Category: Law (Page 10 of 13)

Radical Transformation — Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18C — September 8, 2013

September 8, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 8, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 16 (Proper 18, Year C): Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5,12-17; Philemon 1-21; and Luke 14:25-33. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Swallowtail Metamorphosis We are given three very challenging readings from Holy Scripture this morning. First, there is Jeremiah’s familiar, but radical, prophetic metaphor of God as a potter able to do with the nation of Israel what a potter does with a spoiled piece of work. Second, perhaps the oddest piece of New Testament literature, Paul’s personal letter to a man named Philemon returning a runaway slave whom Paul has converted to Christianity. And, lastly, Luke’s report of Jesus’ radical requirement that his followers must hate their possessions, their families, and even themselves. What I believe is common among these lessons is a call to radical transformation.

Let’s look first at the Gospel lesson. According to Luke, Jesus says to a great multitude of people, “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.” It appears to have been Jesus’ intention to turn away any potential follower who might be half-hearted, or luke-warm; he was not willing to just let anyone come along. Jesus was not interested in “church growth.” But when Jesus says, “You cannot be my disciple,” we need to careful parse and understand what he is saying. He is not say, “I will not let you be my disciple.” The Greek is ou dunatai einai mou mathetes. The verb dunamai means “to be able to, to have power to” – from its root dunamis we get our word “dynamic.” Jesus is not saying he will prevent or stand in the way of such a person becoming a disciple; rather, Jesus is saying such a person is simply incapable of becoming a disciple. The blockage is in that person, not in Jesus.

Jesus goes on to illustrate what he means with two short parables which would have been within the experience and understanding of his listeners: a man counting the cost of building a tower and a king calculating the probability of success in going to war. These examples of what we might call “social calculus” give meaning to Jesus’ use of the word “hate” — and that’s what it is in Greek; in fact, “detest” might be an even better translation — and applying it to family, wealth, and even one’s own soul. Discipleship, as Jesus understands it, is complete, total, uncompromising. It includes counting the costs and considering what it means to set out on the path of discipleship; one cannot do so on the spur of the moment in a brief burst of enthusiasm without a thought where that path might end. Jesus’ use of “hate,” illustrated by stories where there are two possible courses of action, only one of which may chosen and that one must be chosen decisively, underscores that, for Jesus, full commitment means the severance of even potential commitment to any other possibility.

For us, as contemporary Christians, this Gospel faces us with the hard truth of what it means to follow Jesus; we must grapple with the reality that our Messiah is a radical, counter-cultural prophet. As my friend Presbyterian theologian Bruce Reyes-Chow puts it, in this Gospel Jesus calls us “to step into that space of faithfulness that Jesus calls ‘hate.'” (The Hardest Question) That’s really, really hard! His message and actions are not easy to follow, and they do not fit easily or comfortably into our 21st Century context. It is a call to radical transformation.

This was also the message of the Prophet Jeremiah with his deceptively folksy metaphor of a potter reworking a lump of clay.

A potter working with clay was an everyday occurrence in the ancient world. This is not an artisan working on an art piece that Jeremiah is describing. This is a merchant working on the rough and ready pots that were the everyday utensils of a typical Judean household, not perfect, not particularly attractive, but serviceable, useful to hold the grain, oil, and wine to sustain life, the jug to hold water, the bowl or plate from which to eat. God sends Jeremiah to the potters to watch him at this everyday commercial task, and as Jeremiah looks on, the potter decides that his work just isn’t going according to plan . . . and so he smashes the clay and destroys the pot that he is making. He begins again.

There was, in Jeremiah’s time, a conflict or tension between what has come to be called “temple theology,” which the religious leaders of the nation, the King and the priests, believed, and a “covenant theology” taught by the prophets. Temple theology taught that Israel was God’s chosen nations so that bad things would not happen to Israel; indeed, bad things could not happen because of the protection of God guaranteed by performance of the proper rituals and sacrifices in the temple. Covenant theology, on the other hand, was an understanding that God rewards obedience and punishes disobedience, that more than ritual sacrifice was required of God’s people, that fulfillment of the whole covenant, especially its social teachings of justice and care for the poor, the widowed, the orphan, and the stranger, was required.
God says to Jeremiah, “I can do with Israel what this potter has done with his clay.” The word “potter” spoken here by God is based on the verb, yatsar, “to fashion, form.” This is the verb used in Genesis 2:7 to describe God’s creative action when God took up a piece of wet clay and molded it into Adam, the human being. It is a reminder that humankind was formed for a purpose just the way the jugs and bowls and plates of the potter are formed for a purpose and, when that purpose is unfulfilled . . . . well, you understand.

Jeremiah’s prophecy is a call for repentance which includes the unequivocal warning that there are consequences for failing to honor God’s covenant and that those consequences can be severe. The people of God need to know that God’s actions toward them are not limited to the blessings of temple theology; they include the possible consequences of covenant theology, as well. It is a call, as all true calls for repentance are, to radical transformation.

And then we have the Letter to Philemon.

This one chapter letter, the shortest piece of literature in the Christian bible, may just be the most challenging. On its face, it’s just a letter sending a slave back to his master, and therein lies the difficulty.

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, anybody could become a slave for a variety of reasons — being captured in war, becoming unable to pay your own debts, being sold in to slavery by one’s own parents faced with bankruptcy. It is estimated that as much as 40% of the populace of the Roman Empire were slaves! Slaves were the property of their masters. They could be bought and sold at discretion; they could be expelled from their master’s demesne simply for being old or sick. They were often abused. Most important for our understanding of Paul’s letter to Philemon is that a master had the right to kill a slave when he or she ran away. It is not clear that Onesimus was a run-away, but that is the accepted understanding of this letter. Paul was dealing with a potential life or death matter.

Paul’s appeal to Philemon is to accept Onesimus back because, under Paul’s tutelage, Onesimus has become a Christians, as Philemon himself has become. Paul urges the master to accept the slave as his brother in Christ. What is troubling for us is that Paul does not demand that Philemon give Onesimus his freedom. What is troubling for us is that Paul says nothing about what Onesimus might want. From Philemon’s perspective Onesimus is a slave and a useless one at that. What Onesimus actually was, we are not told. We are never told what he thinks or feels.

As Holly Hearon, Professor of New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary, in Indianapolis, Indiana, says:

The letter to Philemon challenges us to discern, in and for Christ, what is the right thing to do. It would be easy if doing the right thing was, for example, taking out the garbage, or helping an elderly person cross the street. It is another when the right thing involves a radical transformation of social relationships: of learning to see people that time and experience have led us to view one way in a completely new way. It is another thing when this radical transformation of social relationships asks us to give up what we have come to view as our rights: to willingly let go of privilege. It is another thing when this letting go of privilege leads us to assume a relationship of kinship — of obligation — with those whom we have formerly viewed with suspicion because we now recognize that we are bound together in Christ. (Working Preacher)

So, again, the theme of the reading, the demand of the reading, is radical transformation.

In his Second Letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17) In his letter to the Romans, he wrote, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Rom. 12:2a)
Radical transformation involves removing the barriers that prevent us from becoming Christ’s new creation, the things that prevent us from being renewed. Jesus told us to “hate” anything that stands in our way; simply put, that means letting go of those things. That’s easier said than done; in fact, on our own I don’t believe we can. The message of Jeremiah’s homely potter metaphor is that the One with the power to do so is not us, poor lumps of clay that we are; it is God. In Alcoholics Anonymous the first two of the Twelve Steps are:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

That is a statement of the very core of Jeremiah’s metaphor: We’re powerless; God isn’t. We do not have the power in ourselves to follow Jesus, but with God’s grace we can.

Being a follower of Jesus and living a life of radical transformation requires a commitment to allow God to continually work on transforming us, and that commitment must be full including severing every potential commitment to any other possibility. Radical transformation does not happen overnight; it takes time, it takes persistence, it takes faith. It takes a willingness to let go and an inner desire to allow the Potter to remake us into the creation God intends us to be.

And when we are transformed, when we are that new creation, we can turn to God and say with the Psalmist: “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” Amen.

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

The One Thing Needful in a Market Economy – Sermon for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11C) – July 21, 2013

July 21, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 21, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 9 (Proper 11, Year C): Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; and Luke 10:38-42. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Fruit Basket In last week’s sermon I talked about the first three prophetic visions God reveals to Amos: a plague of locusts devouring the crops of ancient Israel, a catastrophic fire destroying everything in the nation, and the plumb line set in the midst of the nation’s people demonstrating that they were not upright. This week Amos is shown a fourth prophetic vision.

The eighth chapter of this prophet opens with God showing Amos a basket of summer fruit, such things as peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, and figs. We aren’t told the condition of the fruit, but some commentators suggest that it may be fruit that is over-ripe, maybe on the verge of going bad. They suggest this because God tells Amos that this vision means that “the end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.” God’s explanation continues with visions of dead bodies in the street, wailing and lamentation in the temples, the nation destroyed, and the survivors wandering lost.

Well, it may be that the fruit is going bad, but in truth what God is doing is making a pun in Hebrew, a play on words that simply doesn’t translate into English. In Hebrew, the word for “summer fruits” is qayits; the word for “the end” is qets. The are spelled differently, but pronounced almost identically. Qayits . . . qets . . . God is making it clear that with respect to Israel, God is calling it quits! The finality of the passage is clear; Israel has no recourse.

And why has it come to this? Again, God is very clear, it’s because of economic injustice. God will punish the nation because its upper class, its wealthy merchants “trample on the needy.” They can’t wait Sabbaths and holy days to get over so they can resume their fraudulent business practices. They sell partial measures of wheat weighed on false scales that are overbalanced so that what is shown as a sheckel of wheat is far less. They measure ephahs of grain that are less than the regulation 35 liters. They “buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” That they are described as “selling the sweepings of the wheats” suggests either that they are selling chaff as if it were good grain, or that they are selling even the gleanings which are required by the Law of Moses to be left for the homeless and the beggars. In short, God is more than a little unhappy about the disparity between the wealthy merchants and the poor who must buy from them.

In our world, as in ancient Israel, the overriding organizing principle of society is the market economy, profit at the bottom line: the measure for nearly everything is profit and how it can be increased. It is a principle which works on paper, yet it is not helpful when we encounter the most pressing issues in our society. By “society” I do not mean simply our nation, I mean our entire global society, but we do see this played out in our local and national communities.

We are concerned when our local superintendent of schools seems to abuse his financial privileges because we see our education system not keeping up in a world market. We complain about the cost of salaries and benefits for those who teach our children, and yet paradoxically use the superintendent’s apparent misuse of funds as an excuse to vote against school levies or otherwise reduce school budgets, as if cutting costs will improve our children’s education.

We have all witnessed the damage done to our environment by the continuing use of fossil fuels, and there is plenty of good scientific research indicating that it has resulted in man-made global climate change that is costing billions of dollars in storm damage, and disrupting (if not ending) the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. However, when solutions are proposed, the objection is always that it may impact the profitability of business.

The truth is that profitability is the wrong measure, that the market is unable to deal with these issues. The gap between rich and poor, between haves and have-not is huge when measured in dollars-and-cents; it is even more staggering when measured in education and quality of life, and it is continuing to grow.

Are we able to hear God’s word of justice spoken to Amos as applying to us? Do we even understand how clearly it applied to the ancient Israelites? Do we even remember that what was prophesied by Amos against them did, in fact, come to pass?

God’s word was given by Amos in approximately the year 750 BCE during the reign of Jeroboam II of the Kingdom of Israel. This is not the united monarchy of Saul, David, and Solomon; this is the northern kingdom which rebelled against Solomon’s son Rehoboam in about the year 930 BCE and set up Jeroboam I as a separate monarch in the region we now know as Samaria. These rebels included the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, and Manasseh, ten of the twelve tribes. Only the tribes of Benjamin and Judah remained loyal to the House of David.

Ten tribes. Ten tribes. That ought to ring some bells; that ought to tickle something in your memory. These ten tribes are legendary, known to history as “the ten lost tribes of Israel.” Lost because less than twenty years after Amos prophesied that “dead bodies shall be cast out in every place,” it came to pass. Less than twenty years after God told them through Amos that their end would be bitter and that any survivors would “wander from sea to sea and from north to east . . . seeking the word of the Lord” and never finding it, that is exactly what happened. The Assyrian Empire invaded the northern Kingdom of Israel in 732 BCE and wiped . . . it . . . out . . .

Are we able to hear God’s word of economic justice spoken through Amos as applying to us? Not us the nation, but us the global economic society which cannot seem to divorce itself from the organizing principle of profit no matter what the issue may be, even when that organizing principle cannot address the issue. If we believe the witness of Holy Scripture, the ten lost tribes were lost, utterly destroyed, wiped from human history because God will not tolerate economic injustice!

Let’s leave that question for a moment and turn our attention to the Gospel lesson which seems at first glance to have little if any relationship to our Old Testament lesson. It is the familiar story of Jesus visiting his friends Mary and Martha of Bethany. He arrived and, like good friends and hosts, they held a dinner party. Luke does not tell us that others were present, but it would have been very much out of the ordinary for Jesus to have been alone with these women, so we can assume that others, at least their brother Lazarus, were there for the meal.

Martha, anxious for the comfort of their guest, busied herself with all the details of hospitality — setting the table, cooking, filling the glasses, bustling about will all of that sort of thing. Her sister Mary, however, did not pitch in to help. Instead, she sat with the other guests at Jesus feet, a student attentive to her teacher, listening to his words.

Martha, seeing Mary seeming not to care, became annoyed and ungracious. A word to her sister would probably have been sufficient to secure her help, but rather than do that Martha impatiently complained to Jesus: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”

Jesus answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” This text is commonly understood to contrast Mary’s attention to Jesus words — good — with Martha’s busy distraction — bad. But that’s overly simplistic and isn’t true to the spirit of Jesus teaching.

Martha has done the right thing; she has invited Jesus into her home and busied herself with the obligations of hospitality, something that Jesus values. The problem is that, as a hostess, she hasn’t been gracious; she hasn’t spent time with Jesus, her other guests, or even with her sister. She has let these tasks distract her. And worse, rather than speak with Mary directly and ask Mary directly for help, Martha did what we are all warned against; she dragged someone else into her tiff with her sister. It’s called “triangulation.” Like a school girl angry with a friend, she won’t talk directly to Mary, even when she’s in the same room: “Jesus, tell Mary (who was right there in the same room) to help me.” It’s a contentious move; it creates conflict.

It isn’t her busyness with hospitality and hosting, or her sister’s attention to his conversation, that Jesus referred to when he said, “There is need of only one thing.” Putting Mary to work at Martha’s task wasn’t what was required. It was something else. And to understand what it was, we have to step back from the gospel lesson and see this episode in context.

This visit with Mary and Martha happens immediately after Jesus has told the story we heard last week, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Remember that that story came in response to a question from a lawyer, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

In answer to that question, Jesus asked the lawyer what the Law of Moses says, to which the lawyer answered, “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. ”

Jesus told the lawyer that his answer was correct and then said, “Do this, and you will live.” The lawyer had given a two-part answer: love God — love your neighbor. But to Jesus it was not two things, but one. He did not say, “Do these.” He did not say, “Do those two thing.” He said, “Do this” — singular — one thing. Love God, love your neighbor. To Jesus, it’s one thing, one needful thing. (And, please, remember! This is not sloppy, emotional romantic love! This is Biblical love – chessed in Hebrew; agape in Greek – love which respects the dignity of human being, which promotes peace, and fosters justice.)

For Jesus, love is above and beyond all else. It takes precedence over every other consideration, every other organizing principle, every other motive. He will live by, and die because of, this one needful thing. He will stay true to this one thing even though it will mean his sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. “Through him,” writes Paul to the Colossians, and through the fullness of God, which is Love, which dwelt in him, “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Love is the one thing needful.

And that one thing is the answer to the economic injustice against which the prophet Amos railed. The answer does not and cannot lie within the context of the market economy itself. Just as taking Mary away from the conversation and putting her to work at Martha’s tasks would not really have answered Martha’s complaints and reconciled what had become the bitterness between them, simply taking money away from the rich and giving it to the poor will not correct economic injustice; it simply perpetuates it, giving the money a new owner, and making a new non-owner filled with resentment. Revolution, elevating the working proletariat above the rich merchant class, switching Mary for Martha, also is not the answer; it simply perpetuates the disparities by reversing the roles. The answer does not and cannot lie within the market economy; it must be found in a different context.

Reducing people to commodities — “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” — being eager to sell on the Sabbath, shorting measures, and cutting corners were commonplace, if not integral, to the economy of ancient Israel; they are commonplace, if not integral, to all market economies. But these practices and attitudes of markets, like Martha’s bustling busyness, lack one thing needful. They lack love — love which respects dignity, promotes peace, and fosters justice. And because they lacked love, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom became lost, utterly destroyed, wiped from the human history because God will not tolerate economic injustice!

We must come to the realization as a society, as a global economic society, that we are no different from the lost tribes of Israel. That for many aspects of our modern life — health, education, clean air and water, public safety — profitability is the wrong measure, just as it was for them. The market was and is unable to deal with these issues; it was and is the wrong context within which to solve these and many other of society’s ills. As the Psalm for today says, we must stop trusting in great wealth; we must stop relying upon wickedness; we must, instead, trust in the mercy of God. In these areas of our common life, we need to change society’s organizing principle from market economics to gospel values, from profit as the bottom line to biblical love – dignity, peace, justice – as the bottom line.

It is the one thing needful. Amen.

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

Who Is My Neighbor? And Who Is the Good Samaritan? – Sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10C) – July 14, 2013

July 14, 2013 / eric / 1 Comment

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This sermon was preached on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 14, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 8 (Proper 10, Year C): Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; and Luke 10:25-37. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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The Good Samaritan, engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld The nation’s legal system is corrupt; justice is for sale to the highest bidder. The guilty go free while the innocent suffer and die. The rich are crushing the poor. The affluent, the 1%-ers, are living a lavish life, with their costly perfumes and cosmetics, and their vacation homes with expensive furnishings, pleasure palaces where they can throw extravagant parties with music in every room. They revel in sexual debauchery of all sorts, but try to enforce a puritanical moral code on the rest of society. The poor are at the mercy of predatory lenders who exploit vulnerable families. The rich have more than enough to eat and to waste, while the poorest in the society go hungry. And government and religious leaders not only allow this to happen, they help it happen.

Just a brief summary of Chapters 1 through 6 of the Prophet Amos.

Some of you probably thought, “There he goes again, spouting his liberal politics from the pulpit.” But I’m not; as I said, it’s simply a paraphrase the Prophet Amos’s critique, of God’s critique, of ancient Israel at the time of King Jeroboam II. We just heard most of chapter 7 beginning at verse 7, in which Amos tells of the third of three prophetic visions. In verses 1 through 6, Amos tells of God showing him locusts devouring all the crops of the land and then another vision of fire destroying everything in the nation. Amos pleads with God not to let that happen. Most scholars interpret those visions as omens of what God might do to the nation, but I think perhaps they might instead be striking visions of prophetic judgment against the wealthy of ancient Israel and the rulers and religious leaders of the time. These are not visions of what God might do; they are visions of what those in power will do if not stopped. And God’s judgment spoken twice to Amos is, “This will not happen!” (vv. 3, 6)

So God shows Amos a vision of a plumb line. Do you know what a plumb line is? There’s a picture of a plumb line on the cover of the bulletin this morning. A plumb line is a string with a metal weight, or “plumb bob,” at one end which, when suspended, points directly towards the earth’s center of gravity so that the string hangs perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s surface; it is used to test the verticality of structures, how true to straight up-and-down they are. It sets the standard for up-rightness. God tells Amos that God is setting a metaphorical plumb line in the midst of God’s People and if they don’t measure up to the standard, “the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and [God] will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Well, you say, that’s ancient Israel. What’s that got to do with us?

Let me read you a news item from the past week. This is from the July 9, 2013, issue of the Florence, Alabama, Times-Daily:

Police Chief Lyndon McWhorter said Monday morning’s bank robbery [in Moulton, Alabama] was among the most unusual of his law enforcement career.

“I’ve been involved with several over the years, but none like this,” McWhorter said. “It’s one for the books.”

McWhorter said Rickie Lawrence Gardner, 49, of 7667 Alabama 33, Moulton, was arrested Monday morning while sitting on a bench outside the Bank Independent branch on Court Street in Moulton, minutes after he supposedly walked in and robbed the bank.

“When the officers got there, he was just sitting on the bench, waiting on them,” McWhorter said. “The money was locked up inside his truck, which was parked in the handicapped spot in front of the bank.

“He had a handicap sticker on his vehicle so he even parked legal.”

McWhorter said Gardner told authorities he robbed the bank because he had hurt his leg and wasn’t able to take care of himself.

“So, he decided to get arrested to have a place to live and someone to take care of him.”

Minutes before the arrest, McWhorter said, Gardner walked into the bank just off Alabama 157 and handed a teller a written note explaining that he had a gun and she was to give him money.

Authorities said no weapon, other than a pocketknife, was found when Gardner was taken into custody.

“The only thing he said to the teller was when he asked her to give him a bag to put the money in,” McWhorter said.

With the money in hand, McWhorter said Gardner walked out of the bank, laid the money inside his vehicle, locked the door and walked back to the bench. The chief said Gardner sat down on the wooden bench in front of the bank and waited on officers.

“When officers got there, he did not offer any kind of resistance. He was just waiting on them,” McWhorter said. “This is the first bank robbery I’ve ever worked where the robber was waiting outside the bank for the police to turn himself in.” (Times-Daily)

The Associated Press later reported that Gardner “mentioned the weapon in the note — even though he didn’t have one — because he thought it would get him a longer sentence;” he thought he’d get more time, which would mean more shelter, more food. (AP Story)

The reason you may have thought my opening paraphrase of Amos sounded like an indictment of our own society is simple. It does. The word of prophecy spoken by Amos to ancient Israel speaks directly to us.

You know the interesting thing about Amos’s prophecy is that we can’t even be sure it was heard by the rulers of the nation to which it was spoken. We know Amos wrote it down; we know that someone told the story of Amos delivering his prophecy to Amaziah (who was the high priest at Bethel the religious center of the northern kingdom), but we are told that Amaziah never delivered it to Jeroboam II, the reigning king.

Amaziah instead told the king that Amos was part of a conspiracy to kill him, and then Amaziah told Amos to return to his home which was in the southern kingdom. “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah,” he says, “earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” And this is where Amos speaks one of my favorite lines in Scripture, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.”

Amos’s answer was to indicate that he was not a prophet by profession; he was not a member of one of the official “prophecy schools.” Indeed, as part of the official religious establishment, Amos thought those full-time prophets were as much a part of the problem as the priests, the king, and the wealthy! Amaziah proved that he was part of the problem by failing to communicate Amos’s prophecy to King Jeroboam, so our reading today ends with Amos’s personal prophecy against him: “Your wife shall become a . . . and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword . . . and you shall die in an unclean land.” A pretty pointed prophecy, if ever there was one!

But we, who hear in Amos’s condemnation of ancient Israel at least a bit of a word of warning to our own society, what are we to make of this prophecy of the plumb line? The standard for the People of God in Israel was the ancient law of Moses, the religious, ethical, and social rules we find in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers (Deuteronomy was unknown at the time of Amos). What is it for us? How are we (as Paul wrote to the Colossians) to be “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding?” How are we to “lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him?” How are we to bear fruit in every good work and . . . grow in the knowledge of God?”

Well, that standard is easily stated. A young lawyer does so in today’s Gospel: “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.” It’s easily stated; it’s not so easily understood.

The young lawyer says as much when he asks his follow up question, “Who is my neighbor?” He wants to know what we want to know: are there limits? Is it sufficient to love only the people of my community — for him, Israel; for most of us, white descendants of Northern European immigrants? Does it include Mr. Gardner, the bank robber in Moulton, Alabama? Might it also include other undesirables, Samaritans and Gentiles, the Irish, descendants of African slaves, recently immigrated Asians, Hispanics? Does it include women, people with disabilities, lepers, and others frequently excluded from society? Do we get to define who is our neighbor, or does Someone else?

Ultimately, the answer to our question is the answer to another question: “Who does God love?” Jesus answers the question by telling a parable, the oh-so-familiar story of the “Good Samaritan.” In analyzing this story, Lutheran theologian Brian Stoffregen asks an important question: “Why does Jesus make the hero of this story a Samaritan?” In answering this question he writes:

The idea of being a “Good Samaritan” is so common in our culture, that most people today don’t realize that “Good Samaritan” would have been an oxymoron to a first century Jew. Briefly stated, a Samaritan is someone from Samaria. During an ancient Israeli war, most of the Jews living up north in Samaria were killed or taken into exile. However, a few Jews, who were so unimportant that nobody wanted them, were left in Samaria. Since that time, these Jews had intermarried with other races. They were considered half-breeds by the “true” Jews. They had perverted the race. They had also perverted the religion. They looked to Mt. Gerizim as the place to worship God, not Jerusalem. They interpreted the Torah differently than the southern Jews. The animosity between the Jews and Samaritans were so great that some Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid walking on Samaritan territory. Previously in Luke, the Samaritans had refused to welcome Jesus — the “bad” Samaritans. I’m certain that in the minds of many Jews, the only “good” Samaritan was a dead Samaritan. Note that the lawyer never says “Samaritan.” He can’t call him a “good Samaritan” (a phrase that doesn’t occur in the text). Anyway, we are still left with the question, “Why a Samaritan?”

If Jesus were just trying to communicate that we should do acts of mercy to the needy, he could have talked about the first man and the second man who passed by and the third one who stopped and cared for the half-dead man in the ditch. Knowing that they were a priest, Levite, and Samaritan is not necessary.

If Jesus were also making a gibe against clerics, we would expect the third man to be a layman — an ordinary Jew — in contrast to the professional clergy. It is likely that Jewish hearers would have anticipated the hero to be an ordinary Jew.

If Jesus were illustrating the need to love our enemies, then the man in the ditch would have been a Samaritan who is cared for by a loving Israelite.

One answer to the question: “Why a Samaritan?” is that we Christians might be able to learn about showing mercy from people who don’t profess Christ. I know that I saw much more love expressed towards each by the clients at an inpatient alcoholic/drug rehab hospital than I usually find in churches. Can we learn about “acting Christianly” from AA or the Hell’s Angels? (CrossMarks)

But Stoffregen proposes an alternative response: “Another answer to the question: ‘Why a Samaritan?’ is that we are not to identify with the Samaritan. A Jew would find that so distasteful that he couldn’t identify with that person. He wouldn’t want to be like the Priest or Levite in the story, so that leaves the hearer with identifying with the man in the ditch.” And that raises the further question, “Then who is the Samaritan?” to which there can only be one answer, “The Samaritan is God.”

If the Samaritan represents God, that means that God loves the penniless, the stripped naked, the beaten down, the ones left half dead, the ones passed-by by the leaders of society, by the rulers, by the punctiliously correct, and (I’m sorry to say) by the religious. It makes us realize that God is no respecter of position or wealth, God does not care about social class or religion. The man in the ditch had been stripped of everything that might have indicated his social standing, his religious faith, even his nationality; he was simply a person in need. That is who God loves, and that means that God loves everyone. In the human community, every person is potentially a person in need; truth be told, every person is a person in need.

Who is my neighbor? Who does God love? Everyone. No exceptions. No exclusions. That is the standard, the rule, the plumb line by which God judges society. This again and again is what the prophets of old told us; it is what Jesus told us; it is what our own modern prophets have said over and over. For example:

In the 18th Century, Dr. Samuel Johnson’s biographer James Boswell quoted him as saying, “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.” (Boswell, Life of Johnson)

In her book My Several Worlds (1954), Pearl S. Buck, wrote: “The test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

In his last political speech, Sen. Hubert Humphrey said, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

And Mahatma Gandhi said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”

Who is my neighbor? Who does God love? Everyone. No exceptions. No exclusions.

Every person is potentially a person in need, and every person is potentially a caregiver, a supplier of that which is needed. When we conclude our worship this morning, several young people and a few adults accompanying them will depart for Franklin, Pennsylvania, to be suppliers of that which is needed. At this point, they don’t know whose needs they are going to be supplying; they don’t know what those needs will be. All they know is that there are people in need and they are going to care for them, because they are our neighbors.

So at this point, let’s get on with the business of commissioning them for the ministry on which they are about the embark.

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

Honor Upon the Lawgiver – From the Daily Office – July 4, 2013

July 4, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Sirach:

A wise magistrate educates his people,
and the rule of an intelligent person is well ordered.
As the people’s judge is, so are his officials;
as the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants.
An undisciplined king ruins his people,
but a city becomes fit to live in through the understanding of its rulers.
The government of the earth is in the hand of the Lord,
and over it he will raise up the right leader for the time.
Human success is in the hand of the Lord,
and it is he who confers honor upon the lawgiver.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 10:1-5 (NRSV) – July 4, 2013.)

Independence Day is one of the few secular holidays to have lessons of its own in both the Eucharistic and Daily Office Lectionaries of the Episcopal Church. There is a set of lessons in the regular Daily Office schedule of readings for today, as well, and I am intrigued that the way the calendar falls this year the Gospel for that set is the unjust trial of Jesus. One could meditate for hours on the meaning to be drawn from that juxtaposition.

However, the reading from the apocryphal book The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach (a book also called “Ecclesiasticus”) has caught my attention because of a recent (and unfortunately repeated) incident at my church. The lines of particular import are: “As the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants;” and “It is [God] who confers honor upon the lawgiver.”

In every form of the Prayers of the People in the American Book of Common Prayer (1979) there is a petition included for our civil leaders. According to the rubric in the service of Holy Communion (page 359 of the BCP), we are bidden to pray for “the Nation and all in authority.” At my church, we do so by name, listing our president, state governor, and city mayor, and conclude with a general petition for other elected legislators, judges, and executive department officials.

At my church, as well, we share leadership of the prayers. A single person reads the major biddings of the various forms, but additional petitions are read by members of the congregation. As worshipers arrive, our ushers and greeters ask if they would like to read a sentence or two of additional intercessions. Most readily agree.

However, from time to time someone will decline to do so and occasionally someone will specifically (and sometimes venomously) refuse to read the petition naming the president. This has only happened since the election of the current incumbent. My heart sinks when I hear these refusals or when I am told about them later. It’s an indication of how poorly I have taught the Christian ethos to this congregation.

“As the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants.” If Jesus ben Sirach is correct, then we should very definitely be praying for our rulers and leaders, for they set the example and the tone for the entire populace. And yet people decline to do so . . . .

My parish is dedicated to St. Paul, the writer of most of the New Testament, and Paul was very clear on the duty Christian folk have with respect to secular authorities and civic leaders. He wrote to the young bishop, Titus of Crete, instructing him to teach his congregation to respect civil rulers:

Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:1-5)

He wrote to the Romans in a similar vein:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. (Romans 13:1-6)

And with regard to praying for our secular leadership, he was very clear in his instructions to another young bishop, Timothy of Ephesus:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

I quite understand disliking secular authorities; I don’t understand disliking one so much that we refuse to follow the clear mandate of Holy Scripture and the tradition of our church! Anyone who has ever had even the shortest political conversation with me knows that, in my opinion, George W. Bush was the worst president in U.S. history. Nonetheless, every day of his eight years in office I prayed for him by name, twice a day. (I even pray for the vice-president by name and during those years that was an even more difficult thing to do!) I prayed for Bill Clinton even though his sexual pecadillo with Monica Lewinsky was more than a little off-putting. I pray for Barack Obama even though I am very disappointed with many aspects of his performance as president.

The point is that my prayers have nothing to do with my personal dislike or approval of any of these politicians. My prayers have nothing to do with them at all! My prayers have everything to do with me and my discipline as a follower of Jesus Christ. I am pretty sure that Jesus had some personal problem with the political authorities of his day, with Caiaphas the High Priest, with Herod the Tetrarch, with Pilate the Roman governor, and yet he prayed for them: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) As a disciple of Christ, I can do no less than to pray for the civil authorities in power over me!

“As the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants.” If Jesus ben Sirach is correct, and I think he is, our prayer for our leaders is a prayer for ourselves. Any prayer is, in truth, a prayer for ourselves. We do not pray to bring to God’s attention something God has overlooked, nor do we pray to change God’s mind about something, to get God to do what we want. We pray to conform our wills to God’s Will; we pray that we might have what Paul called “the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. 2:16) We pray that we might be like him who, on the cross, prayed for the civil authorities who hung him there.

On this day especially, let us pray for the Nation and all in authority; let us pray for them by name! For “human success is in the hand of the Lord, and it is he who confers honor upon the lawgiver.”

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

Leopards Changing Spots – From the Daily Office – July 1, 2013

July 1, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Acts:

They dragged [Stephen] out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 7:58 (NRSV) – July 1, 2013.)

Leopard This is the first appearance in the Christian story of the man who will become the early church’s greatest evangelist and the author of most of the New Testament. We are told that as he witnessed the martyrdom of the first deacon, “Saul approved of their killing him.” (Acts 8:1)

Saul would take the Gentile form of his name, Paul, when baptized and under that name would spread the Christian faith among non-Jews. One assumes that, from time to time, he might have told the story of witnessing Stephen being killed – it would make a powerful sermon illustration, don’t you think? He obviously told it to someone because eventually it got to Luke, who included it in his little history of the church.

This story of a public execution brought to mind a conversation I had with a parishioner just a few days ago. Texas recently executed its 500th death-penalty convict since resuming executions in 1980s; that news led us into a discussion of the death penalty. I am opposed to the death penalty on several grounds; my parishioner favors it. In the course of our conversation he put forth the argument that execution rids society of criminals who will kill again. He’s convinced that killers don’t change: “The leopard never changes his spots,” he said.

He certainly has the Bible (or at least the the Old Testament on his side. This old shibboleth comes from word of God spoken through the prophet Jeremiah! Lamenting the sinfulness of God’s People, the Lord asks: “Can Ethiopians change their skin or leopards their spots?”(Jer. 13:23, NRSV). Of course, the message of the prophet would suggest that the answer to that question is “Yes” else why call the people to repentance? And therein lies the theological and ethical issue I have with the death penalty. (I have legal, economic, and practical issues with it, as well.)

The death penalty denies the power of God in Christ to redeem, restore, and transform human existence. It precludes any possibility of repentance and amendment of life. When the capital punishment is imposed, the life of the convicted person is devalued and all possibility of change is ended. When the government undertakes capital punishment on behalf of the people (on my behalf), the people are implicated in that judgment and we are made to share in an ethic we may not accept (one which I do not accept). An ethic which says, as my congregant put it, that “leopards cannot change their spots.”

But that is not the Christian ethic (nor is it the ethic of the Old Testament in which that image is first spoken). The Christian ethic says that repentance is always possible. It is, in a very real sense, the whole message of Christ: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2) The leopard can change its spots and the Christian hope is always that it will.

After all, Saul – who held the cloaks of the executioners and approved their killing of Stephen – changed his!

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

The Duties of the Priests – From the Daily Office – June 19, 2013

June 19, 2013 / eric / 4 Comments

From the First Book of Samuel:

Now the sons of Eli were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord or for the duties of the priests to the people.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Samuel 2:12-13a (NRSV) – June 19, 2013.)

High Priest Offering Sacrifice of a Goat “. . . the duties of the priests to the people . . . ”

Canon 9 of Title III of the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church is entitled “Of the Life and Work of Priests.” It is ten and a half pages long; several of its paragraphs begin with the words, “It shall be the duty . . . .”

The Catechism in The Book of Common Prayer teaches:

The ministry of a priest is to represent Christ and his Church, particularly as pastor to the people; to share with the bishop in the overseeing of the Church; to proclaim the Gospel; to administer the sacraments; and to bless and declare pardon in the name of God.

In the service of ordination of a priest, the candidate for ordination is asked early in the liturgy:

Will you be loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them? And will you, in accordance with the canons of this Church, obey your bishop and other ministers who may have authority over you and your work?

Later in the service, the bishop addresses the ordinand with these words:

As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you.

In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.

The ordinand is then asked eight more questions requiring him or her to promise to faithfully carry out specific ministries or to order his or her life in a particular way.

When the bishop and other presbyters lay hands upon the ordinand, the bishop prays:

Father, through Jesus Christ your Son, give your Holy Spirit to N.; fill him with grace and power, and make him a priest in your Church. May he exalt you, O Lord, in the midst of your people; offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to you; boldly proclaim the gospel of salvation; and rightly administer the sacraments of the New Covenant. Make him a faithful pastor, a patient teacher, and a wise councilor. Grant that in all things he may serve without reproach, so that your people may be strengthened and your Name glorified in all the world. All this we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. [The pronouns are changed when the ordinand is a woman.]

When a priest accepts the call to be rector of a parish, he or she kneels in the center of the church’s worship space in the midst of the people and prays:

O Lord my God, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; yet you have called your servant to stand in your house, and to serve at your altar. To you and to your service I devote myself, body, soul, and spirit. Fill my memory with the record of your mighty works; enlighten my understanding with the light of your Holy Spirit; and may all the desires of my heart and will center in what you would have me do. Make me an instrument of your salvation for the people entrusted to my care, and grant that I may faithfully administer your holy Sacraments, and by my life and teaching set forth your true and living Word. Be always with me in carrying out the duties of my ministry. In prayer, quicken my devotion; in praises, heighten my love and gratitude; in preaching, give me readiness of thought and expression; and grant that, by the clearness and brightness of your holy Word, all the world may be drawn into your blessed kingdom. All this I ask for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“. . . the duties of the priests to the people . . . ”

I was a law office administrator and later a lawyer. I was an active member of the church. I served on the diocesan council, the commission on ministry, the camp and conference center board, and several other committees, commissions, and task forces. I even became the diocesan chancellor (the chief legal office of a diocese). From time to time my bishop (first Wes Frensdorff and then Stewart Zabriskie, both now departed) would say something like, “Why don’t we get you ordained?” or “When are you going to go to seminary?” or some other encouragement to take on the life and work of a priest, to bear the burden of “the duties of the priests to the people.” I would answer in protest, “I’m happy being a layman.”

Until one day, I couldn’t protest any longer. A friend who wanted to be a priest (he was a gas company engineer) but couldn’t afford the cost of changing careers died. He was only 45. At his funeral, I said to my wife, “I can’t do this anymore.” I started into the ordination process.

“. . . the duties of the priests to the people . . . ”

I didn’t want them. They can be onerous and burdensome. I don’t know how many of the duties of an Episcopal priest were also the duties of the priests of God at Shiloh. I know they had some duties that I’m very thankful we don’t have, like sacrificing animals. But I’ll bet the sons of Eli didn’t want them. The Law and the traditional inheritance of their tribe required that they do them, but I’ll bet they really didn’t want to, and that’s why they became “scoundrels.”

No one who does not feel that he or she cannot do anything else should take on “the duties of the priests to the people.” Maybe we ask the wrong questions at ordination. The really important question is “Can you do anything else?” because if you can, we shouldn’t be ordaining you. Our ordination screening process, the “discernment process” is (I guess) supposed to answer that question, although I’m not sure it does. But that is the most important question. Unless you simply cannot not be a priest, don’t be one.

“. . . the duties of the priests to the people . . . ”

They are often onerous and burdensome. I didn’t want them. In many ways, I still don’t want them. But I cannot not be a priest.

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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.

Justice Begins At Home – From the Daily Office – June 6, 2013

June 6, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Deuteronomy:

You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes, in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall render just decisions for the people. You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Deuteronomy 16:18-20 (NRSV) – June 6, 2013.)

Hands Through Prison Bars Justice. When I was initiated into the “free and accepted” fraternity of Masons, I was taught that justice is “that standard or boundary of right which enables us to render to every man [sic] his just due without distinction.” Justice, I was told, “is not only consistent with divine and human laws, but is the very cement and support of civil society.” Furthermore, my instructor continued, justice in large measure “constitutes the really good man, so should it be the invariable practice of every Mason never to deviate from the minutest principal thereof.”

As a child in Sunday School, I learned that justice is a quality of the kingdom of Heaven made real in the church’s practice of acceptance and equality. But that really wasn’t true in the church of the early 1950s – not everyone was accepted and not everyone was equal. In fact, I don’t think I would be too far off the mark to say that the Christian church then and now has done a pretty lousy job of teaching, by word and example, what justice, on an individual and personal basis, is. The Masons’ initiatory instruction probably does a better job of personalizing the idea of justice than does any teaching of the church.

We’re pretty good at teaching about “social justice” and addressing justice as a global goal. There are several books and websites where one can read something similar to this (copied from a popular church website):

It is central to the Christian faith that God desires a world in which justice is done. However, the past hundred years have revealed the scale of injustice in the world to be greater than anyone had previously imagined. Global forces that are deeply unfair determine the destiny of the world’s poorest people and cause damage to the planet’s environment. War and suffering follow. This has led to a planet on which, every eight seconds, a child in the developing world dies from diarrhea because his or her community has dirty water. When seen through God’s eyes, this and many similar issues are an outrage.

Striving for justice and working for peace, particularly for the world’s poorest people, are at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The good news he came to announce was that suffering and oppression could be brought to an end. Christians believe that their faith should lead them to be the people who help bring that about.

The challenge Christians face is to have a personal way of life that does not add to the world’s problems. This means adopting a simple lifestyle in which the world’s resources are not wasted, buying goods that have been fairly traded, and changing habits that damage the environment. In the richer parts of the world many of them support and give money to organizations that are seeking to improve the conditions of the world’s poorest people, to end conflicts, and to preserve the planet.

I have no real quibble with what this says about justice on a global scale. My concern is, “What do we do about justice in our personal lives and in our most intimate local communities, our parish churches?”

This became an issue in my parish when a church member was arrested, and the fact of the arrest and the nature of the charges were splashed across the front page of the local newspaper’s Friday morning edition. The details are unimportant; what is important is how the rest of the church will deal with this parishioner and other members of the family.

On reading the newspaper, I contacted the family; on Saturday, I visited the arrestee at the county jail. I assured them all of my prayers. But then, in the privacy of my study, I began to wonder, “Should I say anything about the situation in church? Should I rework my sermon for Sunday?” At our early service, I said nothing; but just before our principal service, because of something I was asked by another member, I knew I had to address the issue. Our practice is to make announcements before beginning our worship, so when those were concluded, I said something along these lines:

You may have read Friday’s paper or have learned otherwise that a member of this congregation has been arrested and jailed. None of us know the details, so none of us really has anything to say. What I would ask is that we not speculate, not gossip, not spread rumors, and not judge. Instead, let us keep our fellow member and the family in our prayers, and allow the justice system to do its job. Let’s remember that as Americans we are bidden to treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty, and as Christians we are bidden to forgive even the guilty.

Was that enough? I asked some colleagues; I asked friends on Facebook: “Do you know of resources to help a pastor lead a congregation through dealing with the rather public and embarrassing arrest of a parish member?”

Pretty much deafening silence followed . . . .

I searched the internet.

Pretty much nothing there . . . .

I did learn that there is something called Prison Ministry Awareness Sunday among North American Orthodox Christians. This year, an encyclical from the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops sets the observation on June 9 and calls on members of Orthodox faith communities to participate in the church’s ministry to those who are in prison, and to support and encourage “those who bring the Gospel of hope and salvation to the incarcerated.” Their letter begins with these words:

We greet you in the surpassing joy of the Risen Christ. By the grace of God, we are blessed to observe the Sixth Sunday of Pascha, which this year falls on June 9, as Prison Ministry Awareness Sunday. We embrace the diakonia of prison ministry in keeping with the example of our Risen Lord Jesus Christ, the Great Physician of our souls, who did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; who ate in the houses of thieves and forgave the sins of harlots; and who said that, when we visit those in prison, we are in truth visiting Him, the Lord of Glory. (Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry, emphasis in original.)

I believe the Orthodox bishops are on to something. How we handle the arrest and incarceration of a parishioner should be informed by Jesus’ description of the Last Judgment in the 25th chapter of Matthew. When he says, “I was in prison and you visited me” by visiting “one of the least of these who are members of my family,” we should hear his words as addressing the full experience of arrest, arraignment, trial, and sentence. As anyone goes through that process, we should see that person as bearing Jesus’ identity, and however we relate to that person and his or her family will reveal how we relate to Christ. This is especially true of those who are our brothers or sisters in the local Christian community.

Concern for global social justice is well and good, and it certainly has and deserves a place in the teachings and practice of the church. But in light of our parish experience, I believe that, like charity, justice begins at home. How we treat one another in these difficult circumstances in the intimate setting of our parish communities is foundational of our efforts to promote justice in the wider sense.

I’m troubled that there seem to be so few resources available to clergy and church members providing guidance in these circumstances. The Sentencing Project reports that “the United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails — a 500% increase over the past thirty years.” Surely this is something that will increasingly occur in our parishes. We need to address it.

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

Entering the Kingdom by Force? – From the Daily Office – May 31, 2013

May 31, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Luke:

[Jesus said,] “The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone tries to enter it by force.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 16:16 (NRSV) – May 31, 2013.)

Medieval Battering Ram The 16th chapter of Luke’s Gospel keeps pulling me up short with these weird little “What did Jesus mean by that” moments. There’s that “dishonest wealth” comment and now this one about entering the kingdom of God by force . . . .

There are alternative translations, but they aren’t much help in making sense of this. The Douay-Rheims translation, for example, is “The law and the prophets were until John. From that time the kingdom of God is preached: and every one useth violence towards it.” The notes to the New Revised Standard translation (quoted above) suggest this alternative which is truly different, “The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone is strongly urged to enter it.” That does make more sense, but it’s not a generally accepted rendering of the Greek, so we really do have to read this as “everyone tries to enter it by force.” What can we make of that?

Not quite a generation and a half or so ago (a “generation” is something like 30 years they tell me) I was a college drop-out working as an orderly in a small Southern California hospital. Nearby was one of the earliest start-up nondenominational conservative evangelical churches that eventually became a mega-church and is now the mother church of what might be called a “denomination.” A young member of that church was injured very seriously in an automobile accident and was brought to the hospital where I worked. Brain damaged and nearly dead he was put on life support. He was in our facility about three weeks before being transferred to a long-term care facility. During those 21 or so days, there was never a time during which members of the congregation were not present with him. 24 hours a day for three weeks at least a half-dozen church members were in his room praying. They told us they were “storming the gates of heaven” with intense, incessant prayer. (I have no idea if their intercession was effective. In general, I believe in the efficacy of intercessory prayer, but that is not to say that I expect God to work miracles in cases such as that boy’s horrendous injuries. I know that his condition had not changed when he was transported from that hospital to a long-term care facility, and I heard through the grapevine several months later that he was still there, so my suspicion is that his condition never improved.)

When I read of entering the kingdom of God “by force” I think of those folks “storming the gates of Heaven.” And I truly wonder, negatively, if that’s what Jesus ever had in mind in this or any other of his parables, proverbs, actions, or commandments — the two parables about incessant prayer come immediately to mind (the neighbor who gets out of bed to answer the door and the unjust judge who finally responds to the widow’s complaint) but even with those, I don’t believe Jesus ever meant that that is the proper attitude of intercessory prayer. Storming the gates of Heaven just seems some how wrong, as does entering the kingdom of God by force. I have this mental image of folks breaking down the Pearly Gates with a medieval battering ram — just not a great picture of prayer in my opinion.

Nonetheless, it seems to me that this is a prevailing attitude in some religious and political circles, and that it takes the form of “say something loud enough and often enough in enough venues and you’ll get your way” whether one is petitioning the Almighty or stating a partisan position.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebration on the church calendar since the mid-13th Century when the Franciscans began observing it. It commemorates the visit Mary made to her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, and if it celebrates anything, it celebrates their joy in being pregnant. As is my custom on feast days, I read various devotional texts dealing with the feast this morning, including some on the internet. After reading one of those, I skimmed the comments of other readers. I found in one the assertion that this ancient feast of the church is “the most important church holiday for pro-life forces.”

Now on this issue of abortion and its regulation, I am (I guess) in the politically liberal camp. I believe that abortion should be legal, regulated, and safe. I am also in the theologically conservative camp. If asked as a priest for my guidance and counsel on whether a woman should get an abortion, my advice is nearly always going to be “No.” But in the end it is not my decision. It is the woman’s and her physician’s and no one else’s. Years ago an older colleague and I took part in a discussion panel presentation about legal abortion. In answer to some participant’s question, he said words I’ve never forgotten: “I would rather counsel a woman who’s had a safe, legal abortion than bury one who’s had an illegal abortion. And I’ve done both.” Because of our current laws, I’ve not had to do the latter and I hope I never do!)

That said, I must admit that I am just tired of the way the so-called “pro life” advocates turn every (and I do mean every conversation into an abortion debate. They truly are “storming the gates” on this issue. Frankly, it is tedious and irritating; it does not further their cause; it is counterproductive. Like them, I would like to see the number of abortions reduced, but their way is not going to do that. Good sex education in the public schools, readily available contraception, parenthood training, and better moral education in churches and homes . . . those stand a much better chance than this constantly entering into the issue by force!

And their point is especially misplaced on this holy feast day! One of the most important theological aspects of Mary’s pregnancy, which this feast celebrates, is her choice! Nothing could have happened if she had not said, “Be it to me according to your word.” Her conception and pregnancy were not forced upon her; she chose them. One of my favorite paintings of the Annunciation is this one by Sando Botticelli in which Gabriel seems almost fearful that Mary will say “No” and Mary seems almost on the verge of doing so! If the feasts of the Blessed Virgin are about anything, they are about choice! This is not a “pro-life” holiday! And no amount of polemic, or prayer, will make it so. It really isn’t necessary to push the anti-abortion agenda, or any political or religious point of view, at every opportunity in every venue.

Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Sandro Botticelli

So what are we to make of Jesus’ statement that “everyone tries to enter the kingdom of God by force?” I think it is a condemnation of the sort of prayer and the sort of politics that storms the gates of Heaven (or of public opinion) with incessant, tiresome, counterproductive petition or polemic. After uttering these words, he reminded his listeners that “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.” Elsewhere he had summarized the law: “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.”

The law of love trumps force any day. Loving will accomplish more than storming!

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

Category: Law (Page 10 of 13)

Radical Transformation — Sermon for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18C — September 8, 2013

The One Thing Needful in a Market Economy – Sermon for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11C) – July 21, 2013

Who Is My Neighbor? And Who Is the Good Samaritan? – Sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10C) – July 14, 2013

Honor Upon the Lawgiver – From the Daily Office – July 4, 2013

Leopards Changing Spots – From the Daily Office – July 1, 2013

The Duties of the Priests – From the Daily Office – June 19, 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

Justice Begins At Home – From the Daily Office – June 6, 2013

Entering the Kingdom by Force? – From the Daily Office – May 31, 2013

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