That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Isaiah (Page 8 of 14)

Uncounted, Unnamed Children – Sermon for August 3, 2014, Pentecost 8, Proper 13A

August 3, 2014 / / 1 Comment

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On the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, August 3, 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: Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 145: 8-9,15-22; Romans 9:1-5; and Matthew 14:13-21. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Tabgha Mosaic - Loaves and FishToday we are witnesses to one of the great and popular miracles of the gospel story, the feeding of the 5,000, which is actually the feeding of many more than that — notice the last few words of the gospel lesson text: “those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.” (v. 21, emphasis added) Matthew gives little thought to the men’s wives or their uncounted, unnamed children.

I would like to put us in context, both in time and space, so we have a fuller picture of what we have just witnessed. Matthew tells this story in the middle of chapter 14 of his gospel. In chapter 13 he related all those parables told by Jesus sitting in a boat off the shore of the Galilean lake at Capernaum, but at the end of the chapter he doesn’t leave Jesus sitting in the boat. Instead, he tells us that “when Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place [and] came to his hometown,” which would be Nazareth. (Mt 13:53-54) (You may recall that that didn’t go well: Jesus was heard to say that ” prophets are not without honor except in their own country” – v. 57)

Then, at the beginning of chapter 14 Matthew leaves Jesus altogether and tells us about the beheading of John the Baptist, which took place Sebastia, about 36 miles south of Nazareth. Matthew then brings us back to Jesus saying at the beginning of our lesson today that upon hearing the news of John’s execution, Jesus “withdrew in a boat to a deserted place.” (14:13)

Since Nazareth is not on any river or lake, I’m not sure how he did that! Here’s my difficulty: Nazareth is about 20 miles due west of the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee. In order to “withdraw in a boat” he’d have had to walk for a day or two first. It’s possible though.

Near by Nazareth, about four miles away, is the city of Sepphoris, believed to be the Virgin Mary’s hometown. In Jesus’ time it was a Roman city and may have been where craftsmen from Nazareth, like Joseph, worked. There probably was regular commerce between Sepphoris and the Roman city of Tiberias on Galilee; today there is a highway between them. Jesus may have walked to Tiberias and then gotten in a boat to make his way back to Capernaum (about 10 miles north along the shore).

Tradition tells us that the feeding of the 5,000 (or more) took place about three miles south of Capernaum at a place called Tabgha, or al-Tabigha in Arabic, a name derived from the Greek name Heptapegon meaning “seven springs”. As early as the Fourth Century there was a shrine at the identified location. A pilgrim woman from Spain named Egeria chronicled her travels in the Holy Land around the year 384 and, about Tabgha, wrote: “In the same place (not far from Capernaum) facing the Sea of Galilee is a well watered land in which lush grasses grow, with numerous trees and palms. Nearby are seven springs which provide abundant water. In this fruitful garden Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish.” (Egeria, of course, has thought only of the men, not their wives or their uncounted, unnamed children.)

In the floor of that shrine was a mosaic of loaves and fishes which has become famous throughout the Christian world. It is reproduced on your bulletin cover and is now preserved in the floor before the altar of the Church of the Multiplication, a Benedictine monastery church built at the site. The place is about a mile inland from the shore of Lake Galilee.

One last detail must be attended to and that is the question, “Could there really have been that many people there?” Possibly. That’s the best answer one can give. There are many towns and cities close enough to Tabgha that, if word got around that a miracle worker were there, people could have gotten there within a day or less of good solid walking, more quickly if they could ride a donkey or camel. Sepphoris had a population 40,000 or more, and Tiberias may have been of similar size; both were within a day’s journey. Capernaum probably had a population of 2,000 or more. The city of Chorazin, which Jesus (by the way) had cursed, is nearby. Migdala Nunia, the hometown of Mary Magdalene, is nearby. A large, m ixed crowd of Jews, Romans, and other Gentiles could easily have gathered. Matthew may be exaggerating, but even if he has increased the number of men tenfold, we are still witnessing something wonderful. Jesus is able to feed a whole lot more people than he ought with two fish and a few loaves of bread.

So that’s when and where we are as we witness this scene of Jesus providing lunch for an unbelievably huge number of people. We are on a hillside a mile from the Sea of Galilee where Jesus has gone in an attempt to get away by himself. He has just recently had a negative experience in Nazareth; he has just heard about the execution of his cousin John; he has tried to get away from it all, but the people have followed him and now find themselves with nothing to eat. And so they have turned to Jesus’ disciples, to the Twelve (who seem also to have followed him) and asked them for food. And the Twelve are at loss about what to do. They have taken stock and they simply do not believe that they can feed all these men, to say nothing of the women and the uncounted, unnamed children.

So they have a very reasonable suggestion for Jesus: “Send them away. Tell them to go back where they came from, or if that is too far away then to one of the nearer towns, and buy themselves something to eat. We cannot feed all these men and their women and their unnamed, uncounted children.”

Send them away! We do not have enough to share with these children who are fleeing drug wars and violence in Central America and illegally crossing our border and . . . .

O, wait . . . I’m mixing up my stories, sorry. This isn’t the Mexican border. This is the Holy Land. Right . . . .

Send them away! We do not have enough to share with these Palestinian children with their demands for civil liberty and a country of their own and . . . .

O, darn. I’ve done it again, mixed up my stories. This isn’t Gaza; this is the Galilee. Right . . . .

But the stories are easy to mix up. Unnamed people in need, unnamed children in need, and the response at the Mexican border is the response in Gaza is the response on that hillside at Tabgha. Send them away! Get rid of them! And whatever you do don’t count the children, don’t name the children, don’t even think of them as children.

Think of them as “law breakers.” Think of them as “illegal immigrants.” Think of them as “migrant hispanics.” And send them away. Get rid of them.

A few days ago, a major news organization quoted a North Carolina politician as saying (and, as God is my witness, I am not making this up): “To me, they’re breaking the law when they come here. If we can’t turn them back, I think if we pop a couple of them off and leave the corpses laying on the border, maybe they’ll see that we’re serious about stopping immigration.” (Raw Story)

Send them away! Get rid of them! And whatever you do don’t count them, don’t name them, don’t even think of them as children.

A few days after the current fighting in and around Gaza started a U.N. school was bombed — Hamas claimed it was an Israeli shell; Israel claimed it was an errant Hamas rocket; but to the seventeen children who died that was really irrelevant. The numbers of Palestinian dead began to rise and a disproportionate number of the dead every day are kids. By July 23, over 600 Gazans had died, 150 of them children. On that day, international aid agencies were reporting that “a child had been killed in Gaza on average every hour for the preceding two days, and more than 70,000 children had been forced to flee their homes.” (The Guardian)

That week, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem offered for radio broadcast a public service advertisement listing the names of some of the children. The Israeli Broadcasting Authority banned the ad saying its content was “politically controversial.” B’Tselem appealed and in its appeal said: “Is it controversial that the children [aren’t] alive? That they’re children? That those are their names? These are facts that we wish to bring to the public’s knowledge.” Its appeal was denied and the names of the children have never been published in Israel.

Whatever you do don’t count the children, don’t name the children, don’t even think of them as children. Think of them as “collateral damage.” Think of them as “Hamas sympathizers.” Think of them as “dirty Palestinians.” But send them away. Get rid of them.

On learning that the advertisement had been banned, the respected British children’s author Michael Rosen wrote a poem. Rosen, for two years, was British Children’s Laureate and has written more than 140 books for children. He is, incidentally, an ethnic Jew. This is his poetic response to the Broadcasting Authority’s ban:

Don’t mention the children.
Don’t name the dead children.
The people must not know the names
of the dead children.
The names of the children must be hidden.
The children must be nameless.
The children must leave this world . . .
having no names.
No one must know the names of
the dead children.
No one must say the names of the
dead children.
No one must even think that the children
have names.
People must understand that it would be dangerous
to know the names of the children.
The people must be protected from
knowing the names of the children.
The names of the children could spread
like wildfire.
The people would not be safe if they knew
the names of the children.
Don’t name the dead children.
Don’t remember the dead children.
Don’t think of the dead children.
Don’t say: ‘dead children’.
(Don’t Name the Dead Children)

“Send them away,” said the Twelve, “Get rid of them.” Jesus answer took them by surprise: “You feed them,” he said. And he proceeded to show them how they could, to prove to them that with whatever resources they had, they could care for those 5,000 men and their wives and their uncounted, unnamed children.

LambsAbout a mile away from the spot where that happened, on the beach of the Sea of Galilee is another church. It is called by two names. One is the Church of the Primacy of Peter; the other is Mensa Domini, the Lord’s Table. It marks the place where, after his Resurrection, the Lord appeared to his disciples and cooked for them a breakfast of broiled fish. As they ate, Jesus asked Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter

said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” (Jn 21:15-17)

On the Mexican border, in the person of our brothers and sisters who work in Episcopal Border Ministry or Episcopal Migration Ministry, we meet those refugee children fleeing violence and death in Central America . . . In Gaza, in the person of our sisters and brothers of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem who work in the hospitals and clinics our own Good Friday offerings support, we meet the Palestinian children facing bombs and rockets and death . . . And when we meet those uncounted and still in the media unnamed children, we are just like the Twelve standing on that hillside at Tabgha looking at those 5,000 men and their wives and their unnamed, uncounted children and wondering, “How are we going to deal with this?” Some of us will want to say “Send them away we can’t handle this,” but Jesus says to us as he said to the Twelve, “Feed them.”

Jesus asks us what he asked Simon, son of John, on that beach, “Do you love me?” And if our answer is “Yes” he will name those children: he will name them “my lambs,” and what he said to Peter he will say to us, “Feed my lambs.”

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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.

Following Our Own Devices Doesn’t Work – From the Daily Office – July 12, 2014

July 12, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Romans:

Of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 10:21 (NRSV) – July 12, 2014)

Israeli Security Barricade in BethlehemPaul quotes Isaiah here. His translation was obviously rather different from the rendering in the New Revised Standard Version, but the meaning is the same: “I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices.” (Isa 65:2)

The point cannot be made strongly enough nor forcefully enough nor clearly enough that the modern nation-state of Israel is not the biblical people of Israel, and yet these words of condemnation can be fully understood to apply to the modern country.

Having spent two weeks in the Holy Land, I’ve seen what the nation of Israel is doing to the Palestinian people, and I can fully understand (if not entirely sympathize with) the anger and frustration that have overflowed into violence. I understand the intifadas.

I have walked beside the tall, concrete, barbed-wire-topped, machine-gun-equipped, guard-tower-punctuated, grafitti-defaced wall that Israel has built through the Palestinian homeland. Israel calls it a “security barricade,” and its defenders like to point out that many stretches of it are “simply a fence” (a barbed-wire and chain-link fence, one notes). Whatever one calls it, it has ghettoized Palestinians (both Muslims and Christians), created what are essentially “reservations” of Arabs (not unlike the reservations the United States created for Native Americans), and separated people from their loved ones and their livelihoods (many farmers, herd and flock owners, and orchard owners have been cut off from and denied access to their fields, their pastures, and their orchards). Those who build such things “walk in a way that is not good” and “follow their own devices.”

The barricade is just one part of a much larger social program of oppression being practiced by the Israelis against the original inhabitants of the land they moved onto in 1948 and the lands they have occupied since 1967: poor schools, inadequate social services, intermittent (or non-existent) provision of utilities, segregation, creation of high quality roads on which it is illegal for Palestinians to travel through their own country, denial of import and export rights to Palestinian business, and the list could go on.

Why? As I listened to Israeli Jews defend this state of affairs, the bottom-line justification always seems to come back to the Holocaust. “Never again,” they say. And what they seem to mean is, “Never again to us . . . so we do it to someone else.” That’s what it is, a paying forward of bad stuff, really truly awful stuff!, done to them. When it was done to them, it was the paying forward of bad stuff done to Germany in the aftermath of the First World War. When it was done to Germany, it was a paying forward of bad stuff done to other Europeans. And one could probably trace it all back and back and back to first bad stuff done by someone to someone.

Will it stop here? If (as an Israeli commander is recently quoted as saying) the Israelis “wipe out” people seen as “enemies of God” (they aren’t, by the way) will it end? No, obviously not. Genocide has been tried before and it doesn’t work. No people can “wipe out” another, and in the current context that is painfully obvious. The Palestinian diaspora will still be there and eventually they would pay it back to Israel or pay it forward to someone else.

It will only stop, it will only end if all the people of God, all the children of Abraham — Jewish, Muslim, and Christian — can come together as equals and agree to stop it. So long as we rely on our own devices, so long as we are contrary and disobedient the conflict and the killing will go on. Only by relying on the faithfulness of God can this horror be brought to an end. As the last of today’s evening Psalms says:

Praise the Lord, all you nations;
laud him, all you peoples.
For his loving-kindness toward us is great,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever.
Hallelujah!
(Ps 117, BCP Version)

Following our own devices doesn’t and won’t work. Only relying on God’s faithfulness can and will.

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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.

Many Paths: Another Day in the Holy Land – From the Lectionary – July 1, 2014

July 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Isaiah:

The way of the righteous is level;
O Just One, you make smooth the path of the righteous.
In the path of your judgments,
O Lord, we wait for you;
your name and your renown
are the soul’s desire.

(From the Sanctoral Lectionary [Harriet Beecher Stowe] – Isaiah 26:7-8 (NRSV) – July 1, 2014)

What a day this was! We began early, early in the morning, boarding the bus at 4:30 a.m. with no breakfast and a drive from Jerusalem to Jericho.

We got off the highway and trundled through small roads to a scenic overlook called Mizpe Yeriho (I believe it means “view of Jericho”) where we watched the sunrise over the Wadi Qelt, a tributary stream of the Jordan in the Jericho valley.

Each in the silence of his or her thoughts observed the sunrise and then it was my privilege to celebrate the Eucharist in this desolate desert place. Iyad had brought pita and wine, the necessary vessels, and a stole. I was surprised to see that the stole was a duplicate for the natural-colored, green-embroidered stole I had purchased on the Isle of Iona three years ago while on sabbatical. It was as if I were wearing my own stole!

While we celebrated, a Bedouin tribesman showed up and began laying out his wares — stone bead necklaces, bone and stone bracelets. I was facing away from him so could not see what others reported, that he was obviously elderly, obviously in some early morning pain, obviously unhappy to have to be there so early but there nonetheless to do what he does to support his family. It was both a distraction and a reminder that the Eucharist is never separated from context, and the Body of Christ (the church) is always surrounded by the people it is called to meet and serve.

After that we drove to Jericho and had breakfast in a lovely old resort garden accompanied by a little Pekingese-looking little mutt and a small orange tabby cat. Next after breakfast was a cable car trip (the hanging-gondola style cable car) up what is known as the mount of the Temptations. Tradition here teaches that Jesus spent the forty days in the desert in a cave outside of Jericho (now just on the outskirts of the modern city) and it was there that Satan offered him the Temptations. The cave has, for centuries, been incorporated into a Russian Orthodox monastery and church. Four aged monks now live in the monastery and support themselves by seeking pilgrim donations. (The similarity between the old Bedouin man at our sunrise Mass and the old Russian monk who offered us prayer candles for $1 each was striking!)

We were unable to stop at Tel Yeriho, the archaeological dig of ancient Jericho, but we could see if from the cable car gondolas. Our next stop was at the Sepphoris (modern Zippori) site; Sepphoris was the ancient capital of Galilee and it has been extensively excavated. It is a few miles from Nazareth and is probably where Joseph (and maybe Jesus) worked as a builder. We had a discussion here of the meaning of tekton, the Greek word often translated as “carpenter” but which more accurately means “craftsman” or “artisan” or “builder” (and sometimes “stonemason”). In this environment, “carpenter” seems a very inaccurate translation!

In Sepphoris, our guide Iyad, gave me the broken handle of a First Century vessel as a prize for answering a question accurately – my answer was a guess! The question was “How do we know there was a Jewish community at Sepphoris?” I guessed that it was the discovery of a mikvah (the community’s facility for ritual bathing) among the ruins. Turned out to be right.

From Sepphoris we came to Nazareth and first visited the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation. Greek tradition teaches that Mary was greeted by the Archangel Gabriel at the town well and this church is built over the ancient well. There is some great iconography in this church, including one of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt which depicts Joseph carrying Jesus on his shoulders.

We then walked to the Roman Catholic basilica. Western tradition holds that the Annunciation happened at Mary’s home and this church is built over what is believed to be her home. Originally, Antonio Barluzzi (many of whose churches we have seen) was to have built this church but, after he worked 20 years on the design, the project was awarded to a French architect in the 1960s. It is very massive and very typical French mid-century modern. In my opinion, it’s awful – it has all the spiritual wonder of a subway station.

In the church are depictions of Mary donated by the R.C. Episcopal Conferences of the several countries. The American piece is supposed to represent the “woman clothed with the sun” — an Old Testament image understood to refer to Mary — and it fits the church. It’s a disaster! Just my opinion . . . .

Our guest house was almost literally on the doorstep of the basilica, just half a block up a short street from the front door. And just beyond, the Anglican church in Nazareth, Christ Church. Unfortunately, it was not opened at any time during our stay in Nazareth.

This was a day of many paths, not many of them straight and not many of level, but all of them leading to spiritual enlightenment. I am physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted at this point and sorting it all out is an effort. So I’m putting it all in God’s hands, trusting that what I need to have learned, I will have learned.

Post by That Which We Have Heard & Known.

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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.

God’s Butt – From the Daily Office – May 14, 2014

May 14, 2014 / / 2 Comments

From the Book of Exodus:

The Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Exodus 33:17-23 (NRSV) – May 14, 2014)

Detail of Sistine Chapel - God's backsideThe translators of the NRSV are a bunch of prudes; a better translation of the last verse of this section would be “. . . you shall see my butt.”

The term “my back” is a translation of the Hebrew term ‘achowr which, incidentally, is a plural noun; when this is used of an animal, the translation is usually “hindquarters” or something of that nature, which apparently is inappropriate with respect to God. In the 3rd Century Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, it is translated into the odd construction ta hopiso mou, “the behinds of me.” When St. Jerome translated the Vulgate Latin version in the 4th Century, he also retained the plural, posteriora mea, “my posteriors.” The translators of the Authorized version of 1611 did so, as well, “my back parts.” In other words, my backside, my ass end, my buttocks!

So the NRSV editors are just a bunch of prudes! Or maybe they are just being prudish for a contemporary American audience which has become obsessed with . . . what? sex? nudity? titillation?

Recently there was a news article about an attractive 17-year-old young woman who was expelled from a homeschoolers’ prom event because, although her dress met the dress code requirements, it was considered to titillating for the fathers watching the dancers from the balcony! I hesitate to say that this event was billed as a dance for “Christian” homeschoolers, because the published reports reveal a good deal of unchristian behavior from the leering of the fathers to the disrespect shown the young lady and her escort by the chief chaperone of the event. (The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s report yesterday of the incident is here.)

And the question of respect is really what this episode between Moses and God raises for me.

I’m not sure when the “look at God’s face and die” notion arose among the Hebrews, but it isn’t there in the earliest stories of the bible. Adam and Eve seem to carry on face-to-face conversations with God with no ill effect and, when God shows up in the guise of three strangers at the oaks of Mamre, Abraham sits and talks with them over a lamb dinner and does not succumb. But, in any event, the Hebrews somehow got the idea that one shows greatest respect for God by averting one’s gaze and thus this story and, later, Isaiah’s fear that he will die because of his experience in seeing a vision of God in the heavenly throne room: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa 6:5)

Human cultures differ on how to show respect to elders. Some adopt this averted-gaze position; others (my forebears among them) insist on looking people in the eyes. I can remember quite vividly both of my grandfathers forcefully insisting that I look them squarely in the face when in conversation; looking away even briefly was considered either as disrespect or as possible evidence of untruthfulness.

What this suggests to me is that we humans don’t actually know how to respect one another! The story of the really (in my opinion) bad treatment of the young woman at the prom is simply more evidence of that. And, if we don’t know how to respect another human being, we certainly do not know how to respect God.

Respect requires maturity; showing proper respect to another person, human or god, is a mark of adulthood. Perhaps that is the point of today’s story of Moses and God, neither Moses nor the Hebrews (nor, for that matter, any of humanity) were yet mature enough to have a respectful face-to-face relationship with the Almighty, so God did what God could.

Moses is permitted to see God’s butt because God was lowering God’s self to develop a relationship with Moses and, through him and the Hebrews, with all humanity, a relationship that hopefully would grow and mature. In giving Moses this vision, God revealed both a special affection for his favorite and a hope for the eventual adulthood of the human race. The gaze of those lustful old men in the balcony focused on the young prom-goer’s butt suggests we still have a long way to go!

The indecorous nature of God’s backside reveals the extent to which God is willing to humble God’s self out of respect for human beings; someday, perhaps, we’ll learn to show respect as well.

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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.

Grandparental Nicknames – From the Daily Office – May 10, 2014

May 10, 2014 / / 1 Comment

From Matthew’s Gospel:

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake — for they were fishermen.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 4:18 (NRSV) –May 10, 2014)

Grandfather NicknamesSometime this fall, probably during October, my wife and I will become grandparents for the first time. Last night, a friend asked, “What will you be called?” Because the question came out of the blue (we hadn’t been discussing children or grandchildren), I didn’t know what he was asking — and my face must have shown it. “As grandfather,” he clarified, “what will you be called as a grandparent?”

Good question. Is it really up to me? Do I get to say, “I want to be called [something]”? If so, I’d like to be called by one of the Irish nicknames: “Daideó” (pronounced “DAH-doe”) or “Móraí” (pronounced “MO-ree”) or “Papaí” (pronounced “PAH-pee”). The actual word for “grandfather” in Irish is seanathair which means “old father” or (in older Irish) “wise father”; an alternative is athair mór which means “great father” (“great” here is more akin to “big” than to “wonderful”).

But is it really up to me? Families have long-running traditions about naming grandparents, I think. Every grandmother (for the three generations I have known) on both sides of my family was known as “Grammy” — my mother called hers “Grammy Buss” and “Grammy Sargent”; mine were “Grammy Grace” and “Grammy Edna” (we were a less formal generation, I guess), and my mother was “Grammy Betty” to our children.

Grandfathers were less uniformly addressed. I don’t know what my greatgrandfathers were called; both were long dead when I was born. My maternal grandfather, Richard Sargent, was “Daddy Rich” (a combination of what my mother and grandmother called him); my paternal grandfather was “C.E.” (what everyone called him) or, less frequently, “Granddad.” My father was deceased when his grandchildren were born, so if he was referred to at all it was as “your grandfather, York”; my stepfather, Stan Shivers, was called “GrandStan” by my niece and nephew and my children.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the first-born grandchildren get to make the decision. My brother was nearly ten years older than me, and I had two older paternal cousins, so by the time I came along grandparental names were pretty much cast in stone. We have nieces and nephews several years older than our own children, so they had settled the issue on both sides long before our kids had a say.

All of this comes to mind this morning because of “Simon, who is called Peter.” It was Jesus who gave him that name: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” (Mt 16:18) For many years, I wondered why Jesus gave Simon this nickname and thought it was simply out of affection — it’s nearly the equivalent of “Rocky” and since Simon Peter often seems as dense as a bag of rocks, that made sense.

But I’ve come recently (while studying the prophets with an Education for Ministry group) to believe that Jesus is following in the tradition of Isaiah and, since he has no son to name, he is giving Simon a symbolic prophetic nickname in the same way that prophet named his children. Isaiah named his sons Shear-jashub, which means “the remnanet shall return,” and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, which means “he has hurried to plunder,” as signs against Judah and Jerusalem. I think Jesus gave Simon the new name Peter in a similar way, as a prophetic sign to the church.

Shear-jashub, Maher-shalal-has-baz, and Simon Peter had no say in the matter. So I still wonder with respect to this question of grandparental naming, is it really up to me?

And I wonder if grandparental naming is a prophetic activity. Does the name chosen shape the relationship? Does it portend what the relationship will be? Certainly, one would suspect that if a child is taught to call its grandfather “Grandfather,” that relationship will be rather different than that of a child who calls his or her grandfather “Grampa.” But do “Granddad” or “Papaí” or “Nano” shape the bond differently? And, if so, how?

This matter of choosing a grandparental nickname is serious stuff . . . assuming it really is up to 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.

Salted with Fire – From the Daily Office – April 8, 2014

April 8, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel of Mark:

Jesus said: “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Mark 9:49-50 (NRSV) – April 8, 2014.)

Fiery Human FiguresAs Mark constructs his version of the story of Jesus, the Lord has just advised his followers to cut off body parts that might cause them to sin saying it is better to enter Heaven maimed than to be thrown into Hell where “the fire is never quenched.” To this admonition, then, Mark adds this statement about salt.

Has Mark just taken some disparate sayings of Jesus both of which talk of fire and put them together? That’s one theory. Or is Mark accurately relaying a conversation between Jesus and his disciples and, if so, is Jesus suggesting that everyone will be “salted” with hellfire and is he saying that this is a good thing?

The hellfire in question is the fire of Gehenna; the Greek word translated as “hell” in the passage is géennan. This is a reference to the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned; thus, it is a metaphor or symbol for wickedness and its destruction.

The “salting” of which Jesus speaks may be simple seasoning, or it may be the use of salt as a food preservative. If the latter understanding applies, Jesus would seem to be saying that everyone will be “preserved” through the purging, the burning away of wickedness and sin. And this makes sense immediately following upon his startling admonition to cut off and dispose of hands, feet, or eyes which might cause one to “stumble.”

A common image for living through troubles and hardships is “going through the fire.” It’s a biblical metaphor drawn from the prophet Isaiah: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” (Isa 43:2) Another prophet, Zechariah, understood such “walking through fire” to have the purgative and preservative effect to which Jesus seems to be alluding: ” I will put [the remnant of Israel] into the fire, refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.'” (Zech 13:9)

One of my favorite hymns, How Firm a Foundation, includes a verse based on this prophecy:

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

I believe it is to this “refining by fire” that Jesus’ deceptively simple statement, “Everyone will be salted with fire,” refers. At one time or another, everyone will be “salted” with hellfire, and as troublesome and even painful as that may be at the time, it is a good thing.

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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.

Blind to Community – Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year A) – March 30, 2014

March 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; and John 9:1-41. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Jesus Heals the Man Born BlindTwo weeks ago our Gospel lesson was the story of Nicodemus with whom Jesus discussed birth. Jesus talked about being born anew, being born of spirit, but Nicodemus could only think of physical birth and talked about crawling back into his mother’s womb. The words were all about birth, but the lesson wasn’t really about birth, at all. It was, as we all know, about a new life in Christ, about becoming a new person through the power of God.

Last week, we heard the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Jesus asked her for a drink and they talked about water. Jesus said that he could supply living water and that whoever drank it would never be thirsty and would live forever; she thought he was talking about physical water, so she asked for some so that she wouldn’t have to come to the well everyday. The words were all about water, but the lesson wasn’t really about water, at all. It was, as we all know, about sustaining the life of begun in new birth, about the constant refreshment of one’s spirit through the power of God.

Today, we have the story of the man born blind whom Jesus cures by applying a poultice of mud made with dust and spittle. The disciples want to know why he is blind: is it because he sinned or because his parents sinned. The people who knew the man as a blind beggar want to know if it’s really him: they don’t recognize him when he comes back to them sighted. The Pharisees want to know if any law was broken when his sight was restored: it happened on a sabbath and the healing might have constituted work. The words are all about blindness and sight, but . . . guess what? . . . the lesson isn’t really about sight or blindness, at all. So what’s this story about?

Let’s leave that question for a moment and remember what day this is, why it is we have flowers on the altar in the middle of Lent, why (if we had them) we would be using rose colored vestments today, and why (if we were the Crawleys of Downton Abbey) the servants would be away today. The answer to all those questions is that today is Mid-Lent, the fourth Sunday of the season, sometimes called Laetare Sunday or Refreshment Sunday or Mothering Sunday.

That Latin name (which means “Rejoicing Sundy”) comes from the practice of the medieval church which used, on Fourth Lent, an opening sentence derived from the Prophet Isaiah to begin the Mass

Laetare Jerusalem: et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam . . . .

Rejoice, O Jerusalem: and come together all you that love her . . . .

With this admonition to “rejoice,” the sobriety of Lent was lessened which was liturgically symbolized by replacing the penitential purple or violet vestments with rose colored garb for the clergy. Of interest to us in connection with our Gospel lesson, however, is the second admonition of the medieval introit: “Come together all you who love her.” Keep that in mind.

The name “Mothering Sunday” may come from the traditional epistle lesson read on this Sunday prior to the advent of the new lectionaries. In the English church, that lesson came from the Letter to the Galatians in which St. Paul refers to Jerusalem as “our mother” (Gal. 4:26). Perhaps because of that lesson, a tradition began in the early Renaissance (if not earlier) of people returning to their mother church, either the place where they were raised or the cathedral of their diocese. This was a particularly British and Irish tradition, but it was also observed in some places in continental Europe. Those who made the trek were commonly said to have gone “a-mothering,” hence the name Mothering Sunday. As the tradition continued, it became a custom of the aristocracy to give the day to their domestic servants as a day off to visit their mother church, and their own mothers and families. It also became a tradition for children to pick wild flowers along the way to place in the church or to give to their mothers, so we have flowers in church. Visiting one’s place and family of origin, then, is another hint, I think, to the meaning of today’s Gospel lesson.

Because of the gathering of families on Mothering Sunday, the Lenten fast was relaxed and it became known as “Refreshment Sunday.” There are special baked treats made for this day called “Simnel Cakes” and “Mothering Buns.” The first is an almond paste and candied fruit bread similar to, but not as heavy as, fruitcake. The second are sweet rolls topped with white icing and multi-colored sprinkles known in England as “the hundreds and thousands.” It’s believed that both traditions, like others I’ve mentioned, stem from a biblical passage traditionally used on this Sunday, in this case the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:5-14). Another old name for this day is “the Sunday of the Five Loaves” which these cakes represent.

A last “fun fact” about the Fourth Sunday in Lent. There is, for example, a very peculiar English custom associated with it called “clipping the church.” The word “clipping,” however, has nothing to do with cutting or with coupons in the newspaper; it is apparently from the an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning to clasp or to embrace. In “clipping the church,” the congregation form a ring around their church building and, holding hands, embrace it. If the weather were better (and the building smaller), I’d suggest we do that! (Apparently, “clipping the church” is also done on Shrove Tuesday and on the Monday of Easter week. I’m not sure why it’s ever done!)

So what do all these traditions of the Fourth Sunday in Lent have in common: an introit admonishing those who love Jerusalem to gather together; a tradition of return home and gathering with one’s family; special cakes commemorating the feeding of 5,000 people on a hillside in the Holy Land; and the members of a congregation holding hands and embracing their church building. If I were to suggest one word to name the commonality, it would be “community.” And I want to suggest to you that community is what the story of the healing of the man blind from birth is all about, although everyone in the story (other than Jesus) is unable to appreciate that, just as Nicodemus did not appreciate that the conversation about birth was not about birth and the Samaritan woman did not understand that the discussion of water was not about water.

So it’s about community in a sort of negative way . . . when the blind man is healed he goes back home to his neighborhood, and what happens?

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking . . . . (Jn. 9:8-10)

They don’t even recognize him! Without the defining characteristic of his handicap, they can’t relate to him; they don’t even know who he is! Some community, huh?

And then, once he convinces them that he is who he says he is, what do they do? They question the process and the procedure and the legality of the healing. They take him to the Pharisees, to whom he has to give a detailed explanation of the mud, and even with that the Pharisees suggest that he’s lying to them, or that his parents were lying, that he wasn’t ever really blind: “The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them.” (Jn 9:18) And when they are finally convinced that he was blind and has been given his sight, they say it isn’t legal because Jesus did it on the Sabbath. And, in the end, this poor man, whose healing should be a source of rejoicing and celebration, is not embraced by his community; he is expelled! “And they drove him out.” (Jn. 9:34)

It’s really quite sad. This miraculous thing happens in their midst — “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind” (Jn. 9:32) — and not a single one of them praises God for the healing. No one says, “Hallelujah!” No one congratulates the man who now has his sight! No one, not even his parents, says, “That’s great! We’re pleased.” The eyes of one man were opened . . . but because those around him could not see the wonder there was nothing but turmoil. Some community, huh?

In this awful way, this negative way, this story is not about blindness; it’s not about sight. It’s about community or, really, the failure of community. It underscores by their pronounced absence the terrible important of all the things the old medieval and renaissance traditions of this Fourth Sunday of Lent emphasize: gathering with family, rejoicing with friends, embracing the church, being in community.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, open our eyes that we may see you in our families, in our churches, in our communities, in the lives of all our sisters and brothers; open our minds that we may understand their sorrows and their pain, their hopes and their dreams, their triumphs and their joys; open our hearts to give generously of ourselves; grant us wisdom to respond effectively to the needs of your people with grace and compassion, to their blessings with thanksgiving and delight; give us the courage to speak your words of life, peace, love, mercy, gratitude, and human community; through him with whom in the company of the Holy Spirit you form the community we call the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ. 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.

Feet? – From the Daily Office – March 25, 2014

March 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Isaiah:

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 52:7 (NRSV) – March 25, 2014.)

Sandaled FeetIt may be pedestrian of me, but I can’t stop thinking of the messenger’s feet and whether this passage of Isaiah is really very well chosen as the Old Testament lesson for Morning Prayer on the Feast of the Annunciation! Reading the rest of the lesson with its message of redemption and salvation, one can see why it is set out in the special set of Daily Office readings for this feast day, but I can’t get my mind off the feet.

I’m part of a weekly bible study group that, a couple of months ago, read through and discussed the Book of Ruth. It was news to one of our members that the term feet was used there (when Ruth uncovers Boaz’s feet on the threshing floor) as a metaphor for male genitalia; so . . . now when we encounter the word in any other context, the question “Is this metaphorical?” always pops up. I don’t believe Isaiah is being metaphorical in that way here.

What occurs to me about the passage is another question, “Do archangels even have feet?” We know that seraphim do because of Isaiah’s description in Chapter 6: “Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.” (Isa. 6:2) Artistic renditions of the Annunciation seem generally to show at least one of Gabriel’s feet, but then Gabriel is generally depicted in human form which I’m not sure is all that accurate.

In my two favorite pictures of this story, those by Fra Angelico and by Sandro Botticelli, Mary does not seem very interested in the messenger’s feet (or foot). In the former, she looks absolutely distracted and doesn’t appear to be looking at the archangel at all. In the latter, apparently recoiling from the message, her gaze is downcast, but she seems to looking at her own feet rather than Gabriel’s; perhaps she is contemplating running away.

The feet of messengers also have a bit of walk-on part in the regular lessons for Tuesday in the third week of Lent. In the gospel reading from Mark, Jesus sends the Twelve out in pairs to preach his message but tells them, “If they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” (Mk. 6:11) And, yes, bible study partner, Jesus is using feet metaphorically, but not in that Book of Ruth way. Here, as in Isaiah’s prophecy, the metaphor is the message; the messenger’s feet are the foundation of the good news. They can be appreciated for their beauty or rejected and turned away.

When I think of feet, of looking at feet, of considering the appearance or beauty of feet, I remember a bit of verse by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Your Feet:

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.

Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.

I know that they support you,
and that your gentle weight
rises upon them.

Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.

But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon the wind and upon
the waters,
until they found me.

(From The Captain’s Verses, 1952, English translation 1972)

When we cannot fully appreciate the message, when it confuses us or appalls us or frightens us or overwhelms us, we can at least focus our gaze on the feet of the messenger and, perhaps, eventually lift our eyes to view the fullness of the Good News which walks upon the earth and the wind and the waters until it finds us.

So, I think, yes, the Old Testament lesson is really well chosen for this, the Feast of the Annunciation, and it doesn’t really matter whether archangels have feet. After all, it’s a metaphor.

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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.

Wine, New and Old – From the Daily Office – March 14, 2014

March 14, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel of Mark:

Jesus said: “No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Mark 2: 22 (NRSV) – March 14, 2014.)

New and Old WineskinsI remember preaching on this text some years ago and doing a lot of research into the meaning of “new wine” as used in the Bible (tirowsh in Hebrew, oinon neon in Greek) — whether it meant fermented wine or yet-to-be-fermented newly-crushed grape juice. There is a lot of differing scholarship on the issue, both among Biblical scholars and oenologists. I came to the conclusion that all of that scholarship is an interesting waste of time. None of it matters to Jesus’ meaning in using this metaphor for the spiritual life.

So what does it mean? I have to admit to being somewhat confused by it. One thing it could mean is that Jesus’ new teachings don’t it into the “old skin” of the Judaism contemporary to his day, either the Temple Judaism of the sacrificial system or the synagogue Judaism of the Pharisaic rabbis both of which were in operation. That is a popular interpretation among evangelical Christians. The problem with it is that Jesus, though critical of the manner in which Jewish leadership administered the religion, was faithful to it and, by his own statement, did not come to abolish it but to fulfill it. (Matt. 5:17)

I think what Jesus might have been referring to was not the formal structures of religion, but the attitudes of religious people. There’s not a church leader around who hasn’t heard the words, “We’ve never done it that way before” or “We’ve always done it this way.” I think the sentiment or attitude behind those words, the minds that conceive and use them, might be the “old skins” to which Jesus is referring. New ideas, new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things cannot be held by such attitudes, cannot be encompassed by minds which are hardened by “the ways we’ve always . . . . ”

I’ve noticed that new programs or new initiatives in an older parish are usually undertaken among and bought into by the newer members of the congregation, newer members who have little of the power in or control of the congregation. Older members used to and comfortable with the “the ways we’ve always” are not only less likely to participate in new initiatives, they are also prone to undermine them. This is why church leaders often apply the wineskin metaphor to the churches in which they work and remark that it is easier to start up a new congregation than to re-start an older one: the wineskin of “the ways we’ve always” haven’t yet hardened in a new church.

I don’t actually like to use the metaphor of the wineskin to refer to the church itself. The church, I think, is less like the wineskin and more like the burden-bearer that carries it, the donkey on which large wineskins were laid for long-distance transportation or the servant given smaller wineskins from which to serve at a banquet. The church can carry several wineskins, new and old, some containing the old wine of long-standing programs, services, and ways of being that “we’ve always done,” some containing the new wine of new initiatives that “we’ve never done before.” Members of the church can choose which “wine” to enjoy. Some, as Jesus remarked in Luke’s version of this story will say, “The old is good enough.” (Luke 5:39) Some will find, as God speaking through Isaiah noted, that there is a benefit in the new wine. (Isa. 65:8) But both are ministry of the church; neither should be denigrated or discarded.

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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.

City on the Hill, Obscured – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany, Year A – February 9, 2014

February 9, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 9, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; and Matthew 5:13-20. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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The Mythical City on the Hill by Colej_ukListen again to the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

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.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

Listen again to the words of our Savior Jesus Christ:

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

If you read my blog of meditations on the Daily Office readings which I post to the internet everyday and offer to this parish and to others through Facebook, you will already have read some of what I have to say this morning. This is because earlier this week the Daily Office lectionary included the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, at the end of which, after Abraham has shown himself willing to do this humanly unthinkable thing at the command of God and thus demonstrated his faithfulness to God, the angel of the Lord addresses Abraham saying, “By your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” It is the first mention in Scripture of the over-arching purpose of God’s People, the ministry that will be Israel’s and then will be the church’s: to be a source of blessing for all people, not just to be the recipients of blessing, but to be the source of blessing for all nations, to be (as Jesus says in this morning’s gospel) salt and light for the world.

This is and has always been the mission of God’s People; it is repeated again and again throughout the Old Testament. Isaiah prophesied to Israel that “in days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” (Isa. 2:2) Psalm 72 includes the prayer for the king of Israel that all nations may be blessed in him (v. 17), and Psalm 87 proclaims that God will say of all people from every nation that “this one was born” in Zion (v. 6). Ben Sira refers to the promise to Abraham when he writes, “To Isaac also he gave the same assurance for the sake of his father Abraham. The blessing of all people and the covenant he made to rest on the head of Jacob.” (Ecclus. 44:22-23)

We were reminded last Sunday that this mission was inherited by Jesus when old Simeon took the infant Christ in his arms and proclaimed that he was to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Lk 2:32) And now this week, as an adult rabbi, Jesus passes on that mission to his church, the new Israel (as St. Paul would later call it). Jesus instructs his disciples, those present at the Sermon on the Mount and all those to follow them through the ages, right down to you and me, to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Mt 5:16) He has commissioned us to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world,” and reminds us that “a city built on a hill cannot be hid.” (v. 14)

The Puritan preacher John Winthrop, who became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, took up that image when he proclaimed the Puritan colonists’ covenant aboard the vessel Arbella in 1630; he admonished his band of pilgrims to set an example of righteousness for the world. He concluded a very long sermon with these words:

Now the only way . . . to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. “Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,” in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Therefore let us choose life,
that we and our seed may live,
by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him,
for He is our life and our prosperity.

Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made use of the “city on the hill” metaphor in their inaugural addresses; Reagan conflated it with Jesus’ lamp on a lampstand by adding the adjective “shining” . . . America, said President Reagan, should be a “shining city on the hill.”

Now, I would be the last person to stand in a pulpit and tell you that I believe the United States of America was founded to be a “Christian nation.” I know my history far too well to offer that canard. America was not founded to be a Christian nation; it was founded to be a religiously free nation, a pluralist nation, a spiritually diverse nation. But America is a Christian majority country; it is a nation in which Christians have had influence; it is a nation in which Christians still have influence; and it is a nation in which Christians should act like Christians! It is we, the Christians — the followers of Jesus Christ — to whom Jesus gave the mission to be the “city on the hill,” to “let our light shine before others.”

Governor Winthrop, in his address to Puritan pilgrims, made reference to the Prophet Micah and made specific reference to that prophet’s proclamation: “[God] 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?” (Mic. 6:8) Isaiah’s prophecy read today puts flesh on the bones of Micah’s admonition: we do justice, love kindness, and walk with God when we feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked.

We Episcopalians are pretty good at those material things. We run food pantries like our own Free Farmers’ Market. We run soup kitchens like the phenomenal ministry at Church of the Holy Apostles in New York City. We plant public gardens like our brothers and sisters at our own diocesan cathedral have done. We support shelters for the homeless and the abused, like our local Battered Women’s Shelter. We provide financial backing and volunteer labor to programs like Habitat for Humanity. Our own youth group and their adult supporters have traveled on mission trips to the Gulf Coast, to Appalachia, to central Pennsylvania, and to north-central Ohio to participate in housing improvement projects. We participate in Blanket Sunday programs to provide warm blankets and clothing to those in need. Our own knitting groups make shawls for the sick, and mittens, scarves, and woolen caps for merchant seamen. And we are just one of thousands of parishes around the country doing these things and many others.

We Episcopalians are pretty good, really, at the material mercies of feeding, housing, and clothing those in need.

But Isaiah didn’t stop fleshing out Micah’s call to justice, kindness, and humility with only those material ministries. He added that we have to “remove the yoke from among [us], the pointing of the finger, [and] the speaking of evil.” This is what Governor Winthrop was addressing when he said:

We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

I’m not so sure we Episcopalians . . . I’m not so sure that we mainstream American Christians of any denomination . . . have done such a good job in these areas.

Last Sunday was notable not only as the Feast of the Presentation, on which we heard that story of Simeon declaring the infant Jesus to be the light of the world, it was also Super Bowl Sunday. During the broadcast of that game, Coca-Cola offered an advertisement featuring several people of differing ethnicities singing in a variety of languages a rendition of the song America the Beautiful. It was, I thought, a lovely commercial. I enjoyed it. It reminded me of the same company’s ad from nearly 40 years ago when a crowd of folks on hillside proclaimed their desire to “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”

Apparently, however, there were others who saw the ad differently. Almost immediately after its showing, the internet social media was flooded with statements of outrage demanding that the Coca-Cola singers “speak American,” condemning the singing of “our national anthem” in any language other than English, and threatening a boycott of Coke. (As much as I might want to, I’m not going to address the issues that are raised by someone referring to the English language as “American” or by someone not knowing that America the Beautiful is not the national anthem of the United States.)

I must admit that I was both shocked and puzzled that people whom I believe would claim to be Christian, and who clearly claim to be Americans, would be upset with a successful American corporation advertising its product in a commercial in which people from all over the world extol the beauty of our country. The only explanation I can conceive is some sort of misunderstanding of what national unity is, and a misapprehension that uniformity of language promotes such unity. Indeed, that is the tenor of many remarks I’ve seen in the internet social media since the Super Bowl advertisement was aired. In many of those comments, the old image of America as a “melting pot” has been invoked.

Many of us may remember that image from grade school and junior high civics lessons; I remember a junior high school civics and history instructor who suggested another image. Our society is not and never has been a melting pot, he told us. A melting pot, he said, blends everything together. If our country was a melting pot, there wouldn’t be Hispanic barrios, black ghettos, Little Italies, Chinatowns, Levittowns, lace-curtain Irish neighborhoods, and all the other ethnic enclaves that have existed for decades and even centuries. We’re not a melting pot, he said. We are a tossed salad, a lively, tasty, vibrant, salty (to use Jesus’ metaphor) tossed salad. It is our diversity that makes us exciting and makes us strong, unity in diversity, not uniformity, which is what the critics of the Coca-Cola ad seem to want.

Ethnic diversity, however, is the biblical model. All the nations of the world receive a blessing through Abraham and his descendants, but they do not become Israel; they do not become Jews. Even as the nations stream to the mountain of God as Isaiah prophesied, even as God enrolls them as Psalm 87 describes declaring their birth in Zion, they remain Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia, and all the other nations of the world. As immigrants come to be part of America, even as they may become naturalized citizens, they retain their histories and identities as Moroccan, Thai, Xosa, French, Maori, and all the rest, with cultural heritages to be honored, languages to be spoken and sung, and diversity to be celebrated. The shining city on the hill shines with diversity, the diversity shown in the Coke commercial!

I hope you saw the ad. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. I hope you didn’t send any of those tweets and other messages condemning it and calling for people to “speak American.” I hope you didn’t receive any of those messages from acquaintances, but I have to tell you that I did. And I have to confess to you that it wasn’t until a few days later that I was able to reply to them. I have to confess to you that in failing to immediately respond and to gently rebuke, I failed to “remove the yoke from among [us], the pointing of the finger, [and] the speaking of evil.” I failed to “uphold a familiar commerce in meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.” I failed to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” And in that failure I allowed the bushel of hatred and malice to cover the light set upon the lampstand; I allowed the darkness of injustice and oppression to obscure the city on the hill.

And . . . I’m sorry to say . . . I don’t think I’m untypical as an Episcopalian, even as a mainstream American Christian. We are very good at the material ministries of food, housing, and clothing. Not so good at the spiritual ministries of unity and peace. We need to get better — I need to get better — at expressing the Christian faith in public. When someone tells a joke that is racist or sexist or homophobic, when someone makes a statement that demeans another, when someone speaks in any way that promotes injustice or oppression, we need — I need — to not be silent, but to respond immediately with “all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.” Otherwise all of our material works of mercy, all the feeding, all the housing, all the clothing, will be obscured; the city on the hill will be hidden; our light will not shine for all to see; and none will glorify our Father in heaven.

Let us pray:

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart and especially the hearts of Christian people throughout our country — especially our own hearts — that any barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that we recognize that diversity is not division and that unity does not require uniformity. Help us to confront injustice and oppression without hatred or bitterness, to struggle for justice and truth with gentleness and patience, and to work with everyone with forbearance and respect, that our city on the hill may not be obscured and that our light may shine before others so that they glorify you, our Father in heaven, through your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

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

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