Category: Theology (Page 42 of 94)

Dreams of Samhain – From the Daily Office – October 31, 2014

October 31, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From Ecclesiasticus:

The senseless have vain and false hopes,
and dreams give wings to fools.
As one who catches at a shadow and pursues the wind,
so is anyone who believes in dreams.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 34:1-2 (NRSV) – October 31, 2014)

Samhain Illustration The shadows tonight will be full of dreams moving from house to house, door to door, seeking handouts of candy or toys or whatever with a cry of “Trick or Treat!” We hope the wind will stay away, at least until America’s children’s annual celebration of the ancient Celtic feast of Samhain is completed.

As much as I like Ben Sira, I think he is too dismissive of dreams in this passage. He’s right to sound a note of caution against self-delusion (or buying into the fantasies and fallacies of others), but dreams are also the stuff of hope and aspiration. Young Joseph, son of Israel, became overseer of Egypt because of his ability to correctly interpret dreams. Another Joseph received the message that he would be foster-father to the Son of God in a dream. Dreams can be substantial!

So, parting company with Ben Sira, I say, “Believe in your dreams! Chase them!” Yesterday I wrote about using our imaginations and playing with metaphors to better understand the words of Scripture. Following our dreams is a further exercise of imagination. Imagination, as I see it, is our only way forward; without dreams and imagination we have no way to envision the future.

Forty-five years ago, when I was in college, I read a newly published book by Scottish anthropologist Victor Turner entitled The Ritual Process in which the author explored the idea of liminality, the experience of standing on a threshold leaving behind a known, accepted reality and entering into an as-yet-unknown, new reality. (I was reminded of that book this week when I found it cited in the footnotes of another, a text on the use of imagination in biblical exegesis and preaching.) That threshold is the place of shadows and wind; it can be a frightening place. To stand at that threshold demands that we dream and imagine; otherwise, we will never move through it.

Ben Sira is right, dreams give wings, not just to fools, but to everyone. Have the imagination and the courage to take those wings and fly! Fly through the threshold of shadow and wind into the unknown future.

I hope that is what the costumed children, the living dreams wandering the shadows tonight will do.

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

Metaphors – From the Daily Office – October 30, 2014

October 30, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Luke’s Gospel:

Jesus said, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 12:1 (NRSV) – October 30, 2014)

Metaphors I often wonder what (if any) thought went into the construction of various lectionaries, particularly the Daily Office lectionary of the Episcopal Church. Are the sometimes strange, sometimes enlightening, often puzzling juxtapositions of texts planned or simply fortuitous?

Today Jesus uses yeast as a metaphor for what he considers to be the corrupt teachings of the Pharisees. Meanwhile, over in the Old Testament department (actually the Apocrypha department these past several days) we have a note from Ben Sira about wine; although he admonishes his reader not to get intoxicated and quarrelsome, he praises wine in moderation saying:

Wine is very life to human beings
if taken in moderation.
What is life to one who is without wine?
It has been created to make people happy.
Wine drunk at the proper time and in moderation
is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul.
(Sirach 31:27-18)

Yeast, of course, is necessary for the creation of this good wine. In fact, wine makers are often very protective of their particular yeast strains. (Once when I was in college, my roommates and I decided to brew some beer. One of my roommates had a friend who worked for a very famous maker of California champagne – yes, I know, it’s just sparkling wine if not made in France – and was able to obtain – illegally, I admit – a quantity their proprietary champagne yeast. We thought that we’d be super-cool making beer with champagne yeast, that our beer would be magnificent; we weren’t and it wasn’t. But I did learn about proprietary wine yeast.)

So the metaphor of yeast is, like all metaphors, an ambiguous one, as is the metaphor of wine which is also used as a symbol of teaching in the Bible (consider Jesus’ parable of new wine and old wineskins). While Jesus uses yeast here to represent to corrupt teachings of the Pharisees, and Paul will later use it as a symbol of sin and malice (I Cor 5:7-8), Jesus also uses leaven as parabolic of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 13:33; Lk 13:21). Metaphorical ambiguity is the name of the game!

And as a game is how metaphors should be approached. I tell my Education for Ministry students to play with metaphors. Look around the room, pick an object (just on my desk this morning there are a pair of eyeglasses, a stapler, a coffee mug, and a concert ticket, for example). Now say, “The kingdom of God is like [that object]” or “Beware the [object] of the Pharisees,” and begin to explore what that might mean: “The kingdom of God is like a concert ticket” – “Beware the eyeglasses of the Pharisees.” Play with that.

Whoever put together the Daily Office lectionary probably had no intention to link “bad” yeast with “good” wine, but using our theological imagination to play with the metaphors, we can do so. I think we should: we should explore and have fun with biblical metaphors and, in the process, learn something.

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

A Third Tongue – From the Daily Office – October 29, 2014

October 29, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

Slander has shaken many,
and scattered them from nation to nation;
it has destroyed strong cities,
and overturned the houses of the great.
Slander has driven virtuous women from their homes,
and deprived them of the fruit of their toil.
Those who pay heed to slander will not find rest,
nor will they settle down in peace.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 28:14-16 (NRSV) – October 29, 2014)

In law school I learned that slander is the spoken form of defamation; defamation in print is called libel. I doubt the translators of Ben Sira were making any such fine distinction; Ben Sira certainly does not. The Greek original reads, Glossa trite, meaning “a third tongue.” The British Greek scholar G.T. Emery translates this text not as “slander” but as “unrestrained talk of a third party,” which carries no particular suggestion of falsehood or defamation; gossip could be the subject, as well. In any event, our current preferred translation suggests some element of prevarication.

Which brings me to political advertising and clergy relocation . . . .

I don’t know if it’s still the case but several years ago, right after the Roman Catholic Church’s troubles with pedophilia and child sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy became big news, it became mandatory for Episcopal Church clergy seeking new callings to be background checked. One company in particular seemed to corner the market on these reviews and were used by nearly every diocese of the church; maybe they had a contract with the national hierarchy (I really don’t know). The covers of their reports had a box, a big red-flag check box, labeled something like “has been accused of sexual misconduct.” If that box was checked, it was unlikely the clergy person’s file would even be opened or looked at for a new position; their file would be tossed into the rejection stack without even a cursory review.

Note that the big red-flag check box’s label didn’t say “proven” or “shown” or “convicted” or anything of that nature, just “accused.” One unrestrained, possibly even untrue flap of “a third tongue” and one’s service as clergy was essentially done. I knew people who fell victim to slander of that sort. Accusations of misconduct are serious and should be looked into, but accusations are simply that – unproved assertions – and until proven they should be treated with great care.

The same is true of political advertisements. Elections in our country have become a farce (in my humble opinion) because of political advertisements run without regard to truth or verification. Anonymous groups run overwhelmingly negative ads making suggestions about “the other side” which may or may not be grounded in fact. They are like great big red-flag check boxes labeled “is accused of inflammatory nonsense we don’t ever have to prove,” and that’s enough to sway the electorate.

Is this any way to run a church? Is this any way to run a country? Ben Sira would suggest otherwise – our “great houses” are apt to fall if we continue to do so. Possibly they have already fallen and we just haven’t noticed.

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

Roots of Wisdom – From the Daily Office – October 28, 2012

October 28, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people. * * * “I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 24:1 & 12 (NRSV) – October 28, 2014)

Taproot According to Ben Sira, personified Wisdom is rooted in Jerusalem; at the command of the Creator, she has take up residence in Zion among the Chosen People. These days I have a hard time seeing anything which can be counted as “wisdom” coming out of the modern government of that land, and I could write hundreds, even thousands, of words about what I believe to be the foolishness of the criminal injustice being perpetrated on the Palestinian people by that government. But I won’t. Not today. Today, my thoughts run to the question of rootedness, to the metaphor of sustenance drawn from a particular place, to the spatial and cultural peculiarity of wisdom, and to what happens when one leaves a particular place and takes up residence in another.

Consider this mundane example: Recently I visited Palestine and Israel on pilgrimage to various Christian holy sites. With a group of fellow pilgrims, I traveled by motor coach. At every stop our hosts reminded us, and eventually we began to remind each other, to take hats, water bottles, and cameras. Obviously the third was because we were tourists as well as pilgrims, but the first two were matters not merely of comfort but of survival. A hat to protect oneself from the sun, a bottle of water to rehydrate in an extremely arid place, there was wisdom in these admonitions. Having grown up in the desert, I also felt myself re-rooted in a familiar past.

But now I live in Ohio, a place of much more temperate climate most of the time, a place of rivers, lakes, ponds, and (to a desert rat) high humidity, a place where trees and shade abound. Protection from the sun, hats and water bottles, are not a necessity. Here, at various times of the year, a different wisdom prevails – sometimes it’s a reminder to put on heavy coat against cold and wind and lake-effect snow; at others, it’s the need for bug repellant.

I recently read an article about long-distance hiking and the need to plan ahead and to cache supplies, to place resources of particular types in safe but accessible locations along one’s route. The word resource caught my attention: to source again, is that not what it means when used as a verb. Like wisdom and her metaphorical roots, we stop and put out our “roots” and take what is needed in each place, in each culture; we are “re-sourced,” no longer drawing sustenance from the original place where our “roots” were sunk, taking in a new sort of nourishment in this different place.

In one place, hats and water bottles are wise; in another they are completely unnecessary and expending the effort to carry them is folly. In one place, heavy coats are needed; in another, they are useless. In one place, something to keep away the mosquitoes; in another, no mosquitoes. Wisdom in one place is folly in another. We must put down our “roots” to discover which it is.

Is biblical wisdom culturally dependent? Because Lady Wisdom was “established in Zion” and rooted in Jerusalem, is she not relevant in another place? Or can she be “re-sourced,” transplanted and re-invigorated in a new land? Is there a deeper source of wisdom common to all places into which her tap-root reaches? Is that deeper source available to us regardless of culture and place? I believe there is and perhaps the folly of our time is that we transplant and re-source ourselves too often to access it; we draw only from the superficial wisdom of differing places and fail to tap into the deeper strata of common wisdom.

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

Fear Not – From the Daily Office – October 27, 2014

October 27, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Be brave, it will not make you burst!

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 19:10 (NRSV) – October 27, 2014)

Ben Sira’s admonition is set in context in a discussion of gossip, but in the United States today it could also apply to the silly, ignorant, unthinking panic that has attended the arrival of the ebola virus in our country.

Today’s morning headlines include news of yet another state adopting rules and regulations requiring a 21-day quarantine for any person arriving from certain west African countries. I don’t know what to make of this nor do I care for the precedent it sets. Incarceration without due process, which is essentially what this is, probably has more chance of spreading than does the virus from which it allegedly is protecting us.

Ben Sira’s advice about gossip – “question a friend” (v. 13) and “question a neighbor” (v. 14); in other words, check it out! – is equally applicable here. Get the facts! Know what you are saying! Know what you are doing!

We are in the midst of an epidemic, but it is not an ebola epidemic. It is an epidemic of mindless, ill-considered panic and prejudice which (continuing another disturbing trend in our society) ignores science and good medical practice. This epidemic is not a medical issue; it is a spiritual problem. It is an epidemic of fear ignoring the constant reassurance of scripture: “Fear not.” (Here’s a website that’s collected a bunch of verse references for this.) As Ben Sira says, “Be brave.”

Have you heard something that made you afraid? Check it out and “let it die with you. Be brave.” Don’t help the panic pandemic to spread.

Please Do Not Feed the Fears

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

Elements of Choice – From the Daily Office – October 25, 2014

October 25, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

He has placed before you fire and water;
stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.
Before each person are life and death,
and whichever one chooses will be given.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 15:16-17 (NRSV) – October 25, 2014)

Fire and water. Life and death. Which is which? Initially, I thought fire was the death symbol, destructive and dangerous, and water, life-giving water, the emblem of life. But last night I watched a crime drama on television in which two people were murdered by drowning, showing water to be the element of death and destruction. So which is which? And how do we know which to choose?

Yesterday, I stood with a small family in an old cemetery and prayed over a casket of ashes. It was a lovely, sunny day, the sort of bright autumn day when you watch children flying kites and forget that the icy cold of winter is soon to come. One of those present was a young girl of 10; she spent the time waiting for the interment to begin by gathering brightly colored leaves and tossing armfuls of them into the air to dance on the breeze. It was a day on which the choice of life or death was not easily seen, a day on which death and life intermingled into the reality that is human existence.

As much as I like the writings of Jesus, Son of Sirach, and I certainly applaud his insistence on human freedom of choice and human responsibility, there are times when his wisdom is too cut-and-dried, too black-and-white, too this-or-that. The truth is there is no choice to be made between fire and water, or between life and death. They are realities to be embraced; subjects of knowledge and understanding to be sought.

Fire and water are two of the four classical Empedoclean and Hermetic elements – earth, air, fire, water – from which all things are made according to the ancients. All are necessary, no choice between them is required. The choice that lies before humankind is whether to understand them or not, whether to harness and husband them in productive ways or to misuse them in harmful ways. I suppose there is some sort of choice to be made between life and death, but it isn’t so simple as Ben Sira makes it seem, for every choice entails some of both because (contrary to the implication of these verses) they are not opposites; they are complements.

The beauty of the Christian faith is in its acceptance of death not as a negation of life but as part of it. One of my favorite pieces of liturgy is from the proper preface to the burial mass: “For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.”

There are choices set before us, but very often what we must do is find a way to choose both of the so-called alternatives, to stand in a grave yard on a bright sunny day and commit ashes to the earth while children fly their kites and play with the autumn leaves dancing in the air.

Autumn Leaves Thrown in the Air

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

Shut Up! – From the Daily Office – October 24, 2014

October 24, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

Do not find fault before you investigate; examine first, and then criticize. Do not answer before you listen, and do not interrupt when another is speaking.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 11:7-8 (NRSV) – October 24, 2014)

I should have taken a course on the Deutero-Canon when I was in seminary! Really! I’m just astounded at the amount of really good advice there is in this one book, The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, the Liber Ecclesiasticus. Of course, there’s a lot of nonsense, too. You could build a good sermon on the “prosperity gospel” from some of the stuff here . . . but mostly there’s just good common sense.

Like these two verses. They remind me of things my parents said, things like “Get the facts” and “Shut up and listen” and “Don’t interrupt.” Good advice that people in our society seem to have forgotten.

Have you listened to any of the joint interviews that journalists sometimes try to conduct with representatives of opposing camps? I listened to one not long ago on NPR regarding the anti-abortion legislation passed in Texas that requires a pregnancy clinic’s physicians to have admitting privileges at a hospital within some specified distance. A representative of the so-called “right to lifers” and another from the so-called “pro-choice” side were both miked . . . and you couldn’t hear what either had to say because they were so busy trying to shout over each other. Neither would shut up and let the other get a word in edgewise.

My late brother was an avid sports fan (he writes in an apparent non-sequitur). He would get so wrapped up watching football and basketball games on television that he would forget where he was and who he was with. I recall one family Thanksgiving gathering when we were watching some game (between who in what sport I have no idea). My brother got so excited at one point he yelled at the top of his lungs, “Run, you son of a bitch! Move that fucking ball!” My mother was not pleased.

I do not get that excited about sports. I get that excited about politics. That’s why I don’t discuss it with friends and parishioners. That’s why I don’t attend election night poll-watching parties. I tend to cut loose with exactly the same sort of excited utterance to which my brother was prone while watching football.

When I heard the report on the Texas legislation, I was driving to a clergy conference — wearing a Roman collar. I was by myself, but it was a nice day and the window was down. The conversation (I use the term very loosely) started and soon the talking-over and the shouting-down began. At some point I became so annoyed with the interviewees that I yelled at them (well, at my car radio, actually), “Shut the fuck up!” I hope no pedestrian or passerby heard me.

But if they had, I now know that I could point to the Book of Sirach and assert very affirmatively that it is a biblical injunction. “Shut up!” even, perhaps, the more aggressive phrasing. It’s right there! Right here, in the 11th Chapter of Ecclesiasticus!

So, folks, want to prove to us that you pay attention to scripture? Want us to really believe that you follow its injunctions when you try to enforce them on the whole of society, on our friends and neighbors who don’t share our faith? Then pay attention to Jesus, Son of Sirach.

STFU Please

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

Toleration – From the Daily Office – October 23, 2014

October 23, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

Do not get angry with your neighbor for every injury, and do not resort to acts of insolence.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 10:6 (NRSV) – October 23, 2014)

Today is the feast of St. James of Jerusalem, also called James the Just, also known as the brother of our Lord. He is revered as the advocate of tolerance for Gentile converts (see Acts 15:12-19). Of note is the apparent fact that he was not a follower of his famous brother until after Jesus’ Resurrection; one imagines that getting a visit by a deceased-but-risen relative who claims to be the Son of God would be a hell of a conversion experience.

Anyway, this lesson from ben Sira is not from the lessons for James’ commemoration, but its admonition to patience and toleration for the foibles of one’s neighbors, even those which might cause injury, seems fitting to the day. Unfortunately, fitting or not, patience and toleration are not the trademarks of our age, are they?

We live in an era of social conflict which is, if not created by, supported by the social media we thought would overcome such divergence. Library shelves are filled with science fiction novels in which instant and wide-spread communication was predicted to be the panacea for political confrontation, the mechanism which would foster peace and mutual respect, the technology which would usher in utopia. Those rosy speculations have all turned out to be bullshit, however.

Along with the social media has come an increase in “tribalism,” in purity tests for membership in social groups, in litmus tests for political candidates, in raised voices shouting past one another. And the social media technology of algorithms making machine-logical decisions about which messages their human consumers would be fed is pushing the tribes and social groups further apart, raising the volume of the shouting. Some cloud-based calculator is deciding whose voices I hear, whose pictures I see, whose news-feed I read; that coldly logical “thinking machine” is deciding that I only want to hear the voice, see the pictures, and read the news that bolsters my prejudices, and so that’s what I hear, see, and read. Whatever the “other” tribe is hearing, seeing, and reading, I’m not . . . and what I am, they’re not. And so we have no meeting in the middle or anywhere else.

So much for peace and mutual respect, so much for toleration and utopia.

We need to turn off the machines; we need to divorce ourselves from the algorithms; we need to start listening to one another without the filter of calculating machines. We need to be less angry about perceived (often mis-perceived) injury. We need to heed James’ call to toleration.

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

Alms? – From the Daily Office – October 22, 2014

October 22, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

Do not grow weary when you pray; do not neglect to give alms.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 7:10 (NRSV) – October 22, 2014)

“Do not neglect to give alms.” Alms: “charitable donations of money or goods to the poor or needy” says the dictionary with an etymological note saying it comes from an old Greek word, eleemosyne, meaning “pity, mercy.”

The fancy plates of wood or brass or silver passed down the rows of pews on Sunday morning are called “alms basins” by some. (Others call them “offering plates” or, worse, “collection plates.”) But they really aren’t for alms, are they? I know people want to believe that what they turn loose of in church is used for the benefit of the poor, but look at any church budget and ask “How much of this is used for relief of the poor?” The answer will surprise you.

Most of what is given to the church is used for upkeep of the institution. The two largest expenses for most congregations are (1) upkeep of aging, often-remodeled, energy-inefficient, and frequently under-utilized buildings and (2) paying for professional staff, clergy and lay. Is that the way it should be? As one dependent on the church for my paycheck, I benefit from the current arrangement, but I’m not at all sure that the church is managing the alms given by church members properly.

I offer no answer today; I simply raise the question.

Alms Basin

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

Friendship – From the Daily Office – October 21, 2014

October 21, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Ecclesiasticus:

When you gain friends, gain them through testing, and do not trust them hastily.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Sirach 6:7 (NRSV) – October 21, 2014)

My wife and I don’t like to admit it, but as we each have started our seventh decade on this planet we best do so . . . we have each made really bad decisions about trusting people we believed to be friends. We’ve had confidences betrayed; we’ve lost fairly large amounts of money in what turned out to be . . . if not scams, at least unscrupulous business deals. So ben Sira’s advice rings true.

On the other hand, we’ve had a great six decades, more than half of them together, with some lovely friends, with people we still think of fondly and even occasionally still hear from. Some of those people, if we’d followed this advice, we would never have been allowed closer than the other side of locked bars!

What’s better – to go through life constantly wary and on guard, or to be open to friendship and risk occasionally being hurt? I suppose that’s a question each individual must answer for him- or herself.

Jesus risked friendship. It may have brought him bickering from James and John, betrayal from Judas, denial from Peter, but it also brought him the love of devotion of Mary and Martha and, apparently, countless others.

My wife and I have to admit it; we’ve made some bad decisions about trusting people. I’m afraid we will do so again. But we also have some really great friends. I hope we will continue to make others. We’ve chosen to try and be like Jesus, after all.

truefriends

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

Category: Theology (Page 42 of 94)

Dreams of Samhain – From the Daily Office – October 31, 2014

Metaphors – From the Daily Office – October 30, 2014

A Third Tongue – From the Daily Office – October 29, 2014

Roots of Wisdom – From the Daily Office – October 28, 2012

Fear Not – From the Daily Office – October 27, 2014

Elements of Choice – From the Daily Office – October 25, 2014

Shut Up! – From the Daily Office – October 24, 2014

Toleration – From the Daily Office – October 23, 2014

Alms? – From the Daily Office – October 22, 2014

Friendship – From the Daily Office – October 21, 2014

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