Category: John (Page 12 of 24)

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

August 18, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according John:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Believe – From the Daily Office – August 15, 2014

August 15, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according John:

There was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 4:46b-53 (NRSV) – August 15, 2014)

Apostle's Creed in Prayer Book John uses the word “believe” three times in this short passage: once quoting Jesus about witnesses to his acts of power and twice regarding the royal official’s state of mind. What, precisely, does John mean by doing so? That is one of the ponderable but unanswerable questions about scripture, the precise meaning of a biblical author.

John wrote in Greek and in each of the three cases here the Greek word used is some form of the verb pisteuo, which is also occasionally translated as “faith” and as “trust.” It does not usually carry a strong sense of intellectual assent to a doctrine or concept, although our English “believe” certainly does. Jesus, most likely, did not actually use a Greek word in his statement; more likely he spoke Aramaic in which (as in Hebrew) the word for “believe” is ‘aman and, like the Greek, it does not carry a strong association with intellectual concurrence to a proposition.

When we read or hear John’s testimony in English, therefore, we have to appreciate both the ambiguity of the original and the rather different thrust of our modern understanding of the word “believe”. What we especially must not do is hear John’s “believe” in the same way that we use the word in the creeds.

Of course, when I make such a statement I am immediately confronted by the realization that I have not the slightest idea what you mean by the word “believe” when you recite the Nicene Creed! Even more so, I am confronted by my own lack of clarity when I recite the creed.

Recently, my friend and colleague in ordained ministry, Presbyterian elder Mark Sandlin, published an essay on his blog The God Article entitled “Jesus Is Not My God” in which he confessed to being a heretic by beginning with the declaration, “I am a believer. Mostly. I believe that there is probably a god . . . .” Mark then followed up with, “I also believe there might not be a god. . . .” So how is Mark using “believe”? I think (notice I avoided using the word “believe”) that he is saying that he can intellectually assent to those propositions.

That’s not, however, how I understand the word when it pops up in the Nicene Creed which, as a liturgical Episcopalian, I recite publicly at least once each week, or the Apostle’s Creed which, as a practitioner of the Daily Office, I recite twice each day. I regularly say that I believe that there is a God, that that God created everything, that God had a Son and that Jesus the Anointed One is that Son, that Jesus was born of a virgin, that Jesus was killed on a cross, that he rose from the dead, that he went to heaven and that I expect him to return.

When I do so, however, I am not limiting myself to merely assent to the factual accuracy of those statements. In fact, I’m not even concerned with facticity when I make these statements of belief. In the discussion in the comments about Mark’s “heretical” essay, I said this:

I have no problem whatsoever saying the traditional creeds (Nicene, Apostle’s), every single word of them – virgin birth, death on cross, resurrection, expected return, the whole kit-and-kaboodle. (Did I spell “kaboodle” correctly?) That’s because I understand that “believe” doesn’t mean “assent to the scientific [or historical, I will now add] factual accuracy” of the statements set forth. “Believe” means I trust that these things mean something — usually something more than I currently understand and certainly something a lot more important than mere scientific [or historical] factual accuracy.

I don’t (I hasten to add) disbelieve the factuality of the statements in the creeds, don’t get me wrong, but if it turned out that Mary wasn’t, for example, a virgin, I would still recite the creedal words without a qualm. They are metaphoric; they are symbolic; it’s what they say about Jesus, not what they say about Mary, that is important. Or suppose someone actually were to find and verify a bunch of bones as being the remains of Yeshua of Nazareth; I would still assert my belief in his resurrection. Why? Because his truth, his gospel, the good news that God loves the human race was resurrected in, made alive by, and continues to sustain us in his church.

Whatever Jesus and John may have meant by the word “believe” in this story of the healing of the royal official’s son, that’s what I understand it to be in the creeds. I trust in the importance of what the creedal assertions point us toward. Far from being answers, the creedal statements are starting points for further spiritual exploration; they raise more questions than they answer. And I believe (I am using the word intentionally) that exploring those questions is a healthy and health-giving spiritual activity.

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

Of Tombs and Siblings – From the Daily Office – August 14, 2014

August 14, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Acts:

[Stephen the Deacon answered the High Priest in the council and said:] “Joseph sent and invited his father Jacob and all his relatives to come to him, seventy-five in all; so Jacob went down to Egypt. He himself died there as well as our ancestors, and their bodies were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 7:14-16 (NRSV) – August 14, 2014)

Icon of the Martyrdom of St Philoumenos Shechem was known as Sychar in Jesus’ time. Near that land that Abraham had bought for use as a tomb, just a short walk south from the traditional location of Joseph’s tomb, is a well that belonged to Jacob. At that well, Jesus stopped to ask a Samaritan woman for a drink; part of the story of that meeting and Jesus’ conversation with the woman (the longest of all the conversations recorded in the Gospels) is today’s Gospel text (John 4:27-42).

Near Sychar the Romans built the Greek-named city of Flavia Neapolis which grew large and encompassed the ancient Jewish and Samaritan city. As the predominant local language changed to Arabic, the Greek name was retained but shortened and Arabicized, and now the modern city of Nablus is among the largest Arab cities in the Holy Land.

Over the site of Jacob’s Well stands the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Photini. The name Photini is given by Orthodox tradition to the Samaritan woman; it means “light bringer” in recognition of her bringing the light of Christ to the people of the city. The first church dedicated to her at the site was built in 311 AD.

There are two tombs at St. Photini Church. One inside houses the remains of Archimandrite Philoumenos, a priest who almost single-handedly restored the ancient church to its present modern condition. In 1979 a group of radical Zionists from a nearby Israeli settlement claimed Jacob’s Well, which is in a chapel inside the crypt of the church, as a Jewish holy place and demanded that crosses and icons be removed. A week later, on November 29, Fr. Philoumenos was hacked to death with an ax in the crypt and the church was desecrated. Although it is widely believed that the settlers were responsible, no one was ever convicted of the priest’s murder. Fr. Philoumenos was ranked among the Saints of the Church of Jerusalem on August 30, 2008, and his feast day set on November 29, the anniversary of his martyrdom.

Fr Justinus's Tomb The second tomb is that of Fr. Justinus, the priest who took over the church from St. Philoumenos and continued his work of restoration. An accomplished artist, Fr. Justinus wrote all of the icons which now decorate the nave, sanctuary, and crypt, including an icon of the martyrdom of St. Philoumenos. Fr. Justinus’s tomb is empty because he is still alive. He built his tomb himself and it is placed just outside the front door of the church; he walks past it everyday coming from his residence in the neighboring monastery to the church. It is a daily reminder of his (and our) mortality and of the dangers he (and many) face in the on-going violence or threat of violence that characterizes the Holy Land today.

If we were to read further in Acts (and we will tomorrow and the day after) we would read of the martyrdom of Stephen. His address to the Sanhedrin (perhaps one would best characterize it as a polemical sermon) so enraged his hearers that “they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him” (Acts 7:58) which resulted in his death. We are told that “devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him” (8:2) but we are not told where his burial place may have been, though surely it is in or near Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, his sermon about Jesus at Jacob’s Well in Shechem-Sychar-Nablus, the well’s location near Joseph’s Tomb and its intimate connection to the martyrdom of St. Philoumenos, and the eventual outcome of Stephen’s address are stark reminders that the Good News of God (whether that be the Covenant of the Old Testament or the Gospel of the New) is not the promise of an easy life. One would not be surprised to hear the Almighty singing the lyrics of that old country song:

I beg your pardon; I never promised you a rose garden.
Along with the sunshine, there’s gotta be a little rain sometime.
When you take you gotta give so live and let live and let go.
I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.

In fact, Jesus did pretty much that when he disabused his disciples, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Mat. 10:34)

The People of God are called to be risk-takers and, sometimes, to risk even death. Christians most surely must know that; we have only the example of our Lord to prove it. But it is also true of all the children of Abraham, not only Christians but also Jews and Muslims. What is sad is that Abraham’s descendants cannot live peaceably among themselves, that it is often our Abrahamic “siblings” from whom we face the greatest danger (sometimes even more so from our brothers and sisters within the same faith group). I believe that this breaks God’s heart!

As he died, Stephen the Deacon “knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’” (Acts 7:60) So should we all pray for those who persecute us, and let us pray especially for all who are the spiritual descendants of Abraham, that there may be peace among Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

(Note: The icon of the martyrdom of St. Philoumenos may be photographed by pilgrims and tourists, and those photographs are to be found widely posted on the internet, the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority will not permit the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem nor the parish church or monastery to reproduce the icon. It is considered politically inflammatory and is therefore censored.)

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

Unsignaled Turns – From the Daily Office – August 11, 2014

August 11, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to John:

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 3:8 (NRSV) – August 11, 2014)

I wasn’t going to mention this, really, but the mind makes strange associations and when I read the Gospel lesson this morning, particularly this line about the wind blowing where it will and us being unable to tell its origin or its destination, the image that came immediately to mind is an automobile turn signal.

It may be that that happened because in the past several days there have been three incidents at intersections where other drivers have failed to signal their turns and I, anticipating that they would be going straight, have nearly collided with them. Yesterday’s near-collision, I thought, was the worst.

Since moving to Ohio eleven years ago, my wife and I have several times commented a local phenomenon of driver behavior that we have not previously encountered living in other states. We have lived and been licensed drivers in Nevada, California, and Kansas since marrying, and driven in many other places, and we’ve never seen this phenomenon with the same frequency that it occurs here. The phenomenon in question? Drivers signaling their turn after beginning their maneuver.

This is what happened yesterday: I arrived, northbound, at a four-way stop-sign-controlled intersection simultaneously with a southbound vehicle; neither of us were signaling a turn. There was one eastbound vehicle, which proceeded through the intersection as the southbound vehicle and I came to a stop. When the eastbound vehicle cleared the intersection, we both started, the southbound vehicle beginning a left turn into my drive path and at that moment turning on its turn signal. Of course, we both slammed on our breaks and the other driver began yelling at me. I yelled back and proceeded through the intersection.

That incident was still on my mind when I read about the wind and the Spirit’s unknown movements. I thought, “How silly and ridiculous! I’m not going to write about that!” But I couldn’t shake the image from my mind, so I resolved to write nothing in the way of a reflection or meditation until this evening when I would read the other lessons and the evening psalm and, perhaps, have a more “spiritual” take on things.

And then this happened . . . . On the way to the office this morning, northbound on a major roadway through the southern part of our town, I was nearly hit by an historical Jeep (I know it to have been “historical” because it had a license tag that so proclaimed it). The historical Jeep whipped around the corner of an east-west side street, neither stopping (or even slowing down) at a stop sign nor signaling its turn. Fortunately, I was able to (again) slam on my breaks and avoid a collision, the Jeep proceeding ahead of me, the driver completely oblivious to our near-collision; I don’t think he ever saw me! (But I got a good look at his historical vehicle license plate.)

I wonder if Jesus might have used this as alternative metaphor if he were talking with Nicodemus today: “Other drivers go where they choose, and you hear the sound of them, but you do not know where they come from or where they are going, because they do not signal or stop. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Probably not. It lacks the ambiguity of the wind/spirit image inherent in both Hebrew and Greek where the same word is used for the two words.

Nonetheless, it reminds me how dangerous the Spirit can be! The danger of a ton or two of steel headed down a city street piloted by a driver who fails to obey traffic laws cannot compare to the danger presented by the Holy Spirit! I am reminded of a favorite quotation from Annie Dillard’s 1982 book Teaching a Stone to Talk:

Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

It also reminds me how irresponsible God can be! These drivers who fail to signal, who fail to stop, who aren’t obeying the rules are simply irresponsible. Like the wind in Jesus’ metaphor they go where they choose and the rest of us have no idea where that might be; we just have to be on our guard or get out of the way. And Jesus says that this powerful, uncontrollable, unknowable, freely-changing-direction behavior is shared by those who are reborn in the Spirit. Have you taken a good, close look at the people that are so empowered? Have you really looked closely at anyone to whom God has given the power to make unsignaled turns in life?

If not . . . grab a mirror and do so.

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

A Pointless Question? – From the Daily Office – August 6, 2014

August 6, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to John:

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 1:35-38 (NRSV) – August 6, 2014)

Come and See by Cerezo Barredo Every time I read this tale from John’s gospel, I am caught up short by this apparently pointless question. It seems such a non-sequitur, a request for irrelevant information. What could it have mattered where Jesus was staying? John doesn’t bother to give us an answer. We don’t know where this event took place. John never tells us a town and though the two disciples are permitted to come and see where Jesus was staying, the information is never given to the reader. A useless, irrelevant question made important in the dialog but never resolved for the audience — my college writing instructors would have torn this story apart.

All this question does is give Jesus an opportunity to invite them to come with him and spend the rest of the day (and perhaps the night) talking with him, which is all that John wants it to do. The question itself and its answer really don’t matter. Except they do . . . to nitpicky detail freaks like me!

I’ve read a lot of exegeses of this verse. Some suggest that the dialog — “What are you looking for?” “Where are you staying?” “Come and see.” — is an encapsulated invitation to discipleship. That feels like an eisegesis (a reading-into) of the scripture to me. Others suggest that the two men’s question should be understood something like slang, such as we used to use back in the 1970’s — “Where are you at, Jesus?” “What’s happening with you, Jesus?” — but that seems even less likely than the first idea.

I’ve always been convinced that John is just using the question as a scene-setting device and it has no deeper meaning. But today I’m not so sure . . . today I’m thinking maybe John is suggesting that there are no useless, irrelevant questions. Not because this one is some sort of code for entering the discipled life, nor because it’s a colloquial way to make inquiry into the deeper meaning of Jesus teaching, but rather because we can never know what questions may be meaningful nor where the answers to seemingly innocuous questions may lead us.

I didn’t write my Daily Office thoughts this morning for a variety of reasons — computer failure being at the top of the list, but also because of early morning commitments to the veterinarian and to the intake nurse at my orthopedist’s office. I am having surgery on my knee next week, so I had to go first thing this morning to the doctor’s office and answer a bunch of questions. Later in the day, I had to go through almost the same litany of inquiries (and more) at the surgical center where the procedure will be done.

Many of the questions were relevant, but some seemed entirely pointless. I wondered why they were being asked. Apparently some legislators and judges believe that questions about firearm ownership are irrelevant to medical treatment. A recent Federal Appeals Court decision upheld a Florida state law prohibiting physicians from asking about that. I didn’t mind answering any of the questions and wouldn’t have minded answering about gun ownership (the answer would have been “No”). I might have wondered why the question, but the asking wouldn’t have bothered me. (On the other hand, state legislators second guessing my doctor and telling him what he can and can’t ask, that bothers me.)

One of the apparently pointless questions in the afternoon session, however, led to an extended inquiry into very relevant data, however. So I began to appreciate the breadth of the queries and to see why they were being asked. And as I thought about that on my drive back to my office, I made a connection with John’s tale of Andrew and his companion asking Jesus, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”

It may seem like a pointless and irrelevant question. Maybe even John thought its substance was irrelevant (after all, he didn’t give us the answer), but the asking of it led to a life changing event in Andrew’s life, and then to a change in his brother’s life, and his brother’s life led to leadership in a new religious community, and that leadership led to the creation of the church and the spread of the Gospel . . . . One never knows where a question may lead.

Perhaps that is the point of John’s story. One never knows.

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

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

August 3, 2014 / eric / 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 Fish Today 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.

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

Wringing the Past’s Neck – From the Daily Office – July 24, 2014

July 24, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before all of them, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.” When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.” Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know the man!” At that moment the cock crowed. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 26:69-75 (NRSV) – July 24, 2014)

Traveling in Palestine recently, I was accompanied by a priest who had formerly been a Benedictine monk. In religious life, he had taken the name “Peter” and adopted St. Peter the Apostle as his patron.

One day in conversation about some icons in a Jerusalem church, he pointed out that there is almost a chiastic relationship between this story (which John also relates, Jn 18:16-27) and a post-resurrection story in the Gospel according to John.

The latter is the story of the grilled fist breakfast on the beach of the Galilean lake. The disciples, out fishing, see a figure on the shore which they then realize is Jesus. Jesus calls to them and invites them to share some fish he is cooking over a fire. As they are eating, he engages Peter in conversation:

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He 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.” (John 21:15-17)

Peter’s three-fold denial is answered by Jesus’ three-fold commission to tend to the flock. The denial notwithstanding, Jesus affirms Peter’s on-going position as one of (some would say the chief of) his apostles, those he has sent into the world to continue his work. There is a lovely chiastic symmetry to the stories.

My new friend, the former Benedictine, told me that when he took his vows in the order an icon writer created an icon of Peter for him (not the icon illustrating this reflection). In the icon, Peter is wringing the rooster’s neck! In many ways, that simple bit of artistic license underscores for me the humanity of Peter and also illustrates the truth that Jesus’ forgiveness empowers us to overcome the past.

Most of us — probably all of us — have (or will) in one way or another denied Jesus. I’m confident that Jesus has already forgiven us (many times over) for those denials. Thinking of that icon, I believe Jesus has given us the power to “wring the neck” of the circumstances which may have led us to those denials. We may not be able to change the past, but through the forgiveness of Christ and the grace of God we can change the way the past influences the future.

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

At the End, There Is God – From the Daily Office – July 22, 2014

July 22, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Romans:

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 14:7-8 (NRSV) – July 22, 2014)

Coffin in Grave The Book of Common Prayer (1979) lifts these verses and, together with others, uses them in the anthem with which the Burial Office (Rite Two) begins:

I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life,
even though he die.
And everyone who has life,
and has committed himself to me in faith,
shall not die for ever.

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.
After my awaking, he will raise me up;
and in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
who is my friend and not a stranger.

For none of us has life in himself,
and none becomes his own master when he dies.
For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord,
and if we die, we die in the Lord.
So, then, whether we live or die,
we are the Lord’s possession.

Happy from now on
are those who die in the Lord!
So it is, says the Spirit,
for they rest from their labors.

The first paragraph is from Jesus’ conversation with Martha of Bethany when she met him on the road when he came following her brother Lazarus’s death. (John 11:25-26) The second is from Job; it is part of Job’s reply to Bildad the Shuhite. (Job 19:25-27) The conclusion is from Revelation; John of Patmos is told to write this after seeing the “one hundred forty-four thousand” elect and as the angels of God harvest what Julia Ward Howe called “the grapes of wrath.” (Rev. 14:13)

The 1928 Prayer Book had a similar but rather more resigned opening anthem compiled from Scripture, the first two paragraphs being the same, but a third concluding paragraph was taken from 1 Timothy 6:7 and Job 1:21. Where the newer anthem presents the hope of eternal rest, the older feels like a shrug of the shoulders and a sigh of “Oh well, it’s over – it was fun while it lasted.” I’m sure that’s not the original intent of the drafters, but that’s my reaction to it:

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Although the newer anthem is more positive and comforting in my opinion, the theological import of the two is the same; life ends and at its end, there is God.

Both represent a liturgical model of what I find most attractive about the Anglican approach to Scripture. They are theological statements constructed from a holistic understanding of the Bible. They draw from multiple sources within the holy text, from both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, to fashion a statement which succinctly, but memorably summarizes the Christian hope.

Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. At the end, there is God.

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

From Little Things – From the Daily Office – July 17, 2014

July 17, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, “Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 26:6-9 (NRSV) – July 17, 2014)

Building Trust In John’s Gospel, Mary of Bethany is identified as the woman doing the anointing. (Jn 12:3) In John’s telling, Judas Iscariot is identified as the sole disciple who complained about the waste of money (and accused of doing so only because of an imputed intent to steal it for himself). (Jn 12:4-6)

Matthew, however, leaves the woman unnamed and ascribes the financial grumbling to all of the congregation, thus giving us a picture of the earliest beginnings of what have become venerable traditions in the Christian church: waste of church assets without taking personal responsibility, and anonymous grumbling about others’ (usually leadership’s) use (or alleged misuse) church funds. They are the flip-sides of the same coin.

The first doesn’t usually happen so boldly and openly as the woman behaves in this instance. Usually, the church’s property is wasted in anonymous ways. For example, in the men’s room at my church, there is a large hole in the wall behind the door: someone obviously opened the door with rather more force than was necessary and the doorknob smashed through the drywall. Has anyone taken responsibility for that? Not to my knowledge.

Look through the prayer books, hymnals, and bibles in the pew racks of nearly any church, you’ll find one or more bearing the scribbles and drawings of children who entertained themselves during some dull part of the worship. I’ve found such artwork in every parish I’ve worshiped in or served as clergy over the past several decades, but no parent has ever stepped up to me at coffee hour and said, “My child defaced a hymnal.”

Have you ever gone to a supply cabinet, refrigerator, or closet convinced that some item you need will be there, only to find that someone else has used it, taken it, or disposed of it? Who did that? Who knows? And why didn’t that person tell anyone they’d taken or used the last of whatever it was? I’ve stood in church kitchens and supply rooms asking those questions on many occasions.

Why don’t folks step up and admit these things so that they can be taken care of? Is it embarrassment? Is it fear? Is it simple neglect? Is it simple unthinking rudeness? I don’t know, but the end result for the person who must deal with the damage or with the lack of supplies is inconvenience, annoyance, and the beginnings of loss of trust in the community.

Which brings us the flip-side issue, i.e., the complaints (usually voiced in the parking lot) about the manner in which church assets are managed and the way money is spent.

There are people who do step up and take responsibility, the people who get elected to governing boards or who volunteer to oversee ministry programs or who respond to God’s call and end up getting ordained. These folks are then tasked with administering the church and its property, which means they become targets for criticism. It’s almost guaranteed that, whatever decisions they may make, someone in the church is going to follow the example of the disciples and say, “Why this waste? This could have been used for [fill in the blank].” In my experience, however, the folks who make the complaint the loudest are often unwilling to step forward themselves and take on leadership roles in the church. (Notice that none of the disciples offered to take Jesus’ place on the cross . . . in fact, the Gospels tell us that, when the time came to own their allegiance to Jesus, they ran away or, in the case of Peter, denied even knowing him.)

The issue in both the wasting of assets and the grumbling about how others manage them is the same: trust. Communities of faith — indeed, any human community — depends on trust. We human beings can only live together, work together, accomplish anything together, when we trust one another. We have to have enough trust in each other to be able to admit to one another that we have damaged something or used something up without expectation of being found at fault. We have to have enough trust in each other to be able to allow others to run the church’s business without grumbling about the way they do it. And often, we don’t.

A lot of social research has been done with shows rather conclusively that accountability precedes the development of trust in human organizations. This is the way in which these two issues are linked: anonymous damage to, waste of, or use of church property, in other words lack of accountability, deteriorates (or inhibits the development of) trust. Lack of trust leads to the parking-lot grumbling, which encourages the greater loss of trust. The one feeds the other; it’s a circle, a vicious cycle. It takes just a small step, however, to stop it.

That small step is the difference between Matthew’s report of Jesus’ anointing and John’s. When we use the last of something, when we inadvertently damage something, when our kids do what kids do . . . we can identify ourselves, as Mary is identified in John’s Gospel, and take responsibility. This grows trust. When we question leadership’s decisions, we can do so openly, as Judas does in John’s Gospel, this too grows trust — a surprise, perhaps, to see Judas as a positive figure, but there he is. These are a little things, but as many have noted, from little things great things grow. From small acts of accountability, trust grows; from trust, community grows.

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

Particular Social Groups – From the Daily Office – July 16, 2014

July 16, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

Jesus said: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSV) – July 16, 2014)

I don’t usually quote the entire Daily Office Lectionary lesson in these meditations, I try to focus on one image, one metaphor, one statement in one or two verses from one of the lessons or psalms for the day, but today it just seems right to set out the whole end-time, judgment day, sheep-and-goats story that Jesus tells of the Last Day. Here’s why:

A couple of days ago a friend and colleague in ordained ministry posted a link to an essay on her Facebook page. The essay concerned the difficulty the essayist felt in being what he called “a liberal Christian.” He complained (rightly, in my experience) about the fact that among his politically liberal (and not uncommonly agnostic or atheist) friends, he found himself criticized and even ridiculed for his religious faith, while among his religiously Christian (and not uncommonly politically conservative) friends, he found himself criticized and even rejected because of his liberal politics. (The essay is here.)

The very first comment posted by any of her Facebook friends was this, “Chaplain, why not just preach The Word without regard for particular social groups?” (My friend has spent most of her ordained ministry in uniform ministering to American armed forces personnel, which explains why she is addressed as “Chaplain” by the commenter.)

Apart from the ambiguity of whatever it may be that the commenter means by “The Word,” which would be a subject for another meditation perhaps, my reaction to the suggestion was, “Is that even possible?” My faith is a social one (I’m even tempted to say “a political one”); “the word” (here, I mean “the bible”) is almost exclusively about God’s dealing with “particular social groups.” Whenever the prophets of the Old Testament speak, they speak to social classes (usually the ruling class) about the treatment of “particular social groups” (usually the poor). When Jesus deals with individuals (apart from the healing stories), it is usually not about their individual faith or personal behavior, and if it is, it’s almost always about how that behavior affects others.

For example, although in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well he and she do mention her personal life he does not focus on that. Instead, he turns the conversation toward the propriety of worship by groups (her Samaritans, his Jews, and eventually “true worshipers”) in various places and at various times. (Jn 4) When the Canaanite (or Syrophoenician) woman seeks healing for her daughter, neither the nature of the illness nor the personal behavior of the woman or the child are the subject of conversation; the discussion focuses on the targets of Jesus’ ministry (“the children” – i.e., the Jews – or “the dogs” – i.e., the Gentiles). (Mt 15:22-28) When Jesus does address matters of individual religious practice, it is usually to criticize it for taking the believer’s attention away from the needs of “particular social groups”:

The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God ) — then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.” (Mk 7:5-13)

And then today’s Daily Office gospel lesson. How can one “preach The Word without regard for particular social groups” when the Word Incarnate does not do so? Here he specifically tells us that his followers will be (are they not already?) divided into “particular social groups” at the day of judgment, into the “sheep” on his right and the “goats” on his left. And he will address each group with regard to how they treated other “particular social groups” — the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned, the “members of my family.”

I cannot see any way to “preach The Word without regard for particular social groups.” Neither Judaism nor Christianity is an individual faith; neither is concerned exclusively, nor even primarily, with individual behavior and practice, with the individual’s relationship with God. Both have major social components; both are concerned with human beings living in community, in covenant relationship with other human beings, in “particular social groups.” The Jews are nowhere described as “the chosen individuals of God;” they are the People of God. Christians were not told that where one is praying Jesus would be there, but “where two or three are gathered.” (Mt 18:20) Ours is a social, even a political, faith concerned with “particular social groups.”

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

Category: John (Page 12 of 24)

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

I Believe – From the Daily Office – August 15, 2014

Of Tombs and Siblings – From the Daily Office – August 14, 2014

Unsignaled Turns – From the Daily Office – August 11, 2014

A Pointless Question? – From the Daily Office – August 6, 2014

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

Wringing the Past’s Neck – From the Daily Office – July 24, 2014

At the End, There Is God – From the Daily Office – July 22, 2014

From Little Things – From the Daily Office – July 17, 2014

Particular Social Groups – From the Daily Office – July 16, 2014

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