Category: Family (Page 10 of 15)

Does “Journey” Make Sense? – From the Daily Office – July 5, 2013

July 5, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Luke:

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 23:26 (NRSV) – July 5, 2013.)

Start of a Journey Do you know where Cyrene was? Its location was in the same place as present day Shahhat, a town in northeastern Libya, about 80 miles northeast of Benghazi and about five miles from the Mediterranean coast. It’s nearly 1300 miles from Jerusalem. Simon had “come from the country” a fair distance! And at the end of that very long journey, he was made to carry the cross up the hill to Golgotha. The journey is a common metaphor of the Christian life; Simon’s long journey could stand as an example. But does the metaphor, does Simon’s example make sense anymore?

In other reading today, I learned that although the United States as a whole has only 87 people per square mile, the average American lives in a metropolitan area with more than 5,000 people per square mile. Two-thirds of Americans live in metropolitan areas with half-a-million or more residents. The long journey may be a Christian metaphor, but it is probably not one that resonates with the personal experience of most modern Americans. Long journeys are no longer part of our everyday corporate experience.

Certainly Americans travel; last year we spent $597 billion on leisure travel and $259 billion on business trips. But living in cities with nearly every need, and most of our family and friends, close at hand, and without a religious or social tradition of pilgrimage, the long journey is not a common practice.

Paradoxically, we seem to be an increasingly mobile and transient society. We don’t do journeys, but we do seem to move about quite a bit. While my small-town (pop. 28,000) church has several long-term members who have been here most, if not all, of their lives, a significant part of our worshiping community is made up of those who have recently relocated to the area because of job transfers, and who expect to leave within just a few years. Indeed, many of those who have left the congregation in the past ten years have done so for the same reason. The long-term leadership of the congregation (and now that I’ve been here more than ten years, I feel like that includes me) has seen many active church members come and go as breadwinners are transferred into the area, work here for three to five years, and are then transferred elsewhere.

As I ponder these contradictory data, a mobile population lacking in experience of journeying, it seems to me that what we lack may be rootedness, a sense of permanent “home place,” an anchoring in space and time. There is a difference between a “journey” and a “trip” – and that difference is time. There is a difference between a “journey” and a life of constant work-related relocation – and that difference is the home place, the anchor point in space.

My family is as un-rooted as most; my personal history more so. Not quite half my lifetime ago, I was required to fill out an FBI background check form; doing so, I realized that by the time I was 35 years of age, I had had 37 addresses! When my children were in the fifth and third grades, we relocated from Las Vegas, Nevada, to an exurban, Kansas-side community of the Kansas City metroplex, where we lived for ten years; the home we owned there is still the place I have lived the longest in my life! Although they were born in San Diego and Las Vegas, it’s very clear that my kids think of Kansas as “home.” My wife and I moved to Ohio after the children had completed high school and they have never lived here. From time to time someone will ask one or the other, “Are you coming home for Christmas?” Their typical reply makes it very clear that they do not consider Ohio “home.” They have a sense of rootedness, and that root is not sunk into this soil.

Unlike my children, I do not have that sense of rootedness. I was born in Las Vegas, but left the place when I was only 8 years of age. For the next several years, my family relocated (always within the Los Angeles area) every twelve to eighteen months. I continued that pattern after leaving home, sometimes moving after only three or four months. As I aged and became employed, my length of stay in any one place grew. But it is only at more than 60 years of age that I can look back and make sense of life through the metaphor of “the journey.” I do wonder how useful this metaphor is for those still in the throes of an unrooted life, relocating every few years as jobs change, perhaps taking “business trips,” and maybe finding time for vacation travel.

Simon had a home, a place where he was rooted, Cyrene. He was on a journey when he encountered Christ on the way to Calvary. He was not on a “trip”; he was not relocating. What can we learn from Simon? Does the journey metaphor make sense anymore?

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

Seven Times a Day? – From the Daily Office – July 3, 2013

July 3, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

Seven times a day do I praise you, because of your righteous judgments.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 119:164 (BCP Version) – July, 2013.)

Book of Common Prayer (1979) The Book of Acts, the earliest church history, tells us that the followers of Jesus practiced daily prayer: “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts.” (Acts 2:46) Eventually, the Christians were excluded from Jewish worship assemblies, either by their own choice or by action of the authorities, and in an unrelated development, the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Where, then, did Christians pray together? Or, for that matter, alone?

It is likely that there were ascetics who sought solitude away from the cities and what they perceived as a sinful society around them from the start of the Christian community. They may have emulated John the Baptizer and his followers, the Jewish Essenes, or other esoteric communities. However, the first historically verifiable hermit (or “anchorite”) seems to be St. Anthony of Egypt. Unfortunately for him, others were attracted to his lifestyle and he found himself surrounded by disciples following his example. During Anthony’s lifetime, one of his followers, St. Pachomius established the first community for ascetics living together, “cenobites,” during the early part of the Fourth Century. By the end of the Fifth Century, these monks had developed the practice of gathering together for prayer and the early outlines of a Liturgy of the Hours composed of seven “offices” had emerged. It is possible that number of services was chosen because of this (and similar) verses in Scripture.

The foundation of modern western monasticism was the Rule of St. Benedict, authored by Benedict of Nursia in the 6th century. As part of his design for monks living in community, he adopted the practice of regular hours of prayer, adding an eighth. The eight monastic hours are the following:

Matins (during the night, usually at midnight; sometimes called Nocturns)
Lauds (at dawn, or 3 a.m.)
Prime (approximately 6 a.m.; this is the hour added by Benedict)
Terce (approximately 9 a.m.)
Sext (approximately 12 noon)
None (approximately 3 p.m.)
Vespers (approximately 6 p.m., “at the lighting of the lamps”)
Compline (approximately 9 p.m., before retiring)

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the genius behind the Anglican Prayer Book tradition, took bits and pieces of these monastic hours to create the offices of Daily Morning Prayer and Daily Evening Prayer included in The Book of Common Prayer of 1549 and in every revision of the Prayer Book since. It was Cranmer’s idea that individuals and families, like monks in community, would say these offices every day, coming together with others on Sundays to celebrate the Holy Communion.

It was, I’m afraid, a wonderful but never realized vision; I doubt very seriously that there has ever been a time since the Reformation when Anglicans, in general, stop during their days for even a single instance of regular, corporate, liturgical prayer, let alone twice a day, let alone seven or eight times a day. Nonetheless, the Anglican ethos is one of constant daily prayer deriving from the Scriptural witness of the Psalms.

It is my practice to say the Daily Offices at morning and evening and, occasionally, Compline before retiring. The current American Prayer Book of 1979 includes two forms of Morning Prayer, an office for Noonday Prayer, two forms of Evening Prayer, an order for Compline, and four short forms for individual prayer throughout the day. Our tradition is steeped in the monastic tradition!

But how many of us can say this verse of Psalm 119 with complete authenticity? I know that I can’t! Two times a day? Usually. Seven times a day? It just doesn’t happen! It probably should, but it doesn’t.

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

Taking the Train to God’s Picnic: A Homily for a Requiem – June 25, 2013

June 25, 2013 / eric / 2 Comments

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This sermon was preached at the Requiem Mass on June 25, 2013, for Charlie Stehno, a member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Episcopal Church Lectionary, For Burials: Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalms 23; Revelation 21:2-7; and John 14:1-6. These lessons were selected by the family from among the options set forth in The Book of Common Prayer. All options can be found at The Lectionary Page.)

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Steam Locomotive Are you familiar with those visions of the afterlife in which the dearly departed, clothed in flowing white robes lounge around on fluffy, white cotton clouds playing harps? I have to be honest with you that I cherish a very dear hope that such visions are 100% absolutely wrong! I cannot imagine any existence more boring than an eternity of cloud-floating and harp-playing, and if my ten years of knowing Charlie Stehno have given me a clue of anything about Charlie it is that he would most likely feel the same way. If he has gotten to the Great Hereafter only to find himself fitted out with a flowing white robe and issued a harp to play and cloud to lounge upon, I suspect that he is (as my grandmother would say) “fit to be tied.”

But I don’t really think there’s any danger of that! I believe that larger life in God’s Presence is quite a bit different from that beatific vision of robe wearing, harp playing, and cloud floating. As I spent the past few days contemplating the lessons that Kathy selected for today’s Requiem — this wonderful vision of Isaiah’s of a feast on a mountain top; John of Patmos’s vision of the new Jerusalem where our home will be with God, where hunger and thirst will be no more, where there will be these wonderful springs overflowing with the water of life, and where God will wipe away every tear; and most importantly Jesus’ promise that in God’s home there is a place for all of us — as I contemplated these readings and as I thought about Charlie’s life selling the heavy machinery that moved the rolling stock on the railways of this and several other countries, I kept having a childhood memory. It is a memory that informs my vision heaven, that shapes my belief about what lies through that doorway of death. I’d like to share it with you, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I spend a few minutes sharing something about my family as a means to come to terms with the grief and loss experienced by the Stehno family.

My parents were raised in a small town in southeastern Kansas and when I was very young my paternal grandparents and many members of my extended family on both sides still lived in and around that town. On my mother’s mother’s side, my great-grandfather, Hinrich Buss, had emigrated from the German farm country of Ostfriesland in the 1860s when he was about 20 years old. He settled in that area of Kansas and homesteaded several thousand acres, raising not one but three families. I am descended from him and his third wife, Harmke (who bore Hinrich 15 children who lived to adulthood).

Each summer of my childhood I would spend several weeks with my father’s parents, but for one day of each summer I would cease being a “Funston” and, instead, I become one of the several hundred “Buss cousins.” That one day was like a parenthetical note in my life: “This is Eric Funston – open parenthesis – who is also a Buss – close parenthesis.” Those parentheses were, if you will, represented by railroad journeys.

That day would start early in the morning when my great-uncle and great-aunt Roy and Blanche Buss would collect me from my Funston grandparents’ home and we would drive to the Santa Fe Train Station and catch the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad for the ancestral home, which was outside the next town to the west, an hour’s train ride away. Open parenthesis! When the train pulled out of station, I was no longer a Funston; I was a Buss.

When the train arrived, we would disembark to be picked up by other Buss cousins and driven to the farmhouse which had been and still was (and still is) the Buss family home.

As soon as we arrived, Blanche would join the other women in the farmhouse kitchen; Roy would go off with the other men to walk the fields and look at the livestock and smoke cigarettes and talk about the news of the day; and I would join the other kids swimming in the farm pond (which, to be honest, was pretty yucky, but we were kids, we didn’t care).

Around midday trestle tables would be set up in the yard and in pretty short order they would be overflowing with sauerbraten, and schnitzel, and wursts of all sorts, with sauerkraut and potato salad and fresh garden tomatoes, and more kinds of homemade bread and rolls and biscuits than you can imagine. Someone would say a prayer, and we would all dig in and eat way more than we should and, afterward, fall asleep in the shade of the barn.

A little later the older kids and the younger men would get up a football game. Because there were more of us descended from Greatgramma Harmke than from Hinrich’s first two wives it was usually organized as the third family against the first two. And there would be much cheering and yelling and arguing over plays and goals and whether someone is in-bounds or out; you know the sort of thing that happens in those sorts of games.

Sometime during the fourth quarter, the women would disappear back into that farmhouse kitchen and as the game came to its inevitable end, those trestle tables would again be loaded to overflowing, but this time with homemade pies, and cakes, and cookies, and even homemade ice cream. And, once again, we would all eat way more than a person ought . . . .

But in not-too-long a time, the sun would begin to set. And that would be the signal that Great-uncle Roy and Great-aunt Blanche and I would have to leave. We’d be driven back into town to catch the evening train back to my parents’ hometown. When we got there, I went back to being a Funston. That eastbound train ride was the end of my day of being a “Buss cousin.” Close parenthesis.

You know, there are a lot of songs about trains, and among those are a lot of songs about trains going to heaven. That’s another thing that kept coming to mind as I thought about what I might say here today. There’s Woody Guthrie’s familiar tune:

This train is bound for glory, this train.
This train is bound for glory, this train.
This train is bound for glory,
Don’t carry nothing but the righteous and the holy.
This train is bound for glory, this train.

And there’s Boxcar Willie’s wonderful song of a hobo’s last train ride:

I’ll ride that last train to heaven
On rails of solid gold
In a boxcar lined with satin
Where the nights are never cold
Where a hobo’s always welcome
Even in his ragged clothes
I’ll ride that last train to heaven
When the final whistle blows.

And my personal favorite is Curtis Mayfield’s great song:

People get ready there’s a train comin’;
You don’t need no baggage, just get on board.
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’;
You don’t need no ticket, just thank the Lord.

In the 23rd Psalm, David thanks the Lord for shepherding us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, for setting an abundant table for us in the midst of our enemies, and for pledging in God’s mercy and goodness that we will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Jesus affirms that in that home there are rooms for all of us, and both Isaiah and John of Patmos assure us that the abundance of that table will continue, that God will lay out a feast of “rich food . . . and well-aged wines strained clear,” that there will no hunger or thirst of any kind.

It will be like a family reunion, God’s family reunion, where everyone we’ve ever loved is present, and everyone they’ve ever loved (including us) eventually will be, “where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting,” and where “God will wipe away the tears from all faces.” St. Paul, the patron of this parish, explained it this way in his First Letter to the Corinthians:

Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor. 15:21-26)

As a song I know was special to Charlie might put it:

The enemy must yield,
We’ll fight just like our ancestors
and march right down the field!
(University of Toledo Fight Song; Charlie was an alumnus and former football start of Toledo U.)

Charlie has marched down that field; he has finished his walk through the valley of the shadow of death. He has won the victory! He has gotten on board that train bound for glory, that last train to heaven; he’s left this life’s crippling, painful baggage behind, and he has arrived in that larger life where, as Isaiah assures us, he has not found a cloud or a harp.

No, he’s taken that train to a great family reunion, where the picnic tables are eternally laden with God’s overflowing abundance, where the faithful swim not in some yucky farm pond but in the clear river that flows from the springs of the water of life, where the family home has room for everyone, and where (if there isn’t one already, Charlie will make sure) there’s a football game going on.

And the greatest and most wonderful thing is that there will be no sunset and there will be no train going back to anywhere; there will be no “close parenthesis.”

Thanks be to God! Amen.

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

The Dark Lining of Joy – From the Daily Office – June 21, 2013

June 21, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me,
and darkness is my only companion.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 88:19 (BCP Version) – June 21, 2013.)

On Your Ordination Anniversary Card Today is the 22nd anniversary of my ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church. It is also the 20th anniversary of the death of my older (and only) sibling, Rick.

Rick Funston died on Father’s Day 1993 of a cancer called Glioblastoma Multiforme Stage IV. Glioblastoma is an aggressive, extremely invasive, and invariably fatal form of primary site brain cancer; “primary site” means that it is not metastasized from some other location, as most brain cancers are (or so I’m told). Glioblastomas grew rapidly and are the sort of tumors that give cancer its name. Not many people know that cancer is called that because of invasive tumors’ resemblance to the many-legged crab. Cancer is the Latin word (derived from the Greek karkinos) for “crab.”

When Rick was diagnosed, I did some research and learned that the median survival time was about six months from date of diagnosis with nearly all patients passing away within two years. I just checked the current literature and see that the median has lengthened to 12 months and that 3-5% of patients survive as long as three years; they are called “long-term survivors.” Rick was not a long-term survivor.

His first symptoms appeared in October of 1992 and were initially misdiagnosed as a stroke. An accurate diagnosis was made in February of 1993; he died four months later.

Rick was nearly 10 years older than me. He went away to live with our grandparents and attend a private high school in my parents’ Kansas home town when I was 4 years old, so I really have almost no memory of him as a child. We next lived together, only very briefly, when he decided to leave the University of Texas in his sophomore year and attend UCLA; he moved into our parents’ and my home (our mother and stepfather; our father died when I was 5 years old) for a few months. We only really became close after I graduated from high school; he and his wife Janet and I toured Europe together the summer after my graduation.

I miss my brother a great deal. He had a wicked sense of humor. He was incredibly smart. His B.A. and M.A. were in American history; his Ph.D., in political science with a specialization in Constitutional law. He taught at San Diego State University and, at the time of his death, was the vice-president of the university. Somewhere along the line, he’d taken a few hours off from academe and gotten a J.D. as well. He spoke German, French, and Italian, and had more than a passing familiarity with Latin and Greek.

His cancer had attacked the part of the brain that controls speech. For pain relief and to extend his life as long as possible, surgery was done to remove as much of the tumor as could be gotten. This professor who spoke six languages, who lectured nearly every day, who had published several books and authored many articles lost his ability to form sentences and to converse easily. He couldn’t remember the names of colors; he couldn’t remember his children’s names. Sitting and talking with him you could see the frustration and anger, and the fear, in his eyes; he knew what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get the words put together. It was maddening!

He set himself the goal of seeing his oldest child, my niece Saskia, graduate from college. He made that goal.

Every year on the anniversary of my ordination, I spend more time thinking about the brother I miss than about the ministry I have enjoyed. The last verse of the morning psalm, as a result, grabbed me by the throat! “My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, and darkness is my only companion.”

Ordained ministry is lonely work. Clergy have very few friends or close companions, even among our colleagues in ministry. (A 1991 survey of clergy found that 70% of ordained ministers claimed to have no close friendships; a 2001 survey reported that 51% of clergy feel “lonely.”) During my first two and a half years of clergy life (one year as a deacon and eighteen months of priesthood before his diagnosis), my closest friend and adviser was my brother. He’d given some thought himself to becoming a pastor in the Lutheran tradition (something he was, and the entire Lutheran tradition should be, glad he didn’t pursue). I’ve not had a better, or even an equal, adviser since his death.

I won’t go so far as the psalmist and claim that “darkness is my only companion,” but there is a dark lining to the joy I feel remembering my ordination. I miss you, Rick, I really miss you!

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

Gandolfini, Hastings, and the Poor Widow: My Two Cents – From the Daily Office – June 20, 2013

June 20, 2013 / eric / 2 Comments

From the Gospel according to Luke:

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) – June 20, 2013.)

Two Cents Yesterday, the news services and Facebook were buzzing with the news of the death of James Gandolfini. Mr. Gandolfini, who was famous for playing the role of Tony Soprano in an HBO series The Sopranos, suffered a heart attack at the age of 51. The day before, there was a similar (though smaller) buzz about the death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings, aged 33, in an automobile accident.

Last week, a member of my congregation died at the age of 80 after years of crippling illness. Several weeks of acute respiratory distress came to an end when his family made the always difficult decision to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment. Except for an obituary in the local papers and a notice on our parish’s Facebook page, his death received no press coverage and no social media mention.

It seems to me this morning that the contrast Jesus draws between the offering of the poor widow and the donations of the wealthy applies as well to the differences in how the world marks the passing of everyday folk compared to its notice of the deaths of celebrities. A man who has lived a life spent in productive work, making a small but steady contribution to the world, supporting his church, raising his children and grandchildren, quietly doing good works, has perhaps “put in more than all” of the famous actors or well-known reporters who get so much attention.

I suppose I may be biased. I knew my parishioner and I know his family. When I saw the news about Mr. Hastings, I had to do some research to find out if I know any of his work; it turns out I do – he is the journalist who broke the story about General Stanley McChrystal. When I saw the reports of Mr. Gandolfini’s death, I did not need to do so; I knew that he had played the Soprano part. But, truth be told, I’ve never seen an episode of The Sopranos and I have no idea what other roles the actor may have played. In either event, I can safely say that neither man has had as great an impact on my life and the lives of the people and community I know than my parishioner had.

I don’t mean to belittle their deaths nor the pain their passing may have caused those who love them, but I think perhaps we pay too much attention to those who claim (or are given) the name “celebrity” and not enough to the grandfathers and the poor widows around us, even in death. We should do as Jesus did in the Temple; we should take notice.

And that’s my two cents.

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

Sitting Under, or Climbing, the Fig Tree – From the Daily Office – June 11, 2013

June 11, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Luke:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 19:1-4 (NRSV) – June 11, 2013.)

Sycamore Fig in Ashkelon The sycamore which Zacchaeus climbed is not the tree known to Americans as a sycamore. The American sycamore (Platanus Occidentalis) is also known as the “Buttonwood.” It was under a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street, New York City, that the New York Stock Exchange was form in 1793; the founding terms are known as the Buttonwood Agreement. A very large buttonwood sycamore stood in the church yard of St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City until September 11, 2001. It is said that that tree shielded St. Paul’s Chapel from the destructive storm of debris from the fall of the World Trade Center towers, allowing the chapel to survive and become a center of recovery ministry during the clean-up in the weeks that followed.

The biblical tree, however, is a fruit-bearing fig tree (Ficus Sycomorus). (In the “anglicized” version of the New Revised Standard translation of the bible, the spelling of “sycamore” in this passage is changed to “sycomore” to conform with the scientific name and to distinguish the tree from other “sycamores.”) There are several references to the sycamore fig in the Old Testament, one of my favorites being Amos’s protestation when Amaziah addresses him as a prophet: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” (Amos 7:14) Knowing that the biblical sycamore is a fig tree makes being a “dresser of sycamore trees” much more understandable!

In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, Nathanael becomes a disciple when Jesus tells him he knew who he was when he saw him “sitting under the fig tree.” (John 1:47-50) It was probably a sycamore fig. “Sitting under the fig tree” was a colloquial expression referring to studying the Law. In later rabbinic commentary on the Book of Numbers, the Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah, the question, “Why is the Torah compared to a fig tree?” is answered:

Because most trees — olive, grape, date, have their fruit harvested all at one time, but the fig’s fruit is picked gradually. And so it is with the Torah: You learn a little today and more tomorrow, for you cannot learn it in one or two years. (Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 12:9)

It was probably a sycamore fig that the Midrash writer had in mind.

I’m amused by the coincidence of this lesson with this date. In 1980, when I started law school, my wife and I bought a small two-bedroom bungalow in San Diego, California, on a street called “Sycamore Lane.” We lived there for three years. It was there (though not actually in that house) that our son was born on June 11, 1983. The next day, we brought him home to his first home on Sycamore Lane, and for the next six weeks he helped me study for the Nevada Bar Exam which I took that summer. We “sat under the sycamore fig” together, especially late at night, studying the law.

Thirty years later, I am no longer practicing law, and my son and I are both priests. In these thirty years, I’ve learned a lot and think he has, too. What the Midrash had to say about the study of Torah is true of all of life: you learn a little today and more tomorrow, for you cannot learn it in one or two . . . or thirty . . . years. Every day is a day to sit under, or to climb, the fig tree.

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

What a Long, Strange Trip – From the Daily Office – June 10, 2013

June 10, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Second Letter to the Corinthians:

Look at what is before your eyes.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 2 Corinthians 10:7a (NRSV) – June 10, 2013.)

Road to the Desert Horizon Do we ever really know what is “before our eyes”?

I’ve been saying the Daily Office and reading the associated lessons of the two-year-cycle lectionary for the better part of 40 years and never before has this short sentence jumped out at me like it does today!

30 years ago tonight, my wife and I made the short trip from our small bungalow in East San Diego, where we had lived while I attended law school, to Sharp Hospital in Kearney Mesa where she would, early the next morning, give birth to our son, Aidan Patrick. If anyone had said to us, “Look at what is before your eyes,” we would have described a life of law practice and stability in our home state of Nevada. We had it pretty definitely planned out. We were very definitely wrong!

As I thought about the last three decades, a line from a song kept popping into my head. I’d like to be all religious and spiritual and pretend it is a line from a hymn . . . but it’s not. The words are, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” From Truckin’ by the Grateful Dead. Now that song is an ear-worm which probably will eat away at me all day. What it’s definitely done is taken over this meditation.

So rather than write some other words, I give you the lyrics to Truckin’:

Truckin’ got my chips cashed in.
Keep truckin’, like the do-dah man
Together, more or less in line, just keep truckin’ on.

Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street.
Chicago, New York, Detroit and it’s all on the same street.
Your typical city involved in a typical daydream
Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.

Dallas, got a soft machine; Houston, too close to New Orleans;
New York’s got the ways and means; but just won’t let you be.

Most of the cats that you meet on the streets speak of true love,
Most of the time they’re sittin’ and cryin’ at home.
One of these days they know they gotta get goin’
Out of the door and down on the streets all alone.

Truckin’, like the do-dah man.
Once told me “You got to play your hand,”
Sometimes your cards ain’t worth a damn, if you don’t lay ’em down,

Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it’s been.

What in the world ever became of sweet Jane?
She lost her sparkle, you know she isn’t the same
Livin’ on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine,
All a friend can say is “Ain’t it a shame?”

Truckin’, up to Buffalo. Been thinkin’, you got to mellow slow
Takes time, you pick a place to go, and just keep truckin’ on.

Sittin’ and starin’ out of the hotel window.
Got a tip they’re gonna kick the door in again
I’d like to get some sleep before I travel,
But if you got a warrant, I guess you’re gonna come in.

Busted, down on Bourbon Street, Set up, like a bowling pin.
Knocked down, it get’s to wearin’ thin. They just won’t let you be.

You’re sick of hanging around and you’d like to travel;
Get tired of traveling and you want to settle down.
I guess they can’t revoke your soul for tryin’,
Get out of the door and light out and look all around.

Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me, What a long strange trip it’s been.

Truckin’, I’m a goin’ home,
Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong,
Back home, sit down and patch my bones, and get back truckin’ home.

Now that I sing it through, I realize this is a song that’s all spiritual and religious. It occurs to me that life is a trip and, despite Paul’s admonition, no matter how careful we scope it out, we really can’t see what is before our eyes. We always end up looking back and saying, “What a long, strange trip it’s been!”

Strange and wonderful. Thanks be to God!

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

The Little God Made By Human Hands – From the Daily Office – May 29, 2013

May 29, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Deuteronomy:

There you will serve other gods made by human hands, objects of wood and stone that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Deuteronomy 4:28 (NRSV) – May 29, 2013.)

My Samsung Galaxy S2 Seems to me that “gods made by human hands” these days can do some of these things. I have a smartphone that wakes me up by speaking out the time, the weather (current and predicted for the day), and a news headline (I have no idea what the algorithm for choosing the news item is, nor what news feed the alarm application uses). I think I can (if I knew how and did the set up) talk to my smartphone and get it to do things. My phone is not an iPhone, so it doesn’t have a name, but it can do a lot of seeing and hearing and speaking. I don’t think it’s gotten to the eating and smelling part . . . yet. But there are restaurant and wine review applications and who knows what upgrades may be coming . . . .

It would be an overstatement, I think, to say I “serve” my smartphone – after all, it’s supposed to serve me! But it’s all too true that I seem to be at it’s beck and call every minute of every day, or at least I can fall into the trap of thinking that way. The darned thing has a variety of “tones” by which it alerts me to, among things other than telephone calls, text messages, emails, Facebook postings, up-dates available for various applications, Amber alerts, severe weather alerts, voicemail messages, Words with Friends plays, and slew of other inputs. Telephone calls are neatly sounded with individual ringtones; my wife, my daughter, my son, my office, the bishop, and a few other people all have personalized sounds.

A few of those alerts I’ve learned to ignore. I often don’t even recognize the faint “buzz” of a Facebook notification. On the other hand, the raucous SS-siren of an Amber alert will waken me from a sound sleep several rooms away. And when the ringtones for my wife (something called Illuminator) or the bishop (Fanfare for the Common Man) sound, I know I’d better answer.

So, yeah, I guess it does feel like I serve this little “god made by human hands.”

Therefore, for a few minutes each day, and for several hours one day each week . . . I turn this little god off. I can do that. I make it a point to do that. And in the times it is turned off, I turn my attention to God, the real one, the “maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” I need to do this because when the phone is on, when it sounds one of its insistent tones, I can forget to turn to God. When my “little god made by human hands” is in control, I can (and frequently do) find myself relying on my own strength, or on human institutions, or on human technology, all of which are prone to fail. I need those moments when it is turned off to be reminded, as Moses reminded the Hebrews and the end of today’s reading, “The Lord your God is a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.”

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

The Gospel Is a Living Thing – From the Daily Office – May 27, 2013

May 27, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel of Luke:

[Jesus said,] “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 14: 26 (NRSV) – May 27, 2013.)

A Living Thing Wow! Jesus says some really tough stuff occasionally, and this one ranks really near the top. In my opinion, this is just slightly below the cut-off-your-hand and pluck-your-eye out stuff in terms of toughness.

Both those instructions and this demand, however, are great examples of why the Gospels and, indeed, every book in the whole bible need to be read as units, rather than as collections of individual verses. This is true even of the Psalms and the Book of Proverbs which pretty much are collections of individual verses.

One cannot read this statement from Luke’s Gospel without also considering the following pronouncements from Jesus (also recorded in Luke):

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (6:27)

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (10:27)

“You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother.’ ” (18:20)

And, of course, external to this Gospel are the other three Gospels and their record of other things Jesus said.

We cannot lift one statement out of context and focus on it in isolation; we cannot exclude everything else we know about Jesus and what he said when we consider this one pronouncement.

It occurred to me that someone might do that with my life. Someone might look at something I’d written or said 25 years ago when I was a practicing attorney litigating medical malpractice claims. Suppose my examiner had no other knowledge of who I am, what I had done, what I have done since. What a distorted image of my life that one statement, from the professional litigator I used to be, would present! Gospels (and all the biblical texts) are like that; they are living things. We have to read them and consider them as whole units.

Yes, Jesus said we have to hate our family members to be his disciples. Yes, he said to cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes if they are causes of stumbling. But . . . he was a First Century Palestinian Jew. But . . . he taught using a variety of techniques, including the Semitic hyperbole (Google that, if you like). But . . . he demanded love of neighbor and honor for parents a lot more often than he made outlandish statements like this. Take everything into account! Read everything in context! The Gospel is a living thing.

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

Mystery and Community: Trinity Sunday and Memorial Day – Sermon for May 26, 2013

May 26, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, May 26, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Trinity (Year C): Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31; Canticle 13 (Song of the Three Young Men, 29-34); Romans 5:1-5; and John 16:12-15. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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I’d like you to take out a pen (there are some in the pew racks if you don’t have one of your own) and on a blank piece of paper, or an empty spot on your service bulletin, I’d like you write down these numbers:

1,016,823
116,516
405,399
36,516
58,209
2,031
4,487
22
3

They are, respectively:

1,016,823 – the estimated number of war dead from the American civil war (the figures, especially for Confederate dead, are notoriously untrustworthy)
116,516 – the number of Americans who died in World War I
405,399 – the number of Americans who died in World War II
36,516 – the number of Americans who died in the Korean conflict
58,209 – the number of Americans who died in Vietnam
2,031 – the number of Americans who so far have died in Afghanistan during our so-called “war on terror”
4,487 – the number of Americans who so far have died in Iraq during our so-called “war on terror”
22 – the average number of U.S. Armed Forces veterans and active duty personnel who commit suicide every day because of combat-related PTSD
3 – the number of Persons in the One, Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity

Today, our church asks us to focus our attention on the last of these numbers. Tomorrow, our country asks us to remember all the others. It is merely fortuitous that the calendar, this year, conflates the Feast of the Blessed Trinity with Memorial Day weekend, but it seems to me that the two speak to us with a united voice drawing our attention to common themes.

Memorial Day has its origins in a proclamation by General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the organization for Union Civil War veterans. On May 5, 1868, he called for an annual, national “Decoration Day.” It was observed for the first time that year on May 30; the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle and because it was the optimal date for flowers to be in bloom in most areas of the country. It was observed, that first year, in 27 states. A similar day of remembrance was held in the states of the former Confederacy on June 3, which was the birthday of Jefferson Davis, first and only President of the Confederate States of America. Beginning in the 1880s the name “Memorial Day” began to be used for these commemorations and it gradually became the more common term. For the first hundred years, these holidays were matters of state law, although in 1950 Congress issued a joint resolution requesting the President to issue a proclamation calling for a national observance on May 30 and every year since the presidents have done so. In 1967, by act of Congress, “Memorial Day” was declared the official name and May 30 the official date under Federal law. The following year, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved Memorial Day, together with Washington’s birthday, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day, from their traditional dates to specified Mondays in order to create convenient three-day weekends.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars, by the way, opposed that change and has publicly stated its position that, “Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day.” Throughout his career in the Senate, the late Senator from Hawaii Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran, annually introduced a measure to return Memorial Day to its traditional date of May 30. Obviously, his efforts proved unsuccessful.

The Solemnity, or Principal Feast, of the Most Holy Trinity has a somewhat longer history. The Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great (who was pope from 590 to 604) contained prayers and a Preface for a celebration of the Trinity, but specified no date. Documents from the pontificate of Gregory VII (pope from 1073 to 1085) indicate that by that time an Office of the Holy Trinity was recited on the Sunday after Pentecost in some places, but it was not a universal practice. In 1162, Thomas á Becket (1118–70) was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost, and his first act was to proclaim that the day of his consecration should be commemorated as a new festival in honor of the Holy Trinity. This observance spread from England throughout the western Catholic world until Pope John XXII in 1334, the last year of his 18-year papacy, ordered the feast observed by the entire Church on the first Sunday after Pentecost.

I want to suggest to you today that these two observances, one secular and one religious, share two common themes, and that this year’s fortuitous coincidence of Trinity Sunday and Memorial Day weekend allows us to explore them. Those themes are community and mystery.

There is a humorous video on YouTube made by a group calling themselves Lutheran Satire in which two Irishman engage St. Patrick in a dialog about analogies for the Holy Trinity. Although at first pronouncing themselves simple and unsophisticated, the two proceed to demonstrate considerable theological acumen as they condemn Patrick as a heretic each time he tries an analogy. The famous water-ice-steam analogy, they condemn as Modalism; the analogy of the sun, with its light and heat, they denounce as Arianism; when Patrick tries to liken the Trinity to a shamrock, they stop him and criticize him for preaching Partialism. Finally, Patrick gives up and asserts:

The Trinity is a mystery which cannot be comprehended by human reason, but is understood only through faith and is best confessed in the words of the Athanasian Creed which states that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the Persons nor dividing the Substance, that we are compelled by the Christian truth to confess that each distinct Person is God and Lord, and that the deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is One, equal in glory, co-equal in majesty.

The two Irishman, after a moment of stunned silence, respond, “Well, why didn’t you just say that?”

So there you have it: the Trinity is a mystery and every analogy by which we try to explain how God can be one-in-three fails, every attempt to comprehend the unity in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together are one God ends up in heresy, and every sermon about the Doctrine of the Trinity either confuses the heck out of us or bores us to tears.

Therefore, rather than try to explain or comprehend the mystery that is the Trinity, let’s focus instead on the community that is the Trinity: the paradigm and model of all human community. The early Church Fathers explored in their writings how many aspects of our humanity reveal the divine image: our ability to perceive God’s presence; our apparently innate knowledge of the spiritual realm; our intellect; our ability to freely choose; and our capacity to live lives of goodness and love. These characteristics, they taught, belong to every human being and reveal much about God.

In the twentieth-century theologians have explored the concept of human personhood. To be made in the image of God is not to be made in the image of the Father only; it is to be made in the image of the Holy Trinity, to be made in the image of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Human beings are persons intended to be, like the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, in relationship with other persons. This means that participation in community is at the heart of our humanity; our relatedness to other persons is at the very core of who we are. The three Divine Persons are forever united with each other in mutual love. They dwell within one another; they collaborate and share in all their activities; they always act in harmonious accord. This is the model for the ideal human community, the paradigm of corporate human existence.

Human beings are supposed to work together in harmony in ways that preserve and respect the equality and dignity of every person. The English Orthodox bishop and theologian Kallistos Ware put it this way in an article in the journal of the Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius:

Each social grouping — family, parish, diocese, church council, school, office, factory, nation — has as its vocation to be transformed by grace into a living icon of [the Holy Trinity], to effect a reconciling harmony between diversity and unity, human freedom and mutual solidarity, after the pattern of the Trinity. (The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity, Sobornost 8, 17-18)

He also wrote in a later essay:

Belief in a God who is three-in-one, whose characteristics are sharing and solidarity, has direct and practical consequences for our Christian attitude toward politics, economics, and social action, and it is our task to work out these consequences in full detail. Each form of community — the family, the school, the workplace, the local eucharistic center, the monastery, the city, the nation — has as its vocation to become, each according to its own modality, a living icon of the Holy Trinity. (The Trinity: Heart of Our Life, in Reclaiming the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox in Dialogue, James S. Cutsinger, ed., InterVarsity:1997, 142)

On Friday, as has been customary in this country since 1950, the president issued a proclamation designating Memorial Day tomorrow as “a day of prayer for permanent peace.” In his proclamation, President Obama said:

On Memorial Day, we remember those we have lost not only for what they fought for, but who they were: proud Americans, often far too young, guided by deep and abiding love for their families, for each other, and for this country. Our debt to them is one we can never fully repay. But we can honor their sacrifice and strive to be a Nation equal to their example. On this and every day, we must meet our obligations to families of the fallen; we must uphold our sacred trust with our veterans, our service members, and their loved ones.

Above all, we can honor those we have lost by living up to the ideals they died defending. It is our charge to preserve liberty, to advance justice, and to sow the seeds of peace. With courage and devotion worthy of the heroes we remember today, let us rededicate ourselves to those unending tasks, and prove once more that America’s best days are still ahead. Let us pray the souls of those who died in war rest in eternal peace, and let us keep them and their families close in our hearts, now and forever. (Presidential Proclamation, May 24, 2013)

In other words, Memorial Day, like Trinity Sunday, is a day whose theme is community, the nation as community, the military services as community, the family as community. Bishop Ware’s description of Trinitarian community as embracing “diversity and unity, human freedom and mutual solidarity” could as easily have been used by the president to describe the community which celebrates Memorial Day; President Obama’s words of courage and devotion, sacrifice and trust, justice and eternal peace could as easily have been used to describe the community which is an icon of the Trinity.

There is also a mystery about Memorial Day, and the mystery is this: Why must young men and now young women go to war and die? One of my favorite Celtic folk songs reflects on this mystery. It was written in 1976 by the Scottish folksinger Eric Bogle and originally entitled No Man’s Land, but it is more commonly called The Green Fields of France or Willie McBride. It is the musing of a man stopping by a grave in a World War I cemetery and wondering about the man buried there. These are the last two verses:

Ah the sun now it shines on these green fields of France,
The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance,
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds;
There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’re no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it’s still No Man’s Land,
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
To a whole generation that was butchered and damned.

Ah, young Willie McBride, I can’t help wonder why,
Did all those who lay here really know why they died?
And did they believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end war?
For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing and dying were all done in vain,
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again and again and again and again.

The mystery of Memorial Day is the mystery of war. No one wants it to happen, and yet it does, again, and again, and again, and again . . . The mystery of Memorial Day is . . . why?

The mystery of the Trinity is expressed in that number 3: How can God who is One be Three? It’s a mystery which we cannot comprehend. It can be understood only through faith; it can be lived out only in community.

The mystery of Memorial Day is expressed in those other numbers: 1,016,823 — 116,516 — 405,399 — 36,516 — 58,209 — 2,031 — 4,487 — 22. It’s a mystery we must comprehend and, through our faith and in our communities, bring to an end. Please take home the paper on which you wrote those numbers and tomorrow . . . think about that.

Let us pray:

Almighty God our heavenly Father, guide the peoples and nations of the world into the way of justice and truth, and establish among them that peace which is the fruit of righteousness, that the community of humankind may become more and more an image of the community of the Holy Trinity; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

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

Category: Family (Page 10 of 15)

Does “Journey” Make Sense? – From the Daily Office – July 5, 2013

Seven Times a Day? – From the Daily Office – July 3, 2013

Taking the Train to God’s Picnic: A Homily for a Requiem – June 25, 2013

The Dark Lining of Joy – From the Daily Office – June 21, 2013

Gandolfini, Hastings, and the Poor Widow: My Two Cents – From the Daily Office – June 20, 2013

Sitting Under, or Climbing, the Fig Tree – From the Daily Office – June 11, 2013

What a Long, Strange Trip – From the Daily Office – June 10, 2013

The Little God Made By Human Hands – From the Daily Office – May 29, 2013

The Gospel Is a Living Thing – From the Daily Office – May 27, 2013

Mystery and Community: Trinity Sunday and Memorial Day – Sermon for May 26, 2013

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