That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Genesis (Page 5 of 9)

What Is Lent All About? – Sermon for Lent 1, 2015

February 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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A sermon offered on the First Sunday in Lent, February 22, 2015, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; and Mark 1:9-15. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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God the Father and Holy SpiritWhat is Lent all about?

Some say it’s a time when we are supposed to find the presence of God in everyday life. Dr. Jonn Sentamu, the current Archbishop of York, suggested as much in his 2015 Ash Wednesday meditation when he said, “Lent is a time to get to know God better.” Similarly, an interdenominational Lenten devotional refers to Lent as a “journey [on which] you seek – and find – God.”

That’s one way to think about Lent. But that way isn’t working for me this year, especially as I contemplate Mark’s description of Jesus’ baptism and its aftermath. If in our Lenten discipline we are to be, in some way, doing what a Lenten hymn attributed to St. Gregory the Great says — “keep[ing] vigil with our heavenly lord in his temptation and his fast” — then we should pay particular attention to what really was going on there and seek to do during Lent what seems to be going on with Jesus in the wilderness.

Let’s look at Mark’s spare and barebones description of it all again. It’s a short Gospel text, so let’s read it in full one more time:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

OK. It doesn’t seem to me that Jesus needed to look for God! God is always there (which is the promise of the story of the rainbow in today’s Genesis reading) and the presence of God is very apparent in these first few lines of this Gospel story. The Holy Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity) doesn’t just make a polite visit here; she’s not just gliding in here or fluttering by. No! The heavens, Mark says, were “torn apart” and the Spirit (in the form of a dove) came diving done like some eagle homing in on its prey! And there’s a bit of a mistranslation here, as well; the English translation we read says the Spirit descended “on” Jesus but the Greek makes more sense if we read it as saying that the Spirit came down into Jesus.

This really is an active, even violent description, that Mark has laid out for us. Jesus doesn’t just emerge from the water like someone stepping carefully out of a swimming pool; the Greek is “euthus anabainon” – Jesus “immediately ascended” out of the water; like a whale breaching the surface of the sea. And the Spirit, having torn the heaven’s apart, “katabainon eis auton“, dives down into Jesus. Rapid movement up is met with rapid movement down, a collision of the Son and the Spirit. This dove dove deep into Jesus; Jesus was possessed by the Holy Spirit.

And, of course, God the Father (First Person of the Trinity) is right there as well, fairly shouting, “You’re my son! I love you! I’m please as punch with you!” Jesus doesn’t need to go on any journey to find this God; he doesn’t need any time to get to know this God any better!

So what happens next?

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

Mark continues his energetic, and here overtly violent, description of Jesus’ encounter with the Holy Spirit. There’s a sense here that Jesus is not a willing volunteer; the Spirit is making no polite suggestion that Jesus go spend a few days in the desert so that he can know “the presence of God in everyday life.” No! Jesus is prodded, herded, pushed, forced, driven out into the rough country to cozy up to the wild beasts.

Why? What was he to do out there?

He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

“Peiradzomenos hupo tou satana” reads the Greek: literally, “he was tested by the tempter.” Our English translation eliminates the definite article that is clearly there in the Greek, “the satan,” the tempter, and then capitalizes “satan” thus personalizing this tempter and, in fact, makes us think of the Devil of later Christian poetic mythology. But who else might the tempter have been?

“Sometimes we are devils to ourselves, when we will tempt the frailty of our powers, presuming on their changeful potency,” wrote William Shakespeare in the play Troilus and Cressida (Troilus speaking to Cressida and Aeneas, Act IV, scene 4). “The devil tempts us not — ’tis we tempt him….” wrote George Eliot in her 19th Century novel Felix Holt, the Radical.

Could it be that the temptations Jesus faced were those he put before himself? We certainly put enough temptations in front of ourselves; we are, more often than not, our own tempters. Could it be that Jesus’ tempter was his own human self? Scripture reminds us (and the Lenten preface of our Eucharistic prayer repeats) that in Jesus “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb 4:15) Could it be that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to confront himself, to learn about himself?

If Lent is not a journey to find God, could it be journey to find ourselves? It could indeed! Lent, it has been said, is a period of self-discovery in which we encounter the parts of ourselves we don’t want to discover. If Jesus was made to spend time in the desert to learn about himself, then such self-discovery during this season surely would be, as Gregory’s great Lenten hymn proclaims, a reminder that “though frail we be, in [God’s] own image were we made.” Lent is a time to find ourselves, a time to reorient ourselves to who we are, where we have come from, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. This is surely what those forty days in the desert were for Jesus, as Mark demonstrates when he concludes this brief story with these words:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

At the end of his 40 days with the wild beasts, Jesus knew who he was and what he was about. What can we do, then, to experience a similar self-revelation? How can we reorient ourselves to who we are, where we have come from, where we are going, and how we are to get there?

What we can do is to engage in a Lenten discipline, a rule-of-life for these 40 days. I plan to adopt a program set out several years ago by a famous bishop of Rome. It is known as “the daily decalogue of Pope John XXIII.” I plan to use it as a Lenten spiritual exercise to be renewed and lived out each day. As its name implies, it has ten parts:

  1. Only for today, I will seek to live the live-long day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.
  2. Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behavior; I will not criticize anyone; I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself.
  3. Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one.
  4. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.
  5. Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.
  6. Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it.
  7. Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure that no one notices.
  8. Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will be on guard against two evils: hastiness and indecision.
  9. Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances, that the good Providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in this world.
  10. Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12 hours I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life.

I hope that through this daily wilderness exercise of prayer, fasting, and discipline I will find myself, even those parts of me that I don’t want to discover.

May your Lent, too, be a wilderness time of self-discovery. Remember, you don’t need to look for God; God is always there. This Lent, look for yourself. Amen.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Russian Steam Locomotive? – From the Daily Office – August 18, 2014

August 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according John:

[Jesus said:] “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 5:24-25 (NRSV) – August 18, 2014)

Russian Steam LocomotiveDid Jesus actually say these things? Most contemporary bible scholars would probably answer “No.” The author of John’s Gospel has made Jesus say the things a largely Jewish community of the church in the late 1st Century, a church struggling to cope with its separation from traditional Judaism, believed about Jesus; Jesus is thus both the subject and the interpreter of the message of John’s Gospel. In the 21st Century, we might have preferred the author to have included the interpretation of Jesus in the narrative, not in the words spoken by the character of Jesus portrayed here, but that’s not what we’ve got. What we’ve got is the Jesus remembered by a community with a highly developed Christology telling that community, and us, who Jesus was then and now.

Realizing that helps one realize that this is not Jesus’ predicting the end of the world as we know it. The tenses of verbs in this passage are important. The passing of believers “from death to life” is something that has already happened; it is not something in the future. The coming hour “is now here;” it is a present reality not something for which we are still waiting. This is a spiritual reality, not a prediction about physical reality. Death and life, eternity and judgment, coming hour and voice of the Son of God are all metaphoric terms describing a believer’s present spiritual reality, whether that believer is a 1st Century Jew or a 21st Century Gentile.

Metaphoric language is often difficult to understand, especially when the metaphor is an unfamiliar one. It can be confusingly dreamlike and stubbornly unenlightening. The past few days, recovering from minor surgery on my knee (a partial meniscectomy), I have also been “detoxing” from the general anesthesia used during surgery and the pain management medication prescribed afterward (which I only took for 36 hours). Apparently, vivid dreams are a part of that detoxification process.

One of the recurring images of these dreams is travel on a Russian cross-country train pulled by an antique steam engine! I have never been to Russia, rarely traveled anywhere by train, and never in steam-engine driven conveyance; as metaphors for something, these are highly unfamiliar images. To say the least, this imagery is disconcerting, disorienting, and (as I said) stubbornly unenlightening. I do believe that dreams, especially those we remember, are ways in which our minds work out issues in non-rational ways; I believe they are ways our psyches provide us insights not accessible by the conscious mind. But what are my dreams trying to tell me?

When I read today’s Gospel with Jesus’ interpretive discourse today, I have a similar experience of disorientation; I have almost as little experience with John’s images as I do with Russian steam locomotives. I have no direct experience of death though I have witnessed it; I have no direct experience of divine judgment though I have courtroom experience with its earthly analog; I have no direct experience of the voice of the Son of God though I have heard the voices of parents and children. What is scripture trying to tell me when John’s Jesus uses these metaphoric images?

Fortunately, as Walter Brueggemann has often reminded his readers, metaphors are not univocal, nor do they claim a one-to-one correlation with reality. They speak differently each time we encounter them. Today scripture’s voice maybe as confusing as the dream of a Russian train; tomorrow it may be as clear as a bell; the next day . . . who knows?

What I do know is this, that everyday I am called to listen to the voice of scripture and, in it, hope to hear the voice of the Son of God which promises life. Everyday, I must climb aboard the Russian steam-driven train that is Holy Write and ride where it takes me. Everyday, I must wrestle with scripture as Jacob wrestled with the angel at Peniel and hope that, as he saw God face to face and lived, so may I.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

The Covenant of Guesthood – From the Daily Office – July 15, 2014

July 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears.
For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 39:12 (NRSV) – July 15, 2014)

Welcome Guest Parking SignThe Prayer Book version of this verse (which is differently numbered as often happens in the BCP) is this:

Hear my prayer, O Lord,
and give ear to my cry;
hold not your peace at my tears.
For I am but a sojourner with you,
a wayfarer, as all my forebears were.
(BCP 1979, page 639, Ps 39:13-14)

Now, generally, I prefer the BCP version of the Psalms — they chant better than the NRSV and seem more poetic — but in this instance, I think the translators of the NRSV hit one out of the park! “I am your passing guest” is simply brilliant! Modern folks don’t really know what a “sojourner” is (other than, maybe, the title of a liberal Christian magazine edited by Jim Wallis), so the more poetic BCP psalm doesn’t hit one with the impermanency and provisionality of our journey through this world the way the NRSV’s “passing guest” does.

The dictionary, of course, defines a “sojourner” as a “temporary resident”; one dictionary suggests “occupant” or (interestingly) “occupier” as antonyms.

As a biblical metaphor for our inhabiting of the places we live, especially in this time of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over occupation of the place we call “the Holy Land”, “passing guest” is more than thought provoking; it is earth-shattering! So much of the conflict between Jews and Muslims, when it is justified theologically (as if it could be justified theologically), boils down to claims on the land going back to Abraham:

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.” (Gen 15:18-21)

Interestingly, the Qur’an confirms this grant:

O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah has prescribed for you and turn not on your backs for then you will turn back losers. (Surah Al-Ma’idah’ 5:21)

We settled the Children of Israel in a beautiful dwelling place, and provided for them sustenance of the best. (Surah Yunus 10:93)

Dwell securely in the land of promise. (Surah Al-Isra’ 17:104)

The common Christian (and Jewish) understanding of the Abrahamic Covenant is that the grant flowed from Abraham to his descendants through Israel, Abraham’s child by Sarah. Some Muslims argue that the grant flows instead or in addition to the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s first born through the servant woman Hagar. All seem to suggest that the covenant grant is a permanent arrangement, but what if that is not the case? What if the covenant is conceived, as the Psalmist suggests, not as one of ownership, but as one of guesthood?

While preparing for my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I read several travel blogs and in one the author encourage American tourists to consider themselves guests in the countries they visit, asking themselves three questions:

(1) “What am I saying, what is my conduct demonstrating, to non-Americans, about ‘American Tourists’?”

(2) “What am I learning about the host culture? How many personal interactions am I actually having with regular local people? How much ‘inside information’ am I taking away from my travel experience?”

(3) “If the above two issues are meaningless to me, why am I a tourist?” (Americans as Tourists: Adventures in Guesthood)

Those are good questions and they can be simplified, and theologized, as follows. Perhaps all the descendants of Abraham, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, should ask themselves these questions:

(1) What am I saying by my conduct about religious believers, about heirs to the covenant, which status I claim?

(2) What am I learning about my host, the Lord God? How many personal interactions am I actually having with others who claim heirship with the covenant, with others who are guests in this land? How much information am I taking away from this covenant experience?

(3) If these two issues are meaningless to me, why do I claim to be a descendant of Abraham?

If we are all guests, all wayfarers, all sojourners . . . if our claims to the land (or anything else) are all temporary, provisional, and impermanent . . . is there any reason to fight about them? Is it not better to hold what we have temporarily been given gently and in unison so that it will be here for those who come after us? Should we not help one another to do so rather than snatching it away from each other?

Can we look beyond our accepted understandings and the metaphors of ownership to embrace this different metaphor, the metaphor of guesthood, and thereby embrace one another?

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

I Arise Today: Sermon for Trinity Sunday – RCL, Year A – June 15, 2014

June 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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On Trinity Sunday, the First Sunday after Pentecost, June 15, 2014, this sermon was offered to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Canticle 13 (Song of the Three Young Men 29-34); 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; and Matthew 28:16-20. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Triquetra

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity
Through belief in the Threeness
Through confession of the Oneness
Towards the Creator.

Although he probably didn’t actually write it, tradition credits St. Patrick of Ireland with the poetic charm called a “lorica” or “breastplate” which begins with these words, an invocation of the One, Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity whom we today celebrate. Since the time of St. Thomas a Becket, the first Sunday after the Feast of Pentecost has been set aside as day of special veneration of the Triune nature of the Godhead. Becket was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost, and his first act was to decree that the anniversary of his consecration should be commemorated each year in honor of the Holy Trinity. This observance spread from Canterbury throughout the whole of the western church.

Patrick continues:

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension
Through the strength of his descent for the Judgment of doom.

Our Gospel lesson today is the end of Matthew’s Gospel. In it Christ on the mount of the ascension, just before going up into heaven, gives the eleven remaining Apostles what has come to be known as “The Great Commission”:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

For Matthew mountains are what Celtic Christianity refers to as “thin places,” those places where the separation between the spiritual realm and the physical realm is narrowest, where the veil which separates heaven from earth is nearly transparent so that we have the feeling we could reach out and touch, even enter, the holy presence.

On a mountain, in such a place, Jesus calls his followers to a new beginning. The Eleven, standing proxy for all the followers of Jesus then and now, for you and for me, are called to be people moving in mission. It is important for us to note that this mountain is in Galilee, the place where Jesus began his ministry, the place from which he went forth but to which he returned, the place where he was grounded and rooted. The disciples, too, are from this place and their grounding in the Christian story is this same country where their journey began. Like them, we are called to claim our origins, to be rooted in the place where we entered the Christian story, not to be permanently bound there, but to draw strength from it as we venture out in mission into the wider world beyond. The place where we began as members of the community of Christ is, to each of us, an important place of foundation and also, perhaps, a thin place where we encounter the Triune God.

Patrick’s lorica continues:

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim
In obedience to the Angels,
In the service of the Archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of Apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of Holy Virgins,
In deeds of righteous [people].

Here, St. Patrick claims membership in the Christian community as his source of strength, as his foundation, as the community in which his mission is grounded and from which it is nurtured.

In a few moments, we will do something we have not done since Lent . . . join together in the General Confession, jointly and publically acknowledging that as individuals and as a community we have failed to live up to our obligations, that we have sinned “by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” And we will be forgiven that failure by God’s absolution which reconciles us and restores us to the community and fellowship of the Church. When, as presiding priest, I pronounce the words of absolution, I speak not on my own behalf but for the whole church to which Jesus gave what is called “the power of the keys” when he said to the Apostles, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Mt 16:19; cf. 18:18)

The words of absolution, which I speak as much to myself as to anyone, loose our sins, but also bind us into the beloved community:

Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.

The community with which we are reconciled through confession and absolution is the community of the Trinity.

In the Triune Godhead all Christian community begins and finds its perfect expression. Humankind, as our Genesis reading reminded us, was and is created in the image of God. Thus, we are blessed with reason and skill; we are capable of experiencing emotion; and, like God, we have individual will and freedom of action. To be created in God’s likeness also means that we have the possibility of attaining holiness and immortality. To be created in God’s likeness further means that we are created to experience, participate in, and share interrelationship with others, for we are made in the image of the Holy Trinity.

The Doctrine of the Trinity is not a static principal of faith; it is the way in which the church, through the revelation of God, has come to appreciate and express of the significantly dynamic nature of God in the relationship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If we have been created in the image of God and if God is Trinity then at the deepest level of our being, we are communitarian, created not for ourselves, but for one another, for relationship with each other and with God.

Many look at the mystery of the Trinity as if it were a problem in differential calculus. They seem to have the attitude that if one solves the equation, they will have figured out God and earned their entry into heaven. But, as Benedictine poet Killian McDonnell writes, God is not a problem to be solved:

God is not a problem
I need to solve, not an
algebraic polynomial equation
I find complete before me,

with positive and negative numbers
I can add, subtract, multiply.
God is not a fortress
I can lay siege to and reduce.

God is not a confusion
I can place in order by my logic.
God’s boundaries cannot be set,
like marking trees to fell.

God is the presence in which
I live, where the line between
what is in me and what
before me is real, but only God

can draw it. God is the mystery
I meet on the street, but cannot
lay hold of from the outside,
for God is my situation,

the condition I cannot stand
beyond, cannot view from a distance,
the presence I cannot make an object,
only enter on my knees.

Which brings us back to confession, to reconciliation, and to community.

The community to which and in which we are to be reconciled is not only that of the church or that of the human commonwealth, it is the community of the whole of creation. This is why our round of readings from Sacred Scripture bids us on Trinity Sunday to hear the long lesson from Genesis recounting the days of creation as each part of the natural order is ordained by God and pronounced good. This is the community that Matthew’s Jesus claims when he asserts that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” “Heaven and earth” is a figure of speech called a merism, a manner of speaking by which the whole of something is referenced by enumerating its constituents or traits. In the Genesis creation story, heaven and earth comprise a single entity — God’s whole creation. We are a part of that community of creation and it is to that universal community that Patrick next looks in his lorica:

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun
Brilliance of moon
Splendor of fire
Speed of lightning
Swiftness of wind
Depth of sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock.

The whole of nature comprises the foundational community of strength and support upon which a follower of Jesus may depend, because this community finds its strength and support in paradigm community of the Holy Trinity by whom it was creation.

Genesis insists that there is one God, who is sovereign and powerful. Unlike the gods of other peoples in the ancient Middle East, the God of Israel had no specified area of competence. The creation in the first chapter of Genesis is, as one commentator has said, “fiercely monotheistic,” yet even in its insistence on the one God, not limited in space or time, Genesis reveals the Trinity. From this god, the God, a wind, the Holy Spirit, came forth and spread across the void. This god, the God, created everything. This god, the God, simply spoke the Word (“in the beginning was the Word,” said John of Jesus) and creation happened. It is to this god, the God that Patrick looks for strength and protection:

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s host to secure me
against snares of devils
against temptations of vices
against inclinations of nature
against everyone who shall wish me ill,
afar and anear,
alone and in a crowd.

But we are never truly alone, nor are we ever really beset by these and the many other spiritual and physical dangers that Patrick goes on to list. St. Paul blessed and reminded his readers, “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit” are with us all. Jesus promised and reminded the Eleven (and through them, us), “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

These are not mere blessings or simple an appeals to get along with one another; these are exhortations to be the new creation that the Spirit of God equips us to be, a foundational community patterned on the Holy Trinity. Just as the Persons of the Divine Trinity are never alone, human beings are created with a need for one another, a need to communicate with one another. Our thirst to communicate ourselves to others, to be in authentic relationship with each other is never exhausted. The only difference between our community and that of the Trinity is that God’s Triune relationship is perfect and total whereas in our human reality communication and relationship are imperfect and partial. Paul’s appeal for the presence of Christ’s grace, God’s love, and the Spirit’s fellowship is an appeal to enter more to the divine love that creates and sustains the church, that perfects and completes our relationships. The Trinity is the very source of our life in Christ, and in Christ we are a new creation with whom Christ promises always to stay.

So in the lorica, Patrick extols the totality of Christ’s presence, the inescapabilty of Jesus’ promise, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Patrick writes:

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie,
Christ where I sit,
Christ where I arise,
Christ in the heart of every [person] who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every [person] who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

Patrick concludes as he began, invoking the One, Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity whom we today celebrate:

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Towards the Creator.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore. Amen.” (2 Cor 13:14 as used to conclude the Daily Office in The Book of Common Prayer, page 102)

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Boxes – From the Daily Office – June 3, 2014

June 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Ephesians:

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Ephesians 3:20-21 (NRSV) – June 3, 2014)

Pile of BoxesSeveral days ago I was driving on the interstate highway when I encountered a man whose load of cardboard boxes had shifted and tumbled out of his truck. Traffic, of course, was slowed down and tangled up, and he was at his wit’s end trying to gather them up. I could tell that what he really wanted to do was just walk away from those boxes.

I thought of him reading these words.

These are the words with which we close the Daily Office. Well, not these words precisely. The Prayer Book uses a somewhat more poetic translation: “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.” (BCP 1979, page 102) I wonder why we don’t take these verses seriously, especially that part about what God is able to do: “abundantly” or “infinitely” more than we can conceive. (The Greek word Paul uses is hyperekperrissou which means “beyond superabundance”.)

Now I’ll admit that Paul’s letter limits the application of this principle to God’s work “within us,” but that can hardly be understood as a limitation on God’s power. As Paul writes elsewhere, “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” (Rom 1:20) So back to my question: why do human beings not take seriously the idea that God is able to do more — abundantly, infinitely more — than we can conceive?

Whenever I witness — I almost wrote “get into,” but the truth is I’ve given up getting into — the creation-vs.-evolution debate, I am perplexed by the human need to wrestle God into a box (or, alternatively, to keep God out of a box) . . . and by the intellectual effort expended on trying to keep God small enough to understand. At least, that’s what I think those who call themselves “young earth creationists” are trying to do. The constant need to explain away contradictory evidence — the speed of light, the calculated age of the universe, the fossil record of dinosaurs, the demonstrable impossibility of fitting two of every living species of animal onto a vessel the size of Scripture’s ark (not to mention the varieties we’ve rendered extinct), and the list goes on — must be exhausting.

God was gentle with Jacob that night at Penuel, I think. Jacob had only to wrestle with “a man” for a limited number of hours. (Gen 32:24-32) The creationists, on the other hand, trying to wrestle God and all those inconsistent facts into the little box of their very limited imaginations must have to work at it constantly. That’s why I’ve given up getting into that debate; it exhausts me and I’ve better things to do with my energy. Unlike God, I don’t have a beyond-superabundant supply time or power.

The other side of the debate — the atheist evolutionists, let’s call them — have the same problem, I think. Their box is bigger and more flexible; they’re willing to open it up and let in new evidence, work with new theories to understand it, and let go of old or conflicting beliefs. Except, of course, God. Their box, as big and flexible as it is, apparently doesn’t have room for God. Like their debating opponents, they need God to be small enough to understand, but since God can’t be observed, measured, tested, and confirmed by repeated experimentation, there’s no room for God in their box. So, again, limited imagination.

The same problem. One side’s restricted imagination leads them try to wrestle God into their little box; the other’s makes them try to keep God out of their big box.

But God is not a God of boxes. God is not interested in our boxes. God, beyond our imaginings, would like to ignore our boxes, I think, if we would let God.

The man on the freeway couldn’t walk away from his boxes . . . but we can abandon ours! We really should. I believe God would be delighted not to have to deal with them anymore!

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

So Many Martyrs – Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, RCL Year A – May 18, 2014

May 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5,15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; and John 14:1-14 . These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Lynching of Jesse WashingtonDoes the name “Jesse Washington” mean anything to you? It’s unlikely that it does. If I tell you that Jesse Washington died in 1916 in Waco, Texas, would that spark any memory? Have you ever been taught about the incident in which Washington was killed? Have you ever heard of what came to be called “The Waco Horror?”

Probably not. It’s not one of the incidents of American history that gets regularly taught in our schools. If I hadn’t taken a course in African American history when I was a college sophomore in 1970, I wouldn’t know anything about the death of Jesse Washington on May 15, 1916. It’s not the sort of story that makes a white person comfortable. But I do know about it, and the fact that its anniversary falls during the week when I was preparing a sermon on, among other passages from Scripture, Luke’s description of the martyrdom of Stephen in the Book of Acts struck me as significant. Both Stephen and Jesse Washington were murdered by mobs because they were different.

Jesse Washington was a 17-year-old African American farmhand. On May 8, 1916, he was accused of raping and murdering Lucy Fryer, the wife of his white employer in Robinson, Texas, not far from Waco. Jesse and his entire family (his parents and a brother) were questioned; the others were released, but Jesse was not. He was taken to Dallas, where he eventually signed a confession which some legal historians believed was coerced. There was little, if any, evidence that he was actually guilty.

Washington was tried for murder in Waco, in a courtroom filled with locals who had been provoked by local newspaper reports which included lurid, and demonstrably false, details about the crime. His defense counsel entered a guilty plea and Washington was quickly sentenced to death, but he had no opportunity to appeal.

After his sentence was pronounced, the teenager was dragged out of the courtroom and lynched in front of city hall. Over 10,000 spectators, including city officials and police, gathered to watch. Members of the mob castrated the boy, cut off his fingers, and hung him (still alive) over a bonfire. He was repeatedly lowered into the fire and raised again to prolong his agony and death. After he finally succumbed, the fire was extinguished and Jesse Washington’s charred torso was dragged through the town; parts of his body were actually sold as souvenirs. A professional photographer took pictures as the lynching progressed; these were printed and sold as postcards in Waco.

As a Christian society, we remember Stephen as the first Christian martyr and as a hero of our faith; his is a unique story told in the Book of Acts. As a Christian society, we don’t remember Jesse Washington, at all; he’s just one of thousands who were lynched. Historical reports indicate that between 1882 and 1968 there were over 4,700 lynchings in the United States. One history text estimates that between 1882 and 1930 in America at least one black person was lynched every week. (Tolnay, S., & E.M. Beck, A Festival of Violence, University of Illinois Press, 1992, p. ix) We know the numbers, but we don’t know their names.

We Americans, however, aren’t even in the minor leagues when it comes to martyring people for being different. Writing about Stephen’s death, Professor Daniel Clendenin reminds us that there have been so many more martyrs, that martyrdom is not ancient history. It is a very contemporary and present reality:

Millions more have been martyred for reasons other than religion — for their ethnicity (Jews, Armenians, Tutsis), for economic ideology (farmers, land holders), social prejudice (intellectuals, artists), race (American blacks), and gender (women around the world like the inspirational Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan).

Christians are just one group among many that honors their martyrs. Very few times, places or peoples have been spared mass murder.
If you can bear to read it, I recommend the book by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Worse Than War; Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity (2009). Goldhagen estimates that between 127–175 million people were “eliminated” in the last century.

These people came from all regions of the world, and from all social, economic and political groups. The vast majority of these victims were killed in their own countries, by their fellow citizens, by willing and non-coerced murderers, and almost never with any substantial dissent. Eliminationism is thus “worse than war.”

The numbers are mind-numbing, and therein lies our challenge. They bring to mind the infamous remark by [Joseph] Stalin in 1947 about the famine in Ukraine that was killing millions: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” (The Stoning of Stephen)

Clendenin concludes, “The martyrdom of Stephen disabuses us of a sentimental gospel. It roots us in the real world of industrial scale slaughter. The one man Stephen helps us to remember the individual humanity of the millions of people we might otherwise forget.”

Now I want to draw our attention away from mass murder and martyrdom, and focus instead, for a moment, on one another. I’d like you for just a few seconds to look around the room, and just take note of who and what you see here. (A short, silent pause)

What did you see? A bunch of living stones? The members of a holy priesthood? A chosen race? A royal priesthood? A people chosen and named by God? This is what Peter says we should see, the building material for a spiritual house, eternal in the heavens, not made with hands, that mansion in which there are many rooms where Jesus assures his disciples there is a place for all of us. But is that how we see one another?

Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father and Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” I sometimes wonder if Jesus’ answer would perhaps have been different if Philip had asked, “Show us God.”

In the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis we are told, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) If Philip had asked Jesus, “Show us God,” might Jesus not have said, “Look around you, Philip.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu is fond of reminding people of those words from Genesis and suggesting that we should genuflect to one another! In a paper entitled Religious Human Rights and the Bible, he wrote:

The life of every human person is inviolable as a gift from God. And since this person is created in the image of God and is a God carrier a second consequence would be that we should not just respect such a person but that we should have a deep reverence for that person. The New Testament claims that the Christian person becomes a sanctuary, a temple of the Holy Spirit, someone who is indwelt by the most holy and blessed Trinity. We would want to assert this of all human beings. We should not just greet one another. We should strictly genuflect before such an august and precious creature. The Buddhist is correct in bowing profoundly before another human as the God in me acknowledges and greets the God in you. This preciousness, this infinite worth is intrinsic to who we all are and is inalienable as a gift from God to be acknowledged as an inalienable right of all human persons. (Emory International Law Review, Vol. 10 (1996): 63-68)

Which brings me back to Stephen and Jesse Washington, and to a strange little short story by the author Shirley Hardie Jackson entitled The Lottery that was first published in The New Yorker in June, 1948.

Set in a small, contemporary American town, a small village of about 300 residents, the story concerns an annual ritual known as “the lottery” which is practiced to ensure a good harvest; one character quotes an old proverb, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” As the story opens, the locals are excited but a bit anxious on the eve of the lottery. Children are gathering stones as Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves make the paper slips for the drawing and draw up a list of all the families in town.

When they finish the slips and the list, the men put them into a black box, which is locked up in the safe at a local coal company. The next morning the townspeople gather at 10 a.m. in order to have everything done in time for lunch. First, the eldest male of each family in town draws a slip; there’s one for every household. Bill Hutchinson gets the one slip with a black spot, meaning that his family has been chosen. In the next round, each member of the Hutchinson family draws a slip, and Bill’s wife Tessie gets the black spot. Each villager then picks up a stone and they surround Tessie, and the story ends as Mrs. Hutchinson is stoned to death while the paper slips are allowed to fly off in the wind.

Shortly after it was published, Ms. Jackson said of her story that she had hoped that by setting the particularly brutal ancient rite of stoning (the same thing that was done to Stephen) in the present she would shock her readers with “a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in [our] own lives.” (San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 1948.) Her story suggests that we human beings are more capable of honoring our rituals and our preconceptions than we are of honoring one another.

I think the true stories of Stephen of Jerusalem, of Jesse Washington of Waco, Texas, and of those millions of martyrs who have been “eliminated” amply demonstrate that she was right. Not only are we more capable of honoring our rituals and prejudices that we of honoring one another, we are demonstrably willing to murder one another to protect them.

We are because when we look around at our fellow human beings we do not see one another as divine; we do not see living stones; we do not see members of a royal priesthood. Blinded, or perhaps just numbed, by familiar ritual, by preconception, by the simple human need to conform, we do not appreciate one another as fellow citizens of a holy nation, “chosen and precious in God’s sight,” as bearing the image of God.

“Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” Jesus asked. I’m not the least bit surprised in Philip, however; we human beings, made in the image of God, have been with each other for a long, long time, and we still do not know each other. Dr. Clendenin suggested that the martyrdom of Stephen helps us to remember the individual humanity of the millions of unnamed martyrs we might otherwise forget; may it also help us to remember the divinity of each of them and of each other.

Let us pray:

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (For the Human Family, Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal Church, 1979, page 815)

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Psalms Are Not Science – From the Daily Office – May 17, 2014

May 17, 2014 / / 4 Comments

From Book of Psalms:

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 139:13-16 (NRSV) – May 17, 2014)

Human FetusLet me make one thing clear: I do not want to get into the abortion debate! I never want to get into the abortion debate!

Whether and when to end a pregnancy is a personal and painful decision, one which I believe is ultimately to be made by one person, the pregnant one. Others may offer her advice and counsel, but when it comes right down to it no one other than her has any business making the decision. Abortion should not be a debate; it should be a private, medical decision by one person.

But I find myself rather frequently pummeled by those who do want to get into the abortion debate, beaten over the head by one side or the other with their particular arguments — most often, I must admit, by the so-called “Pro-Life” side. As a Christian pastor, I get mail, emails, and phone calls from (mostly) the anti-abortionists encouraging me to support their current efforts to restrict access to medically supervised termination of pregnancy.

And nearly every piece of literature they provide includes somewhere the assertion that “human life begins at conception.” And very often that statement is coupled with a citation to this part of Psalm 138.

So let’s make another thing clear: the psalms are not science. The Psalter is poetry and metaphor; the purpose of the psalms is primarily to praise God and secondarily to teach God’s people that the Almighty is to be praised because of the intimacy with which God loves us. These verses simply do not mean that God creates the inmost parts or the unformed substance of every fetus in every womb; nor do they address the issue of when human life begins! Even taken literally, all that this psalm is saying is that God made plans for David; it has nothing to do with when David’s, or any, life began or begins.

That is, basically, what the entire abortion controversy boils down to: when does human life begin? When does a fertilized ovum become a human person? That is a question with so many dimensions — theological, legal, moral, scientific, medical, spiritual, and more — that I’m not sure I can count them!

What I notice about these verses today is that all they name are the physical parts of the body: inmost parts, frame, substance. The spiritual aspect of human life is not mentioned; there is no thought given here to the soul, the spirit, the breath.

In Jewish and Christian theology a human person is only a human person when there is unity of the physical body with the spirit. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew noun nephesh is often translated as “soul,” but it is most often found in combination with adjective hayyah, meaning “living” or “alive.” In combination, the two are rendered “living being” or “soul alive,” but perhaps the best translation is “person.” There is human personhood only when there is both physical body and living spirit.

So when do they come together? The technical theological term is ensoulment. To ask “When does human life begin?” is to ask when ensoulment occurs.

In Jewish tradition, a baby is not considered to be a human person until its head emerges from the birth canal. According to the Talmud, “the fetus is the thigh of its mother,” which means that it is not considered an independent person until after birth. Indeed, some medieval Jewish sages held a child was not a bar kayyama or “lasting being,” i.e., a viable human being, until a month after being born. Obviously, traditional Jewish law and medieval Jewish wisdom did not give Psalm 138 the meaning our contemporary “Pro-Lifers” give it.

Christian tradition has been all over the board on the question.

Some sects (Mormons, for example — and another debate I don’t want to get into is whether members of the Latter-Day Saints are Christians) believe that the soul pre-exists the body, that God has parented or created numerous “spirit children” who await physical bodies in this world.

Some of the earliest theologians, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Gregory of Nyssa, taught that the egg and the sperm each carried a soul derived from the souls of the mother and the father, and that at conception these two proto-souls merged to form a new and distinct soul. This theory, called traducianism, is a direct and necessary development of the doctrine of Original Sin, which teaches that our sinful nature is passed from parent to child via concupiscence (sexual desire) and its (sinful?) satisfaction.

Interestingly, Augustine, who was responsible for much of the formulation of Original Sin, rejected traducianism; he favored what came to be known as Creationism, which is not the creationism which today does battle with evolutionary science.

Traducianism was rejected by the theologians of the Middle Ages — Thomas Aquinas, especially — and in favor of creationism. This view, based in part on Genesis 2:7 (“The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being”) and Hebrews 12:9 (which distinguishes between our “human parents” and God who is the “Father of spirits”), holds that while the body is formed gradually the soul is directly created by God and enters the body when it is ready to receive it (a determination made by God).

Creationism was the accepted teaching of the church from the Fifth Century on . . . until recent times. In fact, from the late Middle Ages until the end of the 19th Century, the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (and the generally accepted position of most of Christianity) was that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of “quickening,” when the mother first feels movement.

So when does the soul enter the physical body? When does a fertilized ovum become a human person?

I don’t know.

Years ago I sat on a panel discussing abortion law and religion with an older colleague from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. He made this statement which I will never forget: “I would rather counsel a woman about legal abortion than bury a woman who’s resorted to an illegal one. And I’ve done both.” I have had to do the former, both before and after the procedure; that’s why I know so much (and so little) about this theology. Fortunately, unlike my colleague, I’ve not had to do the latter and I hope I never will.

I don’t know when “human life” begins, but I do know this: I do not want to get into the abortion debate, ever, even though I am often forced to. And I know this: abortion is a private, personal, and painful decision which is ultimately to be made by only one person, the pregnant one. And I know this: the psalms are not science.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Wrestling in Prayer – From the Daily Office – May 12, 2014

May 12, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Colossians:

Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you. He is always wrestling in his prayers on your behalf, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in everything that God wills.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Colossians 4:12 (NRSV) –May 12, 2014)

Hercules and Diomedes by Vincenzo de Rossi“Wrestling in his prayers” seems such an odd turn of phrase! Aren’t prayers supposed to be peaceful? The image of prayer as athletic competition (and vigorous, muscular, and very personal competition, at that) just seems contradictory. But the contradiction calls to mind two thoughts.

The first is that I remembered Jacob: “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.” (Gen 32:24-25)

Doing early morning study of Koine Greek is probably a mistake . . . but I wondered, “Does Paul use the same word to describe Epaphras as the Septuagint uses to describe Jacob?” Short answer — no. Long answer — In Genesis, the wrestling contest is described using the word palaío; in Colossians, the word is agonizomai. The former is specific; the latter refers in general to athletic competition and may also mean “to struggle” or “to labor.”

Nonetheless, I wonder if Paul is calling Jacob’s late-night wrestling match with God to mind. If Jacob’s dream-time contest is a metaphor for prayer (and I think it is), then there is a striking contrast between first-party prayer (petition) which leaves the supplicant limping, and third-party prayer (intercession) which permits the subject to “stand mature and fully assured.” I don’t know what to make of this. Is there a suggestion that the prayers of others are more effective for our well-being than our own?

An Indian guru once said, “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness.” Was Jacob’s hip put out of joint by his encounter with God? Or was it always out of joint and the encounter merely led to a recognition or an admission of that fact? Prayer for oneself always does, in my experience, bring one up face-to-face with one’s own inadequacies. And, I have to say, I rely much more upon the prayers and prayerful support of others than upon my own. So perhaps there is something in the contrast Paul may be making.

The second, unrelated thought, is how often I struggle to find the “right words” with which to pray, both in private meditation and in public worship. As a priest, I am often asked to pray in public and, when that happens, I am grateful that, as an Episcopalian, I have been steeped in the language and cadences of The Book of Common Prayer. When I cannot think of anything original to say, I can rely on the prayerful words of generations of Anglicans and, from memory of the prayer book’s beautiful phrases, cobble something quickly together.

It is not always so in my private devotions. But that same Indian guru said of prayer, “It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” So if my struggle to find the right words is unsuccessful, I just let it go and sit quietly, sure that God will understand me.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Gathered – From the Daily Office – April 1, 2014

April 1, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Genesis:

When Jacob ended his charge to his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Genesis 49:33 (NRSV) – April 1, 2014.)

Pine Box CoffinHe has kicked the bucket, cashed in his chips, shuffled off this mortal coil, gone the way of all flesh, croaked, gone home, passed away, turned up his toes, ridden the pale horse, fallen off his perch, taken his last bow, entered larger life, joined the choir invisible.

We have so many idioms and euphemisms for the simple reality of death. I suppose that is because death is frightening, although if we take our Christian faith seriously it should not be.

The epistle lesson for the Easter vigil is always a short reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans in which the Apostle reminds us that “we have died with Christ, [and] we believe that we will also live with him.” (Rom. 6:8) There really is nothing to fear. Still, we avoid even mentioning death by using all these idioms and euphemisms (and many more).

As these turns of phrase go, none is quite so lovely as this verse in Genesis describing the death of Israel (Jacob): “He was gathered to his people.” I find something about that very comforting; I’ve never been a big fan of the “going home” euphemism which it resembles (even though there is biblical warrant for it), but I find this image of joining earlier generations inviting. Perhaps that is because of the fond memories I have of childhood family reunions.

In a former parish, I had a congregant who frequently would turn the discussion in bible study or adult education classes to the question of life after death. “I just want to know what happens when I die,” she would say. “Martha,” I would answer, “I don’t know. I haven’t been there yet.”

I don’t know, but I do have faith that our Book of Common Prayer is accurate when it says (in the Preface to the Eucharist to be said at a requiem), “to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.” (BCP 1979, page 381) One of the collects in the Burial Office includes this petition: “Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before.” (page 493) Until, the writers of Genesis might have said, we are gathered to our people.

Lent begins with a reminder of our mortality: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Here in the middle of the season we find another, but rather more comforting, reminder: you are a part of a people and to your people you shall be gathered.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Really? What? No! – From the Daily Office – March 20, 2014

March 20, 2014 / / 2 Comments

From the First Letter to the Church in Corinth:

Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – I Corinthians 6:16 (NRSV) – March 20, 2014.)

Wedding rings and moneyThis is one of those times (there are, I admit, quite a few) when Paul loses me! I step back from his words and say, “Really? What?” Is Paul seriously equating sex with a prostitute with marriage? I know that Paul didn’t have too high an opinion of marriage. In the next chapter he will say that he thinks staying single is a much better idea: “I wish that all men were even as I myself am. . . . I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I.” (1 Cor. 7:7,8) But does he really hold it in such low regard so as to equate it with prostitution?

Paul’s quotation is from the second chapter of Genesis, from the story of the creation of Eve at the conclusion of which the biblical author writes, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. ” (Gen. 2:24) The story of the creation of Eve is about God fashioning for Adam a helper, someone with whom he would spend his life tending, caring for, and protecting the Garden of Eden — it’s not the story of a “one night stand.”

The two are not the same, but in the midst of his argument about preserving the purity of the church Paul has let his guard down, blurted out an honest (if inappropriate) appraisal of marriage, and let us see what he really thinks of it. To my mind, this makes suspect everything else he writes about marriage (or that someone else has written in his name). If, for example, he believes that marriage is nothing more than a cheap sexual liaison, that stuff about wives being “subject” to their husbands (Eph. 5:22, Col. 3:18) takes on a different color! I don’t know, it might be reasonable to expect a paid call girl to be “subject” to the man who’s paying her (prostitution seems to be inherently a relationship of power and domination) . . . but that’s not what I understand the relationship between spouses to be.

I rather like what the introduction to the Episcopal Church’s rite of Holy Matrimony says about the mutuality of marriage:

The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God. (BCP 1979, page 423)

And I don’t think marriage was instituted by God to be equivalent to prostitution despite what the Apostle Paul may have thought. So when I read this verse, I step back and ask, “Really? What?” . . . and I answer, “No!”

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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

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