Category: Politics (Page 17 of 23)

By the Rivers of Babylon – Sermon for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22C – October 6, 2013

October 6, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, October 6, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 22C: Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 137; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; and Luke 17:5-10. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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You may recognize this reggae version of a portion of Psalm 137, the psalm we recited this morning, combined with a paraphrase of verse 14 of Psalm 19. It was originally done by the Melodians in 1969, but the version I played was recorded by Boney M, a German Caribbean group, in 1978 and claimed the Number 1 spot on the European pop charts that year. It’s quite a danceable little tune; it puts a bounce in your step which seems quite at odds with Psalm 137’s words of lament and with the violent imprecation with which the psalm concludes. I’ll return to this musical version in a moment, but first let’s take a closer look at this psalm and our other lessons today.

Paul begins his letter to the young bishop, Timothy, whom he has nurtured in the faith, with these words: “I am grateful to God — whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did . . . .” I’m glad that Paul was able to do so, to worship with a clear conscience, because I think he was wrong about his ancestors! His ancestors were the ones who wrote the psalm we recited just before Paul’s letter was read, the psalm that ends with these words:

Remember the day of Jerusalem, O Lord, against the people of Edom, *
who said, “Down with it! down with it! even to the ground!”
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, *
happy the one who pays you back for what you have done to us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, *
and dashes them against the rock!
(Ps 137:7-9)

I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time worshiping with a clear conscience after reciting such words and, I suspect, so did the ancient Jews, even though those awful words may have been as heart-breakingly genuine, as horrifically honest as possible.

There is academic debate about the authorship of this letter; many scholars believe that it was not written by Paul even though it purports to be his personal farewell address, “Paul modeling how to die” as one commentator puts it. So we don’t really know when or why this letter was written, or by whom (but we’ll call the author “Paul” anyway). We know that Timothy was in tears: “Recalling your tears,” writes Paul, “I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.” Presumably, Timothy is distraught over Paul’s imprisonment and probable impending execution. Paul’s advice to Timothy is to buck up! “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” Please keep this advice (and the happy, danceable music to which the Melodians and Boney M set Psalm 137) in mind as we turn to the other lessons of the day.

Lessons like the reading from Luke’s Gospel in which Jesus admonishes his followers (specifically the Apostles, but also us), “When you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'” Bill Loader, an Australian theologian whose work and words I rather like, says this admonition is a slap in the face to the established order:

It deconstructs hierarchy [and] debunks the idea that we achieve value by achieving the good, as though we deserve a bonus for being decent, caring human beings. It does not let us play the game. We can’t claim: you ought to love me, because look at how good I am! Look at what I have done! The passage is probably deliberately offensive in flooring aspirations to human worth based on achievement capital. It is annoying and frustrating, and even seems mean. It gives us no credit. (First Thoughts)

Jesus’ comment subverts any system that bases value on achievement; very simply, Jesus is saying that we are valued by God (and thus should value one another), not because of what we achieve, but because of who we are! Paul’s admonition to Timothy to buck up because we have been given “a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” is grounded in the assurance of Jesus that we are loved by God not because we have accomplished anything, but simply because of who we are.

The way Jesus (who is, remember, the incarnation of God) approaches human dignity and value is hugely comforting in a world where the poor are exploited and where anger explodes in violence and terror which disregards human life, in the very world of Psalm 137 and its cry for vengeance, its imprecation that someone will ” take [Babylon’s] little ones and dash them against the rock!”

So what was the world of Psalm 137? It was the world of the Babylonian exile, the world of the destruction of Jerusalem, the world of the demolition of the Temple, the very heart and soul of the Jewish people. The year was 587 B.C.E. The armies of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, aided and cheered on by the Edomites (ancestral enemies of the Jews, supposedly descended from Jacob’s brother Esau) invaded the southern kingdom of Judah. (The northern kingdom of Israel had already been destroyed by the Assyrians 150 years or so before.) The Babylonians took possession of Jerusalem, raping, pillaging, and slaughtering with abandon. They seized the priests and the scribes, the king and the nobles, the wealthy leaders and their accountants, and took them away to Babylon. For those left behind, the economy quickly collapsed, food became scarce, water became foul, the daily life ceased to make sense. Order was replaced by chaos. Jerusalem became a wasteland. The Book of Lamentations describes the scene:

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
. . . .
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
. . . .
Her foes have become the masters,
her enemies prosper;
. . . .
her children have gone away,
captives before the foe.
(Lamentations 1:1,5)

The psalmist, speaking for those who have suffered through this desolation, curses those who have caused it. The psalm’s cries of deep sorrow (“We wept; we could not sing!”) and the dreams of horrible acts of vengeance (“Happy the one who murders their infants!”) are cathartic; they are a means of working through and overcoming the intense hurt of defeat and exile. By voicing anger to God, the exiles cleanse themselves of violent emotion, but they also give themselves a reason to persist.

In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning (Beacon Press, Boston, 2006), psychologist Viktor Frankl described his own experience in the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust and the lessons he and his fellow inmates learned about spiritual survival. Among those learnings was the need for a goal: “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future,” (p. 73) even if that future is one of vengeance. Without a goal, the concentration camp prisoners ceased to live for the future; indeed, they ceased to live at all, they simply decayed. “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how'” wrote Frankl. (p. 76) Their anger and dreams of revenge supplied the exiles with the why, the goal, the reason for them to survive. The provocative and hyperbolic language of the psalm expresses the horror and outrage the exiles were experiencing, and describes a future for which they could live. That it is a horrific future does not deprive it of its spiritually supportive power.

In their defense, we should note that “dashing babies” was a common practice of warfare in the international community of the exiles’ time. In the Second Book of Kings, for example, Elisha weeps in the presence of a foreign general who asks why the man of God is crying, and Elisha answers: “Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel; you will set [Israel’s] fortresses on fire, you will kill their young men with the sword, dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their pregnant women.” (2 Kgs.8:12) Babylonian armies are known to have killed babies, raped women, and blinded some their war prisoners. The Babylonians committed terrible atrocities against the people Judah so, in their dreams of retribution, they cried out to God for proportional retribution. There is, however, no evidence that the exiles ever followed through on their bloodthirsty dreams of revenge.

Psalm 137 “tells it like it is;” anger, vengeance, hatred, rage, pain and suffering are a human reality. The people of Judah believed that everything they had hoped for and everything they relied upon, their own country, their sacred priesthood, the Davidic kingdom, and the Jerusalem temple had been taken away by the bloodthirsty Babylonians. We know that faith becomes compromised when hopes of ease and comfort and success are snatched away by economic chaos, by terrorism, by personal health problems, by hunger, or by the dysfunction (or non-function) of government. Bad things happen and people react. Many, I am sure, have been guilty of extremes of thought like those voiced by the psalmist. Have you never wished someone dead, even in unspoken your thoughts? I confess that I have. Have you never told someone (even if only under your breath) to “Go to Hell”? I have! In today’s culture, that may be more acceptable than threatening to “dash babies,” but theologically speaking, it voices a much stronger sentiment than the psalm. We and our world are more like the exiles and theirs than we know or want to admit.

This is how this psalm, this awful, horrific psalm, speaks both to and for us. The Babylonians may not have attacked us, but we live in a world at least as violent as that of the exiles. Since 1900, there have been 232 wars; more than 96 million people have been killed in those wars, and it is an inescapable fact of modern history that the same barbarism described in Psalm 137 or the Book of Lamentations or the Second Book of Kings occurred in many of those wars and still occurs today. One need only think of the ethnic cleansing episodes in the former Yugoslavia, the civil war in Rwanda, and the almost daily atrocities currently happening in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Myanmar, and elsewhere.

Abandoned Train Station, Detroit, MI We live in a country where there are cities once full of people now sitting lonely: we sit here today less than 200 miles by turnpike from Detroit, where the picture on the cover of our bulletin was taken, a city which has been described as looking as if it had been bombed in a war! Just yesterday, Salon reported that in the United States there are 14 million unoccupied residences. Six months ago, “Detroit had more than 83,000 unoccupied residential addresses. That constitutes nearly 25 percent of the city’s potential housing stock. New Orleans had 44,000, for 21 percent. Cleveland had 41,000, or 19 percent.” (Salon, Abandoned Homes) Cities once full of people are sitting abandoned and lonely. Meanwhile, on any given night in this country over 633,000 homeless people sleep in shelters, and no one knows how many may be sleeping in cars, under bridges, squatting in abandoned buildings, or simply out on the streets. (National Alliance to End Homelessness)

We live in a country where 49 million Americans live in food insecure households, including almost 16 million children; where over 29 million people rely on assistance from government programs (now sadly shut down) to obtain sufficient food; and where 6.2 million households at least once in the last year have accessed emergency food from a food pantry or soup kitchen. (Feeding America)

This is not the country of our hopes and dreams; it is not the country we want it to be; it’s not even the country we think it is! It is a strange land: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” The psalm speaks to and for us.

In this psalm, the poet and the exiles turned their pain over to God! Giving voice to their sorrow, their anger, and their thirst for revenge, they were able to let go of them and to trust in God to act as God might. They were able to follow Paul’s advice to Timothy, to buck up, to rely not on the spirit sorrow and of anger and of cowardly vengeance, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Eventually, they came to understand that they were valued by God (and thus should value others, even their enemies), not because of what they had or had not achieves, but simply because of who they were! This brought them a sense of freedom — even in their exile — to dream, to hope, and to pray. Their prayers may have been, as Bible scholar Walter Wink said, “impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous, [and] more like haggling in an outdoor bazaar than the polite monologues of the church,” and they may have offered them with far less a clear conscience than Paul claims, but through them they voiced faith and courage to hand their desire for revenge over to God; through them they started the long healing process of returning home and truly worshiping God.

And so can we. We can end the wars and put a stop to the genocides. We can rebuild the cities and house the homeless. We can provide good nutrition for everyone and end food insecurity. We can do so because, I believe, we have faith at least the size of a mustard seed, because we have been given a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline, and because we are God’s servants and we know what we ought to do. And when we have done it, we can sing Psalm 137 like a dance tune, with a spring in our step, like exiles returning home to God!

Amen!

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

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

September 8, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then we have the Letter to Philemon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lord Helps Those . . . . — Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17C — September 1, 2013

September 1, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 1, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 15 (Proper 17, Year C): Jeremiah 2:4-13; Psalm 81:1,10-16; Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16; and Luke 14:1, 7-14. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Portrait of Benjamin Franklin Finish this verse: “The Lord helps those . . . .”

Congregation responds: “. . . . who help themselves.”

Do you know where to find that in Scripture?

You won’t. It’s not there. But a lot of people think it is. A survey done by the Barna organization within the past few years showed that at least 80% of American Christians believe that old saying is a biblical verse! It’s not.

“God helps those who help themselves” is probably the most often quoted piece of “Scripture” not found in the Bible. This saying is usually attributed to Ben Franklin because it was quoted in Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1757. In reality it predates Franklin by several centuries! One of the earliest forms of this saying goes back to Aesop’s fable, Hercules and the Waggoner, where the moral of the story is “the gods help them that help themselves.” The modern variant, “God helps those who help themselves,” was first coined by the English political theorist Algernon Sydney in a posthumous essay published in 1698 entitled Discourses Concerning Government. It is not a religious sentiment at all; it comes from moralistic politics! And it carries with it an implied negative corollary – that God will refuse to help those who (for whatever reason) don’t help themselves!

It also demands that we consider the truth of what happens to those who do help themselves . . . those who help themselves to too much . . . those who, as Jeremiah put it, “go after worthless things, and become worthless themselves.”

But for now let us consider, instead, the simple and straightforward statement we find in the Letter to the Hebrews: “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” The writer of the Letter is quoting from Psalm 118. In the prayer book this declaration is phrased: “The Lord is at my side, therefore I will not fear; what can anyone do to me?” This is a theme we find again and again in the Psalms: the nearness and unconditional nature of God’s aid.

When my mother planned her funeral (something I encourage everyone to think about doing; it is a real gift to your survivors!) she chose Psalm 121 to be read; that psalm is also appointed for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, and so for two reasons it is one of my favorites. That psalm reads:

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills; *
from where is my help to come?
2 My help comes from the Lord, *
the maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved *
and he who watches over you will not fall asleep.
4 Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel *
shall neither slumber nor sleep;
5 The Lord himself watches over you; *
the Lord is your shade at your right hand,
6 So that the sun shall not strike you by day, *
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; *
it is he who shall keep you safe.
8 The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, *
from this time forth for evermore.

The graphic on the front of our bulletin this morning is a quotation from the King James version of another psalm, Psalm 46. In the prayer book, the first few verse are rendered:

1 God is our refuge and strength, *
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, *
and though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea;
3 Though its waters rage and foam, *
and though the mountains tremble at its tumult.
4 The LORD of hosts is with us; *
the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

Psalm 46 was the inspiration for Martin Luther’s great hymn, a favorite of this congregation, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.

Nowhere in these psalms, nor anywhere else in the Bible will you find anything that provides a Judaic or Christian basis for the sentiment that “God helps those who help themselves” and its negative corollary that God refuses to assist those who don’t. In fact, the Bible teaches the opposite. God helps the helpless, the poor, the weak, the needy! The Prophet Isaiah, for example, declares, “For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled.” (Isa. 25:4-5) In the Letter to the Romans, St. Paul declares, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

Jesus once told a parable that underscored the unconditional nature of God’s help:

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” (Luke 15:4-6)

We human beings are the lost sheep of this parable, the completely helpless sheep, in need of God’s saving help.

God does not help those who can help themselves, simply because no one can do so! We cannot help ourselves; we cannot free ourselves from slavery to sin and death. Our own power fails us when we rely on it, rather than God.

As another psalm (Psalm 118) says:

16 There is no king that can be saved by a mighty army; *
a strong man is not delivered by his great strength.
17 The horse is a vain hope for deliverance; *
for all its strength it cannot save.
18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon those who fear him, *
on those who wait upon his love,
19 To pluck their lives from death, *
and to feed them in time of famine.

To believe that God’s help is conditioned on our helping ourselves is foolish. It is not only unbiblical, it is prideful! Pride and arrogance motivate us to believe that we can do everything through our own effort and with our own merit, that we can pick ourselves up by our own spiritual and moral bootstraps. However, the clear warrant of Scripture is that “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6)

I got to thinking about the contrast between that popular aphorism and the teaching of Scripture because of the Gospel lesson. In the Gospel lesson for today in which Jesus gives the advice:

When you are invited [to a banquet], go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

It occurred to me that Jesus is, indeed, addressing that second corollary of the old aphorism, that question I suggest at the beginning of this sermon: what happens to those who do help themselves . . . those who help themselves to too much? “All who exalt themselves will be humbled” is a pretty clear answer.

We live in a world dominated by those who have helped themselves to quite a bit. We live in a world where there are a few (“the 1%” we have come to call them), who have helped themselves to much, much more than they will ever be able to use, to the detriment of those who could make very good use of it. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews clearly counseled against such acquisitiveness: “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’” And he said, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

Trust in God. Everything else will fade; everything else will let you down. Over and over again the Bible teaches this lesson that we humans have a hard time understanding. Our tendency is to put our trust in and help ourselves to things, money, stuff. Somebody once asked John Rockefeller how much was enough; he answered, “Just a little bit more.”

I hate to say it, but we are all like that. We accumulate stuff at an incredible rate. We can’t seem to let go of what we have and we are always gather just a little bit more. We build extra garages for our stuff. I read recently that there are now more than 35,000 self-help storage facilities in the United States, with something like 1-1/2 billion square feet of extra storage because our houses and apartments can’t contain it all. I confess – Evelyn and I rent one of those units: it’s full of stuff we haven’t visited in a couple of years. I don’t really know why we keep it! I guess because we’re just like other people. The more we have, the more we need; the more we have, the more we worry about it. We have become like those against whom Jeremiah prophesied, like those who “went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves.”

But, says the Letter to the Hebrews, “be content with what you have; for [God] has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’” And Jesus, continuing the imagery of the banquet, said to his host in today’s Gospel story (and to us):

When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

Give the stuff away. Give it to those who need it. Help yourself by divesting yourself of all that stuff.

If there is any truth in that old saying that “God helps those who help themselves” it is in this, that God will repay those who give their stuff to the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind; that God will help those who help others. God will help those who help themselves by getting rid of the accumulated possessions we have but do not need, the accumulated wealth that can be of use to others. We don’t need it! And we needn’t be afraid of losing it. “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Those with whom you share may not be able to repay you, but “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

So now, let’s finish that verse differently: “The Lord helps those . . . who help others!”

Amen.

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

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

July 21, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In answer to that question, Jesus asked the lawyer what the Law of Moses says, to which the lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. ”

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

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

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

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

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

It is the one thing needful. Amen.

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

Tribalism and an Illustration of Compromise – From the Daily Office – July 18, 2013

July 18, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Mark:

The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against [Jesus], how to destroy him.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Mark 2:6 (NRSV) – July 18, 2013.)

Three Elders Conspiring Jesus had healed someone on the sabbath; that’s the simple back ground to the Pharisees and Herodians conspiracy against Jesus. This alliance is an interesting one since in generally the two groups hated one another! But their fear of Jesus apparently was enough to get them to work together against him.

It’s an odd alliance, particularly if looked at from the view point of the Pharisees. Their name is taken from the Hebrew word parash meaning “to separate;” they adhered to a strict piety and disciplined adherence to the Torah. They refused to associate with Gentiles or any “unclean” person or thing. They exhibited all of the characteristics of what, in our modern world politics, has come to be called “tribalism.”

Recently a friend and colleague bemoaned what she called “the tyranny of liberalism” noting that those on the political left were “wasting precious energy and time beating each other up.” I suggested to her that the problem is not with liberalism (nor, indeed, with conservatism). Rather the issue in modern society is the “tribalism” that seems to have taken over all of American social thought and civic behavior (including behavior in the church).

Tribes (like the Pharisees) group around and define membership on the basis of some type of purity – purity of thought, purity of belief, purity of blood, purity of precious bodily fluids, purity of whatever. Stray even a little bit from that purity and, like white blood cells, other members of the tribe will attack. A liberal voicing illiberal opinions, a conservative embracing a liberal point . . . they will be pilloried by their co-tribalists much faster than by the “opposition.”

This kind of tribal thinking has infected both political parties, many churches, the liberal and conservative political camps . . . name some segment of current American society and you can identify its tribal attributes. There are Pharisees of all stripes in our national community today. Both houses of our nation’s legislature have succumbed to a deeply seated “us versus them” mentality of political tribalism that goes beyond even traditional partisanship; nothing is getting done and so long as this persists nothing is likely to get done.

Not a single one of us is immune to tribalism; none of us avoids it entirely. However, we can do something about it. We can become aware of it. We can identify our own biases and question our own motivation. We can confess our own sinfulness in this regard and repent, turning away from it in favor of a more constructive way of working together.

In the second chapter of his catholic epistle, James addresses the issue of favoritism:

If a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? (James 2:2-4)

He then condemns this favoritism as sinful: “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” (v. 9) It is, he says, a violation of what Christ called the second great commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. Partisan tribalism, I would suggest, is simply a political form of the favoritism scripture here condemns.

I remember reading once that Christians are called to pledge unwavering allegiance to the Lamb, not to the donkey or the elephant. We are bidden by scripture to pray for our governments and our leaders without regard to their politics or our own. If we will do that, while becoming aware of our own motives and biases, we can eschew tribalism and model a way of doing social business, of being community that will benefit all.

The alliance between the Herodians and the Pharisees, even though it was against Jesus, demonstrates that even those with the most tribal of instincts can compromise and work together. We should foster and encourage such behavior, even if this example might not the best illustration to use.

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

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

July 14, 2013 / eric / 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, that standard is easily stated. A young lawyer does so in today’s Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” It’s easily stated; it’s not so easily understood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 4, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Sirach:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wrote to the Romans in a similar vein:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 1, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Acts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bullshit, You F—–g Fundamentalist! – From the Daily Office – June 7, 2013

June 7, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 40:6 (NRSV) – June 7, 2013.)

Religion Bullet In the Psalter in the Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer this verse (numbered “7” there) is rendered: “In sacrifice and offering you take no pleasure (you have given me ears to hear you).” I rather prefer the NRSV’s translation because the “open ear” can hear more than God, and that open-eared hearing of others is much on my mind this morning.

Earlier this morning I was surfing around on Facebook when up popped a “meme” — one of those pictures over which a caption of some sort has been superimposed — from one of the liberal political pages I “follow.” (Yes, I follow liberal political pages. I also follow conservative political pages. And I follow pages with cute pictures of kittens and puppies. You can find just about everything on Facebook.)

The meme features a cartridge. I’m no expert, but I believe it to be a Russian 7.62x39mm round, or possible a 308 Win cartridge. In any event, on the bullet are inscribed three religious symbols: Judaism’s Star of David, a Christian Latin cross, and the Star-and-Crescent of Islam. The superimposed caption reads: “Religion. The Number One Cause of War.”

I commented that the meme reflected an historically invalid assertion and that there are many mixed causes of war, some of which (e.g., economics, nationalist politics, famine or natural disaster) may be more causative than religious belief. The first response to my comment was, “Bullshit!” Some other less scatological responses told me I was wrong. What followed was a fairly reasonable discussion with some commenters agreeing with me and arguing my point further, and others disagreeing but arguing their position rationally. The discussion came to an abrupt end when a dissenter called me a “f—–g fundamentalist.”

Although there was that brief rational discussion between the first response and the last one, it is those two replies — together with the nature of the meme itself — that frame my thoughts about the Psalm verse. In addition, my meditation this morning is informed by the gospel lesson from Luke:

Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

It seems to me that too much of our civic discourse is not civil discourse. Too often conversations, particularly political or religious discussions, are framed in obstinate, polarizing absolutes. These absolutes plug the ears of the participants, to use the Psalm’s image. The Pharisee in the parable represents this closed-minded, plugged-ear way of thinking: he is so certain and self-assured as to brook no contradiction. “Thank God I am not like other people. In everything I do and think, I am right; nothing anyone can ever say will change my opinion or belief.” The ears of the Pharisee are not open; he is impervious to inputs from outside his own mind. He inhabits a world of absolutes in which he is the paragon of virtue and rectitude. This is not someone one can talk to.

The tax-collector, on the other hand, represents a different approach. “I am a sinner. Something in my life and in the world which I inhabit is not right, and I cannot make it so. I need the help of someone or something other than myself.” The tax-collector is not self-assured; his ears are open and listening for the inputs of others, especially from God but also from others in the society around him. He is willing to admit (and does admit) his own fallibility. Not only might he be wrong, he is willing to accept already that he is. This is someone with whom one can converse.

The discussion of the meme on Facebook, insofar is it involved me and two others (and, to a lesser extent, the other participants, as well), can be cast as a conversation between the two characters of this parable:

Pharisee – “Religion is the cause of war.”
Tax-collector – “I think there may be other causes.”
Pharisee – “Bullshit, you f—–g fundamentalist.”

End of discussion.

I can’t really debate the assertion that religion is a cause of war. (It is, but not its principal source.) However, I believe that a “glittering generality,” an absolutist assertion like the meme — an unconditional statement that is not susceptible of historical validation — is not helpful to a reasoned discussion of war’s causes and, more importantly, its solution.

How have we arrived at this highly polarized state of civic discourse? I don’t know and that’s really not the issue either. The issue is how can we back away from it? How can we unplug the “open ear” that God has given us? How can the church, which once fostered and encouraged open debate of issues (that’s how the Reformation got started, for example) promote civil debate?

Many congregations across several denominations sponsor forums and workshops on the issues of the day. This is a step in the right direction but, more often than not, the participant audiences at these debates are merely our own people. My question (and I have no answers to it) is how to begin to dialog with the Pharisees of the day: what does one say in response to “Bullshit, you f—–g fundamentalist” that will allow the conversation to continue?

Jesus once told Peter to forgive someone “seventy times seven times” (Matt. 18:22). I struggle with finding one productive response to “Bullshit, you f—–g fundamentalist”! Coming up with 490 of them is going to be really, really difficult!

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

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

May 31, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Luke:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Sandro Botticelli

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

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

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

Category: Politics (Page 17 of 23)

By the Rivers of Babylon – Sermon for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22C – October 6, 2013

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

The Lord Helps Those . . . . — Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17C — September 1, 2013

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

Tribalism and an Illustration of Compromise – From the Daily Office – July 18, 2013

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

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

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

Bullshit, You F—–g Fundamentalist! – From the Daily Office – June 7, 2013

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

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