That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Sacraments (Page 12 of 14)

God’s Faithfulness Prevails — Sermon for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12C) — July 28, 2013

July 28, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, July 28, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 10 (Proper 12, Year C): Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-19; and Luke 11:1-13. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Baptism“Name this child.” That’s what I say to parents of infant baptismal candidates as I take their children from them. The words are not actually written in the baptismal service of The Book of Common Prayer as they are in some other traditions’ liturgies, but there is a rubric on page 307 that says, “Each candidate is presented by name to the Celebrant . . . .” so asking for the child’s name is a practical way of seeing that done. It’s practical, but it’s also a theological statement.

There is a common religious belief found in nearly all cultures that knowing the name of a thing or a person gives one power over that thing or person. One finds this belief among African and North American indigenous tribes, as well as in ancient Egyptian, Vedic, and Hindu traditions; it is also present in all three of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The naming we do at baptism echoes the naming that takes place in Jesus’ tradition as a faithful Jew. In Judaism, when a male infant is circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, the mohel who performs the brit milah prays, “Our God and God of our fathers, preserve this child for his father and mother, and his name in Israel shall be called ________” and the prayer continues that, by his naming, the infant will be enrolled in the covenant of God with Israel. The same thing is done when a girl is named in the ceremony called zeved habat, or “presentation of the daughter” at the first formal reading of the Torah following her birth. In baptism, we do the same; the church says to its newest member, “This is who you are: washed in the waters of baptism, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever,” a brother or sister in the church, a fellow member of the household of God.

To give a name to anything, especially to another human being, is a powerful thing! In the first verses of Genesis we are told, “God said ‘Let there be Light’ and there was light.” (Gen. 1:3) God named the light before it was created; this process continues through the rest of the story. God says, “Let there be” and names the thing which will come into existence; the naming seems a necessary first step in creation. There is a sense in which the name given shapes the future of the thing, or of the person, named.

So this morning I will ask that question of Danny and Nikki ___________ (parents) and of Peter ___________ (Godfather) who will name Ryan George __________ (infant) as a child of God, and of Mary __________ (sponsor) who will name Jacqueline Ann ____________ (adult) as a child of God, and through baptism we all will welcome Ryan and Jackie into the household of faith, into a covenant relationship with Almighty God and with each of us.

In today’s lesson from the Prophet Hosea, we find God instructing the prophet to give strange and bewildering names to his children as powerful, prophetic signs of Israel’s broken relationship with God. Hosea’s firstborn son is to be named Jezreel, which refers to the location of a particularly brutal and bloody massacre of Israelite royalty; his daughter is to be called, Lo-ruhamah, which means “no pity,” as a sign that God will have no compassion for his people who have gone astray; and a second son is to be named, Lo-ammi, which means “no people,” to let the Israelites know they are no longer God’s people.

Preachers often use their children as sermon illustrations, but what God demands of Hosea seems a little extreme. These poor kids aren’t going to have to live merely with the embarrassment of a single sermon, they are going to live with these names, these prophetic, judgmental names for their entire lives! But as bad as that is, giving these awful names to his children is not the hardest thing God demands of Hosea. No, the hardest thing is marrying their mother, Gomer.

Hosea is ordered by God to (in the words of our NRSV translation) “take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom.” He is to marry a prostitute who will continue in her scandalous and adulterous behavior, even though Hosea will be faithful to her throughout the marriage. Why? Because it is a prophetic sign, a prophetic action symbolizing the way in which Israel has dealt with God: because “the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” God loves Israel with all the passion and loyalty of a faithful husband, but Israel, like a promiscuous wife, has been unfaithful to God.

It is an unfortunate prophetic metaphor, for it is misogynistic to the core! Portraying God as a faithful (but dominant) husband and Israel as a supposed-to-be obedient (and submissive) wife perpetuates a patriarchalism that is inappropriate to our society. As a metaphor it may have communicated clearly to its ancient Israelite audience, but it doesn’t communicate quite so clearly to us, clouded as it is with its ancient cultural bias. So as we read and seek to understand Hosea’s message in our day and age, we must extract the meaning from the metaphor and then, perhaps, cast the metaphor aside, separating the kernel of truth from the chaff of historical baggage.

In the modern world, marriage is not the patriarchal, male-dominated institution it was in Hosea’s time, but the metaphor can still work for us. In our Prayer Book, the meaning of marriage is summarized in the introductory comments with which the presiding minister begins the ceremony. We are told that it is a bond and covenant established by God in creation and that the union of the parties “in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy [and] for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity.” (BCP 1979, page 423)

Later in the service, just before the Nuptial Blessing is given, we pray for the couple that “each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy,” and that “their life together [may be] a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.” (Page 429) In such a relationship neither party dominates the other, neither is submissive; it is a mutual and interdependent bond of covenant obligations, one to the other.

When Hosea’s prophetic metaphor is understood in these terms, it emphasizes that God is angry with God’s people for abandoning the covenant obligations they had to God, even as God remained faithful. What Hosea’s marriage metaphor communicates to us, as it did to his ancient audience, is that it is divine fidelity, not human inconstancy, that will ultimately save the relationship. It is God’s faithfulness, not our own, which prevails and redeems our relationship with God.

This is also the message of the author of the Letter to the Colossians, an epistle traditionally said to have been written by St. Paul, but which is now no longer believed to be of his authorship. The reason for that is in the very part of the text on which I want to focus our attention, the sentence where the author writes: “When you were buried with [Christ] in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.” The author seems to echo Paul’s understanding of baptism in the Letter to the Romans, particularly a section we read every year on Easter Sunday. Paul writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? . . . . If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (6:3,5) The theology is similar, but note the significant shift: in Romans, Paul writes that we will be raised with Christ, whereas the author of Colossians asserts that our resurrection with Christ has already happened by reason of baptism. These two passages reflect the wonderful here-but-not-quite-here mysterious paradox of Christianity; we both celebrate the present reality of and anticipate the future consummation of our salvation in Christ. The victory has already been won, but not yet.

Now, what I really want to focus on is why our resurrection, our salvation, whether it is a present reality or something yet to occur, should happen at all! In Romans, Paul says that it happens “by the glory of the Father.” (v. 4) The author of Colossians asserts that it is “through faith in the power of God” according to our translation; that would seem to imply that our faith is somehow responsible for our salvation, that the means for our resurrection is our fidelity. But there is a growing body of scholarship which suggests that this is a misunderstanding of the original Greek of the text. The Greek is dia te pisteo te energeia tou theou . . . literally: “through the faith the working of God.” Traditional English translations add the preposition “in” into the interpretation which would imply that this powerful, operative faith is ours, but the Greek can also be understood to mean not “faith in” but rather “faith of” – in other words, it is God’s faith!

The 18th Century Lutheran translator Johann Albrecht Bengel suggested exactly this in his Annotations on the New Testament when he translated this text to say that our salvation, our resurrection comes about through faith which is a work of God. This text, he says, is “a remarkable expression: faith is of Divine operation.” (Gnomon of the New Testament, A. Fausset, tr., Clark:Edinburgh 1858, page 171, emphasis in original) Our resurrection with Christ is not brought about because of our faith; it is not because of us, or anything we do or believe! We are saved through the faithfulness of God who, by his glory and power, raised Christ from the dead.

It is also God’s faithfulness to which Jesus alludes in the parental metaphor which he uses in his instruction about prayer: “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” God is the faithful parent who always responds when we ask, who is always there to be found when we search, who always opens the door when we knock. It is God’s faithfulness, not our own, which prevails and redeems our relationship with God.

On this we can rely; in this faithful God, we can have faith.

So let’s go back to Hosea’s marriage metaphor. The Lutheran Book of Worship, used by our brothers and sisters in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with whom we enjoy a relationship of full communion, says this about marriage: “The Lord God in his goodness created us . . . and by the gift of marriage founded human community in a joy that begins now and is brought to perfection in the life to come. Because of sin, our age-old rebellion, the gladness of marriage can be overcast, and the gift of the family can become a burden. But because God, who established marriage, continues still to bless it with his abundant and ever-present support, we can be sustained in our weariness and have our joy restored.” (LBW 1978, page 203)

It is into the household of God, the community of joy restored, the covenant of mutual help and comfort sustained by the faithfulness of God, that we welcome Ryan George and Jacqueline Ann this morning. They (and we together with them) will make the statements of belief and the promises of action set out in the Baptismal Covenant (BCP 1979, pages 304-04), and they (and we) will try faithfully to keep them. Fortunately, however, it is God’s faithfulness, not theirs (nor ours), which will prevail and redeem them (and us), and their (and our) relationship with God.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, by our baptism into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, you turn us from the old life of sin: Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in righteousness and holiness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP 1979, page 254)

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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.

Removing the Distraction of Personality – From the Daily Office – June 14, 2013

June 14, 2013 / / 2 Comments

From the Book of Jesus Ben Sirach:

He exalted Aaron, a holy man like Moses
who was his brother, of the tribe of Levi.
He made an everlasting covenant with him,
and gave him the priesthood of the people.
He blessed him with stateliness,
and put a glorious robe on him.
He clothed him in perfect splendour,
and strengthened him with the symbols of authority,
the linen undergarments, the long robe, and the ephod.
And he encircled him with pomegranates,
with many golden bells all round,
to send forth a sound as he walked,
to make their ringing heard in the temple
as a reminder to his people;
with the sacred vestment, of gold and violet
and purple, the work of an embroiderer;
with the oracle of judgement, Urim and Thummim;
with twisted crimson, the work of an artisan;
with precious stones engraved like seals,
in a setting of gold, the work of a jeweller,
to commemorate in engraved letters
each of the tribes of Israel;
with a gold crown upon his turban,
inscribed like a seal with ‘Holiness’,
a distinction to be prized, the work of an expert,
a delight to the eyes, richly adorned.
Before him such beautiful things did not exist.
No outsider ever put them on,
but only his sons
and his descendants in perpetuity.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Ecclesiasticus 45:6-13 (NRSV) – June 14, 2013.)

Jewish High Priest in His Ceremonial VestmentsWow!

And some people think an alb, stole, and chasuble are “fancy!”

There are a lot of essays out there on the history, origin, function, and purposes of vestments. Every writer has a slightly different take on the matter.

Here’s what I think: vestments obscure the minister. In a sense, vestments “democratize” the priesthood. Vestments symbolize the office of the priest, minister, or elder. No matter what the denominational tradition – whether they are the richly decorated, colorful vestments of the Orthodox or Catholic traditions, or the simple black Geneva gown of the Reformed tradition – the ceremonial garb obscures the personality of the individual wearing them. Personal differences among and between clergy can be a distraction, and there should be no distractions in worship. The focus should be God, not the presider.

Suppose we didn’t wear vestments (and there are traditions in which the preachers and worship leaders do not). And suppose one worship leader is dressed in a very stylish, well-tailored, custom-made, $3,000 Brooks Brothers suit. Suppose another is dressed in a $150 off-the-rack, polyester suit. Another, in t-shirt and jeans. Each participant in worship will react differently to these three clergy, based solely on their appearance. This difference in reaction may rational or non-rational; it may be volitional or non-volitional. But it will be there.

Now, suppose we have these same three leaders. But over their street clothes all are wearing an alb, a stole, and a chasuble. One cannot see any difference in their attire. That distinction between the clergy is erased.

Whatever the other reasons may be that we wear vestments, I think this obscuring of differences amongst the clergy is the most important. Vestments, fancy or plain, remove the distraction of personality.

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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.

Going Fishing, Finding Grace – Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – April 14, 2013

April 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Third Sunday of Easter: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; and John 21:1-19. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Palestinian Fishing Boat 1880Several years ago, shortly after my mother died, my step-dad’s business partner also passed away leaving my step-dad to run the business they had created together. Now it is no insult to my step-dad, Stan, who had never before been a business owner, to say that he knew little or nothing about running a business. He’d been a tool-and-die man most of his working life with a brief foray into sales, but he’d never been in the “front office” and he’d certainly never been a manager or executive of any sort. Stan didn’t know accounts receivable from fish, and inventory control was a foreign language to him.

So I took a leave of absence from the parish where I was then rector, left Evie and the kids on their own in Kansas, moved in with my step-dad in Costa Mesa, California, and became the de facto president and chief executive officer of Halogen Valve Systems. The company had been created to manufacture and market an emergency chlorine valve actuator for municipal water systems, a product my step-dad and his partner had invented and patented. I knew nothing about chlorine, water systems, or valves, but I did know computers, accounting, and business management, so I dove right in to the job, searching through computer files, finding blueprints and parts lists, learning supplier names and product numbers, customer contacts, and so forth; contacting suppliers and customers; charting supply and distribution patterns; organizing the warehouse, the manufacturing shop, and the front office. In the meantime, Stan taught me about chlorine gas and water purification and emergency valve actuators.

After a couple of months, I had the business pretty well systematized and was ready to turn it back to my step-dad and an office manager, so it came time to show my step-dad what I’d set up and teach him what he needed to know. We’d sit down in my office together and, at each session, we’d spend about an hour going over some aspect of the management plan. Our time was limited to an hour because each time, at just about the hour mark, Stan would stand up and say, “I’m going out to the shop.” And off he’d go, out to the manufacturing floor to work with the guys who were building the valve actuators. What he was doing is exactly what Peter does in today’s gospel lesson from John.

Stan could only take so much management talk, so much double-entry bookkeeping, so much inventory control . . . at some point, at that hour limit, he was filled up. He needed to do something with which he was familiar, to give his brain and his spirit time to process all the confusion of front office management. He was going back to the part of the business he could understand. Peter does the same thing in today’s gospel lesson. He’s taken as much confusion as he can stand. All the glory and wonder at the beginning of Holy Week, all the terror and sadness of Good Friday, all the bewilderment and relief and joy of Easter Sunday . . . it’s all been just about more than he can take and it’s time to do something he can understand. “I’m going fishing,” he says. “I’m going back to the part of this business I understand.” And the others know exactly how he feels and they chime in with, “We’ll join you.”

So off they go and as they are fishing, a figure appears on the beach and calls to them. It’s Jesus, who gives them some advice about fishing and then invites them to a grilled fish breakfast he is preparing. While they are eating, he and Peter engage in a conversation, but before we get into that, let’s take a look at the other major story of this morning.

Our Lectionary also gives us the story of St. Paul’s conversion in today’s reading from the Book of Acts. It’s a familiar enough story for us here at St. Paul’s Parish. We hear it at least twice a year, and now the Lectionary gives it to us a third time. Saul of Tarsus, a Jew among Jews, a Pharisee among Pharisees, a prosecutor of the heretics who proclaim this upstart rabbi Jesus to be the Messiah, is on his way to Damascus with letters of warrant from the chief priests to arrest and prosecute any Christians he finds there. Along the road, however, he is knocked on his butt, literally knocked off his horse by a blinding light and a crash of thunder and a voice which asks, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” In surprise, he asks the voice who it is that is speaking and he is told, “I am Jesus!” And Saul and Jesus have a conversation.

Saul’s conversation with Jesus is rather abrupt. Jesus simply tells him to get up and go to a certain place in Damascus and there he will be instructed. Peter’s conversation is rather different. Three times Jesus asks him “Do you love me?” Three times Peter answers, “You know I do.” Three times Jesus tells Peter to take care of Jesus’ sheep.

When we read this in English, we miss a very important nuance in John’s use of language and we are apt to miss John’s point. The first two times Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” John uses the word agape to render the question. This word is normally used in the Greek scriptures to describe perfect or “divine” love. When Peter answers Jesus in the affirmative, he uses another word, phileo, which means “brotherly love.” This suggests that he loved Jesus as a brother, not yet fully understanding his Risen Lord’s divinity. Jesus then calls Peter to feed the lambs. Jesus asks the second time, again using “agape.” Jesus at first had not gotten the answer from Peter that he wanted but, again, Jesus receives the same response from Peter. Jesus then repeats the feeding admonition, changing it so that Peter is responsible for feeding the not just the lambs, but the whole flock. The third time, Jesus changes the word and asks Peter the question in Peter’s own terms; Jesus uses the disciple’s “brotherly love” word, phileo.

What is happening in this conversation, indeed with this whole scene, is that Jesus is meeting Peter where Peter can meet Jesus. Peter had to get out of Jerusalem; he had to get to someplace, to doing something, that he could grasp. So Jesus met him there. Peter couldn’t quite yet understand Jesus’ godliness, using a term for human rather than divine love. So Jesus went along with him. Jesus met and interacted with Peter is a manner appropriate to Peter’s situation. Jesus does the same with Saul.

Saul was a fire-brand, a person who so aggressively and energetically promoted his own cause, his own understanding of religion that he encouraged unrest among Jews and kindled strife for the followers of Jesus. And Jesus did with him what he had done with Peter. He came to him in the place and in the manner in which Saul could be reached and led to understand. Saul clearly had heard the gospel message preached by the disciples; he’d heard it and rejected it. The soft and gentle approach hadn’t worked. So, in the alternative, Jesus came to him with flash of light and a clap of thunder, and knocked him on his butt!

The two stories from Scripture today teach us the same lesson. Jesus comes to us when and where and as we are able to understand and appreciate him, gently to some, more aggressively to others. But however he comes, he comes. We call this “grace.” Simply put, grace is the free and unmerited favor manifesting our salvation and bestowing blessings upon us. Both Peter and Paul received this grace in ways appropriate to them, as do we all.

Earlier this week an author named Brennan Manning passed away. Brennan was an American Roman Catholic, a friar, a priest (who had married!), a contemplative, and a frequent speaker at religious events. He lived a fascinating and turbulent life, and wrote many books, one of which was The Ragamuffin Gospel. In it, he wrote this about grace:

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last “trick,” whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

“But how?” we ask.

Then the voice says, “They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

There they are. There we are — the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace. (The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out)

The stories of Peter fishing on the Sea of Galilee and of Saul traveling to Damascus, and of their encounters with Jesus in those places, teach us that Jesus comes to us wherever and however we are, even defeated, soiled, and bloodied, to give us salvation and blessing, to give us the unmerited favor of God, to give us grace. We may have gone out to the manufacturing floor; we may have gone fishing; we may be on a trip pursuing our passion. Wherever we are, Jesus meets us, and there we find grace. 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.

Faith, Works, Fruits – From the Daily Office – April 12, 2013

April 12, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the First Letter of John:

Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 John 3:7-10 (NRSV) – April 12, 2013.)

The Fruits of the SpiritIt’s been several days since I last offered one of these meditations. I took time off to deal with a family medical issue and then there was Holy Week and then there was Easter and then there was something else and then . . . . Life can become a series of excuses for not getting things done. John, in this first catholic epistle, will brook no excuses, no procrastination. Get it done! Do what is right, for that is righteousness; “all who do not do what is right are not from God.”

Among my favorite verses of Scripture is James 1:22 – “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves” – which I guess is why I could never really be a Lutheran (of any sort). Luther condemned James as a “straw epistle” because, apparently, its author’s insistence that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (1:27), and that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (2:17) conflicted with Luther’s insistence on a Pauline doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. I wonder what Luther made of John’s insistence that the righteous actually do something . . . .

I am an Episcopalian by choice. If I was schooled in any sort of religion as a child, I was reared in the American Campbellite tradition on my mother’s side of the family and in the Methodist tradition on my father’s; but the truth is, my nuclear family was pretty much unchurched. So when I was in high school I made my own decision about a church to attend and, when I experienced the worship and ministry in the Episcopal Church, I knew was “home.”

One of the things I most appreciate about our tradition is our insistence that a professed faith has active consequences; in our liturgy of baptism, these are laid out in the Baptismal Covenant. I preached about that last Sunday when I had the privilege to preside at a baptism. I won’t get into that again; I would just ask my reader to read that sermon (the last posting on this blog).

Righteousness is not just about works; justification is not just about faith. It’s not either-or; it’s a both-and sort of thing. (That’s something we Episcopalians and Anglicans say a lot, “It’s a both-and sort of thing.”) Belief produces results; faith is made alive in works; the Spirit brings forth fruit. As Someone once said, “You will know them by their fruits.” (Matt. 7:16) But that same Someone suggested that there is a limit to how long one can procrastinate before actually doing something, before actually bearing that fruit. Remember the parable about a fruitless tree which ended, “If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down”? (Luke 13:-10) There is a limit to procrastination and to excuses, so be about it; whatever it is that your faith requires of you, get it done!

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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.

Lord, I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief – Sermon for “Thomas Sunday” (Easter 2) – April 7, 2013

April 7, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Second Sunday of Easter, “Thomas Sunday,” April 7, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; and John 20:19-31. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Doubting Thomas by GuercinoLeslie Dixon Weatherhead (1893-1976) was an English Methodist Minister who served at the City Temple, a Congregational Church in London. He served there from 1936 until his retirement in 1960. In one of his several book, The Christian Agnostic, he wrote, “When people said to me, ‘I should like to be a member of the City Temple, what must I believe?’ I used to say, ‘Only those things which appear to you to be true.’”

Last week at our Easter services, many of us reaffirmed our Baptismal Covenant doing exactly what we are about to ask Graham _____________, or those speaking on his behalf, to do . . . and we will all do it again with them. We will ask one another, “What do you believe?” and in good liturgical fashion we will all answer in the same way; we will answer the questions, “Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?” with responses which are nothing more and nothing less than the ancient Apostle’s Creed. Our Anglican tradition calls this creed “the Baptismal Symbol.”

Not a single one of us is likely to balk in the midst of our liturgy and say, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” And yet I’ll bet that some of us might be thinking something very much along those lines as we dutifully recite the answers set out for us in The Book of Common Prayer. Many people in our world today, both outside and inside the church, do.

And there is nothing wrong with thinking that. Nothing at all. Because, you see, there are varieties of belief. Writing to the church in Corinth, St. Paul said, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” (1 Cor. 12:4-6) I suggest to you that there are varieties of belief, but the same Christian faith throughout the church.

For example, on a regular Sunday, a Sunday when we are not baptizing new member of God’s household, we would recite the Nicene Creed, which begins:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

Now let’s just take the last phrase of that bit, the part that says God is the “maker of all that is, seen and unseen.” Let’s just take the last word of the last phrase of that bit, “unseen.” What, in your understanding, does that mean?

Are you one of those who believes in a spiritual or supernatural realm? One who believes that, as the introduction to an old television anthology series used to put it, “there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit.” Is that what you think of when you acknowledge your belief in God as maker all that is unseen?

Perhaps you think of the microscopic, atomic, and subatomic realms of Newtonian space or Einsteinian space-time. Maybe you think of the multiverse and the infinite number of alternate realities suggested by the probability equations of quantum mechanics. Possibly you give thought to the 13 tightly curled, hidden dimensions of superstring theory. Or perhaps you don’t think of any of that. Maybe you’ve never given it any thought; you just say the words that are put there in the Prayer Book.

Whatever, it’s all perfectly acceptable because, as the Rev. Mr. Weatherhead said, there is nothing in particular that you must believe about God as maker of all things unseen, “only those things which appear to you to be true.” And if we were to make our way through the rest of the creed, whether the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed, we would find ourselves facing a bewildering variety of beliefs as we paused at each phrase or word and teased out the various and sundry meanings we all might give it. One of us might say, “This is what that means,” and another would respond, “I don’t believe that at all!” And yet all of us would nonetheless still be comfortable in saying the creed together because, as Peter said to the Temple authorities, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (Acts 5:29) And the creeds, important as they are, are human authority, the words of bishops and church counsels and church tradition, not the word of God.

Early in our Anglican history, there were those who wanted to impose a single understanding, a single interpretation of the creeds, of our several prayers, of the Sacraments, and of Scripture. They wanted to enforce a single way of worshiping God and they prevailed upon Queen Elizabeth I to enforce that uniformity for them. She declined. She simply required that the English people worship together, but what each might make of that worship, of the words spoken, of the Sacraments administered, or of the Scriptures read she left to each: “I would not open windows into men’s souls,” she declared. Her preference, worked out in Parliament in a series of acts known as The Elizabethan Settlement, has been called the terminal point of the English Reformation and, in the long run, the foundation of Anglicanism and the “via media” (or “middle way”) we still, 550 years later, claim to be. We still do not open windows into each other’s souls; we still treat ascent to the historic creeds as a matter of individual conscience and interpretation.

Mr. Weatherhead, in his book The Christian Agnostic, also wrote this:

I believe passionately that Christianity is a way of life, not a theological system with which one must be in intellectual agreement. I feel that Christ would admit into discipleship anyone who sincerely desired to follow him, and allow that disciple to make his creed out of his experience; to listen, to consider, to pray, to follow, and ultimately to believe only those convictions about which the experience of fellowship made him sure.

Mr. Weatherhead may have been a Methodist, but these words would sum up the understanding of every Episcopalian or Anglican true to our heritage. Being an Anglican follower of Christ, to which manner of life today we welcome Graham _____________, is not a matter of theological system, even though we ask those questions with prescribed, systematic, creedal answers. Being an Anglican follower of Christ is about community and fellowship, a community and a fellowship in which it would be perfectly acceptable to say, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Because more than mere intellectual assent to particular propositions is at stake. Because there are varieties of belief, but the same Christian faith throughout the church.

That is why the Baptismal Covenant does not end with those three questions and those three systematic, creedal responses. The Baptismal Covenant continues with questions about community and fellowship, questions about respect and dignity, questions about behavior and practice, questions about ministry and mission. Five questions:

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Five questions to which the answer is the same: “I will, with God’s help.”

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to Mark there is a story of a man who comes to Jesus seeking healing for his son who is possessed by a demon. The mean tells Jesus that the demon “has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus responds to man saying, “If you are able! – All things can be done for the one who believes.” In the wonderful poetic language of the King James version of the Bible we are told that, with tears, the father cries, ” Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:17-24)

It is that same cry that we utter when we answer those behavioral questions of the Baptismal Covenant, “I will, with God’s help.” Lord, we believe (we have said that in answer to the first three questions; we believe in whatever manner each of us believes) . . . Lord, we believe; help thou our unbelief. Help us to carry through on the way of life which is implicit in those stated beliefs. We will; we’ll carry through “with God’s help.”

Belief is one of those ambiguous words that can mean so many things. In the creedal sense, it means to give intellectual assent to a stated proposition. “Do you believe in God?” in this sense means do you accept the proposition as true that there is a God. Suppose we change the object of question, however. “Do you believe in your wife/husband/child/parent?” It would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it, to interpret this as asking, “Do you accept as true the proposition that your wife/husband/child/parent exists?” We know that the question, that the word belief as used in the question, means something very different. It means, “Do you trust in your family member? Do you have faith in them? Do you expect them to behave in certain ways, to carry through on promises, to have your best interests at heart?” And if you believe in your family member, will you behave toward them and within the community of your family in equivalent and considerate ways?

And that is precisely what the word belief really means in the creeds and in the Baptismal Covenant. Do you trust in God? Do you have faith in Christ? Do you expect the Holy Spirit to act in certain ways in your life? Are you confident that God will carry through on God’s promises with your best interests at heart? Do you believe in God? And if you believe in God, will you behave toward God and within the community of God’s household the church and of God’s world, “all that is, seen and unseen,” in equivalent and considerate ways?

Thomas, known for all time as “Doubting Thomas,” wanted to believe! The words of that grieving father, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief,” could as easily have been his. And they are, most certainly, ours. “I will, with God’s help.” Help thou mine unbelief!

Jesus gave Thomas the help he needed; he showed him his hands and his feet; he invited him to put his hand into the wound in his side. “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.'” Jesus was talking about us, about you, about me, about all of us “who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” And he was talking about Graham _____________ who, if we do as we promise each time we reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, if we continue “with God’s help,” if we persevere “with God’s help,” if proclaim “with God’s help,” if we seek and serve others “with God’s help,” if we strive for justice and peace “with God’s help” . . . if we do all that, with God’s help, Graham too will be blessed as one who has not seen and yet has come to believe, because he will, in fact, have seen. He will have seen Christ in us.

“Lord, we believe; help thou our unbelief.”

And now, “to him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:5b)

The candidate for Holy Baptism will now be presented . . . . .

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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.

Pope Francis – From the Daily Office – March 14, 2013

March 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From Paul’s Letter to the Church in Rome:

So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 8:12-17 (NRSV) – March 14, 2013.)

Pope FrancisThere were two things about which I was unaware when I wrote yesterday’s meditation referring to the folk chorus Abba, Father. First of all, I didn’t know that today’s readings would include Paul’s comments to the Romans on that form of addressing God. Secondly, I had no idea that the modern day Romans (in the form of the Papal Conclave) would have elected a new pope by today.

Today the entire world, Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians, as well as those of other religions, together with the world’s Roman Catholics, are taking stock of the newest successor of St. Peter, trying to figure out who Pope Francis is and what his election means. According to all the news reports I’ve seen, he is a humble man with much concern for the poor and the economically oppressed. On the other hand, he is apparently a doctrinal conservative who has had some pretty negative things to say about contraception, a woman’s right to reproductive choice, and the legalization of abortion, as well as about the LGBT community and the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgendered persons. How this will all shake out in his leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is anyone’s guess.

I hope that he will listen to what Paul has to say in his letter to the Roman church of long ago. I hope that he will acknowledge that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God,” even though that Spirit may be leading them in non-Christian directions. I hope that he will consider the suggestion of his fellow Jesuit, Avery Dulles, who wrote: “On Christian grounds, it may be held that the divine person who appears in Jesus is not exhausted by that historical appearance. The symbols and myths of other religions may point to the one who Christians recognize as the Christ.” (Revelation and the Religions, Quaker Universalist Fellowship: 1999)

It is my understanding of basic Christian doctrine that the Holy Spirit may act wherever and whenever she chooses. If we presume to constrain the activity of the Holy Spirit, if our doctrinal predisposition is to limit God to only our particular religious assumptions, then we are not faithful to the Truth. Christian tradition recognizes a mandate to seek Truth wherever it may be found and to follow the Holy Spirit wherever she may lead, even if that may be into consideration of other religions or non-Christian philosophies. I hope his Holiness will be of the same understanding and seek interfaith dialogue.

Even more, I hope that he will seek common cause with non-Roman Christians, even when our ecclesiologies and theologies may not agree with those of the Holy See. I pray that he will acknowledge that Protestants, Anglicans, and Orthodox Christians are “children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” It was a great disappointment when his predecessor, Benedict XVI, ratified and confirmed a statement that “those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century . . . because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery [and] cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called ‘Churches’ in the proper sense.” (Responsa Quaestiones, June 29, 2007) As an Anglican, especially, I would dispute the basic assumptions about the priesthood and the Eucharist, but even without regard to that quibble, to deny that any group of Christians is the church seems to me to be an unnecessary stumbling block to ecumenical relations. Hopefully, Pope Francis will be more gracious than his predecessor in acknowledging that “where two or three are gathered in [his] name, [Christ is] there among them.” (Matt. 18:20 NRSV)

Which brings me back to the folk chorus Abba, Father and yesterday’s meditation. The petition of the song is

Mold us, mold us and
Fashion us,
Into the image,
Of Jesus your Son
Of Jesus your Son.
Father, may we be one in you,
May we be one in you,
As he is in you,
And you are in him.

God the potter is constantly molding the church. May Pope Francis’s election be an opportunity not only for the Roman Catholic Church to be molded anew, may it also be an occasion for the whole of the Christ’s universal church, and God’s people of other faiths, to be molded together into a new ecumenical and interfaith cooperation.

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

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

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

February 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

Dear People of God, . . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Happy Valentine’s Day: Cretans Are Liars! – From the Daily Office – February 14, 2013

February 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Letter to Titus:

There are also many rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision; they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what it is not right to teach. It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.” That testimony is true. For this reason rebuke them sharply, so that they may become sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths or to commandments of those who reject the truth.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Titus 1:10-13b (NRSV) – February 14, 2013.)

Sing of the Cross in Ashes on Purple HeartWell, Happy Valentine’s Day! Doesn’t Paul strike a pleasant note in his admonitions to the young bishop Titus? The ad hominem attack enshrined in Holy Scripture, mixed with a health dose of antisemitism to boot! An ad hominem is considered a logical fallacy because an otherwise potentially valid claim is rejected on the basis of an irrelevant fact about the person presenting the claim. Typically, it involves two steps, both of which Paul demonstrates in this bit of his letter to Titus. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim: “Cretans are always liars.” Second, this personal attack is used as evidence against the argument the person is making. In other words, the ad hominem argument has the following form:

  1. Person A makes claim X: “Rebellious people are teaching things.”
  2. Person B makes an attack on person A: “They are liars, vicious brutes, and lazy gluttons.”
  3. Therefore A’s claim is false: “Their teachings are ‘Jewish myths’.”

However, the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not have any bearing on the truth or falsehood of the claim they may be making or the quality of the argument they may be advancing: this is why the ad hominem attack is, itself, a fallacy.

Reading these words in the letter to Titus this morning hit me with particularly force because of discussions yesterday of the innovation of “Ashes to Go” – a new practice offered by some in the Episcopal Church (and other traditions, I suppose) of going to public places (street corners, coffee houses, college campuses) and offering the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday outside of the context of the full penitential liturgy. Personally, I don’t approve of the practice, but I do appreciate the arguments of those who champion it.

In some of the discussions, both online and in person, arguments were advanced that those on the con side of “Ashes to Go” were “older clergy” whose only concern (apparently because of their age and concern for their pensions) is preservation of a dying institution while those on the pro side were “younger clergy” who (apparently because of their youth) are open to the Holy Spirit doing something new. On the other side, those “younger clergy” were portrayed as killing the church because they fail to appreciate and respect its traditions and by their actions rob them of meaning, while the “older clergy” are the Spirit-filled defenders of the faith.

Hmmm . . . . . . . The division of the church into “older” and “younger” groups (clergy or otherwise) whose age bracket somehow validates or invalidates their positions feels a lot like an ad hominem sort of argument. In the spirit of Paul’s words to Titus, I could almost hear the disputants saying, “Older clergy are always . . . .” and “Younger clergy are always . . . .”

I don’t know whether “Ashes to Go” is a movement of the Holy Spirit or whether it is simply yet another straw being grasped at by a church striving to be “relevant”. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. I do know that, to me, it feels like what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (The Cost of Discipleship)

Whether it is that or not, however, is not dependent on whether the practice is advanced by “younger clergy” or opposed by “older clergy” (and, for the record, there are proponents and opponents on both sides of the age divide, wherever one draws the line).

This Valentine’s Day – this Lent – let’s make the effort to move away from ad hominem arguments, even if they are enshrined in the Pauline text. Let’s listen to one another carefully and address the issues, not the persons.

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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.

Rector’s Address: “The Dream” by Wesley Frensdorff – Conversion of St. Paul (tr.) – January 27, 2013

January 27, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This address was given on Sunday, January 27, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector. The day was celebrated as the Patronal Feast of the parish by translating the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul from January 25 to this, the closest following Sunday. Rather than preach on the propers of the day (Epiphany 3) or of the translated feast, Fr. Funston offered this assessment of the parish and how well it meets the vision of The Dream, a prophetic piece of prose written more than thirty years ago by the late Wesley Frensdorff, one-time bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada.

(Lessons for the Conversion of St. Paul according to the practice of the Episcopal Church: Acts 26:9-21; Psalm 67; Galatians 1:11-24; and Matthew 10:16-22. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Fr. Funston assisted at the Communion Table by children of St. Paul's ParishMore than thirty years ago, a bishop named Wesley Frensdorff set out his vision for the church in a piece of writing he title simply The Dream. Wes Frensdorff was a good friend to Evelyn and to me. He was her parish priest when she was a child, and her boss when she was the director of the Diocese of Nevada’s summer camp. He officiated at our wedding, and is the person who spoke for God and hounded me into eventually becoming a clergyman. As my Rector’s Report, I’d like to share his dream with you, adding my own brief comments as to how I see this church meeting his vision.

Bishop Frensdorff begins . . .

Let us dream of a church . . .
in which all members know surely and simply God’s great love, and each is certain that in the divine heart we are all known by name.
in which Jesus is very Word, our window into the Father’s heart; the sign of God’s hope and his design for all humankind.
in which the Spirit is not a party symbol, but wind and fire in everyone; gracing the church with a kaleidoscope of gifts and constant renewal for all.

I think that is the sort of church we at St. Paul’s Parish are, a congregation which knows God and God’s Son and in which everyone’s gifts and ministries are welcomed, empowered, and celebrated. We have just received written and oral reports on the many and varied ways in which those gifts and ministries are embodied in our parish.

The bishop continues . . .

A church in which . . .
worship is lively and fun as well as reverent and holy; and we might be moved to dance and laugh; to be solemn, cry or beat the breast.
people know how to pray and enjoy it – frequently and regularly, privately and corporately, in silence and in word and song.
the Eucharist is the center of life and servanthood the center of mission: the servant Lord truly known in the breaking of the bread, with service flowing from worship, and everyone understanding why worship is called a service.

I believe we are such a congregation. We have affirmed often that we are a Eucharisticly-centered parish, a prayerful people, and a place of service. We have an active parish prayer chain; we have groups which meet weekly to read spiritual writings or study the Holy Scriptures (and I wish there were more of those); we have just instituted a new chapter of the Order of the Daughters of the King, whose ministry is one of intentional prayer. This is a parish with an active corporate and individual prayer life.

Let us dream of a church . . .
in which the sacraments, free from captivity by a professional elite, are available in every congregation regardless of size, culture, location, or budget.
in which every congregation is free to call forth from its midst priests and deacons, sure in the knowledge that training and support services are available to back them up.
in which the Word is sacrament too, as dynamically present as bread and wine; members, not dependent on professionals, know what’s what and who’s who in the Bible, and all sheep share in the shepherding.
in which discipline is a means not to self-justification but to discipleship, and law is known to be a good servant but a poor master.

I believe we are or are becoming such a congregation. We are a parish in which leadership of worship is shared, in which many study the Holy Scriptures (though I wish more would do so), and in which the discipline of the Christian life is a matter of trust and grace. This is a parish in which the “sheep share in the shepherding;” in addition to our Lay Eucharistic Visitors, we have many in our congregation who’s personal ministry is keeping in touch with those they may not see in church, those whom they know to be in need of a friendly visit, those who may not speak up when they are lonely. It is a delight to be the priest in a place where many share the pastoral service which is the ministry of the priesthood of all believers.

A church . . .
affirming life over death as much as life after death, unafraid of change, able to recognize God’s hand in the revolutions, affirming the beauty of diversity, abhorring the imprisonment of uniformity, as concerned about love in all relationships as it is about chastity, and affirming the personal in all expressions of sexuality;
denying the separation between secular and sacred, world and church, since it is the world Christ came to and died for.

I believe we are such a congregation. We are a parish which welcomes all regardless of race, origin, or sexuality; we are a parish in a tradition which boldly proclaims that creation is good and which seeks to husband and enhance that goodness.

A church . . .
without the answers, but asking the right questions; holding law and grace, freedom and authority, faith and works together in tension, by the Holy Spirit, pointing to the glorious mystery who is God.
so deeply rooted in gospel and tradition that, like a living tree, it can swing in the wind and continually surprise us with new blossoms.

I believe we are such a congregation. St. Paul’s Parish is a household which welcomes the seeker, the questioner, the curious, and the new, offering not easy, black-and-white answers, but responses and exploration in a community of questioners.

Let us dream of a church . . .
with a radically renewed concept and practice of ministry, and a primitive understanding of the ordained offices.
where there is no clerical status and no classes of Christians, but all together know themselves to be part of the laos – the holy people of God.
a ministering community rather than a community gathered around a minister.
where ordained people, professional or not, employed or not, are present for the sake of ordering and signing the church’s life and mission, not as signs of authority or dependency, nor of spiritual or intellectual superiority, but with Pauline patterns of “ministry supporting church” instead of the common pattern of “church supporting ministry.”
where bishops are signs and animators of the church’s unity, catholicity, and apostolic mission, priests are signs and animators of her Eucharistic life and the sacramental presence of her Great High Priest, and deacons are signs and animators – living reminders – of the church’s servanthood as the body of Christ who came as, and is, the servant slave of all God’s beloved children.

I hope we are becoming such a congregation in such a diocese. We have affirmed and celebrated today the ministry of many of God’s people through the activities and outreach of this parish. I look forward to a time when there may be one or more additional priests to animate (as Bishop Frensdorff put it) our Eucharistic life, when there may be one or more deacons to animate our life of service and servanthood, but whether we have those or not, we are now a community which, nourished on Christ’s Body and Blood, is corporately and individually reaching out in service to our community. The Free Farmers’ Market is our largest and most active corporate outreach ministry; but we have many members who are active in public service as hospital and hospice volunteers, as board members of charities, as tutors, and in a variety of other ways. Their public service is a testament to the Christian witness of this church to which they belong.

Let us dream of a church . . .
so salty and so yeasty that it really would be missed if no longer around; where there is wild sowing of seeds and much rejoicing when they take root, but little concern for success, comparative statistics, growth or even survival.
a church so evangelical that its worship, its quality of caring, its eagerness to reach out to those in need cannot be contained.

I believe we are becoming such a congregation. At a recent meeting of leadership in this parish, one of our people said, “I’m looking forward to failing!” What he meant was that he looks forward to us going out into the community around us with (as the bishop says) “little concern for success,” simply going out and getting something done, spreading the Gospel without worrying about the final outcome, which is always and ever in God’s hands.

A church . . .
in which every congregation is in a process of becoming free – autonomous – self-reliant – interdependent, none has special status: the distinction between parish and mission gone.
where each congregation is in mission and each Christian, gifted for ministry; a crew on a freighter, not passengers on a luxury liner.
of peacemakers and healers abhorring violence in all forms (maybe even football), as concerned with societal healing as with individual healing; with justice as with freedom, prophetically confronting the root causes of social, political, and economic ills.
which is a community: an open, caring, sharing household of faith where all find embrace, acceptance. and affirmation.
a community: under judgment, seeking to live with its own proclamation, therefore, truly loving what the Lord commands and desiring his promise.

I believe this is what we meant when we declared, as a congregation, that St. Paul’s Parish’s reason for being is “to set hearts on fire for Jesus” and that our mission is “to advance the Kingdom of God through liturgical worship, spiritual education, personal growth, and service to others.”

And finally, let us dream of a people
called to recognize all the absurdities in ourselves and in one another, including the absurdity that is Love,
serious about the call and the mission but not, very much, about ourselves,
who, in the company of our Clown Redeemer can dance and sing and laugh and cry in worship, in ministry, and even in conflict.
[Frensdorff was a great lover of clowns who often used the clown as a metaphor or illustration in his preaching about Jesus.]

I recently read an essay entitled Why Does God Need the Church? by Ragan Sutterfield, an Episcopalian who lives in Arkansas. Sutterfield’s answer is that God needs the church “to be God’s real presence in the world . . . a radical and amazing call for a group of people.” But, he wrote, “we need to realize . . . that the buildings, the ecclesial bodies, the liturgies, the hierarchies, the bishops, the priests, the laity, the budgets, etc, etc, etc, are only valuable as parts of the church in so far as they are fulfilling the mission of God. And . . . God’s mission is not nice services for nice people in nice buildings.” (Emphasis added.)

Sutterfield, I think, is echoing Bishop Frensdorff’s vision. In doing so, Sutterfield, proposed two new ways to think of our church congregations. First, as “icon” – an icon, he says, is an image that sparks the imagination to move beyond the image and see God. The question we must ask ourselves is “Are we such a community? Looking at us, visiting us, worshiping with us, being served by us, and serving with us, are others moved beyond us to see God?” I believe that we are such a community and I hope that others see through us in that way.

Sutterfield’s second new image of the church is as a “dojo.” A dojo, as you probably know, is “a practice community within martial arts – it is the place where adherents to a specific form come together to learn how to be better practitioners, both from each other and from recognized masters of the form.” It is, simply put, the place and community where people come to get better at what they do. In the church-as-dojo, the congregation becomes the place where we come together to work at becoming more Christ-like. The church becomes a place where we come not to sing some nice songs and hear an occasionally good sermon, but a community with which we gather to explore the faith with one another, recognizing that some among us are more practiced than we may be, challenging each other and learning from one another how better to practice the way of Jesus.

Sutterfield concludes with a vision not too much different from Bishop Frensdorff’s:

Imagine a church where, after a few months of regularly attending, you are able to recognize that you are less angry than you used to be. Imagine a church that shows you how to forgive the person who hurt you most profoundly. Imagine a church that measures your love of God as Dorothy Day did hers, by how much you love the person you love least. Imagine a church that loves you for who you are, away from all of the facades of the self, and teaches you how to love.

I believe that St. Paul’s Parish is and is constantly becoming such a place and such a community. The reports we have received today, the leadership our vestry and officers provide, the ministries of all of our members, all demonstrate that that is so, and for that I am grateful to each of you and to God.

Let us pray:

Almighty and everliving God,
ruler of all things in heaven and earth,
hear our prayers for this parish family.
Strengthen the faithful, arouse the careless, and restore the penitent.
Grant us all things necessary for our common life,
and bring us all to be of one heart and mind
within your holy Church;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Will you turn to the prayers page of the Annual Journal and join me in the “Disturb us, Lord” prayer attributed to Sir Francis Drake which our Inviting the Future Committee adopted as the guiding prayer for our capital project. After the prayer, we’ll sing I Have Decided to Follow Jesus (which is on the back cover of the Journal) and stand adjourned.

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we have sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when, with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life. Having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love. Amen.

Restored to Usefulness of Life – From the Daily Office – January 16, 2013

January 16, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Mark:

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told [Jesus] about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Mark 1:29-31 (NRSV) – January 16, 2013.)

John Bridges, Christ Healing the Mother of Simon PeterDoes it bother anyone else that as soon as Mrs. Simon’s mother is healed by Jesus she gets up from her sick bed and “begins to serve them”? That has always bothered me. I don’t know why it should. After all, if she’s healed (and one assumes that when Jesus healed someone they were really healed), then there’s no reason for her not to do what she would have done if she’d not been sick in the first place. But . . . it has bothered me. Why, I have thought, should this poor woman who’s been sick have to get out of bed and serve these men?

In The Book of Common Prayer 1979 there is a prayer for use when visiting a sick person, particularly one who is about to undergo surgery:

Strengthen your servant N., O God, to do what s/he has to do and bear what s/he has to bear; that, accepting your healing gifts through the skill of surgeons and nurses, s/he may be restored to usefulness in your world with a thankful heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I suppose that the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is a story of one being “restored to usefulness in [God’s] world with a thankful heart,” although we hear no more about her, nor do we know anything of her attitude about her healing or her service.

As I pondered this story, this prayer, and my own experience, I realized a couple of things. First of all, I hate being sick, and when I’m sick, I hate being visited. I’m an introvert, which means that although I enjoy being with people, I find the experience of social interaction very draining; when I’m sick and already feeling low on energy, a visit is the last thing I want or need. But, second, when I am better, I am bursting with energy.

I know that I am fully recovered from an illness when, for no good reason other than I feel better, I get out of bed and start doing housework! When I recover from an illness, that is precisely what I do – I do the laundry; I wash the dishes; I even (as God is my witness) vacuum the house! I get up from my illness and start serving those with whom I live (these days, that is only my wife, a dog, and three cats). I am, as the prayer says, “restored to usefulness” and I actually enjoy doing the housework I have been unable to do while ill.

So I realize now that I have been viewing Simon’s mother-in-law’s healing and subsequent service to her guests from the wrong point of view, from the perspective of an observer or possibly the one receiving her hospitality. But I should be looking at the story from her viewpoint! When I’ve been ill and have recovered, getting out of bed and cleaning the house is exactly what I want to do, so isn’t it just as likely that upon being restored to wholeness she might want to do the same, to be of usefulness, as well?

Considering the story further, I begin to wonder about its value as a metaphor for forgiveness of sin, another sort of healing. Just as one rises full of energy and readiness to be of service following the end of physical illness, should we not also feel that way when we are healed of our sinfulness? Each Sunday when we confess our sins in the liturgy of the Eucharist, we are assured that God forgives our sins, strengthens us in goodness, and powerfully keeps us in eternal life. At the conclusion of the liturgy, we are sent forth in the Name of Christ, to love and to serve, to rejoice in power. Like Simon’s mother-in-law, we rise from the sickness of sin restored to usefulness in God’s world, and like her we are ready to begin to serve.

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

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

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