Category: Church (Page 85 of 116)

What Is the Crying? – Sermon for Advent 2, Year C – December 9, 2012

December 9, 2012 / eric / 1 Comment

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, December 9, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Advent 2, Year C: Baruch 5:1-9; Canticle 16 (The Song of Zechariah, Benedictus Dominus Deus, Luke 1: 68-79); Philippians 1:3-11; and Luke 3:1-6. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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John the Baptist

What is the crying at Jordan?
Who hears, O God, the prophecy?
Dark is the season, dark our hearts
and shut to mystery.

Who then shall stir in this darkness,
prepare for joy in the winter night?
Mortal, in darkness we lie down, blindhearted,
seeing no light.

Lord, give us grace to awake us,
to see the branch that begins to bloom;
in great humility is hid all heaven
in a little room.

Now comes the day of salvation,
in joy and terror the Word is born!
God comes as gift into our lives;
oh let salvation dawn!

(Words: Carol Christopher Drake)

What is the crying at Jordan? What is the crying in New York? What is the crying at Arlington? What is the crying in Southern California? What is the crying at Checkpoint 18 outside of Kabul? What is the crying in Medina? What is that crying?

“Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction,” wrote Baruch, “and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.” This is a time and a season when we expect to leave behind our sorrows and our afflictions; we expect to feel happiness and joy, and if we don’t we feel guilty because that’s what your supposed to feel at Christmas, right? But the truth is that for many this is a time and a season when sorrow and affliction are felt most acutely. That crying is the voice of those feeling the cold hand of death and the emptiness of loss in this season of joy and celebration.

This is a time and a season when death and loss can and do really hit home. Nine days ago, a week ago Friday, we received word that Nancy Lawrence, a long-time, life-time member of this congregation had passed away. Even though her last several months of life were, frankly, awful and everyone who has known Nancy is relieved that she is no longer suffering, still any death is an occasion of sadness. For many this is a time and a season when sorrow and affliction are felt most acutely.

This past Friday, day before yesterday, I got word in the evening that Deborah Griffin Bly, a woman I’ve known and whose music I have enjoyed for seventeen years had died. She was one of the singing duet called “The Miserable Offenders” and it was she and her partner who introduced me to that exquisite piece of poetry and its musical setting, Hymn 69, in our hymnal. Deb and I were part of community of Anglicans online that extends around the world; through it we have had nearly a thousand mutual friends. For many this is a time and a season when sorrow and affliction are felt most acutely.

Thirteen years ago, on the longest night of the year, the winter solstice, December 21, my mother passed away. Losing a parent is one of life’s hardest lessons, and never a good prelude to Christmas, and every year after the joyous holiday is also a reminder of the most profound loss. For me, as for many, this is a time and a season when sorrow and affliction are felt most acutely.

And, yet, Baruch writes, “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.”

In the current issue of the magazine The Christian Century, Lutheran pastor Peter Marty tells of preaching a Christmas Eve sermon in which he made “reference to a little boy in a rough section of Trenton, New Jersey, whose body was found stuffed in a bag under a fire escape.” At the conclusion of the service a woman “told [him] in the receiving line that mention of children being murdered had no place in a Christmas sermon. [She said,] ‘I will never set foot in this church again.'” (December 12, 2012, Vol. 129, No. 25, page 10) I don’t know if I would mention a murder in a Christmas sermon, but I think we all need to remember that for many this time of year is not a “holly, jolly” season.

As we get ready for whatever good times we anticipate, as we prepare to celebrate the Messiah’s birth, let’s remember that unless we see the shadow of the cross falling on the crib we are not seeing Christmas clearly. Jesus did not enter this world just to be a cute little baby; he grew up! He lived in a time of political turmoil in a land oppressed by the military might of the Roman Empire. He taught a subversive “good news” that offended both that Empire and the religious establishment of his own country which sought to appease it. His truth would lead to his arrest and he would suffer and die on a cross. That he did so and rose from the dead so that our sins might be forgiven and we might enter into the Kingdom of God is why Christmas is special. Christmas Eve might not be the time or place to make mention of the murder of children, but our time of preparing to appreciate Christmas is a time to appreciate the reality of death and suffering, the reality of sorrow and affliction.

Traditionally, on this Second Sunday of Advent (and again next week on the Third Sunday) we focus our attention on John the Baptist, the forerunner who was the voice crying in the wilderness. His was the voice crying at Jordan, “In the desert, make straight a pathway for our God.” We turned our attention toward John this morning by saying together the words of the song his father, the priest Zechariah, sang at his birth. It’s a great canticle, and I love its final words:

In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

They are words that speak especially to those for whom this is a time and a season when sorrow and affliction are felt most acutely.

They are also words that speak to and for all of us, because we all dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. At one time or another, we all, as that marvelous poem says, lie down in darkness, blind-hearted, seeing no light. At one time or another, we all, as the Psalmist so eloquently put it, walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But we need fear no evil for as John the Baptist, cried out at Jordan

Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

It is for and through those for whom this is a time and a season when sorrow and affliction are felt most acutely that the real meaning of Advent comes through. Only a very shallow and superficial understanding of the story of the Savior’s birth would lead us to think that the Christmas for which we prepare is only about happiness. Christmas is about real life – yes, it is about joy, but it is also about sorrow; yes, it is about birth, but it is also about death; yes, it is about redemption, but it is also about affliction. It is about God coming to us incarnate in Jesus to give us life, real life, and that abundantly. It is about Christ crucified, risen, and ascended returning for us in glory. When we realize this and are enabled to give thanks for the birth of Christ and to look forward to his triumphant return even in the midst of death and loss, even as we live with profound sorrow and affliction, it is then that the dawn from on high breaks upon us brings us. It is then that we harvest the “righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ;” it is then that we see salvation; it is then that we put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.

Let us pray:

O God of grace and glory, as we continue to prepare to celebrate the birth of our Savior, as we await his return in glory, we remember before you our loved ones departed. We thank you for giving them to us, their families and friends, to know and to love as companions on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, comfort us when we are overcome by sorrow and affliction. Give us faith to know that the valley of the shadow of death shall be filled, that your dawn will break upon us to guide our feet into the way of peace, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by your call, we shall see your salvation and be reunited with those who have gone before; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Remembering My Friend Deb – From the Daily Office – December 9, 2012

December 9, 2012 / eric / 5 Comments

From the Psalms:

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 – Psalm 150 (BCP Version) – December 9, 2012.)

Deb's Facebook Profile Picture Day before yesterday, I had a pretty good day in my ministry as rector of my parish. An Episcopal Church Women event went very well; we all had fun in what we were doing. I got home in the late afternoon and took care of a couple of personal matters, called my wife about the possibility of a “date night,” and when she said “Yes” I made reservations for dinner. I took the dog for a walk and, after my wife got home from work, we went out to dinner at our favorite local restaurant. When we returned home, I turned on my computer, checked my email, took a look at Facebook . . . and learned that Deb, a long time friend, a singer of great skill, and an occasionally very funny woman had passed away. It more than ruined the day.

Here’s the thing about my friend . . . we had known one another for over 15 years, but we had never met. We first became acquainted on an email listserve called “Anglican”, an internet community of Anglicans and Episcopalians all around the world. That list migrated from server to server, grew, shrank, suffered from spats and “flame wars”, eventually a few of its participants left to form another community, a virtual pub called “Magdalen’s Rose and Compass”. Deb and I kept “running into each other” in these virtual venues.

Over the years I learned about Deb’s life, her love of her husband, her deep connection with her severely handicapped step-son, her own difficulties with emotional balance. She learned about my life. We corresponded privately by email and publicly we participated in the listserve discussions and shared each other’s posts on Facebook.

Deb’s voice is sounding in my ears as I write these words. A CD of her Advent and Christmas music, performed with her singing partner Ana, is playing. Her voice is silenced, but lives on in her recordings; I’m sure she is singing in the heavenly chorus now.

A lot of folks don’t understand virtual community. Especially people my age and older will (as my mother would have said) “pooh pooh” the idea that friendship, community, or real relationship can be fostered through what seems to be the impersonal medium of computer-connected-to-internet. I’m here to witness that it most definitely can; deep and lasting friendships, spiritual connections, real and permanent community.

All around the world this weekend, Deb’s good friends, people like me who knew her well and never met her, are praising God for the witness of her voice, singing along with her and Ana’s voices and their wonderful instrumentation of pipes, drums, cymbals, prayer bowls, strings, and you name it! “I’m gonna tell my Jesus ‘Howdy’ one of these days!” she and Ana are singing on the stereo right now. She’s gotten there before the rest of us – she’s told Jesus “Howdy!” and she’s praising God in his holy temple, in the firmament of his power. In our own poor and sad voices, the rest of us are joining along.

It is fitting that Deb passed on during Advent. It is the season when we all look forward to seeing that heavenly temple, to singing in that chorus of “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.” The burial rite of our church reminds us in the preface to the Great Thanksgiving that to God’s People, “life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.” A prayer in the funeral service admonishes us to, in quiet confidence,”continue our course on earth, until, by [God’s] call, we are reunited with those who have gone before.” Deb’s friends won’t be all that quiet, however; we’ll sing along loudly with her music until we see her again . . . or for the first time.

Memory eternal, Deb! Rest in peace and rise in glory!

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

Jesus As Superman? – From the Daily Office – December 8, 2012

December 8, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From First Thessalonians:

The Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Thess. 4:16-17 (NRSV) – December 8, 2012.)

During this season of Advent, we are confronted with many visions of the end of time as we prepare for the Messiah’s return, and today we read a very popular one, a vision of the faithful flying through the sky in defiance of gravity to meet Jesus who is apparently swooping down like Superman! A vision of “the Rapture”!

OK. I have to admit . . . without a little study and background, I would have not the vaguest idea what Paul is talking about. Verse 16 makes perfect sense; it’s a description of the general resurrection. It’s fine. But verse 17? What is that all about? “We . . . will be caught up in the clouds . . . to meet the Lord in the air.” Say what? Is he really predicting Jesus as Superman?

Well, I let me assure you that I’m pretty sure that he’s not. I don’t believe he’s talking about “the Rapture” at all . . . in fact, I think Paul would have been appalled at the whole nonsensical, made-of-whole-cloth silliness that has become a mainstay of modern American conservative evangelical Christianity. That theology (if it can be called that) was cobbled together by an Irish clergyman named John Derby in the 19th Century from disparate and unrelated passages of Holy Scripture ripped from their contexts and stitched together with nothing. Paul would reject it out of hand.

What I think Paul’s use of “clouds” here is all about has to do with the glory of God. The Greek word is nephele. It is the same word used in the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures dating from the 3rd Century BCE) to describe the cloud into which Moses entered when he met with God; it is the same word used to describe the Shekinah, the pillar of cloud which led the Hebrews through the desert. In the New Testament, it is used in all of the Synoptic Gospels to describe the cloud which overshadowed Peter, James, and John when they witnessed Christ’s Transfiguration. So when Paul says that we will be “caught up in the clouds,” I believe he meant that we would be caught up into God’s Presence in the Shekinah, as were Moses, James, John, and Peter. What had been an experience of the Glory of God exclusive to them will be shared by all of us.

Which brings me to the end of the sentence where Paul avers that we shall “meet the Lord in the air.” Here the Greek is aer. As common a word as “air” is, it is suprising to find that aer appears only seven times in the New Testament, and while it is usually used simply to mean the atmosphere, one wonders if here Paul might have meant something else. In the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume (Eerdemans: 2003), one learns that in Greek philosophy the terms pneuma (“breath” or “spirit”), aer (“air”), and psyche (“soul” or “breath”) were “equated as the comprehensive life-principle that integrates all things.” (pg. 878) Because Paul does use pneuma much more frequently to mean “spirit” (either the spirit of a human or the Holy Spirit of God), it is an admitted stretch to suggest that he is here using aer as a synonym, but it’s at least something to think about. It certainly makes more sense to hear Paul predicting that we will enter into God’s glory and meet the Lord in spirit than to think he expected us all to fly up into the sky to meet Jesus swooping down like Superman over Metropolis!

During this season of Advent, we are confronted with many visions of the end of time as we prepare for the Messiah’s return, but I don’t really think that Paul intended us to believe that Jesus is going to return swooping through the sky like Superman! Really. I don’t.

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

The Lonely Golden Years – From the Daily Office – December 7, 2012

December 7, 2012 / eric / 1 Comment

From Luke’s Gospel:

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

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 21:1-4 (NRSV) – December 7, 2012.)

All she had in her golden years were two copper coins . . . . The tale of the widow’s mite is a familiar one, an especially poignant one as we make our Christmas preparations in Advent. It brings to mind all those poor and under-priviliged who are unable to prepare as we do, who see the advertisements for goods and services, the news reports of Black Friday, the television specials featuring warm homes and large family meals and know that those luxuries are not for them. I have visions of the family of Bob Cratchit huddling before a poorly fed coal stove trying to keep warm.

I suspect, however, that the toughest thing for them, especially the elderly who may, in fact, be widowed, is not the poverty nor the meagreness of their meals. I suspect the hardest part of the holidays is the loneliness.

As I made mention yesterday, anyone who has lost friends or family can have a hard time with the holiday season. This is especially so with our elders. Growing old does bring the wisdom of years for many people, but there are unavoidable losses that come to even the healthiest. Many lose their mobility; they can no longer walk as well as they could before and many, for a variety of reasons, can no longer drive their own cars. A lot of older folks have had to relocate to assisted living facilities or nursing homes. Often even those well enough to remain in their own homes can feel friendless and isolated because their neighborhoods have changed. Worse are the losses of spouses, relatives, and friends who are ill or who have died. The holidays can bring the sense of loneliness and isolation to a head.

A recently published study found that people over the age of 60 who feel lonely and isolated have a 45% higher risk of death than those who feel well-connected and supported by family and friends. Researchers found that the risk of death for people who are lonely is 23%, as compared to 14% for those who aren’t. I have heard that the death rate among the elderly goes up during the holidays and I suspect that the increased feeling of loneliness has a lot to do with that.

What can you do for an elderly acquaintance during the holidays? Give them the most valuable gift you have, your time. Your time is precious. Most of us have a spouse, children, friends, and other relatives who need us, but if you know of an elderly widow or widower who is without family at this time of the year, can you stop by their home for a short visit? Do what you can without stressing yourself. Being relaxed when you visit is important; sensing that you are in a hurry can be distressing to the elderly. It’s better not to visit than to make a rushed call. But if you can make a relaxed visit to let them know someone remembers them, your best efforts will be more than good enough. They will be moments of gold for someone in their golden years.

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

Blue Christmas – From the Daily Office – December 6, 2012

December 6, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Luke’s Gospel:

Jesus said: “The fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him another question.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 20:37-40 (NRSV) – December 6, 2012.)

Blue Christmas Tree Ornaments “When those blue snowflakes start falling, that’s when those blue memories start calling,” runs a line from Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas. While most of us are getting ready for happy family reunions during the holidays, and clergy and liturgical ministers of all sorts are preparing for one of the year’s biggest crowds, we may forget that Christmas can be a time of great sadness for many. Mental health professionals note that the Christmas season may be one when many people avoid church. Millions of Americans suffer from the “holiday blues.” I know this all too well because December 21st is the anniversary of my mother’s death.

Her death was not unexpected. I’d been at her bedside in Southern California just days before, but my obligations pastoring a congregation in the Kansas City area at Christmas time meant I couldn’t stay. I had returned to Kansas before she died. It was the custom of my parish to offer Evening Prayer at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday evenings in Advent. At 6:00 p.m. I was vested and ready to lead the service when the phone rang; it was my step-father telling me that Mom had just died. We commiserated for a few minutes and I assured him I would call later in the evening, after the service was over and I had gone home.

I ended the call, took a deep breath, and entered the church; perhaps 20 people were there for the service. I gave the organist the signal and we began. After the opening hymn, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me . . . .” was about as far as I got into the opening sentence of the service before I choked up and could go no further. I swallowed the lump in my throat and explained to the congregation why I was having trouble.

The altar guild director and her husband were in the congregation. In the silence that followed my explanation, they left their pew and came to me. She took my prayer book from me and he took me by the arm and guided me to the back of the church. She began the service again and I sat down in the back pew, blowing my nose and listening to but not really hearing the familiar and comforting words of confession, Phos Hilaron, and psalm.

I don’t remember what the lessons were that evening, but years later on another December 21st I took part as the homilist in an ecumenical “Blue Christmas Service.” Typically offered during these Advent days, and often on the winter solstice, the longest night, these services are for those who have suffered a loss through divorce or the death of a loved one; Blue Christmas Services gives us a chance to say that sadness is OK in this season. It’s not abnormal to shed a tear at Christmas time. As we planned that service, I chose this lesson for the focus of my sermon: “God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

Our departed loved ones are gone from our lives. Nothing can change that and if we are healthy and realistic, we know that and we work through it. But the days leading up to Christmas can be tough, especially if their loss is recent or, as in my case, the anniversary is near to the holiday. To us they are dead, but our faith teaches us that to God all of them are alive, and the community of faith sustains us in our grief. We are surrounded by people like my altar guild director who took over and led the service when I could not, like her husband who sat with me through the service, like that congregation that continued the service of comforting prayer. We are, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote, “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” the communion of saints, the living and the dead, including our loved ones, “for to him all of them are alive.” With that assurance, we can share the joy of the holidays.

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

Swords Into Ploughshares – From the Daily Office – December 5, 2012

December 5, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Isaiah:

Out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 2:3b-4 (NRSV) – December 5, 2012.)

In the Turtle Bay neighborhood of New York City, at the northwest corner of First Avenue and 42nd Street is a small municipal public park, Ralph J. Bunche Park named in 1979 for an African-American diplomat who had been instrumental in the working out of the 1949 Palestinian Armistice Agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In 1950, Dr. Bunche became the first African-American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The park is across the United Nations Plaza from the UN headquarters building. There is a granite staircase there which, since 1981, has been named the Scharansky Steps in honor of Soviet dissident Natan Scharansky. On the northern wall of the steps, now known as the Isaiah Wall, the latter part of this quotation from the prophet is inscribed. The stairway with the wall and inscription were originally built in 1948.

I made my first visit to New York City in the spring of 1968 when I was 16. On a trip to the UN, I saw that wall and was immediately transfixed. I love Isaiah’s words and every time I have returned to the city, visiting that wall has been a priority. It’s something of a pilgrimage for me, visiting a shrine to a vision of a dream not yet achieved.

We read a lot of Isaiah during Advent, or we hear a lot of Isaiah images – the peaceable kingdom, infants playing with poisonous snakes, lions eating straw with the oxen – “and a little child shall lead them.” (Isa. 11:6) There’s good reason for that; after all, it is in Isaiah that we read, “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isa. 7:14)

As we go through this season of preparation, reading these particular words, I know there’s not much any one individual can do to move the nation toward not learning war any more or to prevent the nation from lifting up the sword against another. Those are decisions “above my pay grade” as the saying goes. However, I wonder if I have some personal, metaphorical swords that could be beaten in the spiritual ploughshares, some spears I could bend into pruning-hooks.

According to Freud and his followers, our psyche is a battlefield; instinctual urges and drives at war with societal norms, constraints on our ego at odds with our impulses. As a result we all have defense mechanisms, e.g., denial, repression, fantasizing, acting out; there are dozens of these psychological defenses. Some are mature and constructive; some are not. During Advent, could it not be possible to convert some of the destructive psychological defenses, these mental swords and spears, into constructive behaviors, into emotional ploughshares and pruning hooks? I’m not a psychologist or a therapist, so I make no suggestion how this would be done, but I have faith that that it could be done. Like most things, however, it won’t be done unless we take the first step.

Advent is the beginning of the Christian year. A beginning seems like a good time to take first steps, especially first steps toward beating swords, real or metaphorical, physical or emotional, into ploughshares.

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

The Audience of One – From the Daily Office – December 4, 2012

December 4, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From First Thessalonians:

We have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Thess. 2:4-6 (NRSV) – December 4, 2012.)

I would like to have a word with the clergy, music directors, musicians, choir directors, altar guild mistresses, sacristans, choristers, Sunday School superintendents, lay readers, acolytes, and a score of others about all the things many of us are doing to get ready for Christmas.

I’m sure that you, like my colleagues and me, are planning liturgies, choosing music, decorating sanctuaries, casting church school pageants, rehearsing anthems, laundering vestments, practicing readings, learning how to swing thuribles, and doing dozens of other preparatory tasks as the special events of the holiday loom every closer. Your looking forward to your Sunday School Pageant, to the Christmas Cantata, the Christmas Eve Family Service, the Midnight Mass, or whatever the “big event” may be in your congregation. You’re hoping, expecting that there will be a large turnout of appreciative people, probably many who only show up at Christmas (or maybe also at Easter), but you’re really hoping that a big crowd of parishioners will be there.

Last Sunday evening my parish’s choir did a wonderful job of offering a service of Lessons and Carols. It was the shorter version of that model of worship: six lessons each followed by a hymn or choral offering. Other music included a prelude, a couple of additional hymns at the beginning and end, an offertory anthem, and a postlude. A chanted vesper responsory and a few chanted collects were thrown in for good measure. The music was beautifully performed. The six readers of the lessons had obviously practiced and all read very well. Members of the choir had provided, and some non-choir volunteers had laid out, finger food and snacks for a reception in the parish hall following the service.

Barely 40 people attended. Not even a quarter of the Nave was filled. Those who attended all praised the choir’s, the officiant’s, and the readers’ efforts; they said it was a lovely experience. A couple of people said something to this effect, “It’s too bad more people weren’t here.” The spouse of a chorister was rather more critical and wondered why everyone had even bothered with all the planning, all the rehearsals, or the offering of the service when so few parishioners turned out.

Why? Paul directly answers that question in this bit from his first letter to the church in Thessalonika: “We [do it], not to please mortals, but to please God.” We do it for an audience of One.

A service of worship has many of the elements of a dramatic presentation or a musical concert, and much of the preparation we do for worship is the same as is done for those sorts of events. In many ways, worship is a drama . . . but in one important way it is very different. There is no difference between performer and audience; there is, in fact, no human audience. Every man, woman, and child who participates is an actor, not an observer.

For generations the church has acted as if these were roles of worship: The worship leaders (clergy and liturgical assistants, choir, liturgical musicians) are the performers of worship; the congregation is the audience; and God is the prompter of worship, i.e., God tells the worship leaders what to do. My favorite theologian-philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in the 19th Century wrote that that was all wrong. In corporate worship, he suggested, the people should be the performers, the worship leaders are to be the prompters, and God is the audience.

It doesn’t matter that only a few people turned out for the service of lessons and carols, or for any service. If we do all these things we are doing, all the liturgical design, all the musical rehearsal, all the polishing of silver and decorating of the church, and no one shows up on Christmas Eve but ourselves, it will not be for nothing. We do what we do, not to please mortals, but to please God.

So clergy, music directors, musicians, choir directors, altar guild mistresses, sacristans, choristers, Sunday School superintendents, lay readers, acolytes, and the scores of others doing all the things we are all doing to get ready for Christmas . . . do them to the best of your ability. We are doing them for the audience of One.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Advent Cleansing – From the Daily Office – December 3, 2012

December 3, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Isaiah:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 1:16-17 (NRSV) – December 3, 2012.)

Advent is a time of preparation. We are getting ready for the annual feast of remembrance of the birth of Christ; we are getting ready for that unknown time that will come like a thief in the night when the Lord returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

When I was a kid one of the rituals associated with going to visit someone, or when someone was going to come visit us, was the cleaning up. Taking a bath or shower, scrubbing behind one’s ears, brushing one’s teeth. The latter I could understand; bad breath was to be avoided. But the cleaning behind the ears . . . was somebody going to look at the backs of my ears? Were the people we were going to visit, or the person coming to visit us, really going to inspecting my ears?

Those childhood pre-visit baths come to mind when I read Isaiah’s admonition to “wash yourselves” and “make yourselves clean.” Of course, ears are not the issue here; personal spirits, individual consciences, and social injustices are. What can I do this Advent to seek justice? How can I rescue the oppressed? What measures can I take to defend and plead for the orphan and the widow? Each of us must answer these questions for ourselves, and then act on them. In the midst of shopping, baking, partying, gift-wrapping, decorating, and all the rest, we need to find time to do more than throw a few coins in a red bucket. That may be a start, but earlier in this reading today, the Lord says clearly that “bringing offerings is futile.” (v. 13)

When the king returns, he will be looking at our lives, not our offerings (as important as those may be to us). It is not enough to pay someone else, even a church or a well-deserving charity, to take care of the poor. When the king like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, to those on his right hand he will say, “You gave me something to eat or drink or to wear. You visited me.” He will not say, “You paid for someone else to do these things.” That won’t have been enough; it has to be personal. Each of us must undertake personal actions of justice and kindness; this is how we make ourselves clean.

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

Pluck the Fruit, Pay Attention: Sermon for Advent 1, Year C – December 2, 2012

December 2, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, December 2, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Advent 1, Year C: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; and Luke 21:25-36. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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“The days are surely coming….”

“Be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus….”

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars….”

“Heaven and earth will pass away….”

The End Is Near!

We don’t actually pay much heed or give much credence to crazy talk like that now, do we? We’ve heard plenty of preachers on street corners, on the radio, on the television predicting the end of the world. Remember Harold Camping last year? And, of course, the so-called Mayan prediction that we all have only nineteen days left now. We’ve heard these sorts of things often enough over the years that we just don’t pay any attention to them.

On top of that, we’ve become thoroughly scientific and modern. Everything has an explanation. We know how the world works. And we’ve turned all of it into a product; everything is for sale in one way or another. There seems to be no more mystery in anything. Our materialistic progress has almost overshadowed any sense of the spiritual. We have analyzed, demystified, commodified, and commercialized everything. In 1802 William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet bemoaning exactly that:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

“Great God! I’d rather be a Pagan!” wrote Wordsworth more than 200 years ago. We modern Christians, he said, “have given our hearts away. We are out of tune” with the rhythms of the world. We no longer see the signs in the natural world. But here they are in scripture, the signs of the end of the world, reportedly predicted by Jesus himself. “Look at the fig tree and all the trees,” he says, “as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place [these signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars], you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

We human beings, whether Pagan or Christian, have proven incredibly bad at understanding the signs of the times insofar as they apply on a global, or universal, or apocalyptic scale. We keep getting it wrong. You’ve probably heard someone say something like this: “The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.” Those particular words were found inscribed on a clay tablet from ancient Assyria, a tablet dating from about 2800 BC, and there are similar words on a grafitto on a wall in ancient Pompeii – so I’m not sure Wordsworth was all that right about the pagans. They weren’t any better at it than we are.

But here’s the thing. Jesus didn’t tell us to look at the forest. He told us to look at the trees, at individual trees, at the fig tree in particular. The end of the world doesn’t come, or at least it hasn’t come, in a big global, universal apocalypse. It comes to each of us individually. Today is the end of the world, right now, for somebody. All over the world, today is the day of judgment. For thousands, possibly millions, of individual people today is the end of the world; they will die today. For millions of others, there will be some important turning point their lives. For each of those people, the end – in some way or another – is close at hand.

Why do you suppose church tradition has us thinking about such things at the beginning of the Christian year, the First Sunday of Advent, with only twenty-two days until Christmas Eve, getting ready for one of the most joyous events of our year? Well, it’s because Advent isn’t just about getting ready for Christmas; it’s not even primarily about getting ready for Christmas. It’s about getting ready for Christ’s Return; it’s about getting ready for the Second Coming. Advent, in fact, means “coming” and the season is about getting ready for the coming of Judgment Day, the end of this life.

And how do we do that? By paying attention and by praying. As Jesus says, “Be alert at all times, praying . . . . ”

During this season while we get ready for Christmas, try not to get all caught up in the commodification and commercialization of everything. A friend of mine, Fr. Marshall Scott, who’s a hospital chaplain in Kansas City, commented recently, “It seems to me that the problem is not too little Christ in Christmas. The problem is too many ads in Advent.” Don’t get caught up in all of that! Take a breath; pay attention to the rest of life. I’m tempted to say, “Pay attention the real things in life.” Take time to pray, today; take time to give thanks, today. Because, although it sounds like a cliché, it’s the truth of Advent, today may be the end. And if it is, be assured that at the end stands Jesus.

So live expectantly; fill each day with meaningful activity. “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

The 20th Century poet Denise Levertov penned an answer to Wordsworth. Where he wrote, ” The world is too much with us,” in her poem O Taste and See she wrote, “The world is not with us enough.” This is her poem:

The world
is not with us enough.
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

That is Advent’s message: taste and see, bite and savor, cross the street, pluck the fruit, stand up, raise your head, pay attention, be alert. Amen.

Say a Little Prayer . . . for Yourself – From the Daily Office – December 2, 2102

December 2, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Matthew’s Gospel:

Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 25:1-13 (NRSV) – December 2, 2012. Please note, this is the Daily Office gospel for today, a Sunday, not the gospel from the Eucharistic lectionary.)

I have to admit that I’ve never liked this parable! I mean, isn’t the point of the gospel of Jesus Christ that we are “all in this together” and that we’re supposed to help one another, share what we have, take care of our brothers and sisters who have less than we do? But here “wisdom” of five bridesmaids is to be selfish and not share their oil! That just doesn’t sit well with me.

But, of course, that’s not the point of the parable, is it? The thing about parables is that they are are extremely limited in their application. Parables, especially Jesus’ parables, are usually intended to make a single important point, and living in community, sharing what we have, and helping one another is definitely not the point of this parable. This little story is about being ready, being prepared, getting one’s act together.

As a reminder for the first day of the new Christian year, the first Sunday of the season of Advent, this story is most apt. In the midst of all the running about that most of us are doing at this time of year, buying presents, decorating homes and businesses, planning liturgies (those of us in the church business), planning menus, baking fruit cakes, making candy, taking care of travel arrangements . . . the list of pre-Christmas activities goes on and on . . . it is good to take a moment to look beyond the big day. Are we ready for something else? Are we ready for what lies beyond Christmas? Beyond this life? Are we ready for the bridegroom’s return? Will the bridegroom know you when he comes back?

The way to be known to cultivate a relationship; the way we do that with Christ is through prayer. Forty-five years ago this month, Dionne Warwick made the charts with the Burt Bacharach tune I Say a Little Prayer. The song describes several times each day, during every day activities, when the singer said a short prayer for her beloved. That’s really all it takes, a short prayer in the midst everyday life.

Here’s a simple exercise in tending one’s lamp and making sure one’s stock of oil is filled: each time you get into or out of your car say this words – “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Nine short words. Say them in connection with that one specific action. It won’t take long but it will cultivate the habit of prayer; it will add a little oil to your store; it will trim the wick of your lamp just a little.

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

Category: Church (Page 85 of 116)

What Is the Crying? – Sermon for Advent 2, Year C – December 9, 2012

Remembering My Friend Deb – From the Daily Office – December 9, 2012

Jesus As Superman? – From the Daily Office – December 8, 2012

The Lonely Golden Years – From the Daily Office – December 7, 2012

Blue Christmas – From the Daily Office – December 6, 2012

Swords Into Ploughshares – From the Daily Office – December 5, 2012

The Audience of One – From the Daily Office – December 4, 2012

Advent Cleansing – From the Daily Office – December 3, 2012

Pluck the Fruit, Pay Attention: Sermon for Advent 1, Year C – December 2, 2012

Say a Little Prayer . . . for Yourself – From the Daily Office – December 2, 2102

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