That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Isaiah (Page 14 of 14)

Arise, My Love, My Fair One, and Come Away: A Baptismal Sermon – Pentecost 14, Proper 17B – September 2, 2012

September 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, September 2, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 17B: Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2,7-10; James 1:17-27; and Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23.)

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I want you for just a minute to close your eyes. Just sit back and relax, and imagine that you are hearing not my voice, but the voice of your beloved, the voice of the one person in this world who loves you more than any other . . . .

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Those words, of course, are from Scripture, from the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, one of the oddest books in the Holy Bible, for it is nothing more nor less than a love song, a sensual and even erotic love song.

Our psalm this morning is also a love song. It is a marriage song which the Bible tells us was written by the Korahites or “Sons of Korah” for the wedding of a king. In fact, the Bible tells us a lot about this psalm, information that we don’t find in the Book of Common Prayer Psalter. First, it has an instruction: “To the leader: according to the Lilies.” Apparently this tells the choral director the tune or melody to which the psalm was to be sung. Second, it tells us that it was a song “of the Korahites” who were a musical guild (probably hereditary) in the Temple. Third, the psalm is described as a Maskil – this word is derived from a Hebrew word meaning “understanding” or “insight” and, thus, it is believed that Psalms so described are “insight-giving” or especially instructive. And, finally, it is described as a love song.

The insight comes, perhaps, in what is the third verse of our abbreviated recitation this morning:

Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever,
a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom;
you love righteousness and hate iniquity.
(Verse 7 in the BCP; vv. 6-7a in the NRSV)

In this verse, which has puzzled scholars for generations, though the singer seems still to be singing of the King, he names him “God”! The psalm appears to ascribe divinity to an earthly king which is something quite foreign to ancient Judaism. This is underscored by the last verse of the Psalm:

I will make your name to be remembered
from one generation to another;
therefore nations will praise you for ever and ever.
(Verse 18 in the BCP; v. 17 in the NRSV)

Here, this remarkable psalm lavishes on the human king the type of praise generally given to God! Christians, therefore, read this psalm as referring to Jesus, as we also read the Song of Solomon. The usual interpretation of both is that the Bridegroom or King is Jesus and the Bride or Queen is the church. However, in the middle ages the monastic mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. Bernard of Clairvaux suggested a much more personal interpretation. In their commentaries Bernard and Teresa envisioned the love between Christ the Bridegroom and his bride, the individual soul, and they noted the way in which that love overflows to others.

For Bernard, the Song is about the manner in which the “thirsting soul” can rediscover the power of God’s love. “What a great thing is love, provided always that it returns back to its origin,” he writes; “flowing back again into its source, it acquires fresh strength to pour itself forth once again.” (On the Songs of Songs 83:4) Our journey to God’s love does not consist in our finding the path, but rather in being found on the path by Christ the Bridegroom who passionately seeks us. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away,” are words spoken by Christ to each one of us as he invites us to follow him. But the divine love is never intended to be, and is not complete if it is, purely individual and personal.

Bernard writes that the human soul aflame with the love of God “strives to win [other] souls with its habitual fire and renewed courage.” (58:1) “Love reveals itself,” he writes, “not by words or phrases, but by action and experience.” (70:1) Thus, says St. Bernard, love of God is not merely a personal experience; it is never complete unless it leads us to love our neighbors.

For Teresa of Avila, similarly, the Bridegroom’s call leads the soul back from a lack of love to love most fully realized:

Along how many paths, in how many ways, by how many methods You show us love! …[Not] only with deeds do You show this love, but with words so capable of wounding the soul in love with You that You say them in this Song of Songs and teach the soul what to say to You. (Meditations on the Song of Songs 3:14)

Using the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany, as examples, Teresa, like Bernard, writes that the Song propels us to an exterior expression of love of neighbor. Only disciples who both pray with fervent desire and care for their neighbors, she writes, “imitate the laborious life that Christ lived.” (7:8)

So with the background of these songs of a divine love that compels us to share the love of God with those around us, we turn to today’s Gospel story of Jesus being confronted by and answering the Pharisees. The confrontation is over an issue of ritual cleansing, the failure of Jesus’ disciples to wash their hands before eating. Jesus, however, quickly turns that objection aside quoting from the 29th chapter of Isaiah, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me . . . . ” For Jesus the question is not one of ritual, not one of purity, not one of custom, not one of tradition. For Jesus the issue is love. “Their hearts are far from me.”

“Look,” he says, “the issue is not what’s on the outside. What’s on the outside cannot defile you. The issue is what’s on the inside. If the human heart is not filled with love, all sorts of filth results. If the human heart is not turned toward God with love, the result is disastrous.”

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Understand, the Pharisees weren’t bad people. They were trying to be good Jews. As the People of God, the Jews believed that God wanted them to be separate from other nations and peoples, that God wanted them to be pure and spotless. The word Pharisee means literally “separate ones.” They believed that the better and more stringently you observe the ritual practices, the more you were separate from, different from, and therefore more holy than others. Jesus was just telling them they were wrong, so he quoted from Isaiah about the heart and about love. This was the same prophet he quoted when he began his public ministry in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. There, he read a passage from the 61st chapter of Isaiah. As Luke reports,

the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:17-19)

Where the Pharisees sought to be separated from the unclean around them, Jesus preached the love of God which compels us to serve those around us, especially the ones who are considered unclean. Where the Pharisees were concerned about cleaning cups and washing hands, Jesus was concerned about cleaning lepers and washing their wounds. “Love reveals itself,” St. Bernard writes, “not by words or phrases, but by action and experience.” Only disciples who both pray with fervent desire and care for their neighbors, writes St. Teresa, “imitate the laborious life that Christ lived.”

This is the theme James takes up in today’s reading from his epistle: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father,” writes James, “is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

And this is what the Baptismal Covenant is all about. In a few minutes, we will baptize an infant, Finn, and an adult, John. Together with them and their sponsors, we will all reaffirm our own Baptismal Covenant as they make theirs. We will be asked, “Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” Answering these questions, we will prove ourselves to be hearers of the word. But that is not the end of the Baptismal Covenant.

We will then be asked these five questions:

  • Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
  • Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
  • Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
  • Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
  • Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

In other words, we will be asked, “Will you be doers of the word, and not merely hearers?” Our response will be, “I will, with God’s help.”

In Baptism, the Christ the Bridegroom embraces us as his own. “Arise,” he says as we come up out of the Baptismal waters, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Come away not to be separated from others, but come away to share God’s overflowing love with them. Come away to strive to win other souls with habitual fire and renewed courage. Come away to imitate the laborious life that Christ the Bridegroom lived. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Amen.

Lady Wisdom & Questions God Is Never Going to Ask – Sermon for Pentecost 12, Proper 15B – August 19, 2012

August 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, August 19, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 15B: Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:9-14; Ephesians 5:15-20; and John 6:51-58)

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Proverbs 9 by David WierzbickiAs I may have mentioned here before, I spent many of my childhood summers in the southeastern Kansas town of Winfield with my paternal grandparents, C.E. and Edna Funston. Winfield was my parents’ hometown, both of them were raised there and my mother had been born there. Her maternal grandparents, Hinrich and Harmke Buss, were immigrants from that area of Germany right next to Holland called “Ostfriesland”. My father was born in Dodge City, and he and his folks moved to Winfield when he was just a few months old; they were relative newcomers but my grandfather soon became a prominent citizen.

Anyway, one of the things I remember about Winfield is the way newcomers, or anyone someone was meeting for the first time, were almost invariably asked two questions. I once discussed this with a friend who was born and raised in South Carolina and she said it was the same in her hometown, that these are what she called “very Southern questions.” That makes sense because in an odd way, southeastern Kansas is much more Southern than it is midwestern. My mother used to all that part of Kansas “lap land” – meaning that it is were Oklahoma and Arkansas lap over into Kansas.

So there were these two questions that people asked when first meeting another person. The first was, “Who are your people?” Winfield was an agricultural center and not much else. There was no industry or manufacturing that would bring people to town. There was farming and the businesses that support farming, all of which were family owned. So if somebody new came to town to work in on a farm or in a farm-supporting business, it was assumed you must be part of the family. So, who are your people? The answer placed you in a particular social context. So I would say, “Well, my mother is Betty Sargent, one of the Buss cousins.” Anyone local would then know I was a descendant of Henry Buss. My greatgrandfather had had two families. One set of children were born to first wife Mary – she had 14 kids who lived; another set of 13 living children were born to Harmke, my greatgrandmother. According to his obituary, all of those children were alive when Henry died and he left approximately 200 acres of land to each of them. Doing the math, you get the idea that he had acquired a lot of farmland (something over 5,000 acres) and that he (and his children after him) were influential in the local economy. As I mentioned before, on the paternal side my grandparents were comparatively new to the town, but they had become very active members of the Methodist Church and my grandfather, an active Mason, had risen in those ranks as well. So if I continued to my inquirer, “And my father is C.E. and Edna Funston’s youngest son,” he or she would immediately know I was related to a Past Master of the Lodge and an elder in the Methodist Church.

Because of that, I wasn’t often asked the second question, “Where do you go to church?” But I could have been because it really wasn’t a given that I would have been a Methodist. The Busses were members of the Dutch Reformed Church and the Sargents belonged to the Disciples of Christ; I could have been either of those – but the truth was, except for those summer months with the Funstons at the Methodist Church, I really didn’t go to church as a kid.

In any event, those questions served to place someone in a social context, to define in the questioner’s mind who they were and where the fit. And the truth is they aren’t just “Kansas questions” or “Southern questions”. They are everywhere questions. In the fall of 2005, Evie and I took our first trip to Ireland and, as part of that trip, visited County Donegal as I was in search of Funstons in the area where I believe my Funston great-greatgrandfather originated. In Donegal Town itself, we happened to stop into a woolen sweater store run by a man named Sean McGinty. Mr. McGinty asked about our trip and I was explaining to him my family connection to the area. He turned to his wife Mary and said, “You’re from Pettigo; weren’t there some Funstons in Pettego.” She thought for a moment and replied, “Yes . . . . but they weren’t our people.” — They weren’t our people, meaning they weren’t Roman Catholic. The Irish Funstons were and still are Church of Ireland – Anglicans . . . Protestants. “Who are your people?” “Where do you go to church?” They or something like them are human questions; the help us to put people in their place, to categorize one another, to define each other. They are human questions.

But they are not God’s questions! Long before St. Paul would write to the Galatians that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female,” (Gal. 3:28) the compiler of the Book of Proverbs would make the same point in the 8th and 9th Chapters of that book, part of which we read today. In these chapters we read of Lady Wisdom, one of the most intriguing characters in all of the Old Testament. In the 8th Chapter, before the part we heard this morning, she tells us herself:

When [God] established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. (Prov. 8:27-31)

She was, she tells us, a “master worker” helping God to create all that is. And in our reading this morning from Chapter 9, we see her as “the hostess with the mostest” who is ready to throw a party, to do the honors at a great feast. She has “slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has . . . set her table,” and she sent her servants out to invite her guests. In fact, she herself stands in her doorway, in the highest places of the town calling,

“You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” (Prov. 9:4-6)

Note that she doesn’t ask, “Who are your people? Where do you go to church?” She doesn’t ask if any are Jew or Greek, slave or free, black or white, straight or gay, Republican or Democrat, Catholic or Protestant, none of that matters . . . all she asks is that we be “simple” and “without sense.”

Now that’s a bit disconcerting and, frankly, I think the translation belies the true meaning of the invitation. The Hebrew here is, “Mi-phethi yasur henah chasar-leb ‘am’rah lo.” The word translated as “simple” (and sometimes as “naive”) is phethi. It’s root is the word pawthaw, which means “wide open”. An alternative and more positive understanding of this word is “open-minded”. The term “without sense” (sometimes rendered “lacking understanding”) is chasar-leb. Chasar means “without” or “lacking”. Leb (rendered here as “sense” or “understanding”) is most often translated as “heart” because in the ancient Hebrew understanding the heart was believed to be the seat of comprehension and emotion. This is not simple understanding or sense, this is passionate belief, enthusiastic commitment; in a negative sense we might say “bias” or “prejudice”.

Lady Wisdom is not inviting simpletons or the foolishly naive into her parlor; she is inviting the open-minded, those who have no preconceptions, no intolerant prepossessions. Lady Wisdom, God’s master worker, does not care if you are Jew or Greek, Irish or German, black or white or Asian or Native American, straight or gay or lesbian or transgendered, Democrat or Republican or Socialist or Libertarian. Lady Wisdom, God’s master worker, doesn’t care who your people are; she cares about whose you are! She doesn’t care where you go to church; she cares that you are the church, the People of God! She wants you to be open-minded, to come without prejudice or preconception. Her invitation is reminiscent of the Prophet Isaiah’s, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:18 – KJV) She invites us to come and learn.

She has set her table; she is ready to host her party. “Come, [she says] eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” Lady Wisdom’s celebration is the marriage feast of the Lamb; her invitation is to that very supper Jesus would share with his disciples and shares with us throughout all the ages. St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians the words we recite each time we gather at this Table:

. . . that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor. 11:23-2)

And here in John’s Gospel today he promises that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (John 6:54-56)

To this Feast we are all invited without regard to who our people may be, without regard to where we go to church. To this Feast today we welcome Nathan Joseph Daley who is to be baptized. No one here will ask, “Who are your people?” but if anyone ever does, Nathan can answer “The People of God” . . . and if he wants to be more specific, he can say “The Episcopalians!” No one here will ask, “Where do you go to church?” but if anyone ever does, Nathan can answer, “St. Paul’s!”

Someone else may ask those questions of Nathan or of you or me, but God is never going to ask them! God will ask, “Are you open-minded? Are you free of bias and prejudice?” God will ask, “Are you filled with the Spirit? Do you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs? Do you sing and make melody to the Lord in your heart? Do you give thanks at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ?” (Questions drawn from Ephesians 5:18-20) God will ask, “Do you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Do you strive for justice and peace among all people? Do you respect the dignity of every human being?” (Questions drawn from the Baptismal Covenant in the Book of Common Prayer, pg. 305)

With God’s help, Nathan and we will grow and learn to do these; through God’s grace, he and we will feast on Bread and Wine, and “lay aside immaturity, and live and walk in the way of insight.”

Let us pray:

Grant, Lord God, to Nathan who is about to be baptized into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, and to those who already have been baptized, that, as we have put away the old life of sin, so we may be renewed in the spirit of our minds, lay aside immaturity, and live and walk in the way of insight, righteousness, and true holiness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

God Is in the Business of Healing & Life – Sermon for Proper 8B – July 1, 2012

July 1, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, July 1, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector. (Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 8B: Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15;2:23-24; Lamentations 3:21-33; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; and Mark 5:21-43.)

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The Resurrection of Jairus' Daughter, Emmanuel Benner, 1902Our first reading this morning is from a little book from the Apocrypha called The Book of Wisdom. At one time church tradition ascribed authorship to King Solomon, but it is now believed to have been written sometime in the first or second century before Christ by a Greek-speaking Jew of the Diaspora. It is found in the Greek-language version of Jewish scriptures, not in the Hebrew version, and is therefore not considered as canonical scripture by Jews or by Protestants. Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox do accept it, and we Anglicans take a middle course, saying that we read them “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet [we do] not apply them to establish any doctrine.” (Articles of Religion, Art. VI, BCP 1979, pg. 868). Well, here’s an example of life, then:

God did not make death,
And he does not delight in the death of the living.
For he created all things so that they might exist;
the generative forces of the world are wholesome….

God, says this odd little book, created human beings for immortality.

So here’s some “instruction of manners”: when something bad happens to someone, particularly if someone’s loved one dies, if someone has a miscarriage, if someone is diagnosed with a serious illness (like, say, terminal cancer), do not say, “Well, it’s God’s will. We may not understand it, but it’s part of God’s plan.” And if anyone says that to you or to a loved one or to a friend or even to a stranger, tell them they’re wrong. In fact, if it will make you feel better, you tell them to stick it in their ear! Death is not God’s will; it never was and it never will be! “God,” as the Book of Wisdom says clearly, “did not make death.”

But, of course, someone will say to me, “Wait! You’re making a doctrinal statement based on an apocryphal text and we Anglicans are not supposed to do that.”

OK, yes, that’s what I’m doing, but my “doctrinal statement” is not based only on this small portion of Wisdom. We also have Lamentations in the Lectionary texts this morning: “The Lord will not reject forever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.” God is not in the business of causing grief and suffering; the Prophet Ezekiel, as well, assures us God takes no “pleasure in [even] the death of the wicked, [but would] rather that they should turn from their ways and live?” (Ezek. 18:23) In other words, God is not in the business of causing death! God is in the business of healing and life.

In addition, elsewhere in Scripture, we have the promise of God through the Prophet Isaiah that “he will swallow up death forever,” (Isaiah 25:8) , that the “dead shall live, their corpses shall rise . . . . and the earth will give birth to those long dead,” (26:19), that God is “about to create new heavens and a new earth.” (65:17) In that new reality, “no more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed . . . . The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox . . . . They shall not hurt or destroy on all [God’s] holy mountain [meaning everywhere].” (65:20,25) In other words, God is not in the business of causing death! God is in the business of healing and life.

This is what our Gospel reading today assures us in these two stories of Christ healing two women: the daughter of the synagogue ruler Jairus and the unnamed women who touched him in the market place. Jairus had faith that God’s will for his daughter was healing and so he came to Jesus; the woman with the hemorrhage had faith that God’s will for her was healing and so she thought, “If I could just touch the hem of his garment . . . .” God’s will for us is healing; we just have to have faith in that promise.

Faith, however, does not mean believing the unbelievable; it means holding on to God’s promise, despite whatever present realities call it into question. To the writer of Lamentations, which was written in the 6th Century before Christ at time when the Temple (indeed the whole of Jerusalem) had been destroyed and it seemed all hope was lost, such faith meant holding to the credal and communal memory of what God had done for God’s people in ages past. It meant calling God’s mighty works of healing and strength into the present through prayer and proclamation.

For Jairus and the women in the market place, it meant holding fast to God’s promise that he would bring “recovery and healing” to God’s people, that he would “heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security” (Jer. 33:6), and believing that that promise was made manifest in Jesus of Nazarth. It means the same for us today. It means laying claim to Jesus’ works of healing and strength, and bringing them into the present through prayer and proclamation in the context and community of fellow Christians who support and restore our faith, who recite it with us in the creed, who proclaim it to us in the sermon, who sing it with us in the liturgy and hymns. Even in times when it appears that all is lost, the community of faith helps us to hear the voice of faith saying, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him [God] does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.” God is not in the business of causing death! “God created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome.” God is in the business of healing and life.

This, of course, just raises a question: what if we have faith and pray for someone who is ill, but the sick person does not get better? What if we pray and pray and despite all of our prayer, the person die? Does that mean that we did not have faith or did not have enough faith?

Well, as another preacher has remarked

. . . that depends. Is God obligated to His creatures to answer all prayers with Yes? Is God no more than a cosmic Coke machine, who must dispense what we want when we put in the proper amount? Or does our God have His own will, His own plan, and His own wisdom, which may transcend ours? Personally, I am more comfortable with the idea that God would override any requests I make, if He deems them not in my best interest. What if I ask for something that will cause me great damage, mistakenly believing, in faith, that I need it? Would it not attribute great cruelty and maliciousness to God if we supposed that He were obligated by some scriptural contract to give me what I ask for, no matter what? (Ken Collins, Faith Healing)

If there is healing in response to prayer, we know that it was God’s will to heal, but if there was no healing in response to prayer, the answer isn’t so simple. Perhaps healing at a later date would do more good. Perhaps the illness, if prolonged, might lead to fruitful introspection and a new spiritual awareness. Perhaps the person’s earthly life, if prolonged, might be a source of pain and misery for that person or another. Sometimes the answer to prayer is “No” and we cannot know why. “We have to give God credit for being smarter and wiser than we are, and we must acknowledge that we cannot always immediately apprehend [God’s] designs.” (Ken Collins, Faith Healing) But we can know this: God is not in the business of causing death! God is in the business of healing and life.

As the Book of Wisdom poetically reminds us, “God did not make death . . . but through the devil’s envy death entered the world.” One of the great illusions of our time, some would say that is one of Satan’s great lies, is that through our own effort, through our own science, through our own better medicine, we can live forever. It makes us feel that death is wrong. It comes as a surprise, even when we say that we expect it. We are always surprised by death! But in our Gospel story this morning, we learn that Jesus views death differently; Jesus treats death as if it were simply like falling asleep. Last night (assuming your neighbor was not shooting off fireworks prematurely) you went to sleep. This morning you woke up to a new day. “Death,” says Jesus, is like that.” You fall asleep . . . you wake up. In this Gospel story the young girl wakes up. Jesus shows us that death, the devil’s creation, Satan’s great illusion, is not fatal. Death is merely another form of sleep, because God did not make death; God is not in the business of causing death! God created all things so that they might live. God created human beings for immortality. God is in the business of healing and life.

Let us pray:

O merciful Father, you have taught us in the Holy Scriptures that you do not willingly afflict or grieve anyone: Look with compassion upon all who are in pain or sorrow, all who are troubled by illness, all who tend any who are dying; remember them, O Lord, in mercy, nourish their souls with patience, and comfort them with a sense of your goodness; empower us, O Lord, to minister to their needs and to offer support for their faith; that all may be strengthened in times of weakness and have confidence in your loving care; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

That’s What It’s All About – Sermon for Trinity Sunday (Year B) – June 3, 2012

June 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, June 3, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector. (Revised Common Lectionary Readings for Trinity Sunday, Year B: Isaiah 6:1-8; Canticle 13 [BCP 1979, Page 90]; Romans 8:12-17; and John 3:1-17.)

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Did you listen carefully or perhaps even follow along in the Prayer Book when I offered our opening prayer today, the Collect for Trinity Sunday? Listen to it again:

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity….

Did that make any sense to you? If not, don’t feel bad. It doesn’t make sense to a lot of people and, frankly, I don’t think it’s supposed to make sense.

Today is different from all other days in the liturgical calendar. Nearly all of our other special feast days commemorate events in the life of Jesus or events in the early history of the church or the lives of special saints, but this day, this one peculiar day, we celebrate a doctrine: the Doctrine of the Trinity. It is a day which, after many years in ordained ministry, many years preaching through the liturgical lectionary, I’ve come to realize strikes terror in the hearts of many clergy. Every year we face the same dilemma: how do we make the Doctrine of the Trinity understandable?

You know that in my sermon preparation one of the things I do is consult with other clergy. I talk with my local colleagues in bible study; I “chat” with clergy friends on the internet; I read commentaries, articles, and essays by other clergy and theologians. On one of the blogs I read pretty regularly, a Lutheran pastor summarized the Doctrine of the Trinity this way:

So let’s get right down to it, shall we? Here we go: God is 3 persons and one being. God is one and yet three. The father is not the son or the Spirit, the son is not the father or the Spirit, the spirit is not the Father or the Son. But the Father Son and Spirit all are God and God is one. …so to review. 1+1+1=1. That’s simple enough. (The Rev. Nadia Bolz Weber)

That’s really about as good a summary as I’ve read: 1+1+1=1 Wrap your head around that!

One of the folks I share things with is a priest known to many of you, Vickie H., who served in this parish a few years back. She sent me a poem that she thought she might use in her sermon entitled Dancing with the Trinity by Raymond A. Foss:

Multiple partners and yet one
all of them ready
for me to let them take the lead
to guide my steps
on the floor, on the journey
when I submit
and let them lead

Dancing with the Trinity
each of them important
all in love
in relationship
needing all
to begin to understand
the mystery that is God

That’s a lovely little bit of verse, but if I had written it the penultimate line would have been different. I wouldn’t have written “to begin to understand the mystery that is God.” One doesn’t actually understand a mystery. One experiences God; one appreciates God; one enters into relationship with God, but finite beings such as ourselves are incapable of understanding in infinite. We cannot wrap our finite heads around an infinite God! With particular regard to the Doctrine of the Trinity, the combative 17th Century Anglican preacher Robert South (who was four times offered episcopal orders and each time turned them down!) wrote, “As he that denies it may lose his soul; so he that too much strives to understand it may lose his wits.” So in Mr. Foss’s poem, I think I would have written that we begin to experience the mystery that is God. I believe that is what the Doctrine of the Trinity is all about.

Those dissidents who object to this doctrine, such as the Unitarians or the Mormons, point out that you can’t find the word “trinity” in the Bible, and they are correct. It’s not there. About the closest one can get to finding it spelled out in Scripture is in Christ’s admonition 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. (Matt. 28:19)

The revelation of God as Three-in-One and One-in-Three was understood by the church as it struggled during the first three or four centuries of its existence to grapple with questions like “Who was [or, rather, who is] Jesus?” and “What was the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension?” and “What was it that happened to the apostles on the Feast of Pentecost?” and “Who is this Holy Spirit?” and “How does all this relate to the God of the Hebrews revealed in the Old Testament?” As theologians like Basil of Caesarea, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, their sister Macrina, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzan worked out this revelation and sought to understand it, they looked at the Hebrew Scriptures and they noticed that in creation God refers to Godself in the plural: “Let us make man in our image.” They saw that the Hebrew words for God, Elohim and Adonai, are plural nouns. They noticed things like the song of the Seraphim in our lesson from Isaiah today; they saw that the angels sang “Holy” not once but three times. They looked at Genesis and saw that when God visited Abraham and Sarah at the Oaks of Mamre God appeared in the guise of three men. They began to see God as Trinity and how God is One but also Three, how the Three Persons interrelate in a Triune community.

Ever since, theologians have been trying to make this comprehensible. I did a lot of reading in preparation for today’s sermon and I wrote down some quotations from theological articles that I thought I might be able to include in this sermon. Here’s one by a contemporary theologian named Thomas J. Scirghi. His article is entitled The Trinity: A Model for Belonging in Contemporary Society:

In the mutual relationship of the three persons of the Godhead we find the model for a human community. This relationship is characterized by kenosis and “inclusion”. Kenosis connotes the emptying, or total abandonment of oneself for a higher good, as with Jesus emptying himself for the glory of God and for the salvation of humanity (Phil. 2:5-11). “Inclusion” refers to the acceptance of others, joining them with oneself while honouring the diversity among the many, in a unity that does not seek uniformity.

Well . . . OK. But I’m not sure I understand the Trinity any better.

Another article I read was entitled Three Is Not Enough: Jewish Reflections On Trinitarian Thinking by a rabbinic scholar named David Blumenthal. Jews, of course, reject the notion that God is anything other than One. As a critique of the Trinitarian Doctrine, Blumenthal suggested, on the basis of the Jewish mystical writings, the Zohar and the Kabala, which have identified ten attributes of God that, if we’re going to do this One-in-Many Many-in-One thing, why not a “Ten-ity”? (That’s my word, not his.) But there’s a difference between Judaism and Christianity.

For rabbinic Jews, the goal and focus of religion is intellectual understanding of God, knowing God’s Laws and following them as best one can, which requires comprehension of the nature of God and God’s requirements of humankind. There’s nothing wrong with that, but for Christians the goal and focus of religion is something else; it is a personal relationship with God, not necessarily intellectual understanding. Many of us enjoy employing our intellect in that relationship and that’s not to be discouraged, but in the end relationship is not about intellectual understanding. St. Anselm once famously wrote, ” I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.” It is belief, trust, relationship, which is primary in the Christian faith. This is why the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar writes, “In the trinitarian dogma God is one, good, true, and beautiful because he is essentially Love, and Love supposes the one, the other, and their unity.” This is much more helpful that talk of “kenosis” or inclusion; we can begin to experience God as Trinity when we recognize that God is love and that love means relationship.

As the church was working all this out, the Latin speaking theologians settled on the word circuminsessio, which means “abiding or fixed within”, to described the way in which the all three Persons are at work in every action of God; it’s a rather static term. The Greek speaking theologians, on the other hand, chose a word you’ve heard me mention before: perichoresis. This is a much more dynamic concept. Derived from the same root as our English word “choreography”, it means “dancing around.” Isn’t that a lovely image? It’s what that poet, Raymond Foss, was picking up on. In all actions of God the Persons of the Trinity dance about together; in creation, in salvation, in sanctification, in comfort, in love . . . every action of God, every presence of God is a step in a divine dance!

As the church worked out this revelation theologically, it also began to incorporate it liturgically into its worship. In the east, particularly in the oriental orthodox churches they incorporated dance into the liturgy and they sought to act out or embody an understanding of our invitation to join in the perichoresis or heavenly dance of the Trinity. I’d like to teach you a dance still used in some of those ancient churches today.

Let’s everybody get up (those who are able to do so) and move into the aisles since we can’t dance when we’re restrained by pews. OK . . . everybody ready? First step forward with your right foot . . . now bring it back . . . step forward again . . . raise your foot . . . wiggle it about . . . now raise your hands and turn around. Now step forward with your left foot . . . now bring it back . . . step forward again . . . raise your foot . . . wiggle it about . . . now raise your hands and turn around. (The congregation begins to recognize the Hokey Pokey.)

OK . . . you get the idea. I’m having a bit of fun with you; the Hokey Pokey was not invented by the ancient oriental churches. (In fact, nobody really knows its origins.) But it makes a really good theological point. You know how it continues: you put your right arm in, then your left arm, and then various other body parts. How does it end? “You put your whole self in! . . . That’s what it’s all about!”

A few years ago there was a bumper sticker which asked this question: “What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it’s all about?” I want to suggest to you today that that is exactly the message of Trinity Sunday! That is precisely what the Doctrine of the Trinity, what the concept of perichoresis, is saying to us. Putting our whole selves into the divine dance, into which we are invited by God, IS what it’s all about!

Some of you will recall Christopher W. who was our organist here a few years back. Chris was a great fan of the music of the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Suffice to say that Chris and I parted company on that score. Messiaen’s music has never much appealed to me; it’s all very non-rhythmic and a-tonal and, frankly weird. One does not walk out of a Messiaen concert whistling the melodies! But his music is haunting and one piece in particular is amazing. It is entitled Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen wrote it while a prisoner of the Nazis during World War II. He discovered that there were other musicians in the prison camp and they somehow rounded up a B-flat clarinet, a violin, a cello, and a piano, so he composed for those instruments. It’s a long piece of eight movements lasting about an hour. The interesting thing about it is the way he wrote instructions to the musicians. Usually, composers write things like “play slowly” or “play rapidly” (allegro or adagio in the traditional Italian). Not Messiaen! In the Quartet for the End of Time his tempo markings read “Play tenderly” or “Play with ecstasy” or “Play with love.”

In the end, that is what the Doctrine of the Trinity is all about. It’s not whether we understand it or not. It’s not how fast or how slowly we do things that church teaching may require of us. It’s whether we join the heavenly dance and move with God and the angelic chorus tenderly, ecstatically, and with love. In the end it’s not about understanding; it’s about accepting God’s invitation into the dance, into relationship, and putting our whole selves into it.

Let me shift gears here because I want to offer you something else this morning, as well. Our first lesson today is one of my favorite passages from the Old Testament. It is one of the selections of Scripture that our ordinal offers to those becoming priests for use at their ordinations; I selected it for mine. I can almost recite it from memory, this wonderful vision that Isaiah has of the heavenly throne room filled with awe and majesty, the Seraphim singing God’s praise. This scene was the inspiration for a poem by a Lutheran clergyman from Texas, a pastor named Michael Coffey. I want to leave you today with Coffey’s vision of God, an image of the God who invites us into relationship that is just a little different from those you might be used to. Pastor Coffey’s poem is entitled God’s Bathrobe:

God sat Sunday in her Adirondack deck chair
reading the New York Times and sipping strawberry lemonade
her pink robe flowing down to the ground

the garment hem was fluff and frill
and it spilled holiness down into the sanctuary
into the cup and the nostrils of the singing people

one thread trickled loveliness into a funeral rite
as the mourners looked in the face of death
and heard the story of a life truer than goodness

a torn piece of the robe’s edge flopped onto
a war in southern Sudan and caused heartbeats
to skip and soldiers looked into themselves deeply

one threadbare strand of the divine belt
almost knocked over a polar bear floating
on a loose berg in the warming sea

one silky string wove its way through Jesus’ cross
and tied itself to desert-parched immigrants with swollen tongues
and a woman with ovarian cancer and two young sons

you won’t believe this, but a single hair-thin fiber
floated onto the yacht of a rich man and he gasped
when he saw everything as it really was

the hem fell to and fro across the universe
filling space and time and gaps between the sub-atomic world
with the effervescent presence of the one who is the is

and even in the slight space between lovers in bed
the holiness flows and wakes up the body
to feel beyond the feeling and know beyond the knowing

and even as we monotheize and trinitize
and speculate and doubt even our doubting
the threads of holiness trickle into our lives

and the seraphim keep singing “holy, holy, holy”
and flapping their wings like baby birds
and God says: give it a rest a while

and God takes another sip of her summertime drink
and smiles at the way you are reading this filament now
and hums: It’s a good day to be God

Happy Birthday, Church! You Were Dry Bones…. – Sermon for Pentecost (Year B) – May 27, 2012

May 27, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost Sunday (Year B): Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 104: 25-35,37; Acts 2:1-21; and John 15:26-27;16:4b-15

What happened one thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine years ago?

If we can believe the calculations of an early medieval monk named Dennis the Short, one thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine years ago today (or thereabouts) the events described in the reading from the Book of Acts took place. On this day, in about the year 33 A.D. the Christian Church was born; the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and they went out into the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming the gospel of salvation and baptizing thousands of people.

Happy Birthday, Church! Turn to someone near you and wish them “Happy Birthday!” Now turn to someone else near you and say, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!” Say to them, “Thus says the Lord God: You are dried up! You are spiritually dehydrated!”

That’s not much of a birthday greeting is it? Doesn’t really seem like a very neighborly thing to say, does it?


But that is precisely the task that was given to the prophet Ezekiel. He was shown a series of visions that he was to communicate to the people of God, to his neighbors and fellow Israelites. In one of those visions, which we heard in our Old Testament reading today, he was taken to a valley and shown a pile of bones and told that these were his neighbors to whom he was to say to them, “You are nothing more than dried up on skeletons right now, and worse than that you are not even skeletons . . . you are disconnected bones. You are so spiritually dried up that even your connective tissues, your sinews, your ligaments and tendons have turned to dust.” So he was given the task to prophesy to the wind, that is to the Spirit, to the breath of God and call that breath to enter into the bones and return them to life.

In another vision, Ezekiel was shown a grand plan for a new temple – he goes on at length recording the measurements of the temple and its furnishings, its grounds and all the land surrounding it. He is shown a river flowing from the temple through all of the lands of the world; in places it is ankle-deep; in other places it is waist-deep; in still others it is deep enough to swim it. The river, he is told, is the river of life, “everything will live where the river goes” (Ezek. 47:9). On the banks of the river are trees, “all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.” (Ezek. 47:12)

Quite a contrast . . . to call the people of God from parched desiccated bones with no life in them to a flood of living water, from spiritual dehydration to abundant life flowing from God’s temple.

Throughout the Old Testament, the prophets make use of water was a sign of God’s purifying Spirit: it was again through Ezekiel that God spoke saying, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.” (Ezek. 36:25) Speaking through the prophet Isaiah God promised: “I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring. They shall spring up like a green tamarisk, like willows by flowing streams.” (Isa. 44:3-4). It was Zechariah who predicted that on the day of the Lord “living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter.” (Zech. 14:8). There are so many examples it is not necessary to list them all. The people of First Century Israel knew all this well; their tradition was rich with it. Remember the conversation when Jesus said to Nicodemus: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” (John 3:5). Water was and always is the symbol of God who purifies, who gives birth, who gives life, who heals, and who refreshes.

And so on that day in Jerusalem one thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine years ago, when the people in the streets thought the disciples were drunk, Peter spoke up and said, “No. It is not wine! It is the Spirit of God which, like water, has been poured out upon them so that they prophesy and tell you of Jesus.” And, the Book of Acts tells us, Peter and the others told them the story of Jesus, each in their own languages; Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamian, Judeans, Cappadocians, Pontans, Asian, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libyans, Romans, Cretans, and Arabs all heard the gospel in their own tongues. And the church was born.

Those who heard Peter and the other apostles asked them, “Brothers, what should we do?”

Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” . . . So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. (Acts 2:37-39,40)

That was the task set for the disciples, the same task that was set for Ezekiel – and it is the task set for us. Each and every person in this church today who has been baptized has accepted this same task. Some may have been baptized under the rite of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer in which they (or someone on their behalf) promised to “obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of [their] life” and for them the community prayed that they would “not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified.” Some may have been baptized under the rite of the 1979 prayer book, in which all who participate, both those to be baptized and those who are already members of the church, promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” Some may have been baptized under the rites of other Christian traditions that include similar prayers and promises. In any event, the import is the same: the task set before the baptized is that which was set for Ezekiel, that which was set for the disciples in Jerusalem one thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine years ago today.

But is it possible that we are more like the people in the streets of Jerusalem than like the disciples who went out to them? More like the Israelites of Ezekiel’s time than like Ezekiel himself? Is it possible that it is we who are desiccated, dehydrated, dried-up, and dispirited? Are we in need of God’s life-giving, life-renewing, healing water?

If so, then receive it. [Each congregant was given a bottle of water when they entered the church.] I want you to give your bottle of water to someone whom you think might need some spiritual refreshment; and I want you to accept a bottle of water from someone who thinks you might need some spiritual refreshment. Let these bottles of water remind you that you are a source of refreshment to others, and that through others God provides you with spiritual renewal.

Take your bottle of water as a reminder of the prophets’ promise to God’s people, of Jesus’ promise to you: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.” Jesus also reminded us that as we slake our thirst on the living water he gives us, so we then become sources of living water to others. He went on to say, “As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” (John 7:37-38) Let this bottle of water be a reminder that you are baptized, that you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, that you promised to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” that you are a prophet of the Most High God and a minister of the Gospel, and let your faith be refreshed, restored, and reinvigorated so that you may be a source of spiritual refreshment to others.

No longer are you dried-up bones! No longer are you spiritually dehydrated! No longer is your breath taken away! No longer are you but dust! God has sent forth his Spirit and you are renewed! Sing to the Lord as long as you live; praise your God while you have your being! Declare God’s glory among the peoples!

Happy Birthday, Church! Happy One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy-Ninth Birthday!

Spare That Bull! – From the Daily Office – May 3, 2012

May 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From Psalm 50 (the Lord speaking):

12 If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the whole world is mine and all that is in it.
13 Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?
14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and make good your vows to the Most High.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 50 [from the Book of Common Prayer 1979] – May 2, 2012)

This psalm is not the only time Holy Scripture reports God’s displeasure with the sacrifice of animals. Consider these words from the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.” (Isa. 1:11-13) Despite all of the ritual directions found in the Law and in the Histories (see, e.g., Exodus 29, Leviticus 1, Numbers 7, and 1 Kings 18), the Psalmist, the first Isaiah, and especially the Prophet Micah make it very clear that sacrificing innocent animals is not what Judaism (or religion in general) is all about. Micah writes, “‘With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8) It may be that doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God may (and often does) require one to give up one’s possessions, one’s livelihood, even one’s life. But such “sacrifice” without the demanded ethical basis, sacrifice done only to curry favor with God, is not what God asks or wants. ~ It is from this ethical stream in ancient Judaism that Christianity flows. It is unfortunate that early Christian writers looked back to the sacrificial practices of the Temple to find an analog to crucifixion of Jesus; we might have seen the Christian religion develop differently if, like the writers of the Gospels, they had looked more to the prophets. Jesus certainly did: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) ~ So spare that bull! Sacrifices of animals (or their modern analogs, whatever they may be) are not the sacrifices that demonstrate love of God and love of neighbor. Rather, the core of ethical religion is as the writer of the Letter to Hebrews said: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” (Heb. 13:16)

From the Daily Office – 2 Corinthians 3:1-2 – March 28, 2012

March 28, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From Paul wrote ….

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

(From the Daily Office Readings – 2 Corinthians 3:1-2 – March 28, 2012)

Last Sunday the Year B Revised Common Lectionary for the 5th Sunday in Lent called for a reading from the Prophet Jeremiah which included these words from God, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” (Jer. 3:33) My son Patrick, who is a priest in Kansas, preached a marvelous sermon on the Jeremiah lesson which is posted on his blog. In it he makes reference to a rabbi commenting on that text, “Well, God writes his Law on our hearts so that when our heart inevitably breaks, the Law falls in.” Here Paul takes up the “writing on your heart” image applying it not to the Law but us, to the Christian community as a whole and to each individual Christian. I think the Rabbi’s words apply equally well to Paul’s use of the metaphor. When our hearts inevitably break, what falls in is no longer only the Law, but also our brothers and sisters in faith who fall into our woundedness to help us heal. ~ I remember that Christ began his ministry by reading from the Prophet Isaiah in his hometown synagogue, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me … to bind up the brokenhearted….” (Isa. 61:1, although as quoted in Luke 4:18-19 these specific words are not included). If that was part of Christ’s mission (and I believe it was), it is now our mission. ~ I remember the words of St. Teresa of Avila, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ’s compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.” So it is fitting that we are a letter written on one another’s hearts; it is fitting that we fall into one another’s hearts when they are broken, for it can only be through us that the Lord “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Ps. 147:3) ~ I remember, finally, a sermon preached when I was in seminary. It was preached on the evening of February 24, 1991, the day President George H.W. Bush ordered US forces to invade Iraq. The preacher began, as Episcopal clergy often do, with a prayer of dedication. On this day he said, “In the Name of God the Brokenhearted.” It is a turn of phrase that has stuck with me through the years; it calls to mind a verse in Scripture, “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Gen. 6:6) ~ As I read my son’s sermon, as I ponder Paul’s letter, and as I again remember that opening dedication, I wonder …. who falls into God’s heart when God’s heart is broken? Who heals the broken heart of the Healer?

Fasting Is a Given – Sermon for Lent 4B – March 18, 2012

March 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; and John 3:14-21

Continuing our series of sermons in answer to parishioner questions, today we will explore fasting. A member of the congregation asked, “What is fasting and why do we do it?”

The simple answer is that fasting is going without some or all food or drink or both for a defined period of time. An absolute fast is abstinence from all food and liquid for a period of at least one day, sometimes for several days. Other fasts may be only partially restrictive, limiting particular foods or substance. The fast may also be intermittent in nature; for example, Muslims fast during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan which is intended to teach Muslims patience, spirituality, humility, and submissiveness to God. Fasting as a spiritual practice is common to all major religions. Mahatma Gandhi once noted:

Every … religion of any importance appreciates the spiritual value of fasting … For one thing, identification with the starving poor is a meaningless term without the experience behind it. But … even an eighty-day fast may fail to rid a person of pride, selfishness, ambition, and the like. Fasting is merely a prop. But as a prop to a tottering structure is of essential value, so is the prop of fasting of inestimable value for a struggling soul.

In the Bible, the people of God in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures fasted for a variety of reasons:

  • They were facing a crisis. For example, the prophet Joel called for a fast to avert the judgment of God. (Joel 1:14, 2:12-15), and the people of Nineveh, in response to Jonah’s prophecy, fasted to forestall God’s judgment (Jonah 3:7).
  • They were seeking God’s protection and deliverance. For example, King Jehoshaphat in the Second Book of Chronicles proclaimed a fast seeking victory for Judah over the attaching Moabites and Ammonites (2 Chron. 20:3).
  • They had been called to repentance and renewal. The Psalmist, for example, in Psalm 109 cries:
    O Lord my God,
    oh, deal with me according to your Name; *
    for your tender mercy’s sake, deliver me.
    My knees are weak through fasting, *
    and my flesh is wasted and gaunt. (vv. 20,23)
  • They were asking God for guidance. Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai before he received the tablets on the mountain with God. (Deut. 9) St. Paul did not eat or drink anything for three days after he converted on the road to Damascus. (Acts 9:9)
  • They were humbling themselves in worship. The Book of Acts reports that it was with “fasting and praying” that the members of the church in Antioch “laid their hands on [Barnabas and Saul] and sent them off.” (Acts 13:3)

So fasting has a long and venerable history in all religions including our own. Indeed, Jesus assumed that his followers would fast. You may remember the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel which is always read on Ash Wednesday in which Jesus admonishes the disciples:

Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:16-18)

In this passage Jesus doesn’t say, “If you pray … if you give … if you fast” but rather “when you pray … when you give … when you fast.” He simply expected his followers to do so. Did you know that fasting is mentioned more than 30 times in the New Testament? For a Christian, then, fasting is not an option. It should not be an oddity. Fasting, according to Jesus, is just a given.

During this season of Lent when we “give something up,” we are engaging in the spiritual discipline of the fast. We do so in remembrance of and in solidarity with Jesus during his forty days in the desert. We do so in remembrance of and in solidarity with our spiritual ancestors, the Hebrews, who spent forty years in the desert, often without food or sustenance. In today’s reading from the Book of Numbers, for example, “The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.’” God’s wrath, of course, was kindled against them because of their complaining, but they were humbled by their privation. When we “give up something” (whether it be food or drink or some other thing that we enjoy), we are fasting and our fasting is a reminder of our own humility and own hunger for God. By refusing to feed our physical appetites, what St. Paul in today’s epistle lesson calls “the passions of our flesh” or “the desires of flesh and senses,” we become aware of our spiritual hunger.

The Baptist preacher and author John Piper, in his book A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer, encourages fasting with these words:

If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast, “This much, O God, I want you.” (Pg 23)

Fasting is a way to bring into view those things we may need most to set aside but of which we are often unaware. In today’s lesson from John’s Gospel, Jesus tells Nicodemus that in the coming of the Son, “light has come into the world” and then says:

All who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3:20-21)

In his book Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, Quaker theologian Richard Foster commends fasting as a way of bringing things to light:

More than any other single discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. This is a wonderful benefit to the true disciple who longs to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface. If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. David said, “I humbled myself with fasting” (Ps. 69:10). Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear – if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. At first we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger; then we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ. (Pg. 48)

But when we fast, we must not delude ourselves into believing that the fasting itself is earning us any “brownie points” – it is not through our good deeds, including our fasting, that we earn salvation. Indeed, we cannot earn salvation. St. Paul reminds us of that forcefully in today’s epistle: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)

Thinking that the act of fasting itself could earn God’s reward was condemned by God speaking through the Prophet Isaiah:

[You say,] “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. (Isa. 58:3-8)

So fasting is a spiritual discipline, but only when done with the proper prayerful attitude, the proper religious understanding – when done “in secret” as Jesus said in the Ash Wednesday reading from Matthew’s Gospel. Fasting is not so much about food, as it is about focus. It is not so much about saying “No” to the body, as it is about saying “Yes” to the Spirit. It is not about doing without; it is about looking within. It is an outward manifestation to an inward cry of the soul, a surfacing of those things that need to be brought to light, not to be condemned, but to be saved.

Let us pray:

Support us, O Lord, with your gracious favor through our Lenten fast; that as we observe it by bodily self-denial, so we may fulfill it with inner sincerity of heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Adapted from Holy Women, Holy Men, Collect for Friday after Ash Wednesday, pg. 34)

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