Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Luke (Page 18 of 25)

Does “Journey” Make Sense? – From the Daily Office – July 5, 2013

From the Gospel according to Luke:

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 23:26 (NRSV) – July 5, 2013.)

Start of a JourneyDo you know where Cyrene was? Its location was in the same place as present day Shahhat, a town in northeastern Libya, about 80 miles northeast of Benghazi and about five miles from the Mediterranean coast. It’s nearly 1300 miles from Jerusalem. Simon had “come from the country” a fair distance! And at the end of that very long journey, he was made to carry the cross up the hill to Golgotha. The journey is a common metaphor of the Christian life; Simon’s long journey could stand as an example. But does the metaphor, does Simon’s example make sense anymore?

In other reading today, I learned that although the United States as a whole has only 87 people per square mile, the average American lives in a metropolitan area with more than 5,000 people per square mile. Two-thirds of Americans live in metropolitan areas with half-a-million or more residents. The long journey may be a Christian metaphor, but it is probably not one that resonates with the personal experience of most modern Americans. Long journeys are no longer part of our everyday corporate experience.

Certainly Americans travel; last year we spent $597 billion on leisure travel and $259 billion on business trips. But living in cities with nearly every need, and most of our family and friends, close at hand, and without a religious or social tradition of pilgrimage, the long journey is not a common practice.

Paradoxically, we seem to be an increasingly mobile and transient society. We don’t do journeys, but we do seem to move about quite a bit. While my small-town (pop. 28,000) church has several long-term members who have been here most, if not all, of their lives, a significant part of our worshiping community is made up of those who have recently relocated to the area because of job transfers, and who expect to leave within just a few years. Indeed, many of those who have left the congregation in the past ten years have done so for the same reason. The long-term leadership of the congregation (and now that I’ve been here more than ten years, I feel like that includes me) has seen many active church members come and go as breadwinners are transferred into the area, work here for three to five years, and are then transferred elsewhere.

As I ponder these contradictory data, a mobile population lacking in experience of journeying, it seems to me that what we lack may be rootedness, a sense of permanent “home place,” an anchoring in space and time. There is a difference between a “journey” and a “trip” – and that difference is time. There is a difference between a “journey” and a life of constant work-related relocation – and that difference is the home place, the anchor point in space.

My family is as un-rooted as most; my personal history more so. Not quite half my lifetime ago, I was required to fill out an FBI background check form; doing so, I realized that by the time I was 35 years of age, I had had 37 addresses! When my children were in the fifth and third grades, we relocated from Las Vegas, Nevada, to an exurban, Kansas-side community of the Kansas City metroplex, where we lived for ten years; the home we owned there is still the place I have lived the longest in my life! Although they were born in San Diego and Las Vegas, it’s very clear that my kids think of Kansas as “home.” My wife and I moved to Ohio after the children had completed high school and they have never lived here. From time to time someone will ask one or the other, “Are you coming home for Christmas?” Their typical reply makes it very clear that they do not consider Ohio “home.” They have a sense of rootedness, and that root is not sunk into this soil.

Unlike my children, I do not have that sense of rootedness. I was born in Las Vegas, but left the place when I was only 8 years of age. For the next several years, my family relocated (always within the Los Angeles area) every twelve to eighteen months. I continued that pattern after leaving home, sometimes moving after only three or four months. As I aged and became employed, my length of stay in any one place grew. But it is only at more than 60 years of age that I can look back and make sense of life through the metaphor of “the journey.” I do wonder how useful this metaphor is for those still in the throes of an unrooted life, relocating every few years as jobs change, perhaps taking “business trips,” and maybe finding time for vacation travel.

Simon had a home, a place where he was rooted, Cyrene. He was on a journey when he encountered Christ on the way to Calvary. He was not on a “trip”; he was not relocating. What can we learn from Simon? Does the journey metaphor make sense anymore?

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

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

Honor Upon the Lawgiver – From the Daily Office – July 4, 2013

From the Book of Sirach:

A wise magistrate educates his people,
and the rule of an intelligent person is well ordered.
As the people’s judge is, so are his officials;
as the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants.
An undisciplined king ruins his people,
but a city becomes fit to live in through the understanding of its rulers.
The government of the earth is in the hand of the Lord,
and over it he will raise up the right leader for the time.
Human success is in the hand of the Lord,
and it is he who confers honor upon the lawgiver.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 10:1-5 (NRSV) – July 4, 2013.)

American FlagIndependence Day is one of the few secular holidays to have lessons of its own in both the Eucharistic and Daily Office Lectionaries of the Episcopal Church. There is a set of lessons in the regular Daily Office schedule of readings for today, as well, and I am intrigued that the way the calendar falls this year the Gospel for that set is the unjust trial of Jesus. One could meditate for hours on the meaning to be drawn from that juxtaposition.

However, the reading from the apocryphal book The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach (a book also called “Ecclesiasticus”) has caught my attention because of a recent (and unfortunately repeated) incident at my church. The lines of particular import are: “As the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants;” and “It is [God] who confers honor upon the lawgiver.”

In every form of the Prayers of the People in the American Book of Common Prayer (1979) there is a petition included for our civil leaders. According to the rubric in the service of Holy Communion (page 359 of the BCP), we are bidden to pray for “the Nation and all in authority.” At my church, we do so by name, listing our president, state governor, and city mayor, and conclude with a general petition for other elected legislators, judges, and executive department officials.

At my church, as well, we share leadership of the prayers. A single person reads the major biddings of the various forms, but additional petitions are read by members of the congregation. As worshipers arrive, our ushers and greeters ask if they would like to read a sentence or two of additional intercessions. Most readily agree.

However, from time to time someone will decline to do so and occasionally someone will specifically (and sometimes venomously) refuse to read the petition naming the president. This has only happened since the election of the current incumbent. My heart sinks when I hear these refusals or when I am told about them later. It’s an indication of how poorly I have taught the Christian ethos to this congregation.

“As the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants.” If Jesus ben Sirach is correct, then we should very definitely be praying for our rulers and leaders, for they set the example and the tone for the entire populace. And yet people decline to do so . . . .

My parish is dedicated to St. Paul, the writer of most of the New Testament, and Paul was very clear on the duty Christian folk have with respect to secular authorities and civic leaders. He wrote to the young bishop, Titus of Crete, instructing him to teach his congregation to respect civil rulers:

Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:1-5)

He wrote to the Romans in a similar vein:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. (Romans 13:1-6)

And with regard to praying for our secular leadership, he was very clear in his instructions to another young bishop, Timothy of Ephesus:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

I quite understand disliking secular authorities; I don’t understand disliking one so much that we refuse to follow the clear mandate of Holy Scripture and the tradition of our church! Anyone who has ever had even the shortest political conversation with me knows that, in my opinion, George W. Bush was the worst president in U.S. history. Nonetheless, every day of his eight years in office I prayed for him by name, twice a day. (I even pray for the vice-president by name and during those years that was an even more difficult thing to do!) I prayed for Bill Clinton even though his sexual pecadillo with Monica Lewinsky was more than a little off-putting. I pray for Barack Obama even though I am very disappointed with many aspects of his performance as president.

The point is that my prayers have nothing to do with my personal dislike or approval of any of these politicians. My prayers have nothing to do with them at all! My prayers have everything to do with me and my discipline as a follower of Jesus Christ. I am pretty sure that Jesus had some personal problem with the political authorities of his day, with Caiaphas the High Priest, with Herod the Tetrarch, with Pilate the Roman governor, and yet he prayed for them: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) As a disciple of Christ, I can do no less than to pray for the civil authorities in power over me!

“As the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants.” If Jesus ben Sirach is correct, and I think he is, our prayer for our leaders is a prayer for ourselves. Any prayer is, in truth, a prayer for ourselves. We do not pray to bring to God’s attention something God has overlooked, nor do we pray to change God’s mind about something, to get God to do what we want. We pray to conform our wills to God’s Will; we pray that we might have what Paul called “the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. 2:16) We pray that we might be like him who, on the cross, prayed for the civil authorities who hung him there.

On this day especially, let us pray for the Nation and all in authority; let us pray for them by name! For “human success is in the hand of the Lord, and it is he who confers honor upon the lawgiver.”

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

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

Mix Faith with Frustration – From the Daily Office – July 2, 2013

From the Gospel of Luke:

They said, “If you are the Messiah, tell us.” He replied, “If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 22:67-68 (NRSV) – July 2, 2013.)

Frustration Relief KitIn the assembly of the elders of the people, the chief priests and the scribes, Jesus is asked, “Are you the Messiah?” and in response he gives vent to some very real human frustration.

I recently read an article about frustration as a plot element in writing fiction. The author suggested that frustration is, in fact, the most important emotion in fiction because nothing happens in a novel or short story unless the plans, wishes, or desires of the protagonist are frustrated. If Ahab had killed the white whale on his first attempt, Moby Dick would have been a very short tale, indeed. The author of the article pointed out, however, that frustration “is seldom a ‘pure’ emotion. It can come mixed with many others: anger (‘How dare they!’), hurt (‘Why won’t they help me?’), fear (‘I’ll never get what I want’), self-blame (‘I’m not good enough to succeed’), resignation (‘Can’t win ‘em all’), or bitterness (‘Life sucks’).”

One of my favorite episodes of The West Wing was about a submarine crisis off the coast of North Korea. The White House staff brought in an expert on submarine warfare to advise President Bartlett; Hal Holbrook played the character with droll dullness, droning on and on about difference experiences. In one scene, the expert and Leo McGarry were sitting on the sofas in the Oval Office talking; Leo was listening, the expert droning on. From off camera came the sound of a rhythmic thump – thump – thump. The camera pulled back to reveal the President banging his head on his desk . . . . I’m not sure what the President’s frustration might have been mixed with, but clearly that is not the best way to handle frustration!

With what, we might ask, is Jesus’ frustration mixed? I think the answer must be, “Faith.” Jesus is convinced that whatever happens, his God is with him. The night before this questioning, all the other emotions with which this frustration might have been mixed were sweated out in Garden of Gethsemane, leaving only faith: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) To be true to his mission (whatever we might now believe or understand it to be), to be true to his God, Jesus could not allow any other emotion to taint his frustration.

In any given situation, with what are our frustrations mixed? Too often they are like that article author described, mixed with emotions that result in negative or self-defeating outcomes. Our task is to spend some Gethsemane-time, sweating out those impurities, leaving only faith.

I think frustration mixed with faith might best be named “resolve,” which the dictionary defines as “firmness of purpose.” That certainly describes Jesus in the assembly of the elders (and throughout the Passion).

In an address at the University of Maine in October 1963, President John F. Kennedy exhorted his listeners: “Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.” The example of Jesus suggests that, in some ways, we may still be “victims” no matter what we resolve and no matter how strong our faith may be. But our Lord’s example and the Christian faith also demonstrate that “victimization” to those who stand firm in their mission is a temporary state; on the other side one finds resurrection and redemption.

Frustration is a very real and very human situation. What we choose to mix with our frustrations is the determiner of outcome; followers of Jesus mix faith with frustration.

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

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

Legion . . . Silence: A Contrast – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C) – June 23, 2013

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This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 23, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 5 (Proper 7, Year C): 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalms 42 and 43; Galatians 3:23-29; and Luke 8:26-39. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Schizophrenia Illustration from Vimeo At the beginning of the sermon, following the reading of Gospel lesson, five readers scattered among the congregation, rose and loudly read the following five passages simultaneously:

Voice One: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Voice Two: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Voice Three: “You can’t do anything right and never will be able to. Everyone hates you. You have no friends. You are the most useless, worthless human being on the planet. You know this is true, and you are powerless to change it. You should just end it right now. There’s no reason for you to keep living.”

Voice Four: “In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and two teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.”

Voice Five “Mr. Dursley, a well-off Englishman, notices strange happenings on his way to work one day. That night, Albus Dumbledore, the head of a wizardry academy called Hogwarts, meets Professor McGonagall, who also teaches at Hogwarts, and a giant named Hagrid outside the Dursley home. Dumbledore tells McGonagall that someone named Voldemort has killed a Mr. and Mrs. Potter and tried unsuccessfully to kill their baby son, Harry.”

One of the many ways in which modern scholars try to make sense of the story of the Gerasene Demoniac is the suggestion that he was, in fact, schizophrenic. For example, the Dean of St. Alban’s Cathedral in England, Jeffrey John, writes:

Anyone presenting the symptoms of the Gerasene demoniac today would be rapidly committed for treatment of multiple schizophrenia – and quite rightly. It would be very foolish to do otherwise, or to discount the huge, God-given progress that has been made in our understanding and treatment of mental illness since biblical times. (The Meaning in the Miracles, p. 91, Eerdmans:2004)

A Roman Catholic writer who identifies himself only as “John” tells of accompanying a priest making his Eucharistic ministry rounds at a psychiatric hospital. He describes what happened when they arrived at the ward where the most seriously disturbed patients were housed:

My friend began to say the prayers and all was relatively calm until he raised the Eucharist. This very motion acted like a trigger for one of the patients who began to shout expletives, spit and hiss. This set off most of the others; he had to be restrained while we administered the Eucharist to those who wanted it and lined up to receive it. Amidst the cacophony I heard one thing that he shouted which remains with me to this day; he shouted “why are you coming in here tormenting us?” (John’s Ramblings)

He then comments, “It wasn’t until some time later that when meditating on the Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac . . . that I shuddered to a halt and recalled that event in the psychiatric hospital.”

Schizophrenics hear voices. This is the most common type of hallucination in schizophrenia. The voices may talk to the person about his or her behavior; they may order the person to do things; they may speak warnings of danger. Sometimes the voices talk to each other; sometimes they talk over one another, several voices speaking at once. What we experienced as these five people read these differing texts was a crude demonstration of what some schizophrenics experience, or what the Gerasene Demoniac seems to have suffered.

The great English author, C. S. Lewis, once wrote that we human beings are a “myriad of impulses, a cauldron of evil desires.” The Gerasene Demoniac certainly was. When Jesus asked him (or the demon within him) his name, the answer was, “We are legion.”

That is a very scary answer! That word, legion, is a Roman military term. In the Roman army, a legion consisted of six thousand men. We heard only five voices in our little demonstration. Can you imagine what it must have been like to hear thousands upon thousands of demonic voices? No wonder he would break his chains and shackles and run into the wilds to live in the cemetery among the tombs!

John, the Roman Catholic blogger, suggests that “all disorder, all conflict whether we call it civil, political, doctrinal, psychiatric, psychological, social or personal disorder, . . . anything that creates or contributes to disorder or conflict is the presence of evil at work in the world.” I believe he is correct, the message of the Prophets is that that disorder, that chaos is not, and never will be, the last word.

As dramatic counterpoint to the Gospel story today, we have another story of the Prophet Elijah. The Lectionary, as you remember, has had us bouncing around in the First Book of Kings reading stories of Elijah, but not in the order they are presented in that book. Instead, we have been getting the texts from First Kings as they may relate to the stories from Luke’s Gospel; today’s pairing seems to be a good example. What we see here is the stark difference between the chaotic disorder of evil, represented by demon possession (or schizophrenia), and the order of holiness, represented by the “sheer silence” in which Elijah encounters God.

You recall the story. Elijah has just killed the 450 prophets of Ba’al, which has royally angered the wicked Queen Jezebel. She has sent word to Elijah saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” In other words, “Look out, Dude! I’m gonna kill you!” So Elijah, in fear, flees into the desert and in a fit of depression prays that God will take his life. However, an angel appears and tells him that’s not going to happen. He is instructed to eat something and then travel to “Horeb, the mount of God.” This is understood to be the very same place where Moses received the Tablets of the Law. When he gets there, God asks what his problem is: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah answers that all the prophets of Yahweh have been killed (by Queen Jezebel and her army) and only he is left. So God tells him to stand at the mouth of his cave because God will pass by.

He does so and there is a storm, and then an earthquake, and then a fire. All of these things represent that disordered chaos which the Demoniac in the Gospel experiences, and God is in none of them. Instead, God is in the “sheer silence,” as the New Revised Standard Version translates the Hebrew. A literal translation of the Hebrew would be “the sound of gentle blowing,” and the King James Version translated this by that wonderful turn of phrase “a still small voice.”

So we have this wonderful juxtaposition of an image of loud, confusing, demonic chaos — the Gerasene Demoniac, a person in a situation which is overwhelmingly evil, permeated with and being buffeted by a legion of devils, thousands of incoherent voices, pulling him in every direction, ruining his life — with an image of calm, peaceful, gentleness — the still small voice of God present in sound of sheer silence, the sound of gentle blowing.

We, I hope, are not possessed of demons, nor suffering from schizophrenia or some other form of delusional mental illness. But we all inhabit a world of many, many voices, all talking to us, all telling us what to think, or do, or say. No matter how old we are, we will always have the voices of parents and grandparents playing in our heads; we have the voices of politicians, news reporters, bosses, spouses, our own children, their teachers, doctors, lawyers, tax advisers . . . and occasionally preachers . . . all telling us what to do. There are times when all of that noise can get us down, when we can all relate personally to the lament in today’s gradual psalm: “Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me?”

Several years ago, there was a job opening on a cruise ship; a new communications officer was need. There were several applicants seeking the position and all were told to come to a particular office at the same time on the same day. They arrived and were shown in to a waiting room. While they waited to be interviewed, the conversed with one another and soon the room was filled with the sounds of conversation. After quite a long wait, another applicant who was late came in and sat down; everyone else was busy talking, so she just quietly waited for a few minutes, but then suddenly, she jumped up and walked through a door marked “Private.” A few minutes the personnel manager walked out of that door and announced that the position had been filled; the late-arriving applicant had been hired. The other applicants were extremely angry, “We were here first! How could she go ahead of us and get the job?” To which the personnel manager replied, “Any of you could have gotten the job if you had just been quiet long enough to pay attention to the message on the intercom.” “What message?” “All the time you were talking the intercom was broadcasting in Morse Code, ‘A ship’s communications officer must always be on the alert. The first person who gets this message and comes directly into my office will get the job.'”

I believe that God’s still small voice is like that coded message. It’s there if we will but take a few moments of silence and listen for it. And if it seems like we do not have the power to do so on our own, if we are unable to still the storms, the earthquakes, the fires, the voices . . . the story of the Gerasene Demoniac reminds us that Jesus can, because personal exorcism is not what this story is really about. “Rather,” as Jeffrey John reminds us, “it is about the promise . . . of God’s ability to defeat and re-order the disordered powers that afflict both individuals and communities.”

Life can sometimes, indeed, life can often be permeated with great evil that is almost beyond human comprehension and beyond our ability to handle. In those moments, we may be tempted to just give up and give in to the intensity of evil around us. Like the Psalmist we may cry out, “Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me?” Like Elijah we may be tempted to just sit down in the desert and say, “Let me die.” But God does not give up; Jesus does not give up. Jesus faces the demons with his healing and his peace. There is no situation so bad that Jesus cannot or will not bring his healing power.

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?
and why are you so disquieted within me?
Put your trust in God;
for I will yet give thanks to him,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.
Amen.

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

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

Gandolfini, Hastings, and the Poor Widow: My Two Cents – From the Daily Office – June 20, 2013

From the Gospel according to Luke:

Jesus looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 21:1-4 (NRSV) – June 20, 2013.)

Two CentsYesterday, the news services and Facebook were buzzing with the news of the death of James Gandolfini. Mr. Gandolfini, who was famous for playing the role of Tony Soprano in an HBO series The Sopranos, suffered a heart attack at the age of 51. The day before, there was a similar (though smaller) buzz about the death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings, aged 33, in an automobile accident.

Last week, a member of my congregation died at the age of 80 after years of crippling illness. Several weeks of acute respiratory distress came to an end when his family made the always difficult decision to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment. Except for an obituary in the local papers and a notice on our parish’s Facebook page, his death received no press coverage and no social media mention.

It seems to me this morning that the contrast Jesus draws between the offering of the poor widow and the donations of the wealthy applies as well to the differences in how the world marks the passing of everyday folk compared to its notice of the deaths of celebrities. A man who has lived a life spent in productive work, making a small but steady contribution to the world, supporting his church, raising his children and grandchildren, quietly doing good works, has perhaps “put in more than all” of the famous actors or well-known reporters who get so much attention.

I suppose I may be biased. I knew my parishioner and I know his family. When I saw the news about Mr. Hastings, I had to do some research to find out if I know any of his work; it turns out I do – he is the journalist who broke the story about General Stanley McChrystal. When I saw the reports of Mr. Gandolfini’s death, I did not need to do so; I knew that he had played the Soprano part. But, truth be told, I’ve never seen an episode of The Sopranos and I have no idea what other roles the actor may have played. In either event, I can safely say that neither man has had as great an impact on my life and the lives of the people and community I know than my parishioner had.

I don’t mean to belittle their deaths nor the pain their passing may have caused those who love them, but I think perhaps we pay too much attention to those who claim (or are given) the name “celebrity” and not enough to the grandfathers and the poor widows around us, even in death. We should do as Jesus did in the Temple; we should take notice.

And that’s my two cents.

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

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

Honoring Women on Fathers’ Day – Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6C) – June 16, 2013

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This sermon was preached on the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 16, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 4 (Proper 6, Year C): 1 Kings 21:1-21a; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Mary Magdalene Susanna and Joanna by Janet McKenzieToday, I would like to talk about women. I know it’s Fathers’ Day but as my friend and colleague (someone known to many of you) the Rev. Jennifer Leider recently remarked, “The lectionary is no respecter of secular holidays.” On this 4th Sunday after Pentecost, looking at the lessons for Proper 6 in Lectionary Year C, we have some readings from Scripture which draw our attention to women: women as active agents in the world of men, as subjects who act rather than as objects which are acted upon. Given the cultures, the political realities, and the social mores of the times and places in which these stories happened and were recorded, that’s really quite amazing! So, it may be Fathers’ Day, but let’s take a look at these biblical women.

The first woman to consider is the wife of King Ahab of Israel, Queen Jezebel. Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre, the Phoenician empire. She was a powerful woman who commanded her own army and had considerable control over the religious establishment of her homeland. According to the Scriptures, she converted her husband to the worship of Ba’al and convinced him to have many Jewish prophets killed. As we heard a couple of weeks ago, she brought 450 prophets of Ba’al into Israel and the Jewish prophet Elijah challenged them to a competition, which he and Yahweh won, and he then had the prophets of Ba’al slaughtered. This made Jezebel his enemy and, out of fear for her, he fled the country. In today’s lesson from the First Book of Kings we see her wielding this power and manipulating her husband’s acquisition of a vineyard by getting the legitimate owner, Naboth, falsely accused of and executed for blasphemy. This was not a woman to be messed with; she had political, military, and religious power.

This was not so with the second woman we meet in Scripture today, a woman described in Luke’s Gospel as a “notorious sinner” who interrupts a dinner party to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears, dry them with her hair, and anoint them with costly oil poured from an alabaster jar.

In all four of the gospels there is a story like this. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all relate a tale of a woman who, at a dinner party, comes and anoints Jesus with a jar of balm described as extravagantly expensive. In each story someone objects to the waste of the valuable ointment (or the money spent on it). In each story someone questions Jesus’ credentials as a religious person. In each story Jesus defends the woman’s action.

In Matthew’s Gospel the event happens “while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,” just a few days before the Crucifixion; “a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table.” When the action is challenged by the disciples, Jesus defends it as an anointing for his burial. (Matt. 26:6-13) Mark’s version is essentially the same as Matthew’s.

John says that it was Jesus’ feet that were anointed, rather than his head, but agrees with Matthew and Mark this event took place just a few days before Jesus’ execution. Like Luke, John describes the woman as washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. But John identifies the woman as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

Luke is the only one who doesn’t put relate this story as part of the narrative Jesus’ passion and death. In this version, Luke takes the story of anointing, places it in the house of a Pharisee, adds the parable of excused mortgages, and gives us a story forgiveness, not a story of preparation for death.

In each of the other stories, especially John’s telling, there is some suggestion that the woman has a legitimate right to be at the dinner, or at least in the house. This is not the case here. As I said a moment ago, this woman is described by Luke as “a notorious sinner.” She is clearly not an invited guest; she is not a member of Simon the Pharisee’s household. She just comes in off the street and does this remarkable, surprising thing. We might wonder how this could have happened; how could she have gotten all the way into the dining room to do this? To answer that question, we need to imagine ourselves in First Century Palestine.

Imagine that world for a moment. There are no telephones, neither cell phones nor land lines. There is no air conditioning. There is no refrigeration. Nothing electric at all. Furthermore, there is no credit; lending or credit are forbidden in the Law of Moses. Whatever was needed for daily life, especially food, had to be purchased with cash everyday. Whatever communication there was need of had to be done in person or through a messenger, usually a servant or slave employed specifically to run messages around town. Whatever business was done was usually done from the home, not from an office somewhere else. There were no schools; whatever education a child may have gotten was done at home by parents or, if the family was wealthy, by servants or hired tutors.

So people were constantly coming and going; members of the household going out to shop everyday and returning with their purchases. Messengers from others delivering family or business communications; the households own messengers taking messages to others. Servants coming and going.

Houses of the sort a prominent man like Simon the Pharisee would have had had a central courtyard with a number of rooms opening off it. The courtyard would have been separated from the public street by a wall and a gate, the gate usually open to all that coming and going.

The other three sides of the courtyard was surrounded by rooms, which would have been open to the courtyard to provide ventilation and cooling. Their inner walls would have been finished with a smooth coat of clay or plaster, decorated with elaborate frescoes. Wide benches of stone for sitting and sleeping, and shelves for storage would have been built into the walls. Stairs or a ladder would have led up onto the roof, which was used as an outdoor room most likely for bathing and laundry during the day and for sleeping at night during summer heat.

These rooms tended to be small and dark, so the courtyard and the roof were the important parts of the house; here those activities needing good light, spinning and weaving, food preparation, and dining would have taken place. In the courtyard of a First Century house you might find:

  • the mikveh, a pool of clean rainwater used for ritual cleansing
  • a kitchen area where food, purchased day by day, was prepared
  • a covered area where people worked and socialized, where they ate

This was the center of activity and socializing; it was here that all that coming and going took place. It was here that a woman might enter the gate right off the public street and interrupt a dinner in progress.

And that is what this woman did. A “notorious sinner,” an outcast, one of the lowest of the low, took matters into her own hands. Knowing that Jesus was there and knowing that he might be able to help her do something to end her abject abnegation, she felt herself empowered. She had heard, no doubt, about the several times he had healed and forgiven others even when others thought it violated the Law in some way (Luke, Chapters 5 and 6). She might have heard about (or even been present at) his Sermon on the Plain. When he said:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. (Luke 6:20-23)

she might have understood that he was speaking to her. And when she heard him say:

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back. (Luke 6:37-38)

she may have made her plan to give everything she had, to spend whatever she had on that costly jar of oil, to give him her best in thanksgiving for the forgiveness she felt had been given her. So she took matters into her own hands, bought that ointment, and walked through that gate and into that dinner party. Jesus rewarded her boldness and confirmed her forgiveness in the parable he told the Pharisee and in the words with which he thanked her and sent her on her way, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The last image of women we have in today’s lessons is not a single woman, but a group of women. Luke tells us that, shortly after this extraordinary dinner party, Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming the good news, and that with him where the twelve and “some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.” (Luke 8:1-3) Here we have a picture of women of who in one sense are like Jezebel: they are independent women of means, some married, some unmarried, who own their own property and resources, women who have the authority to do as they wish. But in another sense they are like the woman with the alabaster jar; they give from their resources to provide for Jesus in his ministry.

So these are the three pictures of women in today’s scriptures: a woman of wealth and power who used who wealth and power to corrupt and manipulate; a woman of absolutely no status whatsoever who felt empowered to give probably everything she had in gratitude for the forgiveness brought to her by Jesus; and women of independent means who made their own decisions to work for the betterment of the world, who (in this particular instance) supported Jesus in his ministry of forgiveness. It is certainly not like Jezebel, but like the others that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion encourages and hopes to help women to become through our adoption of the Third Millennium Goal: to promote gender equality and empower women.

Not only in this Gospel story, but again and again in the Gospels we see Jesus meeting and interacting with women in ways that honor them, raise them up, and empower them. There is the woman who argued that “even the dogs get to eat the crumbs under the table” as she begged for healing for her daughter, whose faith Jesus applauded. There is the widow he observed who gave all she had to the temple treasury, whom Jesus praised for putting the wealthy to shame. There was Mary Magdalene, who became the first witness to the resurrection, the first evangelist of the Good News of the Risen Christ.

These are women whom Jesus empowered to be something other than the role their society would have put them in, to act with confidence that they, like the men around them, were created in the image of God.

Many women around the world today live in circumstances that make it difficult, if not impossible, to act with similar confidence. News reports daily document the level of violence against women: rape as a weapon of war (or as a possible danger of military service), so-called honor killings, sex trafficking, and other horrors suffered by women simply because they are women. In the United States today, homicide is the third leading cause of death for girls aged 1 to 4 and also for young women, 15 to 24, and most are killed by someone they know.

We are called by Jesus and by the church to emulate his ministry of forgiveness and empowerment, to offer women throughout the world the opportunity to choose life in a world ravaged by war, hunger, disease, and death; to promote gender equality so that women and men have equal opportunities and equal roles in decision-making throughout society. To promote equality between the sexes is to promote the healing of our world and to further the church’s ministry of reconciliation.

Yes, it’s Fathers’ Day, and as Jennifer Leider said, “The lectionary is no respecter of secular holidays.” But as it happens, Time Magazine decided to celebrate Fathers’ Day this week by asking some famous fathers to write open letters to their daughters, and those letters echo remarkably the message of today’s lectionary readings. Senator Marco Rubio wrote to his daughters Amanda and Daniella: “My hope for my daughters is that they will grow up to be strong, confident women who understand that they can be whatever that want to be in life.” Chicago mayor Rahm Immanuel wrote to his daughters Ilana and Leah his hope that they would be “smart, fearless, independent . . . strong, trailblazing women.” And producer Aaron Sorkin wrote this advice to his daughter Roxanne: “Be brave and know that the bravest thing you can do is be willing to not fit in. Never take pleasure in someone else failing. Dare to fail yourself. Be the one who doesn’t care as much about clothes as the person wearing them. Be kind, be compassionate and be humble.”

Our call as Christians, the message of today’s lessons, is that we are to help build a world where that is possible, where no woman need be as conniving and manipulative as Jezebel, where no woman should be as put down and subjected as the woman who interrupted the dinner party, where every woman can be as independent and resourceful as those who followed Jesus and supported his ministry of forgiveness.

Today’s Gospel teaches us that the best way to honor fathers is empower their daughters.

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

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

Sitting Under, or Climbing, the Fig Tree – From the Daily Office – June 11, 2013

From the Gospel according to Luke:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 19:1-4 (NRSV) – June 11, 2013.)

Sycamore Fig in AshkelonThe sycamore which Zacchaeus climbed is not the tree known to Americans as a sycamore. The American sycamore (Platanus Occidentalis) is also known as the “Buttonwood.” It was under a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street, New York City, that the New York Stock Exchange was form in 1793; the founding terms are known as the Buttonwood Agreement. A very large buttonwood sycamore stood in the church yard of St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City until September 11, 2001. It is said that that tree shielded St. Paul’s Chapel from the destructive storm of debris from the fall of the World Trade Center towers, allowing the chapel to survive and become a center of recovery ministry during the clean-up in the weeks that followed.

The biblical tree, however, is a fruit-bearing fig tree (Ficus Sycomorus). (In the “anglicized” version of the New Revised Standard translation of the bible, the spelling of “sycamore” in this passage is changed to “sycomore” to conform with the scientific name and to distinguish the tree from other “sycamores.”) There are several references to the sycamore fig in the Old Testament, one of my favorites being Amos’s protestation when Amaziah addresses him as a prophet: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” (Amos 7:14) Knowing that the biblical sycamore is a fig tree makes being a “dresser of sycamore trees” much more understandable!

In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, Nathanael becomes a disciple when Jesus tells him he knew who he was when he saw him “sitting under the fig tree.” (John 1:47-50) It was probably a sycamore fig. “Sitting under the fig tree” was a colloquial expression referring to studying the Law. In later rabbinic commentary on the Book of Numbers, the Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah, the question, “Why is the Torah compared to a fig tree?” is answered:

Because most trees — olive, grape, date, have their fruit harvested all at one time, but the fig’s fruit is picked gradually. And so it is with the Torah: You learn a little today and more tomorrow, for you cannot learn it in one or two years. (Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 12:9)

It was probably a sycamore fig that the Midrash writer had in mind.

I’m amused by the coincidence of this lesson with this date. In 1980, when I started law school, my wife and I bought a small two-bedroom bungalow in San Diego, California, on a street called “Sycamore Lane.” We lived there for three years. It was there (though not actually in that house) that our son was born on June 11, 1983. The next day, we brought him home to his first home on Sycamore Lane, and for the next six weeks he helped me study for the Nevada Bar Exam which I took that summer. We “sat under the sycamore fig” together, especially late at night, studying the law.

Thirty years later, I am no longer practicing law, and my son and I are both priests. In these thirty years, I’ve learned a lot and think he has, too. What the Midrash had to say about the study of Torah is true of all of life: you learn a little today and more tomorrow, for you cannot learn it in one or two . . . or thirty . . . years. Every day is a day to sit under, or to climb, the fig tree.

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

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

Offal Theology Beats Awful Theology – Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5C) – June 9, 2013

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 9, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 3 (Proper 5, Year C): 1 Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; and Luke 7:11-17. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Jesus Raises the Son of the Widow of NainYou may remember that last week, as we were looking at the story of Elijah competing with the prophets of Ba’al, I said that Elijah was an unpleasant person. Well, this week we have another story of Elijah and another example of his unpleasantness. The Rev. Lia Scholl, a Mennonite pastor who writes sermon helps on a blog called The Hardest Question, said, “Every time I read this passage, my first reaction is, ‘Elijah is a jerk!'”

She points out that doesn’t ask for a drink of water or a morsel of bread, he demands them. Listen again to what the First Book of Kings says, “When [Elijah] came to the gate of [Zarephath], a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’ As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.'” He doesn’t introduce himself; he doesn’t explain himself; he just insists that the widow take care of his needs. “It’s just jerk behavior,” says the Rev. Scholl.

For the moment, though, let’s forgive Elijah his jerkiness, his unpleasant personality, and take a close look at this story. If it is an historical event (and about that there is some considerable doubt), and if the Books of Kings are intended to be a chronological record, then our lectionary has had us read about events in Elijah’s life out of sequence; this story is told one chapter before the sacrifice competition we heard about last week. The reason for us reading the stories out of order is pretty clear; our lectionary editors want us to hear and consider this story in connection with Jesus’ raising of the son of the widow of Nain.

This story about Elijah would have been very familiar to Jesus and those who witnessed what he did in Nain, and it’s possible that this Elijah story was known to Luke. They may have believed it to be an historical fact, but modern scholarship considers it unlikely that this is a factual story. It has the appearance of being a legend or folk tale intended by the author of First Kings to enhance Elijah’s standing as a prophet. First, there is the matter of the magic flask of oil and the magic container of flour, these vessels that never run out during the course of the three-year drought that is said to be affecting the land. (By the way, Elijah is credited with both causing and ending the drought with just a word, but other than this story in First Kings, there’s no evidence in any other historical or archeological record of there being a drought around his time.) Second, there is the manner in which Elijah brings the widow’s son back from the dead. Here’s the way it is described: “He [meaning Elijah] stretched himself upon the child three times.” This is what folklorists and anthropologists would call “sympathetic magic;” Elijah mimics the death of the boy, then acts out his desired resurrection, then utters some sort of magical formula, in this case a prayer to his god, Yahweh.

Now I said that those who witnessed Jesus raise the son of the widow of Nain probably knew this story and probably thought of it as factual. It is this prayer that Elijah speaks, and in fact the whole theology of the story, that makes me glad that we can look back at it and say it probably isn’t!

Listen to what the widow of Zarephath said to Elijah when her son died: “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” This is awful theology! The widow blames herself for her child’s death. She believes that something she has done has caused her son to die. We still hear this kind of thinking today; we’ve all heard people in fits of grief cry out, “What have I done to deserve this?” Worse, she blames God because God’s prophet, Elijah, has come to her and this (she believes) has caused her sin to be recalled by God; in turn, because of that recollection, God has caused this terrible judgment (the death of her son) to happen. Now the poor woman in her grief, I suppose, can be forgiven this awful theology.

But Elijah in his prayer, his magic incantation after stretching out on the body of the deceased and enacting the boy’s resurrection, says exactly the same thing to God: “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” According to the theology of this story, God punishes the sinful behavior (what ever it may have been) of parents by murdering their children!

I am often called upon to engage in conversation with atheists who want to tell me why they don’t believe in God. I don’t go looking for these conversations, but wearing a clerical collar in an airport or a restaurant or wherever they just seem to happen. And when they tell me why they don’t believe in God, in addition to all the allegedly scientific reasons about there being no credible experimentally verifiable evidence, there is always some variation on, “I can’t believe in a god that would allow (or cause) children to die.”

“Well, guess what?” I tell them. “I don’t either!” I don’t believe in the god that this story of Elijah portrays. I do not believe the theology of this story is correct! And that’s why I’m glad that I can say, “Modern biblical scholarship strongly suggests that this story never happened.” It was and is merely folklore preserved to enhance the reputation of this jerk Elijah as a powerful, miracle-working prophet of God.

But as I suggested, the people who witnessed Jesus’ action in raising the son of the widow of Nain revered Elijah’s memory and probably did believe it to be factual, and that’s why what Jesus did was so important. Let’s set Elijah and his awful theology aside for a moment and just focus on the gospel story.

First of all, let’s make note of the fact that this story is one of only three in which Jesus raises someone from the dead. One is the raising of the synagogue leader Jairus’s daughter told in all of the Synoptic Gospels. The second is the raising of Lazarus told only in John’s Gospel. And then there is this story told only by Luke.

In the first two, Jesus is asked by the grieving father, or by Lazarus’ grieving sisters, to come and heal their sick relative, but before he comes the patient dies. In this story, there is no request at all, and Jesus’ first knowledge of the death is when he happens upon the funeral procession. Luke writes, “As [Jesus] approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her.” That’s it, that’s the key to this story. Jesus had compassion for the widow.

What does that word mean to you? When someone is said to be “compassionate,” what do you understand them to be saying? I asked some high-schoolers what it meant to them and one of them volunteered, “Well, it means you feel sorry for someone.” The rest all agreed with that. I suppose to most modern American folk that is what it means. We feel sorry for someone, so maybe we lend a hand if we have the time, or give a few dollars to charity, or if it’s someone we know we bake a casserole. The root of our word “compassion” is Latin for “feeling with” and feeling someone else’s sorrow, feeling “sorry for them” is part of that.

But that doesn’t hold a candle to the word Luke uses to describe Jesus! The Greek text here is the verb splanchnizomai. You know how some words just stick with you? When I was learning Greek that was one that did – splanchnizomai – I just loved the sound of it. It derives from the noun splanchna, which refers to offal, to inner organs – intestines, spleen, liver, kidneys – we would say “guts” today. Jesus didn’t just “feel sorry” for the widow of Nain; he felt this woman’s pain and grief down here, down deep, down in his offal, down in his guts . . . and he was determined to do something for her.

So Jesus does the unthinkable; he interrupts a funeral procession and takes hold of the corpse! In any culture that would be a violation of, at the very least, good taste, but amongst First Century Palestinian Jews this was an act of unspeakable uncleanness; it was a sacrilege! One simply did not touch, let alone grab hold of a dead body!

I was present at both my father’s and my paternal grandfather’s funerals. They were open-casket funerals because of their Lodge affiliations – my father was member of the BPOE; my grandfather, a Mason. Both groups have special funeral services that require an open casket. I remember that the morticians had arrange their hands so that they were laid across their chests, and I remember that both my mother and my grandmother at the conclusion of the services went up to the coffin, reached out, and grabbed hold of their husband’s hands. I’m certain that both of them, if they could have, would have pulled them out of those boxes and made them live again. They couldn’t, of course, but Jesus could do that for the widow of Nain. He could do it and did do it because he had compassion; he felt her pain and her grief right down there in his gut, and he gave her back her son.

And that is what makes this story so different from our Old Testament story!

The theology of the story of Elijah with widow of Zarephath tells of a god who punishes parents’ wrong doing by murdering their children. Jesus showed that theology to be not merely wrong, but awful, monstrously awful! God is a god of life, not of death. God is a god who not only does not murder children to punish their parents, God gives dead children back to their parents.

God moves powerfully beyond our theologies, especially our monstrous theologies, to give new life, to perform a new creation. God is a god of compassion, a god who feels our pain and our suffering and our grief down deep in God’s guts. (One might say that the offal theology of Jesus is beats the awful theology of Elijah.)

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
because the Lord feels their captivity in his guts.

the Lord opens the eyes of the blind; *
because the Lord feels their blindness in his guts.

the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
because the Lord feels their degradation in his guts.

the Lord sustains the orphan and widow.
because the Lord feels their pain and grief and loneliness in his guts.

The offal theology of Jesus beats the awful theology Elijah! Hallelujah!

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

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

Writing Sermons – From the Daily Office – June 8, 2013

From the Psalter:

Lord, you have searched me out and known me.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 139:1 (BCP Version) – June 8, 2013.)

to consider something deeply and thoroughlyToday, it is the evening psalm that I ponder.

The NRSV translation of the first verse of Psalm 139 is similar to that in The Book of Common Prayer: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me.” One renders the Hebrew verb chaqar as “search out;” the other as “search.” And both have always caused me to stop short and wonder, “What? The omniscient, omnipresent God has to look for me?”

Good thing chaqar has some other understandings:

  • In the First Book of Samuel, David is afraid that Saul has decided to kill him and so his friend, Saul’s son Jonathan, tells David that he will “sound out” his father. Chaqar is the verb translated as “sound out.” (1 Samuel 20:12 NRSV)
  • In the First Book of Kings, chaqar is rendered as “determined” when it is used in the story of Solomon making the bronze vessels for the Temple. They could not be weighed “because there were so many of them; the weight of the bronze was not determined.” (1 Kings 7:47 NRSV) – The New American Standard version of this verse uses “ascertained” to translate the Hebrew.
  • In the story of Job, the New American Standard translation uses “ponder” to translate chaqar when Elihu says to Job: “I waited for your words, I listened to your reasonings, while you pondered what to say.” (Job 32:11 NAS)

So “searching” or “searching out” as used in the Psalm doesn’t mean “looking for.” It means giving careful consideration, as in the weighing of precious metal vessels in the First Book of Kings. Even more, it means the give-and-take between two persons, the “sounding out” of ideas, the coming to mutual understanding as two people share their thoughts. And it means to contemplate and meditate upon what the other has revealed, to ponder what he or she has communicated.

Ponder is not a word we use much anymore in modern American English. Say the word to most people and probably the first thing that will come to their minds is the opening stanza of a famous American poem:

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.”
(Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven)

Ponder, the dictionary tells us, means “to consider something deeply and thoroughly.” That is an image of God that resonates with me. I know full well that God is not an entity, not a being in the sense that God sits in heaven’s library late at night pondering over ancient tomes, leafing through the Book of Life or the Book of the Dead or the whichever book it is in which our “names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20) Nonetheless, I am intrigued and even comforted by that image.

Because that is precisely what I do! Especially on a Saturday when I do the final polishing of my sermon for the next day (and, if truth be told, more often than not “final polishing” actually means “start from scratch!”) Surrounded by bibles and books, my computer humming away, a cup of coffee (or other libation) nearby, I ponder God. That God might be simultaneously pondering me delights me. Together we ponder one another, we sound each other out, we ascertain our thoughts; perhaps (one hopes) we become “united in the same mind and the same purpose,” and perhaps within my mind forms “the same mind . . . that was in Christ Jesus.” (1 Cor. 1:10; Philip. 2:5) Hopefully, that gets onto the paper and into the sermon. That is, after all, the goal of writing and preaching homilies!

Lord, you have pondered me and known me; I ponder you and seek to know you . . . . and to preach your truth.

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

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

Bullshit, You F—–g Fundamentalist! – From the Daily Office – June 7, 2013

From the Psalter:

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 40:6 (NRSV) – June 7, 2013.)

Religion BulletIn the Psalter in the Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer this verse (numbered “7” there) is rendered: “In sacrifice and offering you take no pleasure (you have given me ears to hear you).” I rather prefer the NRSV’s translation because the “open ear” can hear more than God, and that open-eared hearing of others is much on my mind this morning.

Earlier this morning I was surfing around on Facebook when up popped a “meme” — one of those pictures over which a caption of some sort has been superimposed — from one of the liberal political pages I “follow.” (Yes, I follow liberal political pages. I also follow conservative political pages. And I follow pages with cute pictures of kittens and puppies. You can find just about everything on Facebook.)

The meme features a cartridge. I’m no expert, but I believe it to be a Russian 7.62x39mm round, or possible a 308 Win cartridge. In any event, on the bullet are inscribed three religious symbols: Judaism’s Star of David, a Christian Latin cross, and the Star-and-Crescent of Islam. The superimposed caption reads: “Religion. The Number One Cause of War.”

I commented that the meme reflected an historically invalid assertion and that there are many mixed causes of war, some of which (e.g., economics, nationalist politics, famine or natural disaster) may be more causative than religious belief. The first response to my comment was, “Bullshit!” Some other less scatological responses told me I was wrong. What followed was a fairly reasonable discussion with some commenters agreeing with me and arguing my point further, and others disagreeing but arguing their position rationally. The discussion came to an abrupt end when a dissenter called me a “f—–g fundamentalist.”

Although there was that brief rational discussion between the first response and the last one, it is those two replies — together with the nature of the meme itself — that frame my thoughts about the Psalm verse. In addition, my meditation this morning is informed by the gospel lesson from Luke:

Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

It seems to me that too much of our civic discourse is not civil discourse. Too often conversations, particularly political or religious discussions, are framed in obstinate, polarizing absolutes. These absolutes plug the ears of the participants, to use the Psalm’s image. The Pharisee in the parable represents this closed-minded, plugged-ear way of thinking: he is so certain and self-assured as to brook no contradiction. “Thank God I am not like other people. In everything I do and think, I am right; nothing anyone can ever say will change my opinion or belief.” The ears of the Pharisee are not open; he is impervious to inputs from outside his own mind. He inhabits a world of absolutes in which he is the paragon of virtue and rectitude. This is not someone one can talk to.

The tax-collector, on the other hand, represents a different approach. “I am a sinner. Something in my life and in the world which I inhabit is not right, and I cannot make it so. I need the help of someone or something other than myself.” The tax-collector is not self-assured; his ears are open and listening for the inputs of others, especially from God but also from others in the society around him. He is willing to admit (and does admit) his own fallibility. Not only might he be wrong, he is willing to accept already that he is. This is someone with whom one can converse.

The discussion of the meme on Facebook, insofar is it involved me and two others (and, to a lesser extent, the other participants, as well), can be cast as a conversation between the two characters of this parable:

Pharisee – “Religion is the cause of war.”
Tax-collector – “I think there may be other causes.”
Pharisee – “Bullshit, you f—–g fundamentalist.”

End of discussion.

I can’t really debate the assertion that religion is a cause of war. (It is, but not its principal source.) However, I believe that a “glittering generality,” an absolutist assertion like the meme — an unconditional statement that is not susceptible of historical validation — is not helpful to a reasoned discussion of war’s causes and, more importantly, its solution.

How have we arrived at this highly polarized state of civic discourse? I don’t know and that’s really not the issue either. The issue is how can we back away from it? How can we unplug the “open ear” that God has given us? How can the church, which once fostered and encouraged open debate of issues (that’s how the Reformation got started, for example) promote civil debate?

Many congregations across several denominations sponsor forums and workshops on the issues of the day. This is a step in the right direction but, more often than not, the participant audiences at these debates are merely our own people. My question (and I have no answers to it) is how to begin to dialog with the Pharisees of the day: what does one say in response to “Bullshit, you f—–g fundamentalist” that will allow the conversation to continue?

Jesus once told Peter to forgive someone “seventy times seven times” (Matt. 18:22). I struggle with finding one productive response to “Bullshit, you f—–g fundamentalist”! Coming up with 490 of them is going to be really, really difficult!

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

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

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