Category: Law (Page 9 of 13)

Jesus the Lens – Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, RCL Year A – March 2, 2014

March 2, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, March 2, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; and Matthew 17:1-9. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Bible and Magnifying Glass Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra . . . .
[silence]
Shaka, when the walls fell.
[silence]

Obviously, there is no one here who was a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation! “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is a line from an episode of that show entitled Darmok in which Picard, the captain of the Enterprise, and the captain of an alien vessel are marooned on a planet called El-Adrel. The alien race are called the Tamarians and their way of communicating is by making metaphorical references to legends, myths, and incidents in their history.

“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is the alien captain’s way of trying to say that he and Picard, the Tamarians and the humans, though strangers can become friends and allies — the reference is to a story in which two strangers become allies against a common enemy. Picard, of course, does not understand and so the Tamarian captain in frustration says, “Shaka, when the walls fell,” a metaphor for failure.

That episode and the Tamarian way of communicating came to mind as I considered the story of the Transfiguration as told by Matthew in today’s Gospel lesson (and referred to in the epistle lesson, as well). The point of the episode is that we all communicate by way of analogy and metaphor; the fictional Tamarians were simply an extreme case. So is religion. All talk of God, all religious language, is metaphorical.

There are anti-religious writers who fail to understand that. I call them “anti-theists” or “evangelical atheists” — they are so sure of the truth of their Godless vision of the universe that they insist on trying to destroy religious faith, to spread the “truth” of their atheism. When they consider the story of the Transfiguration, they insist that it is a made-up story. They point to the fact that the story combines elements of earlier stories of the Hebrew people and say the Gospel writers were simply inventing something.

And, yes, they are right about the earlier stories. In the Book of Daniel, Daniel tells of seeing a vision of heaven in which one he calls “the Ancient One” is clothed in “clothing [which] was white as snow,” (Dan. 7:9) like Matthew (and Mark and Luke) describe Jesus’ clothing on the Holy Mountain. Daniel tells of seeing one “like a son of man” (a title claimed by Jesus, by the way, even in today’s reading) who he describes this way: “His face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze.” Matthew doesn’t go into such detail, but he describes Jesus’ face as shining like the sun.

Another earlier story is that of Moses receiving the law from God at Sinai, the story we heard this morning. On that mountain, Moses encountered the Shekinah, the glowing cloud of the Lord’s Presence, not unlike the cloud the Gospel describes on the Mount of the Transfiguration.

What happened on that mountain? I really don’t know. I take the Gospelers’ word for it that something important, something incredible happened. I believe they tried to describe it using stories familiar to their people. Like the fictional Tamarians of Star Trek:TNG, they were reaching back into their history to communicate, by metaphor and analogy, the meaning and importance of a present reality. They were not “making it up,” they were describing it in a way they hoped would make sense. They were trying to communicate that something important happened on that mountain, that in some way Jesus was changed and God spoke to them. I believe that what was of most importance is summarized in three small words: “Listen to him.”

Peter in his second letter — and I know there are scholars who doubt that Peter wrote the second letter attributed to him, but for the moment let’s just go with tradition — Peter in his letter relates his experience on the mountain, and I find it interesting that in doing so, he left out those three words: “[Jesus] received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” Peter set a pattern for the church which has continued for nearly 2,000 years. We fail to heed those three small words; we fail to even remember them — and we do not listen to Jesus.

We listen to Paul in his several letters! We listen to John in his three, and to James, and Jude, and Peter. We listen to John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation. We listen to those who came earlier, to Moses, to those who wrote or edited Leviticus and Deuteronomy, to the Prophets, to David in the Psalms. We listen to all of them . . . but we do not listen to Jesus.

All talk of God, all religious language is metaphorical . . . so let me suggest a couple of metaphors that might help us to do so.

I think it was Brian McClaren who said that the way we read the Bible can be likened to an hour glass, which all of the Old Testament being the sand in the top of the glass, and the writings of the New Testament being the sand pouring through the tiny middle, Jesus being that little hole in the center of the glass. We read all that sand in the top as pointing to Jesus, as prophesying Jesus, as explaining why Jesus was going to come. We read all that sand in the bottom of the glass as pointing back to Jesus, as explaining Jesus, as prophesying his return. We read Jesus through the lens of the Old Testament writers or through the lens of the Epistle authors. We listen to what they tell us about Jesus . . . but we do not listen to Jesus.

We should stop treating Jesus as the central stem of an hour glass to which all Old Testament sand points forward and to which all New Testament sand points back. We should think of Jesus as the lens of a microscope, or a telescope, or just as a magnifying glass. We should read Paul through the lens of Jesus, not vice versa. We should read Revelation through the lens of Jesus, not vice versa. We should read the prophets, the Psalms, Moses, the whole of the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus. When a biblical writer has something to say about a particular matter, we should hear what that writer has to say, but we should then critically question that writer’s words by asking, “Did Jesus say anything about that?” We should listen to Jesus.

There are many in our society who purport to speak for the church — truth be told, they purport to speak for Jesus — on a variety of topics. For example, we are told that Jesus is opposed to abortion. But when you question that, when you ask for the Biblical basis of their argument, they will cite Genesis: “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27) and then tell you that “when it comes to human dignity, Christ erases distinctions. St. Paul declares, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave or free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). We can likewise say, ‘There is neither born nor unborn.'” This is an actual quotation from an antiabortion website. Notice what was done: Christ, we are told, erases distinctions, but it is Paul who is cited. This is reading Jesus through the lens of Paul; this is listening to Paul, not Jesus.

Did Jesus ever say anything about abortion? No. Never. What did Jesus say? “Love God; love your neighbor as yourself.” Sometimes our neighbor must make very hard, very painful decisions, but never did Jesus suggest we are to make her decisions for her, or to prevent her from making her own decisions, or to question the decision she may make. Quite to the contrary, he said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” (Luke 6:37) Listen to him.

We are told that Jesus condemns those who engaged in sexual immorality, but did Jesus do so? On one occasion, he encountered a crowd which was intent on executing (as the law demanded) a woman who had been exposed as an adulterer. What did he do and say? He convinced the crowd to abandon their plans. When the crowd left while he was looking away, Jesus said to the woman, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:10-11) Jesus had a lot to say about sexual immorality, but when dealing with some accused of it, he followed his own rule: Love your neighbor, and do not judge. Listen to him.

We are told that Jesus condemns homosexuality, that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons should be excluded from ministry, that they should be forbidden to marry the person they love. Did Jesus ever say anything about same-sex relationships? No, never. Leviticus has something to say about, though scholars are in conflict about whether that has any application to committed, loving adult relationships. St. Paul had something to say about, maybe. There is the same doubt about the application of his words to committed, loving adult relationships. There is even some doubt about whether Paul’s words are anything more than a cut-and-paste use of a Greek rhetorical form. But Jesus? Jesus never even said anything about which there could be doubt; about homosexual relationships, Jesus said nothing . . . nothing other than “Love your neighbor, and do not judge.” Listen to him.

We do this over and over again throughout history, whatever the issue of the day may be. Go back about a hundred years; go back to the temperance movement of the early 20th Century. Members of the Church campaigned against “demon rum” on the grounds that Jesus was against drinking. Did Jesus ever say anything about alcoholic beverages? Yes! He said to drink them! And, especially, he said to do so in his memory. Listen to him!

My systematic theology professor, Jim Griffis, was very good at dealing with students who wanted to read Jesus through the lens of other Scripture. He would listen to them cite the Old Testament or Paul or Revelation, and then ask, “What does Jesus say?” “The Gospel,” he would say, “trumps the Bible.” The Gospel of love: Love God; love your neighbor; do not judge. Understand everything else through that critical filter.

Something happened on the mount of the Transfiguration, something so important that those who later wrote about it and preserved it, analogized it to the important stories of their past. Like the Tamarian captain looking back to Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, they looked back to Moses receiving the law at Sinai, to Daniel seeing a vision of heaven.

There is one more similarity between those earlier bible stories and the tale of the Transfiguration. In Daniel’s vision, the one “like a son of man” says to Daniel, “Pay attention to the words that I am going to speak to you.” (Dan. 10:11) The three most important words spoken on the Holy Mountain are “Listen to him!” — Listen to Paul, listen to Moses, listen to John of Patmos, listen to the prophets, listen to David . . . but, most importantly, listen to Jesus and understand all the rest through that lens: “Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do not judge.”

“This is my son, the beloved; in him I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

Amen.

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

Philemon Pisses Me Off – From the Daily Office – February 28, 2014

February 28, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to Philemon:

I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother — especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Philemon 14b-16 (NRSV) – February 28, 2014.)

Slave Auction There’s really very little in the Bible that makes me angry. I find a good deal to object to, to be annoyed by, and to wish wasn’t there, but very little that riles me. Paul’s letter to his friend Philemon, however, just plain pisses me off.

Paul has somehow encountered the runaway slave Onesimus while he, Paul, is imprisoned. Onesimus has become a follower of Christ like his owner, Paul’s friend Philemon, a leader of the Colossian church. Paul sends the slave back to his owner with this letter which can be interpreted as carrying a strong hint, but never actually saying, that Philemon should manumit Onesimus.

It is maddening that Paul apparently does not view slavery as incompatible with Christianity. Not once in this letter does Paul condemn slavery either in general or as it specifically applies to Onesimus. He does not try to persuade Philemon that Onesimus, “a beloved brother . . . in the Lord,” is deserving of his freedom. In failing to do so, Paul gives tacit approval to the economic institution of slavery.

He had done so before. In his first letter to the church in Corinth he wrote:

Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called. Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever. For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ. (1 Cor. 7:20-22)

Now I know that Paul expected the parousia to happen at almost any moment so staying in slavery, or in marriage, or in a single state, or whatever was not a big deal. And I know that in the Corinthian letter Paul was using slavery more as a metaphor or as an example to make a theological point. But . . . this text and especially the letter to Philemon were used for so long to justify the institution of slavery, the very idea that one human being owning another as a piece of property, was acceptable before God . . . and it just pisses me off that Paul didn’t demand of Philemon that he set Onesimus free. Every time I read the letter to Philemon I get angry!

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

Political Calculation – From the Daily Office – February 26, 2014

February 26, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel of John:

You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 11:50 (NRSV) – February 26, 2014.)

Broken Glass The words of Caiaphas the high priest are reported by John as a prophecy that Jesus’ death would be an atoning sacrifice, that he would “die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.” (vv. 51-52) But I read them this morning as nothing more than political calculation.

More years ago than I care to remember I took a college class in political history. One of the things I learned is that nearly all decisions of government include two major components: political calculation, which is always based on past experience, and profound ignorance of current conditions and future potentials. Despite prodigious amounts of fact finding and data gathering, that ignorance remains a factor. There is always “one more fact” that could have been learned. And, more often than not, a “known fact” is not appreciated because prejudice, preconception, or inexperience blinds the decision-maker to its importance.

I suspect the lawmakers in Kansas and Arizona, where legislation has recently been enacted by one or both houses of the state legislatures permitting service providers, both private and public, to refuse service to gay, lesbian, and transgendered persons on the basis of “sincerely held religious belief,” have been surprised by the responses their actions elicited. They may have expected some reaction from the political left. It’s possible they anticipated some objection from more liberal religious bodies (such as the Episcopal Church). I don’t think they had a clue that the business community, represented by Apple, Delta, American Airlines, and other corporations, would oppose their action. I don’t know what data gathering they did before enacting those proposed laws, but they either failed to get the business data or failed to understand the data they got.

I could criticize what they did — these bills are, in my opinion, deeply flawed in several respects — but my thought today is that in our personal lives we do much the same thing. We make personal decisions on the basis of past experience in an atmosphere of profound ignorance; there is always something we don’t know. St. Paul was speaking of the eschaton, the end of time, about which we can know nothing when he wrote, “We see through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12, KJV) but the truth is that our vision is always obscured. The glass through which we look at the present or the future is always darkened; there is always something we don’t see, some fact or bit of data of which we are ignorant either through lack or through misinterpretation.

So what does one do? Fail to decide? Fail to act? No, one cannot be paralyzed by fear. The only answer is to decide, to move forward in faith, to hope for the best. I don’t fault Caiaphas for his political calculation or for his ignorance; I am no different. I can hope I make better choices, but the process by which and environment in which human decisions are made has not changed in 2,000 years. Political calculation and profound ignorance are still the norm and probably will be until we get to the other side of Paul’s darkened glass.

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

Choose Life! L’Chaim – Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany – February 16, 2014

February 16, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, February 16, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20 (used as the gradual); 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; and Matthew 5:21-37. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Alphabet Chart As I have mentioned here more than a couple of times, I went to high school at a boarding school in the middle of nowhere . . . a place called Kansas. At the time, my family was living in Southern California in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, so I was very far from home. Truth be told, nearly all of us in the cadet corps of St. John’s Military School in Salina were far from home; there were very few Kansans in the student body.

The dormitory at the school was called “the barracks” but, in truth, it wasn’t barracks-style living with everyone sharing one big room. We had discrete two-, three-, or four-bed rooms; there were also single rooms, but those were reserved to the highest ranking officers of the cadet battalion. At the end of each year, you could request a particular room for the next school year. Each size of room had its particular advantages; the four-bed rooms were newer, had better study carrels, nicer beds, and larger closets. So at the end of my first year, I requested a four-person room for the coming year.

You could also request particular roommates but that didn’t always work out. It usually would if it was just two people agreeing to share a two-bed room, but even then you couldn’t be guaranteed a roommate. I really didn’t care, so I just asked for the size of room I wanted and trusted to the luck of the draw for my roommates.

We got notice in late July what our room assignments were and who are roommates would be. As it turned out, two other continuing students with whom I was good friends got assigned to the same room, as did a new kid. I think they may have assigned him to room with me because, like me, he was from Southern California — San Diego, to be exact.

So I get this notice and it tells me that my roommates will be the two guys I knew and someone named “Joseph Joachim __________.” Well, with a name like that I was pretty certain that he was going to turn out to be Roman Catholic and Latino, specifically, since he was from San Diego, I figured he’d be a Mexican-American. So in August, when I reported to school, I was expecting to meet someone with brown skin and dark hair, and probably smaller than me. (This is an object lesson in never forming expectations based solely on someone’s name!)

What I encountered, instead, was a young man who stood about 6′ 2″ and towered over me! Plus, he had flaming red hair and a face full of freckles. He looked as Irish as Brian Boru! And turned out to be Jewish.

We became good friends and through that friendship, I had my first introduction to Judaism. Jojo (that was his nickname, Joseph Joachim shortened to “Jojo”) took me with him to a Chanukah party at one of the local — actually, I think, the only synagogue in Salina, Kansas, and it was there, also, that I experienced a Passover Seder for the first time. It was also because of my friendship with Jojo that I first experienced a traditional Jewish wedding.

I was attending college in San Diego, Jojo’s hometown. Jojo, though a year behind me in high school, had graduated from college before me, and shortly after completing his degree decided to get married. He invited me to be a part of that celebration and I accepted. One of the traditions of a Jewish wedding (as in every wedding) is the offering of toasts and one frequently given is the Hebrew salutation, “L’chaim!” — “To Life!” It is a wish for a person’s, or in this case the couple’s, health and well-being.

Jojo’s father was the first to offer the toast. I was standing beside him as he did so, and I may have been the only person to hear a muttered after-thought that he spoke when giving the toast. He said the usual few words about how proud and happy he was, loudly proclaimed “L’chaim!” and then muttered, “And don’t screw it up.”

That is precisely what Moses is saying to the people of the Hebrews today in our reading from the Old Testament: “L’Chaim! – And don’t screw it up!”

Remember where we are in this reading. The Book of Deuteronomy is supposed to be the farewell address from Moses to the people he has led across the desert for forty years. The first generation that had left Egypt has died off — you may remember that they angered God with their stiff-necked whining so God had sworn that none of them could enter the Promised Land, even Moses! God has promised Moses, however, that he would be able to see Canaan, even though he couldn’t go in.

So in Deuteronomy, we are standing on a high hill looking over the border into Canaan-land and Moses is reminding the Hebrews of their past. In a series of three discourses, Moses reminds them of their time of slavery in Egypt, of their liberation at the Passover, of their trek through the desert, and of God’s giving of the Law at Sinai. He has recounted the Ten Commandments and the rest of 613 mitzvot required in the Torah. And he is now, in the third discourse, consigning the Hebrews to the leadership of his assistant, Joshua the son of Nun, and encouraging them to success in the land God is giving them.

In the portion that was read this morning he says to them, “I am laying before you a choice between life and death. Choose life.” And then he tells them that doing so successfully is really a very simple thing; there are only three elements, three things that have to be done. There may be ten major commandments and 613 little rules and regulations, but really there are only three things that are required for them to live a good life in the land God is giving them: love God, obey God, and be faithful. He underscores this by saying it twice in this short passage: “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live . . . .” (v. 16) and again “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him . . . .” (vv. 19b-20) Love God, obey God, and be faithful. Choose life!

Or as Jojo’s father put it, “L’Chaim! And don’t screw it up!”

In our epistle lesson, Paul is writing to the Christians in Corinth. He’s gotten word that they are screwing it up! The church he planted there has become split; there is conflict; people are following different practices and different teachings, dividing themselves according to whomever they were converted or baptized or taught by. “It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people,” he says in the beginning of this letter, “that there are quarrels among you.” (1 Cor. 1:11) The followers of Apollos were at odds with followers of Paul and both were at odds with the followers of Cephas.

In correcting them, Paul basically tells them that they are acting like children! He reminds them that in proclaiming the Gospel to them he spoke to them as if they were children: “I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready . . . . (1 Cor. 3:1-2)

Paul made the same point about religion, really about maturity in religion, in his letter to the Galatians when he spoke of the Jewish law (the Torah, the same law of ten major commandments and 613 mitzvot about which Moses had spoken to the Hebrews on that hill overlooking Canaan) as a “disciplinarian”:

Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. (Gal. 3:23-26)

The actual Greek word is paidagogos which is more accurately translated as “tutor” or “schoolmaster.” It is the word from which we get pedagogy.

Traceable Letter A As I thought about this image of learning, this metaphor of the Law as schoolmaster, I thought about the way we all learn to write, by first learning to letter (or “print” as some people call it). I’m sure we all started in the same way, with those workbooks with very wide ruled lines, maybe 1/2 inch? And there were dashed lines over which we traced with our pencils. We started with the straight-line letters . . . I . . . then added a crossbar at the top . . . T . . . or a bar at the bottom . . . L . . . then two bars . . . F . . . and so on. Eventually, when we had mastered the straight lines, we learned to make diagonals . . . X . . . and . . . Z . . . and then . . . Y And after that came the curved letters . . . O . . . then . . . C . . . then . . . S. And I remember that . . . Q . . . was last because it had that little squiggly addition.

What was the point of that? Were we learning to trace dashed lines? Not really. The rule was to trace the dashed line, but what we were learning was lettering, writing, and really not even that . . . what we were learning was a means of communication! The point was not to trace dashed lines; the point was to communicate.

As I thought about that further, I remembered my grandfather Funston. I’ve mentioned him a time or two and told you how I spent my childhood summers with my grandparents. My grandfather, when I knew him, was an insurance salesman, the owner of the Funston Insurance Agency on Fourth Street in Winfield, Kansas (another part of the middle of nowhere). But earlier in life, before he “retired,” he was a school teacher, and he had been a certified Palmer method penmanship instructor. So one of the “fun” things his grandchildren got to do during their summer vacations was learn to write in cursive. Does anybody do that anymore? Write what we used to call “long-hand”? Email begat texting and texting begat tweeting and it seems no one writes notes or letters in beautiful flowing script anymore. But my grandfather made sure that my cousins and I learned to write that way!

There was one sentence that we practiced over and over. Later, in high school at St. John’s Military School, when I learned to type from a retired baseball player named “Lefty” Loy, I encountered that sentence again. And when my mother and I bought my first typewriter for college, we used that sentence to test the key action — and still to this day when I test computer keyboards I type out that same sentence. It’s one that I am sure is familiar to many if not most of you: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy white dog.” An English sentence containing every letter of the Latin alphabet.

The quick brown fox . . . .

Writing that sentence again and again, typing it over and over, was I learning about brown foxes or white dogs? No! The rule was to write or type the sentence, but the goal was to learn yet another means of written communication. The dashed lines in the workbook, the constant repetition of that sentence were training us in an underlying principle. In Paul’s words, they served as a schoolmaster until we had internalized the lessons. The Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, the 613 mitzvot, served as schoolmaster until the Hebrews had (as Moses said) learned to love God, obey God, and be faithful. Until they had learned to choose life.

But over time, the rules and regulations, the commandments, the laws, and the ordinances had become more important than those underlying principles. They screwed it up! So that the tracing of the dashed lines was more important than the communication. Then, through God’s grace, Jesus came “so that we might be justified by faith,” so that we might be set free from a disciplinarian, from a schoolmaster which had become more important the lessons the schoolmaster was supposed to teach.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus is on a hillside beside the Sea of Galilee delivering what we have come to know as “The Sermon on the Mount.” And here in this section we hear a part of what are known as “the antitheses” in which Jesus deals with this very issue. He takes apart the Torah and shows that beneath its specific rules is an underlying principle by dealing with several of the commandments in this fashion: “You have heard it said . . . . but I say to you.” You have heard the rule, but I tell you something more basic, something that is the foundation of the rule.

For example, he begins with the commandment, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, `You shall not murder’; and `whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.'” (v. 21) So, why do people commit murder? The last time you murdered someone, why did you do it? Statistically, we know that most murders are committed in what the law calls “the heat of passion.” In other words, people mostly kill other people because they’re angry! They’re mad as hell and lose control. So Jesus says, “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.” And he continues to say that if you act on that anger in any way you will be liable to damnation. It isn’t the rule against murder that is, in and of itself, important; it is the underlying principle of not losing control to anger. The commandment is a schoolmaster; the commandment is a dashed line; the commandment is a repetitive sentence teaching us the foundational lesson to control our passions. And so Jesus continues with the commandment against adultery and its relationship to foundational issue of lust and covetousness, and with the commandment against false swearing and its relationship to the foundational issue of honesty. And so it goes for all of the Ten Commandments and all of the 613 mitzvot. And the foundational principle for the whole of the Torah is what Moses taught on the hill overlooking Canaan: Love — love God, obey God, be faithful — choose life.

You recall that Jesus was once asked what the greatest commandment was and you remember how he answered: the greatest commandment is this, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And, he added, there is a second, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In so answering, Jesus was not declaring anything new; his answer was straight up traditional rabbinic teaching.

There is a story about a rabbi contemporary to Jesus, Rabbi Hillel, the leader of one of the influential schools of Judaism at the time. A story related in the Jewish Talmud tells about a gentile who was curious about Judaism. This man challenged Hillel to explain Jewish law while he (the gentile) stood on one foot. Accepting the challenge, Hillel said: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Now, go and read it!”

Jesus and Hillel, good First Century rabbis, were simply saying what Moses had said to the people of the Hebrews standing on that hill looking into Canaan-land so many centuries before. There are a lot of commandments, a lot of rules, a lot of ordinances . . . but they are simply schoolmasters, disciplinarians teaching an underlying, foundational principle: Love God, obey God, be faithful. To do this is to choose life; to do anything else is to choose death.

Choose life!

L’Chaim! And don’t screw it up!

Amen.

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

Bravo! Bishops of Kansas – From the Daily Office – February 15, 2015

February 15, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Romans:

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 14:10-13 (NRSV) – February 15, 2014.)

Kansas Map A few days ago, the Kansas state house of representatives did a horrendous thing. They passed HB 2453 granting public and private employees the right to deny services, including unemployment benefits and foster care, to same-sex couples on the basis of “religious freedom.” When I read this morning’s words from St. Paul to the Romans, I wanted to address that legislation. However, two other Episcopalians had already done so with more authority than I could muster and said precisely what I would have wanted to say. The bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas and the Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas issued a joint statement apropos of this legislation:

Some people regularly suggest that the Church should stay out of politics, but we regret to observe that the current political agenda is encroaching upon fundamental principles that Christians, and people of all faiths, hold dear: compassion for the poor, safety for all people and equality for everyone.

House Bill 2453, which is currently before the Kansas Senate, proposes to legalize discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, attributing the excuse for such discrimination as “religious freedom.” In truth, this bill is not about religious freedom but is aimed at creating state-authorized bias and inequality.

Under this bill, government employees could refuse to offer services to their fellow citizens and taxpayers, while claiming religious motives. Business owners could refuse goods and services to people they perceive to be partnered gay or lesbians without repercussion. This proposed legislation is reminiscent of the worst laws that permitted discrimination against people on the basis of color, sex or nation of origin. The intent of this bill is an affront to the beliefs of all Kansans who support equal treatment under the law for every human being.

Kansas history is filled with examples of standing up for the expansion of rights – in our abolitionist, free state roots; as the first state in the country to elect a woman to a political office; and as a place identified with contributing to the end of school desegregation. We have a high calling to provide equality and equal opportunity to everyone.

For Episcopalians, our faith is unequivocal. Our Baptismal Covenant asks, “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?” Promising to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being requires us to be adamantly opposed to legislation that does none of these things.

Our biblically based faith calls us to live out the command of Jesus Christ to love one another. You cannot love your fellow Kansans and deny them the rights that belong to everyone else.

We urge the rejection of this bill so that our great state might continue to stand for justice, dignity and equality.

In Christ,

The Right Reverend Dean E. Wolfe
Ninth Bishop
The Episcopal Diocese of Kansas

The Right Reverend Michael P. Milliken
Fifth Bishop
The Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas

Well done, bishops! Bravo!

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

City on the Hill, Obscured – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany, Year A – February 9, 2014

February 9, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 9, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; and Matthew 5:13-20. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Listen again to the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

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?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

Listen again to the words of our Savior Jesus Christ:

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

If you read my blog of meditations on the Daily Office readings which I post to the internet everyday and offer to this parish and to others through Facebook, you will already have read some of what I have to say this morning. This is because earlier this week the Daily Office lectionary included the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, at the end of which, after Abraham has shown himself willing to do this humanly unthinkable thing at the command of God and thus demonstrated his faithfulness to God, the angel of the Lord addresses Abraham saying, “By your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” It is the first mention in Scripture of the over-arching purpose of God’s People, the ministry that will be Israel’s and then will be the church’s: to be a source of blessing for all people, not just to be the recipients of blessing, but to be the source of blessing for all nations, to be (as Jesus says in this morning’s gospel) salt and light for the world.

This is and has always been the mission of God’s People; it is repeated again and again throughout the Old Testament. Isaiah prophesied to Israel that “in days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” (Isa. 2:2) Psalm 72 includes the prayer for the king of Israel that all nations may be blessed in him (v. 17), and Psalm 87 proclaims that God will say of all people from every nation that “this one was born” in Zion (v. 6). Ben Sira refers to the promise to Abraham when he writes, “To Isaac also he gave the same assurance for the sake of his father Abraham. The blessing of all people and the covenant he made to rest on the head of Jacob.” (Ecclus. 44:22-23)

We were reminded last Sunday that this mission was inherited by Jesus when old Simeon took the infant Christ in his arms and proclaimed that he was to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Lk 2:32) And now this week, as an adult rabbi, Jesus passes on that mission to his church, the new Israel (as St. Paul would later call it). Jesus instructs his disciples, those present at the Sermon on the Mount and all those to follow them through the ages, right down to you and me, to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Mt 5:16) He has commissioned us to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world,” and reminds us that “a city built on a hill cannot be hid.” (v. 14)

The Puritan preacher John Winthrop, who became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, took up that image when he proclaimed the Puritan colonists’ covenant aboard the vessel Arbella in 1630; he admonished his band of pilgrims to set an example of righteousness for the world. He concluded a very long sermon with these words:

Now the only way . . . to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. “Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,” in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Therefore let us choose life,
that we and our seed may live,
by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him,
for He is our life and our prosperity.

Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made use of the “city on the hill” metaphor in their inaugural addresses; Reagan conflated it with Jesus’ lamp on a lampstand by adding the adjective “shining” . . . America, said President Reagan, should be a “shining city on the hill.”

Now, I would be the last person to stand in a pulpit and tell you that I believe the United States of America was founded to be a “Christian nation.” I know my history far too well to offer that canard. America was not founded to be a Christian nation; it was founded to be a religiously free nation, a pluralist nation, a spiritually diverse nation. But America is a Christian majority country; it is a nation in which Christians have had influence; it is a nation in which Christians still have influence; and it is a nation in which Christians should act like Christians! It is we, the Christians — the followers of Jesus Christ — to whom Jesus gave the mission to be the “city on the hill,” to “let our light shine before others.”

Governor Winthrop, in his address to Puritan pilgrims, made reference to the Prophet Micah and made specific reference to that prophet’s proclamation: “[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8) Isaiah’s prophecy read today puts flesh on the bones of Micah’s admonition: we do justice, love kindness, and walk with God when we feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked.

We Episcopalians are pretty good at those material things. We run food pantries like our own Free Farmers’ Market. We run soup kitchens like the phenomenal ministry at Church of the Holy Apostles in New York City. We plant public gardens like our brothers and sisters at our own diocesan cathedral have done. We support shelters for the homeless and the abused, like our local Battered Women’s Shelter. We provide financial backing and volunteer labor to programs like Habitat for Humanity. Our own youth group and their adult supporters have traveled on mission trips to the Gulf Coast, to Appalachia, to central Pennsylvania, and to north-central Ohio to participate in housing improvement projects. We participate in Blanket Sunday programs to provide warm blankets and clothing to those in need. Our own knitting groups make shawls for the sick, and mittens, scarves, and woolen caps for merchant seamen. And we are just one of thousands of parishes around the country doing these things and many others.

We Episcopalians are pretty good, really, at the material mercies of feeding, housing, and clothing those in need.

But Isaiah didn’t stop fleshing out Micah’s call to justice, kindness, and humility with only those material ministries. He added that we have to “remove the yoke from among [us], the pointing of the finger, [and] the speaking of evil.” This is what Governor Winthrop was addressing when he said:

We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

I’m not so sure we Episcopalians . . . I’m not so sure that we mainstream American Christians of any denomination . . . have done such a good job in these areas.

Last Sunday was notable not only as the Feast of the Presentation, on which we heard that story of Simeon declaring the infant Jesus to be the light of the world, it was also Super Bowl Sunday. During the broadcast of that game, Coca-Cola offered an advertisement featuring several people of differing ethnicities singing in a variety of languages a rendition of the song America the Beautiful. It was, I thought, a lovely commercial. I enjoyed it. It reminded me of the same company’s ad from nearly 40 years ago when a crowd of folks on hillside proclaimed their desire to “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”

Apparently, however, there were others who saw the ad differently. Almost immediately after its showing, the internet social media was flooded with statements of outrage demanding that the Coca-Cola singers “speak American,” condemning the singing of “our national anthem” in any language other than English, and threatening a boycott of Coke. (As much as I might want to, I’m not going to address the issues that are raised by someone referring to the English language as “American” or by someone not knowing that America the Beautiful is not the national anthem of the United States.)

I must admit that I was both shocked and puzzled that people whom I believe would claim to be Christian, and who clearly claim to be Americans, would be upset with a successful American corporation advertising its product in a commercial in which people from all over the world extol the beauty of our country. The only explanation I can conceive is some sort of misunderstanding of what national unity is, and a misapprehension that uniformity of language promotes such unity. Indeed, that is the tenor of many remarks I’ve seen in the internet social media since the Super Bowl advertisement was aired. In many of those comments, the old image of America as a “melting pot” has been invoked.

Many of us may remember that image from grade school and junior high civics lessons; I remember a junior high school civics and history instructor who suggested another image. Our society is not and never has been a melting pot, he told us. A melting pot, he said, blends everything together. If our country was a melting pot, there wouldn’t be Hispanic barrios, black ghettos, Little Italies, Chinatowns, Levittowns, lace-curtain Irish neighborhoods, and all the other ethnic enclaves that have existed for decades and even centuries. We’re not a melting pot, he said. We are a tossed salad, a lively, tasty, vibrant, salty (to use Jesus’ metaphor) tossed salad. It is our diversity that makes us exciting and makes us strong, unity in diversity, not uniformity, which is what the critics of the Coca-Cola ad seem to want.

Ethnic diversity, however, is the biblical model. All the nations of the world receive a blessing through Abraham and his descendants, but they do not become Israel; they do not become Jews. Even as the nations stream to the mountain of God as Isaiah prophesied, even as God enrolls them as Psalm 87 describes declaring their birth in Zion, they remain Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia, and all the other nations of the world. As immigrants come to be part of America, even as they may become naturalized citizens, they retain their histories and identities as Moroccan, Thai, Xosa, French, Maori, and all the rest, with cultural heritages to be honored, languages to be spoken and sung, and diversity to be celebrated. The shining city on the hill shines with diversity, the diversity shown in the Coke commercial!

I hope you saw the ad. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. I hope you didn’t send any of those tweets and other messages condemning it and calling for people to “speak American.” I hope you didn’t receive any of those messages from acquaintances, but I have to tell you that I did. And I have to confess to you that it wasn’t until a few days later that I was able to reply to them. I have to confess to you that in failing to immediately respond and to gently rebuke, I failed to “remove the yoke from among [us], the pointing of the finger, [and] the speaking of evil.” I failed to “uphold a familiar commerce in meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.” I failed to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” And in that failure I allowed the bushel of hatred and malice to cover the light set upon the lampstand; I allowed the darkness of injustice and oppression to obscure the city on the hill.

And . . . I’m sorry to say . . . I don’t think I’m untypical as an Episcopalian, even as a mainstream American Christian. We are very good at the material ministries of food, housing, and clothing. Not so good at the spiritual ministries of unity and peace. We need to get better — I need to get better — at expressing the Christian faith in public. When someone tells a joke that is racist or sexist or homophobic, when someone makes a statement that demeans another, when someone speaks in any way that promotes injustice or oppression, we need — I need — to not be silent, but to respond immediately with “all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.” Otherwise all of our material works of mercy, all the feeding, all the housing, all the clothing, will be obscured; the city on the hill will be hidden; our light will not shine for all to see; and none will glorify our Father in heaven.

Let us pray:

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart and especially the hearts of Christian people throughout our country — especially our own hearts — that any barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that we recognize that diversity is not division and that unity does not require uniformity. Help us to confront injustice and oppression without hatred or bitterness, to struggle for justice and truth with gentleness and patience, and to work with everyone with forbearance and respect, that our city on the hill may not be obscured and that our light may shine before others so that they glorify you, our Father in heaven, through your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

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

How Silently – From the Daily Office – December 30, 2013

December 30, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Fourth Gospel:

Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. . . . And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 8:6b,8 (NRSV) – December 30, 2013.)

Writing in the Sand What did he write? What did he write the first time? What did he write the second? I have heard many speculative answers to this question, but the truth is that no one knows. And I tend to think it really doesn’t matter. I find myself in the company of John Calvin and others who have suggested that Jesus was merely doodling. This group of interpreters believe that by doing so Jesus was showing either utter contempt for the accusers or a calm lack of anxiety in the situation. Calvin was of the first opinion; I hold to the second.

In the past several years, under the influence of family systems therapists and theorists, most notably Rabbi Edwin Friedman with the 1985 publication of his book Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, many clergy have sought to develop the ability to be a “nonanxious presence.” This, says Friedman, is someone who can demonstrate emotional clarity, who can separate while still remaining connected, who can manage his or her own reactivity to the automatic reactivity of others.

The automatic reaction of most of us (which the scribes and Pharisees in this story certainly exhibit) is to fill what seems to be empty emotional space with busy-ness, to plan and schedule our days, to keep busy and demonstrate a purpose, to have some sort of criteria against which to evaluate and judge both situations and people, and to exercise that judgment whether we actually need to or not!

In the midst of the emotional turmoil around him, Jesus just doodled. He waited it out. Whether he wrote anything of meaning, we cannot tell from the text. So let me add my speculation . . .

I think, if he wrote anything, it was not the names of prostitutes visited by the accusers, nor their own names, nor the list of their many sins, nor the Ten Commandments, nor the requirements set out in Leviticus for the proper conduct of legal proceedings against adulterers, all of which have been suggested by various interpreters and scholars. No, I don’t think he was writing anything for the benefit of the unruly crowd. I suggest two other possibilities . . . .

The first would be something for the benefit of the woman. Perhaps the admonition from the Psalms: “When you are disturbed . . . be silent.” (Ps. 4:4) Or another: “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Ps. 46:10)

The second possibility would be something written for himself, a recollection perhaps of the story of Elijah in the First Book of Kings, a reminder that the Spirit of God was not found in the turmoil of wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the “sound of sheer silence.” (1 Kings 19:12)

In any event, in this season of the Incarnation, this story of Jesus’ patient doodling, his calm in the midst of turmoil, reminds us “how silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”

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

Lions Eating – From the Daily Office – December 4, 2013

December 4, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Amos:

Thus says the Lord: As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who live in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and part of a bed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Amos 3:12 (NRSV) – December 4, 2013.)

Lion Eating I’m sitting here this morning knowing full well that I should be writing something about Advent and, truth be told, there are other parts of today’s daily readings that would lend themselves to an Advent reflection. But…. yesterday a federal court in Michigan decreed that the city of Detroit could carry on with a restructuring of its debt through bankruptcy and, more importantly and more destructively, that among the obligations that could be discharged are its pension responsibilities to former municipal employees. I was deeply troubled by that news when I heard it yesterday morning and I’ve been pondering it since.

It’s been more than thirty years since I graduated from law school (thirty years!) and at no time in those three decades have I practiced bankruptcy law, and I certainly haven’t kept up with the changes in statutory or judicial determination of what debts can and cannot be discharged. The only significant change that I know of personally is the legislative decision that student loans cannot be subjected to bankruptcy protection (about which I am keenly aware as the parent of a young adult with significant educational debt). Nonetheless, I recall from my law school studies that the basic concept of court-supervised bankruptcy is supposed to fairness and equity to both debtor and creditors. Sometimes fairness requires that an obligation cannot be set aside in bankruptcy; sometimes equity demands that the creditor be made whole to the greatest extent possible. There is something that seems to me grossly unfair about allowing an employer to simply walk away from a contractual promise to pay a pension, about putting pensioners into the same class of creditors with vendors and lenders.

So with that news of the day in my consciousness, I sat down to read the Daily Office and contemplate the Lectionary texts . . . and the image of the lion with two legs of a lamb or the ear of a goat hanging from its lips (which Amos has taken from the laws of Exodus) struck me as a visual metaphor for the plight of Detroit’s retirees (and possibly those of other employers, public and private, if this decision sets a precedent).

The law of Moses requires that someone entrusted with another’s livestock who has lost an animal to a predator, in order to prove that that is the case and that he has not taken it for his own use, salvage some part of the carcass (Exod. 22:13). Amos twists the legal requirement into a prophetic metaphor by using the verb “rescue” to refer to the salvage of the body parts and then uses the metaphor to describe the way in which God will “rescue” the Israelites of Samaria, driving the point home by saying that those few who will be “rescued” will also come away with only a fragment of their possessions, “the corner of a couch and part of a bed.”

I’m not really sure who’s the lion or who’s the rescuer in the Detroit bankruptcy, but I’m pretty certain who the sacrificial lambs are, who the people who are going to get to keep only a fragment (if that) of what ought to be legally theirs. At one point, Jesus warned his disciples about those whom he described as loving “to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces,” who want to have the “places of honor at banquets:” “They devour widows’ houses,” he said. (Luke 20:46-47) I can’t help but think of that warning, and see this image of the lion with legs dangling from its mouth, when I think of the pensioners who will be deprived of their retirement income by this court decision and the actions of the city managers of Detroit.

Perhaps the Advent message in the lesson from Amos today is found a few verses further on when the prophet addresses those “who oppress the poor, who crush the needy” and warns them, “The time is surely coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks . . . .” (Amos 4:1-2) That is the Advent theme, “The time is surely coming . . . the time is surely coming.”

The time is surely coming when the King will say to some, “I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing . . .” And he will assure them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” (Matt. 25:42-43,45)

I wonder if he will add, “I was a retiree and you did not pay me my pension.” I wonder if he will mention the bankruptcy of Detroit.

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

Quick! Grab a Pruning-Hook! — From the Daily Office — November 25, 2013

November 25, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Joel:

Proclaim this among the nations:
Prepare war,
stir up the warriors.
Let all the soldiers draw near,
let them come up.
Beat your ploughshares into swords,
and your pruning-hooks into spears;
let the weakling say, “I am a warrior.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Joel 3:9-10 (NRSV) – November 25, 2013.)

Sword Making Read it carefully, it’s not what you think it is. It’s not what you expect. It’s not a call to make agricultural implements out of the weapons of war . . . it is quite literally the opposite!

It’s another surreal moment with scripture, like that reading from Revelation we had a few days ago! It’s God saying precisely what we do not want God to say . . . but isn’t that the way with God?

And like Revelation is sometimes understood, these words from God spoken through the Prophet Joel are about the end times; they are about judgment. God is summoning the nations do battle with God! God is coming to pronounce and carry out judgment, so he is ironically calling the peoples of the world to defend themselves against God. Earlier Joel had used a courtroom and law case metaphor, so this is just an escalation of that call to present a defense.

“I’m comin’; you best get ready,” is what this prophecy says. “Defend yourselves!” Can we do so?

Can we defend the failure all around us to feed the poor? In a country where our elected leadership has cut food assistance to the poor by $40 million while continuing and expanding corporate subsidies to agribusiness (and other industries), can we do so?

Can we defend the failure all around us to house the homeless? In a country where there homes sitting vacant because of the “real estate bubble” and the “foreclosure crisis” while families live in their cars and camp under highway bridges, where there are in fact more vacant homes than there are families in need of housing, can we do so?

Can we defend the failure all around us to care for the widowed and the orphan? In a country where we spend more per capita on health care than nearly any other industrialized nation but rank 37th overall in health care outcomes and have the 46th ranked life-expectancy for an adult, can we do so?

Can we defend the failure all around us to honor human life? In a country that regularly sends unmanned aerial vehicles (otherwise known as “drones”) into foreign nations to murder perceived enemies (including our own citizens) without warning, where thousands die every year because we value the “right to bear arms” so highly that we will not enact even reasonable regulations for the ownership of firearms, can we do so?

Quick! Grab a pruning-hook! Start straightening and sharpening it, because I think we’re going to need more than a few spears.

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

Houses and Vineyards, Laws and Regulations – From the Daily Office – November 23, 2013

November 23, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Isaiah:

They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 65:21-22 (NRSV) – November 23, 2013.)

House and Vineyard This part of Isaiah was written shortly after the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, which Cyrus of Persia had allowed in the middle of the 6th Century BCE. Isaiah (on God’s behalf) was promising two things with these images of laborers enjoying the fruits of their own efforts: first, that the people would no longer be (if not slaves) subjugated workers of foreign (or domestic) overlords and, second, that there would be peace. Israel’s and Judah’s history had been one of regular (if not constant) upheaval with invaders coming in and taking control of the vineyards and seizing the people’s lands and homes: the simple planting of vineyards with an expectation of enjoying the crop was a metaphor of peace and security.

As I read the words this morning in our modern context, I thought how inappropriate a metaphor this is for us. We no longer live in a world where enjoying the fruits of one’s own labor is the norm. We live in a world dominated by an economic system in which those who tend the vines and harvest the grapes are not those who enjoy the crop, those who build the houses are not those who will ultimately live in them; indeed, they are several levels of “production” and “marketing” away from those who do. The metaphorical vineyard workers and home builders of our society have no personal or emotional connection to the crops and the buildings; they work for a paycheck which, one hopes, will enable them to purchase other crops harvested by other workers and to live in other homes built by other builders.

Not that there is anything wrong with that system, so long as it is fairly administered. Fairness, justice, and peace are, after all, what this prophecy is really addressing. Any economic system that produces those fruits lives up to the biblical standard. But it takes laws and regulations (and law enforcement systems and regulatory agencies) to assure that human beings and their economies behave in such ways. Left to our own devices, we humans seldom do so, as the historical record makes painfully clear.

As so often happens, I could not help but think of two recent news reports when confronted with this witness of scripture, reports that clearly demonstrate the need for such laws and the need for vigilance by those (like me) who would insist that they are needed. The first was the news that a congress woman from another state has introduced a bill to abolish, as a matter of federal law, the requirement of overtime pay for those whose employers demand they work in excess of 40 hours per week. The second was a report yesterday that British authorities had found and freed three women who had been kept as domestic slaves (in London, for heaven’s sake!) for thirty years!

We are so far from the biblical standard of fairness and justice for laborers! So far! And at times we seem to be slipping further way. The prophecy promises that the time will come when workers will know justice and peace; present-day news reports show that that time hasn’t come yet.

Another prophet once asked “What does the Lord require of you?” and then answered his own question: “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) Only when each person and the whole of society (through its laws, regulations, and law enforcement) does so can we be assured that workers will build houses and inhabit them, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

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

Category: Law (Page 9 of 13)

Jesus the Lens – Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, RCL Year A – March 2, 2014

Philemon Pisses Me Off – From the Daily Office – February 28, 2014

Political Calculation – From the Daily Office – February 26, 2014

Choose Life! L’Chaim – Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany – February 16, 2014

Bravo! Bishops of Kansas – From the Daily Office – February 15, 2015

City on the Hill, Obscured – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany, Year A – February 9, 2014

How Silently – From the Daily Office – December 30, 2013

Lions Eating – From the Daily Office – December 4, 2013

Quick! Grab a Pruning-Hook! — From the Daily Office — November 25, 2013

Houses and Vineyards, Laws and Regulations – From the Daily Office – November 23, 2013

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