Category: Psalms (Page 30 of 41)

Kintsugi Gospel – From the Daily Office – January 24, 2014

January 24, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am as useless as a broken pot.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 31:12 (BCP Verson) – January 24, 2014.)

Kintsugi Repaired Blue-Green Bowl It might strike some as odd that of all the myriad metaphors and poetic images in the Psalter this this one, “I am as useless as a broken pot,” speaks to me most loudly.

About 15 years ago, serving in a different parish than the one where I am now rector, I suffered a period of severe depression. A couple of years of treatment on anti-depressant medication, cognitive therapy, and (most importantly) working with a spiritual director got me through it.

What didn’t get me through it was the support of the church as a community. There was none to speak of.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. There were church members who were great and on whom I could (and did) rely. But, in general, as a community, the parish where I’d been rector for five or so years at that point was of little or no support. In fact, when I informed the vestry and then the whole congregation of my diagnosis (after trying to hide it for several months), there was an influential woman in the parish who said to the senior warden (knowing full well I could overhear), “We’ll have to ask the bishop to pull him out of here. We can’t afford to support him while recovers; we don’t even know if he will recover.” She was not alone in her sentiment.

Truthfully, I almost agreed with her. I was as useless as a broken pot! What parish would want me to be their priest?

Thing about broken pots, however, is that they aren’t really useless. Even if broken beyond repair, the busted shards can still be put to use. And if the pot can be repaired, it can be even more useful than before.

In Japan, they practice the art of kintsugi. The word translates as “golden joinery” and refers to the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer resins containing powdered precious metals. It has been called “talismanic proof that imagination has the power to make ill fortune good.” Its legendary origins date to the late 15th century, when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged tea bowl back to China for repair. It was returned fixed with ugly metal staples. Japanese craftsmen, offended by the ugliness of the repair, sought and found method of fixing the broken pottery that could make a broken piece look as good as, or better than, new.

The possibilities presented by kintsugi, the new beauty it brings to the repaired broken pot, help us to see the value of a broken vessel. Where we might previously have seen in a broken pot or a broken person only trash, something or someone to throw away because we can’t afford to keep it or support the person, kintsugi permits us to see the possibility, even the likelihood, of a greater strength that follows healing. Kintsugi is good news for the broken. In a real sense, it is gospel and the gospel is kintsugi.

If we can see with “kintsugi eyes,” we may be more gentle with the people and the things around us that experience brokenness. And when we are broken ourselves, the promise of kintsugi, the promise of the gospel allow us to be hopeful.

I am grateful to those in my prior congregation who didn’t listen to the influential member and seek my removal, who were willing to give me time to heal, who believed in the possibility of repair. It was a learning experience; it was kintsugi for me. It taught me to believe in, preach, and try to live by a kintsugi gospel.

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

The Boa and the Wart-Hog – From the Daily Office – January 13, 2014

January 13, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Hebrews:

“In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Hebrews 1:10-12 (NRSV) – January 13, 2014.)

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews quotes from Psalm 102 and asserts that the words are spoken by God the Father to the Son. In The Book of Common Prayer (TEC 1979), the verses quotes read:

Constrictor with Prey

In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands;
They shall perish, but you will endure; they all shall wear out like a garment;
as clothing you will change them, and they shall be changed;
But you are always the same,
and your years will never end.
(Psalm 102:25-27 – BCP Version)

The lessons today focus on beginnings — the Old Testament lesson is the second (but older) creation story from the Book of Genesis and the Gospel lesson is the prologue of John’s Gospel. The epistle and the psalm which it quotes, however, remind us of endings: created things “will all wear out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up.” I’ve always thought that a wonderful poetic metaphor for theoretical entropic nature of the universe, the idea that all of the matter and energy in the universe will ultimately degrade to a state of inert uniformity.

That these lessons of cosmic beginnings and endings are on the lectionary today is a coincidence that somehow seems appropriate as the world says “Good-bye” to Dr. Ian Barbour, who died yesterday at the age of 90. Barbour was a physicist who embraced the truth of the Christian faith while holding fast to the ethic of scientific inquire; he demonstrated to the world that there is no contradiction between the pre-scientific religious stories of creation and the scientific explanation of the universe’s beginnings.

When he won the Templeton Prize in 1999, Dr. Barbour said:

If we take the Bible seriously but not literally, we can accept the central biblical message without accepting the prescientific cosmology in which it was expressed, such as the three-layer universe with heaven above and hell below, or the seven days of the creation story.

In his book Religion in an Age of Science (Harper San Francisco: 1990), Dr. Barbour proposed a colorful metaphor for the relationship between science and religion, decrying what he called (with characteristic understatement) the “misuse” of each in the extremes of scientific materialism and biblical literalism:

Warthog

In a fight between a boa constrictor and a wart-hog, the victor, whichever it is, swallows the vanquished. In scientific materialism, science swallows religion. In biblical literalism, religion swallows science. The fight can be avoided if they occupy separate territories or if, as I will suggest, they each pursue more appropriate diets.

He wrote that “our personal and social lives are intimately bound to the rest of the created order. We are redeemed in and with the world, not from the world. Part of our task, then, is to articulate a theology of nature, for which we will have to draw from both religious and scientific sources.” The wart-hog and the boa constrictor each have their part to play and their perspectives to contribute. Unfortunate, there are many who still encourage them to fight to the death rather than change their diets and cooperate. We need fewer leaders of that sort in both religion and science, and more like Dr. Barbour, to whom we say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; rest in peace and rise in glory.”

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

Gimmicks Distract – From the Daily Office – January 11, 2014

January 11, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From the Psalter:

Hallelujah!
Praise God in his holy temple;
praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts;
praise him for his excellent greatness.
Praise him with the blast of the ram’s-horn; *
praise him with lyre and harp.
Praise him with timbrel and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe.
Praise him with resounding cymbals;
praise him with loud-clanging cymbals.
Let everything that has breath
praise the Lord.
Hallelujah!

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalme 150 (BCP Version) – January 11, 2014.)

Clown Presiding at Communion The musical Godspell debuted in 1971 (my junior year in college); in it, Christ is portrayed as a clown. Whether it was an expression of or the catalyst for the phenomenon of offering clown eucharists as an edgy, avant-garde presentation of the Christian Mysteries, I really don’t know. The two are inextricably linked in my memory.

And . . . to be honest, I never cared for either. And . . . being further honest, that may be because I have never like clowns. I find them creepy. On the other hand, a bishop of whom I was very fond and for whom I had great respect, loved Clown Eucharists. He had a set of clown-decorated vestments made; he offered a clown eucharist at least once each year (often at diocesan convention) throughout his episcopate. They may have resonated for him because, unlike me, he loved clowns.

But I didn’t (and don’t) and so the clown eucharist was, for me, a distraction. I couldn’t get passed the gimmick, the clown images and the circus music, to the Christ at the center of mass. The clown gimmick, not the foolishness of God to which it was supposedly pointing, took over and seemed to be the point of the whole thing.

Some years later, when the music of U2 became popular and new generation were finding spiritual meaning in the band’s lyrics, someone put together a celebration of the Holy Mysteries in which that music played a part — the major part — it was the only music — and promoted the event as a U2charist.

“Right,” I thought. “The clown eucharist in a new guise.” Again, for me, the gimmick (the U2 music) distracts from the principal focus. I attended a U2charist and, for me, all I heard was the band’s music; I didn’t hear the gospel. That’s not to say it wasn’t there; it may have been. I just couldn’t hear it through the distraction of the soundtrack.

Since then I have heard of (but not attended) celebrations of Holy Communion in which the music was all from the Beatles canon, or all “oldies” from the 1960s, or all Broadway show tunes . . . and I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been other similar “thematic” eucharists. All, I think, the descendants of the clown masses of the 1970s — attempts to package the Christian Mysteries in edgy and avant-garde ways to present them to a target audience, to sneak the gospel message in under the guise of entertainment.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Let me hasten to say that I think entertainment is fine. If clowns float your boat, go the circus! If you like the music of U2 (and I do), listen to it! If you like Broadway musicals (and I do), go to the theater! And if you find something of spiritual import in those entertainments (and I do), great! Make use of it in your spiritual life and, even, in church services and celebrations.

The last of the psalms encourages the people of God to make use of many forms of entertainment, symbolized by musical instruments — trumpets and horns (the ram’s horn), stringed instruments, percussion, wood winds — and dance, in their worship. So I believe it’s fine to make use of clowns, to use of U2’s music, to sing the Beatles’ lyrics, to offer the tunes from Broadway shows as part of the liturgy.

But when these things become the reason for the service, when we name the service for the clowns or the bands or the theater district, the tool meant to be used for praising God has become the object of praise. The psalm says, “Praise God with strings and pipe,” not “Praise the strings and pipe;” “Praise God with resounding cymbals,” not “Praise the cymbals.”

Others, I am quite certain, will have found the U2charists a path to God. Other, I know, will have found in the Beatles mass and in the Broadway eucharists the truth of the gospel. After all, that bishop whom I really did love found Christ in clowns no matter how creepy I may have found them!

But for me, these feel “gimmicky” — one or two Beatles songs might be used to good effect, but nothing but Beatles music through the whole service? Not so much. U2’s Gloria could certainly stand as a liturgical piece, but all U2 music throughout the mass? Too much of a good thing. I’m not sure that I can say anything positive about clowns . . . but someone might, perhaps. My point is that themed eucharists like these, in which the theme predominates, feel like gimmicks. It feels to me like we have stopped praising God with the clowns and have started praising the clowns; the gimmick distracts. Praise God with the gimmick, but don’t praise the gimmick!

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

Sweetgum Balls – From the Daily Office – January 9, 2014

January 9, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy,
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich,
and of the derision of the proud.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 123:4-5 (BCP Version) – January 9, 2014.)

Sweetgum Balls on Snow There’s a lot of talk these days about “class warfare,” most of it sheer nonsense. There is, it must be admitted, a growing class divide, an increasing gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of us. One might be tempted to write about that in light of this psalm’s reference to the “scorn of the indolent rich” and the “derision of the proud.” But, let’s face it . . . scorn, derision, contempt, and generally obnoxious conduct transcend class and other distinctions.

Prickly, disagreeable people come in all income groups, all races, all genders and sexual preferences, all religions . . . in any grouping of human beings you care to make. Indeed, everyone of us can be and are, from time to time, prickly and unpleasant. A lot of the time, we are completely oblivious to our own unpleasantness.

Driving past our town square yesterday afternoon, I noticed that a sweet gum tree had shed its empty seedpods, the hard, prickly fruit littering the snow all around the trunk. I rolled down the car window, pulled out my smartphone and took this picture (which came out a bit unfocussed). I thought I might use it as inspiration (or illustration) for a poem. And then this psalm came up on the lectionary rotation and the sweet gum was an obvious metaphor.

Unpleasant people drop little bombs of scorn, little grenades of derision all around them. They mar the world around them the same way the sweet gum tree’s seedpods mar the snow around the tree. But like the tree, they are unaware (or uncaring) of the damage they are doing and seem unable (or unwilling) to bend; they lack the flexibility to remedy the mess they create around them.

The psalmist is right to pray for deliverance from such folk . . . but more importantly we should pray for change in ourselves, that we not be prickly, contemptuous, and scornful towards those around us. Jesus once said to his listeners:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Matt. 7:3-5, NRSV)

In terms of the tree on square . . . deal with your own prickly seedpods of contempt, scorn, or derision before criticizing another’s.

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

Be Glad – From the Daily Office – January 8, 2013

January 8, 2014 / eric / 2 Comments

From the Psalter:

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 118:24 (NRSV) – January 8, 2014.)

Whirling Dervishes My wife and I met at a Cursillo three-day weekend event. I was a part of the team (one of the cooks) putting on the Cursillo; she was “making” her Cursillo (as the lingo has it). She claims we’d met before at a fund-raiser fair at my parish (she attended elsewhere), but I was very busy during the fair and don’t recall that. I remember meeting her at the Cursillo weekend.

The Cursillo movement and the Cursillo community became an important of the early years of our marriage. We married about six months after meeting and in another six months we relocated to another state where I attended law school. There was an active Cursillo community in that location and we became involved.

An eye-opening move, that was. We discovered that the Cursillo community in our original home had been doing things incorreclty! Not just different. They’d been wrong. They’d been violating of the agreement between the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Cursillo Movement, which had licensed the Cursillo method to the Episcopalians. And, we later learned, they knew they’d been doing so.

This comes to mind today because one of the major elements of a Cursillo weekend is music. In those communities, it was the sort of music that today might be called “praise choruses” or “church folk” or “contemporary.” Simple, easily remembered, repetitive songs accompanied by guitars, banjos, tambourines, bongos. One song common to both communities was based on this verse; in fact, it was this verse so far as I can remember.

There may have been verses and this may simply have been the chorus, but all I can recall is this verse: “This is the day, this is the day, that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made. We will rejoice, we will rejoice, and be glad in it, and be glad in it.” A catchy, bouncy little tune to which one could dance a formless dance, whirling like a dervish! It was easy to get caught up in and it demonstrated to me the spiritual power of music, simple melodies, and physical movement. Whirling and spinning and experiencing the power of the Spirit!

When my wife and I returned to our original home after three years in law school, we were asked to be the leaders of a coeducational three-day Cursillo event. We agreed, but we said we wanted to try to abide by the agreement between our church and the Roman Catholics, to discontinue those practices which violated the accord, to keep faith with our brothers and sisters who had gifted us with the Cursillo as a tool for deepening the faith of mature Christians.

There was push-back. In fact, there was outright rebellion. Members of the community refused to sponsor candidates to the weekend we were to lead; others refused to contribute to the cost of the event. Evelyn and I resigned from leadership and felt we had no choice but to withdraw from the community.

What had been an important support for us in the early years of married life became a source of grief and sadness. It still is. We miss being a part of that community and we miss the nearly automatic entry being in the Cursillo community gave us to a wider circle of church friends when we relocated. Where we live now, there is no active Cursillo community so the sharpness of the grief is dulled; there are no “Reunions,” nor “Ultreyas” (as the regular get-togethers of Cursillistas are called), so no constant reminders that we are no longer a part of Cursillo.

And yet we rejoice that we were fortunate to have been called to that community. It’s where we met; it sustained us. Like each day the Lord makes, it has passed. When it was here, we rejoiced in it and we were glad. And we look back on it still with gratitude. When I think of it, I think of this verse and that danceable chorus, and my soul comes alive in the Spirit, whirling and spinning, and expressing the joy that community gave us . . . and how grateful I am to that experience for the gift of my wife and the family we have created.

Everyday is a new day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it, whirling and spinning in the power of the Spirit.

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

River of Words – From the Daily Office – January 6, 2013

January 6, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 46:5 (BCP Version) – January 6, 2014.)

A River in the Desert

Two poems about rivers . . . first from the Malaysian poet John Tiong Chunghoo who is known best for his haiku, a work entitled Part of God:

created in his likeness
the anger – thunder
the warning – lightning
the tears – rain
the smile – the breeze
the punishment – earthquake
lesson – the echo, memory
the trees, birds,
sea, clouds and sky
his pictorial poetry
in his likeness
i paint them
with words
that run
like a river
reflecting their beauty in me
styling them in realism
on a calm day
impressionism
on a breezy one
as the river
dances with light
modernism
when the river
shakes the
inquisitive mind
of the mysteries of life
all the blocks and angles
the river registers
as it unfolds a scroll
of god’s law
surrealism
mistfilled
a river scene
i did to run away from
a mind that torments
a world that begs for
an answer to everything

I am intrigued by Chunghoo’s image of poetry as a river, of words as flowing water. I grew up in the desert of southern Nevada and, as an adult, enjoyed recreational backpacking down the valley of the Virgin River, a tributary of the Colorado that now makes up the northern branch of Lake Mead. In the desert, a river is a source of life. Around it the ground is parched, dry, and apparently lifeless, but immediately next to it and in it there is abundance of life. Words, Chunghoo seems to suggest, are like that; they are more than mere devices of communication — they are sources of life in a world that “begs for an answer to everything.”

That’s a biblical image! Genesis: “Then God said, ‘Let there be . . . .'” John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word . . . . ” God’s words are life-giving. Human words can be, too! Communication sustains the life of community. The river of words makes glad the city.

The second poem, read together with Chunghoo’s, read in the light of the image of a river of communication, is an old hymn given new meaning:

Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide for ever flowing
by the throne of God?
Gather at the river!
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
Yes well gather at the river
that flows by the throne of God.
Shall we gather? Shall we gather at the river?

Shall we gather at the river of words? Shall we give life to one another with our communication and our conversation? Is there any other way?

Interestingly, Robert Lowry, the Baptist minister who wrote the hymn, was also a professor of literature. I wonder what he might have thought of a “river of words” . . . .

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

A Theology of Gift Giving – Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas – January 5, 2014

January 5, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Second Sunday of Christmas, January 5, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The Revised Common Lectionary, Christmas 2A: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Psalm 84; and Matthew 2:1-12. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Gifts of the Wise Men Very recently in the church office mail there was this small envelope addressed to me personally — the address has been typed out on a separate sheet of paper, cut therefrom, and glued onto the envelope. There is no return address and the postmark is a Cleveland, OH, cancelation. Inside there was no personal note of any kind, just a page torn from the last quarter’s Forward Day by Day devotional. One side, as you can see, has been scribbled all over; clearly not the side I am supposed to read. The other is the meditation for October 30, 2013, which begins:

Have you ever suffered because you sat through a really boring, abstract, incoherent, and disconnected sermon? Most of us have. Believe it or not, some people report that after enduring something like that, they decide never to go back to that particular church or any church at all. Sermons can make or break some people’s relationship with the church.

(The entire meditation can be read at Forward Day by Day.)

I have to be honest — my first reaction on receiving this was to think, “Well, that’s not something I wanted to get!” And immediately I was reminded of one Christmas when our children were quite young.

Our family tradition is to wait until Christmas morning to open our packages, so even if we’d been to the Midnight Mass we would rise early to see what Santa had brought. On the Christmas I recalled, our daughter rushed down the stairs from her second-floor room to the tree set up in our first-floor den and tore open the largest of her gifts, ripping to shreds the wrapping paper with obvious excitement. However, when she saw what was under the wrapping her expression changed to disappointment and she cried out, “That’s not what I wanted!” I don’t remember what she had wanted; I don’t even remember what we had given her. But I remember that reaction.

It got me to thinking about the reasons we give things to one another, the how of it and the why of it. What is the “theology of gift giving?” The gifts of the wise men to the Christ-child help us to explore that question.

The first element of such a theology would be the recognition that the giving of gifts is perfectly acceptable! There are some who teach that it is not, but we have plenty of examples in Scripture including, of course, the very story we are told in today’s gospel reading of the visitation of the Magi. More basically, we have God’s own example starting with the gift of life to plants, animals, and human beings as described in the Creation stories and exhibited most clearly in God’s self-giving in Jesus Christ. Generosity and charity are fundamental to an active Christian faith. Giving is the very thing that defines our belief: God-made-human gave himself entirely so that we might be free to give ourselves entirely back to God. As James said, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” (James 1:17, NRSV) Gift-giving, in a sense, is the purpose of the Incarnation, so it is something strongly encouraged.

The second element of a theology of gift giving is that giving gifts allows us to be ministers of grace, the free and undeserved help of God. The gifts of the wise men were symbolic: the hymn “We Three Kings” lays out in verse what these are. Gold is a symbol of kingship, frankincense (used for incense in worship) is a symbol of deity, and myrrh (an embalming oil) is a symbol of death. (By the way, did you know that that hymn is quintessentially Episcopalian? It was written by John J. Hopkins in 1857 for a Christmas pageant at General Theological Seminary, the Episcopal Church divinity school in New York City.) In other words, they are symbolic of the full grace and mercy of God incarnate in Jesus. Every gift we receive, especially those from God but really from anyone, is a demonstration of God’s grace because, after all, grace is undeserved. How many times have you opened a present and sat there with the gift still in the box, looking at the giver with eyes and thinking to yourself, “What done to deserve this?” That question, of course, is rhetorical. The answer is “Nothing.” Gift giving is a form of grace by which we imitate the behavior of God and model the character of God.

The third element of a theology of gift giving is that it give us opportunity to display the love of God. “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver,” wrote Paul to the Corinthians. (2 Cor. 9:7, ESV) And, of course, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” (John 3:16, NRSV) Every gift should be a reflection of that love. If a gift is a real gift it is given with no thought of return. It’s not about starting an endless series of gift exchanges. It’s not about buttering someone up. It’s not about impressing someone or trying to get someone to do something for you. A real gift is an act of unconditional love, with no demands, no hints, no requirements of any return. Love, as Paul reminds us in the First Letter to the Corinthians,

is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. (1 Cor. 13:4-6)

Our gift-giving character should be one of genuine love. By giving a gift, we are symbolically recalling the gift of Christ for our salvation because “God so loved the world.”
The final element of a theology of gift giving, the element to which the first three point, is that it is relational. When the Magi encountered the Christ-child, they worshiped him: “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.” Worship is an expression of relationship at its deepest. However we define the word worship, it has its center in how we relate to God; it is the very reason, Scripture tells us, that we were created.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite poets is the African American James Weldon Johnson. At funerals, I often use one the poems from his collection God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. Another poem in that book is entitled The Creation; it explores this truth of our creation. The poem begins —

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
“I’m lonely —
I’ll make me a world.”

The poem continues, as Genesis does, detailing the creation of earth, the seas, the plants, the animals . . . and then goes on —

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,
And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And God said, “I’m lonely still.”

Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man!”

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

And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

“Like a mammy bending over her baby . . . .” We are created for relationship — relationship with God and relationship with each other. Like the gift giving of the Magi, that’s what our gift giving to one another is all about. It is a tangible expression of relationship; although gifts are given out of love with no expectation of reciprocation, they do provoke a response. They are relational, and in the way we relate to each other, especially in our giving of gifts to each other, we exhibit how we relate to God.

I’ll be honest. I was upset by this anonymous gift. But in the end I’m grateful for it because it is a reminder of this most important element of the theology of gift giving, this relational aspect. After that rather brutal opening paragraph, the Forward Day by Day meditation examines what it calls “Jesus’ methodology” of preaching by story-telling and then concludes, “In spite of all of our media gadgets, communications systems, and technological tools, we still need to truly perceive, listen, and understand.”

My mentor, the late Fr. Karl Spatz, taught me to think of a sermon as a conversation and as a gift. A sermon is not a lecture and it has many participants. Preaching is grounded in community, and like gift giving is relational. Preaching is not me or any clergy person standing in the pulpit telling you what we think that you should hear. A sermon is an exploration of the things we all struggle to understand, the troubles we all have to deal with, the things we all try to do better, the joys we all celebrate. A sermon is a priest’s prayerful and considered reflection upon these things, offered humbly as a gift to the gathered community. The congregation’s part in the conversation is to receive the gift and, as the meditation says, make the effort “to truly perceive, listen, and understand.” That may sometimes mean that we continue the conversation at a later time, perhaps through notes like this one — but we can only really continue the conversation that if I know who you are . . . .

When all is said and done, any gift giving (including any preaching) is an imperfect thing. It is an imperfect thing that seeks the perfection of the one true gift, the gift of Jesus for the salvation of the world. Amen.

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

Technical Support – From the Daily Office – January 4, 2013

January 4, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

Restore us then, O God our Savior;
let your anger depart from us.
Will you be displeased with us for ever?
will you prolong your anger from age to age?
Will you not give us life again,
that your people may rejoice in you?

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 85:3-6 (BCP Version) – January 4, 2014.)

Help Key Late yesterday I created and posted a “meme” on Facebook and then put it on this blog as well . . . a picture of a sack lunch with words from the early 1970s humor piece entitled The Deterioriata: “

Gracefully surrender the things of youth:
The birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan . . .
And let not the sands of time
Get in your lunch.

I edited the posting this morning to include the whole text of The Deteriorata. It’s a parody. It’s humor. It’s not the way I actually see the universe functioning. Let’s make that clear. But another part of the piece strikes awfully close to home:

Therefore, make peace with your god
Whatever you conceive him to be —
Hairy thunderer, or cosmic muffin.
With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal
The world continues to deteriorate.

There is ample evidence that the world does continue to deteriorate, even more so than when that piece was written in 1972 as a part of a National Lampoon comedy record! Economic injustice and wealth inequality, increased pollution and anthropogenic climate change, wars and civil wars . . . you can complete the list. So perhaps making peace with one’s god is a good idea.

And that’s the line that gets to me this morning, the bit about “whatever you conceive him to be.”

And the line (or, actually, the word) that got my attention in the morning psalm is “Restore…”

Here’s why.

For several hours yesterday and this morning, when I would try to access this site (a family domain I set up several years ago and host with a company whose servers and technical support staff are in . . . God knows where), I could not do so. I would get strange error messages. It would tell me that the “resource limit” had been exceeded; it would claim there was a “database error;” it would give me an HTTP 500 error saying that it had “encountered an unexpected condition that prevents fulfilling the request by the client;” it would give me an HTTP 404 error – “Page not found!”

My only recourse when these things happen is to go to my hosting company’s website and complete a “support ticket” detailing the error received and saying something very much like “Restore us then, O hosting company.”

Before reading the Daily Office this morning, I checked the weather. In our area we are experiencing very cold winter temperatures and in this morning’s prediction there was a “Winter Wind Chill Watch” for the next few days. Beginning early Monday morning and continuing through mid-day on Tuesday, there are predicted temperatures at Zero Degrees Fahrenheit or below, blowing snow showers (winds of 20-25 mph), and wind chills of -25 to -40 . . . . Not being a fan of cold, snowy winters in the first place, the Psalm’s plea, “Restore us then, O God our Savior; let your anger depart from us” seemed to me particularly appropriate; bad winter weather will screw up a whole lot of plans that I have made!

But then I had to pull myself up short and ask myself, “How are you conceiving God to be? Hairy thunderer, cosmic muffin, universal weatherman, celestial technical support department?” All might be good metaphors to help us understand the divine in bible study, but as with any metaphor they are of limited use in most circumstances, and especially in these.

Faced with glitches and bugs in the programs we’ve tried to write for our own lives, what do we do? Call on God as some sort of master IT technician to come fix them? Or do we knuckle down and do the hard work of reading through the code line-by-line and fixing things ourselves, relying on the tools and skills that God has already given us.

In my own life, I’m trying to do the latter, but I must confess that every once in a while I really do just want to throw up my hands and submit a “support ticket” to the heavenly technician, and then gripe about how slowly he gets around to fixing things: “Will you be displeased with us for ever?”

No, better not to call on technical support; best to work things out for ourselves and with the help and support of our communities to the extent we can. And we will find out that that extends really pretty far!

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

How Silently – From the Daily Office – December 30, 2013

December 30, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Fourth Gospel:

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. . . . And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 8:6b,8 (NRSV) – December 30, 2013.)

Writing in the Sand What did he write? What did he write the first time? What did he write the second? I have heard many speculative answers to this question, but the truth is that no one knows. And I tend to think it really doesn’t matter. I find myself in the company of John Calvin and others who have suggested that Jesus was merely doodling. This group of interpreters believe that by doing so Jesus was showing either utter contempt for the accusers or a calm lack of anxiety in the situation. Calvin was of the first opinion; I hold to the second.

In the past several years, under the influence of family systems therapists and theorists, most notably Rabbi Edwin Friedman with the 1985 publication of his book Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, many clergy have sought to develop the ability to be a “nonanxious presence.” This, says Friedman, is someone who can demonstrate emotional clarity, who can separate while still remaining connected, who can manage his or her own reactivity to the automatic reactivity of others.

The automatic reaction of most of us (which the scribes and Pharisees in this story certainly exhibit) is to fill what seems to be empty emotional space with busy-ness, to plan and schedule our days, to keep busy and demonstrate a purpose, to have some sort of criteria against which to evaluate and judge both situations and people, and to exercise that judgment whether we actually need to or not!

In the midst of the emotional turmoil around him, Jesus just doodled. He waited it out. Whether he wrote anything of meaning, we cannot tell from the text. So let me add my speculation . . .

I think, if he wrote anything, it was not the names of prostitutes visited by the accusers, nor their own names, nor the list of their many sins, nor the Ten Commandments, nor the requirements set out in Leviticus for the proper conduct of legal proceedings against adulterers, all of which have been suggested by various interpreters and scholars. No, I don’t think he was writing anything for the benefit of the unruly crowd. I suggest two other possibilities . . . .

The first would be something for the benefit of the woman. Perhaps the admonition from the Psalms: “When you are disturbed . . . be silent.” (Ps. 4:4) Or another: “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Ps. 46:10)

The second possibility would be something written for himself, a recollection perhaps of the story of Elijah in the First Book of Kings, a reminder that the Spirit of God was not found in the turmoil of wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the “sound of sheer silence.” (1 Kings 19:12)

In any event, in this season of the Incarnation, this story of Jesus’ patient doodling, his calm in the midst of turmoil, reminds us “how silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”

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

Four Christmas Poems – Meditation for Christmas Day – December 25, 2013

December 25, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This meditation was offered on Christmas morning, December 25, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Christmas, Proper Set III: Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1:1-12; and John 1:1-14. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Icon of the Nativity of Christ

Light Looked Down by Laurence Housman

Light looked down and beheld Darkness.
“Thither will I go,” said Light.
Peace looked down and beheld War.
“Thither will I go,” said Peace.
Love looked down and beheld Hatred.
“Thither will I go,” said Love.
So came Light and shone.
So came Peace and gave rest.
So came Love and brought life.
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

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Praise for the Incarnation by John Newton

Sweeter sounds than music knows
Charm me in Immanuel’s name;
All her hopes my spirit owes
To his birth, and cross, and shame.

When he came, the angels sung,
“Glory be to God on high;”
Lord, unloose my stamm’ring tongue,
Who should louder sing than I?

Did the Lord a man become,
That he might the law fulfil,
Bleed and suffer in my room,
And canst thou, my tongue, be still?

No, I must my praises bring,
Though they worthless are and weak;
For should I refuse to sing,
Sure the very stones would speak.

O my Saviour, Shield, and Sun,
Shepherd, Brother, Husband, Friend,
Ev’ry precious name in one,
I will love thee without end.

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I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Still, ringing, singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

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On the Mystery of the Incarnation by Denise Levertov

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.

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

Category: Psalms (Page 30 of 41)

Kintsugi Gospel – From the Daily Office – January 24, 2014

The Boa and the Wart-Hog – From the Daily Office – January 13, 2014

Gimmicks Distract – From the Daily Office – January 11, 2014

Sweetgum Balls – From the Daily Office – January 9, 2014

Be Glad – From the Daily Office – January 8, 2013

River of Words – From the Daily Office – January 6, 2013

A Theology of Gift Giving – Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas – January 5, 2014

Technical Support – From the Daily Office – January 4, 2013

How Silently – From the Daily Office – December 30, 2013

Four Christmas Poems – Meditation for Christmas Day – December 25, 2013

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