That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Theology (Page 30 of 94)

The Devil’s Dust – From the Daily Office Lectionary

October 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The Devil’s Dust

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of Proper 23, Year 1 (Pentecost 20, 2015)

Matthew 10:14 ~ Jesus told his disciples: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

I was born in the desert and spent the formative, play-outside years of my childhood there. We had a small plot of grass as our front yard, but the back was desert sand, gravel, and rock. My best friend Richard and I often played there catching “horned toads” and other lizards, sometimes confronting more dangerous reptiles: I have early memories of instruction from my father about rattlesnakes and even more vivid memories of encountering them. (“Back away, smoothly but quickly!”)

After a time playing in a desert yard, one is generally covered with dust, not just one’s feet but one’s entire being. We lived in small house, we didn’t have what I have come in later life to call a “mud room”; such a chamber would have been a “dust room” in our home, I guess. Instead, our back door entered directly onto the kitchen, which also served as our dining room.

My mother, a fastidious housekeeper right up to the day she died, hated dust, and she hated having anyone track dust into her home. So there was a large mat outside the kitchen door on which my friends and I were to wipe our feet very well, and just inside the door was a bin in which she required us to deposit any dusty outerwear. My friends (I hope) got used to playing inside at the Funston home dress only in t-shirts and tighty-whities if they had started their visit with an hour or two of reptile capture in the backyard.

Dust had to be kept out! So when Jesus tells the disciples to “shake off the dust,” I know exactly what he is saying. Dust is the Enemy!

Just recently, I had the opportunity to preach on St. Francis Day and, while researching my sermon, I ran across this image of the devil attributed to Francis by his first biographer, Thomas of Celano. The devil, Francis said, “carries fine dust with him in little boxes and scatters it through the cracks in our conscience in order to dim the soul’s pure impulses and its luster.” (Celano, Second Life)

That’s what we need to shake off, the Devil’s Dust. That dust is the cloud of evil that blocks the good, that sullies the good news, that dims our consciences, and that chokes off the proclamation. Shake it off!

At That Time: A Sermon Offered on St. Francis Day, 4 October 2015

October 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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A sermon offered on Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4, 2015, to the people of Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio.

(The lessons for the day are Jeremiah 22:13-16, Psalm 148:7-14, Galatians 6:14-18, and Matthew 11:25-30.)

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Detail, Francis in Ecstasy, CaravaggioWhen I was learning the art of preaching, my instructor was a fan of the old Barthian aphorism that a homilist should enter the pulpit with the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. So here I am, newspaper and Bible at the ready, and opening the first I find glaring at me the headline you all have also seen: another mass shooting in America – the 294th multiple gun homicide of the year. Like many, if not most, of the clergy here this evening I have preached too many sermons about mass murder and gun control: after Columbine, after the Aurora theater, after the Milwaukee gurdwara, after Sandy Hook Elementary School, after Mother Emanuel Church, after so many others . . . . I’m sorry; my heart is broken and my prayers arise for the Umpqua College victims, their families, and their community. But, even as we gather to remember the Little Poor Man of Assisi, in whose name we often pray, “make me a servant of your peace,” I just don’t have another mass-murder-gun-control sermon to offer.

So I want to tell you about the other headline that grabbed my attention earlier in the week. The hairstyle commonly known as the “man-bun,” which described as “typically worn with hair shaved on the sides of the head with a top-knot worn in the middle,” has been banned at Brigham Young University’s Rexford, Idaho, campus. According to the school’s “Student Honor Administration,” the man-bun is not consistent with the school’s dress code; it is no considered “an extreme hairstyle . . . just something that deviates from the norm.” (BYU-Idaho Scroll)

The BYU action reminded me of a story the late Senator Sam Ervin used to tell about a rather puritanical North Carolina preacher whose ministry bridged a time when women’s hairstyles were changing and women were beginning to wear their hair up in buns and this preacher found that most objectionable. It was, he thought, wanton and sinful for women to tempt men by exposing the curve of their shapely and attractive necks, and so he preached against this “modern” hairstyle. He chose as his text the famous admonition of the Savior Himself: “Top knot, come down!”

“At the conclusion of his sermon an irate woman, wearing a very pronounced topknot, told the preacher that no such text could be found in the Bible. The preacher thereupon opened the Scriptures to the seventeenth verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew and pointed to the words: ‘Let him which is upon the house top not come down to take anything out of his house.’” (Schutz, C., Political Humor: From Aristophanes to Sam Ervin, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Pr, 1976, p. 42)

That story has nothing to do with St. Francis, but it does illustrate the quandary I felt when considering the lessons assigned to this feast. I don’t want to accuse those who selected these lessons of decontextualizing Scripture quite so badly as Sen. Ervin’s preacher . . . but let’s be honest: these traditional lessons have been selected less because they convey a gospel message than for their superficial reminders of Francis. Clearly, this is true of the epistle in which Paul claims “I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body,” a reminder that late in his life Francis bore the Stigmata. Similarly, the Psalm reminds us of Francis’s Canticle of Brother Sun; the reading from Jeremiah, of his service to the needy.

One supposes the gospel lesson was similarly chosen because Jesus’s dismissal of the “wise and intelligent” reminds us that Francis, who came from a wealthy family and could have lived among the educated elite, chose instead a life in solidarity with the voiceless, uneducated poor.

But, when the first words I read in a gospel lesson are “At that time” my curiosity is immediately piqued! “What time?” I want to know. Our evangelist contextualized these words of Jesus, and I want to know what that context is. I hope you do, as well, because I’m about to tell you; we are going to untie this “top knot”.

Chapter 11 of Matthew’s Gospel, the end of which constitutes our lesson, is a discrete literary unit which opens with messengers from John the Baptist asking Jesus if he is the anticipated messiah. Jesus’s reply is, “Tell John what’s happening: the blind see, the lame walk, the mute speak, the dead are raised.” He then turns to those who are with him and says, “By the way, when you went out to the Jordan to see John, what were you expecting?”

He answers his own question, “You expected to see a prophet, and that’s what you got and more.” But, he reminds them that they rejected John because of his asceticism: “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.'” (v. 18) But when Jesus came, “eating and drinking, … they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!'” (v. 19) They didn’t want the tough asceticism of John, nor did they did want the lighter touch of Jesus.

Why? Because both challenged the status quo; to follow either would have meant changing the rules! John’s way would have required them to renounce worldly pleasure; Jesus’s would have meant welcoming everyone including (heaven forbid!) sinners. They didn’t want to change the rules. They didn’t want to deviate from the status quo. They just wanted someone to bless them the way they were.

Jesus compares them to children who can’t make up their minds, “children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.'” (v. 16-17) They are like children who cannot decide whether they want to hold a pretend funeral or a make-believe wedding and end up doing nothing. Australian theologian Bill Loader calls them “the religious wise who seriously go about trying to protect God,” to maintain the status quo. They are the rule-makers and the rule-keepers who miss the point.

In their book The Unblocked Manager (Gower:Brookfield, VT, 1996), Dave Francis and Mike Woodcock make the argument that in business an overly-serious obsession with rules, with established norms, is not compatible with playful creativity and receptivity, that such an attitude inhibits communication and saps new ideas of their excitement, vitality, and strength. St. Francis said much the same thing according to his first biographer, Thomaso da Celano: “It is the devil’s greatest triumph when he can deprive us of the joy of the Spirit. He carries fine dust with him in little boxes and scatters it through the cracks in our conscience in order to dim the soul’s pure impulses and its luster.” (Quoted in Dorothee Solle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance; see also, Celano, Second Life, Ch. LXXXVIII.125) That’s what had happened to Jesus’s audience in Matthew 11; they were the rule-makers and the rule-keepers who had been sprinkled with Satan’s powder of unmitigated seriousness.

So Jesus gets really personal and really pointed with them! He condemns three particular communities, pronouncing woes upon Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum, saying of the first two that “if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.” (v. 21) Tyre and Sidon were Philistine centers of pagan religion, business and commerce, and (apparently) prostitution; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other prophets foretold their doom and destruction as a result. Of Capernaum, Jesus says that because of its rejection of those same deeds of power “on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you!” (v. 24) In that condemnation we get a hint of what has so angered Jesus for we know that Sodom’s sin was not about sexuality, despite centuries of misinformation on that score; Sodom’s sin was a failure of compassion, generosity, and hospitality. And those words clearly describe the “deeds of power” witnessed and dismissed by Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum.

Actually, we don’t really know what may have happened in Chorazin; it is not otherwise mentioned in the gospels. But we do know that in Bethsaida Jesus gave sight to a blind man and we believe that it was a few miles south of town at Tel Hadar that he fed the Four Thousand. We know that in Capernaum Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and that a few miles south of there at Tabgha he fed the Five Thousand. Works of compassion, acts of generosity, instances of hospitality, these are the “deeds of power” scorned by the religiously “wise and intelligent,” the overly serious who go about enforcing rules, trying to protect the status quo, missing the point, and sapping Jesus’s gospel of its excitement, vitality, and strength.

We don’t know what the “wise and intelligent” of those towns may have said, what criticism they may have leveled, but on the basis of other conversations reported by the evangelists we can surely speculate. Were the healings done on the Sabbath so that they might constitute “work” in violation of the Law of Moses? Did the crowds at Tel Hadar and Tabgha wash their hands or did they eat in a defiled condition? Especially at Tel Hadar, might there have been Gentiles present? I’m sure we can with some accuracy suggest the concerns and critiques of the rule-keepers.

It is Jesus’s deeds of mercy and compassion that are the evidence of God’s gracious will, not rules! That is why Jesus told John’s messengers, “Look at what’s been done.” “Wisdom,” said Jesus, “is vindicated by her deeds.” (v. 19)

So this is the context of our gospel reading: “At that time, Jesus [angry and frustrated] said, ‘I thank you, Father, because you have hidden these things from’” these people, these overly-serious rule-keepers who cannot see that there is something more important than rules, who stifle compassion, and generosity, and hospitality, and mercy, and grace. (He’d run into this before. Remember when he visited his home synagogue at Nazareth? Mark tells us that “he could do no deed of power there. . . . And he was amazed at their unbelief.” [Mk 6:5-6]) At that time, he was offended that Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin had refused to respond. At that time their overly serious attitude and unbelief sapped his good news of its excitement, its vitality, and its strength.

Those overly-serious rule-keepers, the defenders of the status quo are with us today; at this time there are lots of Chorazins, Bethsaidas, and Capernaums. We read about them in the newspaper at this time.

Woe to you, Ft. Lauderdale and Philadelphia and Salt Lake City (and 20 other cities), who deny compassion and make it illegal to feed the homeless and the hungry just to protect your rules about public order!

Woe to you, House of Representatives, you deny health care to hundreds of thousands of poor women who need cancer screenings and perinatal care because of your rules about abortion funding (rules that weren’t being violated in any event)!

Woe to you, Rowan County, KY, you would deny two people who love each other the possibility of marriage because of your rule about homosexuality (a rule that isn’t the law of the land any longer)!

Woe to you, Rexburg, ID, you would deny self-expression to your students because of your petty dress code about hair!
Woe to you, America, you sacrifice the students in your colleges, the children in your schools, the movie-goers in theaters, the worshipers in your temples and churches just to protect a rule you call “the Second Amendment.”

At this time, this is the context within which we hear Jesus say, “I thank you, Father, because you have hidden these things from [the rule-makers, the rule-keepers, and the overly serious] and have revealed them to infants.” (v. 25)

Here’s an interesting thing . . . the Greek word translated as “infant,” the word nepioi, is unlike much of the koiné Greek of the New Testament; it is a word one also finds in classical Greek literature. In the Septuagint, it is used in the Psalms to translate the Hebrew words for the naive, the innocent, and the uneducated. In the Illiad and the Odyssey, it describes those who are socially and spiritually disenfranchised, who have no say not only in public affairs but in their own lives, as well. In all these contexts, it carries the connotation of voicelessness, of being not a rule-maker or a rule-keeper, but one burdened without one’s say by the rules of others.

Our saint today was born in late medieval Italy and christened Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone. “Francis” was a derogatory nickname meaning “little Frenchman,” which apparently had been given him by his father because of his habit of dressing in the French style. He tried to live up to the conventions of his place and time first as merchant with his wealthy father, then as a soldier in the service of his city. Eventually, experiencing a mystical call and a religious conversion, he gave that all up. When his father hauled him before the Bishop of Assisi in legal proceedings, Giovanni renounced his inheritance and stripped naked in public, returning to his father the garments he had paid for. According to his second biographer, St. Bonaventure, “the servant of the most high King was left stripped of all that belonged to him, that he might follow the Lord whom he loved, who hung naked on the cross.” (Major Life, Ch. II.4) He left behind a life among the rule-makers and the rule-keepers, and began a life among the voiceless and the disenfranchised; he laid down the heavy burden of social convention to take up the yoke of Christ.

The life to which Jesus invited Francis, and to which he invites us, is not found in the rules; it is not found in the newspaper. It is found in the examples, in the “deeds of power” we encounter in the Bible. For Francis, it was a life full of risks and challenges, and Jesus has made it abundantly clear that it will be for us. He calls us to a life of humble service, a life of generosity, compassion, and hospitality, a life of mercy and grace.

To live, as Francis did, yoked to Jesus is to live free from the burden of sin, resting freely, deeply, and securely in God’s grace. To live yoked to Jesus is to be free from the need to prove oneself under some set of rules whether they be the mitzvoth of Moses, the social conventions of medieval Italy, the dress codes of a university, or the amendments of the Constitution. To live yoked to Jesus is to be the voice to the voiceless who always face the oppression and the opposition of the rule-makers and the rule-keepers.

It is to live the life described in the prayer attributed to St. Francis, which though not actually written by him, “admirably expresses the thought and spirit of Francis, ‘the Man of Peace.'” (Marion Habig, OFM, Francis of Assisi: Writer, in Omnibus of Sources, Franciscan Herald:Chicago, 1983, p 1930)

Will you join me in offering that prayer now?

Let us pray:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
(BCP 1979, Prayer No. 62, p 833)

It’s a beautiful prayer, but it’s essential to recognize that praying isn’t enough. Like Francis, we must live yoked to Jesus and be the voice of the voiceless in answer to the rule-keepers. 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.

You Are What You Eat ~ From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 30, 2015 / / 0 Comments

You Are What You Eat

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Wednesday in the week of Proper 21, Year 1 (Pentecost 18, 2015)

1 Corinthians 8:8 ~ “Food will not bring us close to God.”

Apparently St. Paul is quoting someone? I have not the vaguest idea who that might be . . . but it seems a strange thing to say as the proponent of a religion whose principal act of worship is a meal!

I haven’t done a service of the Holy Eucharist using Rite One of the current Book of Common Prayer in so long that I can’t remember the last time. The last time I used the 1928 Book of Common Prayer was more than twenty years ago. Nonetheless, phrases from those services are indelibly etched in my psyche. One of them is this sentence from the Prayer of Humble Access as it is found in the earlier liturgy: “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” If ever there was a refutation of Paul’s quotation from whomever, it is found in that sentence which (in my opinion) is at the heart of Anglican eucharistic theology: food, this food we call “communion,” does indeed bring us closer to God!

Of course, Paul wasn’t thinking of that when making his arguments about eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols. His thoughts, however, did turn to Christian table fellowship almost immediately for just three chapters later he recounts: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor 11:23-26)

Perhaps Paul might better have quoted the aphorism, “You are what you eat,” to make his points both about pagan-sacrifice meat and the eucharist.

Golden Rule Halfway – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 29, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Golden Rule Halfway

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Tuesday in the week of Proper 21, Year 1 (Pentecost 18, 2015)

Matthew 7:12 ~ In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

Ah, yes, the Golden Rule, or at least one Christian version of it spoken by Jesus. When I think of the GR, I cannot help but remember the opening lyric of the song Iowa Stubborn from Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man:

Oh, there’s nothing halfway
About the Iowa way to treat you,
When we treat you
Which we may not do at all.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was nothing halfway about the way people lived and applied the GR? Unfortunately, in my experience (and today that experience celebrates 63 years) folks seldom live the GR even a quarter of the way, let alone half, let alone all the way!

Did you know there’s a Silver Rule? It’s the negative formulation of GR and is attributed to Hillel the Elder, a First Century rabbi who was a contemporary of Jesus. The story told in the Babylonian Talmud is that he was challenged by a Gentile who agreed to convert to Judaism if the Torah could be explained while standing on one foot. Hillel, standing on one foot, replied: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.”

In one form or the other, positive formulation or negative, this idea that we should gauge our own treatment of others against how we would wish those others to treat us is common to nearly every religion and ethical system known to humans. It seems to be both universally recognized and universally ignored. If we would only live it halfway, as the Iowa song suggests, how much better the world might be!

“I Give My Opinion” – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“I give my opinion”

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Monday in the week of Proper 21, Year 1 (Pentecost 18, 2015)

1 Corinthians 7:25 ~ Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.

Wouldn’t it have been great if Paul had prefaced every letter with a comment like this: “This isn’t a command from God, it’s just my opinion”? Wouldn’t it be great if every preacher began his or her sermon in a similar way?

I know that’s contrary to what preachers are taught. I can’t remember in which seminary class nor from which seminary professor I heard it, but I do remember a comment being made that a preacher should steer away from saying, “I believe” or “I think” because the congregation “doesn’t want to know what you think; they want to hear the Word of the Lord.” Maybe so, but in all honesty the only thing I can give my congregation are my thoughts; I can’t give them “the Word of the Lord.” (It’s no accident that one of my favorite prophetic utterances is from Amos: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” 7:14) So my sermons tend, in contravention of that professor’s admonition, to be liberally peppered with “I believes” and “I thinks” . . . .

Truth be told, after a quarter century of preaching, I am more tempted than I was when I started to preface every homily with Paul’s words, “I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion,” and end each one with my own, “But what do I know?”

That’s Not How It Works! – Sermon for Pentecost 18 (Proper 21B) – 27 September 2015

September 26, 2015 / / 2 Comments

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A sermon offered on Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21B, Track 1, RCL), September 27, 2015, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day are Esther 7:1-6,9-10;9:20-22, Psalm 124, James 5:13-20, and Mark 9:38-50. These lessons may be found at The Lectionary Page.)

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BeatriceIf you’re like me, you usually ignore television commercials; like my wife, you may even mute the sound on your TV when they come on. But every once in a while there will be one that is just so good you have to give it credit, you watch it when it comes on because it’s just a really good piece of little film making.

One such little story that I think is brilliant is a commercial for Esurance entitled Beatrice in which an older lady, standing in front of her living room wall which is plastered with photographs of her vacation, she says, “Instead of mailing everyone copies of my vacation photos, I’m saving a ton of time by posting them to my wall.” She goes on to extol her quick on-line insurance and when her friend, who has a very puzzled and concerned look on her face, responds that she’s saved more, Beatrice says to her, “I ‘unfriend’ you.” And the friend replies, “That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.”

That, I suggest to you, is Jesus’ message to his misguided disciples when they “saw someone casting out demons in your name, and . . . tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” It’s like they are saying, “Hey, Jesus! We saw this guy doing this . . . so we ‘unfriended’ him!”

The disciples are quite pleased with themselves. Like later generations of church members, their aim is to preserve the purity and orthodoxy of the Jesus’ movement by silencing the ministry of someone they consider an outsider, by delegitimizing someone who is not like them, by cutting off the other. They are surprised when Jesus rebukes them for their narrow-mindedness and limited understanding of Jesus’ mission

“That’s not how it works,” says Jesus, “That’s not how any of this works. Whoever is not against us is for us.” That is a radical statement of hospitality and inclusion.

Jesus then launches into these hyperbolic instructions to remove body parts. I used to believe that Jesus in this, as in other passages, was making use of a rabbinic teaching technique which scholars have named “Semitic hyperbole.” After all, Jesus was a native speaker of Aramaic (although his words have been transmitted to us in the koiné Greek of the New Testament) so we can assume that Jesus said this originally in Aramaic in which hyperbole was an accepted way of making a point. Speakers of Semitic languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic) use hyperbole so often and in such grossly exaggerated forms that to an English speaker it almost seems to border on lying.

By exaggerating something beyond the bounds of rationality, speakers of these languages catch our attention, stating truths in a “bigger than life” way and waking us up to the reality of life, to the reality of our own lives. G. K. Chesterton noted that Jesus was a master of the hyperbole: “Christ had even a literary style of his own . . . The diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea.” (Orthodoxy, John Lane: New York, 1908, pp 271-72)

However, hyperbolic though this language is, I don’t think Jesus is actually using hyperbole as a teaching tool in this case. I think he’s just being sarcastic. I think he’s saying, “Go ahead! Cut off your nose to spite your face! Go ahead! You’ll see how pointlessly self-defeating your behavior is. You will only hurt yourself in the effort to correct or punish someone else.”

Because . . . that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works!

It is not by cutting off hands or feet, or by plucking out eyes that an individual is healed or saved; similarly, it is not by cutting off another or by stopping another’s ministry that the community of faith is grown. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Healing and salvation happen through relationship, through radical hospitality and radical inclusion.

James, in our epistle lesson today, writes: “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” Salvation is not accomplished by hacking away; salvation is accomplished by grafting on, by relationship, by hospitality, and by inclusion.

“The prayer of faith will save the sick,” writes James, “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” The quality of our prayer lives influences others; it creates relationships and opens pathways for divine energy. We achieve well-being for ourselves and for others by reaching out and grafting on, not by cutting away. No one who does a deed of power in Jesus’ name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of him or of his church, and anyone who promotes abundant life is on God’s side, whether it be by liturgical laying on of hands such as we will offer here today, or by reiki massage, or social action, or Zen meditation, or chemotherapy, or Tai Chi, or yoga, or whatever . . . even by something as simple as offering a cup of cool water to thirsty child. God is present and moving in all things, in all healthful, health-giving, hospitable, and inclusive relationships.

There is, I believe, a reason that our lectionary links James’ message of healing in relationship with today’s gospel story of radical inclusion, and that reason lies in the often overlooked relationship between the words “hospital” and “hospitality.” The linguistic connection between these words is no accident. As early as the 4th Century, it was common for Christian congregations to have “houses of lodging for strangers.” Later, medieval monasteries and convents carried on this tradition, and it was common for a member of the community to serve as “hospitaler,” the one who extended hospitality to strangers. Sometimes this meant caring for the travelers’ injuries and ailments. Thus, these “houses for the lodging of strangers,” these “hospitals,” became the first infirmaries where the other was welcomed and healed in Jesus’ name.

This mission of hospitality is not simply a sideline of the Christian mission, an add-on or plug-in, if you will, but rather the heart of it. As David Atkinson and his co-authors write in the New Dictionary of Christian Ethics & Pastoral Theology:

[C]are for the stranger goes hand in hand with preaching the gospel. ~ The Bible’s insistence that the Lord’s people should be hospitable highlights several vital, lasting theological and ethical principles. One is stewardship: showing hospitality is simply good caretaking, distributing the Master’s resources where they are most needed. Another is the imitation of God: being hospitable is being like God, who treated his people so generously when they were strangers in Egypt. And a third is grace: as God lavishes his love on those who deserve none of it, so Christians must provide hospitality for those who cannot earn or repay their generosity. (Atkinson, David, J., et al., New Dictionary of Christian Ethics & Pastoral Theology, Inter-Varsity Press, 1995, p 517)

“Hey, Jesus! We saw a guy healing in your name, but he wasn’t one of us and he wasn’t doing it our way, so we ‘unfriended’ him!”

“That’s not how it works! That’s not how any of this works! Whoever is not against us is for us!”

Jesus ends the conversation, and Mark ends the entire episode, with an obscure and confusing metaphor about salt. “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

morton-saltThe Bible is full of metaphors which can be lost on modern American Christians, and this is one of them. We buy our salt (sodium chloride) in neat blue boxes from the supermarket; it’s purified, though it may be mixed with a small amount of an additive to make it run smoothly and flow freely. It may have a bit of granulated sugar added to it because pure salt is too salty for modern tastes! And it may have iodine added to it as a protection against goiter and other iodine deficiency issues; sea salt naturally contained iodine, but highly processed and refined salt does not.

This modern “pure” salt is incredibly stable and does not lose its saltiness. But salt which is mined from deposits such as one might have found in First Century Palestine is not pure. It is an amalgam of sodium chloride with other salts and minerals. If this mixture becomes wet, the sodium chloride can dissolve and leech away. The remaining substance looks the same but the salty flavor is lost and it cannot be brought back.

Followers of Jesus are called to be salty and, like that First Century salt, people are amalgams; we are not pure in any way. And we certainly can lose our “saltiness” as the “dampness” of life dilutes and leeches it away, or if (as Jesus has sarcastically suggested) we start cutting away bits and pieces of our lives.

What is the “saltiness” that we are meant to retain? What is the human “saltiness” that Jesus is concerned cannot be restored? Jesus words are often taken to be spiritual and lofty and, since salt was a required part of the grain and incense offerings in the Temple, this “salt” metaphor is often understood in that way.

However, another definition of “salty” is “down-to-earth,” and a third is “coarse” in the sense of colorful, spicy, racy, risqué, naughty, vulgar, or even rude. I don’t really know if “salt” had those connotations in Jesus’ time, but I do know that salt was considered symbolic of friendship, loyalty, and hospitality, all of which Jesus valued.

Time and time again the Gospels remind us that Jesus was a down-to-earth and hospitable sort of guy. He want to dinner parties and wedding receptions, and had a good time. He told jokes, most of which we don’t get because we’ve lost the cultural references (like the impure salt metaphor). He was condemned by the religious people for associating with sinners and was publicly criticized as a “winebibber,” the quaint King James English term for “drunkard.”

This all suggests to me that the “saltiness” that Jesus here speaks of is not some lofty, holy preservative of morality; it’s that down-to-earth hospitable conviviality that builds community and makes life fun. It might be what the French call “joie de vivre.”

There’s a series of advertisements for Dos Equis beer in which the corporate spokesman, described in the ads as “the Most Interesting Man in the World.” He’s not quite as entertaining as Beatrice and her “wall,” but he does memorably advise consumers, “Stay thirsty, my friends.”

I think Jesus is more entertaining than Beatrice and more interesting that the beer man and, in this gospel story, I see him looking into the camera, perhaps thinking of the parties and weddings he has attended and of the sinners he has befriended, of the hospitality and inclusiveness he is trying to teach his disciples, and saying, “Stay salty, my friends.”

Because that’s how it works! That’s how all of it works! Be hospitable, stay in relationship, reach out, include the stranger, do not cut off things or people. “Whoever is not against us is for us! . . . Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” Amen.

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Note: This sermon includes a somewhat edited version of a previously published Daily Office meditation.

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

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered! – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 25, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered!

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Friday in the week of Proper 20, Year 1 (Pentecost 17, 2015)

Matthew 6:9-13 ~ Jesus said, “Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.”

Today the Lord’s Prayer instruction from Matthew’s Gospel is paired in the Daily Office readings with the story of the death of Jezebel (with dogs eating her corpse) in the Second Book of Kings, and with Paul’s advice to the Corinthians about sex and marriage. It’s been three hours since I said the Office and read those lessons; I’ve had several cups of coffee and a high-fiber-high-protein breakfast. Despite that nourishment and caffeine, which should have kickstarted my brain, I confess to befuddlement. I don’t get the connection, any connection!

So that’s the take away today, not from the lessons themselves but from the Lectionary and its lack of connection between the readings that come up on the rota. In the Sunday Lectionary, one can generally find a linkage between at least two of the four readings (For non-Lectionary folk: the Eucharistic Lectionary for Sunday celebrations nearly always has four selections from Scripture – a lesson from the Old Testament, a Psalm, a lesson from the Epistles, and a lesson from one of the Gospels. Frequently, there is a thematic connection between the Old Testament readings and the Gospels), but not always. In the Daily Office Lectionary, thematic connections are even less common.

As a preacher I strive to find those connections when drafting my homilies for Sundays, and that influences my meditations on the Daily Office readings. Out of habit I try to find the linkages, the thematic relationships, the common message . . . and when it’s not there, I get bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. I become a simpering, whimpering child again . . . I want the lessons to make sense, together, not individually, and I’m angry with the Lectionary and whatever group of editors put it together!

Especially when I feel like I should be getting a good jolt of religion and spirituality with the Our Father but, instead, get Jezebel’s bloody death and Paul’s going on about people “aflame with passion.” I’m vexed again, perplexed again, and (frankly) oversexed again! Lead us not into temptation . . . .

Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered!

Play Acting? – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Play Acting?

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Thursday in the week of Proper 20, Year 1 (Pentecost 17, 2015)

Matthew 6:1 ~ Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Jesus said this and then launched into a rant about the practices of “the hypocrites.” In modern English, this word means someone who says one thing but does another, or someone who adopts inconsistent positions. For example, a lot of people in the news media and are criticizing Pope Francis for taking “political” positions apropos of climate change and other issues; he should stick to “religion,” they say. These very same people just a couple of weeks ago were championing Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk, who politicized her religious beliefs through her very public refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Clearly such people are hypocrites in this modern sense.

But . . . they are, then so must I be. I condemned Davis for her words and actions but defend Francis for his. I can salve my conscience in this regard by pointing out that Davis was refusing to do what I believe is her public sector job while Francis is doing what I believe to be his. Her job as a civil servant in a secular state does not entail (in fact, by definition, precludes) the application of religious belief to political issues, while that is the very essence of at least part of the pope (and every clergy person’s) job as a religious leader. Nonetheless, I have at least a twinge of a sense, scintilla of self-perception that there is a bit of hypocrisy in my positions about these two persons.

In classical Greek and, I suspect, in the koiné Greek of Jesus’ day, hypokrités, meant something different, although Jesus can be understood to be using the word in the modern sense. The original Greek means a stage actor, one who pretends to be what he or she is not. In other words, Jesus was accusing “the hypocrites” (most likely members of the Pharisaic party) of play acting at religion.

So, are the critics of Francis and champions of Davis just play acting at politics or religion? Certainly one of the news media outlets voicing the loudest criticism of the pope must be; in fact, it has denied being a news channel despite its name – it claims to be an entertainment channel (when it suits its purposes to do so). In any event, that is a question that they must answer.

And so must I. Am I just play acting?

Favorite Bible Verse? Not Likely – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Favorite Bible Verse? Not Likely

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Saturday in the week of Proper 19, Year 1 (Pentecost 16, 2015)

1 Corinthians 4:7 ~ What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?

“I built this.”
“I earned this.”
“I am a self-made man/woman.”

These are the self-affirmations of the American dream. Paul challenges them, and that mythology, with this simple question: “What do you have that you did not receive?” I can claim to have built or earned something but, in the final analysis, whatever I have built or earned came as a result of the skills, talents, and resources that I received somewhere along the line in my life, and (more importantly) with the investment of the skills, talents, and resources of many others.

Paul’s point (I think) is the same one he makes privately to the young bishop Timothy: “We brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.” (1 Tim 6:7) Coming into this world naked and unprepared, suckling infants unable to build, earn, or self-construct, we start only with that which we a given by others: parents, family, community, and God. At core, everything we end up with, even that which we claim to have built or earned (including ourselves), comes from those gifts. Why, then, do we boast as if anything were not a gift?

Political candidates are being asked to quote their favorite bible verses. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear one mention this question? Not very likely, though.

Laying Fractured on the Floor – From the Daily Office Lectionary

September 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Laying Fractured on the Floor

From the Daily Office Lectionary for Friday in the week of Proper 19, Year 1 (Pentecost 16, 2015)

2 Kings 1:2 ~ Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice in his upper chamber in Samaria, and lay injured; so he sent messengers, telling them, “Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this injury.”

I don’t know what lattice the Anglican Communion has fallen through, but it sure looks like it may suffer the same fate as Ahaziah. The Archbishop of Canterbury, traditional “first among equals” head of the Communion, has invited the other 37 Primates of the Communion to meet with him to discuss some sort of restructuring of our common life in a way that would allow the differing provinces to be in communion with Canterbury although not with each other. (He has also invited the “archbishop” of the break-away “Anglican Church of North America” to attend.)

The conservative (that’s a loaded word, I know) Primates of the “Global South” (mostly African) provinces which several years ago formed something called GAFCON (originally an acronym for “Global Anglican Futures Conference”) have rebuffed the invitation because they refuse to sit at the same conference table (or the same Communion Table) with The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada.

Maybe I do know what lattice the Anglican Communion has fallen through . . . it is the open-weave of cultural diversity. So long as the Communion was built with the relative solidity of English colonialism, all was well. When all of its provinces (other than a few rebellious folks like the Scottish and American Episcopalians) were “The Church of England in [fill in the blank],” all was well. When its provinces started to become independent and autocephalic (as their host colonies became independent nations) but still looked to England (and sometimes America) for guidance (and financial assistance), all was well.

But when those newly independent churches reached adolescence and early adulthood and began shrugging off the paternal arm of the English and American establishments, when the cultures of the former colonies reasserted themselves and the local leadership lost the thin gloss of British gentility, when the young churches began to flex their ecclesiastical muscle, fractures and gaps began to appear. The plaster of English churchmanship began to fall away from the apparently solid wall of Anglicanism leaving behind a lattice-work of cultural diversity and diversity’s evil twin, disparity.

The Communion fell through that fractured, lattice-work wall and, like a soft boiled potato pushed through a ricer, fractured itself. Laying injured like Ahazia, it called out to its gods, but not with a unified voice; the parts of the fractured body called out in many voices to many gods. Some parts called out to “inclusivity” and “toleration”. Some parts called out to “doctrinal purity”. Some parts called out to “covenant” and “structure”. All were valid “Anglican” appeals, but each seems not to have heard the Anglicanism in the others’ cries.

This remains the state of the Communion despite the Archbishop’s invitation to conversation. Like Ahaziah in his chamber, the Communion lays crippled on the floor still crying out to its various gods. This morning’s reading ends with Ahaziah’s death and his kingdom passing to his brother “because Ahaziah had no son.” Anglicanism, however, has many children and they seem hell-bent on continuing the fractious discord of diversity and disparity.

On the other hand, however, is the promise of the God to whom all the parties claim to call yet none seems clearly to have addressed, the God Incarnate who promised us that people (even members of our own family, of our own Communion) would “revile [us] and persecute [us] and utter all kinds of evil against [us],” but that on the other side of that would be a reward (Mt 5:11-12), something very like resurrection, I suspect. So, he said, stay salty and keep shining, even as we lay fractured on the floor.

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