Category: John (Page 23 of 24)

God, Words, Responsibility – From the Daily Office – August 6, 2012

August 6, 2012 / eric / 4 Comments

John’s Gospel begins:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 1:1-5 – August 6, 2012)

Pulpit, Exeter Cathdral Reading these oh-so-familiar words in the introduction to John’s Gospel, I remember other words I read on another blog yesterday:

If the Church was meeting the deepest needs and yearnings of spiritual people, it would be a priority in their lives. But it is not, and it chooses to ignore everything except the obvious. Evelyn Underhill, the great Anglican mystic of the early 20th century, said that the “only really interesting thing about religion is God.” People aren’t staying away from the Church to play football or shop – they’re staying away because they aren’t finding God. (Do Anglican Churches Really Want to Survive?)

Reading those words I felt like I’d been gut punched, knifed, shot in the head. Not because they are wrong, but because I fear they are probably right, and I wonder what I and my fellow clergy have been doing for the past several decades.

Well, that’s not exactly true. When I read those words I didn’t wonder about other clergy at all . . . I just wondered about me. What have I been doing? Worship in the Episcopal Church takes the effort of lots of people – musicians, choir singers, lay assistants who read lessons, lead prayers, and help at the altar, sacristans who set things up and clean them up after its all done, ushers, greeters, and so forth . . . but it is the priest who designs the liturgy within the broad outlines of The Book of Common prayer, who presides at the altar, and who stands in the pulpit preaching the word. In 22 years of ordained ministry, I’ve done all of that and said a lot of words . . . a lot of words! If in what is happening on Sunday people are not finding God, it is in large part the priest’s responsibility, my responsibility.

Not solely the priest’s, by any means, but in large measure. Especially in a church which follows the catholic tradition of Holy Orders as sacramental and, by its rubrics and canons, makes the parish priest the final arbiter of all worship experiences. Yes, one could recruit and work with a worship committee, and yes, one does work with the musician and all those good volunteers, but in the final analysis, as our canons put it, the senior pastor has “full authority and responsibility for the conduct of the worship and the spiritual jurisdiction of the Parish.” There is even a canon declaring that, in regard to worship, the ordained minister in charge of a congregation, “shall have final authority in the administration of matters pertaining to music.” So I say again, if in what is happening on Sunday people are not finding God, it is in large part the priest’s responsibility.

In 22 years of ordained ministry I’ve said a lot of words, sung a lot of words, heard a lot of words, quoted a lot of words. I hope that God was in some of them.

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

Carb Loading on Jesus – From the Daily Office – August 5, 2012

August 5, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Judges:

Gideon went into his house and prepared a kid, and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour; the meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the oak and presented them. The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And he did so. Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes; and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. Then Gideon perceived that it was the angel of the Lord; and Gideon said, “Help me, Lord God! For I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.” But the Lord said to him, “Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die.” Then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord, and called it, The Lord is peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Judges 6:19-24 – August 5, 2012)

It is intriguing how often in stories of Holy Scripture food plays a role. From the “apple” in the Garden, to Abraham offering a meal of cakes and meat to the three men (who turn out to God) at the Oaks of Mamre, to this story of Gideon, to David and his men eating the Bread of the Presence, to all the food items listed as items of sacrifice in Leviticus, the Old Testament (indeed, the whole Bible) is food focused. The People of God define themselves through the annual reenactment of a ritual meal celebrating the Passover; the new People of God define themselves (in my tradition and others) by the weekly reenactment of a ritual meal celebrating the death and Resurrection of Christ and anticipating his return. It’s intriguing but not surprising. The Jewish and Christian faiths are not, in the long run, about following rules of ritual or moral conduct; they are about being in an intimate relationship with that which is the source of being, that which we call “God” and address as “Father” or brother or redeemer. And, other than sex, there is probably no more intimate activity two or more people can share than eating together.

Today the gospel lesson for the Eucharist is from John’s lengthy “treatise on bread” section in which Jesus describes himself as the “bread of life,” an image which continues this focus on food. (John 6:24-35) My son Patrick was our guest preacher this morning; he extemporized a sermon around bread as a carbohydrate food. He called to mind the practice of long-distance competitive runners, the folks who run marathons and compete in triathlons, to “carb load”, involves greatly increasing the amount of carbohydrates you eat several days before a high-intensity endurance athletic event. The purpose is to increase the level of glycogen stored in one’s muscles. Usually, only enough glycogen to sustain 60-90 minutes of physical activity is stored, but through carbohydrate loading an athlete, particularly male athletes, can often double the glycogen in their systems.

Noting that the church is in a dynamic period of change, figuring out how it will minister in a new century in a radically different social context, Patrick suggested the period ahead of us is going to be like running a marathon. In the past, the church has been like a sprinter, dashing along quickly with this new program and then dashing again with another new program. But now, the long, hard sustained work of reimagining and restructuring for a new ministry paradigm requires that we “carb load” on the bread of life, Jesus our Lord. Only he can provide the life energy the church needs at this time in its existence.

As I listened to him preach, I thought of this Daily Office lesson and how Gideon’s altar is said to stand “to this day.” I firmly believe that the church will stand, in one way or another, through the years to come. It may not be very much like the church of my youth, or the church in which I currently minister. The era of the parish church, of the congregation with a dedicated single-purpose building, of the local church with a full-time paid priest may be coming to an end, but in some form or another the church will stand. It will endure. It will “run the race that set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” (Heb. 12:1-1) the bread of life which sustains us.

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

Infinite Abundance – Sermon for Pentecost 9, Proper 12B – July 29, 2012

July 29, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, July 29, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 12B: 2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145:10-19; Ephesians 3:14-21; and John 6:1-21)

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How many of you have ever attended a potluck supper or potluck luncheon in this parish? Let’s have show of hands. OK – hands down. Those of you who have done so . . . have you ever known there to be an insufficiency of food at any such event? Ever? Keep that in mind, please, as we take a look at these lessons today.

First of all, a story about the prophet Elisha from the Second Book of Kings. This the fourth in a series of miracles which are set out in Chapter 4 to prove that Elisha is a spokesman for God. In the first story, one of Elisha’s disciples dies leaving a widow with two children to raise by herself; her only possession, we are told, is a jar of oil. Elisha instructs her to borrow as many vessels from her neighbors as she can and to pour the oil from her jar into the borrowed vessels. She and her children fill vessel after vessel with the oil from her jar. When all the borrowed vessels are filled, the miraculous supply of oil stops. Elisha then instructs her to sell the oil, pay her debts, and live off the remaining money. It is a story of over-flowing abundance.

In the second story, Elisha promises a barren woman who has provided him hospitality that she will conceive and bear a son, which she does. Sometime later, however, the son becomes ill and dies. The woman, after placing the body in the room of her house where Elisha had stayed, finds Elisha and tells him what has happened; he offers to send his servant Gehazi but she insists that the prophet himself must come. He does so and raises the son from the dead. Again, it is a story of over-flowing grace.

The third and fourth stories are tales about food. In the third, we learn that on his return from raising the boy a time of famine has come upon his land of Gilgal, but Elisha nontheless orders his disciples to make a big pot of stew. One of the students goes into the field to gather herbs. Along with other ingredients he brings some gourds from a wild vine. As they eat the stew, apparently some fall ill and die as the men cry out, “O man of God, there is death in the pot!” Elisha, by the simple expedient of throwing some flour in the pot, “cures” the stew. Once again, the prophet brings life out of death. Perhaps more importantly, when his disciples were without food, God through Elisha’s ministry was able to provide them with what they needed.

And then we come to our reading for today at the end of the chapter. In this fourth story, twenty loaves of barley bread and some undefined but clearly small amount of grain feed a hundred people with plenty left over. This story differs from the first three in that it specifically mentions the commandment of God. The instruction to give the loaves and grain to the people and to eat and have some left over are not Elisha’s, they are the Lord’s.

This series of miracles accomplished through Elisha proves his legitimacy as a prophet of God, but beyond that in each of these events God meets and satisfies a significant human need. Saving orphaned children and their widowed mother from poverty and possibly slavery, providing a son to a barren woman and then raising that child from the dead, and feeding the hungry with more than enough are accomplished in these miracles. These are not demonstrations of power for the sake of impressing an audience; these are acts of abundant compassion and love flowing from God.

These stories, especially the one chosen by the Lectionary this morning, form a backdrop to the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. This story was so important to and had made such an impression upon the first Christians that we find it in all four of the Gospels – each of the the Evangelists puts a different “spin” on the story, but there it is in every Gospel. In fact, it is the only miracle of Jesus that is reported in all four Gospels. John, whose version we heard today, uses it to introduce a lengthy discourse on the “bread of life” from which we will hear pieces read over the next five weeks, but for now let’s just concentrate on story itself.

As John tells the story, Jesus had gone off to be by himself after a particularly intense period of ministry. However, the crowds followed him: “Jesus,” writes John, “went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. . . . . [Then] he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him.” This isn’t the sermon on the mount; it’s not a teaching event; he hadn’t encouraged this group of people to come to this place. In fact, as John tells it, there is almost a suggestion that Jesus didn’t want these people around, but there they are! There they are in a wilderness area at the end of the day, tired, hungry, and apparently without food.

“How are we going to buy food to feed these people?” he asks Phillip. Notice that there is no doubt or hesitation about whether or not he and his disciples have any responsibility to do so; it’s not even a question worth asking or thinking about. These people are here; they need to eat; what are we going to do about it? And Phillip’s immediate response is, “We don’t have enough money.” Meanwhile, Andrew pops up with the fact that there is a boy present with five loaves fish and two loaves, but then immediately observes (like Elisha’s servant in the story from Second Kings) that that clearly isn’t enough food for the number of people to be fed.

Elisha’s servant could not see how twenty loaves could feed a hundred men; Philip and Andrew could not see past the probably out-of-reach cost of sufficient supplies or the meagerness of the boy’s five loaves and two fish. And we, even though we regularly experience episodes of improbable and exorbitant abundance (remember those potluck meals I asked you to keep in mind), are much like them. We base many of our decisions on an assumption of scarcity and on our fear of insufficiency; we hoard and save and worry and end up living our lives, personally and corporately, in small and safe (but largely boring and ineffective) activities. We pull back when we should push forward. We give in to our fear of a shortfall rather than exercising faith in God’s profligate generosity. Elisha and Jesus, out of God’s overflowing abundance, gave the people what they needed.

These miracles, Elisha’s feeding of his 100 disciples and Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, demand that we as the church face squarely this question: “Do we believe that God will provide what we need to do the ministry God wants done?” Note the essential qualifiers – what we need, not necessarily what we want, and the ministry God wants, not necessarily the ministry we’ve planned. Another way to ask the question: Do we operate according to a mind-set of abundance or of scarcity? The former engenders generosity, joy, and hope; the latter brings anxiety, fear, and decline. These stories encourage us to rely about God’s infinite abundance, to live in God’s world of generosity and hope, in God’s world of infinite possibility.

These stories demonstrate that will of God for God’s people, throughout both the Old and the New Testaments, is profligate generosity; God’s will for God’s people is the same today. God wants to meet our human needs. We face no problems that are any different from those faced by God’s people in the past; the problems we face can and will be resolved when we rely upon God’s generous abundance without fear of scarcity or insufficiency. Our problems are not our problem! Our problem is really believing that God is still able and willing to enter into our lives to meet our needs.Our problem is in really internalizing what we are saying when we repeat the words of the Psalm: “You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature.”

And yet we have our own experiences of that abundant provision. Elisha told his servant to feed the 100 men with the twenty loaves of bread: “He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.” Jesus had the people sit down; he took five loaves and two fish from the boy, gave thanks to God, and distributed the food. After everyone had eaten, “he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up, and . . . filled twelve baskets.”

That’s exactly what happens when we have those potlucks I asked you to keep in mind! When we have shared suppers in this parish, no one has ever gone away hungry. There are always plenty of leftovers. They don’t always go home with the people who brought them either – they are sent home with our seniors who live alone, with struggling young families with children to feed, or with the family whose breadwinner has recently lost his job. At our potlucks we personally experience of the very stories we read in the Bible. God not only meets our needs, God overfills them with profligate generosity.

With that experience, we really should have no trouble believing that God is able and willing to enter every area of our lives to meet our needs, not just at our potluck suppers but in every thing we do as individuals and together as the church. We should have no trouble comprehending, with all the saints, the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ and the fullness of God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Amen.

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

June 3, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 28:19)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 27, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grow My Church! – Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter – May 20, 2012

May 20, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Sunday after the Ascension): Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; and John 17:6-19.

The story from the Acts of the Apostles this morning tells us that the apostles, in choosing a replacement for Judas Iscariot, relied on a game of chance. They couldn’t decide between two candidates so, rather than voting, they “cast lots”, drew straws, rolled the dice. Matthias got the short straw. As I was contemplating these lessons, and particularly this story, this week, I was also assaulted by radio and television advertisements for the new Horseshoe Casino in downtown Cleveland. And just like the lessons of the past few weeks, this coincidence of events triggered a memory of childhood. But this week, the memory was not of summers spent with my grandparents, it was of Saturdays spent with my father.

My father, R. York Funston, was a Certified Public Accountant in Las Vegas, Nevada. During the 1940s and 1950s one of the ways the authorities kept tabs on the gaming industry was through weekly audits of the casino records conducted by state-appointed CPAs, of which my dad was one. For some reason, the Gaming Control Board thought Saturday mornings would be the best time for the books to be collected, so that was when he would make the rounds of the five casinos he was responsible for. It was also the day my mother did her housekeeping and she didn’t want me underfoot, so I would accompany my dad as he drove through Las Vegas visiting the casinos.

The Las Vegas of the early 1950s was rather different from the city one visits today. In those days, Las Vegas as about the size of current-day Medina, Ohio. A permanent population of right around 30,000 people, a downtown like that of any other city with a Sears-Roebuck, a Rexall drug store, a locally owned department store called Ronzone’s, a movie theatre that showed double-features, and half-a-dozen or so casinos. We lived near the south edge of town in a post-war housing development called Huntridge. Just a couple blocks south of us was Sahara Boulevard, south of which was the desert and a collection of horse ranches called Paradise Valley.

Dad and I would get up and leave the house at about 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings and drive through Paradise Valley headed for the Tropicana Hotel & Casino to pick up the first set of books. Then we’d hit three other places on the strip and finish up downtown at Binny Binion’s Horseshoe, the casino which eventually became the big publicly-traded corporation now running a casino in Cleveland.

This was not, in terms of miles traveled, a very long trip, but it would take about four or five hours because at each stop my dad would have a cup of coffee and a conversation with the casino managers. At each place, I would get to spend time with a change girl or a cocktail waitress while Dad conducted his business, and sometimes I’d get to meet other people. For example, I met Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and all the rest of the Rat Pack when I was four years old. But when we got to Binion’s, I got to do something else.

The Horseshoe was on the corner of Fremont, the downtown main street of Las Vegas, and Third Street, and the whole corner of the building was open to the street. Right at the corner, visible for everyone passing by to see, was a big glass box in which, it was said, there was $1,000,000 in U.S. currency in bills of various denominations. On either side of the box stood a uniformed guard carrying a shotgun. Casino patrons could get inside that box with all that money and large fan would blow a whirlwind around them and lift those bills so they were flying all around the person. I’m not sure how long the patron had, maybe a minute, but whatever it was, the idea was that during that period of time whatever bills the person could catch and hold on to, they got to keep. My dad would leave me there at the entrance to Binion’s Horseshoe and let me watch those people trying to catch money while he went inside and got the books. I never saw anybody catch very many bills – that’s really hard to do.

So when the Bible describes a game of chance as the means by which the apostles chose a successor to Judas, and the radio is broadcasting ads for a new casino in Cleveland, I remember those childhood visits to Binion’s Horseshoe and those silly people grabbing at those flying bills.

Luke does not tell us whether Matthias was commissioned in any way for his ministry as Judas’s replacement, but I think we can be fairly certain that he was. Elsewhere in Acts Luke describes acts of laying of hands and prayer to commission people for special ministries, and church historians assure us that from the very earliest days of the church this was the regular practice. Today we are commissioning a group of St. Paul’s members to perform a special ministry as part of what is called a Grow My Church Task Force. The “my” in “Grow My Church” refers to Christ; this title is a paraphrase of Jesus’ “Great Commission” to the Apostles, the commandment given them just before his ascension into heaven. St. Matthew reports it in these words:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always , even to the end of the age. (Matt. 28:19-20)

Jesus refers to his intention to do this in today’s gospel from John, in what is called his “high priestly prayer” offered to God on the night of the Last Supper. In fact, this prayer is the Apostles’ commissioning by Jesus for the ministry they will be given:

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:17-19)

The word for sending here in the original Greek of the New Testament is apostello and it is from this word that we get our word apostle – an apostle is one who is sent.

In a few minutes, we will formally commission the Task Force, we will make them apostles sent to do a job, but before we do, I want to tell you what the Vestry, our parish governing board, has charged them to do. At its last meeting, the Vestry adopted this resolution:

We, the Vestry of St Paul’s Episcopal Church formally charge the members of the newly formed Grow My Church! Team, which includes Barbara Baird, Shelley Triebsch, Mark Hansen, Joe Mahn, David Muffet, Steve Rucinski, and Ray Sizemore, to help us learn more about our congregation. We commend to you the Grow My Church! course and ask that you exercise all diligence in prayer and study, and return to us with recommendations. Therefore, in the course of your study we formally charge you to develop a Congregational Growth Plan to help reinvigorate our church and better live out our role in The Great Commission. We pledge to review your recommendations, intending to fruitfully apply your work as the Holy Spirit guides us. We expect to hear back from you in four months and pledge to keep everyone involved in our prayers

The Task Force will be meeting on Monday evenings for twelve weeks. Each meeting will address a particular topic:

Organization
Landscape (What are the societal and community factors influencing our church?)
Leadership (How does our governance structure work? How could it be improved?)
Purpose (What is our mission? How well is it known to our members and to non-members?)
Worship (Why we gather on Sunday? What do we do? What should we do?)
Spirituality (What is our church’s relationship with God?)
Service (What are our community outreach ministries? Are there others we should be doing?)
Fellowship (What about the social time we spend together? Can it be improved?)
Generosity (How do we talk about money? How do we raise it, use it, steward it?)
Hospitality (How are we at welcoming the visitor and incorporating the newcomer?)
Invitation (How well do we do at asking others to join us? What can we do to make our invitations more frequent and more effective?)
Growth Plan (Putting it all together with action recommendations reported to the Vestry.)

OK … so that’s who they are, what they’ve been commissioned to do, and how they’re going to go about doing it.

Here’s what I hope they (and we) won’t do.

First, I hope they won’t be like those people in the glass box at Binion’s Horseshoe grabbing at the flying money. I sometimes feel that that is what the church has been doing for the past three or four decades. We have known that church membership has been declining, that Average Sunday Attendance has been going down, but we haven’t known what to do about it, so we stand in the whirlwind and grab at anything that flies by. We’ve had program after program that was supposed to reinvigorate the church and make us grow. We’ve had canned studies called Edge of Adventure, Living the Adventure, Faith Alive, Acts 29, and on and on. We’ve had spiritual experiences like Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, the charismatic movement, and the so-called contemporary worship craze. We’ve done Natural Church Development and we’ve done Unbinding the Gospel.
Some of these things have worked for while; some of these things have taught us lessons we ought to remember; some of these things actually have done harm. But much of it has been “like chaff which the wind blows away” or like the dollar bills flying around in that glass box. I hope this Task Force doesn’t repeat that experience but will be solidly grounded and take from the things we’ve tried and the things they study some good, reliable insights on which to make recommendations to the Vestry and to all of us. I hope that in this study this Task Force will be “like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season.”

Second, I hope they won’t feel constrained by the past. I hope they won’t use (or even hear) two sentences. One is “We’ve never done it that way before” and the other is “We’ve always done it that way before.” There are lots of things that we (throughout the church not just in this parish) have not done that we clearly ought to be doing; and there are plenty of things that we’ve done for years that we need to abandon. Someone recently reminded me of an observation made back in the 1990s by Father Robert Farrar Capon, one of the great writers of our church. Fr. Capon, in a book entitled The Astonished Heart: Reclaiming the Good News from the Lost-and-Found of Church History, wrote:

The church can’t rise because it refuses to drop dead. The fact that it’s dying is of no use whatsoever: dying is simply the world’s most uncomfortable way of remaining alive. If you are to be raised from the dead, the only thing that can make you a candidate is to go all the way into death. Death, not life, is God’s recipe for fixing up the world.

As John wrote in today’s epistle, God intends for us to have eternal life, “and this life is in his Son,” and his Son said:

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24-25)

I believe that is as true for the church as a community as it is for each of us as individuals, but just as individuals must die to self in order to be born again, the church must die to all the things, the practices, the ways-we’ve-always-done-it that may have worked in the past but that are now holding us back.

Third, I hope that you won’t ignore their work. I hope you will participate in this process. As the Task Force works through these twelve weeks of study, they will be seeking your input. This white board over here will be in the hallway each week with a question or maybe two. There will be inserts in your bulletin for your answers. Please give them and put them on the board with those colored magnets you see. And sign them! The Task Force cannot respond to anonymity – they may want to get more information from you and they will want to respond to you. So give them your thoughts and take ownership of them. Have the courage of your convictions and let the Task Force have your testimony about your church.

Finally, after we commission them, we will hold them responsible for producing an action plan to report to the Vestry within four months pursuant to that resolution. I hope that they won’t just walk away from it. I hope that they, in turn, will hold us responsible to do the things in that plan. They are a Task Force and when their task is done, they will be discharged and their team disbanded, but I hope they will continue to be active in our pursuit of the Great Commission making sure that we do what they determine in this study we need to do.

The liturgy of commissioning the members of the Grow My Church! Task Force is in your bulletins. Would you please pull that out while I ask the members of the Task Force to step forward….

Paradox or Confusion – From the Daily Office – May 17, 2012

May 17, 2012 / eric / 1 Comment

From Matthew’s Gospel:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 28:16-20 – May 17, 2012)

Dali Ascension Today is the Feast of the Ascension. Today we remember that, forty days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven, disappearing from his disciples’ sight into the clouds. Luke tells us in the Book of Acts that the disciples stood there gazing up towards heaven, and that two men, presumably angels, appeared and asked “Why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11) So we have two biblical promises: “I’m still with you” and “He’s not with you but he’ll be back.” The Christian paradox illustrated in the readings for a single day. ~ For me the meaning of the Ascension is summarized in the petition of one of the collects for the day in the American Book of Common Prayer (1979): that “we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell” – or as Jesus put it in John’s gospel “that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:3) I don’t understand that as a future conditional promise but rather as a present permissive reality. Christ’s ascension allows us to be in God’s presence, now . . . no matter what our circumstance may be. It’s a matter of us recognizing that presence in the present, which we so often fail to do because we think of it as a future reward for some good behavior or something on our part when, in reality, it has nothing to do with our behavior or our goodness at all. The apparent paradox of the two biblical promises accurately reflects our confusion.

Dancing for Joy – Sermon for Easter 6B – May 13, 2012

May 13, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B: Acts 10:44-48, Psalm 98, 1 John 5:1-6, and John 15:9-17.

Are you a music fan? A classical music fan? I am. I love the great symphonies – Beethoven’s Fifth, his Ninth, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, Dvorak’s From the New World, and many others – they just bowl me over. I can sit down in a concert venue and no matter what emotional state I may be in, a good symphony or concerto can overcome it – cynicism, depression, grumpiness, whatever my condition may be it will be conquered by the music and I will be uplifted. It doesn’t even have to be live in a concert hall. Sometimes when I’m feeling a bit out of sorts, I’ll put on a CD and just let great music lift me up. In fact, even badly played band music can have that effect.

When we first moved from Nevada to Kansas in 1993, Evelyn was unable to accompany the children and me. We had been unable to sell our home and she was unable to transfer her job for several more months. So she stayed in Las Vegas while in August the kids and I moved into an A-Frame farmhouse on 40 acres just outside the town of Bucyrus, Kansas. The kids enrolled in Circle Grove Elementary School and Patrick decided he wanted to learn to play a musical instrument in the band. So he started instruction on the clarinet. Three weeks into the semester, the Fifth Grade Band had its first concert. Believe me that I am being inordinately charitable when I describe it as abysmal – it was SO bad!

Several weeks later Evelyn was able to join us for a few days at Thanksgiving and it just happened that the band was giving its second concert, a holiday offering, while she was with us. Well . . . to be honest, once again, with still only three months of instruction, the band was terrible. But they were so much better, by orders of magnitude better, than they had been at the end of September that I just couldn’t shut up about how good they were. Evelyn looked at me like I had lost my mind; four months in Kansas had clearly unhinged me! But I just had to get down to the stage to tell the band instructor what a marvelous job she had done! I was simply gushing with excited praise for what she had accomplished.

This is precisely what is happening in John’s First Letter. He is so excited about the love of God, so effusive that words just keep flowing across his page: I can see him sitting with his stylus scribbling away, trying to find new ways to write about this wonderful new Christian faith. The way he repeats things, the way his ideas tumble over one another, you can tell he’s just bubbling over with enthusiasm and eagerness.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.

In fact, John’s vision of the Christian faith is just like my experience of sitting in a symphony hall. The way my mood, whatever it may be, is overcome by the music is the way John envisions the world being conquered by our faith. Jesus calls us to love our God and our neighbor in such a way that the world can’t help but be won over. “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.” And John assures us that this call is not burdensome.

It may not be burdensome . . . but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take some effort, does it?

There is a story of a young sailor on a small ship sailing through the night. The captain instructed him to take the helm while the captain went below for a brief nap. “All you need to do,” explained the captain, “is follow the North Star,” which he carefully pointed out to the sailor. “Do you think you can do it?”
“Yes, sir!” the sailor replied. “You can count on me” as he took the wheel and the captain disappeared below.

Several hours later the captain woke from his nap and came up on deck. One look at the sky he knew immediately that the ship was off course. “Sailor,” he said. “What have you been doing? Why aren’t we headed toward the North Star?”

“Oh,” said the sailor. “We passed that an hour ago!”

Keeping one’s eye on the Pole Star and staying on a heading for it . . . it’s not burdensome, but it takes effort.

In theology there is a concept called adiaphora. It means “things indifferent” and refers to matters which are debatable or spiritually neutral. There are essentials of the Christian faith such as the deity of Christ, Jesus’ physical resurrection, the centrality of the Sacraments in worship, and so forth. But there are also lots of things that we get exorcised about which are non-essentials, things that are neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture. These include such things as whether to use candles or not, whether to furnish a worship space with chairs or pews, what time of day our services should be held, what sort of music to sing, and so forth. The adiaphora, some would argue, might also include the very important but nonetheless secondary issues that we grapple with, such as war and peace, abortion, marriage equality, healthcare and welfare, and a host of current issues. All of which can, and frequently do, command our attention and distract us from keeping our eye on the Pole Star of our faith, which is Jesus!

As business coach Steven Covey might put it, we forget that “the main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.” The main thing, Jesus said, is this: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That is not a burden, but it does take effort because of all the distractions turning around us in this world. This is what T.S. Elliot wrote about in the poem Burnt Norton one of his Four Quartets, in which we find these lines:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I love that image, “At the still point of the turning world . . . .” For a Christian, that “still point” is Jesus. “At the still point of the turning world . . . there is only the dance.”

If I’d thought about it, before putting this sermon to bed last night, I’d have included “The Lord of the Dance” in today’s hymns:

I danced in the morning when the world was begun.
I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun.
I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth;
At Bethlehem, I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be.
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

Wonderful, joyful piece of music. The tune is based on the Shaker melody, ‘Tis a Gift to be Simple and Aaron Copland used it in Appalachian Spring, which is another of those orchestral pieces of music that can pull me right up out of any funky attitude into happiness.

Have you ever heard the term “dance for joy”? Did you know that’s from the Bible? The Prophet Jeremiah wrote that God will come and gather his people like a shepherd gathers his flock, that there will be an abundance of crops, of grain, of oil, of herds, and that “the young women will dance for joy; the young and old men will join in.” (Jer. 31:13, Common English Bible)

Jesus said in today’s gospel lesson that joy is the very purpose of his not-terribly-burdensome command: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” That’s where the whole gospel is headed, where the whole arc of salvation history is taking us, where God wants us to be. Our Christian faith is taking us – to joy, to the kind of joy that lifts and us completely fills us like a good symphony, to the kind of joy that makes us dance. And that is why our faith is “the victory that conquers the world” at the still point of which there is only the Lord of the dance.

From time to time, we need to be reminded of this. The goal of the Christian faith is not purity; it’s not morality; it’s not bringing world peace or world dominion; it’s not the right to life or the right of reproductive choice; it’s not the sanctity of marriage or marriage equality. The goal of the Christian faith is none of those nor any other secondary thing we can imagine or get distracted by. The goal of the Christian faith is nothing less than joy, a joy that fills us completely and fulfills itself in love.

We . . . each one of us individually, and all of us together . . . need to keep our eye on the Pole Star of our faith, on Jesus, on the Lord of the dance, and remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Amen.

Know – Go – Show: Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year B – May 6, 2012

May 6, 2012 / eric / 2 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for the 5th Sunday in Easter, Year B: Acts 8:26-40, Psalm 22:24-30, 1 John 4:7-21, and John 15:1-8

On Thursday of this past week, a client of the food pantry of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City, Maryland, shot and killed the parish secretary, Brenda Brewington; shot and critically wounded one of the parish priests, the Rev. Dr. Mary-Marguerite Kohn; and then shot and killed himself. His name was Douglas Jones. The cutting short of those lives is not the sort of pruning about which Jesus speaks in today’s gospel lesson, but I could not let go of that image as I thought about and prayed about what happened in Maryland. As you all know, we here at St. Paul’s have our own regular food pantry ministry – the Free Farmers’ Market – and, on occasion, volunteers, including me although I don’t work the Market as often as I used to, have been threatened with violence by clients who have clearly had some cognitive dysfunction. The same has happened on weekdays when needy persons have come to the office seeking assistance; we have had uncomfortable and sometimes scary incidents in the office. I have never taken them very seriously. Perhaps I should. But I do not believe that the murder of church workers, lay or ordained, is the sort of “pruning” Jesus is here talking about. On the other hand, I have no doubt that from this tragedy in Maryland there will come much fruit. I have no doubt because I have heard the resolve in the voice of the bishop of Maryland, in the words of the parish and diocesan spokespeople who have interfaced with the media, in the reactions of clergy and laity throughout the church, and especially in the words of the parish’s rector, Fr. Kirk Kubicek. There will be growth from this horrible event because, while this is not the sort of pruning our Lord describes in this gospel lessons, the determination with which those most affected are facing this heartbreak, is the fruit of the Vine which is Christ, the Vine of which we are also branches. Today, in our prayers, we will pray for repose for those who died and for strength for those left behind.

Well . . . .

I hadn’t really planned to do a sermon series about my childhood summers spent with Edgar and Edna Funston, but these “I am” statements of Jesus from the Fourth Gospel keep taking me back there, so once again . . . a story from Winfield, Kansas, fifty years ago.

It was the summer of 1961, that was the second summer my cousins were there as well. Bob – two years old then me, Randy – 20 months younger, and I decided we wanted to build a tree house. So we asked Granddad if we could do that and he said, “Yes.” He didn’t ask which tree we were thinking of using, and he didn’t give us any direction . . . he just said, “OK.” So we proceeded to build our tree house in his prize pie cherry tree.

My grandmother made wonderful cherry pies from that trees fruit. I think those cherry pies are the reason that’s my favorite kind of pie . . . and why I’m usually disappointed when I order my favorite kind of pie in a restaurant. They were my grandfather’s favorite pies, too.

That’s probably why he got so angry when he saw what we’d done. I’m sure he thought he’d never see another cherry pie from that tree again. Back in 1961 grandfathers could still spank their grandsons . . . and he did. Fifty years later and I still remember it. He also tore down the tree house we’d worked so hard to build.

Fast forward several months to June, 1962. Back in those days the Los Angeles Unified School District ended classes on the last school before Memorial Day (which wasn’t always on a Monday like it is now) and started them on the Tuesday after Labor Day (which always was the first Monday of September). My mom would always arrange to take a week of vacation the second week of June so she could drive me to Kansas, so I’d usually arrive at my grandparents sometime between the 5th and the 10th of June. That just happens to be cherry picking season in southeast Kansas. I usually looked forward to that . . . but not in 1962. Like my granddad, I was sure there would be no cherry harvest, and I was sure that he would again make his displeasure known.

Well, contrary to all expectations, not only was there a cherry harvest, it was the largest harvest from that tree in several years. My grandfather’s first words to me that summer were, “I owe you an apology. I guess that tree needed pruning.” It wasn’t the most attractive and artful job of pruning that Bob and Randy and I had done, but it was effective. We enjoyed more cherry pies that summer than you could imagine! And Grammy canned cherries for weeks.

I learned two things from that episode. One was that an honorable person apologizes when he’s proven wrong. My grandfather was nothing if not honorable. The second was the value of pruning. I’m a terrible gardener. I don’t enjoy it and I usually produce next to nothing useful when I try, but I know (because of that cherry tree) the purpose and value of pruning.

So when Jesus, in this the seventh and last of the great “I am” statements in John’s Gospel, talks about pruning, I know exactly what he is saying. I know what pruning is, I know that pruning can be painful, and I know that pruning produces results.

Last week, you’ll remember, we heard another of the “I am” statements: “I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus said then. These metaphors that Jesus uses, these agricultural pictures that Jesus paints for us last Sunday and today are graphic reminders of our total dependence upon God, our pitiful inability to flourish with his nurturing. Sheep without a shepherd who (unlike the hired hand) remains with them in danger, even at the cost of his life, stray to solitary deaths. Vines without a a skilled vineyard keeper to prune away superfluous, misguided, and barren branches bear little or no fruit. Jesus didn’t say as much last week, but flocks like vines need to be cut back.

Where I was living in Ireland last summer was a livestock producing area. My cottage was on a cattle farm, not a ranch … they don’t have ranches in Ireland! Anyway, my landlords, John and Marion, would by a dozen or so steer calves each year, fatten them for some several months, and then sell them to be slaughtered for beef. One evening over a beer, John told me that one gets to know the cows; they each have a personality and as one moves them from field to field you get to know them. So when slaughter time comes, it is sort of sad. “But,” he said, “I don’t know how my neighbour does it.” His neighbour had a lambing operation. He was there for the birth of each lamb. His children would name them. The lambs were practically members of the family! And, yet, at various times the neighbouring shepherd would have to make a decision: which lambs to cull, to send for slaughter, which to keep for breeding stock, which to sell to someone else as breeding stock. “I don’t know how you do that,” John said.

Every day I would take a long walk down that road accompanied by the farm dog Buddy and on some days I would see the shepherd out with the sheep and the lambs. One day I could tell by his demeanor that it was that day, that he was selecting among the lambs those who would be taken away for slaughter and those that would be kept for breeding. This was not a large industrial operation; this was a small family-run farm and I am sure that, as Jesus said in last week’s gospel, he knew each of those lambs. But what had to be done had to be done, sad though it might have made that shepherd.

Culling the flock or cutting the vine in the right place are exacting, necessary tasks which the skilled shepherd or vine grower must do. Unpruned, vines grow in wild, unruly ways, exploding with new branches and great leafy cascades, but few grapes. Unwatched, sheep scatter and lose their way, wandering heedlessly into danger; unculled, a flock weakens and all of the sheep suffer.

Flocks of sheep are disorderly and topsy-turvy crowds. Vines and their branches are similarly tangled and messy. With either, it’s just too hard to know what is what. Not only are we dependent on Jesus the Shepherd, on God the Vinedresser, but our lives are uncomfortably tangled up together. The Christian life is a flock-y, vine-y, branch-y, mixed-up mess of us and Jesus and others.

I think only one or two of us may have culled a flock, but I know that all of us have, at one time or another, pruned our suburban hedges or shrubs. You may have experienced, as I have, a feeling of hesitation, that unwillingness to strip away what have been thriving branches for a greater and unseen future good. But what, with all that tangle of branches, are the alternatives?

Over the past several years there has been much hand wringing over the state of the church, its decline in membership, its loss of congregations, the shrinking of parish budgets, and so forth. We’ve looked at statistical graphs, at flow charts, at columns upon columns of figures, and we’ve pointed fingers at one another, at those who left, at the secular world around us, and at all sorts of other things seeking someone or something to blame for it all. In the Episcopal Church, we’ve blamed our loss of membership on new prayer books or on old prayer books, on women in Holy Orders or on failure to receive women in the clergy, on the acceptance (or the lack of acceptance) of gays and lesbians, on old style music or on new kinds of music, never noticing that the same statistical declines were happening in all the mainline denominations where none of those things were issues. We have wrung our hands and cried out to one another, “We’re dying on the vine here!”

I believe that today’s gospel lesson gives us a different way to look at things. We on the Vine, that’s for sure! But we ain’t dying on it. I believe these past several years have been a time of cutting back, that we are the branches that remain after the Vinedresser has done his pruning, the flock that is now smaller after the Shepherd has done his culling. And I believe that means we are on the verge of a time of new and exciting growth, a productive time of bearing fruit, a time of expanding the flock. We have all that we need to do that because we have the promise of the gospel: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit. . . . 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.”

We know this! These are the most important words in epistle lesson from First John today: “We know that we abide in him.” Right there in your lesson insert; find those words and read them with me . . . “We know that we abide in him.” Again – “We know that we abide in him.” One more time – “We know that we abide in him.” With feeling! “We KNOW that we abide in him.”

We know that we abide in him. We know that we are loved by God, and so we also must love.

The most important words in the reading from the Book of Acts today are right at the beginning lesson: “An angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go’.” All the rest there, that story about the Ethiopian Eunuch, that’s just an example; it’s window dressing. The important words are “Get up and go!” Can you say those words with me? “Get up and go!” I want you to turn to the person next to you; I want you to be an angel to that person; I want you to say to that person, “Get up and go!” Go on, now! Say to that person next to you, “Get up and go!”

Get up and go! God’s love, our love must send us out, out of the church, out of our comfort zone, into the uncomfortable and unlovable circumstances around us. We must get up and go into places where love is absent; we must get up and go to people to whom love is simply unknown. To abide in Jesus, to be loved by God is to be given a mission, a mission to get up and go with what we know to those who cannot accept it, to the destitute, the broken, the lost, the hopeless; a mission to get up and go, not to tell them what we know, but to show them what we know, through our lives and by our actions. That is how and when we will bear fruit; that is how and when we will grow. Not merely to know that we abide in him, but to show that we abide in him!

We know … so get up and go … and show. Know, go, show! That is how we shall bear fruit and grow.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, you know our world is broken, sinful, and shameful, filled with hate and with pain. Because of that brokenness and pain Brenda, and Mary-Marguerite, and Douglas died. Because of that brokenness and pain your Son our Savior Jesus Christ died. But in him you showed us that your love and your life know no bounds, are held back by no obstacles, not even death. Give us the faith to know that we abide in him, the faith to get up and go, the faith to show love even to the least lovable of people, in the least lovable of places, at the least lovable of times; Lord, give us the faith to know, to go, and to show, that we may bear fruit and grow, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lord Is My Shepherd: I HATE that! – Sermon for Easter 4 – April 29, 2012

April 30, 2012 / eric / 3 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday in Easter, Year B: Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; and John 10:11-18.

Jesus the Good Shepherd My father died in an automobile accident when I was five years old. Two things important to my religious life resulted from that. First, my mother and I stopped attending the Baptist church which she and my brother and I had gone to up to that point. Second, I started spending every summer with my paternal grandparents, Charles Edgar and Edna Earle Funston, in the town of Winfield, Kansas, and thus began attending the Methodist church during those summer vacations.

My grandparents were staunch Methodists. In those days that denomination was known simply as the Methodist Church, but as I remember the cornerstone of Grace Church identified it as having been established as a congregation of “the Methodist Episcopal Church (South)” which means that it was started as rather (shall we say) conservative parish. That certainly would have described my grandfather. (I’m named for my grandfather, but I thank my parents every day for deciding to change the middle name from “Edgar” to “Eric”. I don’t think I would have liked having the name “Edgar” – I’m not sure he did, either. The only person I ever heard call him “Edgar” was Edna! Everyone, including his grandchildren, called him “C.E.”)

My grandfather was a Sunday School teacher. When Edna and C.E. relocated to Winfield from Dodge City, Kansas, in 1919, the immediately joined Grace Church and almost as immediately my grandfather became a kindergarten Sunday School instructor. And he continued to teach that class for the next fifty years. I don’t mean that he continued to teach kindergarten. I mean that he continued to teach that class of individuals for the next five decades. The next year he was their First Grade teacher, and then their Second Grade teacher, and so on up until they were in their 50s and my granddad was in his late 70s! In that tradition, you went to Sunday School every week, regardless of your age; infants, children, youth, adults, everybody went to Sunday School.

As a result, my grandfather was well-versed in the Bible and in Wesleyan theology (probably as well as if not better than a lot of Methodist clergy), and he took it upon himself to make sure that his grandchildren were also well-instructed. So during those summer months, I not only went to Sunday School at Grace Methodist Church (where Sunday School was a year-round program; none of this “summer off” nonsense), I also received daily religious instruction at home. And one of the absolute requirements of that was that I learn the 23rd Psalm by heart (the King James Version, of course) and recite it every night at bedtime.

I hate the 23rd Psalm!

Eight years of saying it every night of every summer will do that to you! I tried to get him to change that. “Granddad, couldn’t we learn another psalm now? Say Psalm 117?” (I was being pretty cagey with that suggestion – the 117th Psalm is the shortest in the book – only two verses.) But, no, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” . . . every night!

After two years, my three cousins started also spending summers with our grandparents and I started sharing a room with my nine-month younger cousin Randy. In the room we shared, there was a picture of a nice looking young man (I suppose it was supposed to be Jesus), well-groomed with longish brown hair and neatly trimmed beard, wearing a long white robe, carrying an adorable (and clearly adoring) little lamb. That picture became the victim of our dislike of the 23rd Psalm. Every night after we’d said the psalm and bid our grandparents “Good Night”, Randy and I would throw spit-wads at that picture! (They say confession is good for the soul . . . I hope so – this is the first time I’ve ever told anyone about our late-night target practice with Jesus as the target!) Of course, that meant that we’d have to get out of bed early to clean off the picture for Grammy got a look at it!

So fast forward several years and here I am, now ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church, and every year on the Fourth Sunday of the Easter Season I find myself confronted by the 23rd Psalm and Good Shepherd Sunday. Every year, it’s the same thing, the same lesson from the Gospel of John: “I am the Good Shepherd.” Every year, “The Lord is my shepherd.” (Of course, since the 1979 Prayer Book and its new translation of the Psalms, that long-engrained memorization of the KJV means that I get tongue-tied when we recite the gradual.) And every year I try to find something nice, something pleasant, something up-lifting to say about this metaphor that not only means very little to an urban, city boy like me, but one that I really actively dislike.

I suspect that the metaphor of shepherd and sheep doesn’t really work for most modern Americans. If Jesus is the shepherd that means we are the sheep and that’s not a terribly flattering thing to say. I know that a few of us in this congregation have some experience with sheep, but most of us just have vaguely sentimental fuzzy notions of cuddly little lambs, notions that are wrong because sheep really aren’t very loveable animals . . . so what does this metaphor really say about us and about our Lord? And this is a metaphor, make no mistake about that. Jesus wasn’t really a shepherd and his followers not really sheep. But metaphors are supposed to aid our understanding; they use the qualities of the one element to illustrate the qualities in the other. So Jesus as shepherd sort of works; followers as sheep, on the other hand, doesn’t work for me at all and probably not for some of you, either.

If you, like me, spend some time each day surfing the internet or checking out your Facebook page or using the web for research, you’ve probably learned that there are dozens if not hundreds of compilations of quotations, some famous, some not so well-known, from poets, playwrights, philosophers, holy books, and so on. You can search through these collections for pithy remarks on just about any topic imaginable. I tried doing that several times earlier this week . . . . Do you know that there are no positive comments about sheep!?!

I think that’s where and why the Good Shepherd metaphor breaks down for me. Yes, it says wonderful things about Jesus and his dedication to the flock . . . . But it doesn’t say much about the flock and what it says doesn’t really fit with what Jesus expects of the flock! Jesus expects the sheep to become shepherds . . . .

In the 21st Chapter of the Gospel of John there is a story familiar to all of us, a story one of those post-resurrection appearances Jesus made during the fifty days before he ascended into heaven. The story is that some of the disciples were fishing on the Sea of Galilee and from their boat they see someone grilling fish on the shore. At first, they are not sure who it is but eventually one of them realizes that it is Jesus, at which point Peter, impulsive Peter, jumps out of the boat and swims to the beach. The others bring the boat in and Jesus invites them to have breakfast. As they are eating the grilled fish, Jesus asks Peter “Do you love me?” Three times he asks this; Peter’s feelings are hurt because he asks three times. Each time Peter answers, “Yes, Lord. You know I love you!” And each time Jesus responds in some fashion commissioning Peter, who here represents all of us, “Feed my sheep. Tend my flock. Take care of my lambs.” Jesus expects the sheep to become shepherds . . . .

St. Paul put it this way: we are called, he said, “to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ;” we “must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13,15) In the real world, sheep don’t do that! They do not grow up into shepherds! One of those quotations I found said, “You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs.” (Max Beerbohm) It just doesn’t happen. So the metaphor breaks down, as all metaphors do. Jesus’ expectation, that the sheep become shepherds, nonetheless remains.

When I was in British Isles this past summer, I saw a lot of sheep. All over southern Scotland and northern England and throughout Ireland, one sees these lovely vistas of rolling hills, green pastures, and huge flocks of sheep. Sheep are lovely at a distance; not so pretty up close – they’re really quite dirty up close. But at a distance, they look like these lovely, fluffy white balls ambling across the beautiful, rolling, green pasture, mirroring the fluffy white clouds in the sky above . . . except in Ireland and Scotland. There, that pastoral scene is sort of marred by spray paint! Each sheep is marked with this splotches of bright red or bright blue spray paint! Sometimes both! First time I saw that, I wondered, “What’s that all about?”

Jesus says in today’s gospel lesson, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me,” but how is someone else supposed to know whose sheep are whose? By those markings! Those splotches of paint are the way the shepherds, who mix their flocks in the common fields, identify ownership of the sheep. I got to thinking about that in terms of our identity as members of Christ’s flock, because we are marked as well.

In the liturgy of baptism or of confirmation, a follower of Jesus Christ in the Episcopal Church and in a few other traditions is marked just as surely as those painted sheep are marked. We call it “chrismation”. Some specially blessed oil is taken and with it a cross is made upon the forehead of the newly baptized person or the person being confirmed; the person is marked! In the baptismal rite we say, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit is baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” (BCP 1979, pg. 308) We are marked just as surely as those painted sheep are marked! The problem, of course, is that our outward mark is made with clear oil which no one else can see. How is that mark to be made known to others?

There was a news story recently about a woman who was arrested for car theft. Apparently, another driver did something she found annoying and she hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration, cussing a blue streak, making certain hand gestures. As a result of this conduct a police officer who witnessed it approached her vehicle and ordered her to get out with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a cell. A couple of hours later she was released and the arresting officer apologized. He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see; I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ‘Honk if you love Jesus’ bumper sticker, the ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ bumper sticker, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.”

How do others know we marked as Christ’s own? In the absence of big splotches of red or blue paint, how does anyone know whose sheep I am? St. John said it in that bit we heard from this first general letter to day: our identity is made known “not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” St. James put it another way, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” (James 2:18) It is through our actions that our mark is made apparent to all. It is through truth and action, through faith shown in works of mercy and justice that we the sheep become shepherds, that we grow up into the fullness of Christ, that our mark is seen.

This is the question the 23rd Psalm (as much as I dislike it) and the Good Shepherd gospel raise for me. Am I like that woman arrested for car theft, who had a lot of words about Jesus on the back of her car but whose mark was not made visible in truth and action? Is my mark apparent to those around me? Can anyone else tell that I am “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever”?

“The Lord is my shepherd . . . .” Is that apparent to anyone else around me?

Amen.

Category: John (Page 23 of 24)

God, Words, Responsibility – From the Daily Office – August 6, 2012

Carb Loading on Jesus – From the Daily Office – August 5, 2012

Infinite Abundance – Sermon for Pentecost 9, Proper 12B – July 29, 2012

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

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

Grow My Church! – Sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter – May 20, 2012

Paradox or Confusion – From the Daily Office – May 17, 2012

Dancing for Joy – Sermon for Easter 6B – May 13, 2012

Know – Go – Show: Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Easter, Year B – May 6, 2012

The Lord Is My Shepherd: I HATE that! – Sermon for Easter 4 – April 29, 2012

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