That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: John (Page 13 of 24)

The Hope of the Poor – From the Daily Office – July 14, 2014

July 14, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish for ever.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 9:18 (BCP Version) – July 14, 2014)

Palestinian RefugeesOne of the Daily Office versicle-and-response couplets in the suffrages for both Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer is based on this verse of Psalm 9:

V. Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten;
R. Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
(BCP 1979, Morning, page 98; Evening, page 122)

I’ve always liked that couplet, but over the years I’ve come to believe that it is what (back in the 1960s and ’70s) we used to call “a cop out.” Both the Psalm and the versicle-and-response are in the passive voice. They leave open the questions — by whom might the needy be forgotten? by whom might the hope of the poor be taken away? By God? Not likely. By other human beings? Probably. By we who are singing the Psalm and praying the suffrages? Yep, we’re the ones, but we hide behind that passive voice and fail to take responsibility.

I wonder if Jesus had this psalm in mind when Judas objected to Mary of Bethany anointing his feet:

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” (Jn 12:1-8)

The Psalm calls upon God to render justice, “Rise up, O Lord, let not the ungodly have the upper hand; let them be judged before you.” (v. 19, BCP) But how does God do that except through us? If we have the poor with us always, it is only because of inaction on the part of the society within which the poor live. If we always have conflict, it is only because the society in conflict fails to find peace. If we always have fear, it is only because the society which fears has failed to find courage. If we always have hate, it is only because the society which hates has refused to love.

It’s time to give up the passive voice. It’s time to take ownership of our failures and do something about them.

Let us not forget the needy, O Lord.
We shall not take away the hope of the poor.
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.

Partial Truths and Hamster Wheels – From the Daily Office – June 9, 2014

June 9, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Galatians:

Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Galatians 4:16 (NRSV) – June 9, 2014)

Hamster in a Wheel“What is truth?” asked Pilate. (Jn 18:38)

“The truth will set you free,” said Jesus. (Jn 8:32)

“You can’t handle the truth,” shouted Col. Nathan R. Jessup (Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men).

“Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods,” wrote political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (Reconsidering Immigration, November 2000).

Poor Paul! He’s just telling the Galatians the truth and they hate him for it. Thank heaven he didn’t say some post-modern nonsense about “what is true for you isn’t necessarily true for me!” But in his correspondence with these Gentile Christians, is the good apostle communicating the whole truth, or a partial truth? I’m not asking if Paul is being dishonest; I’m asking if, as a rhetorician making a point, is he constructing a narrative with some, but not all, of the pertinent facts. It’s hard to tell from his letter and it’s even harder to determine because we have only his side of the correspondence. But, I suggest, it’s a very valid inquiry because partial truths can create (or exacerbate) discord and enmity.

Recently on our local NPR station, a panel of journalists were discussing a bill recently passed by the Ohio legislature. One insightfully noted that each side of the debate over the bill presented facts in support of its position; each constructed a narrative from easily verifiable data; and each arrived at a “truth” that was convincing to its followers. The “truths” they presented, however, were diametrically opposite in the conclusion to which they led as to whether or not to support the legislation. Why? Because each was partial, each conveniently overlooked facts contradictory to its narrative, and each was partisan. Neither was factually inaccurate, but neither was entirely true.

Fully investigating and fully presenting all the facts of any situation takes time, effort, and resources, and might lead to some conclusion other than that which a partisan is trying to argue. And, anyway, it is much easier to simply go with a few critical facts supporting a partial truth; it lends itself to brevity of argument and to sound-bite news coverage. Furthermore, partial truths are inflammatory; they excite people, rally the troops, and build the cadre of (ill-informed?) supporters. Partial truths do not set free; they entrap and they entangle.

Partial truths make enemies (or, at least, opponents). And this is where we seem to be in American politics and society at the moment. We are in a battle of partial truths. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show recently made the point that partial truths about the Second Amendment have brought us to an intersection “of Open Carry Road and Stand Your Ground Place. * * * You have a right to carry a weapon that may cause a reasonable person to believe they are in danger of great bodily injury, and they have a right, if they feel that way, to respond with deadly force. It’s a perpetual violence machine.” And, I would suggest, the same is true in many other areas of our political and social life. Competing partial truths trap us in perpetual cycles preventing any advance; society ends up like a hamster in an exercise wheel, running to beat the band but going nowhere.

If the truth is really going to set us free, if we are going to be able to handle the truth, we must first determine what it is. In any discussion, listening to any news report, reading any newspaper, one should ask whether important facts have been left out or not, particularly if the report is inflammatory or clearly partisan. It is always wise to pause and consider that not all the facts may be given and that some additional data is likely to change the story significantly. This is worth the effort.

What is truth? It is more than few carefully chosen facts and a well-constructed narrative. The whole truth can set us free and, I believe, we can handle it. We have to make the choice, however, to get out of the hamster wheel and get all the facts.

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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.

Power and Authority – From the Daily Office – June 5, 2014

June 5, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

When the crowds saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 9:8 (NRSV) – June 5, 2014)

The Lords of LightningJesus healed a paralytic. More than that, he told him that his sins were forgiven! The scribes became irate, accusing Jesus of blasphemy. Jesus asked them, “Which is easier to tell him his sins are forgiven or to tell him to get up and walk?” As a demonstration of power and authority, Jesus did both.

And then this, Matthew’s description of the reaction of the crowd with that interesting plural ending. I’ve never noticed it until this morning. Matthew could have written “God had given authority to him” or “to a human being” or “to a man” or even “to Jesus.” But he didn’t. He wrote that God has “given such authority to human beings.” Plural.

I have grown someone distrusting of the New Revised Standard Version. In the effort to be non-sexist and inclusive in its language, the translation sometimes adds words or changes constructions from the original Greek. Often when, in the NRSV, one reads “brothers and sisters” the original Greek text merely says, “brethren;” the old use of the masculine plural to encompass all siblings or all humankind no longer being acceptable or understood, the translation enlarges the text to clarify the implication that all persons regardless of sex are included. In other places, it pluralizes singular constructions. I was convinced this would be such a case.

It’s not. The Greek words are toi anthropoi, “to men.” The NRSV correctly broadens the translation to a more comprehensive “human beings,” but the plural is original to the Greek.

What does this mean? A brief search through the online commentaries is unhelpful: they all focus on the power and authority given Jesus and overlook (as I have always done) Matthew’s use of the plural. Certainly, the Father has given this healing power and the authority to forgive sin to Jesus, but Matthew seems to be saying that it is not his alone. It has been given to everyone.

And if one stops to consider that, there is plenty of biblical warrant for such a statement. Just a couple of weeks ago in the Sunday Lectionary, in a reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus had said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” (Jn 14:12) After his Resurrection, he gave what is known as the “power of the keys” to the church in the Gospel lesson that will be read this Sunday, the Feast of Pentecost: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (Jn 20:23; cf. Mt 16:19)

The authority to forgive sins and the power to heal have been given to us, to human beings. I wonder when we’ll realize that and begin to exercise them . . . .

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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.

Rise! Rise! Rise! – Sermon for Easter 7 (Ascension Sunday) – RCL Year A – June 1, 2014

June 1, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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On the Seventh Sunday of Easter: the Sunday after the Ascension, June 1, 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: Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; and John 17:1-11. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Ascension of Christ by Salvadore Dali

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

(From And Still I Rise,Maya Angelou, Random House:1978.
Note — The verse beginning “Does my sexiness upset you?” was not read in church.)

The late Dr. Maya Angelou, who died this week and was (in my opinion) one of the greatest of contemporary English-language poets, wrote that poem (entitled Still I Rise) in 1978. Though it speaks out of her experience as a black woman growing up in the segregated South of the mid-20th Century, I believe it also speaks to us in our context today, celebrating the Ascension of Christ into heaven and, also, honoring our five newly minted high school graduates.

The Feast of the Ascension was Thursday. You may have missed it, however; it is a feast largely ignored by the Church. It passes by and we seldom, if ever, give any thought to it. In the Sunday rota it is noted only as the day after which the Seventh Sunday of Easter comes: that’s exactly how today’s collect is titled in The Book of Common Prayer, Seventh Sunday of Easter: The Sunday after Ascension Day. Kind of sad, because the Ascension really is the last event of the Incarnation, the last scene of the last act of the great drama which is “the Christ event.” Fortunately, this year (Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary) we have actually heard the story of the Ascension from the Book of Acts. This is not the case in the other two years of the rotation; in years B and C the Ascension isn’t even mentioned in any of the Sunday readings.

The story of Christ’s Ascension is told not only in Acts, which we heard this morning, it is also found in the Gospels of Mark and Luke. Mark’s account is brief, a single verse: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” (Mk 16:19) Luke’s is also short: “He led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” (Lk 24:50-51).

Although neither Matthew’s Gospel nor John’s mention the Ascension event itself, both include prophetic references to it. According to Matthew, in his trial before the High Priest just before his Crucifixion, Jesus said, “I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Mt 26:64) In John’s Gospel, after the Resurrected Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him, he gives her a message for the Apostles: “Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” (Jn 20:17) So the fact of Jesus’ Ascension is well attested by Christian Scripture.

This Jesus, whom the powers of his age had (to use Dr. Angelou’s poetic language) tried to “write down in their history with bitter, twisted lies,” had tried to “tread in the very dirt” — this Jesus rose, not only from the grave into a new earthly existence, but into heaven. This Jesus, whom they “wanted to see broken, with bowed head and lowered eyes, with shoulders falling down like teardrops, weakened by his soulful cries” — this Jesus rose into very center of the Godhead. This Jesus, whom they “killed with their hatefulness” rose “out of the huts of the Hebrews’ history of shame,” from Israel’s past, a past “rooted in pain,” “bringing the gifts that his ancestors gave;” he is “the dream and the hope” of every human being enslaved to sin and death. He is our hope and he rose. He ascended into heaven taking our humanity into the very presence of God Almighty.

If the Incarnation (meaning the whole of Jesus’ earthly being, the entire time of God’s being in the flesh on earth) were viewed as a stage play, the drama of salvation would be seen in this way:

Act One — In the Nativity, God becomes a human being offering great promise to humankind.
Act Two — In the life of Jesus, God fully enters human existence in all its aspects making clearer the meaning of the promise.
Act Three — In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God defeats death and opens the way of eternal life to all human beings setting the scene for fulfillment of the promise.
Act Four — In the Ascension, the story comes full circle as a human being becomes God bringing the promise of the Nativity to fruition.
(Pentecost and all that follows it are the epilogue, just as the story of Israel and the words and works of the Prophets are the prologue.)

The Ascension is the denouement of the entire story but, unfortunately, most of the audience, thinking the play concluded, left after Act Three; some may even have left in the middle of that act. The climax of the drama played out on Thursday to a largely empty theater.

One of the Episcopal Church’s collects for today says: “We believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend.” (BCP 1979, page 226) I think this prayer gets it slightly wrong. Our ascension with Jesus is not a future thing that we “may” later attain. Rather, in Jesus’ Ascension we all have already ascended. It is not only Christ’s humanity but our humanity that ascended into heaven. God has already seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus; our ascension is not so much an experience to be attained, but a reality to be experienced. As St. Athanasius famously put it, “God became man that man might become God.” This is known theologically as the theosis or deification of humanity, and in the Ascension of Jesus it has already happened.

So here we are, deified human beings capable, as Jesus told us, of doing the very works that he did and, in fact, of doing greater works because he has ascended to the Father and he will do whatever we ask in his name — at least that’s what he promised in the Gospel lesson from John we heard in church two weeks ago (Jn 14:12-13) — but do we actually do them? Do we do the works of power and witness to the truth of the Gospel? Let’s be honest and admit that we usually don’t.

We don’t because we’re a lot like the eleven guys standing on that hilltop in Bethany “gazing up toward heaven.” Like them, as Prof. James Holbert of the Perkins School of Theology has written, “We are too enamored of the ascending Jesus, our necks strained as we peer upward, hoping for a further sign, for a magic act, for a cloud spelling out ‘I love you.'”

Ascension WoodcutIt’s my favorite part of the story, really, because it demonstrates just how human the Apostles really were, how much like us. It’s this part of the story that is depicted in the woodcut on the cover of our bulletins. There they are looking up, Jesus’ feet just disappearing, when the “two men” (probably angels) appear and ask them why they are staring into space. In our modern vernacular, the two angels tell them, “Don’t just stand there. Do something!”

Prof. Holbert paraphrases and analyzes what the angels say in this way:

“Why do you stand looking into heaven?” Did you not pay attention to him just a few moments ago? He said, ‘Go,’ and you are rooted on this spot, looking longingly for some further word from him. He will come back in the same way that he went, but you need ask no further questions about when, they imply. “When” is simply not the right question to ask.

Why in heaven’s name (I mean that quite literally!) do so many Christians then spend vast amounts of time, inordinate amounts of energy, immoderate amounts of speculation, asking precisely that very question? We have been asked to be “his witnesses” to the world, not his calculators for his return. It remains a thorough mystery to me why this is so, and has been so throughout Christian history.

But I suppose I do know the answer. It is far safer, far less demanding, to be a speculator than a witness. Speculators write books of calculations, hold seminars that attract thousands, rake in untold piles of loot, while prognosticating a certain time for Jesus’ return. Witnesses, on the other hand, just witness to the truth of the gospel: the truth of justice for the whole world, the love of enemies, and the care for the marginalized and outcast. As Acts 1 makes so clear, the world needs far fewer speculators and far more witnesses. (Speculators or Witnesses)

Which brings me to our five high school graduates . . . . You have finished that part of your education which society has made mandatory. Whatever you do from now on is up to you. You may, if you and your families decide, continue your education at college or university; you may continue it in trade or vocational school; you may continue it as an apprentice in a skilled trade. You may, alternatively, decide to enter the work force immediately and skip any further formal education and training, opting instead for what is known as “on the job training.” And you could, although no one here would recommend it or be happy if you did so, opt to do none of these things and, instead, become a bum, a grifter, a burden on society, in which case you will learn the hard and dangerous lessons of the streets.

Whatever you choose to do, you may have noted that every path means continuing to learn. I hope, as I’m sure everyone here and your parents hope, that you will learn the lessons of faith, hope, and love.

We hope that you will learn the lessons that Dr. Angelou learned and tried to teach us through her poetry — if people tell lies about you, rise above it; if people try to tread you in the dirt, rise above it; if they want to see you broken and weeping, disappoint them and rise above it; if they try to shoot you with their words, cut you with their eyes, or kill you with their hatefulness, rise above it.

We hope that you will learn to be, as Prof. Holbert said, witnesses “to the truth of the gospel: the truth of justice for the whole world, the love of enemies, and the care for the marginalized and outcast,” that you will learn to be (as the Letter of James puts it) “doers of the word, and not merely hearers.” (James 1:22)

That is our hope for you and our prayer.

And now I have a word for the parents of our graduates. I’ve been where you are now, twice. When our eldest, our son Patrick, entered college he went away to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. We drove him down to Sewanee and, with other freshman parents, we attended a meeting with the school’s president while our children took part in orientation activities. At the end of our meeting, the president was quite blunt: he basically said, “Go away. Get off campus. Let go of your sons and daughters.” Like Mary Magdalene, we were being told not to cling, not to hold on. So we left that meeting, found our son, and said good-bye. After he hugged us both, he turned and walked down the street toward to his dormitory, and he never looked back.

I stood there watching him go and, like those guys on the Mount of Olives, I wanted him to look back; I was “hoping for a further sign, for a magic act, for a cloud spelling out ‘I love you.'” Like them, I didn’t get it. I suppose the Apostles realized at some point as they stared into the sky that their friend, their rabbi, was no longer the man they thought they knew; he was something more. He was, and is, God. Standing on that campus lane at Sewanee, I knew that this young man was no longer the child I thought I knew; he was something more. He was, and is, an adult.

Both of our children, Patrick and Caitlin, are adults. So are yours. I’m proud to say that both of ours are college graduates and, though Caitlin is not working in her chosen field (yet), both are fully employed, productive members of society. So will yours be.

So don’t cling to them and don’t just stand there watching them go away, fading into the distance. You have things to do because, like them, like those eleven guys on that hillside in Bethany, like everyone of us, you too are called to be witnesses “to the truth of the gospel: the truth of justice for the whole world, the love of enemies, and the care for the marginalized and outcast,” to be “doers of the word.”

So graduates, parents of graduates, everyone . . . Remember the implication of the angels at the Ascension.

Don’t just stand there. Do something!

Experience the reality of the Ascension. Christ’s Ascension, our Ascension, your Ascension!

Rise!

Rise!

Rise!

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.

Memorial Day at Church – Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (May 26, 2014)

May 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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On the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 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: Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; and John 14:15-21. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Memorial Day Cemetery FlagsI’m going to do something I have never done before! I’m going to read someone else’s sermon. While I was pondering these lessons, doing the usual research, and thinking about what to say, I came upon a superb sermon preached on Memorial Day weekend three years ago when, as today, the lesson from Acts was the story of St. Paul preaching at the Areopagus. The preacher was the Rev. Kurt Wiesner who is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Littleton, New Hampshire, and whom many of us remember from his tenure as curate at our own Trinity Cathedral. This is what Kurt had to say and I earnestly commend his thoughts to you:

[The sermon as originally posted on the internet can be found on Fr. Wiesner’s blog One Step Closer: Religion & Popular Culture.]

Memorial Day in Church — (A sermon preached Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, 5/29/2011)

Contrary to the assumptions of many, Memorial Day is not officially a celebration of the church. Unlike Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day (both which I have talked about in the past), it is not on our church calendar, and there is no prayer in our Prayerbook to mark this day. It did not come from the church, nor was it formally adopted by it.

Robert Bellah writes that sociologists have suggested that America has a secular “civil religion” –- one with no association with any religious denomination or viewpoint –- that has incorporated Memorial Day as a sacred event. Our American tradition includes an obligation to honor the sacrifices made by our nation to earn our freedom. With the Civil War, a new theme of death, sacrifice and rebirth enters the civil religion. Memorial Day gave ritual expression to these themes, integrating the local community into a sense of nationalism. The American civil religion in contrast to that of France was never anticlerical or militantly secular; in contrast to Britain it was not tied to a specific denomination like the Church of England. Instead, Americans borrowed selectively from different religious traditions in such a way that the average American saw no conflict between the two, thus mobilizing deep levels of personal motivation for the attainment of national goals. (Civil Religion in America, by Robert Bellah, 1967. Used by Wikipedia)

This cannot completely explain why the church has not officially adopted Memorial Day: after all, the church has taken and adapted plenty of public events and celebrations in the past. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time. Then again, one could argue that every day is a Memorial Day in the church.
Regardless, this morning I want to share with you some Memorial Day history, which comes mostly from the Wikipedia Memorial Day entry:

Our tradition of Memorial Day comes from the time after the Civil War, honoring the soldiers who had died by decorating their graves with flags or flowers. By 1865 the practice of decorating soldiers’ graves had become widespread in the North. The first known observance was in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, on October, 1864, and each year thereafter. Similar events followed around the northern states on various scales.

In Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865, freed enslaved Africans celebrated at the Washington Race Course, today the location of Hampton Park. The site had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp for captured Union soldiers in 1865, as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died there. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, freedmen exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and reinterred them in individual graves. They built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch and declared it a Union graveyard. On May 1, 1865, a crowd of up to ten thousand, mainly black residents, including 2800 children, proceeded to the location for events that included sermons, singing, and a picnic on the ground.

Beginning in 1866 the southern states had their own Memorial Days. The earliest Confederate Memorial Day celebrations were simple, somber occasions for veterans and their families to honor the day and attend to local cemeteries.

General John A. Logan may be most responsible for growth of a particular holiday. On May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic -– the organization for Northern Civil War veterans -– Logan issued a proclamation that “Decoration Day” should be observed nationwide. It was observed for the first time on May 30 of the same year; the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of a battle.

There were events in 183 cemeteries in 27 states in 1868, and 336 in 1869. The northern states quickly adopted the holiday; Michigan made “Decoration Day” an official state holiday in 1871 and by 1890 every northern state followed suit. The ceremonies were sponsored by the Women’s Relief Corps, which had 100,000 members.

The Decoration Day speech became an occasion for veterans, politicians and ministers to commemorate the war -– and at first to recall the atrocities of the enemy. They mixed religion and celebratory nationalism and provided a means for the people to make sense of their history in terms of sacrifice for a better nation, one closer to their God. People of all religious beliefs joined together, and the point was often made that the German and Irish soldiers had become true Americans in the “baptism of blood” on the battlefield.

By the end of the 1870s the rancor was gone and the speeches praised the soldiers of both the Union and Confederacy. In 1882, the name of Decoration Day was formally changed to Memorial Day in “memory” and ‘honor” of those who gave their lives fighting for a common cause, America.

This name, however, did not become more common until after World War II and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967.

Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries and memorials. A national moment of remembrance takes place at 3 p.m. local time. Another tradition is to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff from dawn until noon local time. The half-staff position remembers the more than one million men and women who gave their lives in service of their country. At noon their memory is raised by the living, who resolve not to let their sacrifice be in vain, but to rise up in their stead and continue the fight for liberty and justice for all. The National Memorial Day Concert takes place on the west lawn of the United States Capitol the Sunday before Memorial Day. The concert is broadcast on PBS and NPR. Music is performed, and respect is paid to the men and women who died in war.

There have, however, been a number of the historical problems concerning Memorial Day. Many of the celebrations have included a demonization of whatever is the perceived other side: not just concerning the Civil War, but the world conflicts that have followed. Certain ideologies have upended Memorial Day at different times. Continuing from Wikipedia:

In many southern locations in the 1890s from the consolatory emphasis of honoring soldiers to public commemoration of the Confederate “Lost Cause”. Changes in the ceremony’s hymns and speeches reflect an evolution of the ritual into a symbol of cultural renewal and conservatism in the South.
By the 1950s, the theme of Memorial Day had become more geared towards American exceptionalism and understood duty to uphold freedom in the world.

There have also been challenges beyond nationalism. The tradition has become permanently linked to sporting events. One of the longest-standing traditions is the running of the Indianapolis 500, the auto race has been held in conjunction with Memorial Day since 1911, run on the Sunday preceding the Memorial Day holiday. The Coca-Cola 600 stock car race has been held later the same day since 1961. The Memorial Tournament golf event has been held on or close to the Memorial Day weekend since 1976.

On June 28, 1968, the Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill which moved three holidays from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend. The holidays included Washington’s Birthday, Veterans Day, and Memorial Day. The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. The law took effect at the federal level in 1971. This change is still controversial. The VFW stated in a 2002 Memorial Day Address:

Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed a lot to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day. (David Mechant, April 28, 2007, “Memorial Day History”, in the Wikipedia entry)

While the actual significance of the original date is debatable, it is pretty clear that Memorial Day Weekend’s role as the unofficial start of summer has come to dominate the observance. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that, in the vocabulary of many, the phrase “Memorial Day” include the word “sale.”

As I said at the beginning, Memorial Day is not officially a day marked by the Episcopal Church. Certainly remembering those who have given their lives in service is appropriate for church communities to do, and explains why plenty of individual churches celebrate the day.

Perhaps some of what the church has to offer Memorial Day can be found in Paul’s insightful preaching in the Book of Acts this morning (Acts 17:22-31). Paul observes the many religious practices of the Athenians. He does not spend it time condemning what is wrong with their practice. Instead, he lifts up the Athenians pursuit of religious understanding, and building on their creativity and passion, preaches about God “…in whom we live and move and have our being”. (Acts 17:28)

Perhaps it is the role of the church to not only help remember what is good in Memorial Day … honoring those who died in service to their country … but to also lift up the day as something more: articulating a vision of a world that so values peoples’ lives as dwelling in God, that violence towards others becomes unacceptable.

Perhaps this is why I find the [hymn from the United Methodist Hymnal], A Song of Peace, so appropriate:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine;
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine;
O, hear my song, Thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for (people) in every place;
And yet I pray for my beloved country
The reassurance of continued grace:
Lord, help us find our oneness in the Savior,
In spite of differences of age and race.
[From the United Methodist Hymnal (Stanzas 1 & 2 by Lloyd Stone, Stanza 3 by Georgia Harkness)]

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That is Kurt’s sermon…. to which I want to add just a brief postscript, beginning with a personal story:

From 1972 to 1974, I was the youth minister at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Del Mar, California, where Fr. Tally Jarrett, a former military chaplain who had served in Germany, was the rector. Fr. Tally had absolutely no musical talent or skill, and seldom used hymns in his sermons, so (unlike me) he did not select the hymns for worship; he left that up to the Choir Director. (I select the hymns, but I leave the selection of preludes, postludes, voluntaries, and anthems up to Bertie.)

One Sunday we had a guest preacher, the local Reformed Jewish rabbi, and I was on the schedule as the chalice bearer for the service. As we lined up in the back of the church for the procession, the organist struck the opening notes of the first hymn, Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken. The words were written by John Newman, the same man who wrote Amazing Grace, but the hymn is set to the tune Austria by Franz Joseph Haydn. That tune is also the music for Das Lied der Deutschen, the German national anthem. Fr. Tally heard that tune start up, looked at the rabbi, and turned beet red with embarrassment; the rabbi just laughed and said, “Don’t worry about it! It’s a lovely tune.”

Thursday evening I was here in the church and heard the choir practicing their anthem . . . which turns out to be a choral arrangement of that hymn. I chuckled remembering that Sunday morning back in Del Mar and it occurred to me how similar to that event the singing of that tune, the melody of the national anthem of our sworn World War II enemy, on Memorial Day is. Some of us who fought against Germany in WW2 ourselves or whose fathers fought in that theatre, as did mine, might find it odd to do so. I find it particularly appropriate; a reminder that we have gotten past that conflict and that our former enemy is now our ally.

I would ask you to pay particular attention to the final verse that the choir will sing:

Savior, since of Zion’s city
I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride or pity,
I will glory in your name.
Fading are the worldlings’ pleasures
All their boasted pomp and show;
Solid joys and lasting treasures
None but Zion’s children know.

This, as Fr. Wiesner suggested, is what the church can lift up and articulate on Memorial Day, a “vision of a world that so values peoples’ lives as dwelling in God, that violence towards others becomes unacceptable,” a vision of a world in which all can enjoy the “solid joys and lasting treasures” of peace and good will.

Let us pray:

O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this and every land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. 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.

What Is Joy? – From the Daily Office – May 19, 2014

May 19, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From Book of Psalms:

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 65:12-13 (NRSV) – May 19, 2014)

Joy Carved on StoneWhat is joy? A bible study group at church grappled with that question recently and I’m still thinking about the question, so these concluding verses of today’s evening psalm got my attention. It’s not just a matter of defining emotion. Joy is a religious attitude, a stance toward God mentioned numerous of times in the Holy Scriptures; according to St. Paul, it is one of the “fruits of the Spirit.” (Gal 5:22) It’s important to know what we mean when we name it.

In the bible study discussion, I found it amazing that, although “laughter” was mentioned as we tried to answer this question, the common synonyms “happiness,” “mirth,” “giddiness,” and the like (even “gladness”) were not. We wrestled with the issue by exploring such questions as: “When do you feel it?” “Who are you with?” “Where does it come from?” “Where are you when you know joy?” and a really tough one “How do you feel when you experience it?”

That question almost seems redundant, doesn’t it? But as we tried to answer that in some meaningful way another question was asked, “Did Jesus feel joy on the cross?”

Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft says that joy “is more than happiness, just as happiness is more than pleasure. Pleasure is in the body. Happiness is in the mind and feelings. Joy is deep in the heart, the spirit, the center of the self.” If he’s right, and I think he is, then the answer to our question about Jesus must be “Yes.” Jesus felt joy on the cross!

Consider Christ’s “seven last words”:

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Lk 23:34)
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Lk 23:43)
“Woman, here is your son” . . . “Here is your mother.” (Jn 19:26-27)
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34; Mt 27:46)
“I am thirsty.” (Jn 19:28)
“It is finished.” (Jn 19:30)
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Lk 23:46)

Read in this, the traditional order in which they are presented in Good Friday meditations, only one simply cannot be read or understood as containing any joy: Mark’s and Matthew’s report of his cry of despair, “Why have your forsaken me?”

Jesus had told his disciples that joy is the result of a relationship with God:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. (Jn 15:1-10)

He concluded this discourse saying to them, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (v. 11)

In the Psalms, the hills, the sheep, the trees, all of nature is described as experiencing and giving voice to joy. This makes sense only if joy is a relationship with God. On the cross, only once, only in that cry of “why have you forsaken me,” do we find Jesus unable to sense that connection. In fact, the “seven last words” in their traditional order evince the very human journey every person has experienced at one time or another during a time of trouble, a journey from trust in God (“Forgive them”) into the valley darkness where God seems absent and back out again with a renewed sense of kinship with God (“Into your hands, I commend my spirit”).

What is joy? A connection with God, a relationship in which we are fulfilled not by our own efforts, not by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, not by anything other than the Presence and grace of God. Even in the hardest and most troubling of situations, even hanging on a cross, we can know joy.

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

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

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

May 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us pray:

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

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

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

Howling and Prowling – From the Daily Office – May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Psalms:

Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 59:6 (NRSV) – May 15, 2014)

Feral Dog PackI usually prefer the Prayer Book Psalter to the NRSV translation of the Psalms, but in today’s readings I find the latter rather more compelling. The NRSV makes it clear who the “they” is in this verse (which is repeated again at verse 14). “They” are “the nations,” which in the Hebrew bible always refers to ethnic groups other than the tribes of Israel. The BCP version refers to “the ungodly,” which is decidedly unclear; it could refer to individuals and, further, could refer even to persons from within the Jewish people, neither of which understandings would be accurate.

With regard to this specific verse (which is numbered 7 or 16 in the BCP), the notion of returning late in the day from some unspecified and perhaps unknown other location is lost: “They go to and fro in the evening; they snarl like dogs and run about the city.” They (whoever they are) could have been at rest within the city during the day, but the Hebrew shuwb ‘ereb is clear: “They return at sunset.” The nations have been somewhere else during the light of day, but where is unknown (at least, it is not stated in the psalm).

The NRSV text is also much more poetic than the BCP version (which is something of a surprise, frankly). The evocative rhyming of “howling . . . and prowling” is so much more effective than “snarl . . . and run about.” It casts a disturbing vision of a dog pack roaming, possibly hunting, through the darkened city streets.

Dogs, of course, are considered unclean in Judaism. They are scavengers which will eat any sort of refuse and carrion, even excrement. Although mothers do tenderly care for their young, dogs do not pair bond and have no sexual loyalty. They urinate and defecate wherever they wish. Left on their own and untrained, dogs are pretty unsavory characters!

They also have a social order that is decidedly not a human one. 21st Century research into the organization of packs of both canis lupus (wolves) and canis familiaris (dogs) has demonstrated that the “alpha male” aggression-dominance model of pack behavior is nothing more than a human projection. Dog packs are (I use the word very loosely) organized in a much more fluid and changing way, a way not easily appreciated by human observers. For all intents and purposes, dog packs mostly appear to us to be disorganized mobs.

So these are the ungodly (to use the BCP’s word): gone when it is light, showing up in the darkness, decidedly unclean in their habits, leaderless, disorganized, and dangerous. They are like feral, untamed dogs. And, yet, dogs have shown themselves not only willing but eager to give up these ways! Dogs are more than happy to associate with humans, to acknowledge humans as their leaders, to behave in ways humans deem acceptable. And we have been happy to accept them on those terms as pets, as friends, and as co-workers.

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson was from John — Jesus declaring himself to be the good shepherd. Shepherds are nearly always assisted by dogs to whom none of the negative characteristics implicit in this psalm could be ascribed. My pastoral theology instructor (as I told my congregation in my extemporaneous children’s sermon) objected to the word pastor as a descriptor of clergy; pastor, he pointed out, means “shepherd” and there is only one shepherd. Clergy, he insisted, should be thought of as sheepdogs.

The good shepherd made a few other claims for himself. “I am the light of the world,” for example, and “I am the way.” (Jn 9:5, 14:6) For those who are leaderless, living in darkness, howling and prowling the night-time streets, Jesus offers an alternative of light and direction.

Years ago, when I was a college student in southern California, my friends and I would visit the border towns of northern Mexico. There always seemed to be plenty of ownerless, feral dogs running about. From time to time, I would notice that a feral dog would gingerly approach and befriend (possibly another human projection) a domesticated dog and, with and through that dog, would approach its owner. More often than not they were kicked and shooed away, but occasionally the human would be willing to share some food; perhaps this was the beginning of a longer relationship — I don’t know; I never stuck around or went back to find out.

Remembering those wild dogs seeking, through a domestic dog, the friendship and protection of a human being . . . thinking about the picture of dogs set out in the psalm today . . . and putting meat on the bones of my theology professor’s objection to pastor, I think there is a lesson for me and my fellow sheepdogs here. Or, more correctly, there is a question: are we in the right place?

Are we (and the flocks we are tending) in the places where the howling and prowling, the wild and feral, the leaderless, those in darkness and hunger, can gingerly approach and possibly, through us, meet the good shepherd?

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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.

Jesus the Jedi – Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Easter (Year A) – May 4, 2014

May 4, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Acts 2:14a,36-41; Psalm 116:1-3,10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; and Luke 24:13-35. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Broken BreadSince the early 1970s this day, on the Episcopal Church calendar, this day on which we hear the story of Jesus’ appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus has been known as Star Wars Sunday. It’s because Jesus is very much like a Jedi in this story. I mean, think about it . . .

In the Star Wars movies, Luke Skywalker is mentored first by Obiwan Kenobi, who dies, then by Yoda, who also dies. But both Obiwan and Yoda come back! They appear to Luke and others after their deaths, continue to teach and give sage counsel, and disappear. That’s what happens with Jesus in the story Luke tells us this morning.

It’s still Easter Sunday. (For us, we’re three weeks down the road, but for them it’s the afternoon of the same day on which Mary Magdalene and the others found the empty tomb.) Two disciples, one named Cleopas and the other unnamed (let’s call him “Bob” — although some feminists scholars suggest that the reason this disciple is not named is because she is a woman, so it might be “Bobbie”) are on their way to a village called Emmaus. Luke tells us this village is seven miles from Jerusalem; that’s a long walk — two or three hours. Sometime during this long afternoon journey, they are joined by a stranger whom they do not recognize; the stranger, Luke reveals, is Jesus but Cleopas and Bob can’t recognize him. They have a long talk with him about all the thing that have happened in Jerusalem in recent days, and he gives them sage counsel about the meaning of scripture, particularly the messianic prophecies. They arrive in Emmaus early in the evening and encourage their traveling companion to join them at dinner.

They sit down at an inn for the evening meal and the stranger takes the lead. He takes the bread served by the innkeeper, offers a blessing, and breaks the bread. Now, Cleopas and Bob realize who this is. As he does the same thing he had done with his followers just a few days before, their memory is tweaked and their eyes are opened (which suggests that Cleopas and Bob were in the upper room in Jerusalem on Thursday evening). That’s when they recognize him; that’s when they think they’ve figure out who he is — he’s Jesus the Jedi. And that’s when Jesus vanishes.

Why do you suppose that is? Why does Jesus disappear?

Well . . . let me remind you of what happened earlier in the day as the story is told by John. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, found it empty, and told Simon Peter. Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved (another unnamed follower!) also found it empty, and then returned to their home to tell the others. Mary, however, hung behind and encountered Jesus but, like Cleopas and Bob on the road to Emmaus, she did not recognize him; she thought he was the gardener. Only when he addressed her by name (perhaps because of the tone of his voice) was something in her memory triggered and she realized who he was. She called him “Rabbouni” (which means teacher) and apparently fell at his feet and grabbed hold of them, for Jesus says to her, “Don’t hold on to me.” I think he did so for the same reason he disappeared from the table at the Emmaus inn.

Similarly, remember what happened before they arrived in Jerusalem, when Jesus took Peter and James and John up the mount of the Transfiguration. While they were on the holy mountain, the three disciples witnessed Jesus in conversation with Elijah and Moses. Peter wanted to memorialize the event by building booths, monuments to concretize the moment. Jesus said, “No. We’re not going to do that.” Again, I think for the same reason he disappeared in Emmaus.

That reason is that we cannot pin Jesus down. Jesus cannot be contained; he will not fit neatly into our boxes. When we think we have him figured out, we find out we are wrong. Jesus . . . God is bigger than any notion of him we may have; God is bigger than our conceptions, bigger than our doctrines, bigger than our creeds. And every encounter with Jesus is singular and unique. We cannot hold onto him; we cannot concretize and cast the moment in stone.

We just sang as our sequence hymn the old chestnut In the Garden, and that hymn makes this very point. We, the singer, say that we would like to stay there in that garden, but Jesus will not allow that:

I’d stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

We cannot pin him down! We cannot cast the moment in stone. When we think we’ve got hold of him, we find we are wrong; he disappears and what we are left with are our own notions, our own ideas, our own doctrines, our boxes. Our boxes, however, are too small; God is too big for them.

And the chorus of the hymn reminds us of the singularity and uniqueness of every meeting with our Lord:

And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Every time we encounter Jesus, the experience is unique; none other (not even our earlier selves) has ever had that experience before.

I think that is why it is significant that Cleopas and Bob recognized Jesus as he broke bread. Every loaf of bread is unique, similar perhaps to other loaves but never, ever identical. And every occasion on which bread is share is singular and unique. It may be a family meal or a celebration of the Eucharist; it may be a formal banquet or just friends having a bite. Whatever the circumstances, the situation is one unto itself, not like any other, never to be repeated.

A couple of Christmases ago, Evelyn gave me a set of books about the elements of the Eucharist. One volume is entitled The Spirituality of Wine; the other, which I have here, is The Spirituality of Bread by Donna Sinclair. The author is a Christian (in fact, I think she is an Anglican). I’d like to read you some of what she has to say about the symbolism of bread. About bread and community, she writes:

Jesus may have been lent significance by his association with other gods of bread. But that doesn’t acount for the power of his celebration, which persists daily around the world.

Everywhere, the words are similar: “He took a loaf of bread and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them and said, ‘Take, this is my body.'” And, everywhere, people line up, blue-jean clad or robed, young or old, to receive bits of bread; or they sit in pews and pass tiny chunks on a plate; or they stand in a circle and murmur a blessing as a broken loaf moves from hand to hand.

Sometimes they gather around a sickbed.

Once, I sat in a circle of friends, in a smoky cabin in the bush, after a weekend of tending a woodstove and talking about dreams. We passed the bread around as gently as if it were the heart of the other, which it was.

The ritual has power. I get uneasy if I think I might be left out. Once, reporting on an event, I slipped up to take a photo of Archbishop Desmond Tutu serving Communion, and then paused anxiously. He winked and held out the bread.

Perhaps inclusion is this ceremony’s strength. This bread offers an enormous community, a family that stretches around the world and through the centuries. We don’t want to be left out.

We don’t want to be left out because we don’t want to miss the opportunity for that unique and singular encounter with Christ. Every celebration of Eucharist, like every sharing of bread and every meeting with Jesus, is a moment unto itself never to be repeated, never to be duplicated. We realize that in some way, that this encounter with Christ in the breaking of the bread will never happen again, and we don’t want to be left out.

With regard to bread and sacrifice, Ms. Sinclair writes:

The celebration of Communion is also a powerful experience of metaphor. Bread as body. Wine as blood. Love as sacrifice.

In the Jesus story, it is clear that love has great requirements. There is a price to pay, in an oppressive era, for feeding the unwanted.

It may help to see another story, that of the Celtic Earth goddess Tailtiu, queen of the Fir Bolg, one of the ancient peoples of pre-Christian Ireland.

When Tailtiu saw that her people were starving after an insufficient grain harvest, she took up an axe and, for a solid year, cleared a forest: “the reclaiming of meadowland from even wood by Tailtiu, daughter of Magmor,” is the way it is reported by the anonymous bard of The Dindsenchas, poems about Irish place names.

After the trees had been cut down, “roots and all, out of the ground,” the land became “a plain blossoming with clove,” presumably suitable for planting grain. But the cost was appalling. Tailtiu’s heart “burst in her body from the strain beneath her royal vest,” the bard says. The Celts loved their sacred groves, and the destruction to the enchanted richness of her forest must have broken Tailtiu’s heart.

Aware that she is dying, her courtiers gather around, and Tailtiu whispers her last command. She wants funeral games to be held in her honour each year, just before the harvest. And they are to be peaceful, she says, “without sin, without fraud, without reproach, without insult, without contention, without seizure, without theft.”

Thanks to her faithful foster-child Lugh (later associated with a bountiful harvest), Tailtiu’s wish came to pass. There was always an “unbroken truce” at her fair, and “men went in and came out without any rude hostility. Corn and milk in every stead, peace and fair weather for its sake, were granted to the heathen tribes of the Greeks for maintaining of justice.”

Tailtiu had given up her beloved forest and her life for a vision not too different from that of Archbishop Oscar Romero or of Mondawmin, who brought corn to the Ojibway. “Unbroken truce” and “corn and milk in ever stead,” represent the commonwealth of peace, the kingdom Jesus told his friends was close by. New parents get a glimpse of this kingdom looking at their tiny baby. Their sudden understanding that they would do anything to keep this child safe is the closest we can come, perhaps, to understanding the sacrifice that is part of love’s potential.

Perhaps that’s the power of Communion bread. Some say that it commemorates Jesus offering himself as a sacrifice for our sins, but I don’t think so. I would be appalled by a god who asked for the death of his child, or any child. But like any parent, I believe I would die for my children’s lives, even as absurdly grown-up as they are now.

Perhaps this bread simply expresses our wish to live little closer to the ideal of Tailtiu, Jesus, or Mondawmin, who died to give their people enough to eat. None of us can stand up to greed or selfishness as strongly as we wish. But eating this ceremonial bread with others, who also want to be just and loving, makes us brave enough to try.

Maybe that’s why I am sometimes overwhelmed at these ceremonies. Maybe I am simply terrified by the high sacrifices love assumes. Certainly the part most touching to me in the story of my own bread-god, Jesus, is not his death, but his constant focus on compassion. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he commands. “Love your enemies.”

Every encounter with this God who commands us to love, every encounter with love is unique and singular. Every encounter with this God who commands us to love, every encounter with love is larger than we can describe. We cannot constrain love in our boxes. Whatever our notions, our doctrines, our creeds, our understandings . . . they are too small to contain love, to pin love down, to hold onto and control love. When we try, love disappears, and that is why Jesus disappeared from the dinner table in that inn in Emmaus.

Now . . . I have to confess that, on the church’s calendar, this really isn’t Star Wars Sunday. But as every Star Wars aficionado knows, today is Star Wars Day: “May the Fourth be with you.”

But may Jesus the Jedi . . . Jesus, known in the breaking of the bread . . . Jesus, whom we cannot hold onto and pin down . . . Jesus, unique and singular . . . may Jesus be with you. 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.

Wilderness – From the Daily Office – May 1, 2014

May 1, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Exodus:

As Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked towards the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Exodus 16:10 (NRSV) – May 1, 2014.)

Painted Desert Wilderness AreaTwo days ago we celebrated the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist and the Gospel lesson for use at the Eucharist was the opening of his Gospel which relates the story of Jesus’ baptism following which, Mark says, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness,” (Mk 1:12) so the word “wilderness” caught my attention today.

Years ago I read a commentary on the book of Revelation in which the author asserted that the wilderness is the true home of the People of God, that it is in the wilderness that the People find their true identity. Here in this verse we find the Hebrews looking towards the wilderness where they find the glory of God. Is that our true identity? St. Irenaeus wrote, “Gloria Dei est vivens homo,” which means “The Glory of God is a living person,” sometimes translated as “The Glory of God is the human fully alive.” Is that what the Hebrews spied in the wilderness? Is that what the Redeemer was compelled by the Spirit to discover out there with the wild beasts?

Yesterday I read an essay comparing the scientific theory of “dark matter” and “dark energy” to the doctrine of Original Sin, and suggesting that both spring from a human “primal desperation to make sense of our overwhelming ignorance.” The author suggested, “Truth lives in a lot of places – but we often just cannot seem to find out exactly where.” In the wilderness, where there is an absence of distraction, where our ignorance becomes more evident, where the Spirit drove Jesus, where the Hebrews encountered the Glory of God, perhaps truth is more readily apparent. And the truth will make us free (Jn 8:32), free to be truly alive.

I am a member of the Masonic fraternity (although these days not a very active one). In Freemasonry, the tools of stone masonry are given symbolic meanings. Among the first tools to which a new Mason is introduced is the common gavel. We are told that in operative masonry this tool breaks off the rough corners of the stone to better fit it to the builder’s use. Freemasons are to use it metaphorically to divest ourselves of the “vices and superfluities of life,” thereby becoming better fit as “living stones” to be used by the Supreme Architect of the Universe. The reference, of course, is to the First Letter of Peter in which the Apostle admonishes us:

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Pet 2:4-5)

It seems to me that in the wilderness those “vices and superfluities,” which I think are all those things we use to cover up or deny our “overwhelming ignorance,” naturally fall away — the work of using that gavel to remove them is much easier. The wilderness is a sort of quarry where we are cut away from all that we have accumulated, all that we have used to deny our ignorance; we are trimmed of that excess to become the building stones of that “spiritual house” of which Peter wrote. Little wonder that the Hebrews looked to the wilderness and saw God, little wonder the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be fitted for his ministry, little wonder we find our true identity there. Stripped of the doctrines, theories, and metaphors with which we cover our ignorance, we find that we don’t need them. Without them we are living stones, living human beings, a spiritual house, a royal priesthood, truly alive, the glory of God.

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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.

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