Category: Psalms (Page 27 of 41)

Let the Psalms Do It – From the Daily Office – May 28, 2014

May 28, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Psalms:

Go away from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commandments of my God.
— Psalm 119:115 (NRSV)

O that my people would listen to me,
that Israel would walk in my ways!
— Psalm 81:13 (NRSV)

Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
— Psalm 82:3-4 (NRSV)

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Morning & Evening Psalms – May 28, 2014)

Empty Arched Space Two years ago I wrote a meditation on First Timothy on this blog about our need to pray for our political leadership, especially those with whom we disagree; yesterday, I repeated that same reflection. Really, our need is to pray for everyone, including those we really don’t want to pray for: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Mt 5:44) I believe that, I really do.

Since the first publication of that reflection in May, 2012, there have been nine mass shootings in this country, including the Sandy Hook tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, and this week’s killings near UC Santa Barbara in Isla Vista, California:

“Seven people are dead, including a suspect, and seven people are wounded following a series of shootings in Isla Vista. The identities of those who were killed are not being released until next of kin notifications are made. Of the seven people in the hospital, all are being treated for gunshot wounds or traumatic injuries and at least one of the victims has undergone surgery.” — Santa Barbara, California, Sheriff’s Office press release, May 24, 2014

After the UCSB deaths, this father spoke out:

“Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the N.R.A. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this?’ Too many have died. We should say to ourselves: not one more.” — Richard Martinez, father of Christopher Martinez, one of the Isla Vista decedents

And these gun-rights advocates responded:

“No idea how my son will die, but I know it won’t be cowering like a bitch at UC Santa Barbara. Any son of mine would have been shooting back.” — Todd Kincannon, North Carolina Tea Party activist, known for thoughtless tweets like this one

“[Y]our dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.” — Samuel Wurzelbacher a/k/a “Joe the Plumber,” brought to national attention during the 2012 presidential campaign

And I wrote this on Facebook (after reading Wurzelbacher’s open letter):

“Between this (and that Kincannon person characterizing the Isla Vista victims as ‘cowering bitches’) we see the moral depravity, the ethical bankruptcy, and the just-plain vileness of those who have elevated the misconstrual of the Second Amendment’s provision of a right to bear arms above all other rights and laws.”

And The Onion published this biting satire:

“ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. ‘This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,’ said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. ‘It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.’ At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as ‘helpless.’”

I really, really believe in the power of prayer. I really, really believe that we are to pray for those who do wrong. I really, really believe we should pray for those we don’t want to pray for. I really, really believe that we are to pray for our leaders, even when we disagree with them and even when they are failing to lead, failing to protect the people, failing to take action that is needed.

But today I’m finding really, really hard to do that. So I’ll let today’s psalms do it for me.

Let the psalms do it.

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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.

Praying for Leaders – From the Daily Office – May 27, 2014

May 27, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the First Letter to Timothy:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should 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.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Timothy 2:1-2 (NRSV) – May 27, 2014)

Praying with the Bible There was a meme circulating the conservative blogosphere and email circuit several months ago in which folks of a certain political persuasion asserted that they were “praying” for President Obama by reciting a verse from Psalm 109: “Let his days be few, and let another take his office.” The psalm continues in the next verse: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife become a widow.” And the petition get even worse after that. This is not what Paul is admonishing the faithful to do in his letter to the young bishop Timothy. In fact, it is clearly the very opposite.

What would our country and our society be like if everyone did offer “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings … for … all who are in high positions”? One of the things I counsel folks who come to me with issues of unresolved anger toward another is to pray for that other. Not specific intercessions just simply to offer that person’s name before God with the simple request, “In this person’s life, Lord, may your will be done.” The nearly universal experience of my counselees is that over the course of time (the length of time varies from person to person) their anger dissipates; the typical observation is that is impossible to stay angry at someone for whom you are praying.

The purpose of prayer is not to inform God of anything of which we believe God may be unaware, to give God our good advice, or to conform God’s will to ours. Rather, it is to relinquish our own selfish desires in acquiescence to the one “whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine,” as we remind ourselves as the end of the Daily Office (quoting Ephesians 3:20).

What would our society be like if everyone prayed for our leadership, even the leaders with whom we have political disagreements or personal dislikes? What would things be like if I prayed for that jackass in Congress, or that SOB in the state house? I cannot imagine, but Paul assures me that we would all “lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” Maybe we (that really means, I) should give it a try.

(The reflection above is a repeat of one written on this blog in May of 2012 when this lesson was last on the lectionary rotation.)

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

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

May 25, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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On the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2014, this sermon was offered to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:7-18; 1 Peter 3:13-22; and John 14:15-21. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us pray:

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

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

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

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

May 18, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us pray:

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

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

Psalms Are Not Science – From the Daily Office – May 17, 2014

May 17, 2014 / eric / 4 Comments

From Book of Psalms:

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 139:13-16 (NRSV) – May 17, 2014)

Human Fetus Let me make one thing clear: I do not want to get into the abortion debate! I never want to get into the abortion debate!

Whether and when to end a pregnancy is a personal and painful decision, one which I believe is ultimately to be made by one person, the pregnant one. Others may offer her advice and counsel, but when it comes right down to it no one other than her has any business making the decision. Abortion should not be a debate; it should be a private, medical decision by one person.

But I find myself rather frequently pummeled by those who do want to get into the abortion debate, beaten over the head by one side or the other with their particular arguments — most often, I must admit, by the so-called “Pro-Life” side. As a Christian pastor, I get mail, emails, and phone calls from (mostly) the anti-abortionists encouraging me to support their current efforts to restrict access to medically supervised termination of pregnancy.

And nearly every piece of literature they provide includes somewhere the assertion that “human life begins at conception.” And very often that statement is coupled with a citation to this part of Psalm 138.

So let’s make another thing clear: the psalms are not science. The Psalter is poetry and metaphor; the purpose of the psalms is primarily to praise God and secondarily to teach God’s people that the Almighty is to be praised because of the intimacy with which God loves us. These verses simply do not mean that God creates the inmost parts or the unformed substance of every fetus in every womb; nor do they address the issue of when human life begins! Even taken literally, all that this psalm is saying is that God made plans for David; it has nothing to do with when David’s, or any, life began or begins.

That is, basically, what the entire abortion controversy boils down to: when does human life begin? When does a fertilized ovum become a human person? That is a question with so many dimensions — theological, legal, moral, scientific, medical, spiritual, and more — that I’m not sure I can count them!

What I notice about these verses today is that all they name are the physical parts of the body: inmost parts, frame, substance. The spiritual aspect of human life is not mentioned; there is no thought given here to the soul, the spirit, the breath.

In Jewish and Christian theology a human person is only a human person when there is unity of the physical body with the spirit. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew noun nephesh is often translated as “soul,” but it is most often found in combination with adjective hayyah, meaning “living” or “alive.” In combination, the two are rendered “living being” or “soul alive,” but perhaps the best translation is “person.” There is human personhood only when there is both physical body and living spirit.

So when do they come together? The technical theological term is ensoulment. To ask “When does human life begin?” is to ask when ensoulment occurs.

In Jewish tradition, a baby is not considered to be a human person until its head emerges from the birth canal. According to the Talmud, “the fetus is the thigh of its mother,” which means that it is not considered an independent person until after birth. Indeed, some medieval Jewish sages held a child was not a bar kayyama or “lasting being,” i.e., a viable human being, until a month after being born. Obviously, traditional Jewish law and medieval Jewish wisdom did not give Psalm 138 the meaning our contemporary “Pro-Lifers” give it.

Christian tradition has been all over the board on the question.

Some sects (Mormons, for example — and another debate I don’t want to get into is whether members of the Latter-Day Saints are Christians) believe that the soul pre-exists the body, that God has parented or created numerous “spirit children” who await physical bodies in this world.

Some of the earliest theologians, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Gregory of Nyssa, taught that the egg and the sperm each carried a soul derived from the souls of the mother and the father, and that at conception these two proto-souls merged to form a new and distinct soul. This theory, called traducianism, is a direct and necessary development of the doctrine of Original Sin, which teaches that our sinful nature is passed from parent to child via concupiscence (sexual desire) and its (sinful?) satisfaction.

Interestingly, Augustine, who was responsible for much of the formulation of Original Sin, rejected traducianism; he favored what came to be known as Creationism, which is not the creationism which today does battle with evolutionary science.

Traducianism was rejected by the theologians of the Middle Ages — Thomas Aquinas, especially — and in favor of creationism. This view, based in part on Genesis 2:7 (“The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being”) and Hebrews 12:9 (which distinguishes between our “human parents” and God who is the “Father of spirits”), holds that while the body is formed gradually the soul is directly created by God and enters the body when it is ready to receive it (a determination made by God).

Creationism was the accepted teaching of the church from the Fifth Century on . . . until recent times. In fact, from the late Middle Ages until the end of the 19th Century, the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (and the generally accepted position of most of Christianity) was that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of “quickening,” when the mother first feels movement.

So when does the soul enter the physical body? When does a fertilized ovum become a human person?

I don’t know.

Years ago I sat on a panel discussing abortion law and religion with an older colleague from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. He made this statement which I will never forget: “I would rather counsel a woman about legal abortion than bury a woman who’s resorted to an illegal one. And I’ve done both.” I have had to do the former, both before and after the procedure; that’s why I know so much (and so little) about this theology. Fortunately, unlike my colleague, I’ve not had to do the latter and I hope I never will.

I don’t know when “human life” begins, but I do know this: I do not want to get into the abortion debate, ever, even though I am often forced to. And I know this: abortion is a private, personal, and painful decision which is ultimately to be made by only one person, the pregnant one. And I know this: the psalms are not science.

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

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

May 15, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Psalms:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cleaving to Dust – From the Daily Office – May 7, 2014

May 7, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

My soul cleaves to the dust; give me life according to your word.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 119:25 (BCP Version) – May 7, 2014.)

Handful of Dust The Gospel lesson today is the baptism of Jesus as told by Matthew. With it, for the evening, is coupled a portion of Psalm 119 which includes this verse. This image of a soul clinging to the dirt caught my attention. I wonder if baptism is efficacious if the soul being baptized steadfastly and stubbornly “cleaves to the dust” of its pre-baptismal life.

I sometimes wonder about my own baptism, which happened when I was 14 years of age and attending a private, residential high school affiliated with the Episcopal Church.

As part of the religious instruction required of all students, I had taken the confirmation class offered by the chaplain and was, thus, included in the list of young men upon whom the bishop was to lay hands during his official visit at one Thursday evening chapel service. Earlier in the day, going over his records, the chaplain noticed he had not record of my baptism.

That was not surprising since I’d not been baptized. Growing up in a largely unchurched home with a father estranged from the Methodist Church and a mother who’d been reared in (but left) one of those traditions that practice “believers’ baptism,” there had been no encouragement of nor opportunity for baptism.

So, in a hastily arranged private afternoon ceremony at the back of the chapel after gym class, with two members of the faculty standing as sponsors, I was quickly sprinkled and informed that I was now a Christian, eligible to be confirmed as an Episcopalian. That done, I went to my room to shower and dress for dinner and the obviously more important confirmation service later that evening.

What exactly happened that afternoon? Did my soul turn loose of the dust, or did it cleave to the dirt from which it was supposed to be cleansed? Does it matter? I’m not even going to try to answer those questions this morning, but the pairing of the baptismal story and the image of the soul clinging to the dust is certainly an odd lectionary coincidence.

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

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

May 4, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes they gather around a sickbed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hyperbole – From the Daily Office – April 30, 2014

April 30, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly;
the faithful have disappeared from humankind.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 12:1 (NRSV) – April 30, 2014.)

Hyperbole Is the Best Thing Ever I am given to hyperbole. I know that. So, apparently, was David (the superscript to this psalm attributes it to David), as the first verse of today’s evening psalm amply demonstrates. I’ll bet he got into as much trouble (or maybe more) because of that as I get into!

Hyperbole is defined as “an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally.” The problem is that some don’t understand a hyperbolic statement to be something “not intended to be taken literally.”

Hyperbole can be handy in conversation and public speaking. For example, I can tell you that I am so hungry I could eat a horse. You know very well that I can’t actually do that, but you get the message that it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten. Picking up your luggage, I can complain that your suitcase weighs a ton. Of course, it doesn’t, but you know I think you’ve packed too much. Hyperbole is useful shorthand, but it is risky. When one is speaking, perhaps, tone of voice can indicate the meaning, but in writing — absent tone of voice, facial expression, body language — there is a real risk of being misunderstood. The risk is greatest when one’s audience is unfamiliar with the writer.

Hyperbole, as it happens, is the language of theology. In Works of Love the Danish theologian-philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote of the need for hyperbole in Christian rhetoric: “The more learned, the more excellent the defense, the more Christianity is disfigured, abolished, exhausted like an emasculated man, for the defense simply out of kindness will take the possibility of offense away.” With religious subjects, argued Kierkegaard, it is sometimes more important to shout than to offer a reasonable discussion. Because the world assumes that Christianity has triumphed, he suggested, the theologian must use hyperbole as a rhetoric that makes the impossible both practical and necessary, that will draw attention to itself in order to point away from itself to the mystery of God.

Karl Barth, too, was given to hyperbole. In the preface to the second edition of his The Epistle to the Romans he warned his readers not be seduced by the contagious enthusiasm of his hyperbole, asking them not to receive the book with either “enthusiasm or peevishness.” He knew that his exaggerated critique of the church could be (and, indeed, was) found to be both exciting and irritating.

So if I express myself with hyperbole, with exaggeration, with rhetorical overstatement . . . I find myself in good company, as liable to be as misunderstood as David, as Kierkegaard, as Barth, as many other prophets and theologians. Not that I count myself in their league! If I am in their company it is only in the way a child may be in the company of adults, an apprentice in the company of masters, a mortal in the company of eternals. (How’s that for hyperbole?)

In any event, I have to keep that in mind: I’m given to hyperbole and that is risky business. I hope my readers will keep it in mind, too, otherwise their heads will explode! (No, they won’t. I’m just demonstrating my tendency to be hyperbolic.)

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

Chesed – From the Daily Office – April 25, 2014

April 25, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalms:

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.
O give thanks to the God of gods,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for his steadfast love endures for ever.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 136:1-3 (NRSV) – April 25, 2014.)

Chesed Psalm 136 is twenty-six verses long. The second half of every single verse is the same: “For [God’s] steadfast love endures for ever.”

In The Book of Common Prayer version this refrain is translated, “For [God’s] mercy endures forever.”

“Mercy” is the pertinent term in the Authorized Version, as well, while in the New American Standard, the word is “lovingkindness.”

The New International Version renders it “love” and the Complete Jewish translation uses “grace.”

They’re all good words . . . and not one of them fully and completely captures the meaning of the original Hebrew word chesed.

It seems to me that what is lacking in all of the translations is recognition of the implicit qualities of unconditionality, loyalty, and devotedness, and the explicit quality of covenant.

Chesed, additionally, conveys a sense of priority. God’s chesed is prior to all human response and in no way depends upon any human response; nonetheless, God binds Godself in chesed in covenant with humankind offering a loyalty and devotion humankind is incapable of reciprocating.

Perhaps this is why our translations of chesed (and even the word chesed itself) are inadequate. Human language cannot encompass the unconditional and endless self-giving of God. And, perhaps, this is what Psalm 136 must repeat, over and over again, that God’s steadfast love, mercy, lovingkindness, grace, chesed is eternal.

We must constantly remind ourselves of that which is fundamentally beyond our comprehension. We cannot comprehend it; we cannot offer any adequate response. We can only accept it and be grateful. Repeatedly.

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

Category: Psalms (Page 27 of 41)

Let the Psalms Do It – From the Daily Office – May 28, 2014

Praying for Leaders – From the Daily Office – May 27, 2014

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

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

Psalms Are Not Science – From the Daily Office – May 17, 2014

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

Cleaving to Dust – From the Daily Office – May 7, 2014

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

Hyperbole – From the Daily Office – April 30, 2014

Chesed – From the Daily Office – April 25, 2014

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