That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Law (Page 11 of 13)

Economic Excrement, Financial Feces – From the Daily Office – May 13, 2013

May 13, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Ezekiel:

[God said to Ezekiel] “You shall eat it as a barley-cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Ezekiel 4:12 (NRSV) – May 13, 2013.)

Dung FireToday’s Old Testament reading is a disturbing piece in which the Prophet Ezekiel is instructed to lie down for several days (in fact, for more than a year) as a sign of the number of years Israel and then Judah will be punished.

While lying down, he is to make grain cakes from specific measures of spelt, millet, wheat, barley, lentils, and beans, and he is to drink specific measures of water each day. This is to symbolize that during their punishments, the Israelites and the Judeans will lack bread and water; they will experience poverty and deprivation, and “look at one another in dismay, and waste away under their punishment.” (v. 17)

The selected verse is from God’s instructions to Ezekiel on how he is to prepare and bake his grain cakes, representative of the way in which the soon-to-be-exiled People of God will have to cook their food during their banishment.

The very thought of cooking with excrement must have been shocking to Ezekiel who objected and was given leave to use cow dung rather than human excreta. It would have been shocking in the extreme to people whose God had commanded them to cover their bodily wastes immediately after defecation because the very sight of it was offensive to God:

You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go. With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement. Because the Lord your God travels along with your camp, to save you and to hand over your enemies to you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

The “designated area outside the camp,” though initially commanded as the latrine, was where everything unclean was to be disposed: the offal of sacrificed animals, warriors’ garments soiled with the blood the enemy, the stones of houses in which plague has been found, and the idols and altars of other nations are all commanded in the Law to be taken there. Persons deemed unclean because of leprosy, menstruation, issue of semen, or slaughter of animals were sent outside the camp. The “designated area outside the camp” was a place of defilement, uncleanness, impurity, corruption, dirtiness, filthiness, pollution, contamination, condemnation, punishment, rejection, castigation, and reproach. It is where disease, dung, and death were. To cook one’s food over excrement wasn’t simply distasteful, it was to imbue one’s nourishment with everything foul and unholy from the “designated area.” The smoke from a cooking fire of whatever fuel flavors anything cooked upon it; the smoke from a fire of human feces would pollute everything cooked over it.

In modern kitchens where we cook on electric burners or over clean natural gas flames, we no longer appreciate how the cooking fuel affects the flavor of the food. Many years ago, the summer of 1969 to be exact, I went to study in Florence, Italy. Upon arrival, I discovered that my pensione (boarding house) would not have a room for me until the next day. So, I checked into a small bed-and-breakfast hotel where I was offered an evening meal of chicken cacciatore. Having no other plans, I accepted. Unfortunately, the hotel kitchen used a kerosene stove. Chicken cacciatore cooked over kerosene is inedible; so too (I discovered the next morning) is coffee.

On the other hand, several years later, I had occasion to rent a cottage near the River Shannon in Ireland. It was heated by a peat stove and on that stove I could also boil water for my breakfast tea. Although I prefer coffee, one does want to be traditional occasionally when living in a 200-year-old, turf-fire-heated Irish farm cottage. My tea tasted of peat, which was an odd flavor, but not an inedible one (like kerosene). By the end of my month there everything I owned – my luggage, my books, all my clothing – smelled of peat. A couple of weeks later, touring a whisky distillery on the Isle of Skye, I discovered that good Scotch whisky (the malt for which is toasted over open peat fires) reminds me of my Irish cottage and, especially, of my morning tea.

I cannot imagine what food cooked over human feces might taste like, and I certainly do not want to find out! Apparently I’m not alone: a couple of years ago, a Japanese scientist perfected a method of making a vegan meat substitute using proteins extracted from human waste. Of over 12,500 who responded to an internet survey, 76% said there was no way they would even try the substance and another 11% said they were unsure whether they would. We can be very sure that the Israelites and the Judeans would not have wanted to; even the thought (or the threat) of eating food cooked over excrement was a religious affront to them.

However it might have tasted, the prophetic meaning is clear: food cooked over human feces is a symbol of abject poverty and want. It is a symbol of something unclean and contaminated to be avoided, not only for ourselves but for everyone. Poverty and deprivation are an abomination; any system which creates them should be viewed as corrupt and filthy, as economic excrement, as financial feces. It does not matter what name we may give such systems — capitalist or communist, socialist or fascist — if the success of the financial institutions created by those systems depends upon human beings being made destitute, those institutions and the system which creates them should be relegated to the “designated area outside the camp.” Like the smoke from a cooking fire of human dung, they pollute everything they touch. They are, simply put, shit not fit for human society.

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

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

One of Those Weeks (Salvation Belongs to Our God) – Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter – April 21, 2013

April 21, 2013 / / 3 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Fourth Sunday of Easter: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; and John 10:22-30. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Etching of the Heavenly Throne RoomIt’s Good Shepherd Sunday . . . the Fourth Sunday of the Easter Season is always Good Shepherd Sunday. Every year, regardless of which of the three years of the Lectionary cycle we are in, we hear some lessons which mention shepherds or lambs, and we recite the 23rd Psalm as the Gradual, and we sing every “Shepherd hymn” in the hymnal. I’ve been preaching Good Shepherd sermons for 25 years, so I pretty much thought this was going to be one of those Sundays when I could just “wing it” and preach extemporaneously.

But it’s not. The events of the past week have made this a Good Shepherd Sunday unlike any that has come before. This Good Shepherd Sunday, as I read the words of the 23rd Psalm, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil,” (Ps. 23:4) I cannot help but be aware of all those who, unknowingly, were in that very place on Monday afternoon; I cannot help but think of Boylston Street, Boston, as “the valley of the shadow of death.”

Today’s Gospel lesson is John the Evangelist’s story of an event that happened before Jesus’ crucifixion, something that happened as he was teaching in the Jerusalem Temple. “The Jews,” which is John’s way of naming the temple authorities (the priests and scribes) gathered around Jesus and put him on the spot. “Are you the Messiah?” they ask, “Tell us plainly.”

Jesus’ answer is to say that he has said as much and that it is plain to those who are his sheep, because his sheep understand what he says: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27) They hear what I say; they understand my words; and they do what I tell them.

Well, maybe . . . .

Let’s be honest. Understanding Jesus and doing what he says aren’t always very easy. For example, St. Luke tells us that Jesus said, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:36-37) And St. Matthew tells us that he commanded, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matt. 5:44) I know what those words mean, but when it comes to the events of this week, they are not easy to obey.

But . . . OK . . . let’s give it a try. Our prayer book heritage gives us words to pray when we cannot think of the words ourselves, so let’s give this praying for those who hurt us a try using some of those prayers:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer 1979, page 816)

Into your hands, O Lord, we commend Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as into the hands of a faithful Creator and most merciful Savior, praying that he may be redeemed in your sight. Wash him, we pray, in the blood of that immaculate Lamb who was slain to take away the sins of the world; that, whatever defilements he may have contracted in the midst of this earthly life being purged and done away, he may be presented before you pure and without spot; through the merits of Jesus Christ your only Son our Lord. Amen. (Adapted from the BCP 1979, page 488)

O God, whose mercy is everlasting and whose power is infinite; Look down with pity and compassion upon Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and whether you visit him to test his fortitude or to punish his offences, enable him with your grace to submit himself willingly to your holy will and to your judgment. O Lord, go not far from him or any person whom you have laid in a place of darkness; and seeing that you have not cut him off suddenly, chasten him as a father and grant that he, duly considering your great mercies, may genuinely turn to you with true repentance and sincerity of heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Adapted from the Book of Common Prayer of 1789, A Form of Prayer for the Visitation of Prisoners.)

This is what our Shepherd requires of us, that we pray for the repose of the soul of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and for the salvation Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, even though we find it very difficult to do.

When I was still practicing law, I had occasion to defend a dentist whose hobby was sculpting. One of the pieces he showed me was a very nicely done, and in most respects very traditional, Crucifix. What was nontraditional about it was the expression on Jesus’ face; it was contorted in obvious and quite extreme rage.

I asked him about that saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Christ depicted in that way, and I can’t say that I’ve ever conceived of this reading any of the Gospels’ crucifixion stories.” He answered by asking me, “You know in the Gospel according to Luke when Jesus says, ‘Father, forgive them . . . . ?’ I’ve always heard that as angry, as Jesus saying to God the Father, ‘You forgive them because, right now, I can’t.'”

If you, like me, are having some difficulty in praying for those two boys, let these prayers be offered in that same spirit. We pray for God to take them, for God to forgive them, because right now, we can’t. We know exactly what Jesus meant but right now, we can’t do it. So we ask our Shepherd to do it for us. Because, as the multitude witnessed by St. John of Patmos cried so clearly, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:10)

That’s one of the Good News lessons for today, for this week, I think. Jesus asks us to pray for and forgive those who do us wrong, but if we can’t, he can do it for us. We don’t need the fancy words of prayers out of the prayer book tradition. We just need Jesus’ own words, his words on the cross, “Father, forgive them.” That’s really all we need to say, “Father, forgive them.” Because even if we can’t, he can.

I think the other Good News lesson for this week is in something else Jesus says in today’s Gospel lesson: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Yesterday, I was at a diocesan leadership conference and, as you might expect, during the break times, our conversations centered around the events of the week.

A colleague commented at a diocesan meeting this morning, “It’s been one of those weeks.” My first thought was, “One of what weeks? There aren’t very many weeks like this!” The more I thought about it, however, I think maybe every week is like this. Every week people die. It’s an uncomfortable reality, but it’s true. Every week people die. It’s nothing to fear, however. I remember hearing a bishop (it may have been Desmond Tutu) say that being a Christian means (among other things) accepting the fact that you have already died. Certainly that is the witness of scripture: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:3-4) And, again, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:2-3) And, again, “The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” (2 Tim. 2:11) The very meaning of the Easter Season which we continue to celebrate is that death has been conquered, and that to God’s faithful people “life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.” (BCP 1979, page 382)

And every week people do awful things to other people. Sometimes those things are hugely catastrophic for many people, like the bombs at the marathon finish line. Sometimes those things go unseen by nearly everyone except the one injured, like the bullying that has led so many teens to commit suicide. Such things, awful things happen all the time. But . . . “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.” (Isaiah 40:28-29) And, again, “The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.” (Psalm 145:14) And, again, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Philip. 4:13) The very meaning of the Easter Season which we continue to celebrate is that the power of God overcomes anything, any-awful-thing, the evildoers of this world can throw at us.

Not very long after the bombs exploded in Boston, comedian Patton Oswalt posted a reflection on his Facebook page in which he said:

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem — one human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in a while, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evildoers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

I think that is the reality to which Scripture testifies; I think that is the triumph of Easter — that the good will always outnumber the evil. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

So I guess my colleague was right. It’s been one of those weeks . . . a week when life was changed for some, a week in which the Presence of God helped people get through some really awful stuff, a week when the good outnumbered the bad. It’s been one of those weeks. Every week is. Thanks be to God!

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

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

The Lesson of Bombings – From the Daily Office – April 19, 2013

April 19, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Second Letter of John:

Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching; for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of such a person.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 2 John 9-11 (NRSV) – April 19, 2013.)

No Man Is an IslandReading this on a morning when parts of Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, are “locked down,” when the entire city of Boston and its environs are under a “shelter in place” order as police engage in a massive manhunt for one of the two suspected perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing (the other having been killed already) is a bit strange.

“Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes to you” is exactly what the authorities are telling people. Of course, they are doing so for safety’s sake not because of some religious or philosophical concern for approving or participating in evil.

Nonetheless, this is precisely the problem that the incidents of this week present to each of us. How do we, by our “welcome” or by our silence, participate in the evil deeds that pollute our world? John Stuart Mill in the late 1880s said, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” Similarly, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” runs a saying often attributed to Edmund Burke. Although it’s unlikely Burke ever said that, it is true.

Mosaic law, to which the elder may be referring in this letter, provides, “When any of you sin in that you have heard a public adjuration to testify and — though able to testify as one who has seen or learned of the matter — do not speak up, you are subject to punishment.” (Lev. 5:1) By one’s silence, one participates in the sin and is subject to the law.

Are there any who might have prevented the Boston bombings simply by speaking up? If so, how many? We may never know. What we do know is that each of us has an obligation to do what we can to improve the world, to do something when confronted with evil. A verse in the Mishnah reads:

Humans were created singly, to teach you that whoever destroys a single soul [of Israel], Scripture accounts it as if he had destroyed a full world; and whoever saves one soul of Israel, Scripture accounts it as if she had saved a full world. (Sanhedrin 4:5)

The Unitarian clergyman Edward Everett Hale, in the same spirit, is often quoted as saying, “I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” (This is often misattributed to Helen Keller.)

Most artistically, perhaps, is the expression of this sentiment of connection in the famous poem by Anglican priest John Donne:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

There are many big lessons to be learned from the events of this week, but this lesson of individual responsibility may be the most important: we are not alone, we are not disconnected, we not without responsibility — to welcome the perpetrator of evil, even to remain silent in the face of evil, is to participate in it.

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

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

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin – From the Daily Office – April 18, 2013

April 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Daniel:

Daniel answered in the presence of the king, “You have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven! The vessels of his temple have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines have been drinking wine from them. You have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know; but the God in whose power is your very breath, and to whom belong all your ways, you have not honored. So from his presence the hand was sent and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: mene, mene, tekel, and parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; tekel, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Daniel 5:17,23-28 (NRSV) – April 18, 2013.)

Brass ScalesMene, mene, tekel, upharsin. (KJV)

“Your days are numbered. You have been judged and found wanting. Your possessions will be divided among others.” The writing on the wall is a harsh judgment and a decree of the sentence. As it turns out, the judgment is swiftly executed: “That very night Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.” (vv. 30-31)

I read these lessons a few days ahead of time so that they can rumble around my head and I can figure out what I want to write about them. I had thought I would be writing something else – indeed, I thought I would be writing about a different lesson . . . . but yesterday the United States Senate voted 54-46 in favor of a bill that would have expand the federal background check system on gun purchases to include sales made at gun shows or over the internet. A majority of senators voted in favor of this legislation, and yet it will not become law. An overwhelming majority of American citizens favor this legislation (by some reports 90%), and yet it will not become law. It would not impose any burden on gun sellers or gun purchasers that is not now required in most gun transactions, and yet it will not become law.

“You have been weighed on the sales and found wanting.” I keep imagining a set of scales like those carried by Lady Justice. On one side of the scales stand 54 senators; on the other, 46. And yet the scales tip toward the 46, toward what should be the lighter side. On one side of the scales stand 90% of the American people; on the other, 10%. And yet the scales tip toward the 10%, toward what should be the light side.

On one side of the scales are the lives of 21 children and six adults killed at Newtown, twelve killed at Aurora, seven killed at Oak Creek, six killed in Tucson, nearly 3,500 people killed by guns since the Newtown massacre; on the other . . . . the interests of the N.R.A. and the gun industry. We know to which side the scales have been tipped.

We have been weighed on the scales. Have we been found wanting? I, for one, believe we have. We have to do something to change this unbalance. We have to do it soon.

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.

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

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

Nothing! – From the Daily Office – March 15, 2013

March 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From Paul’s Letter to the Church in Rome:

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 8:37-39 (NRSV) – March 15, 2013.)

Dissociative Disorder IllustrationThese may be my favorite words from the pen of the Apostle Paul. My mentor during my education for ordained ministry, who also became my first boss after ordination, often referred to these verses and would add, “Not even ourselves.”

But there are times when I wonder about things Paul seemed not to know about. Sure, he puts in that great, inclusive catch-all phrase “nor anything else in all of creation,” but what about drugs, addiction, mental illness, brain dysfunction . . . . What about the things that make us no longer us, the things that separate us from ourselves?

We human beings can suffer all sorts of trauma, large or small, that can lead to separation from ourselves, from others, and from the meaning of life. Even simple depression, anxiety, or just getting “off-track,” can create a sense of separation or alienation. We may feel like we are living in a sort of fog; our thinking may become clouded. We may find ourselves unable to access our feelings, and simply not be aware of or engaged in the world around us. We seem to be functional, but we are living a life separated from ourselves and from those who love us. Dissociation becomes a way of life. People in such a state are vulnerable to quick fixes and bad habits, behaviors and addictions that promise quick relief.

My father was an alcoholic who drove off in the middle of the night, angrily separating himself from his family, and a few hours later dying in a single-vehicle automobile accident. He was “not himself;” he was, in a real sense, separated from himself. My mother-in-law took years to slip away deep into the darkness of Alzheimer’s disease; for the last few years of her life, she wasn’t there. In a very real sense, she was separated from herself.

Last Sunday’s gospel lesson was the parable of the prodigal son, a story of separation and estrangement. The story is that the younger of two sons demands his inheritance from his father, takes the money and squanders it, and ends up living as a starving swineherd in a foreign land. There is this wonderful line in which Jesus says of him, “When he came to himself he said, . . . ‘I will get up and go to my father . . . .'” (Luke 15:17-18) “When he came to himself…;” he was separated not only from his father, but from himself. Nonetheless, that separation was overcome and there was reunion first with himself and then with his father.

I do believe in divine grace that precedes any human decision we may make. God’s grace operates in no way dependent on anything we may have done or failed to do. In the words of The Book of Common Prayer, God’s “grace . . . always precedes and follows us” (Collect for Proper 23, pg 234); it allows us to engage our free will to choose reunion, to choose to not be separated, to choose salvation. And I hope that God makes that choice for us when, because of mental illness, alcohol, drugs, brain dysfunction or injury, or whatever reason we are unable to make it for ourselves, when we cannot “come to ourselves.” Because nothing can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” not even ourselves. Nothing!

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

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

The Ash Wednesday Exhortation – Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – February 17, 2013

February 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, February 17, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Lent 1, Year C: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2,9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; and Luke 4:1-13. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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LentIn The Book of Common Prayer on page 264 you’ll find the beginning of the liturgy for Ash Wednesday. If you were here on that day which marks the beginning of this season we call Lent, or in another church to be marked on your forehead with the cross of ashes, to be reminded of your mortality with the familiar words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return,” you will also have heard the Lenten admonition which the presiding priest reads at each Ash Wednesday service. It begins at the bottom of that page and comes in the service after the reading of the lessons of the day and the preaching of the sermon.

It seems to me that many of us hear those words, perhaps even read along with them (as is our wont as Episcopalians), but I wonder to what extent we actually think about them, consider them, and internalize them. So this morning, as we enter into the Sundays which are in Lent but not of Lent, I’d like to return to Ash Wednesday and look more closely at, and perhaps offer a few cogent comments about, the Ash Wednesday admonition.

Dear People of God, . . . .

. . . . it starts and let’s just stop there and consider what that means. We hear those words, “the People of God,” often in Scripture, and when we do we usually understand it to mean those people long ago, those folks who lived way back then 2,000 or 3,000 or more years ago and way over there in the deserts of the Middle East in Palestine or Judea or Israel or Syria. “The People of God,” we think, are the Hebrews, those folks who Moses helped get their freedom from Pharaoh in Egypt, the ones to whom Moses is talking in the reading from Deuteronomy this morning. Or, perhaps, we believe “the People of God” are the descendants of Abraham, that “wandering Aramean” whom Moses’ audience was to claim as their ancestor. Or, again, maybe we think of the modern Jews as “the People of God,” the Chosen people with whom God has that special covenant.

But here we are addressed in the liturgy of Ash Wednesday as if we are the People of God! Do we think of ourselves that way? And more specifically, does each of us think of him- or herself individually as a “person of God”?

Did you know that that one of my titles, one of the names of the office of ministry in which I work, actually comes from that term? The word “parson,” which describes a parish priest or village clergyman comes from the old or middle English version of the word “person”. The medieval parish priest was the “person of God,” the “parson,” whose job it was to be in the church praying the liturgical hours, offering the sacrifice of the Mass, looking after the spiritual business of the community so the rest of the people wouldn’t have to! They could get on with the planting of crops, the tilling of fields, the harvesting of produce, the care and feeding of livestock. They could do all the other things of daily life and then go to the pub and have a beer because the “parson,” the “person of God” would have have taken care of the religious stuff, the spiritual stuff for them.

That is not, however, the way it’s supposed to be because no one person is the “person of God” — we are all “people of God;” we are all “persons of God.”

The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection . . .

Now pay close attention to that! The focus of Lent is not Lent! The focus of Lent is “our Lord’s passion and resurrection.” The focus of Lent is Maundy Thursday and Jesus’ agonizing night of prayer in the garden at Gethsemane. The focus of Lent is Good Friday and his terrible, tortured death on the cross of Calvary. The focus of Lent is Holy Saturday and his burial in the borrowed tomb, his descent into hell, his freeing the souls of the dead. The focus of Lent is the empty tomb of Easter morning, his resurrection, his fifty days on earth appearing to, teaching, and sending forth his apostles. The focus of Lent is his Ascension into heaven to be always alive and always with us, our great high priest eternally pleading our case before the Father, elevating our humanity into divinity. Lent is never about Lent! Lent is always looking forward. Lent is always about Easter and beyond.

. . . . and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent . . . .

As many of you know, I was not reared in the Episcopal Church . . . I wasn’t really brought up in any religious tradition. On one side, my mother’s, the family were part of the Campbellite tradition, out of which the Disciples of Christ is the largest current denominational body; they didn’t know from Adam about the church year, about Lent or any other season. On my father’s side they were Methodists in the old Methodist Episcopal (South) mold; no liturgical seasons for them! So we didn’t do this Lent thing. I had Catholic classmates in grade school, of course. I knew they were Catholic because they would show up at school on Ash Wednesday morning having come from Mass with a smudge of ash on their foreheads; they were doing Lent.

But the only thing I knew about “Lent” was that in the sort of English my grandmother spoke it was the past tense of the verb “to lend”. I thought the Roman Catholics were maybe paying back to God something they had borrowed from God. And, you know what? That’s not far from being a good description of what Lent is, in fact, all about. In our lesson from Deuteronomy today that is exactly what Moses instructs the people who are about to enter into the Promised Land, these Hebrews which he has led from captivity in Egypt. They are to remember that everything they have or ever will have has been given to them by God, through no merit of their own; they are to return to God at least some portion, the “first fruits”, of that which God has lent to them.

This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism.

Did you know that back in the beginning, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity first legal and then the official religion of the Roman Empire, it was a big deal to become a Christian? It was a dangerous thing because it was illegal, and Christians were often blamed for the Empire’s problems and made scapegoats, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. One could not simply walk into a congregation and ask to become a member. You had to be instructed and tested, and often it took as long as three years to complete all the catechesis needed to be accepted into the assembly, to be permitted to undergo the rite of Holy Baptism, which was commonly done only at Easter. And during these forty days of Lent modeled on the forty days of Christ’s tempting in the desert about which we heard in the Gospel lesson, the catechumens underwent their most rigorous training and testing, with mortification of the flesh, denial of even the simplest pleasures, a severely restricted diet (a “fast” in the dietary sense). Only then could they be baptized.

This was a big deal because baptism was considered a sort of death. St. Paul puts it this way in the Letter to Romans (not in the portion we heard today, but in the Sixth Chapter in a passage we read on Easter morning): “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom. 6:3) The symbolism of Holy Baptism, especially when done in the traditional way by full immersion, is that the water represents the soil of the grave; we are “buried” as we go under the surface and as we come up out of it, we are resurrected: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. . . . If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” (6:6,8)

So Lent was a time for this baptismal preparation, and it was a time that reminded every member of the church of their own baptismal promises, of their own “death” to the world and their new, resurrected life in Christ, of the seriousness of what it meant (and means) to be a Christian.

It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.

There was no rite of private confession in the early church; that was created by the Irish monks in the 6th Century and eventually spread to the whole church after the 9th Century. Nor was there a general confession in the early liturgies such as we now have in the Anglican form of worship that we enjoy. No, in the early church when a member was guilty of some grave sin they had to confess it before the whole assembly, after which they would be excluded from communion and they would be given some penance, some way to make amends before they would be permitted to return to worship with the congregation.

Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

Of course, the congregation would, as the admonition suggests, realize that not only was the repentant sinner in need of forgiveness; they all were — and we all are. You’ll remember the story of Jesus encountering the rabbis and villagers planning to stone the woman taken in adultery. “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” he said. (John 8:7) And not one of them did so because they realized, as Lent calls us to realize, that we are all sinners and all stand in need of forgiveness.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

So this closing invitation to “a holy Lent” just asks us to do a lot of things we hear about every Lent, doesn’t it? Every year someone like me gets up in front of the congregation in every parish and prattles on about things we should do for the next six weeks, which are really things we ought to do year-round, but this time of year we sort of focus on them. We know we’re supposed to “fast” – that means give something up, right?

When people ask me what I’m going to give up for Lent, I always answer, “Chocolate.” It’s easy for me to give that up – I don’t eat chocolate. I should give up . . . I don’t know . . . my Irish whiskey? Good wines? I know! I’ll give up Downton Abbey right after tonight’s episode (the Season 3 finale).

But really, the point of fasting and self-denial is not the “mortification of the flesh.” It isn’t making oneself miserable because we think we ought to join Jesus in his desert misery, his famished hunger as described in today’s gospel lesson. The point of giving something up is to make room in our lives for something else, or to pay over or pay forward that which we give up to the benefit of someone else, or to concentrate on something of spiritual benefit to ourselves.

In the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God questions God’s people about fasting. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” writes the Prophet. Delivering God’s word, Isaiah tells us that God asks, “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” (58:4-5) The answer to these questions is clearly, “No.” The Prophet continues:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (58:6-7)

If I give up whiskey for Lent, the money I save not buying it should be given to World Vision International or to Episcopal Relief and Development or to our own Free Farmers’ Market food pantry. If I do give up Downton Abbey, the time I save should be given to study of Scripture, another of the admonitions of this Ash Wednesday exhortation.

The forty days of Lent are, symbolically, our time with Jesus in the desert, our time to emulate our Lord in his preparation for ministry, our time to face our temptations as he faced his. Note how he did so. Each time the devil would set something wonderful before him – food, or world power, or spiritual superiority – Jesus responded by quoting Scripture. Jesus was sustained, strengthened, and empowered by the words of the Law and the Prophets. How many of us could do that?

The truth is that I couldn’t! I’ve never been able to memorize chapter and verse. If you ask me, “Doesn’t the Bible say something about . . . . ?” my response will be to shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know. I’ll look that up.” Don’t get me wrong! I read Scripture all the time, every day in fact. I just don’t have the head to remember it all. That’s what concordances and computer search programs are for! I know what’s in there, I just don’t always know where it is. But just because someone may not have the knack to remember chapter-and-verse is no excuse not to study God’s Word. So I do, and I commend the practice to you, so that, as Paul wrote to the Romans, “The word [will be] near you, on your lips and in your heart.” We are all, as the collect for today confesses, assaulted by many temptations; through study and contemplation of the Bible, we can each find God mighty to save; we can each, like Jesus, be sustained and strengthened and empowered by Scripture.

And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

And then there is a rubric, a word of instruction, saying, “Silence is then kept for a time.” The rubric is not part of the Ash Wednesday exhortation, but those may be the most important words on the page.

When the exhortation and our tradition ask us to “give something up for Lent,” the purpose is to turn our attention from the distractions of the world around us. At the vestry’s retreat the past couple of days, our facilitator asked us to consider the difference between “doing” and “being”, to consider whether the job of the vestry is to “do things” or rather to “be something”. As part of a clergy study group, I’m currently reading a book entitled Beyond Busyness: Time Wisdom in Ministry. The author’s premise is that being “busy” is a bad thing, that when we are “busy” we are allowing a lot of small distractions take us away from the bigger, more important things one which we should use our time. “Busyness” results from concentrating too much on “doing” and too little on “being”.

Keeping silence for a time helps us turn our attention away from busy doing and toward productive being.

There is a lovely verse from the Psalms. (Don’t ask me which verse in which psalm! Remember, I just can’t recall that stuff.) The verse reads, “Be still, and know that I am God!” (46:10) In those catalogs like National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting send out from time to time, I’ve seen a carved stone plaque of that verse which repeats the verse several times, but in each reiteration leaves off a word or two:

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.

So I leave you with the rubric as, perhaps, the most important admonition of Lent: “Silence is kept for a time.” Be still and know that God is God. . . . . Be still and know that God is. . . . . Be still and know. . . . . Be still. . . . . Be.

Amen.

Employers and Employees – From the Daily Office – January 25, 2013

January 25, 2013 / / 2 Comments

From the Letter to the Ephesians:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free. And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Ephesians 6:5-9 (NRSV) – January 25, 2013.)

Victorian Child Labor PhotographSo let’s admit right off the bat that we have a problem here. Where the progressives and liberals among us would much prefer to read Paul condemning the institution of slavery, he does not. Instead, he simply admonishes slaves to be good slaves and masters to be good masters, and even goes so far as to analogize a Christian’s relationship with God (or Jesus) to slavery. This just doesn’t sit well in the modern mind and provides plenty of ammunition for those whom Friedrich Schleiermacher addressed as religion’s “cultured despisers.” We would much rather Paul hadn’t said this.

But he did. So what to think of it . . . .

First off, the Greek here is doulos which is most often translated as “slave” as it is here, but it can also refer to a bond-servant, a servant for hire, or to someone who is devoted to another without regard of his or her own interests (the last often metaphorically). It’s unlikely that Paul intended this as either a comment on non-slavery employment relationships or as a metaphorical statement, but we can certainly read it in those ways in our modern context.

Secondly, and this encourages us to read this text as applicable to modern employee-employer relations, the institution of slavery in the First Century Roman empire was an economic, not a racial, reality. We modern Americans, influenced by our own history, hear racial overtones in these verses, but they are not really there. In ancient Rome slaves might be prisoners of war, sailors captured and sold by pirates, slaves bought outside Roman territory, or even the children of desperately poor Roman citizens sold into bond-servanthood by their parents. Further, slaves were commonly and even rather frequently freed; a slave could buy his or her own freedom.

So if we read this text as referring not only to the First Century practice of slavery, but applying also to any economic institution wherein one person works at the behest of and for the benefit of another, it provides guidance for theological critique of contemporary employment practices and related laws. It requires the church to question any employment situation in which workers are inadequately paid, where worker safety is at risk, or which threatens to damage the family life or welfare of the worker and his or her dependents.

In fact, the long struggle to recognize and protect workers’ rights finds its genesis in this and similar biblical texts. In Great Britain and in our own country during the 18th and 19th Centuries (and even into the early 20th Century), children worked in mines and factories; all laborers worked six-day weeks and often 16- to 18-hour days; working conditions were often dangerous; and on-the-job death was a common occurrence. Fans of the series Downton Abbey (or earlier dramas such as Upstairs, Downstairs) need only think of the way in which the servants’ life is portrayed to see a small (and very toned-down) illustration of what a worker’s life was like, always at the beck-and-call of the employer.

The anti-slavery movement in Britain became the movement to bring about just and equitable labor laws, to prevent children from working, to reduce the work day to ten hours per day, and to make employers responsible for working conditions. That movement spread to the United States. In both Britain and America, it was driven by Christians, many of them Christian socialist Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, who read these texts as demanding the ends they sought.

So we need not apologize to our “cultured despisers” for Paul’s words about slavery. Instead, we are called like our forebears in the faith to see in them our call to champion workers’ rights and just labor laws.

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

Choose a Party over Purity – Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany – January 20, 2013

January 20, 2013 / / 2 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, January 20, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Epiphany 2, Year C: Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 96:1-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Icon of the Wedding Feast of CanaIn our gospel lesson today, Jesus turns water into wine. He does so, somewhat unwillingly it seems, because he and his mother are at a wedding banquet and the couple is about to run out of wine for their guests. Mary brings this to Jesus’ attention because she apparently believes he can do something to save the hosts from embarrassment. At first, however, he seems disinclined to do anything about it. Not the least bit phased by her son’s reluctance, Mary tells the servants to do whatever he tells them, and she goes back to the party. I have always imagined that as she turned away Mary gave Jesus the same sort of look my mother would give me when I tried to not do as she wanted, the same sort of look I’ve seen my wife give our children. So . . . Jesus turns water into wine, and (as you will see) not just any water into not just any wine, but really good wine! Now, one supposes that Jesus could have done something else to assist the wedding couple, but he chooses to do this, to turn water into wine.

Wine is a very special sort of drink, especially in the Jewish tradition and, thus, in our own Christian faith. Wine gets a special mention in Psalm 104, which is a long song of praise to God for all the things God has created, especially those things that are good for human beings. Along about the middle of the psalm, the singer gives praise to the Almighty that among the “plants to serve mankind” are those from which we get “wine to gladden our hearts.” (Ps 104:15-16) In Jewish tradition, grape wine is considered such a gift to humankind that it alone of all alcoholic beverages has a special prayer of thanksgiving: Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam, bo’re p’ri ha’gafen (“Blessed are you, O Lord our God, Sovereign of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine”).

I would like you to keep that in mind. I’ll return to the subject of wine and glad hearts in a short while, but first I want to share with you a news story that crossed my desk a couple of days after Christmas. It is from the Jewish publication, The Tablet:

Climate change has been blamed for a host of devastating events, from Hurricane Sandy to the evaporation of Greenland’s glaciers. But earlier this year, a dramatic weather event had a small but important impact on the Jewish community: In July, as a drought brought the effects of global warming to the Midwest, the only mikveh in Omaha, Neb., went dry.

The mikveh, a ritual bath, is an essential part of any Orthodox Jewish community, so when one goes dry, it’s a serious issue — especially in Omaha, where the next nearest mikveh is a state away. “The mikveh is one of the most basic institutions of any Jewish community,” explained Jonathan Gross, the rabbi of Beth Israel Synagogue, Omaha’s Orthodox congregation. “How are you supposed to have young families if you don’t have a mikveh?”

Refilling a mikveh isn’t a simple matter of turning on a faucet; there are rules about what kind of water can and cannot be used. The community in Omaha prayed for rain – one of the approved methods for replenishing the water in a mikveh – and their prayers were eventually answered. But by the time those rains came, another solution was already in place, a solution that involved one ton of ice.

Mikvehs typically serve multiple purposes. The first and most important is as a place for women to purify themselves after completing their menstrual cycles; immersion in a mikveh is a critical part of the laws of Taharot HaMishpacha, family purity, and without immersion a woman is forbidden to have sex with her husband. New vessels, like pots and pans, must be immersed before they can be considered kosher and thus usable. And converts need to immerse to conclude their conversions. Customarily, men also dunk, before holidays and before their wedding day, although this isn’t mandated by modern Jewish law.

Like many mikvehs, the Omaha Community Mikvah is composed of two below-ground pools. The first pool fills with rainwater through a hole in the roof, and the second, larger pool is used for the actual bathing. To be considered halachically valid, a mikveh is required to have at least 40 se’ah of natural water. A se’ah, a unit of halachic measurement, corresponds to roughly five gallons of water, according to one stringent opinion – meaning that 200 gallons of natural water are required for a kosher mikveh. The water must fill the mikveh through naturally occurring sources, either by rain or through a connection to a spring or river. Water that is transported to the mikveh through direct human means – in buckets, for instance – is called she’uvim, drawn water, and cannot be used to fill a mikveh. Tap water is also forbidden, though this wasn’t always the case—and tap water can be added to the mikveh once the required 200 gallons of natural water are present.

[Preacher’s Note: The author is being generous in equating 40 se’ah to 200 gallons. A se’ah is 12.128 litres. Doing the math yields a more accurate conversion of 40 se’ah to just under 130 gallons. This is the approximate volume of water changed to wine in today’s gospel lesson. See The Jewish Encyclopedia.]

In July, Omaha’s mikveh was accidentally emptied when a maintenance crew member thought that cleaning the mikveh meant emptying it completely. In most circumstances, a mikveh can be refilled relatively easily through rain or snow, but this summer’s drought made that impossible. “Had this happened in January with all the snow we would have been filled up in a week!” Gross lamented on his blog.

The mikveh was out of service for almost two months. Women traveled to the next closest mikveh in Des Moines, Iowa, or Kansas City, Kan., each more than two hours away. Dishes went unpurified. The receptionist at the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home, where Omaha’s mikveh is located, received calls every time it rained an inch, asking if the pool had somehow miraculously filled. As the weeks passed, different ideas were thrown around: The supervising rabbi of the mikveh suggested the community pray for rain. They did. Another rabbi tried to open up a larger hole in the roof to allow more water, but that didn’t work. Some scientific-minded congregants suggested lighting giant Bunsen burners, evaporating water and then allowing it to condense over the mikveh; this was deemed impractical and was never tried.

The town finally turned to Rabbi Yaakov Weiss, 34, the pastoral service coordinator of the Blumkin Home and one of the supervisors of the mikveh. Another rabbi brought up the idea of using ice to fill the mikveh, and Weiss began looking into it. Using ice was a sort of loophole or leniency: Since the ice was solid and not liquid, if it was moved into the mikveh while still in its frozen state, when it melted it would be considered non-she’uvim water, and the mikveh would be kosher. This procedure, while not common, is almost universally accepted.

“I know it had been done in Nova Scotia once, but I had never heard much about it prior or since,” Weiss said.

Weiss called Rabbi Hershel Schachter and Rabbi Zvi Sobolofsky, two important legal minds at Yeshiva University in New York. They referred him to a mikveh expert, Rabbi Yirmiya Katz, who went through the exact requirements of filling the mikveh with ice.

Weiss’ first thoughts were to use the large ice machines in the Blumkin Home, but that plan was quickly vetoed since the ice would have melted too much by the time they put it in the mikveh. Weiss, with Katz’s help, figured out that he’d need a lot of very frozen ice put in the mikveh very fast.

Weiss called every ice company in Omaha (“Did you know that while there are many ice companies – Arctic Ice, Omaha Ice, Glacier Ice – they are all actually the very same place?” he wrote on Gross’ blog) and finally found one that could deliver the required amount: 250 10 pound blocks of ice. The ice was paid for by the Jewish Federation of Omaha, on whose campus the Blumkin Home is located.

On Friday, Aug. 24, Weiss and a group of volunteers wearing special gloves that wouldn’t melt the ice amassed outside the mikveh at 8:15 in the morning. But the truck showed up an hour late, and by the time Weiss opened the first package, the ice melted in his hands.

“Apparently this was their version of solid blocks of ice: It was a block of crushed ice pushed together in a brick,” explained Weiss. “It doesn’t stay as cold as a real block of ice.”

Weiss went back to the drawing board where he found Muzzy Ice, an ice company that makes blocks of ice for ice sculptures. He had found them earlier but decided against using them given the large size of their ice blocks. “I didn’t want to risk damaging our mikveh,” Weiss said, but he relented once he realized that was the only option.
Three weeks later, on Sept. 11, a Muzzy Ice truck pulled up to the mikveh. Inside the truck were seven 300-pound blocks of ice. An extra 100 pounds of dry ice was shoved inside the truck to ensure that nothing melted.

In less than an hour, staff members of the Jewish Federation moved the ice into the mikveh. Along the way, little pieces of ice would chip off and fall on the stairs; Weiss and a colleague would rush to pick them up to make sure that the chips wouldn’t liquefy and contaminate the mikveh water. “It was very intense and very stressful,” recalled Weiss. “[But] it was quite an experience. I’ve never dealt with a ton of ice in a small contained area.”

Once all seven 300 pound blocks were moved, the question became how long the ice would take to melt. Estimates ranged from two days to a week.

They never got to find out.

The next evening a huge torrential storm hit the Midwest. In several hours, the bor z’reih, the place where the rainwater collected, was filled to capacity and the first pool was filled. “I went in the next day and said, ‘Wow.’ ” Weiss told me. “Now our only problem was our mikveh was filled with ice.”

Both Weiss and Gross said that the whole effort pulled Omaha’s roughly 6,000 Jews together and led to a newfound curiosity about the mikveh, even among those who don’t really use it.

“Was it a waste of energy and time? Or conversation and money?” Weiss considered. “We often say that our efforts and actions have repercussions for good and bad and perhaps this was a repercussion. It’s a community mikveh and it’s integral to us. Perhaps by showing how much it means to us, I think . . . we saw a response or sign from God. For our action, we have God’s reaction: ‘I’ll give you the rainfall you were looking for.’ ” (The Day the Mikveh Went Dry, The Tablet, December 27, 2012)

I wanted to read that article to you because it gives you a picture of how seriously the Orthodox Jews of our time treat what John in today’s gospel lesson calls “the Jewish rites of purification.” Modern Orthodox Judaism is the direct descendent of, and the closest thing we have in our world to, the village religion of Jesus’ time and place. The seriousness with which the Orthodox Jews of Omaha, Nebraska, dealt with the filling of their mikvah gives us clue to how gravely the Jews of Cana, and Jesus himself, would have regarded the 130 or so gallons of water that Jesus just sort of willy-nilly turns into wine for the wedding banquet.

OK. Yes, I’m being facetious. There is nothing willy-nilly about this. Jesus isn’t just turning water into wine. Jesus is doing something called an “enacted parable”. An “enacted parable” is one told through actions rather than words. The prophet Hosea, for example, married a prostitute to illustrate the unfaithfulness of Israel; the prophet Jeremiah wore a yoke to symbolize the oppression of the Babylonians. An “enacted parable” has been described as “an extravagant action which upsets the conventions of life” (A. Richardson, Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, Westminster:1983, p. 426). This is precisely what Jesus is doing when he changes the water of ritual purification into wine to celebrate newlywed love; he is upsetting the religious conventions of Jewish life.

Jesus is enacting the distinction that St. Paul will later explicate into a theological contrast between Law and Grace. Now don’t get me wrong, Jesus is not overthrowing the Jewish religion! Jesus was, himself, a good and faithful Jew, and the Law’s insistence upon ritual purity is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. But the point Jesus seems to be making here is that given a choice between Law and love . . . choose love! Given a choice between worrying about water for purification on the one hand or enjoying wine to gladden the heart on the other . . . choose gladness. By changing the water intended for the mikvah into wine for the party, Jesus is saying that joy ranks higher in the scheme of things than purity. Given a choice between celebration and seriousness, says this action . . . choose celebration.

Judaism, of course, is not a religion entirely of Law, ritual purity, and seriousness. As anyone who has been to a Passover supper or a Chanukah party or a Jewish wedding feast knows, there are occasions of great merriment and fun, of joy and celebration. Here, at the beginning of his public ministry, the Son of God makes it plain, that these are the higher ranking values of the reign of God. He will do so again at the end of his earthly life when, in the joyful context of the Passover banquet, he will take bread and wine, wine which gladdens the human heart, and tell his friends to do the same again and again, “whenever you do it,” in his memory.

One of my very favorite motion pictures is Auntie Mame starring Rosalind Russell; I just love that movie. There is a scene in it in which Mame is speaking to her stenographer Miss Agnes Gooch (played by Peggy Cass):

Mame — Oh, Agnes! Here you’ve been taking my dictations for weeks and you haven’t gotten the message of my book: live!
Agnes — Live?
Mame — Yes! Live! Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!

I want to suggest to you today that Mame was preaching the gospel, that that is a Christian sentiment fully in keeping with miracle at the Wedding in Cana of Galilee, that it is a Christian sentiment fully in keeping with Lord’s Passover supper in the Upper Room, that it is a Christian sentiment fully in keeping with our weekly gathering for the Lord’s Supper in Holy Communion.

Choose wine over water, choose love over Law, choose gladness over worry, choose joy over gravity, choose celebration over seriousness, choose a party over purity! Life’s a banquet! Enjoy it! Amen.

Happy Holy Name Day! – From the Daily Office – January 1, 2013

January 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Genesis:

God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Gen. 17:9-14 (NRSV) – January 1, 2013.)
 
Circumcision of Jesus, Chartres CathedralToday, people all over the world go all sort of crazy making resolutions about how we will improve our lives in the coming year – it is New Year’s Day! But on the calendar of the church it is the Feast of the Holy Name, also known as the Feast of the Circumcision.

The law of Moses (as this bit of Genesis shows) required that newborn boys be circumcised on their eighth day of life. So on this eighth day after Christmas Day, we commemorate Jesus’ early submission to the law as recorded in Luke 2:21: “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” (This verse also explains the first alternative title of this day.)

It seems to me appropriate that this feast day of the beginning of a new covenantal relationship between God and one of God’s children falls on the day the secular world also celebrates a new beginning. It reminds me of Carl Sandburg’s famous statement that “a baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.” The coincidence of New Year’s Day and Holy Name Day reminds us that life in relationship with God should go on. Here’s Sandburg’s full comment:

A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don’t compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn’t know he is a hoary and venerable antique – but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby – with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker. (Remembrance Rock, Harcourt Brace:1948)

The coincidence of the Feast of the Circumcision with New Year’s Day is a reminder that, first day of the new year it may be, we know “as of old” how to live the life it presents us. Every year we make resolutions, new covenants perhaps, to do the things we’ve always known how to do, the things we’ve always known we should do. St. Paul wrote to the Romans that “real circumcision is a matter of the heart – it is spiritual and not literal.” (Rom. 2:29) John Wesley taught that this implies humility, faith, hope, and charity. Let us resolve, let us covenant to live out these qualities in the year ahead.

Happy Holy Name Day!

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

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

False Teachings and Guns – From the Daily Office – December 22, 2012

December 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Letter of Jude:

You, beloved, must remember the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; for they said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts.” It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions. But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Jude 1:17-23 (NRSV) – December 22, 2012.)

Glory in the SkySort of buried in Jude’s moralizing about false teachers and those who follow them is an Advent message: “Look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” As I’ve been saying pretty consistently throughout the season, here and in my sermons, Advent is not so much about celebrating the birth of Jesus, wherever it was and whenever it was about 2,000 years ago, as it is about getting ready for his return, the parousia as seminary-educated folks like to say.

It’s kind of humorous that Jude’s letter with its warning about “worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions” and others for whom we are to have mercy mixed with fear “hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies” should come up today. Yesterday, a lot of those very people were running around convinced the world was going to end because of the Mayan long calendar. It didn’t, we and they are still here . . . and don’t they have egg on their faces (or defilement on their tunics, as Jude might have said).

It is humorous, but it’s also a warning to us that Jude was right. We can be led astray by false and outlandish teachings. In the days since the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, there have been a lot of people saying a lot of things, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t. And some who should know better have been saying things about the use of violence to curb violence. Even before the NRA’s spokesman yesterday suggested putting armed guards in every school (an idea I find repugnant), I heard Christian clergy suggest the same thing, or some variation on it (such as arming our school teachers).

I don’t want to get into the politics of gun control or the history and meaning of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. (Well . . . I do, but not here.) What I do want to suggest is that those clergy are not building themselves or other church members up on our most holy faith; I suggest that their teaching is false. As I understand the Christian faith, it is not about meeting violence with violence. The One whom we name “Prince of Peace” gave these instructions to his followers: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:27-31) No matter how much I try, I cannot make those admonitions into any sort of support for taking up guns, for arming teachers, for adding to the surfeit of firearms already present in our culture.

Every Sunday, I end the Mass with these words from my parish’s patron saint: “Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:12,14-18,21)

So far as it depends on me to live peaceably with all, the one thing I cannot do is arm myself nor recommend that others be armed nor countenance those recommendations from others. The words I leave out of Paul’s encouragements to the Christians in Rome include these: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’” (Rom. 12:19-20) I cannot guarantee that I will never avenge myself, but I can take a step in that direction by not preparing in advance to do so.

I know that I have friends and parishioners who disagree with me and with our church’s official teaching on this point (which is in favor of strict gun regulation). I believe they are wrong, but I know they hold their views for what they believe to be good reasons. I can only hope they know the same of me and that we can come to some consensus in our country that honors all points of view and that, at the end of it all, at the parousia we will all “stand without blemish in the presence of God’s glory with rejoicing.” (Jude 1:24)

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

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

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