meeting.  Not one!  And many of our other leaders in both the administration and in Congress exercised the same bold leadership reflecting the values they had learned in Sunday school or Sabbath school.

By the grace of God, a lost nation found its way.  Yes, some would argue that it also took the tragedy of a world at war to get the nation moving again.  But in the progress, we stood up against some of the most murderous regimes history has known and liberated a world. 

All is lost.  All is found.  Yes, we can do this again.  We can find our moral compass.   Again, arms are strong.

How does Jesus’ story of the Lost Coin end?  The story becomes the celebration not of one woman, but the joyful victory of her entire community.  Ultimately, it’s a story about us, not me.  “See, I set before you the ways of life and death.  Choose life, that you and your children may live.”  That your nation may live and flourish.

It is the inner urge to tirelessly seek what has been lost. – just as my son some time ago scoured his Portland neighborhood when their orange striped cat Morris didn’t come home one night.  For days, he walked the neighborhood calling.  He and Rachael truly mourned that beloved cat’s loss.  At odd moments they would imagine they had heard his license tags jingling, when it was only a passing kid on a skateboard or maybe a car going by.  That is surely how the heart of God must ache for us when we’ve lost our way.

God plants within each one of us the restless need for restoration and connection.  We feel that painful sense of loss when one is missing around the table at dinner, even if it’s only Morris the Cat.  God seeks us out when we’ve gone astray with the same dogged (excuse the poor choice of words, Morris, wherever you may be) persistence, as of a woman scouring her home for what is missing — Just as God seeks out a crooked tax collector and remorseful thief on a cross at Golgotha.  Or a repentant member of the NIMBY crowd.

In the sentiment of that beloved song, “His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches over me.”  He watches over each and every one of us frail creatures, ever searching us out.  And His – Her eye — is over our very endangered democracy.  Yes, His eye is on our good, old US of A.  AND on this frail and dying planet, our island home.    Dear Lord, give us eyes to seek out the Right and the courage to do the Right.  Amen.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

Proper 19, Year C, September 15, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

There’s an old freedom song from the 60s we used to sing.  Sometimes, still, I hear it today.  When I read todays passage from Luke’s gospel, that old song bubbled right up in my mind.

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me ‘round,

Turn me round, turn me ‘round.

Ain't gonna let nobody, turn me ‘round.

I'm gonna keep on a walkin', keep on a talkin',

Walkin' into freedom land.

Those were heady days when we thought America was on the verge of a new birth of freedom.  Working in Los Angeles, our church was right smack dab in the middle of that birthing.  The Pico Union Neighborhood was alive with bustle and we had our eyes on the prize.  If you wanted slacker Christianity, if you wanted your ease in Zion, there would be no rest for you here.  Yes, you had to let go of the old stuff.  Let go of old attitudes.  Let go of old priorities.  Our parents couldn’t understand why we would ever want to work in such a vermin, such a gang, such a poverty infected neighborhood.  All who worked at our church had some version of that discussion with parents.  Yet we kept on marchin, kept on talking all the way into a new freedom land.

And because that congregation in very real ways worked to live up to both the mandate and the promise of the gospel, it was a most joyful place.  Most every Sunday church would conclude with the music group and choir rocking out to that song from the musical “Hair.”   “Let the sun shine in, let the sun shine in, the sun shine in.”  And off we’d all go, energized and focused for another week.  And we made a difference.

I can still remember that old Latina who one evening a week taught some of the neighborhood girls cooking.  Many of these girls came from homes where mothers were sometimes working two and three jobs just to keep it together.  So, we taught cooking.  But that wise old Latina taught much more than cooking.  She held out the promise of a future for these girls.  If nothing else, they picked up the message that their whole existence didn’t depend on any boyfriend.  These girls held the future of being women of promise.  You want to be a teacher?  You want to be a nurse or a doctor?  You want to be a sheriff?  Follow your dream.  The last thing you need right now is to have some parasite boyfriend get you pregnant and then disappear.  You need to graduate.  You need education.

That is the same singlemindedness Jesus urges in today’s gospel reading.

My wife thinks I sometimes exaggerate, blow up a story for dramatic effect.  Yeah, I can sympathize with poor Joe Biden.  Sometimes the story gets away from those of us who make our living with our mouths.

But we don’t hold a candle to Jesus on this account.  He was the master of hyperbole, exaggeration for dramatic effect.  As we move through the long green season of the church year, more and more the lessons focus on the “Cost of Discipleship.”  “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  Tough stuff indeed. 

This is an echo of the summons from Deuteronomy.  As the community of faith gathered at the Jordan River, about to enter the so-called Promised Land, they were instructed by Moses, “See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil…that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life…that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God…”  Choose life.  Stay in school. Get your education.  Graduate.  Become that doctor, that teacher.

This stark choice is front and center in the two antithetical life modalities the writer lays out in the first Psalm.  “Blessed are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scoffers…They are like trees planted by streams of water.”   “It is not so with the wicked, they are like chaff which the wind blows away.”  Choose this day, life or death.  Keep your eyes on the prize.  Marching into Freedom Land.

Talk about a sharp morality tale!  The ways of healthy religion are the ways that lead to life abundant.  They lead to a life worth living.  And they require a conscious choice.  A decision.  A decision for a life of sisterhood, brotherhood.   A life where all are invited to the table. 

The ways of the world are not the ways of the Gospel.  Au contraire, Gordon Gekko, greed is NOT good.  Do not leave your chances to the Snake.  With the Snake, there’s absolutely no future for any Garden of Eden.  The way of the Snake is paved-over cities choked with pollution and rates of childhood asthma that are stratospheric.  Greed is definitely NOT good.  Ask the homeless family living in a tent on Wilshire Blvd. who couldn’t make the last increase in rent.

We all, each and every day, have a choice set before us.  The ways of life and the ways of death.  Each and every day America stands before the same fateful choice.  Will we learn to live together as brothers and sisters?  Or will we perish as fools – and take the planet with us?

The ways of Jesus’ gospel require self-transcendence.  As the kids would say, “Get over yourself.”  Survival is not an individual project.  It is a “we” project.

The other morning, I heard our back doorbell ring.  There was my neighbor Sue with some disturbing news.  She was there to inform me that I had a dead rat out on our side lawn.  I made a facile quip as to which political party this rat might have belonged to before recalling a book I am currently reading, Love Your Enemies.[1]

This is the sort of book I would normally pass over with hardly a second glance.  But as how I had mentioned several Sundays ago from the pulpit that this Jesus stuff was a pretty difficult challenge – like loving your enemies – I thought I should at least pick it up and see what Mr. Brooks had to say.

Then I noted on the back cover that it had been given a promo by a couple of folks I respected: David Axelrod and Deepak Chopra.  What I discovered was a book which, if put into practice, could help heal our national conversation across the political divide.  This approach seemed to be an echo of what Jesus had in mind.  It could be a choice for life over evil and death.  I picked it up and kept reading.  The author got me with a story, and what a story!

He begins the book by relating an event at a Trump rally.  The usual battle lines were drawn up.  On one side, the folks with the red MAGA hats and on the other, a group from Black Lives Matter. 

As the two sides traded insults and curses the situation grew more combustible.  Hawk Newsome had recently arrived nursing an injury from Charlottesville, Virginia.  A white supremist had thrown a brick which had hit him in the face.  Hawk and his team were ready for battle.  He approached the Trump supporters with the same distain he had held for those white nationalists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.  The Trump supporters responded in kind. 

Then the most amazing thing happened.  The leader of the Trump rally, Tommy Hodges, invited Hawk Newsome onto the stage. “We’re going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out.”  Tommy added, that Hawk shouldn’t be concerned with whether the Trump supporters agreed or disagreed with his message, “It’s the fact that you have a right to have the message.”

As Hawk accepted the invitation and mounted the stage with no little trepidation, he flashed back to what a little old white lady had told him as he had been prepared to throw a rock in Charlottesville, “Your mouth is your most powerful weapon.  You don’t need anything but that.”  As a Christian, Hawk said a brief, silent prayer as he took the mic.  In that moment a voice in his heart told him to just let them know who he was.

“My name is Hawk Newsome.  I am the president of Black Lives Matter New York.  I am an American.”

He had the crowd’s attention, and he continued. “And the beauty of America is that when you see something broken in your country, you can mobilize to fix it,” he said.

To his utter surprise, the crowd burst into applause.  Emboldened, he said, “So you ask why there’s a Black Lives Matter?  Because you can watch a black man die and be choked to death on television and nothing happened.  We need to address that.”

“That was a criminal,” someone yelled, as boos started emanating from the crowd.

Hawk pressed on. “We’re not anti-cop.”

“Yes you are!” someone yelled.

“We’re anti-bad cop,” Hawk countered.  “we say if a cop is bad, he needs to get fired like a bad plumber, like a bad lawyer, like a bad…politician.”

At this the crowd began cheering again. 

These days, there’s nothing political ralliers hate more than bad politicians.

“I said that I am an American.  Secondly, I am a Christian,” Hawk said, once again connecting with his audience.  “We don’t want handouts.  We don’t want anything that’s yours.  We want our God-given right to freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

The crowd erupted in cheers.

Then someone shouted, “All lives matter!”

“You’re right, my brother, you’re right.  You are so right,” Hawk said.  “All lives matter, right?  But when a black life is lost, we get no justice.  That is why we say black lives matter.”

As Hawk prepared to step off the stage, his two minutes over, he left the crowd with one passing thought, “Listen, I want to leave you with this, and I’m gone.  If we really want to make America great, we do it together.”

The crowd roared.

To the amazement of many, including Hawk himself, he was mobbed by well-wishers who embraced him.  A member of a four-thousand-man militia upon noticing that Hawk had cut himself took out a medical aid packet and began bandaging up his finger.  Another fellow from a group called Bikers for Trump approached Hawk and told him, “Your speech was amazing.  I’d be honored if you meet my son.”  The biker introduced his son Jacob and asked Hawk to pick up the boy so they could have a picture together. [2]

Yes, it cost Hawk something.  Some in his group called him a “KKK-loving Trump supporter.”  Another said what he did was treasonous.  It costs us all something, it might cost us to give up what Arthur Brooks calls our “addiction to hate.”  But, oh, the benefit!   The video of the event on social media has had over fifty-seven million views.  Look at it yourself.  What does Democracy look like?  This is what Democracy looks like.  What does the Gospel look like?  You got it!

Keep on marching. Keep on talking.  Marching on to Freedom Land.  No turning back here!

This Jesus stuff is tough.  But it is redemptive.  Choose Life, indeed!  Now, before you think I’ve gotten all sappy and am ignoring the real values that do, in fact, matter – yes stay strong and hold fast to those values – AND…and, we can also have political discourse that doesn’t demonize and is not contemptuous of the opponent. 

Yes, lets struggle together.  Let us fight it out at the ballot box and in public hearings.  But as Hawk said, let’s remember that if we are to make America great, we will have to do it together.  It’s a “we” project.

And should we get a bit raucous and rambunctious, let’s pray God sends us the stern John Bercow, Speaker of the British House of Commons, crying above the bedlam, “Ohduhr, Ohduhr. Ohduhr.”  You can see it all on YouTube.[3]  Marvelous to behold.

If our nation pursues the path of respect, of truth, of decency, of fairness, we will have chosen life.  Might that sacred Tree of Liberty be planted by an ever-flowing stream of righteousness.  Choose life and goodness. 

Now, in the past it was said that the Tree of Liberty was watered by the blood of the patriots and tyrants.  I say, let the Tree of Liberty be watered by the deeds of the righteous.  Let it be watered by the faithfulness of all those who have kept their eyes on the prize.  Let it be watered by a vision of unity where all are invited to the feast.  All of us — walking into Freedom Land.

Those wonderful women in our midst working to prepare a food pantry – they’re taking us all by the hand.  Walking into Freedom Land.  The faithful who prepare each Sunday, week after week, that our worship might be an act of praise and recommitment – they’re taking us all by the hand – walking into Freedom Land.

Yes, those folks who put their pledge without fail into the collection plate.  They keep the promise alive that St. Francis might remain a bold expression of God’s gracious will and abundance here in this little corner of San Bernardino.  Yes, indeed – they’re taking us all by the hand — Walking into Freedom Land.

The faithful six who month after month make the trip into Los Angeles to be a part of the diocesan Episcopal Enterprise Academy, dreaming the vision of a House of Hope – San Bernardino – they’re taking us all by the hand — Walking into Freedom Land.

Let our motto at St. Francis ever be: “Whoever you are, and wherever you are on your journey of faith, there’s a place for you here.  Come right in.   Sit right down.  ‘Cause…  ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.  Turn us around.  Turn us around.   Aint gonna let nobody turn us around.  Keep on walkin’.  Keep on talkin’.  Walkin’ into Freedom Land.  Amen.

---

[1] Arthur Brooks, Love Your Enemies (New York: Broadside Books, 2019).

[2] Ibid, 5-6.

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7EIZl4raY

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-21;

Luke 14:25-33

Proper 18, Year C, September 8, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Strive to enter the narrow gate.  That sounds like a lot of work.  Actual effort.  I must confess that my early college career was not stellar by any sense of the word.  I can still hear my kindly German teacher, Frau Bluske, telling me in front of the entire class one afternoon after I had to admit that I hadn’t done my homework, “Herr Forney, wenn sie nicht studieren, sie will durchfallen.”  Translation:  “Mr. Forney, if you don’t study, you will flunk.”  The narrow door was a much more difficult operation than hanging with the guys the night before in the pool hall drinking a beer.  Enter the narrow gate, indeed!

And I still shudder when I remember that physics exam on electricity.  The only question I could answer with any certainty was the one that asked, “name.”  Not my finest moment.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t much better at pool.

The reality is, that if one’s Christian faith is to amount to anything, it takes a bit of doing.  Sometimes this Jesus stuff is downright hard. And the results are not always going to be what we had in mind.  There’s no guarantee of success.

It has not been that long ago that the Episcopal Church had a bit of a reputation for being the “party church.”  You’ve probably heard the line:  Where two or three Episcopalians are gathered together, there’s usually a fifth.  We have been a part of that “wide door” the world holds open.  Hopefully, that’s not so much the case anymore – back in the day when our church was known as the “status church” of the upper classes.

To the extent that we come to church “for solace only and not for renewal,” as the communion prayer puts it, we may be coming to just a party church.  Church as entertainment.  And all we will get is junk food religion.  Lots of sugar and calories but no nutrition.  As the grandma in the Wendy’s commercial demanded to know, “Where’s the beef?”

If we’re prone to take our ease in Zion, today we get a warning shot across the bow from our Lord.  When asked who would be saved, Jesus answers, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying ‘Lord, open to us.’  He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’”

That the road through the narrow door is difficult and the path ahead is unclear, is no excuse.  Jesus didn’t give up, and his narrow door led to the cross.  One friend said about extravagant discipleship, “There’s two possibilities.  There’s success and there’s a learning experience.” 

Now, some are wont to say upon hearing such dyspeptic talk, “Well, I don’t agree.  The real Jesus would never say anything like that.  I come to church for comfort, not to be riled up.”  I don’t remember Jesus promising comfort.

Don’t discount what Bonhoeffer calls “the cost of discipleship.”  And what was all this talk we had last week about Jesus bringing a sword.  Pretty tough stuff.  His message is sure to cause great consternation.  It asks of us something difficult like loving our enemies and forgiveness.  It is about struggle, it’s about spiritual warfare, if you will.  The ethic of the Jesus Movement is not the ethic of the world. 

My friend Wesley knows that he needs a big kick in the pants at times.  He needs challenge.  His frequent prayer upon entering the church door is, “Jesus, dropkick me through the goal posts of life.”  He wants the whole gospel, not fast food spirituality.  Where’s the narrow door.  Point me there, he asks of the preacher.

I suspect that Jesus was a pretty radical fellow who put his marker very far out there, knowing that we couldn’t possibly reach it in all likelihood.  But we would enter into life abundant in the trying.  We need such a holy goad because it’s so easy to get distracted by all the stuff out there which does not nourish.

Jesus might be sort of like my old chemistry professor.  She was a tough old bird who told us all on that first day of class in that huge lecture hall to look at the person on either side of us, because by the time the course had finished, one of us wouldn’t be there.  She was right.  Talk about the narrow door!

Now, she didn’t want people to flunk out, but she knew that for those folks who didn’t keep step, who idled in the pool hall, that they would soon fall by the wayside.  She was indeed right.  Far less than one half the class was left by the time the final rolled by.  I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth.

“Strive to enter at the narrow gate,” Jesus admonishes.  It’s easy to get lost.  Durchfallen doesn’t require much effort at all (remember Frau Bluske).  As Dante writes in the opening pages of the Inferno:

       Midway in the journey of our life

       I came to myself in a dark wood,

       For the straight way was lost…

       How I came there I cannot really tell,

       I was so full of sleep

       when I forsook the one true way.

That the “true way” could so easily be lost on the road to the pool hall, I’m here to tell you.  The world offers a plastic religion – all sorts of things that will make life worthwhile.  Indeed, there are a jillion things out there that promise life abundant.  If you only have the right car, the right trophy wife or husband, the right toothpaste, the right hair, or at my age, if you have any hair at all!  And so much of this hype is aimed right at our youth and young adults.

One of my friends had a Porsche, another had a chopped and souped up Olds.  The girl across the street got a new Thunderbird with those little porthole windows on the sides.  But I was in teenage agony.  I didn’t have a car.  I had a hand-me-down 1950 Studebaker!  You remember the ones of the early 50’s with the curved back window, so you really couldn’t tell whether the thing was going backwards or forwards.  It had a chrome bullet nose and was sort of a pukey dark green.  Even the name sounded horrible – like rutabaga, or cauliflower.  Bleah!  It’s a wonder they ever sold any of them.

My dad the dentist was the only one I ever knew who bought one, because it was cheap.  Cheep!  Not cool.  Cheep.  My dad didn’t understand cool.  I don’t think most dentists do.  Not another family in the entire neighborhood had one.  So, it was a miracle I ever got any dates at all with that car.  I was convinced that my whole career as a teenager was being severely stunted by this ugly car.  No telling how many years I might have to spend in therapy working through the psychic damage.  (Looking back on things, I did get a pretty good wife — but probably not because of the car.)

Now, as my hair has turned quite grey in my latter years (my wife says “white”), perhaps a bit of God’s wisdom has finally sunk in.  “Strive to enter at the narrow door,” says our Lord.  It will never be about the car, the toothpaste, or any of the rest of it.  It is about a tradition that nourishes.  It is about a God who redeems.  Yes, even through the difficult sayings and hard lessons of life – God redeems.  It is about a spirituality that is mature enough for the long haul.

Fortunately, I believe the party days are mostly bygone for our beloved Episcopal Church.  The period of cultural captivity of our church has been slowly coming to an end.  Reality check time.

When the church came out foursquare against the Vietnam War, it took on a tough issue.  Just as it had over slavery.  When the church came out for women’s ordination, it knew we would lose some folks.  The same as for LGBT inclusion.  Yes, God does love everyone!   When we elected our first woman bishop…well, can you imagine the uproar in some quarters.  And then a woman presiding bishop.  Yes, there was hate mail.

I can still remember my friend Bob up in Sitka one day announcing, “Well, I finally figured out why God wanted us to have women priests.”  Knowing Bob’s unrelenting opposition to women clergy, in amazement I asked, “Why’s that, Bob?”  “To show us that it couldn’t possibly ever work!”  he said, banging his fist on the desk.  Yes, we lost members.

When you drove or walked up to church this morning, you surely didn’t see any “Golden Arches.”  No junk food spirituality offered here. Here you get a meal here which lasts for the long haul.  It is this same rich and deep Anglican spirituality that has nourished so many faithful souls who have gone on before.  That’s what we’re about at St. Francis.

In the New York Times this week I came across an article about a nun, a doctor and a lawyer…now, now, I know.  You’re thinking that this is leading to some bar joke…a nun, a doctor and a lawyer walked into a bar…   Well, that’s not the case.  Actually, it’s all about the narrow door.

What these three stalwart people did was to walk right into the face of big pharma, Purdue Pharma, to be exact — in Pennington Gap, Virginia. This Catholic nun, this doctor and this lawyer were present at the beginning of the opioid epidemic in Appalachia.  In sounding the alarm, these three entered through a narrow door they hoped would prevent a lot of misery.

They inspired “a burst of local activism against Purdue Pharma, Oxycontin’s maker, that the company ultimately crushed.[1] Their failed effort was a missed opportunity to stem the onslaught of addiction to opioids and the drugs they quickly led to — fentanyl, heroin and methamphetamine.”

Sister Beth Davies had known an epidemic was on the way.  She witnessed it’s unfolding in their little town of nineteen hundred people in the southwest corner of Virginia.  The journalist covering the story, Berry Meier, had come to that part of Appalachia about twenty years ago.   Out of the activism of Sister Davis, Dr. Van Zee, and Ms. Kobak, Barry Meier also witnessed the inception of the scourge.  These three would become the central cast of the reporter’s book, Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic.[2]

Dr. Zee urged Purdue to change the way it was marketing OxyContin but to no avail.  He and the others launched a recall petition to the FDA to have the drug taken off the market.  Purdue countered by threatening to publish a full-page ad in the local paper attacking the recall drive, and offered $100,000 to the group to drop the recall drive.  They refused.

Things looked up when the Justice Department finally announced felony criminal indictments against Purdue Pharma and it’s three top executives.  The charge?  Deceptive marketing.  Purdue said the stuff was harmless.

Victory was short lived.  Department officials negotiated a plea deal under which the executives would cop to minor charges and no jail time.  There would be no right of discovery.  No chance to see all the emails documenting the nefarious plot to cover up the work of this addiction factory.

“In the years that followed, executives of other opioid makers and distributers kept shipping millions of addictive pain pills into towns like this one apparently without fear of serious penalties.”[3]  Dr. Zee is convinced that had the Justice Department not reversed course, the outcome would have been completely different.  Appalachia might have avoided so much needless death and misery.  The malefactors would have been in prison.

Recently, Dr. Van Zee and Ms. Sue Ella Kobak flew to Oklahoma to testify in its lawsuit against Purdue.  They continue the fight.  Sr. Beth, standing outside a courtroom in the rain, still remembers her bitter disappointment in the Justice Department’s settlement of the case against Purdue.  All three continue to insist that these pill-pushers face scrutiny and be held accountable for the untold lives they have ruined and the communities they have destroyed in Appalachia. 

These three activists indeed entered through the narrow door of our criminal justice system.  And though the door of justice was slammed in their faces, yet they persisted.  The tide is changing.  I hope they know the satisfaction of having alerted all of us to this disaster now facing America.  I’m sure our Lord is saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”  Indeed, strive to enter the reign of God through the narrow door.

When it comes time for me to lay my life down on God’s altar, I would like to be able to offer something like the work of those fearless Appalachian activists: Sr. Beth Davis, Counselor Sue Ella Kobak, and Dr. Van Zee.  Oh, that our lives might be laid upon God’s altar, if only as a pale likeness of their gift. 

That it might be said of each of us — as I believe the Lord must regard the unblemished gift of a nun, a doctor and a lawyer from Pennington Gap, Virginia — they have striven to enter at the narrow door, and it has made – it still does make — all the difference in the world.  Blessed are they indeed.  Amen.

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[1] Barry Meier, “Ruling Lost Chances to Stem the Opioid Crisis They Saw Coming,” The New York Times, August 19, 2019, p. A13.

[2] Barry Meier, Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic (NewYork: Random House, 2003).

[3] Barry Meier, New York Times. op.cit.

Preached at St. Francis Episcopal Mission Outreach, San Bernardino

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews12:18-29;

Luke 13:22-30

Proper 16, Year C, August 25, 2019

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney