Category: Theology (Page 46 of 94)

“Joshua” Is Not a Plan for Government – From the Daily Office – July 26, 2014

July 26, 2014 / eric

From the Book of Joshua:

Joshua summoned all Israel, their elders and heads, their judges and officers, and said to them, “I am now old and well advanced in years; and you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you. I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. The Lord your God will push them back before you, and drive them out of your sight; and you shall possess their land, as the Lord your God promised you. Therefore be very steadfast to observe and do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right nor to the left, so that you may not be mixed with these nations left here among you, or make mention of the names of their gods, or swear by them, or serve them, or bow yourselves down to them, but hold fast to the Lord your God, as you have done to this day. For the Lord has driven out before you great and strong nations; and as for you, no one has been able to withstand you to this day. One of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, as he promised you. Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Joshua 23:2-11 (NRSV) – July 26, 2014)

Map of Palestine 2007 For the past several days, the Daily Office Lectionary has required us to read sections of the Book of Joshua detailing the conquest of the land “from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west.” I have dutifully read those lessons every day. I have been deeply troubled by them and by the suggestion (which I have seen some make on Facebook and other online sources) that the “history” set out in the Book of Joshua demonstrates God’s approval of the conquest of “biblical Israel” by the modern state of Israel. I have avoided writing anything about these lessons in these daily reflections on this blog.

I’ve decided I cannot be silent any further. I must protest such a gross misunderstanding these stories and at least two distortions on which it is based.

First, the modern state of Israel is not the ancient nation of Israel. One cannot say that strongly enough. The modern state of Israel is NOT the ancient nation of Israel. That ancient nation ceased to exist centuries ago; its people were dispersed through several other nations — this is what the term “the diaspora” refers to — its government collapsed — its territory was absorbed into a series of empires.

The modern state of Israel was created in 1948 following the campaign by modern Zionists, themselves mostly secular rather than religious Jews, for a Jewish homeland. That campaign pre-dated the Nazi holocaust, but the holocaust gave the Zionist program added urgency. In November 1947, bowing to intense lobbying by Zionist organizations and after years of terrorist activities by the Jewish Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi organizations in Palestine, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 calling for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The final vote was 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions and 1 absent. European Zionists welcomed the plan; the Arabs of Palestine rejected the vote immediately, but their objections were ignored.

In a civil war extending from 1947 into 1949, the modern state of Israel was born. Nearly one million Arabs lost their homes and become refugees in other parts of Palestine or elsewhere in the Arab world. The new government of Israel shortly passed two laws: the Law of Return (1950), which grants citizenship to any Jew from anywhere in the world who immigrates to Israel, and the Entry into Israel Law (1952), which prevents the return of Palestinian refugees.

This is the modern state of Israel. It is NOT the ancient nation of Israel. There is no biblical mandate for the modern country’s existence, nor for its laws and actions. It is a modern political reality which the world, including the Arab world, must accept and with which it must deal, but it is not a God-endorsed, biblically-mandated reality.

The second distortion is the idea that the Book of Joshua is history. It is not. Technically, it is what is known in literary scholarship as an etiological myth. These are stories which provide a mythological explanation for certain events and customs (or natural phenomena) the origin of which has long been forgotten or is not understood. Other stories of this type are the Greek Illiad and Odyssey, the Irish stories of Cúchulainn, or even the American folk tales of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe. Joshua is the ancient Hebrew equivalent of Achilles, Odysseus, Cúchulainn, or Paul Bunyan.

The Book of Joshua tells us something about human beings, something about human understandings of God, something about how humans behave in community (and in war); it tells us something of what some of the ancient Hebrews believed about their origins (which is partially contradicted by what others of them believed and is recorded in the Books of Chronicles). It tells us nothing, however, about actual historical events, nor about God’s endorsement or condemnation of them or of any of their enemies.

To suggest that modern governance of territory in the Middle East should be based on (or understood through the lens of) the Book of Joshua makes as much sense as suggesting that the modern governance of Greece should be based on Homer’s poems, that Irish foreign policy should be evaluated through the Cúchulainn stories, or that American environmental policy should derive from the tales of Paul Bunyan.

These are spiritual stories, not political ones. These are myths, not histories. These stories reveal truths, not facts. They should trouble us, perhaps inspire us, not direct us nor determine modern national governance.

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

The Dead Matter – From the Daily Office – July 25, 2014

July 25, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

After conferring together, [the chief priests used the silver Judas returned] to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 27:7-8 (NRSV) – July 25, 2014)

Shrouded Corpses Until our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary my wife had never traveled overseas. She’d been to Canada, but that was it for foreign travel for her. For our anniversary we went to Ireland, something we’d talked about doing for many years. In fact, it had been my plan for our honeymoon, but that (obviously) didn’t happen.

Since then, we’ve returned to Ireland and we’ve traveled in Israel and Palestine. Each time we’ve gone overseas (and I’ve made two other trips by myself), she has insisted that we up-date our wills, temporarily transfer assets to our children, and make other death preparations before leaving. My wife is afraid of dying in a foreign land and (I suppose) of being buried in a potter’s field.

I’m not. I don’t care where I die and I don’t care where I am buried.

I wonder if that difference between us is because there is a “family plot” where she knows her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins are buried, whereas my deceased family members are just about everywhere.

My father, the first of my nuclear family to die, is buried in Las Vegas. My brother, the next, is buried in his hometown of Winfield, Kansas (his wish and that of his second wife, another Winfield native). My mother and stepfather were cremated and their ashes deposited in a church memory garden in southern California. My mother’s only brother, the only extended family member whose grave I know of (because I handled the arrangements), is buried in Winfield like my brother, but in a different cemetery. I have no idea where my grandparents are buried; my father’s parents are somewhere in Denver, Colorado, and my mother’s somewhere in or near Long Beach, California, I think. Visiting family graves for Decoration Day would be an expensive road trip!

There’s none of these places special enough to me — except maybe my hometown, Las Vegas — that I would want to be buried there, and even Las Vegas is without significant meaning to anyone else in my family. (Our daughter was born there, but she considers Kansas her “home place.”) So I bury me anywhere, even in a foreign country; I don’t care.

In any event, I wonder about those foreigners in that field. Like the man whose betrayal money purchased their graves, their burials would be attended to by non-family. Perhaps, like his, their burials would be hastily arranged and the rituals only partially attended to. Like him, they would be buried in tombs not their own. But did they care? I think not.

Recently, a group of us clergy were talking about funerals and funeral planning. One of our group pointed us to a wonderful essay by undertaker and poet Thomas Lynch entitled Tract: I commend it to you, as well. Interviewed about that piece by Frontline, Lynch said:

[Q] Will you care after your death if they take care of you in death as you did your dad? Will that matter?

[A] Whether or not my family is involved with the care of my body, that’s their business. I’ll be the dead guy, and the dead say nothing. This is a sign to me that they don’t care, that heaven is not having to worry about these things, so I’m determined not to worry about them either.

But, you know, we used to say to my father, who directed a fair few funerals, “What do you want done with you when you’re dead?” and he’d say, “Well, you’ll know what to do.” I think mine will know what to do, too, not because I’ve said, “Do this or that,” but because they have seen life as I have seen it, and they sort of know me and I know them. And so they’ll know what to do.

[Q] And yet you write that beautiful essay Tract in your book, The Undertaking, which is in some way a map, is it?

[A] Well, read it closely, and what I’ve written is that as long as they deal with it, I don’t care what they do. I do not care but that they do it honorably. That they do it for themselves I think is very important. So yeah, I enjoyed writing that piece. And I do think that while the dead don’t care, the dead matter. The dead matter to the living. And at least so far as my experience is concerned, the living who bear those burdens honorably are better off for it.

(Frontline interview)

“The dead don’t care, the dead matter.” I don’t care and when I’m dead I’ll care even less. I really don’t think my scattered family members cared. Those foreigners buried in the potter’s field, once they were dead, didn’t care. But they did and do matter. They matter most to the One whom they were like, the one who had no hole, no next, no place to lay his head (Lk 9:58), not even a grave of his own, the One who like them (and like Moses before them) was “a stranger in a strange land.” (Ex 2:22, KJV)

“The dead don’t care, the dead matter.” And they matter to the One who has gone that way before.

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

Wringing the Past’s Neck – From the Daily Office – July 24, 2014

July 24, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before all of them, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.” When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.” Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know the man!” At that moment the cock crowed. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 26:69-75 (NRSV) – July 24, 2014)

Traveling in Palestine recently, I was accompanied by a priest who had formerly been a Benedictine monk. In religious life, he had taken the name “Peter” and adopted St. Peter the Apostle as his patron.

One day in conversation about some icons in a Jerusalem church, he pointed out that there is almost a chiastic relationship between this story (which John also relates, Jn 18:16-27) and a post-resurrection story in the Gospel according to John.

The latter is the story of the grilled fist breakfast on the beach of the Galilean lake. The disciples, out fishing, see a figure on the shore which they then realize is Jesus. Jesus calls to them and invites them to share some fish he is cooking over a fire. As they are eating, he engages Peter in conversation:

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17)

Peter’s three-fold denial is answered by Jesus’ three-fold commission to tend to the flock. The denial notwithstanding, Jesus affirms Peter’s on-going position as one of (some would say the chief of) his apostles, those he has sent into the world to continue his work. There is a lovely chiastic symmetry to the stories.

My new friend, the former Benedictine, told me that when he took his vows in the order an icon writer created an icon of Peter for him (not the icon illustrating this reflection). In the icon, Peter is wringing the rooster’s neck! In many ways, that simple bit of artistic license underscores for me the humanity of Peter and also illustrates the truth that Jesus’ forgiveness empowers us to overcome the past.

Most of us — probably all of us — have (or will) in one way or another denied Jesus. I’m confident that Jesus has already forgiven us (many times over) for those denials. Thinking of that icon, I believe Jesus has given us the power to “wring the neck” of the circumstances which may have led us to those denials. We may not be able to change the past, but through the forgiveness of Christ and the grace of God we can change the way the past influences the future.

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

Bless [All] the People of Israel – From the Daily Office – July 23, 2014

July 23, 2014 / eric / 3 Comments

From the Book of Joshua:

All Israel, alien as well as citizen, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark in front of the levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, that they should bless the people of Israel.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Joshua 8:33 (NRSV) – July 23, 2014)

Soldier at Mt Gerizim Two weeks ago, I stood on Mt. Gerizim with 17 friends looking over to Mt. Ebal. We read this text; we read Deuteronomy 27 in which the explicit curses to be read from Mt. Ebal are set forth. We pondered what it means for a people to live in a land divided by blessings and curses. Lost in our thoughts, we were startled when we turned around and found a young Israeli soldier standing behind us in full battle gear, an Uzi loaded and held at the ready.

Some of us found him threatening, but we were told that he was there for our protection. The lookout is a spot where Jewish pilgrims also like to come and remember their heritage; it is in full view of the Arab city of Nablus and a sniper on the city’s outskirts with a high-powered rifle could pick off someone standing at the lookout. I don’t know if that has ever happened, but the young soldier was there to make sure it didn’t or that, if it did, the gunfire would be answered.

I’m sure there might be some radical lunatic who might try such a thing, but in the three days we spent in Nablus, walking its streets, eating in its restaurants, greeting its people, I certainly never met or encountered anyone whom I thought to be such a threat.

In any event, I wonder about that young soldier now. Has he been transferred the fifty or so miles from his outpost on the ancient mountain to the modern battleground on the border with the Gaza Strip? Is he safe? Has he been wounded or killed? Is he preparing for a ground battle in Gaza? I’ll never know, of course, but I wonder.

There was a report recently that in Sderot, an Israeli community less than three miles from the Gaza community of Beit Hanoun, the Jewish residents sat in their lawn chairs watching the bombing of their Palestinian neighbors, laughing and cheering as the bombs exploded. An Australian CNN reporter filmed them doing so.

I couldn’t help but think about that when I read today’s story of Joshua. I couldn’t help but remember standing on Mt. Gerizim and wondering what it must have been like to hear from the mountain across the valley the voices of Joshua and others yelling out the curses. Ancient Jews on a hillside pronouncing curses on the land a couple of miles away; modern Jews on a hillside laughing derision and cheering destruction on the land a couple of miles away. Ancient history come to life in modern Palestine; an ancient ritual now played out as if in some obscene parody with modern weapons of terrible vengeance. Would the residents of Sderot have laughed and cheered if they knew that young soldier might be in danger where those bombs were exploding? Did it matter to them that other young soldiers, not to mention women, children, elderly people, disabled people, and other civilians, were dying where those bombs were exploding?

I don’t ask to imply or suggest any condemnation of them. God knows Americans have no high moral ground to stand on in this regard! It’s a well-known fact of American history that the residents of Washington DC took picnic baskets out to the hillside overlooking Bull Run to watch what became the first Civil War battle at that site. And, more recently, many of us cheered and partied in the streets when we learned of the death of Osama bin Laden. Laughing derision and cheering the destruction of those we consider our enemies is a universal human behavior. We just don’t consider them to be quite like us.

But they are like us. They have lives like ours. As Shakespeare’s Shylock pointed out when contemplating the differences (or lack of differences) between Jew and Gentile:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute — and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. (Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1)

Is that what is happening now? In unknowingly acting out that bizarre caricature of the curses from Mt. Ebal, in carrying out their “containment” of the Palestinians behind a “security barricade,” in bombing the herded-together densely-packed residents of Gaza (1.8 million people on a piece of land only 139 square miles in size; 13,000 people per square mile) is that what Israel is doing? Bettering the instruction that Gentile society, Christian Europe specifically, has taught the Jews? Is that what is happening? The abused become the abuser and doing it “better”? The accursed become the curser and doing it “better”?

I am commended by Scripture to “bless the people of Israel.” I am commended by Scripture to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. I can only do so if I include in my blessing all the people of Israel, Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian, secular Jew and Orthodox, Amenians and Greeks, all the people of the land. I can only do so if my prayer is for a peace which is just to all and in which all are secure, “alien as well as citizen.”

Bless the people of Israel and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

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

At the End, There Is God – From the Daily Office – July 22, 2014

July 22, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Romans:

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 14:7-8 (NRSV) – July 22, 2014)

Coffin in Grave The Book of Common Prayer (1979) lifts these verses and, together with others, uses them in the anthem with which the Burial Office (Rite Two) begins:

I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life,
even though he die.
And everyone who has life,
and has committed himself to me in faith,
shall not die for ever.

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.
After my awaking, he will raise me up;
and in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
who is my friend and not a stranger.

For none of us has life in himself,
and none becomes his own master when he dies.
For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord,
and if we die, we die in the Lord.
So, then, whether we live or die,
we are the Lord’s possession.

Happy from now on
are those who die in the Lord!
So it is, says the Spirit,
for they rest from their labors.

The first paragraph is from Jesus’ conversation with Martha of Bethany when she met him on the road when he came following her brother Lazarus’s death. (John 11:25-26) The second is from Job; it is part of Job’s reply to Bildad the Shuhite. (Job 19:25-27) The conclusion is from Revelation; John of Patmos is told to write this after seeing the “one hundred forty-four thousand” elect and as the angels of God harvest what Julia Ward Howe called “the grapes of wrath.” (Rev. 14:13)

The 1928 Prayer Book had a similar but rather more resigned opening anthem compiled from Scripture, the first two paragraphs being the same, but a third concluding paragraph was taken from 1 Timothy 6:7 and Job 1:21. Where the newer anthem presents the hope of eternal rest, the older feels like a shrug of the shoulders and a sigh of “Oh well, it’s over – it was fun while it lasted.” I’m sure that’s not the original intent of the drafters, but that’s my reaction to it:

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Although the newer anthem is more positive and comforting in my opinion, the theological import of the two is the same; life ends and at its end, there is God.

Both represent a liturgical model of what I find most attractive about the Anglican approach to Scripture. They are theological statements constructed from a holistic understanding of the Bible. They draw from multiple sources within the holy text, from both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, to fashion a statement which succinctly, but memorably summarizes the Christian hope.

Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. At the end, there is God.

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

From Little Things – From the Daily Office – July 17, 2014

July 17, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, “Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 26:6-9 (NRSV) – July 17, 2014)

Building Trust In John’s Gospel, Mary of Bethany is identified as the woman doing the anointing. (Jn 12:3) In John’s telling, Judas Iscariot is identified as the sole disciple who complained about the waste of money (and accused of doing so only because of an imputed intent to steal it for himself). (Jn 12:4-6)

Matthew, however, leaves the woman unnamed and ascribes the financial grumbling to all of the congregation, thus giving us a picture of the earliest beginnings of what have become venerable traditions in the Christian church: waste of church assets without taking personal responsibility, and anonymous grumbling about others’ (usually leadership’s) use (or alleged misuse) church funds. They are the flip-sides of the same coin.

The first doesn’t usually happen so boldly and openly as the woman behaves in this instance. Usually, the church’s property is wasted in anonymous ways. For example, in the men’s room at my church, there is a large hole in the wall behind the door: someone obviously opened the door with rather more force than was necessary and the doorknob smashed through the drywall. Has anyone taken responsibility for that? Not to my knowledge.

Look through the prayer books, hymnals, and bibles in the pew racks of nearly any church, you’ll find one or more bearing the scribbles and drawings of children who entertained themselves during some dull part of the worship. I’ve found such artwork in every parish I’ve worshiped in or served as clergy over the past several decades, but no parent has ever stepped up to me at coffee hour and said, “My child defaced a hymnal.”

Have you ever gone to a supply cabinet, refrigerator, or closet convinced that some item you need will be there, only to find that someone else has used it, taken it, or disposed of it? Who did that? Who knows? And why didn’t that person tell anyone they’d taken or used the last of whatever it was? I’ve stood in church kitchens and supply rooms asking those questions on many occasions.

Why don’t folks step up and admit these things so that they can be taken care of? Is it embarrassment? Is it fear? Is it simple neglect? Is it simple unthinking rudeness? I don’t know, but the end result for the person who must deal with the damage or with the lack of supplies is inconvenience, annoyance, and the beginnings of loss of trust in the community.

Which brings us the flip-side issue, i.e., the complaints (usually voiced in the parking lot) about the manner in which church assets are managed and the way money is spent.

There are people who do step up and take responsibility, the people who get elected to governing boards or who volunteer to oversee ministry programs or who respond to God’s call and end up getting ordained. These folks are then tasked with administering the church and its property, which means they become targets for criticism. It’s almost guaranteed that, whatever decisions they may make, someone in the church is going to follow the example of the disciples and say, “Why this waste? This could have been used for [fill in the blank].” In my experience, however, the folks who make the complaint the loudest are often unwilling to step forward themselves and take on leadership roles in the church. (Notice that none of the disciples offered to take Jesus’ place on the cross . . . in fact, the Gospels tell us that, when the time came to own their allegiance to Jesus, they ran away or, in the case of Peter, denied even knowing him.)

The issue in both the wasting of assets and the grumbling about how others manage them is the same: trust. Communities of faith — indeed, any human community — depends on trust. We human beings can only live together, work together, accomplish anything together, when we trust one another. We have to have enough trust in each other to be able to admit to one another that we have damaged something or used something up without expectation of being found at fault. We have to have enough trust in each other to be able to allow others to run the church’s business without grumbling about the way they do it. And often, we don’t.

A lot of social research has been done with shows rather conclusively that accountability precedes the development of trust in human organizations. This is the way in which these two issues are linked: anonymous damage to, waste of, or use of church property, in other words lack of accountability, deteriorates (or inhibits the development of) trust. Lack of trust leads to the parking-lot grumbling, which encourages the greater loss of trust. The one feeds the other; it’s a circle, a vicious cycle. It takes just a small step, however, to stop it.

That small step is the difference between Matthew’s report of Jesus’ anointing and John’s. When we use the last of something, when we inadvertently damage something, when our kids do what kids do . . . we can identify ourselves, as Mary is identified in John’s Gospel, and take responsibility. This grows trust. When we question leadership’s decisions, we can do so openly, as Judas does in John’s Gospel, this too grows trust — a surprise, perhaps, to see Judas as a positive figure, but there he is. These are a little things, but as many have noted, from little things great things grow. From small acts of accountability, trust grows; from trust, community grows.

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

Particular Social Groups – From the Daily Office – July 16, 2014

July 16, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Matthew:

Jesus said: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSV) – July 16, 2014)

I don’t usually quote the entire Daily Office Lectionary lesson in these meditations, I try to focus on one image, one metaphor, one statement in one or two verses from one of the lessons or psalms for the day, but today it just seems right to set out the whole end-time, judgment day, sheep-and-goats story that Jesus tells of the Last Day. Here’s why:

A couple of days ago a friend and colleague in ordained ministry posted a link to an essay on her Facebook page. The essay concerned the difficulty the essayist felt in being what he called “a liberal Christian.” He complained (rightly, in my experience) about the fact that among his politically liberal (and not uncommonly agnostic or atheist) friends, he found himself criticized and even ridiculed for his religious faith, while among his religiously Christian (and not uncommonly politically conservative) friends, he found himself criticized and even rejected because of his liberal politics. (The essay is here.)

The very first comment posted by any of her Facebook friends was this, “Chaplain, why not just preach The Word without regard for particular social groups?” (My friend has spent most of her ordained ministry in uniform ministering to American armed forces personnel, which explains why she is addressed as “Chaplain” by the commenter.)

Apart from the ambiguity of whatever it may be that the commenter means by “The Word,” which would be a subject for another meditation perhaps, my reaction to the suggestion was, “Is that even possible?” My faith is a social one (I’m even tempted to say “a political one”); “the word” (here, I mean “the bible”) is almost exclusively about God’s dealing with “particular social groups.” Whenever the prophets of the Old Testament speak, they speak to social classes (usually the ruling class) about the treatment of “particular social groups” (usually the poor). When Jesus deals with individuals (apart from the healing stories), it is usually not about their individual faith or personal behavior, and if it is, it’s almost always about how that behavior affects others.

For example, although in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well he and she do mention her personal life he does not focus on that. Instead, he turns the conversation toward the propriety of worship by groups (her Samaritans, his Jews, and eventually “true worshipers”) in various places and at various times. (Jn 4) When the Canaanite (or Syrophoenician) woman seeks healing for her daughter, neither the nature of the illness nor the personal behavior of the woman or the child are the subject of conversation; the discussion focuses on the targets of Jesus’ ministry (“the children” – i.e., the Jews – or “the dogs” – i.e., the Gentiles). (Mt 15:22-28) When Jesus does address matters of individual religious practice, it is usually to criticize it for taking the believer’s attention away from the needs of “particular social groups”:

The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God ) — then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.” (Mk 7:5-13)

And then today’s Daily Office gospel lesson. How can one “preach The Word without regard for particular social groups” when the Word Incarnate does not do so? Here he specifically tells us that his followers will be (are they not already?) divided into “particular social groups” at the day of judgment, into the “sheep” on his right and the “goats” on his left. And he will address each group with regard to how they treated other “particular social groups” — the naked, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned, the “members of my family.”

I cannot see any way to “preach The Word without regard for particular social groups.” Neither Judaism nor Christianity is an individual faith; neither is concerned exclusively, nor even primarily, with individual behavior and practice, with the individual’s relationship with God. Both have major social components; both are concerned with human beings living in community, in covenant relationship with other human beings, in “particular social groups.” The Jews are nowhere described as “the chosen individuals of God;” they are the People of God. Christians were not told that where one is praying Jesus would be there, but “where two or three are gathered.” (Mt 18:20) Ours is a social, even a political, faith concerned with “particular social groups.”

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

The Covenant of Guesthood – From the Daily Office – July 15, 2014

July 15, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold your peace at my tears.
For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 39:12 (NRSV) – July 15, 2014)

Welcome Guest Parking Sign The Prayer Book version of this verse (which is differently numbered as often happens in the BCP) is this:

Hear my prayer, O Lord,
and give ear to my cry;
hold not your peace at my tears.
For I am but a sojourner with you,
a wayfarer, as all my forebears were.
(BCP 1979, page 639, Ps 39:13-14)

Now, generally, I prefer the BCP version of the Psalms — they chant better than the NRSV and seem more poetic — but in this instance, I think the translators of the NRSV hit one out of the park! “I am your passing guest” is simply brilliant! Modern folks don’t really know what a “sojourner” is (other than, maybe, the title of a liberal Christian magazine edited by Jim Wallis), so the more poetic BCP psalm doesn’t hit one with the impermanency and provisionality of our journey through this world the way the NRSV’s “passing guest” does.

The dictionary, of course, defines a “sojourner” as a “temporary resident”; one dictionary suggests “occupant” or (interestingly) “occupier” as antonyms.

As a biblical metaphor for our inhabiting of the places we live, especially in this time of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over occupation of the place we call “the Holy Land”, “passing guest” is more than thought provoking; it is earth-shattering! So much of the conflict between Jews and Muslims, when it is justified theologically (as if it could be justified theologically), boils down to claims on the land going back to Abraham:

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.” (Gen 15:18-21)

Interestingly, the Qur’an confirms this grant:

O my people! Enter the holy land which Allah has prescribed for you and turn not on your backs for then you will turn back losers. (Surah Al-Ma’idah’ 5:21)

We settled the Children of Israel in a beautiful dwelling place, and provided for them sustenance of the best. (Surah Yunus 10:93)

Dwell securely in the land of promise. (Surah Al-Isra’ 17:104)

The common Christian (and Jewish) understanding of the Abrahamic Covenant is that the grant flowed from Abraham to his descendants through Israel, Abraham’s child by Sarah. Some Muslims argue that the grant flows instead or in addition to the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s first born through the servant woman Hagar. All seem to suggest that the covenant grant is a permanent arrangement, but what if that is not the case? What if the covenant is conceived, as the Psalmist suggests, not as one of ownership, but as one of guesthood?

While preparing for my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I read several travel blogs and in one the author encourage American tourists to consider themselves guests in the countries they visit, asking themselves three questions:

(1) “What am I saying, what is my conduct demonstrating, to non-Americans, about ‘American Tourists’?”

(2) “What am I learning about the host culture? How many personal interactions am I actually having with regular local people? How much ‘inside information’ am I taking away from my travel experience?”

(3) “If the above two issues are meaningless to me, why am I a tourist?” (Americans as Tourists: Adventures in Guesthood)

Those are good questions and they can be simplified, and theologized, as follows. Perhaps all the descendants of Abraham, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, should ask themselves these questions:

(1) What am I saying by my conduct about religious believers, about heirs to the covenant, which status I claim?

(2) What am I learning about my host, the Lord God? How many personal interactions am I actually having with others who claim heirship with the covenant, with others who are guests in this land? How much information am I taking away from this covenant experience?

(3) If these two issues are meaningless to me, why do I claim to be a descendant of Abraham?

If we are all guests, all wayfarers, all sojourners . . . if our claims to the land (or anything else) are all temporary, provisional, and impermanent . . . is there any reason to fight about them? Is it not better to hold what we have temporarily been given gently and in unison so that it will be here for those who come after us? Should we not help one another to do so rather than snatching it away from each other?

Can we look beyond our accepted understandings and the metaphors of ownership to embrace this different metaphor, the metaphor of guesthood, and thereby embrace one another?

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

The Hope of the Poor – From the Daily Office – July 14, 2014

July 14, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish for ever.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 9:18 (BCP Version) – July 14, 2014)

Palestinian Refugees One of the Daily Office versicle-and-response couplets in the suffrages for both Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer is based on this verse of Psalm 9:

V. Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten;
R. Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
(BCP 1979, Morning, page 98; Evening, page 122)

I’ve always liked that couplet, but over the years I’ve come to believe that it is what (back in the 1960s and ’70s) we used to call “a cop out.” Both the Psalm and the versicle-and-response are in the passive voice. They leave open the questions — by whom might the needy be forgotten? by whom might the hope of the poor be taken away? By God? Not likely. By other human beings? Probably. By we who are singing the Psalm and praying the suffrages? Yep, we’re the ones, but we hide behind that passive voice and fail to take responsibility.

I wonder if Jesus had this psalm in mind when Judas objected to Mary of Bethany anointing his feet:

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” (Jn 12:1-8)

The Psalm calls upon God to render justice, “Rise up, O Lord, let not the ungodly have the upper hand; let them be judged before you.” (v. 19, BCP) But how does God do that except through us? If we have the poor with us always, it is only because of inaction on the part of the society within which the poor live. If we always have conflict, it is only because the society in conflict fails to find peace. If we always have fear, it is only because the society which fears has failed to find courage. If we always have hate, it is only because the society which hates has refused to love.

It’s time to give up the passive voice. It’s time to take ownership of our failures and do something about them.

Let us not forget the needy, O Lord.
We shall not take away the hope of the poor.
Amen.

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

Following Our Own Devices Doesn’t Work – From the Daily Office – July 12, 2014

July 12, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Romans:

Of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 10:21 (NRSV) – July 12, 2014)

Paul quotes Isaiah here. His translation was obviously rather different from the rendering in the New Revised Standard Version, but the meaning is the same: “I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices.” (Isa 65:2)

The point cannot be made strongly enough nor forcefully enough nor clearly enough that the modern nation-state of Israel is not the biblical people of Israel, and yet these words of condemnation can be fully understood to apply to the modern country.

Having spent two weeks in the Holy Land, I’ve seen what the nation of Israel is doing to the Palestinian people, and I can fully understand (if not entirely sympathize with) the anger and frustration that have overflowed into violence. I understand the intifadas.

I have walked beside the tall, concrete, barbed-wire-topped, machine-gun-equipped, guard-tower-punctuated, grafitti-defaced wall that Israel has built through the Palestinian homeland. Israel calls it a “security barricade,” and its defenders like to point out that many stretches of it are “simply a fence” (a barbed-wire and chain-link fence, one notes). Whatever one calls it, it has ghettoized Palestinians (both Muslims and Christians), created what are essentially “reservations” of Arabs (not unlike the reservations the United States created for Native Americans), and separated people from their loved ones and their livelihoods (many farmers, herd and flock owners, and orchard owners have been cut off from and denied access to their fields, their pastures, and their orchards). Those who build such things “walk in a way that is not good” and “follow their own devices.”

The barricade is just one part of a much larger social program of oppression being practiced by the Israelis against the original inhabitants of the land they moved onto in 1948 and the lands they have occupied since 1967: poor schools, inadequate social services, intermittent (or non-existent) provision of utilities, segregation, creation of high quality roads on which it is illegal for Palestinians to travel through their own country, denial of import and export rights to Palestinian business, and the list could go on.

Why? As I listened to Israeli Jews defend this state of affairs, the bottom-line justification always seems to come back to the Holocaust. “Never again,” they say. And what they seem to mean is, “Never again to us . . . so we do it to someone else.” That’s what it is, a paying forward of bad stuff, really truly awful stuff!, done to them. When it was done to them, it was the paying forward of bad stuff done to Germany in the aftermath of the First World War. When it was done to Germany, it was a paying forward of bad stuff done to other Europeans. And one could probably trace it all back and back and back to first bad stuff done by someone to someone.

Will it stop here? If (as an Israeli commander is recently quoted as saying) the Israelis “wipe out” people seen as “enemies of God” (they aren’t, by the way) will it end? No, obviously not. Genocide has been tried before and it doesn’t work. No people can “wipe out” another, and in the current context that is painfully obvious. The Palestinian diaspora will still be there and eventually they would pay it back to Israel or pay it forward to someone else.

It will only stop, it will only end if all the people of God, all the children of Abraham — Jewish, Muslim, and Christian — can come together as equals and agree to stop it. So long as we rely on our own devices, so long as we are contrary and disobedient the conflict and the killing will go on. Only by relying on the faithfulness of God can this horror be brought to an end. As the last of today’s evening Psalms says:

Praise the Lord, all you nations;
laud him, all you peoples.
For his loving-kindness toward us is great,
and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever.
Hallelujah!
(Ps 117, BCP Version)

Following our own devices doesn’t and won’t work. Only relying on God’s faithfulness can and will.

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

Category: Theology (Page 46 of 94)

“Joshua” Is Not a Plan for Government – From the Daily Office – July 26, 2014

The Dead Matter – From the Daily Office – July 25, 2014

Wringing the Past’s Neck – From the Daily Office – July 24, 2014

Bless [All] the People of Israel – From the Daily Office – July 23, 2014

At the End, There Is God – From the Daily Office – July 22, 2014

From Little Things – From the Daily Office – July 17, 2014

Particular Social Groups – From the Daily Office – July 16, 2014

The Covenant of Guesthood – From the Daily Office – July 15, 2014

The Hope of the Poor – From the Daily Office – July 14, 2014

Following Our Own Devices Doesn’t Work – From the Daily Office – July 12, 2014

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