That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: John (Page 16 of 25)

Herding Cats – From the Daily Office – January 30, 2014

January 30, 2014 / / 1 Comment

From the Gospel of John:

[Jesus said,] “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 5:46-47 (NRSV) – January 30, 2014.)

The Church Today - Jesus Herding CatsIs it just me, or does this speech of Jesus (the verses are part of a long, long address to “the Jews”) just drip with frustration? And it makes me wonder – did Jesus really express such frustration? Or is it John who is frustrated and does his frustration color the way he presents the gospel story?

I’ll admit it . . . I have a problem with the Gospel according to John. I view it with suspicion. Its Jesus is at one and the same time too holy, too divine, but also too combative, too confrontational, and too given to these frustrated and frustrating condemnations of those whom he has not persuaded.

It’s not that I don’t think Jesus was divine; I believe that whole-heartedly. I am convinced that he was and is the incarnation of God. And it’s not that I don’t think the human Jesus had his moments (as the Rolling Stones’ devil put it) of doubt and pain, moments of sheer human frustration and anger. I’m certain that he did. It’s just that the way Jesus is presented by John is hard to understand.

He’s almost too hard to accept; he’s confusing and frustrating. I get as frustrated trying to understand this Jesus as he seems to get with his audiences. John’s Jesus is sublimely holy — the Logos of God (1:14) — who is also presented as just plain rude to his mother — “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” (2:4) He is compassionate to a woman caught in adultery — “I do not condemn you” (8:11) — yet dismissive, even condemnatory, of others — “There is no place in you for my word.” (8:37) He heals a stranger he happens upon in Jerusalem — the man at the pool of Beth-zaida (5:9) — but declines to help Lazarus whom he is said to love until after he’s gone through the pain of death just to make an example of him — “I am glad I was not there.” (11:15)

David Hayward, who blogs and draws church cartoons under the name “the naked pastor,” has done a drawing of Jesus attempting to herd cats (an expression which was a favorite of my late grandfather) with the caption “the church today.” In one simple picture, Hayward captures the frustrations of the modern pastor, but it seems to me he also depicts the difficulty I have of getting a handle on John’s Jesus! John’s Jesus is not one of the “cats” and he knows it; he can do and does things no “cat” could ever. He says as much at one point, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” (8:23) And sometimes he seems not to like the cats very much!

John’s Jesus is holy, rude, compassionate, condemnatory, dwelling in the world, not of the world, loving to strangers, using his friends . . . he’s confusing, contradictory, complex, and incredibly frustrating!

Trying to understand John’s Jesus, in all his contradictory complexity, is definitely like herding cats!

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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.

Punctuation and Spirituality – From the Daily Office – January 29, 2014

January 29, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel of John:

[Jesus said:] “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. For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out — those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 5:25-29 (NRSV) – January 29, 2014.)

Punctuation Saves LivesThere are times when I’m reading one or another of the Gospels and I am pulled up short; I just have stop and say, “Really? Jesus said that? Really?”

This is one of those times! Did Jesus really say (and I paraphrase), “We’re going to get people up out of their graves just so we can punish them.” That’s what verse 29 is saying with that weird turn of phrase “the resurrection of condemnation”; all the dead will be raised, some to life and some to condemnation. (Whether that means an eternity of punishment or simply annihilation is another issue I’ve dealt with before and won’t address again today.)

Maybe what Jesus said ended before this verse; maybe this is John interpreting what Jesus said. Perhaps the quotation from Jesus should end with the words “because he is the Son of Man” and the part that starts “Do not be astonished” is John’s commentary. Could be. It’s an issue that could be solved by judicious use of punctuation. Unfortunately, John didn’t use punctuation and where to insert quotation marks, periods, commas, etc. is left to the “best guess” of modern translators based on noun declensions, verb tenses, and a colloquial understanding of the original language.

You see, punctuation is a modern invention. So are spaces between the words, although they have been around longer than colons, semi-colons, and full stops. Spaces were the bright idea of Irish monks working in early medieval scriptoria about 1400 years ago; punctuation marks came along about a thousand years later. They weren’t even all that common when the translators of the Authorized (“King James”) version made their estimations of where to put them in the biblical text in 1611.

The lack or improper placement of punctuation can lead to interesting misunderstandings. A popular t-shirt design noting that “punctuation saves lives” demonstrates its point with two similarly worded but radically different sentences:

“Let’s eat Grandma.”

versus

“Let’s eat, Grandma.”

Scripture itself contains an example of a misunderstanding which punctuation might have cleared up. In Mark’s Gospel, the writer applies a prophecy of Isaiah to John the Baptizer saying that his is “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'” (Mk. 1:3) Isaiah, however, seems to have said something slightly different: “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'” (Isa. 40:3) Matthew and Luke, relying on Mark, repeat his slightly altered quotation — compare Matt. 3:3 and Luke 3:4. Is the voice crying out in the wilderness or is the way of the Lord in the wilderness? The gospellers and the prophet seem to have a disagreement.

So which is it in John’s Gospel? Should the quotation from Jesus be ended a sentence earlier and the bit about getting people out their graves only to condemn them be attributed to the writer instead? To do so would, I admit, fly in the face of centuries of understanding of Jesus’ words to the Jewish authorities when they confronted him in the Temple following the healing of the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda, from which this text is taken. But it’s at least a possibility to consider, and it highlights how carefully one must read scripture.

Punctuation, as the t-shirt says, can save lives. It can also have a significant impact one’s spirituality!

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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.

Make the Circuit – From the Daily Office – January 27, 2014

January 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

Make the circuit of Zion; walk round about her;
count the number of her towers.
Consider well her bulwarks; examine her strongholds;
that you may tell those who come after.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 48:11-12 (BCP Version) – January 28, 2014.)

Look Crosswalk Pavement SignI’m intrigued that, near the end of what is a pretty standard hymn-of-praise sort of psalm, there is this admonition to be a careful observer. Jesus will echo this admonition, not in its exact words but in intent, several times in the gospels.

Jesus often urges his followers to pay attention to things and to observe carefully; each of the gospels includes at least one such admonition:

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.” (Matt: 24:32; cf. Mark 13:28)

“Be alert at all times . . . . (Luke 21:36; cf. Mark 13:33)

“Pay attention to what you hear . . . .” (Mark 4:24; cf. Luke 8:18)

“Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.” (John 4:35)

In the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, the science fiction author Robert Heinlein invented the profession of “Fair Witness.” This is an individual trained to observe events and report exactly what he or she sees and hears, making no extrapolations or assumptions; the Fair Witness draws no conclusions and makes no inferences from what is observed. At one point in the story, a Fair Witness is asked the color of house. She replies, “It is white on this side;” she refuses to venture an opinion as to the color of the sides which cannot be seen.

When I first read Stranger, I was intrigued with that idea and when I was a practicing trial lawyer, I often wished that I could call a Fair Witness to the stand. Practicing attorneys are well aware of how poorly most people observe, recall, and report what happens in the world around them. Although traditionally valued by the courts, eye-witness testimony is notoriously inaccurate!

So the Bible’s admonitions to carefully observe, to “make the circuit” of the subject, to walk around it, to count its features, to examine, and to consider well are good ones. But it is not “Fair Witness” observation to which we are encouraged, not simply the accurate gathering of facts. It is, rather, to intelligent consideration and contemplation, to the drawing of inferences, and to the making of conclusions on the basis of observed data. A modern reader might even say that the Bible urges us to make use of the scientific method!

A Cambridge University scientist, William Beveridge, in his book explaining The Art of Scientific Investigation (1957) wrote, “Interpreting the clue and realizing its possible significance requires knowledge without fixed ideas, imagination, scientific taste, and a habit of contemplating all unexplained observations.” I believe that this is as true of religion as it is of science. It applies to consideration of one’s faith and one’s spirituality, as well as to observation of the physical world. This is why the Bible encourages us to pay attention.

Like science, religion is hampered by “knowledge with fixed ideas,” by lack of imagination, and by failure to contemplate the unexplained. I also think it is imperative that a religious person have what Beveridge calls “scientific taste,” which I understand to mean a passion for observation, a commitment to being alert at all times, a delight in taking the time to “make the circuit of Zion.”

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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.

Extraordinarily Ordinary – From the Daily Office – January 25, 2014

January 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel of John:

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 4:39-42 (NRSV) – January 25, 2014.)

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well by GuercinoThese few verses are the end of the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well which led to his two-day sojourn in the Samaritan city of Sychar. Whenever I have heard this story preached (and, I confess, when I have preached it myself), the emphasis seems always to be on the Lord’s daring to speak with a woman, and a Samaritan woman, at that! The focus is his unconventionality, his willingness to step outside the Law, and his abrogation of ethnic and sexual norms. We are told how extraordinary this encounter was.

What strikes me this morning is how very ordinary it really was. The water remains water. The woman is not saved from an angry, legalistic mob. No one is healed; no one walks on water; no large crowds are fed. The dead are not returned to life. Despite its radical breaking of boundaries, this is a very boring story with a remarkable ending: two people meet, they talk, one of them talks to other people, the other people talk to the second person, and many people come to faith and belief as a result.

Immediately after this event, Jesus returned to his home territory, to Cana in Gallilee, and complained of a royal official, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” (John 4:48) And even if there are “signs and wonders,” belief may not result. In John’s telling of the events of Holy Week he says of one crowd which Jesus confonts, “Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him.” (John 12:37) The contrast between faith which depends on miracles (and may not come even when they are accomplished) and faith which comes from simple conversation is striking and instructive.

It’s also reassuring. It means that a simple person like me, unable to convert water to wine or to heal with a touch, can nonetheless effectively communicate the word of Lord. It means that anyone can do so; if an unremarkable (and, in fact, semi-outcast) woman can bring many to belief simply by telling her story, then anyone can. We don’t need a flashy show of signs of power; we just need to tell our story with integrity and authenticity.

For all its radical social message, the story of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at Sychar is simply the story of two people talking. It is extraordinarily ordinary.

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

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

The Bible Is Fun! – From the Daily Office – January 23, 2014

January 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Genesis:

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Genesis 11:5-6 (NRSV) – January 23, 2014.)

Construction of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the ElderI’ve never quite understood the story of the tower of Babel. I get that it’s an etiological myth to explain the variety of languages spoken by human beings, but the picture of God that it paints is (shall we say?) less than positive. Might it have been better to cast someone else (say the Tempter?) as the “bad guy” who thwarts the plans of the tower builders?

As the story of God and God’s People develops over time and through the pages of Scripture, we learn that God’s goal is that “they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” or at least that’s what Jesus said (John 17:21). The apostle Paul proclaimed this Good News setting out that the goal was that all people, indeed all things, be put in subjection under the Christ and ultimately under the one God “so that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). And his colleague, Peter, argued that preachers should speak as if speaking the very words of God so that “God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4:11).

It’s not just the New Testament that proclaims this goal of universal solidarity. Solomon proclaimed in prayer that the goal of his kingdom was “that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other” (I Kings 8:60). The prophet Isaiah proclaimed that “in days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it” (Isaiah 2:2).

So, if that has been God’s goal all along, isn’t God’s fit of pique at the plain of Shinar just a wee bit counterproductive?

Playing with questions like that is why I so enjoy studying the Bible; the Bible is fun! So, I get really annoyed when someone treats it as some sort of scientifically or historically accurate text, and robs it of its capacity to provide fun and enjoyment.

It’s a bunch of stories and other sorts of literature! It’s a bunch of often contradictory stories, myths, poems, histories, memoirs, and so forth which, despite their contradictions (and often because of them) point to a truth that transcends our mundane perceptions. Sure, if I were writing a single text to tell the story of God, I’d use the Babel story quite differently and tell it from a very different perspective. But that’s not how the Bible came to be and, thanks be to God, I don’t have to write God’s story! Suffice to say that the Bible is not a history book; it’s not a scientific text. It’s a library, a collection of all different sorts of literature.

These texts must be read in light of each other. The prophet’s vision of the nations streaming to a temple on a hill and Jesus’ prayer for unity among all peoples (the prayer is not just about his followers) provide lenses through which we view the myth of the tower at Babel; the story of the tower provides a critical backdrop and foundation for the prophecy and the prayer. So, I may not understand the story of the tower of Babel standing alone, but I understand it in context. I understand it as a part of a synthetic whole (synthetic in the sense of dialectic synthesis, not as “artificial” or “unnatural”).

I’m not going to write a synthesis of these stories this morning (and probably not ever), but I am going to start the day acknowledging that, if the Bible is anything, it is fun!

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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.

Hell can go to Hell! – From the Daily Office – January 21, 2014

January 21, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel of John:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 3:16-17 (NRSV) – January 21, 2014.)

Outsourcing Abuse MemeMaking the rounds of Facebook these days is an anti-religious meme which basically equates religious teaching to child abuse. It says:

If parents constantly told their children:

“We will love you forever . . . as long as you do what we tell you to do and never disagree with our views. But if you disobey , we will make sure to torment you until the grinding of your own teeth makes you cry; we will lock you up in a dark place where you’ll be strangled by snakes, and we will see that you burn in a lake of fire.”

We would recognize it as child abuse.

So why do we keep thinking that, by outsourcing the job to a deity, it becomes something else?

There’s nothing in the meme which specifically mentions Christianity, but because members of our faith so often evangelize by fear, by threatening Hellfire and damnation on those who fail to convert, I’m fairly confident that we can assume the Christian faith to be the target. I wish it weren’t so and I wish I weren’t so sympathetic to the producers of the meme! But, let’s face it, there’s a good deal of really awful theology and really bad evangelism out there.

The truth, however, is that an awful lot (nearly all, in fact) of the mythology of Hell is not found in Holy Scripture. The English word Hell is derived from an ancient Germanic word (hel), which in Norse mythology named a place of eternal punishment. When the Greek Hades (used in the New Testament to name the place of dead) and the Hebrew terms Gehenna or Sheol (used in the Old Testament for the same purpose) were translated into English using this Germanic word, that resulted in a transfer of the pagan concept into Christian theology and its vocabulary.

Then along came poets like Milton and Dante and added all sorts of wonderful, fantastic, and clearly non-biblical imagery to the popular imagination — and, voila! — a full-blown picture of Hell featuring brimstone, lakes of fire, and tormenting demons ruled over by the fallen angel Lucifer, and inhabited by poor human souls condemned to an eternity of pain. One must admit that segments of the church have made full use of this as a scare-tactic mechanism to encourage conversions and to keep the faithful in line, but it was and is wrong to do so. Neither the New Testament Hades nor Old Testament Gehenna had any attached meaning of eternal torment; the Greek signified the place where all the dead, the good, the bad and the indifferent, were thought to go, while the Hebrew terms signified a place of disposal, a place of ending.

It is true that Jesus used imagery of an after-life fire to describe the punishment of unrighteous, but the implication is of annihilation and destruction, not eternal punishment. (See, for example, Matthew 13.) His parables, such as the tale of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16), cannot be the basis of a theology of eternal torment; parables are metaphoric or analogic teaching tools of limited application and to stretch them beyond their immediate point is to misunderstand and misuse them.

This is especially so when we have his own direct testimony in the Gospel of John. Because of signs displayed in the crowds of many sporting events, many people are familiar with John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And many of us were required to memorize this verse in Sunday School. Few, however, know or memorize the next verse — “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Two things must be observed and emphasized about how these verses describe the mission of the Christ. First, in verse 16 the alternatives are not an eternal life of joy versus an eternal life of punishment; the alternatives are “perishing” (i.e., annihilation and ending) or “eternal life.” Second, the purpose of Jesus’ life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension is not to condemn but to save.

The meme, so far as it goes, is accurate. There is way too much bad theology threatening people with Hellfire and damnation; to my way of thinking, any such theology is too much. But the meme is as wrong as those who promulgate the pagan mythology of Hell as a part of the Christian faith. It isn’t and we need to expunge it from our theology and from our vocabulary.

In a word, Hell can go to Hell!

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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.

Spooky Jesus – From the Daily Office – January 20, 2014

January 20, 2014 / / 1 Comment

From the Gospel of John:

When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 2:23-25 (NRSV) – January 20, 2014.)

Jesus Holy CardThe Definition of Chalcedon affirms, in part:

Following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin . . . .

That last bit is derived from Holy Scripture, specifically from a verse in the Letter to the Hebrews: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15 NRSV)

The Jesus described by the writer of Hebrews and affirmed in the Chalcedonian definition is a man I can follow. There are times when the Jesus described by the writer of the Fourth Gospel creeps me out! This is one of them. The thought that someone could “know all people” and “know what is in everyone” is just spooky.

Now, let me be clear, I am not speaking of the eternal Second Person of the Trinity; I’ve no doubt that God knows all people and knows what is in everyone. But the human person born in early First Century Palestine, who ate and drank and walked around, who expressed joy and disappointment, who got mad, who went to parties, who hiked the roads from town to town, that guy who was “like me in all respects” . . . . I don’t think that Jesus in his human life had access to the divine mind or could have known “what was in everyone.” If he did, he wasn’t like me and what he lived through, what he taught, and his death, resurrection, and ascension have no bearing on my life or meaning for me. He’s too spooky for me!

Years ago I was given a “holy card” which I have since lost. (In the Roman Catholic tradition, holy cards, also called “prayer cards” are small, devotional pictures, often mass-produced for the use of the faithful.) This card had what I’m sure is a very unrealistic portrait of Jesus done in what is technically called “lenticular printing;” that’s the process that makes the printed image seem to change or move as it is viewed from different angles. On that holy card, Jesus’ eyes seemed to move and follow you. It was creepy! When I read about Jesus reading the minds of everyone around him and knowing “what was in everyone,” I think of that spooky holy card.

John does this a lot; this gospel sometimes makes Jesus so divine that the human being gets lost. The wisdom of the biblical canon is that John’s too-divine Jesus is tempered by Mark’s portrait which is too human! (Could the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel, Mark 16:9-20 which includes the Great Commission and a description of Christ’s Ascension, have been added as a corrective to that too-human portrayal? That’s a topic for another exploration.)

I’m not suggesting that John’s Gospel be discounted or overlooked or thrown away. I’m just acknowledging that its mind-reading Jesus who “knew what was in everyone” is someone I wrestle with (like Israel in the desert with the angel of God). He’s spooky and spooky bothers me.

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

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

Obnoxious Jesus – From the Daily Office – January 17, 2014

January 17, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From John’s Gospel:

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 2:1-5 (NRSV) – January 17, 2014.)

Icon of the Wedding at CanaToday is the feast of St. Antony of Egypt. According to a Life of St. Antony written by Athanasius, Antony and his younger sister were orphaned when he was about 18 years of age, inheriting a goodly estate which he began to manage. However, writes Athanasius, six months after his parents’ death he was “turning over in his mind the way the apostles had left everything to follow the Savior” when he heard a sermon on Christ’s encounter with the rich young man whom the Lord instructed, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (Matt. 19:21)

According to Athanasius:

As though this reminder of the saints had ben sent to him by God, and as though that passage had been read specially for his sake, Antony went out immediately, and gave to the villagers the possessions he had inherited from his ancestors — they consisted of some three hundred very pleasant and fertile acres — so that they would not be an encumbrance to him and to his sister. He sold all his possessions and gave the considerable sum h raised to the poor, keeping back only a little of it for his sister.

Again when he went into church, he heard what the Lord said in the gospel, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.” He could not wait any longer, but went out and gave away even what he had kept back to the poor. He left his sister in the care of some well-known, trustworthy virgins, putting her in a convent to be brought up, and he devoted himself to the ascetic life not far from his home, living in recollection and practicing self-denial.

When I read that, I wondered what Antony’s sister’s reaction to it all might have been . . . . Truthfully, had I been her, my affections toward my older brother would not have been kindled! And then I read this morning’s Daily Office gospel about the wedding at Cana and the (to my mind) very uncomfortable repartee between Jesus and his mother. If we take off the rose-tinted glasses through which the Holy Family and the saints are often viewed and assess this conversation honestly, these are two people talking passed one another and not being terribly pleasant to each other!

When I was in seminary, my New Testament professor Bill Countryman referred to the portrayal of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel as “obnoxious.” In his book The Mystical Way in the Fourth Gospel, Countryman called Jesus’ repeated pattern of hard-to-understand responses to questions “obnoxious discourse.” Jesus seems intent on making his claims as difficult and offensive as possible; everything he says seems designed to irritate the people listening. And, in the story of the wedding at Cana, he seems to be starting with his mother!

Taken together, the story of Antony disposing of the family fortune and this gospel lesson serve as reminders that every family has its “issues.” The saints and holy people whom we revere and to whom we look as exemplars, even Jesus and his mother, were just “regular folks” doing the best they could and trying to work things out as well as possible. Sometimes they were wildly successful and are examples we should seek to emulate. Sometimes we look at them and question their judgments and their actions; not every example is one to follow. In either case, we hope to learn something, even when they are being obnoxious. Perhaps especially when Jesus is obnoxious!

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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.

Geographic Assumptions – From the Daily Office – January 16, 2014

January 16, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From John’s Gospel:

Nathanael said to [Philip], “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 1:46 (NRSV) – January 16, 2014.)

Map of StereotypesWe make many assumptions based on geography. Think of the all the comedians who make a living in North America by joking about stereotypes of Canadians — the television program South Park has made a running gag of Canadian stereotypes for years! Just try saying, as I truthfully can, “I was born in Las Vegas.” You’ll be very surprised by the reactions and the seriously ridiculous comments (I no longer am).

Although my wife is not a Las Vegan (she’s from a town in northeastern Nevada), we met and were married there. When I say that to someone in her presence — “We were married in Las Vegas” — she always adds “in a large church wedding.” She knows full well that the immediate assumption raised by my statement is that our marriage took place at the Little Chapel in the Parking Lot Behind Caesar’s Palace or some similar establishment.

Nathanael is voicing geographic assumptions in his question to Philip. In word, he is stereotyping.

Nazareth in Galilee, north of Jerusalem, was a nothing town, a poor, back water village of maybe 500 people ignored by nearly everyone, not only the Roman Empire but even by its nearby neighbors. Its residents were the First Century Jewish equivalent of hillbillies. It was not the sort of place from which one expected anything great, or anything at all . . . even an inhabitant of a similar neighboring town (like Bethsaida) could turn his nose up at it!

There are plenty of such places in the world today; there are many, many modern-day Nazareths. Every empire has its left-behind, forgotten, impoverished villages, its places from which no one expects any good thing to come. The spirit of Nazareth lives on in the slums and abandoned neighborhoods of Detroit, of Rio de Janeiro, of Calcutta, of hundreds of cities and towns around the globe.

“Can anything good come from [fill in the blank . . . I’m sure you know a place]?”

Philip’s answer to Nathanael is “Come and see.” God has two answers. The obvious answer: Yes! The less obvious answer is an admonition to stop stereotyping. If we can learn to take off the blinders of our geographic (and other) assumptions, if we can give up the habit of stereotyping, we will see greater things.

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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.

WYSIWYG World – From the Daily Office – January 10, 2014

January 10, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Colossians:

Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Colossians 2:16-17 (NRSV) – January 10, 2014.)

Green-on-Black TextI sometimes wonder to what extent Paul, as an educated Jewish citizen of a Greek-speaking empire, was schooled in the classical Greek philosophers. Had he read Plato’s Republic? Was he aware of the conversation portrayed in Book VII between Socrates and Glaucon in which the allegory of the cave is laid out?

In the dialog, Socrates describes a prison cave in which the inmates have lived all of their lives chained in such a way that all they can see is a blank wall. The prisoners watch shadows formed on the wall by things passing between them and a fire behind them. They recognize the shadows, give them the names of the things which cast them, and believe them to actually be those things. The shadows, says Socrates, are as close as the inmates get to viewing reality. According to Socrates, a philosopher is like a prisoner who is loosed, sees the real forms casting the images, and comes to understand that the shadows are not reality at all. He is aware of the true form of reality, not the shadows seen by the chained inmates. The story illustrates Plato’s “Theory of Forms,” which holds that things in the material world perceivable through sensation are mere “shadows” of ideal “forms.” These “forms,” not the “shadows,” possess the highest and most fundamental reality.

When Paul writes things like “these are only a shadow . . . the substance belongs to Christ,” he seems to be buying into this Platonic idea. His famous line from the first letter to the church in Corinth seems to do so as well: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Take these sorts of Pauline statements and mix them with the Letter to the Hebrews (“They offer worship in a sanctuary that is a sketch and shadow of the heavenly one.” – Heb. 8:5) and even a bit of James (“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” – James 1:17), and one can see where the Neoplatonists and even the Gnostics get the notion that the material world is less than ideal, fallen, corrupt, or even evil. That’s a position that, unfortunately in my opinion, has made a significant impact on Christian theology.

It is also not a view to which the Hebrew Scriptures lend much support and one doubts very much that it was the opinion of Jesus of Nazareth! Oh sure, there are hints of it in Hebrew poetry and prayer. For example, King David prays with the assembly of the people: “For we are aliens and transients before you, as were all our ancestors; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope.” (1 Chron 29:15) And Bildad the Shuhite advises Job: “For we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing, for our days on earth are but a shadow.” (Job 8:9) And from time to time the Psalms say things like the description of human beings as “like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow.” (Ps. 144:4) But on the whole, the Old Testament and (I suggest) the Christian faith declare a much different understanding of reality!

Just read the accounts of creation in Genesis! God is not shown to be casting shadows; God is creating hard, physical reality and, at each step along the way, declares it good. In the second account (which is probably the older of the two), God gets God’s hands dirty in all that good, hard, physical reality molding human beings out of the clay. I’m particularly fond of poet James Weldon Johnson’s retelling of that story (which I quoted in last Sunday’s sermon):

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life.

(“The Creation”, from God’s Trombones)

When I was a second-year student at law school I was a member of the law review where we used some very early word processing equipment and software in which one had to enter the codes for changes in typeface, indentation, and so forth (not too dissimilar from writing HTML code, frankly). What you looked at on the green-on-black computer screen bore no resemblance to what (you hoped) the printer would produce. The next year, when I became an editor, we purchased a new computer and were introduced to a new concept – “WYSIWYG” (pronounced “wissy-wig”) – What You See Is What You Get. What was on the screen looked like what the printer produced!

I believe that’s the kind of world we have been given, one in which what we perceive is real. Yes, I know that quantum mechanics and superstring theory bring that into some question, that at some super-micro-nano-reality level things are not quite what they seem; but that is a different issue than this philosophical nothing-is-really-real shadow-world construct of Plato’s, and a far cry from the fallen, corrupt, evil world of some Christian theologies. We live in a real, physical world, one in which God was pleased to take on flesh and dwell among us (John 1:1-14).

When I see beautiful winter hillside covered with glistening snow, when I taste a sweet-tart bite of homemade cherry pie, when I kiss my wife or hug my daughter, when I listen to a Vivaldi concerto, I am seeing/tasting/feeling/hearing what I get, not some shadow of an unseen and unknowable “ideal form.” Like that mammy bending over her baby, what I am experiencing is real and good; it is the ideal. We live in a WYSIWYG world!

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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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