That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Sacraments (Page 10 of 14)

The Ten Predictions: Hear the Music & Dance – Sermon for Lent 3, 2015

March 7, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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A sermon offered on the Third Sunday in Lent, March 8, 2015, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; and John 2:13-22. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Dancing FeetToday is the Third Sunday in Lent but, being March 8, it is also the day set aside on the calendar (both that of the Church of England and that of the Episcopal Church) for us to remember a hero of the Anglican tradition, a World War I chaplain named Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy. In 1914 he became the vicar of St. Paul’s, Worcester, UK, but a short while later, on the outbreak of war, Kennedy volunteered as a chaplain to the armed forces. He gained the nickname “Woodbine Willie,” for his practice of giving out Woodbine brand cigarettes to soldiers. In 1917, he won the United Kingdom’s Military Cross for bravery at Messines Ridge.

He was, additionally, a poet and an author of Christian social critique. We will sing one of his poems as our offertory presentation hymn this morning. (Not Here for High and Holy Things, Hymn No. 9, in the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1982.) Among his works of social criticism is one entitled Democracy and the Dog Collar published in 1921. It is an imagined conversation between a representative of “Organized Religion” and one from “Organized Labour” which was just then getting a strong foothold in Britain. In the introductory chapter, he wrote these words:

God is the great politician. He is out to build a City — the new Jerusalem — and He has to work through subordinates and trust them. We are all His subordinates, some of us knaves and some of us fools (perhaps most of us rum mixtures of the two), but we are all He has got to work with and we all must play our part, we must all be politicians. That’s the essence of Democracy, and with all my heart I believe that the City of God is to be a democracy. It would be tidier, more efficient, and less noisy if it were to be built as an autocracy or an oligarchy; but from what I can make out, God is not out for tidiness (if He is He has scored a failure so far, for this world is about the untidiest place I have ever been in — save us, what a muddle it all is!), or efficiency or silence, God is out for life. That is why He is a democrat, and would rather see a world of fat-headed, blundering, vicious fools that are free than a world of strong, silent super-men that are slaves. If you want to save your soul alive you have got to be a politician — a builder of the City of God — there is no other way. (pp 4-5)

I want neither to endorse nor to debate Studdert-Kennedy’s politics, but I do want to say that I think he is absolutely correct when he says that every Christian must be a politician and, a little later in the book, when he writes, “We cannot have any truck with this travesty of Christ’s truth which would bid His servants save their souls and leave their brothers to be damned. Christianity has to do with politics, in fact it is politics — the politics of God.” (p. 6) What I understand him to mean by that is that Christianity, indeed religion in general, is all relationship. The term “politics” at its most basic means “the complex or aggregate of relationships of people in society.”

Today, we have had a reading from Exodus in which we heard that familiar list of ten items popularly and traditionally known to Christians as “The Ten Commandments.” To Jews, however, they are known as Aseret ha-Dibrot, a phrase more accurately translated as “the Ten Sayings,” or “the Ten Statements,” or “the Ten Declarations,” or “the Ten Words,” but not as “the Ten Commandments,” which would be Aseret ha-Mitzvot. These Ten Declarations form the very basic politics, the basic societal relationships of the Judaism from which our faith sprung and which our Lord famously summarized in this manner:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. (Mt 22:37-40, quoted in The Book of Common Prayer 1979, page 319)

Now, traditionally these “Commandments” are considered to be what is called “apodictic law,” which means that which is “absolutely certain or necessary.” The Decalogue (another name for the Ten Commandments, a Greek word meaning Ten Laws) is seen to be the basic foundation upon which was built the more detailed instructions of the whole Mosaic Law that follows in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Those 613 detailed mandates, or mitzvot, are the Law Jesus referred to as “hanging” on the two Great Commandments.

Tom Long, a Presbyterian seminary professor, once wrote of the Decalogue:

In the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights and heavy obligations. For many, the commandments are encumbrances placed on personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging “thou shalt not.” For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be publicly placed on the necks of a rebellious society. (Dancing the Decalogue)

But as I was studying the Scriptures for this sermon, I learned two things about these passage from Exodus: one that I had known and forgotten, and one I’d never known before.

The former is that the articles of the Decalogue are numbered differently among the religious traditions. Jews number the Ten Sayings differently from Christians and – among Christians – Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and Lutherans number them differently than do Anglicans, the Reformed Churches, and other Protestants. That really is a minor matter inasmuch as we all eventually get to the same bottom line, except for this – Jews separately enumerate the first several words of what we historically call “the first commandment” and make it an introductory comment to the entire set.

Take a look at page 350 in The Book of Common Prayer 1979. This is the contemporary English version of the Decalogue (there is a Jacobean English version beginning on page 317). Notice the way it begins: “Hear the commandments of God to his people:” and then follows what we have always taken to be the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of bondage. You shall have no other gods but me.” In the Jewish understanding, that first sentence is not part of the first commandment. And, truly, it is not a commandment at all; rather, it is the statement of a relationship out of which all that follows flows.

God first establishes God’s relationship with the People; what follows is a description of the behavior of a free people, people whom God has freed “out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” As Tom Long puts it, “Understanding the Decalogue as a set of burdens overlooks something essential, namely that they are prefaced not by an order – ‘Here are ten rules. Obey them!’ – but instead by a breathtaking announcement of freedom.” These people may be, as Studdert-Kennedy remarked, “fat-headed, blundering, vicious fools,” but they are free and in their freedom, if they are in this right relationship with God, this is how they will behave: they will worship God and no other; they will keep the Sabbath; they will honor their elders; they will not commit murder or adultery; and so forth.

The second thing I learned is that at least some, if not all, of the so-called commandments are stated in a Hebraic verb form called “the infinitive absolute.” There’s nothing quite like it in English grammar. It is a verb form that, while it can be used for mandates and instructions, is most often used for prophecies!

Putting these two learnings together, I have come to the conclusion that these “ten words” are better thought of, not as “ten commandments,” but as the “ten predictions.” It’s not a case of “because I am your God you will do this” but rather “because I am your God you will do this.” God does not give the law as a means to salvation; the “ten words” are not conditions precedent, which is what commandments are: “If you do these things, then God will be your God” (and if you don’t . . . well, then, watch out!) They are, rather, statements of what happens simply because God is our God; they are predictions of what naturally follows from that relationship. The relationship comes first and this manner of life is the outcome. Lutheran theologian James Arne Nestingen has said that the Ten Commandments are “gifts of redemption, a gracious bequeathal given in the course of release from bondage,” (Word & World) or as my friend and colleague Peggy Blanchard said, “The Decalogue is not a prescription but a description.”

If the ten articles of Exodus 20 are “laws,” they are more like the laws of nature than like statutes. They are statements of the uniformities and regularities in the world, descriptions of the way the world is, principles which govern the phenomena of existence. Add two to two and you get four. Drop an object from a tall building and it will accelerate toward the ground at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared.

Our saint-of-the-day, Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, in another of his books wrote:

A man cannot act right unless he believes right, because men always act according to their belief. A man may not act according to the belief he professes, but he will always act according to the belief he really holds — he cannot help it. * * * A man must always act upon his neighbour according to his master-passion — his real belief. He must always love his neighbour as he loves his God. That your love of your neighbour depends for its force on the love of your God is not a Christian dogma but a law of social life, as the law of gravity is of natural life, just as universal and just as inevitable. (Lies!, 1919, pp. 109, 111)

Love God, love your neighbor, “on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Be in a right relationship with your God and you will behave as described in Exodus 20; it is “a law of social life, as the law of gravity is of natural life, just as universal and just as inevitable.”

To quote Tom Long one last time, “The good news of the God who set people free is the music; the commandments are the dance steps of those who hear it playing. The commandments are not weights, but wings that enable our hearts to catch the wind of God’s Spirit and to soar.” Remember what the Psalmist wrote:

The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the innocent.
The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes. (Ps. 19:7-8, BCP Version)

Be in that right relationship with God and you will be revived, you will be given wisdom, your heart will rejoice, you will catch the wind of God’s Spirit and soar; hear the music of the good news and you will dance. Amen.

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

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

Decision Train: Between Stimulus and Response – Sermon for Lent 2, 2015

February 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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A sermon offered on the Second Sunday in Lent, March 1, 2015, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were Genesis 17:1-7,15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; and Mark 8:31-38. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Decision Train TrackI was an English and American literature major in college (well, I finished as an English literature major – I was a biology major, a sociology major, an anthropology major, a philosophy major, and an undeclared major before ending up with a degree in literature.) I remember a certain type of end-of-term take home exam, the compare-and-contrast question. For instance, you’d read a bunch of novels and then along would come the final exam with a question like, “Compare and contrast the vision of the sea in Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea and Melville’s Moby Dick.”

Reading our lectionary selections today, I had the sense that I was being handed a compare-and-contrast question: Compare and contrast the covenant made by God with Abram in Genesis 17 with the demand made by Jesus in the 8th Chapter of Mark.

On the one hand, we have “I will make you exceedingly numerous. You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful.” On the other, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

On the one hand, “I will give you everything.” On the other, “Give it all up.”

And yet the process and the promise is the same. The covenant offered to Abram and the demand made by Jesus both require a decision (that’s the process) and both lead to the promise described both by Paul in his letter to the Romans and by the Psalmist in Psalm 22: “the promise that [the righteous will] inherit the world” – the promise that “they shall be known as the Lord’s for ever” – that they shall enjoy what Jesus variously described as the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, eternal life, or abundant life.

As I was making my notes for this homily, I was also carrying on a conversation by internet chat with a friend and colleague about something else, and my friend quoted the late philosopher-psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. He reminded me of something Frankl, an Austrian Jew, had written in his book Man’s Search for Meaning which described the things he had observed and learned as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Frankl wrote, “Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” It occurred to me that Frankl’s “space between stimulus and response” is a key to understanding the process which is common to God’s covenant and Jesus’ requirement.

Between God’s offer to Abram and Abram’s answer, between Jesus’ demand of his disciples and their reply is what Frankl identified as this space of our power to choose, this place where our potential for growth and freedom lies entirely within our control, where we either accept the kingdom of God or reject that abundant life. God offers, Jesus mandates, but we decide. We choose our response and “in our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

In our response also lies our identity. It is important to note that it is when Abram accepts God’s offer – which he does not only for himself but for his wife Sarai, a detail we might explore at another time – he and his wife are given new names; they become Abraham (“father of many nations”) and Sarah (“princess to all”). Their new names are symbolic of their act of giving up their former lives for the sake of God’s truth. In that “space between stimulus and response,” they were freed to live and grow into the new names, the new identities that God promised to give them.

The same is true for the disciples of Jesus. In that moment of decision, that “space between stimulus and response,” they (we) are given a new name. It is not without reason that in the sacramental sign of that decision, baptism, we are given a name, “sealed by the Holy Spirit,” and “marked as Christ’s own for ever.” As Peter reminds us in his first letter, we are to “glorify God because [we] bear [the] name” of Christian.

I got to thinking about the language we use to describe the act of deciding, and particularly the difference between the way Americans describe deciding and the way the British refer to it. We are, as George Bernard Shaw is supposed to have quipped, “two countries separated by a common language.” In colloquial American speech, we “make decisions,” but in idiomatic British, one “takes a decision.” To “make” a decision, or to “take” a decision? In all honesty, I think the British have the better of us here. To take a decision is certainly more responsible and more theologically sound than to make one. Here’s what I mean . . . .

Consider the difference between “making” something and “taking” something.

When you make something . . . when you have made something, you’re done with it. You do a lot of preparation, a lot work getting ready; you put a lot into the process, and then you create whatever it is – a painting, a piece of pottery, a casserole, a pie, whatever. You make it, and then you stop making it because there it is. You’ve made it. It has an independent existence in the world. You set it on the counter and the world will do with it whatever the world will do. You can just leave it there and let the world have it.

When we “make” decisions, we do the same thing. We treat decisions as destinations, as end points. In business management courses, students are taught to use “decision trains” in which the process of deciding is metaphorically diagrammed as a locomotive passing through “stations” labeled “situation,” “factors to consider,” “desired outcomes,” “possible consequences,” and so forth, eventually arriving at the terminus labeled “decision.” We even, in everyday speech, talk about “reaching a decision.”

There! We have arrived! We’ve done it! We’ve made our decision! Set it on the counter, record it in the minutes, put it in the filing cabinet, and let the world do with it whatever the world will do. We’re finished.

But when you “take a decision” the act of deciding is not the end . . . it is the beginning. When you take something, you are doing something very different from making something. When you take something, you hold it in your hands rather than set it on the counter. When you take something, you have to do something with it rather than let the world do with it whatever the world will do. When you take a decision, you have to act on it. It is not the terminus of your decision train; it is the start of the journey. Not the end, but the beginning.

When we make a decision, our “decision train” runs from stimulus to response . . . and stops. When we take a decision, our “decision train” starts at the response and runs for the rest of our lives.

In that “space between stimulus and response,” between God’s offer of covenant and our reply, between Jesus’ demand for discipleship and our answer . . . in that space lies our power to choose, to decide, not to make a decision and simply end an old way of being, but to take a decision and begin a new way of being, to give up an old life and save a new one, to surrender our old name and take on a new name, our true name.

As Episcopal theologian Elizabeth Webb reminds us: “To know our true name is, as it was for Abraham and Sarah, to turn, to reorient ourselves according to that name, and to live it. Just as God’s naming of Abraham and Sarah was also a calling, in naming us God is calling us to discipleship, casting off the old names by which we’ve been known, and living into (and maybe ‘up to’) the name that God bestows.” Whether that name be Abraham (“father of nations”), or Sarah (“princess to all”), or, simply, Christian (“follower of Jesus”).

So . . . compare and contrast . . .

For some, the decision we must take is to accept God’s offer: “I will give you everything.” For others, the decision we must take is to follow Jesus’ demand: “Give it all up.” For all, the promise is the same: “[We] shall be [named and] known as the Lord’s for ever.” Amen.

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

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

The Great Dance with the Christ-about-to-be-Born: Sermon for Christmas Eve 2014

December 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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A sermon offered, on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; and Luke 2:1-20. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Dachshund Plush ToyTonight we gather once again to celebrate a memory, the memory of the birth of Christ, the Christ who is about to be born again as he is every year. We don’t really know if he was born at this time of the year; in fact, most scholars agree he wasn’t. But that doesn’t matter. It isn’t the date that we celebrate; it is his birth, then and in our lives each time we remember.

I have mentioned in this pulpit before my memory of a childhood incident in which my brother, clothed in a cowboy outfit he’d received at Christmas, wondered in a neighborhood bar and, when told that the bar did not serve minors, retorted “I’m not a miner; I’m a cowboy!”

I remember that incident as if it was yesterday. I can see that set of cowboy clothes. I know the bar where it occurred. That memory is as clear as clear can be.

But here’s the weird thing about that memory: That incident happened four years before I was born.

I think probably everyone has memories like that, constructed memories, memories which are ours, but are of events which we did not experience; that’s what it is to be a part of a family, of a community. We share the collective memories of the group and make them our own. Celebrating the Nativity each year at this time is like that, a memory and a future we have made our own because we are part of God’s family.

My first real personal memory is also a Christmas memory. The Christmas I was three years old I got a puppy, a dachshund puppy my father named “Baron.” Baron was probably about ten weeks old and what a mess he made of our Christmas! We had Baron for five years, but when my father passed away and my mother decided that we would move to southern California, Baron had to be given away. Still, one always remembers one’s first dog!

So imagine how delighted I was a few days before Thanksgiving when Evelyn and I went shopping at Aldi and I found this! [Holds up stuffed plush toy dachshund dressed in green Christmas attire] A Christmas dachshund! Like a visit from my first Christmas dog. And imagine my further delight when I squeezed his foot and discovered that he plays this Christmas classic:

[Toy plays truncated version of C+C Music Factory’s Everybody Dance Now]

Everybody dance now
Da da da, Da!
Da da da, Da!
Dance till you can’t dance
Till you can’t dance no more
Get on the floor and get warm
Then come back and upside down
Easy now, let me see ya
Move
(Let your mind)
Move
(Put me online)
The music is my life

Okay, so maybe it’s not so much a Christmas classic . . . . But it did remind me of the Great Dance, a classic metaphor for the actions of God, and how that metaphor can help us to understand and enter into the joy of the God’s Incarnation in the Christ-about-to-be-Born.

This is nothing new, of course; the old Cornish Christmas carol portrays the birth of Christ as an invitation to the Dance.

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance;
Then was I born of a virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance
Thus was I knit to man’s nature
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

The metaphor of the Great Dance portrays the cosmos as rhythmic, trustingly and lovingly attuned to and following the lead of its Creator. The concept of the Great Dance is found throughout human cultures and predates Christianity. It is found in Plato who wrote, “The dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of the gods.” The Roman poet Lucian wrote of the dance of the heavenly bodies which came into existence at creation. The Hindu God Shiva is called “Lord of the Dance,” and his eternal dance creates, destroys, and recreates all things. The spiritual practices of many tribal cultures involve communal dance. King David, the Second Book of Samuel tells us, “danced before the Lord with all his might” (2 Sam 6:14) as the Ark of the Covenant was brought into Jerusalem. The last of psalms enjoins us to dance:

Praise [God] with the blast of the ram’s-horn; *
praise him with lyre and harp.
Praise him with timbrel and dance . . . .
(Ps 150:3-4a, BCP Version)

In his book To a Dancing God, theologian Sam Keen, wrote that human flesh “has a natural sense of the sacred.” (Harper & Row, 1970, pg 153) When human flesh dances it joins in patterns and takes on memories and dreams of a future that are not originally its own.

Are you a dancer? Do you and your beloved enjoy a turn on the dance floor from time to time? Do you remember what it was like when you were first learning to dance? Tentatively and awkwardly you took your position on the floor, shuffling your feet not knowing where to put them, raising your arms, hands trembling, feeling like an idiot. Where do your hands go? Where do your feet go? Which way should you look? At first, this strange position with arms outstretched in an awkward formal embrace of your partner, your feet oddly placed on the floor, is a position of vulnerability and humility. But eventually, whatever the form you may have been learning – foxtrot, two-step, waltz, tango, whatever it may have been – eventually you learned it; your body learned it; your body with its “natural sense of the sacred” becomes a part of the Great Dance, remembers the steps and moves that were not originally your own.

Those of you who know me well know that for relaxation I like to read science fiction. It was through science fiction that I was introduced to the great Anglican apologist Clive Staples Lewis. Most people become familiar with Lewis because of the Narnia stories and then move on to read The Screwtape Letters and then possibly Lewis’s Christian apologetics such as Mere Christianity or his memoir Surprised by Joy. My first encounter with Lewis was his science fiction trilogy and in that work was where I first read about the Great Dance.

The story of the trilogy centers on an Oxford Don named Elwin Ransom who, in the first book entitled Out of the Silent Planet, voyages to Mars and discovers that Earth is exiled from the rest of the solar system. Ransom learns of and meets angelic beings called eldila who oversee the solar system on behalf of the Creator (who is called “the Old One”). One of these eldila, a being known as the Bent Oyarsa, has turned (as modern Hollywood would put it) “to the Dark Side” and taken control of earth. In the second book, entitled Perelandra, Ransom journeys to Venus. Near the end of the book, Ransom is shown the Great Dance by the eldila. At first, they describe it to him and then he begins to experience it for himself. This is the way Lewis tells it: one of the eldila says to Ransom –

The Great Dance does not wait to be perfect . . . . We speak not of when it will begin. It has begun from before always. There was no time when we did not rejoice before His face as now. The dance which we dance is at the centre and for the dance all things were made.

Others of the eldila speak of the Dance and then Ransom begins to see it for himself. Lewis describes it this way:

And now, by a transition which he did not notice, it seemed that what had begun as speech was turned into sight, or into something that can be remembered only as if it were seeing. He thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity – only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern not thereby dispossessed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated. He could see also (but the word ‘seeing’ is now plainly inadequate) wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected, minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells – peoples, institutions, climates of opinion, civilisations, arts, sciences, and the like – ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were things of some different kind. At first he could not say what: But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities. If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it. Some of the thinner more delicate cords were beings that we call short-lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things as we also think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars. Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours from beyond our spectrum were the lines of the personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some were universal truths or universal qualities. It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which live and died in the clashing of their streams: but afterwards, when he came back to earth, he wondered. And by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole solid figure of these enamoured and inter-inanimated circlings was suddenly revealed as the mere superficies of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped farther and farther behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of the sky, and simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into its own stillness. He went up into such quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of stripping off encumbrances and awaking from trance, and coming to himself. (Lewis, C.S., Perelandra, Scribner:NYC, 2003, pp. 183-88)

This, then, is the Dance into which the Christ-to-be-Born invites us.

In a book of the Christian apocrypha called The Acts of St. John, we are told that after the Last Supper Jesus came down from the table and danced a ring dance with his twelve disciples. The picture here is of the disciples united with their Rabbi in the mystery of atonement. Sounding through the dance is the voice of Christ, the Logos, the original Word that was there at the beginning, that came to dwell among us, that will be there at the end, imparting the essence of divine mystery through the Great Dance described so brilliantly by Lewis.

Perhaps because of that dance scene in The Acts of St. John, Christian writers, musicians and poets have repeatedly used the image of the dance. Theologians use the Greek word perichoresis, which means “dancing around,” to describe the way in which the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity relate one to another. In the Trinity’s dance, “each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration into them. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. [This] creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love.” (Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Penguin: New York, 2009, p. 215) Creation is a dance with the inner life of the Trinity written all through it and the Christ-about-to-be-Born invites us to join the dance, to share the memories and dreams of God, to be part of the family of God.

Early Fathers of the Church often commented on the dance as a means of worship and of linking the faithful to the angels and blessed souls in Paradise. The Fourth Century bishop, St. Basil of Caesarea wrote, “Could there be anything more blessed than to imitate on earth the ring-dance of the angels . . . . ?” And, although the attribution may be spurious, there is a poem in praise of the dance credited to St. Augustine of Hippo:

I praise the dance,
for it frees people from the heaviness of matter
and binds the isolated to community.
I praise the dance,
which demands everything:
health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul.
Dance is a transformation of space,
of time,
of people,
who are in constant danger
of becoming all brain, will, or feeling.
Dancing demands a whole person,
one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life,
who is not obsessed by lust for people and things
and the demon of isolation in his own ego.
Dancing demands a freed person,
one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers.
I praise the dance.
O man, learn to dance,
or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you.

“Tomorrow shall be my dancing day,” sings the Christ-about-to-be-Born in the old Cornish Christmas carol. In a more contemporary song many of you will know, the Christ-about-to-be-Born says:

I danced in the morning when the world was begun.
I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun.
I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth;
At Bethlehem, I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be;
For I am the lord of the dance, said he.
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be;
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.
(Lord of the Dance by Sydney Carter)

The Christ-about-to-be-Born invites us to join the Great Dance, to share the memories and dreams of God and to be part of the family of God.

Or as Baron the Christmas Puppy would put it [sings]

“Everybody dance now! A-a-a-a-men! A-a-a-a-men! A-a-a-a-men!”

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

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

Anticipating an Ordination – From the Daily Office – November 7, 2014

November 7, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach:

The leader of his brothers and the pride of his people
was the high priest, Simon son of Onias,
who in his life repaired the house,
and in his time fortified the temple.
When he put on his glorious robe
and clothed himself in perfect splendor,
when he went up to the holy altar,
he made the court of the sanctuary glorious.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Eccesiasticus 50:1,11 (NRSV) – November 7, 2014)

Ordination and First Mass of Saint John of Matha by Vincenzo CarducciTonight, as my diocese begins its annual governing convention in traditional fashion with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist, we will doing so in the context of an ordination – two ordinations, in fact, one to the diaconate and one to the presbyterate. This morning’s reading from Ben Sira is lengthy description of the glories of the ceremonial priesthood. One might have expected the church to have made this one of the potential readings for a presbyteral ordination, but in its wisdom, it has not.

My personal religious background is as the child of an inactive, not-quite-thoroughly-unchurched mixed marriage of a Disciple of Christ and a Methodist, the disinterested products of two decidedly American expressions of protestant evangelical Christianity. Until I was in high school my church attendance depended on which set of grandparents I was visiting; at home, church was out of the question. My grandparents’ churches were proudly non-ceremonial; the closest anyone came to wearing a vestment was the Methodist pastor’s doctoral gown.

In high school, I encountered the Episcopal Church in an Anglo-Catholic diocese. Bells, smells, chants, rich vesture . . . I knew I had come home! As I read the entire lesson today from Ecclesiasticus, I can almost remember every detail of that first encounter with the ritual of religion.

But the rubrics of the ordination service for a priest of the Episcopal Church do not permit or recommend Ben Sira’s soaring description of ceremonial liturgy and priestly elegance! Instead, we are given these choices from the Hebrew Scriptures:

  • Isaiah 6:1-8, in which the soon-to-be-commissioned prophet cries, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips,” and has his lips seared with a burning coal; or
  • Numbers 11:16-17,24-25, in which Moses is instructed to recruit seventy elders to “bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”

And then there are the choices from the Psalter:

  • Psalm 43 in which we ask, “Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? and why are you so disquieted within me?” or
  • Psalm 132:8-19 in which we beg God “do not turn away the face of your Anointed.”

In the New Testament readings, Peter reminds us, “Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock” (1 Pt 5:3), a rather different vision than Ben Sira’s description of the magnificent Simon, son of Onias. Paul warns us through his words to the Ephesians to not “be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14), and in his admonition to the church in Philippi he instructs us, “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” Again, a contrast to the picture of priesthood in this morning’s reading.

Don’t get me wrong! I love the ritual and the ceremonial. I love great vestments, incense, chant, trumpets, the clanging of bells – it’s all great show and great fun and adds to the experience of religion for me. But the priesthood is much, much more than all of that.

In my vesting sacristy hangs a simple frame with a printed copy of an address by an Englishman who was a bishop in Africa in the early years of the 20th Century. The Rt. Rev. Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, in his concluding address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923, finished with these words:

If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down this country. And it is folly – it is madness – to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done.

There then, as I conceive it, is your present duty; and I beg you, brethren, as you love the Lord Jesus, consider that it is at least possible that this is the new light that the Congress was to bring to us. You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.

Every time I put on my fine silk vestments from Whipple or Almy, the hand-made stoles and chasubles commissioned from private tailors, or the humble offerings created by members of the congregation, I read those words. The priesthood is not about Simon’s glorious robes and perfect splendor; it’s not about trumpets and thuribles and magnificent altars. That’s just the fun stuff we are privileged to enjoy. As the ordination readings and Bishop Weston remind us, priesthood is about serving God’s people in whom we find the living Jesus.

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

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

The Holiest Place – From the Daily Office – June 28, 2014

June 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From Matthew’s Gospel:

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 21:1-11 (NRSV) – June 28, 2014)

Is it merely fortuitous that this turns out to be the Gospel lesson for the Daily Office today? Today we went to the Mount of Olives, to Gethsemane, to the place were Jesus was questioned by Caiaphas the High Priest.

We started, as we started yesterday, with that Middle Eastern breakfast of cucumbers and olives, pita and cheeses, yogurt and pickled eggplant. It was an early start, too. A short bus ride to the Garden of Gethsemane where we were the only people present! Walking around (not in) the Garden, seeing the ancient (though not 2,000 year old) olive trees, smelling the garden flowers in the early morning . . . it was (as my wife said) exactly as one would have envisioned it. And, of course, it’s designed that way. This Garden is a relatively modern iteration of the old reality, a modern version whose creation was guided by those spiritual and artistic sensitivities of centuries of Christian devotion. It’s emotional impact is not less real for all of that. Modern garden or not, this is the place where Jesus spent his last free moments of life.

The Garden is dominated by the Church of All Nations, a 1924 structure built by an Italian architect, Antonio Barluzzi. Heavy, dark, and foreboding as befits the story of Maundy Thursday, it is an impressive structure. It houses what is called the stone of agony: “Going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.” (Mark 14:35) By tradition, this stone is the “ground” on which Jesus prayed for an alternative outcome. Kneeling before the altar, placing one’s hands and forehead on the stone, and giving up one’s will to God’s will is deeply profound experience.

After Gethsemane, we went up the Mount of Olives and back a few days in the Holy Week story, to Palm Sunday. We went to the Church of Bethphage at the place where Jesus is said to have stopped on his way into the city:

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” (Mark 11:1-3)

Another Barluzzi church (actually his restoration of a pre-existing church), Church of Bethphage is quite small, but was wonderful accoustics. Mark Stanger and Keith Owen blessed small olive branches for us to carry, and we sang All Glory, Laud, and Honor (“Valet will ich der geben”). That was glorious! Great to be with people who clearly love to sing and in a place where that singing is enhanced.

Then we cheated a bit . . . we took a bus part of the way down the Mount, disembarked, and walked to the church called Dominus Flevit, “The Lord Wept.” Again, a Barluzzi building built in the 1950s. At the corners of the building, at roof level, are representations of urns supposed to be vials for collecting tears, inspired by the psalm verse, “You have noted my lamentation;put my tears into your bottle; are they not recorded in your book?” (Ps. 56:8, BCP version) The reference to Jesus weeping is not to the death of Lazarus, but to Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem which is said to have occurred at this spot.

This was the most moving part of the day for me, and I will return to it in a minute.

From there we walked on to Gethsemane, where we had already been, then board the bus for a drive through the Kidron Valley and up the slopes to an old part of Jerusalem outside the current walls, but not before a small detour to learn more about the state of things in modern Israel and Palestine.

At the top of the highway is Mount Scopus, or Mount of the Lookout. Hebrew University has a campus here and we stopped at a scenic viewpoint and terrace owned by the university on the Jerusalem side of the mountain. Visible from there was the Hecht Synagogue on the campus, which was built in honor of US Senator (from Nevada) Chic Hecht; Chic had been a good friend of my father when I was child in Las Vegas! From there, we went to a similar viewpoint on the other side of the mountain. Visible from there was the desert landscape of occupied West Bank . . . and the “settlements” Israel is building there.

“Settlement” has always suggested to me a small group of temporary houses or perhaps mobile homes occupied by a few crazy Zionist families. That’s not what they are at all. They are massive planned communities housing hundreds of thousands of people. Israel is surrounding Arab East Jerusalem (which is in the West Bank – geography here is confusing) with a ring of settlements so that, eventually, 200,000 Palestinian Arabs will be surrounded by nearly half a million Jewish “settlers.” This is not a bunch of fanatics breaking the law — this is a nation breaking international law and stealthily, steadily taking over and conquering occupied territory!

After that eye-opener about the modern state of Israel, we returned to the First Century, making our way to what is believed to have been the location of the High Priest Caiaphus’s house where Jesus was taken after his arrest and where Peter denied knowing him. A Byzantine church was built on the site many centuries ago. That was replaced in the 1990s by a modern French Benedictine church called St. Peter in Gallicantu which means “St. Peter at Cock Crow.”

Below the church is a dungeon where it is believed Christ was questioned and spent the night before his crucifixion. Here, in the pit, we gathered and recited Psalm 87. Outside the church is an ancient stone stairway leading up from the Kidron Valley into the old city. Our guides tell us that we can be certain that Christ walked these steps when he went to and from Jerusalem from and to the home of his friend’s Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany.

After that . . . lunch in a local restaurant (a variety of salty Middle Eastern “salads,” followed by baked chicken with rice, carrots, and peas) and then a return to St. George’s Guest House where, after freshening up and napping, we heard a presentation on Islam, enjoyed a lovely dinner of fish, and then read Compline together.

As I mentioned above, the most moving part of the day for me was at the Church Dominus Flevit. I entered the church and found a congregation gathered for Holy Communion. The Franciscans were setting the altar and preparing to say the Mass, and I noted that the altar window frames the Dome of the Rock. Christians celebrating our most holy sacrament would look out at two of the most holy sites of the other two Abrahamic faiths: Judaism’s temple mount and Islam’s Dome of the Rock. It occurred to me that our holiest site is not a geographically fixed place. As holy and moving as all the places we have visited (and those we will visit) are, none of them is our faith’s holiest place. Our holiest place is a table. It may be the altar or communion table of our local church; it may be a table in our own homes; it may be a folding table set up at summer camp. Wherever the elements of bread and wine are offered, blessed, broken and shared as the Body and Blood of Christ, that is our holiest place.

I had to come half-way around the world to this land of the Holy One to discover that the holiest place is back home, wherever home may be.

Post by That Which We Have Heard & Known.

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

====================

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

Jesus the Jedi – Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Easter (Year A) – May 4, 2014

May 4, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Acts 2:14a,36-41; Psalm 116:1-3,10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; and Luke 24:13-35. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Broken BreadSince the early 1970s this day, on the Episcopal Church calendar, this day on which we hear the story of Jesus’ appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus has been known as Star Wars Sunday. It’s because Jesus is very much like a Jedi in this story. I mean, think about it . . .

In the Star Wars movies, Luke Skywalker is mentored first by Obiwan Kenobi, who dies, then by Yoda, who also dies. But both Obiwan and Yoda come back! They appear to Luke and others after their deaths, continue to teach and give sage counsel, and disappear. That’s what happens with Jesus in the story Luke tells us this morning.

It’s still Easter Sunday. (For us, we’re three weeks down the road, but for them it’s the afternoon of the same day on which Mary Magdalene and the others found the empty tomb.) Two disciples, one named Cleopas and the other unnamed (let’s call him “Bob” — although some feminists scholars suggest that the reason this disciple is not named is because she is a woman, so it might be “Bobbie”) are on their way to a village called Emmaus. Luke tells us this village is seven miles from Jerusalem; that’s a long walk — two or three hours. Sometime during this long afternoon journey, they are joined by a stranger whom they do not recognize; the stranger, Luke reveals, is Jesus but Cleopas and Bob can’t recognize him. They have a long talk with him about all the thing that have happened in Jerusalem in recent days, and he gives them sage counsel about the meaning of scripture, particularly the messianic prophecies. They arrive in Emmaus early in the evening and encourage their traveling companion to join them at dinner.

They sit down at an inn for the evening meal and the stranger takes the lead. He takes the bread served by the innkeeper, offers a blessing, and breaks the bread. Now, Cleopas and Bob realize who this is. As he does the same thing he had done with his followers just a few days before, their memory is tweaked and their eyes are opened (which suggests that Cleopas and Bob were in the upper room in Jerusalem on Thursday evening). That’s when they recognize him; that’s when they think they’ve figure out who he is — he’s Jesus the Jedi. And that’s when Jesus vanishes.

Why do you suppose that is? Why does Jesus disappear?

Well . . . let me remind you of what happened earlier in the day as the story is told by John. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, found it empty, and told Simon Peter. Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved (another unnamed follower!) also found it empty, and then returned to their home to tell the others. Mary, however, hung behind and encountered Jesus but, like Cleopas and Bob on the road to Emmaus, she did not recognize him; she thought he was the gardener. Only when he addressed her by name (perhaps because of the tone of his voice) was something in her memory triggered and she realized who he was. She called him “Rabbouni” (which means teacher) and apparently fell at his feet and grabbed hold of them, for Jesus says to her, “Don’t hold on to me.” I think he did so for the same reason he disappeared from the table at the Emmaus inn.

Similarly, remember what happened before they arrived in Jerusalem, when Jesus took Peter and James and John up the mount of the Transfiguration. While they were on the holy mountain, the three disciples witnessed Jesus in conversation with Elijah and Moses. Peter wanted to memorialize the event by building booths, monuments to concretize the moment. Jesus said, “No. We’re not going to do that.” Again, I think for the same reason he disappeared in Emmaus.

That reason is that we cannot pin Jesus down. Jesus cannot be contained; he will not fit neatly into our boxes. When we think we have him figured out, we find out we are wrong. Jesus . . . God is bigger than any notion of him we may have; God is bigger than our conceptions, bigger than our doctrines, bigger than our creeds. And every encounter with Jesus is singular and unique. We cannot hold onto him; we cannot concretize and cast the moment in stone.

We just sang as our sequence hymn the old chestnut In the Garden, and that hymn makes this very point. We, the singer, say that we would like to stay there in that garden, but Jesus will not allow that:

I’d stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

We cannot pin him down! We cannot cast the moment in stone. When we think we’ve got hold of him, we find we are wrong; he disappears and what we are left with are our own notions, our own ideas, our own doctrines, our boxes. Our boxes, however, are too small; God is too big for them.

And the chorus of the hymn reminds us of the singularity and uniqueness of every meeting with our Lord:

And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Every time we encounter Jesus, the experience is unique; none other (not even our earlier selves) has ever had that experience before.

I think that is why it is significant that Cleopas and Bob recognized Jesus as he broke bread. Every loaf of bread is unique, similar perhaps to other loaves but never, ever identical. And every occasion on which bread is share is singular and unique. It may be a family meal or a celebration of the Eucharist; it may be a formal banquet or just friends having a bite. Whatever the circumstances, the situation is one unto itself, not like any other, never to be repeated.

A couple of Christmases ago, Evelyn gave me a set of books about the elements of the Eucharist. One volume is entitled The Spirituality of Wine; the other, which I have here, is The Spirituality of Bread by Donna Sinclair. The author is a Christian (in fact, I think she is an Anglican). I’d like to read you some of what she has to say about the symbolism of bread. About bread and community, she writes:

Jesus may have been lent significance by his association with other gods of bread. But that doesn’t acount for the power of his celebration, which persists daily around the world.

Everywhere, the words are similar: “He took a loaf of bread and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them and said, ‘Take, this is my body.'” And, everywhere, people line up, blue-jean clad or robed, young or old, to receive bits of bread; or they sit in pews and pass tiny chunks on a plate; or they stand in a circle and murmur a blessing as a broken loaf moves from hand to hand.

Sometimes they gather around a sickbed.

Once, I sat in a circle of friends, in a smoky cabin in the bush, after a weekend of tending a woodstove and talking about dreams. We passed the bread around as gently as if it were the heart of the other, which it was.

The ritual has power. I get uneasy if I think I might be left out. Once, reporting on an event, I slipped up to take a photo of Archbishop Desmond Tutu serving Communion, and then paused anxiously. He winked and held out the bread.

Perhaps inclusion is this ceremony’s strength. This bread offers an enormous community, a family that stretches around the world and through the centuries. We don’t want to be left out.

We don’t want to be left out because we don’t want to miss the opportunity for that unique and singular encounter with Christ. Every celebration of Eucharist, like every sharing of bread and every meeting with Jesus, is a moment unto itself never to be repeated, never to be duplicated. We realize that in some way, that this encounter with Christ in the breaking of the bread will never happen again, and we don’t want to be left out.

With regard to bread and sacrifice, Ms. Sinclair writes:

The celebration of Communion is also a powerful experience of metaphor. Bread as body. Wine as blood. Love as sacrifice.

In the Jesus story, it is clear that love has great requirements. There is a price to pay, in an oppressive era, for feeding the unwanted.

It may help to see another story, that of the Celtic Earth goddess Tailtiu, queen of the Fir Bolg, one of the ancient peoples of pre-Christian Ireland.

When Tailtiu saw that her people were starving after an insufficient grain harvest, she took up an axe and, for a solid year, cleared a forest: “the reclaiming of meadowland from even wood by Tailtiu, daughter of Magmor,” is the way it is reported by the anonymous bard of The Dindsenchas, poems about Irish place names.

After the trees had been cut down, “roots and all, out of the ground,” the land became “a plain blossoming with clove,” presumably suitable for planting grain. But the cost was appalling. Tailtiu’s heart “burst in her body from the strain beneath her royal vest,” the bard says. The Celts loved their sacred groves, and the destruction to the enchanted richness of her forest must have broken Tailtiu’s heart.

Aware that she is dying, her courtiers gather around, and Tailtiu whispers her last command. She wants funeral games to be held in her honour each year, just before the harvest. And they are to be peaceful, she says, “without sin, without fraud, without reproach, without insult, without contention, without seizure, without theft.”

Thanks to her faithful foster-child Lugh (later associated with a bountiful harvest), Tailtiu’s wish came to pass. There was always an “unbroken truce” at her fair, and “men went in and came out without any rude hostility. Corn and milk in every stead, peace and fair weather for its sake, were granted to the heathen tribes of the Greeks for maintaining of justice.”

Tailtiu had given up her beloved forest and her life for a vision not too different from that of Archbishop Oscar Romero or of Mondawmin, who brought corn to the Ojibway. “Unbroken truce” and “corn and milk in ever stead,” represent the commonwealth of peace, the kingdom Jesus told his friends was close by. New parents get a glimpse of this kingdom looking at their tiny baby. Their sudden understanding that they would do anything to keep this child safe is the closest we can come, perhaps, to understanding the sacrifice that is part of love’s potential.

Perhaps that’s the power of Communion bread. Some say that it commemorates Jesus offering himself as a sacrifice for our sins, but I don’t think so. I would be appalled by a god who asked for the death of his child, or any child. But like any parent, I believe I would die for my children’s lives, even as absurdly grown-up as they are now.

Perhaps this bread simply expresses our wish to live little closer to the ideal of Tailtiu, Jesus, or Mondawmin, who died to give their people enough to eat. None of us can stand up to greed or selfishness as strongly as we wish. But eating this ceremonial bread with others, who also want to be just and loving, makes us brave enough to try.

Maybe that’s why I am sometimes overwhelmed at these ceremonies. Maybe I am simply terrified by the high sacrifices love assumes. Certainly the part most touching to me in the story of my own bread-god, Jesus, is not his death, but his constant focus on compassion. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he commands. “Love your enemies.”

Every encounter with this God who commands us to love, every encounter with love is unique and singular. Every encounter with this God who commands us to love, every encounter with love is larger than we can describe. We cannot constrain love in our boxes. Whatever our notions, our doctrines, our creeds, our understandings . . . they are too small to contain love, to pin love down, to hold onto and control love. When we try, love disappears, and that is why Jesus disappeared from the dinner table in that inn in Emmaus.

Now . . . I have to confess that, on the church’s calendar, this really isn’t Star Wars Sunday. But as every Star Wars aficionado knows, today is Star Wars Day: “May the Fourth be with you.”

But may Jesus the Jedi . . . Jesus, known in the breaking of the bread . . . Jesus, whom we cannot hold onto and pin down . . . Jesus, unique and singular . . . may Jesus be with you. Amen.

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

====================

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

“You Have Died (a Little)” – A Sermon for Easter Morning – April 20, 2014

April 20, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2,14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; and John 20:1-18. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Shrouded CorpseSeveral days ago, as I was reading again the Easter story and the sections of the Holy Scriptures appointed for this year, I had the radio on and tuned to my favorite oldies station.

I was prayerfully considering and trying to figure out what Paul was saying to the Colossians when he wrote these words that we heard in the Epistle lesson for today: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:3) I was trying to figure out what Paul meant by “hidden with Christ.” The Greek word is krypto and in addition to “hidden” it can also mean “secret” or “not noticed.” It is the origin of words like cryptogram and cryptography and also of crypt, a synonym for tomb. What does Paul mean? Is he saying our life is buried with Christ? Or that, somehow, the Christian life is a “secret” or that it goes “unnoticed”?

So I was pondering all of that and my oldies station played a very old and familiar song:

It hurts to be in love when the only one you love
Turns out to be someone who’s not in love with you
It hurts to love her so when deep down inside you know
She will never want you, no matter what you do

And so you cry a little bit
Oh, you die a little bit
Day and night, night and day
It hurts to be in love this way

Some of you are old enough to recognize the lyrics of It Hurts To Be In Love by Gene Pitney, a Top Ten hit from 1964.

And then, right after that song, the radio station played the one which has this as the refrain:

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

That was a Number One hit for Roberta Flack in 1973.

Those songs played just as I was prayerfully considering and trying to figure out what Paul was saying to the Colossians when he wrote: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3:3) Now I don’t really think that God speaks to me through the radio or in the lyrics of popular songs, although it’s possible that God does. However, that coincidence of lyrics and Biblical text did take me down a path of revelation that I’d like to share with you this morning.

Those songs and songs like them – you can probably name several popular melodies going back to Cole Porter’s 1944 tune Every Time We Say Goodbye (“Every time we say goodbye, I die little”) or before – songs that mention this sense we have all had of “dying a little” because of a broken heart, because of the loss of a loved one, because of a disappointment in life. I think that’s why these songs become popular. We’ve all had that sense of “dying a little inside” for these and for many other reasons. And so Paul writes to the Colossians and to us:

“You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

In his historical play Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare has his title character observe that “a coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.” (Act 2, Sc. 2) Ernest Hemingway took Shakespeare to task about that. In A Farewell to Arms he wrote:

‘The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one’…. (The man who first said that) was probably a coward…. He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.

I think the truth is that everybody, valiant or cowardly, everybody dies many little deaths throughout our existence on this earth. Each and every one of us is “killed softly” in myriad ways by the circumstances of life. We have, as Paul wrote to the Colossians, died . . . many times over.

Sometimes those little deaths are the result of our own actions; sometimes they are the result of other’s actions; sometimes they happen because that’s just the way the world is. The world, though created by God to be good, is out of kilter; it is, we say theologically, fallen. The world and everything in it, including you and me, are not in the proper relationship with our Creator. We are not in proper relationship with one another. We call that “sin.” And sin, as the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, has weight, a weight that clings to us like dirt, and each time we experience one of those little deaths a little more weight, a little more dirt is tossed on until, as Paul wrote in this simple verse in the letter to the Colossians, we are buried.

“You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Think about the weight of all that sin, all that dying, experienced in little ways every day by all the people who have ever lived . . . think of that weight crashing down
through the centuries,
through the millennia,
through all of time and all of space,
crashing down to a single hour,
a single moment,
a single instant,
on a hill outside of Jerusalem,
on a single man,
a man hanging on a cross
who cried out
“It is finished!”

“You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

They took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb and on the day after the Sabbath the women came and found the tomb empty. We know that story so well. It is the foundational story of our faith. We know it so well and yet we have to be reminded of it again and again because those little deaths seem to keep happening and hiding it from us. “Our life is hidden;” it gets buried under that weight; it goes unnoticed.

Anastasis IconIn the Eastern Orthodox tradition, icons of the Resurrection depict Christ rising from the tomb with a whole crowd of people. To one side of him crowned and haloed are King David and King Solomon; on the other, we see Abel the first martyr of creation carrying a shepherd’s crook and Moses the first prophet of the Old Covenant. Also present is John the Baptist, who is both the first prophet and the first martyr of the New Covenant. Beneath Christ’s feet, the gates of hell lie broken, often forming a cross. And from two tombs, Adam and Eve are rising, but not of their own accord; Jesus holds them by the wrists and is pulling them from their graves.

The mythological proto-parents of our race, the ancient kings, the prophets and martyrs . . . this little crowd represents all of humankind . . . you and me and all the people who have ever lived, all the people who have ever died any kind of death, whether physical death or the little daily kinds of dying we all have experienced . . .
we are all there,
all being pulled from death,
pulled from out of hiding,
pulled from where we are buried,
pulled from where the life God wants for us is unnoticed,
all rising with Christ to new life.

“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, . . . ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’” (1 Cor. 52,54-55) “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

We celebrate Easter, the historical fact of the Resurrection of Christ, not because it is something that happened 2,000 or so years ago, although it is certainly that. We celebrate the Resurrection because it is something that happens every day. “You have died . . .” Every day in myriad little ways, as those popular songs and our own experience reminds us, we die a little. Every day our life is obscured and hidden; every day our life is made secret even from us and the life God wants for us goes unnoticed.

But . . .
“It is finished!”
That seemingly endless round of sinful little deaths is over;
it crashed down through time and space
to that one instant
on that one cross
and it was done with,
conquered!
“It is finished!”

Every day Jesus, rising from the tomb, grabs us by the wrist and pulls us from the grave. “I came,” said Jesus, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Every day, he pulls us up out of the little deaths of sin into the resurrection of that abundant life. “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “It is finished!”

“When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory,” wrote Paul. (Col. 3:4)
Christ has been revealed; we are revealed with him in glory.
Christ is risen.
We are risen!
Death is conquered!
“It is finished!”
We are free!
Alleluia!

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

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

Questions from the Press – Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent – Year A – March 23, 2014

March 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday in Lent, March 23, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; and John 4:5-42. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Russian Icon: Woman at the Well and ZacchaeusFour interesting things happened this week. The first was our monthly Brown Bag Concert. During the construction of our Gallery addition to the Parish Hall, the attendance at the concerts had dropped off. Tuesday’s was the first since construction has been completed and we were unsure what sort of turn out we would see. Well, as it happened, we had over 100 people in this church for that concert! What a great thing!

The second thing was the death of Fred Phelps on Wednesday, March 19. The so-called Reverend Mr. Phelps was the so-called pastor of the so-called Westboro Baptist Church. I say “so-called” so many times because I believe Mr. Phelps was essentially self-ordained, and he founded the Westboro congregation which, despite its name, is not recognized by any national or regional Baptist convention. If you don’t recognize those names, Fred Phelps and his congregation are the people who show up with picket signs at the funerals of servicemen and other notable people, picket signs which read “God Hates [Homosexuals]” (only they use a much viler term on their signs). There’s a meme floating around the internet that reads, “Live your life in such a way that Fred Phelps will picket your funeral.” I recommend that.

In the days surrounding his death, my gay and lesbian friends were having quite a discussion of whether anyone should picket his funeral. Another Facebook meme answered that question: it was a cartoon of God saying, “I give you a new commandment: you shall not stoop to Fred Phelps’ level.” That’s where I came down on the question. We pray for the repose of Mr. Phelps’ soul, as we do for anyone who died; we pray that he find in death the peace he seemed not to find in life and which he denied to so many.

His death nearly coincided with what would have been the 86th birthday of another Fred, Fred Rogers, the man who assured children that everyday “it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” What a contrast these two Freds present: the man who invited everyone to be his neighbor and the man who wanted almost no one to be his. I had a little vision when I heard of Fred Phelps’ death that he had arrived at the Pearly Gates to be greeted by Fred Rogers saying, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, Fred, and everybody’s here!”

The third thing was our “St. Patrick’s Last Gasp” Irish Festival yesterday. It was a great party and a smashing success. Ray and I were trying to figure out how many people actually attended and we think that, at the highest point, we probably had more than 250 people in this building – here in the church, in the parish hall, in the dining room – if we’d had 25% more people, we couldn’t have moved. That’s a great problem to have!

The fourth interesting thing that happened was that our diocesan communications office contacted me and asked if I would be one of seven Episcopal clergy in the Cleveland metropolitan area to answer some questions posed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Sure,” I said and set about answering their questions. After doing so, I thought I ought to share my answers with you so you won’t be surprised when you open the paper someday soon and see what your rector is quoted as saying . . . because although their questions start innocently enough, they escalate rather quickly to address some thorny issues in our tradition and in our society.

I will get to addressing today’s Gospel lesson, trust me, but I want to share those answers with you first. So here they are . . . .

What is my favorite Easter tradition?

My favorite tradition is the Great Vigil of Easter celebrated as an evening service on Saturday evening or as a sunrise service on Resurrection Sunday. At St. Paul’s, Medina, we celebrate the Vigil in even numbered years on Resurrection Eve Saturday evening, and in odd numbered years on Sunday at sunrise. This year is our Saturday evening year and the service will begin after sundown at 8 p.m. Beginning the service in the dark with the lighting of the new fire, processing the Paschal Candle through the dark church, the church coming to light as other candles are lighted one from another, and finally the sanctuary fully lighted as the cry of “Alleluia! Christ is risen!” is sounded, the sun just rising (when we do it at sunrise), and the bells ringing . . . all of that brings me great joy. It speaks to me more clearly of the Light of Christ than any other tradition we observe at Easter or at any time during the church year. Of course, the Sunday morning Festival Eucharist (which will start at 10 a.m.) is great fun, as well!

How do I feel about the way Easter is celebrated in popular/secular culture?

I think the secular traditions of Easter (bunnies, eggs, new bonnets, a new set of dress clothes for the kids, lots of candy) are fine. They are celebrations of the new life of springtime. I’ve gotten out of the habit of calling our church celebration “Easter” and more often refer to it as “Resurrection Sunday” or “Resurrection Season,” so the term “Easter” actually speaks more to me of the secular festivities than of church observance, but the popular Easter traditions and the Christian celebration of Christ’s Resurrection all celebrate the joy of life returning. Human beings in all religious traditions (and those in none) have been celebrating springtime for millennia, and all that we do is good fun and spiritually uplifting. I don’t think the popular traditions detract from the religious significance at all.

What is the relationship between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion (including the Church of England)?

The Episcopal Church is one of the many churches around the world which trace their lineage to Christ and the Apostles through the historic Church of England, a family of churches called “the Anglican Communion.” The U.S. Episcopal Church is the second such offshoot of the Church of England; the Scottish Episcopal Church, which ordained our first bishop, was the first. As Anglicans, we are a part of a reformed catholic tradition which separated from the Roman Catholic Church as a political act during the reign of England’s King Henry VIII, not as a result of theological reform or protest. The Episcopal Church is the only Anglican church in the United States officially recognized as such by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, and the Anglican Consultative Council (our international “instruments of unity”).

What does it mean for the Episcopal Church to allow gay & lesbian weddings when the state of Ohio does not legally recognize these unions?

In considering this question, I think we should make a distinction between the civil contract of marriage, which is a creature of law defined by state statutes and constitutions, and the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, which is the church’s blessing of a committed, loving relationship of two adult persons. Currently, the Episcopal Church does not offer this sacramental blessing to same-sex couples; we offer a service of blessing and life-long commitment. A study group has been appointed by our highest governing body, the General Convention, to reflect upon our theology of matrimony and make recommendations as to whether the sacrament can and should be extended to same-sex couples; I believe that it should.

Although state law (wrongly, in my opinion) currently denies same-sex couples the right to form the civil contract, that law cannot prohibit the church from offering its blessing to anyone or for any purpose; that would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. Therefore, the church is free to and does offer a service of blessing to couples who wish to make solemn vows of life-long commitment one to the other. The church’s blessing does not (and should not be understood to) constitute the formation of the legal contract of marriage. When in a traditional wedding ceremony the husband and wife make their promises, in the Episcopal Church, the first part of the service before the reading of Scripture and the making of the religious vows, is the formation of the contract; after that is done, Scripture is read, prayers are offered, and the religious vows are made and sanctified during the sacramental service of blessing.

By the way, I don’t like to use the term “gay wedding” or “lesbian wedding” because the wedding or commitment ceremony is just that, a ceremony, regardless of the gender or sexual orientations of the persons involved; the couple may be both of the same sex or of opposite sexes, but the nature of the commitments they make to each other in the religious vows — to rely upon God, to love and support one another, to care for each other, and so forth — are the same, neither gay nor lesbian nor straight.

What does “God loves you. No exceptions.” mean to me in a culture that’s spiritual but not religious or with little to no religious affiliation?

Well, I think the statement speaks for itself and would mean the same thing whether the surrounding culture were highly religious or completely secular; God’s love for everyone is not culture dependent. As a statement of belief of the Episcopal Church in this diocese, it means that everyone is welcome. As a former Presiding Bishop of our church once said, “There will be no outcasts in this church,” meaning no one is excluded from participating in our worship, our educational programs, or the social life of the church community. A few weeks ago we put up on our church sign this invitation: “You can belong before you believe.” There is welcome here for the “spiritual but not religious,” the unaffiliated, the disaffiliated, the questioner, the doubter . . . everyone. We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we love exploring the questions and we offer a safe place for those with questions to do so. Although he’s not an Episcopalian, the author Brian McLaren speaks for our tradition when he writes in one of his books that the church should offer responses to questions, not answers; answers cut off conversation, while responses invite further discussion. The Episcopal Church offers responses. We think that’s what God does, too; God responds.

Considering the Gospel story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well

Which brings us to today’s Gospel reading, a very long reading setting out the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in any of the four Gospels. It’s amazing that Jesus had this conversation at all. First of all, he is speaking with a Samaritan. The Samaritans were the descendants of those who were left behind when the important families of Jerusalem and the country were taken into exile in Babylon. Those who got to stay in Israel had intermarried with the surrounding Canaanite peoples and continued to worship God according to the first four Books of Moses; they built a temple on Mt. Gerizim not far from the city of Sychar where this conversation took place and offered their sacrifices there. When the exiles returned and restored the temple in Jerusalem, they launched a campaign of “racial purity” demanding that those with “foreign” wives divorce them; adding the Book of Deuteronomy to the Scriptures, they also insisted that sacrifices could only be made at the Jerusalem temple. The Samaritans rejected these demands and “bad blood” existed between the two groups. By Jesus’ time, there was real hatred and enmity between them; John is a master of understatement when he says, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”

Not only was Jesus’ conversational partner a Samaritan, she was a woman! If we accept the Gospel’s naming of Jesus as a Rabbi, he was breaking all sorts of laws and traditions by conversing with a woman, even if she were a good and faithful Jew. Rabbis simply did not speak to any woman to whom they were not related; it just wasn’t done. And this particular woman, apart from being a Samaritan, was also a woman of (shall we say) besmirched reputation. She had been through five failed relationships and had entered into yet another with a man not her husband (how Jesus knows this I’m not sure, but he knows it).

So this poor woman was everything Jesus should have had nothing to do with, and yet there he is carrying on a conversation as if they were old friends. No wonder the disciples were astonished when they returned.

A fifth interesting thing happened this week. I was introduced to a Russian Orthodox icon depicting this Gospel story, and the interesting thing about it is that the icon writer chose to depict not only this story, but also the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus, you remember, was the Jewish tax collector who climbed a tree so that he could get a look at Jesus as he walked through a crowd in the Jewish city of Jericho. (Luke 19:1-27) Just as with the woman at the well, Jesus spoke to Zacchaeus. And he didn’t just talk to him; he walked up to the tree and said, “Zacchaeus, come down because I’m going to have dinner with you.”

Now, Zacchaeus was a tax collector, a lacky of the hated Roman occupiers of Israel. We all, I’m sure, have our opinions of the agents of the I.R.S. and as we get closer to April 15, that opinion is probably going to get pretty bad. But whatever we may think of contemporary revenue agents, what the Jews thought of Jewish tax collectors was a thousand times worse. They were collaborators working with oppressive Roman Empire which had invaded and occupied the Jewish nation. They were given what was for practical purposes a license to steal. The Roman authorities would tell them what they were to collect, but they could take more and did; they excess was what they lived on. So they were as hated and as outcast among their own people as a Samaritan would have been.

I believe that is the reason the Russian iconographer depicted the two stories on the same panel; he was illustrating that for Jesus there were no outcasts. For God incarnate in Jesus, there are no outcasts. Despite what Fred Phelps may have taught in his church, the Gospel story we heard this morning and the story of Zacchaeus demonstrate that God hates no one. As that diocesan bumper sticker and billboard about which the Plain Dealer asked says, “God loves everyone. No exceptions.” In Christ’s church, in this church there will be no outcasts. Ever.

Amen.

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

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

Really? What? No! – From the Daily Office – March 20, 2014

March 20, 2014 / / 2 Comments

From the First Letter to the Church in Corinth:

Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – I Corinthians 6:16 (NRSV) – March 20, 2014.)

Wedding rings and moneyThis is one of those times (there are, I admit, quite a few) when Paul loses me! I step back from his words and say, “Really? What?” Is Paul seriously equating sex with a prostitute with marriage? I know that Paul didn’t have too high an opinion of marriage. In the next chapter he will say that he thinks staying single is a much better idea: “I wish that all men were even as I myself am. . . . I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I.” (1 Cor. 7:7,8) But does he really hold it in such low regard so as to equate it with prostitution?

Paul’s quotation is from the second chapter of Genesis, from the story of the creation of Eve at the conclusion of which the biblical author writes, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. ” (Gen. 2:24) The story of the creation of Eve is about God fashioning for Adam a helper, someone with whom he would spend his life tending, caring for, and protecting the Garden of Eden — it’s not the story of a “one night stand.”

The two are not the same, but in the midst of his argument about preserving the purity of the church Paul has let his guard down, blurted out an honest (if inappropriate) appraisal of marriage, and let us see what he really thinks of it. To my mind, this makes suspect everything else he writes about marriage (or that someone else has written in his name). If, for example, he believes that marriage is nothing more than a cheap sexual liaison, that stuff about wives being “subject” to their husbands (Eph. 5:22, Col. 3:18) takes on a different color! I don’t know, it might be reasonable to expect a paid call girl to be “subject” to the man who’s paying her (prostitution seems to be inherently a relationship of power and domination) . . . but that’s not what I understand the relationship between spouses to be.

I rather like what the introduction to the Episcopal Church’s rite of Holy Matrimony says about the mutuality of marriage:

The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God. (BCP 1979, page 423)

And I don’t think marriage was instituted by God to be equivalent to prostitution despite what the Apostle Paul may have thought. So when I read this verse, I step back and ask, “Really? What?” . . . and I answer, “No!”

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

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

Shrove Tuesday Confession – From the Daily Office – March 4, 2014

March 4, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Proverbs:

Thus says the man: I am weary, O God,
I am weary, O God. How can I prevail?
Surely I am too stupid to be human;
I do not have human understanding.
I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the holy ones.
Who has ascended to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered the wind in the hollow of the hand?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is the person’s name?
And what is the name of the person’s child?
Surely you know!

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Proverbs 30:1b-4 (NRSV) – March 4, 2014.)

Stained Glass Window Portraying ConfessionI am later than usual committing to “paper” my thoughts on a portion of today’s readings, but these first verses of the lesson from Proverbs have been with me all day. Today is Shrove Tuesday, the day before the season of Lent begins, a day on which in the 2,000-year tradition of the church the faithful are encouraged to meet with a priest and make their confessions. The name, “Shrove Tuesday,” comes from the old English verb “to shrive,” which means to absolve of sin.

Several days ago I sent out an email to the members of my parish advising them that they could, if they would like, make an appointment to offer their confession in the formal rite of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I make that invitation every year. In ten years in this parish not a single person has approached me to hear their confession. I’m not surprised; the piety and devotional practice of what is, essentially, a Midwestern Protestant congregation is very different from the nosebleed-high, bells-and-smells, Anglo-Catholic piety and practice of my initial formation as an Episcopalian. These folks are very like my southern Methodist grandparents for whom the very idea of baring their souls to a priest was anathema.

So it’s been a very long time since I have heard someone say to God, through me as a priest, “I am weary, O God, I am weary. I am too stupid; I have not learned wisdom.” That, really, is what every confession boils down to — a recognition that I am burdened by something really incredibly stupid that I have done or failed to do, an acknowledgement that the result of that has wounded my spirit, and an action taken in hopes of relieving the pain of that wound. It isn’t necessary to do this in the formal confines of the confessional, nor is it necessary to do it in the presence of another human being. But sometimes it helps. Confession, like any prayer, is a conversation between the penitent and God; the confessor is there only to aid in the communication.

I’ve had people tell me that they’ve never done (or failed to do) anything that requires confession. I’m dumbfounded when I hear that . . . because I know for sure that I have! And I’ve heard enough confessions in my years as God’s priest to know that I’m not alone and my experience of my own sinfulness and stupidity (and that of others) pretty much convinces me that it is a universal human condition. We all, every single one of us, fall short of the mark. Every single one of us is in debt to God in some way. Very few of us (and certainly no one I know) has ascended to heaven; very few of us can gather the wind in our hands; very few of us can wrap the waters in their garments; and none of us established the ends of the earth. Perfection and universal knowledge is the providence of only one or two . . . definitely not me and, I’m pretty sure, not of anyone I’ve ever met on this earth.

It’s appropriate to acknowledge that occasionally, even if only once a year.

And now I must confess that I didn’t make an appointment with a priest to make my confession this year. I knew what my day would be like; I knew what was on my itinerary through this day. I started early and didn’t write this, my daily meditation, at the usual time — in fact, I didn’t think I’d write one at all. But something I thought would take more of my time than it did is now accomplished and I find myself with a few minutes to spare. So in the absence of a private time with my confessor . . .

Holy God, heavenly Father, you formed me from the dust in your image and likeness, and redeemed me from sin and death by the cross of your Son Jesus Christ. Through the water of baptism you clothed me with the shining garment of his righteousness, and established me among your children in your kingdom. But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste.

Especially, I confess to you and to the Church . . .

[Well, let’s just say that there have been some times when I have been too stupid to be human, when I have not had human understanding, when I have not learned wisdom . . . ]

Therefore, O Lord, from these and all other sins I cannot now remember, I turn to you in sorrow and repentance. Receive me again into the arms of your mercy, and restore me to the blessed company of your faithful people; through him in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. (BCP 1979, page 450)

I haven’t done any of those things the author of proverbs asks about, but I do know who has, and I know the name of that Person’s Child. And knowing that, I know that I am shriven. Thanks be to God!

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

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