Category: Christianity (Page 65 of 84)

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.

Choosing Life – From the Daily Office – January 7, 2013

January 7, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Deuteronomy:

He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Deuteronomy 8:3 (NRSV) – January 7, 2014.)

Manna from Heaven Cartoon Jesus and a crowd who challenge his authority also make reference to the manna in today’s Daily Office gospel lesson in which Jesus says: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6:49-51)

So I know that I really ought to be thinking pious thoughts about the Eucharist, or something . . . .

But, truth be told, what I’m really led by these lessons to think about is dieting and weight loss. Damn it!

Back in late September, I was having trouble fastening my trousers and avoiding stepping onto the bathroom scale, but eventually I did so and was appalled at the number it gave me. So I decided to do something about it and, before going public, lost a few pounds. When I was down to 273 lbs. (273! For God’s sake!) I decided I needed the “moral support” of my congregation, so inspired by another priest who had done so, I created a “Reduce the Rector” campaign and asked people to pledge dollars against pounds lost.

By Thanksgiving I’d lost 20 pounds, and then . . . well, let’s just say there was a diet hiatus through New Year’s. Fortunately, only a pound and a half was regained. But, now . . . .

Now Moses and Jesus are talking about food and more than food and reminding me that I need to focus on the healthier stuff that God has in store for me. Moses’ line about being “humbled” by the food eaten (the manna) and Jesus’ comment that “they ate and they died” really put a zinger into it. Food, too much of it and not the right kinds of it, is a humbling thing for me and I know if I don’t change the way I deal with it, it will kill me. High cholesterol, hypertension, blood sugar issues, joint pain, tendonitis . . . in some way or another, they are all related to the excess weight I am embarrassed to carry.

So . . . end of diet hiatus. Back to healthy eating and (even in the frigid cold) taking walks and getting more exercise.

The annotations to Deuteronomy tell me the last verse of the passage has an alternative reading: “One does not live by bread alone, but by anything that the Lord decrees.” I’m going to start focusing on something else God decreed through Moses: “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live!” (Deut. 30:19) I choose healthy eating and healthy living; I choose life.

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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.

Chaotic Disorderliness – From the Daily Office – January 3, 2014

January 3, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the First Book of Kings:

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him . . . .

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Kings 19:11-13 (NRSV) – January 3, 2014.)

It’s almost over . . . nine ballerinas or lady ballroom champions or something are supposed to show up to join the eight milkmaids who came yesterday; then, ten leaping lords are to show up tomorrow. I’m not sure why the dancers are scheduled to get here before the musicians, but the pipers and the drummers won’t get here until the end. In any event, the familiar carol promises that the end of Christmas will be even more noisy and confusing than its beginning.

Thinking of Elijah standing at the mouth of his cave through all the turbulence of storm and temblor and conflagration, but not perceiving God until the “sound of sheer silence,” I am reminded again of how odd I find our (basically) northern European fantasies of the birth of Jesus to be. I sometimes wonder what “first world” Christianity would be like if we’d never developed the notion that the Savior was born on a quiet, snowy night.

We did, though, and church congregations play that up in spades! And, I must confess, my own parish and our liturgical planning for Christmas Eve and the Christ Mass of Christmas Day went right along.

At the Midnight Mass, as a sequence hymn, we sang O Little Town of Bethlehem with that line, “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given . . . .” The Choir sang an anthem version of the Christina Rossetti — Gustav Holst hymn In the Bleak Midwinter with its gorgeous portrayal of a dark winter night:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

And we finished off with the lights dimmed, the candles flickering, and everyone singing Silent Night! We bought right into it! More than likely it’s completely wrong, but we did it anyway.

I think passages like this story of Elijah encourage us to envision the Nativity of Jesus as this peaceful, very-quiet-if-not-silent, nighttime event; this story and others make dark silence the normative setting for God’s interaction with humans. There’s Samuel’s late night call from God (1 Sam. 3:1-18). There are the Josephs (Jacob’s son and Jesus’ foster father) who both received dream messages while sleeping (Gen. 37:5-10; Matt. 1:18-25). There is Jacob who encountered God at night at Peniel, although wrestling with God through the night could hardly have been a silent affair (Gen. 32:24-30).

We’re also fooled by the Magi being led by a star. “There’s a star? Must have been at night,” we think, but the Magi were astrologers whose lives and actions, not just their travel plans, were “led” by the stars and constellations regardless of the time of day (Matt. 2:1-12). (Let’s not even mention the fact that the wholesale slaughter of the Holy Innocents suggests that their visit was several months, if not a couple of years, later so the star is completely irrelevant to Jesus’ actual birth!) And we’re told by Luke that shepherds were in the area keeping watch over the flocks “by night” when the angel told them of the birth, but the angel’s message is, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:8-20, emphasis added) Couldn’t the birth have been earlier? During daylight hours, perhaps? To be honest, there is just no indication when the actual birth of Jesus took place.

And that “when” is bigger than time of day! There’s no indication of what time of year, either. As we all know (since the anti-religious crowd loves to tell us every year, just in case we don’t already know or had forgotten since they told us last year), the December 25 date of Christmas was originally the Roman feast of Saturnalia simply taken over by the church. When someone tries to disprove the Christian story by telling me this, my standard response is “So what?” We don’t celebrate the birthday of Jesus; we celebrate the birth of Christ, the Incarnation of God. We can and do that all the time; it doesn’t matter what day of the year we choose to do so in a particular and special way.

Except that we get this cold, bleak, quiet, silent, peaceful, midwinter, snow-on-snow, everyone-bundle-up northern European picture of Jesus’ birth.

I’ve attended births; I was present when both our children were born in the comfort of hospital birthing centers. Neither was quiet, silent, or peaceful! There was panting, grunting, crying, exclamations, excited utterances, anxiety, frustration, elation . . . and my wife was making noise, too! I can’t imagine that the biblical delivery in a stable would have been any less raucous! I’d be surprised if, with the farm animals provoked by all the goings on, Joseph excited, and Mary in the throes of childbirth (and possibly the owner of the stable and members of his family coming and going), it wasn’t a very noisy place!

I am thoroughly convinced that God was present in all the fuss and noise of my children’s births, so I am just as sure that God was present in all the fuss and noise of God’s own Son’s birth! I am pretty certain that God is present in the fuss and noise of all human affairs. So I would not be surprised, therefore, if the Deuteronomic historian responsible for redacting the First Book of Kings and recording this story of Elijah in the cave was just wrong. Perhaps it would have been accurate to say that Elijah did not perceive God in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but I think it is simply inaccurate to say that “the Lord was not in” any or all of those. God is with us in all the noisy, chaotic disorderliness of life.

I don’t have a clue what the Christian faith would be like if it were grounded by a more realistic narrative of Jesus’ birth, but I do know that God is there in the midst of turmoil, in the midst of chaos, in all the cacophony of human existence. That’s the truth the Christian faith teaches. So bring on the dancing ladies, the leaping lords, the pipers, and the drummers! Enough of this sheer silence! God’s twelve-day party is nearly over; let’s make the most of it!

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

Biblical Arithmetic – From the Daily Office – January 2, 2013

January 2, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From John’s Gospel:

They sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 6:10b-13 (NRSV) – January 2, 2014.)

Mathmatical Symbols Let’s just be clear: this is biblical arithmetic. If this were a “word problem” on a school math quiz, we would reduce the story to a simple equation:

(5 + 2) ÷ 5000 = 12

Now, granted, this is the story of one of Christ’s miracles (or, as John prefers to call them, “signs”), but even so, reading a story like this I cannot help but wonder how anyone can take the Bible as “historically factual” and “totally inerrant.” It’s not! It’s just not!

The Bible is a human document, filled with all the potential for error and mistake as the human beings who produced it. That doesn’t mean, however, that we dismiss it, anymore than we would dismiss any work of humanity. The great writer, theologian, and faithful Episcopalian Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “I take the Bible too seriously to take it all literally.” The same quotation is often attributed to Karl Barth, but like many “facts” in the Bible that can’t be verified.

The Bible is a library filled with a variety of genres. I can think of at least two books of the Bible which are obviously fiction – Job and Esther. And though obvious fiction, they are clearly true. They may not be factual, but as William Faulkner is said to have remarked, “The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.” And Canadian novelist Keith Oatley, who is also a cognitive psychologist, has said that “a literary work can be truthful, not just generally but in relation to a specific reader and to that reader’s own understandings of self and others.”

In other words, the “truthfulness” of literature, especially biblical literature, is not dependent on its factual accuracy. Phyllis Tickle, in a talk I heard her give in Memphis, drew a distinction between recognizing the “actual truth” of scripture and insisting on its “factual truth,” which (she said) reduces it to the confines and strictures of human understanding. When we insist on the factual accuracy of biblical stories, we conform them to our beliefs instead of conforming our beliefs to the witness of scripture.

So I’m fine with biblical arithmetic! Even if it makes no mathematical sense, it’s full of truth!

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

Wild Bells – From the Daily Office – January 1, 2013

January 1, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Matthew’s Gospel:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 1:18a (NRSV) – January 1, 2014.)

Bells The first day of the year on the Church’s calendar has a variety of names:

The Feast of the Circumcision, in honor of the Jewish tradition of circumcising a male infant on his eighth day of life: “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (Luke 2:21)

The Feast of the Holy Name: The angel said to Joseph in a dream, “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21)

The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, a celebration of Mary’s motherhood of Jesus.

I think it is occasionally the Feast of the Holy Family (the first Sunday of the Christmas season in the Roman tradition), although that one may get translated if it falls on January 1; I’m not sure about that.

What all of these share with the secular observance of the New Year is an emphasis on beginnings: a newly-minted Jew, a newly-named child, a new mother, a new family. All the promise of the tabula rasa, the pristine, empty tablet waiting to be filled with all the narratives of life.

I don’t make resolutions, primarily because I am simply so bad at keeping them. But I do look forward making changes. There is a tradition in Stockholm, Sweden (of all places), of reading a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Looking forward to another year of trying to be more Christ-like, I follow the Swedish tradition and read this poem myself at midnight. Midnight is passed, but I offer the poem again this morning as we welcome the New Year:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

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

Pray Clay – From the Daily Office – December 31, 2013

December 31, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the First Book of Kings:

[Solomon prayed:] Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Kings 3:9 (NRSV) – December 31, 2013.)

You’ve got to hand it to Solomon; he really knows how to wrap God around his little finger. God has appeared to him in a dream and said to him, “Ask what I should give you.” (1 Kings 3:5) This is Solomon’s reply. It just tickles God’s fancy! Because Solomon hasn’t asked for riches or long life, God replies, “I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.” (v. 12)

God wants the rulers of his people to be wise; Solomon prays for “an understanding mind.” Solomon gets what he prays for, big time! So here’s what I get from this: ask in your prayers what accords with God’s will . . . you get it! In spades!

I was taught years and years ago by my paternal grandfather, a life-long Methodist Sunday School teacher, that that is, in fact, the purpose of prayer: not to convince God to do something God wasn’t going to do anyway, not to call to God’s attention something that had escaped God’s attention, not to give God advice on how to run the cosmos – the purpose of prayer is to conform our wills to God. Prayer is about changing us, not changing God or God’s mind.

This is why, I think, Jesus teaches the importance of persistence in prayer. He offers the people two parables lauding characters who are pests: the widow who pesters the unjust judge (Lk 18:1-8) and the neighbor who bangs on the door in the nighttime (Lk 11:5-10). The parables suggest that the judge and the neighbor who is in bed are ones who change, but I think that’s just artful misdirection; to take the parables teaching that we can change God through persistent prayer is to extend the metaphor of persistence beyond its usefulness.

I think also of Jeremiah’s prophetic metaphor of the clay being reworked by the potter until the potter has the exact sort of vessel he wants (Jer. 18:2-6). Our time in prayer is as if the clay were able to put itself into the potter’s hands, able to climb onto the potter’s wheel, able to say “Here I am. Form me.”

God’s invitation to Solomon is God’s invitation to us all: “Ask what I should give you.” So pray clay! Be wise and pray persistently! The potter invites it. (And, today, it seems a good resolution for New Year: resolve to be persistent in prayer.)

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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.

Category: Christianity (Page 65 of 84)

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

Choosing Life – From the Daily Office – January 7, 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

Chaotic Disorderliness – From the Daily Office – January 3, 2014

Biblical Arithmetic – From the Daily Office – January 2, 2013

Wild Bells – From the Daily Office – January 1, 2013

Pray Clay – From the Daily Office – December 31, 2013

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

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