Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Evangelism (Page 3 of 6)

Hell can go to Hell! – From the Daily Office – January 21, 2014

From the Gospel of John:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 3:16-17 (NRSV) – January 21, 2014.)

Outsourcing Abuse MemeMaking the rounds of Facebook these days is an anti-religious meme which basically equates religious teaching to child abuse. It says:

If parents constantly told their children:

“We will love you forever . . . as long as you do what we tell you to do and never disagree with our views. But if you disobey , we will make sure to torment you until the grinding of your own teeth makes you cry; we will lock you up in a dark place where you’ll be strangled by snakes, and we will see that you burn in a lake of fire.”

We would recognize it as child abuse.

So why do we keep thinking that, by outsourcing the job to a deity, it becomes something else?

There’s nothing in the meme which specifically mentions Christianity, but because members of our faith so often evangelize by fear, by threatening Hellfire and damnation on those who fail to convert, I’m fairly confident that we can assume the Christian faith to be the target. I wish it weren’t so and I wish I weren’t so sympathetic to the producers of the meme! But, let’s face it, there’s a good deal of really awful theology and really bad evangelism out there.

The truth, however, is that an awful lot (nearly all, in fact) of the mythology of Hell is not found in Holy Scripture. The English word Hell is derived from an ancient Germanic word (hel), which in Norse mythology named a place of eternal punishment. When the Greek Hades (used in the New Testament to name the place of dead) and the Hebrew terms Gehenna or Sheol (used in the Old Testament for the same purpose) were translated into English using this Germanic word, that resulted in a transfer of the pagan concept into Christian theology and its vocabulary.

Then along came poets like Milton and Dante and added all sorts of wonderful, fantastic, and clearly non-biblical imagery to the popular imagination — and, voila! — a full-blown picture of Hell featuring brimstone, lakes of fire, and tormenting demons ruled over by the fallen angel Lucifer, and inhabited by poor human souls condemned to an eternity of pain. One must admit that segments of the church have made full use of this as a scare-tactic mechanism to encourage conversions and to keep the faithful in line, but it was and is wrong to do so. Neither the New Testament Hades nor Old Testament Gehenna had any attached meaning of eternal torment; the Greek signified the place where all the dead, the good, the bad and the indifferent, were thought to go, while the Hebrew terms signified a place of disposal, a place of ending.

It is true that Jesus used imagery of an after-life fire to describe the punishment of unrighteous, but the implication is of annihilation and destruction, not eternal punishment. (See, for example, Matthew 13.) His parables, such as the tale of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16), cannot be the basis of a theology of eternal torment; parables are metaphoric or analogic teaching tools of limited application and to stretch them beyond their immediate point is to misunderstand and misuse them.

This is especially so when we have his own direct testimony in the Gospel of John. Because of signs displayed in the crowds of many sporting events, many people are familiar with John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And many of us were required to memorize this verse in Sunday School. Few, however, know or memorize the next verse — “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Two things must be observed and emphasized about how these verses describe the mission of the Christ. First, in verse 16 the alternatives are not an eternal life of joy versus an eternal life of punishment; the alternatives are “perishing” (i.e., annihilation and ending) or “eternal life.” Second, the purpose of Jesus’ life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension is not to condemn but to save.

The meme, so far as it goes, is accurate. There is way too much bad theology threatening people with Hellfire and damnation; to my way of thinking, any such theology is too much. But the meme is as wrong as those who promulgate the pagan mythology of Hell as a part of the Christian faith. It isn’t and we need to expunge it from our theology and from our vocabulary.

In a word, Hell can go to Hell!

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

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

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

From the Psalter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parking & Pancakes – From the Daily Office – December 27, 2013

From the Prophet Isaiah:

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel
and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
I am the first and I am the last;
besides me there is no god.
Who is like me? Let them proclaim it,
let them declare and set it forth before me.
Who has announced from of old the things to come?
Let them tell us what is yet to be.
Do not fear, or be afraid;
have I not told you from of old and declared it?
You are my witnesses!
Is there any god besides me?
There is no other rock; I know not one.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 44:6-8 (NRSV) – December 27, 2013.)

PancakesI took yesterday “off” and stayed away from church-related things. I read the Daily Office, of course, and thought about St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr. I even thought about writing one of these meditations, but never got around to it. I really did nothing “religious” . . . until dinner time when I had a previously scheduled a meeting with a small group of parishioners.

We met at a local sports bar for burgers and beer, and a discussion of how to get the church out of the church and into the marketplace. Some weeks ago, one of the group had had the idea of promoting our church by offering a place to park and a breakfast to those who might attend the town’s winter festival, which is held on the town square a block from the church building and is coming up in about six weeks. “Parking and Pancakes,” he called it. Another noted that making our restrooms available might be just as big a draw, so we considered (and dismissed) retitling it “Parking, Pancakes, and Peeing.”

We kicked around the various logistical elements of the idea, handed out action assignments and report-back deadlines, used our smart-phones to get data pertinent to our discussion, ate our burgers, drank our beers, and went on our ways.

This morning I am struck by the pertinence of Isaiah’s declaration (on God’s behalf), “You are my witnesses!” and its follow-up question, “Is there any god besides me?” In a society which is increasingly religiously pluralistic and increasingly non-religious, I am heartened that at least a few members of the church are beginning to understand the role of each member, and the whole of the church community, as “witness.” We can no longer sit at the side of the road and expect passers-by to turn into our drive and knock on our door. We must go out and testify; we must open the doors of the church, stand in the road, and beckon the worn and the weary to come in for respite. Because the answer to the follow up question is no longer that proposed by Isaiah (or by God?), “There is no other rock . . . . ” There are plenty of other rocks, other gods.

Some of those other rocks are, indeed, gods – or at least religious in nature. Within not-very-many miles of our small Ohio county-town church one can find a Hindu temple, a Moslem mosque, and a Buddhist ashram. Though there is no synagogue in town, there are several within a reasonable drive. I have no interest in trying to convince the members of these faiths that they should become part of mine; they are already, in their way, in touch with the divine.

There are the “gods,” however, from which we should like to turn their followers. The gods of money, status, acquisition . . . the gods of alcohol, addiction, self-destruction . . . the gods that promise (but do not deliver) immediate satisfaction, a temporary filling of the void in human lives, the void that only the divine can fill. These gods are incredibly attractive and once a person is in their thrall getting away can be incredibly difficult, almost impossible. It takes the help of a witness, perhaps even a witness who has “been there and done that.”

That is why last night’s little meeting over burgers and beer was so important. I don’t give a damn about “growing the church.” I care very much about spreading the Good News, about helping people find a solid rock on which to ground their lives. If parking and pancakes and giving people a place to pee can do that, I’m all for it.

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

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

Creating Community – From the Daily Office – November 21, 2013

From the Matthew’s Gospel:

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 18:5 (NRSV) – November 21, 2013.)

Creating CommunityI’m following a thread on a friend’s Facebook page about the future of the “institutional church,” by which I think the various participants mean their several denominations. (We are Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc., all of whom seem primarily to identify as Christians and only secondarily with the variety of polities, theologies, liturgical styles, and so forth we each prefer.) I suggested in the discussion that creating institutions is in the very nature of human beings; we create them, criticize them, tear them down, reform them, and recreate them, but we never escape from them. Another participant in response said, “I do not create community.”

“Really?” I thought as I read that. Then what is Jesus talking about when he bids us to welcome others? What is it that we are about when we enter a church fellowship? The other continued, “Community is right in front of us.” Now, that’s true. But do we not “create” a new community when we join that which pre-exists us? When we welcome the child in Christ’s name, we so alter the existing community that it is no longer the same, it is something new. It can never go back to, never again simply that which it was.

“See,” says the Lord, “I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5) We and our welcome are the tools which God uses to create new communities out of the old.

In that thread, I said, “I don’t despair of the institutional church; I believe it is in a state of flux and reform, but it will survive. We may not recognize it were we to come back in a 100 years or so, but it will be here.” Whether it will be Episcopalian or Presbyterian or Congregational or Methodist is anyone’s guess, but it will definitely be community created by human beings empowered by God and used for God’s purpose of making all things new.

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

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

What Is A Church Building? – Sermon for a Ground Breaking on the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9C) – July 7, 2013

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This sermon was preached on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 7, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector. The worship that morning included breaking ground on an expansion of the church’s parish hall.

The lessons were taken partially from the readings suggested in the rubrics of The Book of Occasional Services for a ground breaking liturgy and partially from the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 7 (Proper 9, Year C). The Old Testament reading was Genesis 28:10-17; the Gradual was Psalm 132:1-9. The epistle was Galatians 6:1-16; the gospel lesson was Luke 10:1-11,16-20. The latter two lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.

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Church Interior with Superimposed Question MarkWhat is a church building? It’s a holy place. It’s a place where people gather to worship. It’s a place where people encounter God. It’s a place where God’s people enjoy one another’s company. It’s a place where people get married, where babies are baptized, where funerals are held, where memories are made and lives remembered. It’s a place where the stories of faith are told and retold. It’s a place we teach and it’s a place where we learn.

Our reading from Genesis this morning is a small part of the story of Jacob, the son of Isaac who will later be called “Israel.” Jacob is the least likely of patriarchs. Of all the biblical patriarchs, he is the most enigmatic. He never exhibits either the awesome faith of Abraham or the level-headedness of Isaac. He is, in fact, a scoundrel. He’s tricked his father and cheated his brother out of the blessing of the first-born; his character emerges through a series of deceptions, intrigues, and conflicts. He will wrestle with God and be given the name “Israel,” the name that will identify his descendants for the rest of time. He must be taught by God; he has some learning to do.

In the story we heard today, he is on the run. He is afraid of his brother, whom he has cheated, so he has taken off. His father has told him to flee to Haran (his grandfather Abraham’s original home) and there find a wife. Along the way, he camps near a town called Luz and has this dream that we have all heard of before, the vision of a ladder on which angels are traveling back and forth between heaven and Earth. He learns that, like Moses before him, he is standing on holy ground. He says, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven,” and so he renames it, Bethel, “House of God.” A lot of sermons have been preached about Jacob and his character flaws, or about this vision and what the angels coming and going might mean.

But, today, what I want to call to our attention is what God says to Jacob: “Your offspring [God says] shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.”

The descendants of Jacob would go forth from that place to spread blessing to all the corners of the earth – to west, to east, to north, to south. They would go out from that place to change the world.

I’m particularly fond of an Orthodox Jewish translation of this text: “Your seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and you shall burst forth to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in you and in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” I love that image – Jacob and his descendants would not, could not stay in that awesome place; they could not stay in the house of God or at the gate of heaven. They had to leave, to spread from the Holy Land, to “burst forth” bringing a transformation to the world that would be explosive and dramatic.

We are not gathered in a desert wilderness. We have not gone to sleep on holy stones. We have not seen angels climbing to rocks to heaven . . . but we have gathered in a church building, a place that for many for generations has been an awesome place, a house of God, and a gate of heaven, a place where children have been blessed, where children have been told the stories of God, the stories of Jesus, where hymns of joy have been sung. We are gathered in this place to reaffirm our commitment that heritage and that ministry, to renew this place and to renew the ministry done here.

But like Bethel where Jacob camped for the night, this is not a place to stay; it is a place to leave. It’s a place from which the people of God are sent into the world.

Church buildings are centers of ministry, places of assembly, where God’s people gather to worship, to hear the good news, and to be transformed, not for themselves but in order to be sent back out into the world, to “burst forth” and change the world. Jesus’ last words to his followers were, “Go . . . and make disciples!” (Matt. 28:19)

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus gives his followers their marching orders. “The Lord appointed seventy [followers] and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” Some commentators suggest that seventy disciples were chosen because in rabbinic tradition, seventy represents the total number of nations in the world. Just as the children of Jacob were to spread to every corner of the earth, the disciples of Jesus are to go to every nation in the world. As the descendants of Israel are to be a blessing to others, the disciples of Jesus are to go into the world and announce that “the kingdom of God has come near.”

Church buildings, worship spaces and fellowship halls, are the bases from which the church is sent out to do that, as the disciples in today’s reading from Luke were sent out by Jesus. The Rev. Edward Markquart, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Seattle, Washington, writes this about our gospel lesson today:

What happened is that those disciples first went to a village or town. Those first disciples planted a church, and then went to a second village or town, and planted a church. They went to a third village or town and planted another church. They … whoops. We have to go back to that first village or town and look more carefully. We have to go back to that first village, because before the disciples went onto the second village, they left a group of people in that village who were committed to Jesus Christ. The Greek word is “laos.” They were called the “laos,” which means, “the laity,” “the people,” “the people of God.” The Apostles always left common and ordinary townspeople and villagers whose hearts were on fire, whose tongues were on fire, who hadn’t gone to the seminary, who hadn’t seen Jesus face to face, who hadn’t talked with him in the flesh. These were not the Apostles. These were not the twelve disciples. These were the people of God in each village who spread the Gospel from house to house, and neighbor to neighbor and friend to friend and family to family. That’s the way it always is. That fundamental principle is always true; it is the laity, the people of God, who become inspired by the Holy Spirit. They are the ones, not the twelve, not the Apostles, not the pastors. It is the laity, the people of God, who go about winning souls to Jesus Christ and nurturing those souls into maturity. (Sermons from Seattle)

Church buildings don’t change the world. They may be awesome; they may be houses of God; they may be gates of heaven. But by themselves, they don’t win people to Jesus, nurture souls to maturity, or change the world. Church buildings are meant to be the bases from which the people of God do that. Church buildings are meant to be places of life, living, breathing, growing, exciting places of life. Church buildings are meant to be centers of ministry, places of assembly, where God’s people gather to worship, to hear the good news, to celebrate the meaning of life, and to be transformed, and then “burst forth,” back out into the world to share that life and transform the lives of others.

We have broken ground today on our Inviting the Future project; after four years of visioning and planning, we have, at last, begun this project to improve this center of ministry, not as a monument to ourselves, but as a place from which we might better serve the world, that we might “burst forth” and tell the world that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Poet and priest Sheila Nelson-McJilton, offers a poetic retelling of our Old Testament reading in her poem Who Sleep on Holy Stones: A Meditation on Genesis 28:10-17.

Bearer of curse and blessing,
I left home to stumble into the desert,
Exhausted and empty
I watch fierce sun set over silent stones.
Stars ascend toward midnight,
The wind moans through desert canyons,
And clouds drift across a full moon like shimmering angels.
Broken and empty I come to you, O Lord God.
In a desert midnight,
There is no smell of blessed fields
No grain
No wine
No fatness of earth
No sweet dew of heaven.
Alone I sleep on holy stones,
Under stars that blaze fierce and countless as dust.
The wind moans high above me, through desert canyons.
Clouds veil the moon.
Strong shining faces of angels appear.
Michael Gabriel Raphael
Lean down to earth.
Their glittering swords carve stones into steps to heaven.
Angels descend in silence to gaze into my face.
Angels ascend in silence to bear my deceit away.
Then in a shimmering celestial dance
Of turning wings,
Swirling wings
They sweep aside clouds.
I see a heavenly host as countless as dust.
I hear a heavenly host, their voices joined by joyous stars.
Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth . . . peace.
Their alleluias echoing high above desert canyons,
The Holy One descends from the gate of heaven
To stand beside my stone pillow.
To wrap my empty fears
In an eternal mantle of blessing.
To hallow the ground on which I sleep.
Michael veils the moon with his wings
And the only light I see is God.
I left home, soul that raged with wild emptiness
And in this desert wilderness, angels carve holy names for sleep.
They dance a path between me and You, O Lord God.
You have found me, broken and empty,
On holy stones that ascend to the very gates of heaven,
And you have not cursed me.
In a desert midnight, I know the smell of blessed fields, grain.
I will tell of you, O Lord God,
To laughing children who bless my tent,
To strong children who become tribes as countless as dust.
I will tell them of desert midnights filled with blazing stars
Of fierce angels who carve holy stones
And dance with glittering swords among clouds
Of hymns sung by joyous stars over Bethel
And over Bethlehem.
(from Anglican Theological Review, Winter, 2000)

What is a church building? A church building is a place to leave. From this place, this improved place, this living, breathing and growing place, we will leave. We will “burst forth” to tell in story and in song, in words and in deeds, in actions and in ministries, of the love of God. We will tell of God to laughing children, to strong children, to hungry children, to mourning children, to children in need, to all of God’s children; we will tell them of desert midnights and blazing stars; we will tell them that the kingdom of God has come near!

As we do so, let us never forget the prayer which has guided us throughout this project, a prayer written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu adapted from an original by Sir Francis Drake.

Let us pray:

Disturb us, O Lord
when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.
Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow,
our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

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

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

Humility and Interfaith Dialogue – From the Daily Office – June 4, 2013

From the Book of Deuteronomy:

You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Deuteronomy 12:2-3 (NRSV) – June 4, 2013.)

A Smashed AltarOK. I’ll acknowledge and admit that there may have been good reason for Moses to lay down this law for his people as they were preparing to enter the Promised Land. He was concerned that they maintain their identity as the Hebrews, the People of the God of Sinai, and if they had taken on the gods or worship of the people they were conquering that might have been difficult. That he put these words into the mouth of God, however, is very problematic. It was a disservice to later generations and it has played havoc with ecumenical and interfaith relations in the modern era.

“Wait,” someone will say, “these are God’s words, not Moses’s.” So it says. So it says. Moses claims his words are God’s and we have no reason say otherwise. Except . . . . we have the later revelation of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. We should read the text of the Hebrew Scriptures using our understanding of the Gospel and our relationship with Jesus as a lens or filter; Jesus should be our starting point for reading the text.

Brian McLaren suggests that we use a “a Christo-focal reading,” in which “Jesus becomes . . . the catalytic agent in a chemical reaction or the central variable in a mathematical equation. When Jesus is the focal point of the story, he is the climax, the hero, the summit, the surprise, the shock, the revelation that gives all that precedes and all that follows profound and ultimate meaning.” As one of my seminary professors used to say, “The gospel trumps the bible.”

When we apply such a lens, such a “Christo-focal” reading, when we allow the gospel to trump the bible, does the utter and complete destruction of another people’s religious tradition seem like a godly admonition? Is this what we expect of the God who, incarnate in Jesus, healed the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman and the servant of a Roman Centurion, who praised that same Centurion for faith greater than any he had seen in Israel, and who preached his gospel and worked his wonders among the Greek-speaking Gentile population of the Decapolis? Is this what we expect of the God who commissioned and empowered his apostle Paul to walk the streets of Athens viewing the temples of its citizens whom he would later praise as “extremely religious?”

I think not. I’m willing to give God the benefit of the doubt and conclude that these are Moses’s words, and to give Moses the benefit of the doubt that there was good reason for this strategy at the time of the Hebrews’ conquest of the Promised Land.

But today we must have a different attitude toward other faiths! In a paper presented to a symposium on pluralism sponsored by the National Council of Churches, Professor Damayanthi M.A. Niles calls upon Christians to develop a theology “that values and takes plurality seriously.” Such a theology, he argues, would “allow Christians to celebrate and participate in the diversity around us and to add our own particular stories, enriching the story of God’s work in the world.” It would also help Christians to hear “the weaker and marginalized voices often silenced in the name of an artificial unity.” He suggests that as Christians enter into interfaith dialogue we will discover that other religious traditions have appropriated Christ and the Christian story in their own terms. Responding to the ways other faiths may interpret Christian ideas will give us unique opportunities to restate our own understanding of who Christ is. This could not happen if the altars, pillars, sacred poles, the icons, and the images of other faiths are destroyed.

On the first anniversary of 9/11, my friend and colleague Pierre Whalon, bishop of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, wrote that “the present global situation requires interfaith dialogue.” In an essay entitled The Question of Other Faiths he concluded:

Engaging people of other faiths is therefore not to be done as an exercise in the superiority of Christianity. Not only does our chequered history give the lie to any such claims—they are also fundamentally incompatible with being Christian. It is not in our strength but our weakness that we may speak of Christ to others. He demands not pride, not an imparting of our imagined riches, but an admission of our own poverty before God and others.

No one can go to war who is coming from this position of servanthood. On the contrary. In the strange reversal that characterizes the action of the Spirit, those who seek to be warrior-conquerors are weak, and the ones who cling to the powerless Jesus are the truly strong. This provides us with a coherent position from which to address others that avoids the hollow claims of Christian superiority, the unselfconscious arrogance of universalism, or the belittling of the grounds of Christian faith.

There is a single word that describes this attitude, which was attributed to Jesus himself: humility. It does not come naturally to us anymore than to other people. But without it, we are no followers of Christ, and we therefore have nothing to say to, and learn from, people of other faiths.

More than a decade later there is no less urgency, no less a need for humility and interfaith dialogue. And absolutely no need to “break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places!” Even if that admonition is in the Bible!

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

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

Six New Oxen – From the Daily Office – May 25, 2013

From the Gospel of Luke:

Jesus said, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, “I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, “I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.'”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 14:16-20 (NRSV) – May 25, 2013.)

Plowing with Oxen Teams, 1866, by William WatsonA few days ago an ordained colleague posted this status to Facebook:

Memorial Day Weekend & Trinity Sunday. First weekend of summer. Last weekend of church “program year”. #attendancedrop

In the discussion and comments that followed, he noted that his posting was not a complaint but “a reminder that parish life doesn’t exist apart from the lives of the folks who comprise a parish.” Sometimes, he suggested, we try to ignore that reality and end up causing ourselves (both ordained and lay church leadership) unnecessary angst.

I’m sure he’s right and yet I’m still saddened when attendance falls off. We joke about the excuses for low attendance at church – it’s the weather (good or bad) – it’s sports (professional, amateur, kids) – it’s traffic (bad getting to church or good getting to recreation venues) – it’s a three-day weekend (this one, for example) – it’s any number of things. We joke, but the jokes are tinged with that angst my friend mentioned. Always underneath our airy dismissal of low attendance is the conviction that if we just did the right thing, if we just had the right formula, if we could just implement the right program, if we just “tweeked” worship one way or the other people would not choose to try out their six new oxen instead of coming to church.

I wish I could say I’ve given up that sort of thinking. I wish I could say I don’t experience that angst. I wish I could believe that my colleague’s Facebook status was not a complaint. But . . . as my late mother-in-law was fond of saying . . . if wishes were horses we could all saddle up and ride. Ride to church, I suppose, in this case. But the truth is I still think in those sorts of thoughts, I still fret when attendance is down, and I do think my colleague was complaining even as he was facing the reality.

Is there a “right thing” that could change this picture? Given the story Jesus told in today’s gospel lesson, the very familiar parable of the wedding banquet, I’m going to take a wild guess that the answer is “No.” People not attending to religious business in favor of alternatives has been going a long time, at least since Jesus’ day and probably longer. If we church leaders haven’t figured out how to deal with that in 2,000 or more years, my guess is there isn’t a way to deal with it. People, as my non-complaining friend reminded us, have lives outside the parish church to which they are going to attend, even if it means skipping Sunday morning worship, and we forget that to our peril.

So I’ll continue to try not to feel the angst, to rejoice in the presence of those who attend, to pray for the well-being of those who do not, to wish them well with whomever or whatever they have “just been married,” and to hope that we will see them again when they finish training their six new oxen.

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

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

A Community of Fishers – From the Daily Office – March 11, 2013

From the Prophet Jeremiah:

I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Jeremiah 16:16-18 (NRSV) – March 11, 2013.)

Still from A River Runs Through ItI wonder if Jesus had this prophecy in mind when he called Andrew and Peter and said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” (Matt. 4:19)

When we modern, urban Americans read biblical references to fishermen, I suspect that a majority of us picture someone sitting lazily on the banks of a river with a pole stuck in the soil next to them, a line trailing off to a bobbing float; or perhaps we imagine Tom Skerrit standing in the Blackfoot River casting hand-tied flies trying to snag a large trout. Although hook-and-line fishing was not unknown in the ancient world, it was then, as now, a recreational sort of fishing. When God says through Jeremiah that he is sending fishermen to catch the wayward people of Israel, when Jesus tells his new disciples that they will become fishers of people, the reference is a very different sort of fishing.

The image we should have is of net fishing, probably using either a dragnet or a cast net. The dragnet is one of the oldest of fishing dating from the third millennium B.C. in Egypt. The dragnet, perhaps 250 to 300 yards long, and varing in height from 3 to 8 yards, would be taken out from the shore by boat which would proceed straight out for a distance, then turn parallel to the shore for a bit, and then turn back to the shore. The bottom of the net would be weighted with sinkers, and the top would have cork floats attached. Tow lines attached to each end of the net were hauled in by a teams of sixteen men for large nets, fewer for for smaller nets. This method of fishing is described in the books of Habakkuk, Ezekiel, and Matthew.

A cast net was, as the name suggests, thrown or cast onto the waters by one man either from shore or from a boat. After it had sunk to the bottom, trapping fish within it, the caster and others would dive down to it and either retrieve the fish individually placing them into pouches, or they would gather the footrope of the net, gathering the fish into a sort of purse formed by the net and bring them up together.

In either event, the picture we get is of teamwork. Biblical fishing was a community activity, something that required cooperation to be effective. So, although God promised to send a single shepherd, the Messiah, God in this prophecy of Jeremiah also promised to send a working party.

And, one wonders, who might that be? The church? All the baptized? No doubt. God’s team is made up of the spiritual descendants of the ones to whom Jesus said, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Midway through Lent as we are, this might be a good time to turn from individual self-examination and consider how well we are doing as a community of fishers.

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

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

Simple Invitations: Troubling Questions – From the Daily Office – February 15, 2013

From the Gospel according to John:

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 1:35-36 (NRSV) – February 15, 2013.)

InvitationCould it get any simpler? “Look, here is Jesus.” The proclamation of the Good News, the invitation into personal relationship with our Incarnate God, the revelation of what it is to be truly human . . . whatever you want to call it (we’ll steer clear for the moment from the word “evangelism”), it can’t get any simpler than this: “Look, here he is.”

That’s really all the Baptizer is doing. He’s inviting his friends to consider this Jesus whom he, John, has found to be a compelling figure. It’s a simple invitation.

Almost thirty years ago I read the book The Inviting Church by Roy Oswald and Speed Leas (Alban Institute 1987). In fact, I still have two or three copies of it on my office shelves. Right there on page 44 are these statistics about what attracts visitors to churches:

2% by Advertisement
6% by the Pastoral Invitation
6% by organized evangelism campaign
86% by friends or relatives

Guess what? Those statistics still hold true today. Over these three decades they have been confirmed again and again. The personal invitation, “Look, here he is,” is by far the most effective way the message of the Gospel spreads and the church grows.

The sadder statistic, also reported by Oswald and Leas and also still true today, is that half of church members have never invited anyone to church . . . ever. About a third have invited one person sometime during their lives. Fewer than 20% have made more than one invitation.

“What is the mission of the Church?” asks the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer. The answer is simple: “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” This mission, says the Catechism, is carried out “through the ministry of all its members.” (Emphasis mine.) The Catechism then teaches us that the ministers of the church are “lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.” That’s an awfully wordy way to say “all of us.”

The ministry of the laity, we are taught, is first and foremost “to represent Christ and his Church [and] to bear witness to him wherever they may be.” That’s really the ministry of all orders (lay or ordained), the ministry of every church member. There is no better example of bearing witness to Christ than the one given by the Baptizer in today’s lesson: “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” It’s really just that simple.

That so few do it speaks not of them as persons, but of the church corporately. Instead of asking (as so many clergy do) why people do not invite others, perhaps we should consider why people do invite friends to places or events. What encourages people to issue invitations? Basically, I think that we invite people we value to share with us in the things and communities we value, in the things and events that bring us joy. We invite people into that which is important to us.

And doesn’t that, especially for church leadership during this Lenten season, raise even more questions, more troubling questions, than it answers?

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

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

Happy Valentine’s Day: Cretans Are Liars! – From the Daily Office – February 14, 2013

From the Letter to Titus:

There are also many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision; they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach. It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.” That testimony is true. For this reason rebuke them sharply, so that they may become sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths or to commandments of those who reject the truth.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Titus 1:10-13b (NRSV) – February 14, 2013.)

Sing of the Cross in Ashes on Purple HeartWell, Happy Valentine’s Day! Doesn’t Paul strike a pleasant note in his admonitions to the young bishop Titus? The ad hominem attack enshrined in Holy Scripture, mixed with a health dose of antisemitism to boot! An ad hominem is considered a logical fallacy because an otherwise potentially valid claim is rejected on the basis of an irrelevant fact about the person presenting the claim. Typically, it involves two steps, both of which Paul demonstrates in this bit of his letter to Titus. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim: “Cretans are always liars.” Second, this personal attack is used as evidence against the argument the person is making. In other words, the ad hominem argument has the following form:

  1. Person A makes claim X: “Rebellious people are teaching things.”
  2. Person B makes an attack on person A: “They are liars, vicious brutes, and lazy gluttons.”
  3. Therefore A’s claim is false: “Their teachings are ‘Jewish myths’.”

However, the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not have any bearing on the truth or falsehood of the claim they may be making or the quality of the argument they may be advancing: this is why the ad hominem attack is, itself, a fallacy.

Reading these words in the letter to Titus this morning hit me with particularly force because of discussions yesterday of the innovation of “Ashes to Go” – a new practice offered by some in the Episcopal Church (and other traditions, I suppose) of going to public places (street corners, coffee houses, college campuses) and offering the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday outside of the context of the full penitential liturgy. Personally, I don’t approve of the practice, but I do appreciate the arguments of those who champion it.

In some of the discussions, both online and in person, arguments were advanced that those on the con side of “Ashes to Go” were “older clergy” whose only concern (apparently because of their age and concern for their pensions) is preservation of a dying institution while those on the pro side were “younger clergy” who (apparently because of their youth) are open to the Holy Spirit doing something new. On the other side, those “younger clergy” were portrayed as killing the church because they fail to appreciate and respect its traditions and by their actions rob them of meaning, while the “older clergy” are the Spirit-filled defenders of the faith.

Hmmm . . . . . . . The division of the church into “older” and “younger” groups (clergy or otherwise) whose age bracket somehow validates or invalidates their positions feels a lot like an ad hominem sort of argument. In the spirit of Paul’s words to Titus, I could almost hear the disputants saying, “Older clergy are always . . . .” and “Younger clergy are always . . . .”

I don’t know whether “Ashes to Go” is a movement of the Holy Spirit or whether it is simply yet another straw being grasped at by a church striving to be “relevant”. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. I do know that, to me, it feels like what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (The Cost of Discipleship)

Whether it is that or not, however, is not dependent on whether the practice is advanced by “younger clergy” or opposed by “older clergy” (and, for the record, there are proponents and opponents on both sides of the age divide, wherever one draws the line).

This Valentine’s Day – this Lent – let’s make the effort to move away from ad hominem arguments, even if they are enshrined in the Pauline text. Let’s listen to one another carefully and address the issues, not the persons.

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

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

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