Category: Theology (Page 51 of 94)

Doing Something – From the Daily Office – May 24, 2014

May 24, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Matthew’s Gospel:

Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 7:21 (NRSV) – May 24, 2014)

Jesus Said What? I love this verse! I always think of it as Jesus’ version of “Don’t just stand there. Do something!”

If I could point to one bit of Holy Scripture that convinced me to become an Episcopalian, it would be this one. The King James Version’s rendition was the favorite offertory sentence of the Episcopal chaplain at the military academy where I went to high school and attended Evening Prayer or the Holy Eucharist everyday. I can still recite that version from memory: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

My childhood was largely an unchurched one. My earliest memories of going to church were in a Baptist congregation which eventually we ceased attending when the pastor declined to bury my non-church-member father (whose hard-drinking, Las-Vegas-Strip lifestyle he found objectionable); no more churchgoing after that. Summers were spent with my paternal grandparents who insisted that I go with them to an old-timey, very evangelical Methodist Church. The message at both those churches, so far as understood (and now remembered) by a grade school kid, was that all you needed to do to be “saved” was to claim Jesus as Lord and talk about him a lot. I never heard anything like this verse from Matthew and, by the time I was in junior high and no longer going to church with my grandparents, the talking-about-Jesus thing had worn a bit thin.

The liturgical worship of the Episcopal Church (back then, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer) resonated with me. I do have to admit that the first few weeks of attending daily chapel I was less aware of the words than of the rhythm of worship because I was getting used to the “Episcopal juggle” — when to use the prayer book, when to use the hymnal, when to use the service sheet or “bulletin” — and Episcopal calisthenics — when do I kneel? when do I stand? do I ever get to just sit still? But eventually the words started making an impact and the words of the chaplain’s favorite offertory sentence — “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” — made a particular impact.

In addition to learning about the liturgy of the Episcopal Church, I was learning about the culture of the Episcopal Church. It was the 1960s. John Hines was Presiding Bishop; he was contributing to the Angela Davis Defense Fund! Episcopalians were marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. One of them, a seminarian named Jonathan Myrick Daniels, was shot and killed by a deputy sheriff in Alabama when Daniels moved to protect a 17-year-old black girl. (Daniels is now recognized as a martyr on the church’s sanctoral calendar.) Some Episcopalians were active in protesting the Vietnam War, while other Episcopalians served as chaplains in the military and were stationed in Vietnam — but both respected the other, worshipped together, and worked out their differences, whatever they may have been, through the church’s conciliar governance at diocesan and national (general) conventions.

I was captivated by the culture of the 1960s Episcopal Church. These weren’t people who simply claimed Jesus as Lord and talked about him a lot; these people did things! I joined, and as I got more active I found out Episcopalians did “smaller,” less noticed things — things like feeding the hungry, providing shelter for the homeless, opening their churches for free community concerts, tutoring kids struggling in school, teaching English to refugees from other countries — the list of things Episcopalians do, things I hadn’t seen in my parents’ and grandparents’ churches (although now I’m pretty sure they did at least a few of them; I hope they did), is long, almost endless.

It is my joy to be rector of a parish with an active food pantry ministry, a parish which opens its space each month for a free concert, a parish whose youth sleep outside in all sorts of whether to call attention to the plight of those without homes, a parish where youth and adults travel somewhere together every summer to build or repair the homes of those unable to do it themselves, a parish which doesn’t just call Jesus “Lord” but which actively does the things he told us were his Father’s will.

There are many, many reasons I became, and stay, an Episcopalian. An important one is that Episcopalians don’t just stand there — they do something!

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

Sabbath with Frank Lee – From the Daily Office – May 23, 2014

May 23, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Leviticus:

For six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no work: it is a sabbath to the Lord throughout your settlements.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Leviticus 23:3 (NRSV) – May 23, 2014)

Rest Area Highway Sign I am an absolutely faithful believer in the biblical concept of sabbath. I am also one of its worst offenders. No matter what day I choose to be my day “away from the office,” at least 50% of the time I will end up doing something work related. Today, for example, a Friday, is supposed to be my day off. What will I be doing? Giving my time to the church as a volunteer working on the refurbishment of the undercroft which is being converted to office space (laying peel-and-stick carpet tiles, to be precise). — This raises the interesting issue: “Can one volunteer at one’s place of employment?” I suspect the answer is “No” because whenever I am on the church property or in the church building I am “the rector,” not just some Joe who’s helping out.

If there isn’t something of that nature to do, there are (potentially) wedding rehearsals, Friday evening social events, Good Fridays (OK, only one of those each year), and other things that interfere. But is any other day a good day for clergy to take off? If there is, I haven’t found it in 24 years of ordained ministry. No matter what day I have selected as my “day off,” it has been subject to interruption and disruption. So keeping sabbath is rather difficult to do. One has to be very intentional about it, which is why God enjoined it on everyone in the Hebrew community in the Law of Moses. Left each to our own devices, we fail to do it; if everyone is doing so, one has lots of community support.

Several years ago I had a colleague whose appointment book a couple of times each week included some time with “Frank Lee.” Her parish staff were told in no uncertain terms that when she was away for her meeting with Mr. Lee she was not to be called, ever. Nothing was important enough to disturb her time with him. After a couple of years working with her, the parish secretary became very curious as to who this Mr. Lee was. He wasn’t on the parish rolls; he never came to the church office; he never called; the rector never called him. Who was this strange man the rector would go away to spend a few hours with?

My friend informed her that Frank Lee was nobody. Not a nobody, but quite truthfully nobody. He didn’t exist. He was simply a place marker for some inviolable personal sabbath time. His name was derived from a famous movie line: “Frank Lee, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” My colleague had determined that her sabbath time was so important that she truthfully did not give a damn about anything else during those few hours.

The parish secretary breathed a sigh of relief, my friend says. She’d thought the rector was having an affair! Which is both funny and sad. It’s sad that a priest has to resort to subterfuge of this sort to get that personal sabbath time; it’s sad that taking it could lead to suspicion of infidelity.

I’m not able to sustain the effort needed to maintain a “Frank Lee” of my own. Like most clergy, I’m too willing to set aside personal time to attend to the needs of my parishioners, the diocese, the clergy association, or whatever. I don’t say “No” when and as often as I should and then I end up resenting my lack of personal time. I know that this is common among parish priests and pastors because I hear my colleagues saying the same things when we get together for coffee, conversation, and mutual support.

It’s funny, though, that in those conversations no one calls anyone to account! As supportive colleagues in ministry what we ought to be doing is not commiserating with one another; we ought to be supporting one another in claiming those times with Frank Lee and strongly, forcefully encouraging one another to do so. As the ancient Hebrew community of old supported (and Jewish communities of today support) one another in honoring the sabbath, we should support and encourage one another to take our personal sabbath times. (Our denominational judicatories should do the same, but often do not.)

So, brother and sister priests and pastors, get some time of complete rest, hold for yourself a holy convocation, do no work, take personal sabbath time, get together with Frank Lee!

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

I’m Done with the Cassock-Alb – From the Daily Office – May 22, 2014

May 22, 2014 / eric / 3 Comments

From Gospel according to Matthew:

Why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. * * * Do not worry, saying . . . “What will we wear?”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 6:28-29,31 (NRSV) – May 22, 2014)

Priest Vesting for Mass “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” This aphorism has been variously attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo, to Menno Simons the spiritual father of the Mennonites and the Amish, to Richard Baxter of the Moravians, and various others.

To the best of my knowledge, it has never been attributed to an Anglican or an Episcopalian. And with good reason! Witness a current dust-up over the cassock-alb.

Yesterday, a colleague and fellow ecclesiastical blogger posted a humorous but serious entry entitled Cassock Albs Are Destroying the Church. Cassock-albs are a modern bit of liturgical vesture which combine the virtues of two medieval garments (the cassock and the alb) and permit the abandonment of a third (the amice), which is rendered unnecessary. They have become ubiquitous since their introduction several decades ago; nearly every church supply company offers one or more versions of the garment. They are what I wear and what our altar servers and liturgical assistants wear, as well.

My colleague’s opinion piece argues that the cassock-alb symbolizes sloppiness, laziness, haste, and lack of care in preparation for worship; calling it “the strip mall of vestments,” he decried the cassock-alb as “an innovation for the sake of comfort that too much resembles other short-cuts we might take in our spiritual and devotional life.” His Facebook notice of this essay resulted in a slurry of posts either agreeing with him (most did since he seems to be followed mostly by a high church Anglo-Catholic crowd many of whom cherish many things about the ritual of an earlier era in the church) or arguing the merits of the cassock-alb (not many modernists, however).

I considered writing a humorous point-by-point rebuttal, but decided not to for a variety of reasons including lack of time and my conviction that debating things like vestments is one of the shortcomings of our tradition. As I have often said, we Anglicans and Episcopalians get our knickers in a twist over really very silly things; there was a time when members of this church excommunicated each other because one or the other either put candles on the altar or didn’t. (In the 1800s, at least one bishop-elect — James DeKoven — failed to receive sufficient canonical consents because of his support of candles and other elements of catholic ritual in the celebration of Holy Communion.)

In the past four decades we have fought about the rather more serious issues of prayer book revision, ordination of women, and the full inclusion of homosexual and transgendered persons, but we have also wrangled over such ridiculous issues as which direction clergy should face while leading worship, whether communicants should stand or kneel, and what position a person’s hands should be in while at prayer. It occurred to me that if anything is “destroying the church,” it is our inability to agree to disagree, to treat as irrelevant and unworthy of debate those minor things on which we differ and concentrate on those matters central to the faith on which we agree. So, I decided not to write in the cassock-alb’s defense.

Indeed, even though I posted a comment or two on my colleague’s Facebook entry, I simultaneously thought what that string of remarks about the merits or demerits of a bit of priestly vesture would look like to a non-church member. If I were a non-Christian (or even a non-Episcopalian) happening upon that conversation (and I’m sure each of the participants has non-Christian friends who might have taken a look at it; I know I do), I would have shaken my head in disbelief at the pettiness of it. If this is what Episcopalians consider important enough to argue about vehemently, I would want nothing to do with those people! So I determined to add nothing further to the evidence that Episcopalians fail to allow liberty in non-essentials and certainly do not practice charity in all things (especially not in regard to vestments and ritual).

Then I came upon today’s Daily Office gospel lesson and I am encouraged to say at least one more thing about the cassock-alb debate. In this lesson from Matthew, Jesus tells his followers, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.” (Mt 6:25) Jesus goes on to assure his hearers that God will provide. I’m not convinced, however, that Jesus is referring simply to concern about food and clothing, in general. Certainly, I don’t believe that he is telling them to do nothing about taking care of their own health and well-being; on several occasions he advised his disciples to attend to preparations, to be alert, to take care of that which God has entrusted to them, so this is not a man to instruct people to abandon common sense self-care! What I think he is referring to are the ritual concerns about food and clothing in the Law of Moses, rituals that had become overly important in the teachings of the Pharisees, for example.

Most non-Jewish people are aware of kosher restrictions on diet which derive from the Torah: not to eat pork or shellfish, not to eat red meat with dairy, and so forth. Many may not be aware that there are ritual rules regarding clothing, as well. For example, “You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.” (Dt 22:11) Some of these rules came to be applied specifically to ritual clothing, the tallit (prayer shawl), for example: “Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner.” (Num 15:38)

I believe it is overweening concern for these ritual niceties of food and clothing that Jesus is criticizing in his admonition not to worry about what one will eat or what one will wear. Sometime later, Jesus did so explicitly, condemning the scribes and Pharisees because “they do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” (Mt 23:5) Cassocks, albs, amices, surplices, and cassock-albs are the tallits, the phylactories, and the fringes of our tradition. Our concerns about them are very much the same as the Pharisees’ concerns, and I suspect that Jesus is just about as impressed with our vestment debates as he was with theirs.

So I’m done with the cassock-alb. I’m still going to wear them and provide them for my liturgical staff and volunteers; I believe they are a perfectly acceptable modern alternative to medieval garments that are no longer convenient, meaningful, or necessary. But I’m done debating about it, and about whether and when to wear eucharistic vestments versus choir garb, whether and when to kneel, whether and when to raise one’s hands, whether and when to use candles, and all the rest of that.

It is not the cassock-alb that is destroying the church! It is public disagreement over vesture and other equally silly things that is doing so. Let’s stop it, shall we?

(By the way, the aphorism about unity, liberty, and charity most likely was first penned by Rupertus Meldenius, a 17th Century Lutheran, during the Thirty Years War.)

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

Curmudgeonly Conversations – From the Daily Office – May 21, 2014

May 21, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Book of Leviticus:

You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Leviticus 19:3 (NRSV) – May 21, 2014)

Muppet Curmudgeons Statler and Waldorf Time for me to put on my curmudgeon hat and unload a rant I’ve been promising myself for the better part of two weeks. It’s a matter of respect for elders, so this verse which links reverence of parents with reverence of God is a perfect entrée for me to set down what’s been bugging me.

Three times in the past couple of weeks I answered our home phone and was immediately asked: “Is Charles there?” (I could go off on another tangent about telephone etiquette and how inappropriate and rude it is to respond to someone’s “hello” with this sort of question, but that’s a cranky-old-man discussion for another time.)

There’s only one Charles who lives in our home, me. I don’t use my first name, so I immediately know this is someone who doesn’t know me. Since the caller has not first identified herself — all three calls were from women and I think all were probably in their 20s or early 30s, I ask, “Who’s calling please?” In one case it was a charity seeking contributions; in the second it was a lawn service looking for customers; the third, a vendor of “retirement services,” whatever those are.

Once I ascertained who was calling, I responded as I usually do, “This is Mr. Funston. What can I do for you?” In every case, the young woman replied, “Well, Charles . . . .” And that’s when I began to think about someone’s lack of respect for elders (especially someone who has implied by his self-identification that this call is not a “first-name basis” conversation).

I’ll grant that the charity solicitor probably would have no way to know the age of the person she was called. The lawn service lady wouldn’t either, although the fact that she was calling homeowners might have suggested that many, if not most, of her contacts would be older than her. The lady drumming up business for “retirement services,” however, was surely calling a defined demographic: the cranky and curmudgeonly, the decrepit, those nearing the time of kicking the bucket, the people whose useful working life is coming to an end . . . in short, people older than her!

When did it become acceptable to call strangers, especially older strangers, by their first names? When did it become acceptable for people to adopt a false attitude of familiarity toward those, especially their elders, with whom they are not familiar at all? And (to quoted verse leads me to ask) is this failure of respect for others (especially elders) related to the amply demonstrated decrease in the percentage of the population which describe themselves as “religious”?

In William Langland’s 14th Century allegory of Christian maturation, The Vision of Piers Plowman, respect for elders is portrayed as one of the stages along the way to salvation, one through which the pilgrim must pass before being able to show respect for God. So I am clearly not the first to wonder about this relationship, the connection set out so plainly in the linkage made in this verse from Leviticus.

In the Muslim tradition of adab (which can be loosely translated as “etiquette,” “good manners,” or “proper behavior”), it is a sign of respect to the Creator when we respect and love others simply because, like us, they are human. It is a part of adab to let one’s elders speak first in daily conversations and situations. In Islamic tradition, the Prophet Mohammed is sometimes quoted as saying, “To show respect to an old Muslim with white hair manifests true respect for God.” In the Holy Qur’an, one can find a sentiment not dissimilar to today’s quoted verse from Leviticus; for example, “We have enjoined upon man care for his parents. * * * Be grateful to Me and to your parents.” (Surat Luqman 31:14)

Is there a connection between respect for one’s parents and other elders and respect for God? The holy texts suggest there is. Is there a relationship between a decline in respect for one’s elders and a decline in the population which is religious? One might need to have become a decrepit old curmudgeon to think so . . . so I guess I qualify and I do believe that.

What I can’t believe is how much I sound like my grandfathers! (I won’t get started on how contemporary parents — particularly my generation, the boomers — have failed to teach these things. That would keep me here all day and into next week!)

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

The Scapegoat – From the Daily Office – May 20, 2014

May 20, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Book of Leviticus:

When he has finished atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Leviticus 16:20-22 (NRSV) – May 20, 2014)

The scapegoat! One of the little-known but very often mentioned figures of the Old Testament is the scapegoat. If I were a betting man, I would bet that very few people actually know the origin of this term that nearly everyone has used at some time or another. Well, here it is in Israel’s ancient ritual of atonement.

The scapegoat is one of two that Aaron has taken from the flock for the atonement ritual. Part of yesterday’s Old Testament reading explained how he was to make the choice between the two:

He shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting; and Aaron shall cast lots on the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin-offering; but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, so that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel. (Lev 16:7-10)

Who or what “Azazel” may be, or even what the word means, is a matter of debate and has been for centuries. Azazel is identified in the Talmud as a demon, and this understanding repeated in the pseudepigraphic apocalypse, the Book of Enoch. (Some elements of the recent Russell Crowe movie Noah, particularly “the Watchers” who assist Noah, were taken from this book.) But some scholars of the Hebrew language suggest that, instead, the word is an emphatic form of an ancient root, azel, which is believed to mean “to remove.” It may be what is called a “reduplicative intensive” meaning not merely “to remove,” but “to remove completely.”

If the goat is sent off into the desert to be eaten by a demon, that’s one thing. That means the innocent scapegoat, although set free, dies because of someone else’s wrong doing. But if there is no demon, if the goat is just set free “to remove completely” another’s fault, what does that mean? It occurs to me that (if there’s no demon to catch and destroy it) the goat gets away.

“You got away with it!” I remember childhood friends saying that to one another when we thought we had pulled the wool over our parents’ or teachers’ eyes, when we had committed some discretion and it apparently had gone unnoticed because no one was punished. “He got away with murder,” people said of O.J. Simpson. When someone “gets away” with something, we human beings both celebrate and revile that fact — I guess it depends on how flagrant the misdeed is.

The scapegoat, on Israel’s behalf, gets away with Israel’s sin (assuming no devouring demon). The sins aren’t actually removed, except in the sense that the goat carries them into the desert; what happens is that God choses not to notice them. In fact, God’s detailed directions for this ritual mean that God actively conspires with the People to let them, through the scapegoat, get away with their wrong-doings.

Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, has suggested that, when we are baptized into the body of Christ, Jesus wraps us with his love, and that when God looks at us, God sees Jesus, sees Jesus’ perfection and, therefore, doesn’t see our sins. I’ve come to a rather different belief. I think God sees us in all our glorious imperfection; God is aware of our indiscretions and our short-comings. But God chooses to overlook them, just as God chose to let the Hebrews “get away” with their iniquities through the setting free of the scapegoat.

As an adult, I look back on the childhood misbehavior of me and my friends, and I now know perfectly well that we hadn’t fooled anyone. Our parents and our teachers knew what we were up to; they let us get away with it. They hoped (rightly, I hope) that we would grow up and put aside such behavior. I believe that that was God’s hope with respect to the Hebrews and is God’s hope with respect to human beings in general. God hopes we’ll grow up.

But the fact that we still create scapegoats sometimes makes me wonder.

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

What Is Joy? – From the Daily Office – May 19, 2014

May 19, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Book of Psalms:

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 65:12-13 (NRSV) – May 19, 2014)

Joy Carved on Stone What is joy? A bible study group at church grappled with that question recently and I’m still thinking about the question, so these concluding verses of today’s evening psalm got my attention. It’s not just a matter of defining emotion. Joy is a religious attitude, a stance toward God mentioned numerous of times in the Holy Scriptures; according to St. Paul, it is one of the “fruits of the Spirit.” (Gal 5:22) It’s important to know what we mean when we name it.

In the bible study discussion, I found it amazing that, although “laughter” was mentioned as we tried to answer this question, the common synonyms “happiness,” “mirth,” “giddiness,” and the like (even “gladness”) were not. We wrestled with the issue by exploring such questions as: “When do you feel it?” “Who are you with?” “Where does it come from?” “Where are you when you know joy?” and a really tough one “How do you feel when you experience it?”

That question almost seems redundant, doesn’t it? But as we tried to answer that in some meaningful way another question was asked, “Did Jesus feel joy on the cross?”

Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft says that joy “is more than happiness, just as happiness is more than pleasure. Pleasure is in the body. Happiness is in the mind and feelings. Joy is deep in the heart, the spirit, the center of the self.” If he’s right, and I think he is, then the answer to our question about Jesus must be “Yes.” Jesus felt joy on the cross!

Consider Christ’s “seven last words”:

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Lk 23:34)
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Lk 23:43)
“Woman, here is your son” . . . “Here is your mother.” (Jn 19:26-27)
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34; Mt 27:46)
“I am thirsty.” (Jn 19:28)
“It is finished.” (Jn 19:30)
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Lk 23:46)

Read in this, the traditional order in which they are presented in Good Friday meditations, only one simply cannot be read or understood as containing any joy: Mark’s and Matthew’s report of his cry of despair, “Why have your forsaken me?”

Jesus had told his disciples that joy is the result of a relationship with God:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. (Jn 15:1-10)

He concluded this discourse saying to them, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” (v. 11)

In the Psalms, the hills, the sheep, the trees, all of nature is described as experiencing and giving voice to joy. This makes sense only if joy is a relationship with God. On the cross, only once, only in that cry of “why have you forsaken me,” do we find Jesus unable to sense that connection. In fact, the “seven last words” in their traditional order evince the very human journey every person has experienced at one time or another during a time of trouble, a journey from trust in God (“Forgive them”) into the valley darkness where God seems absent and back out again with a renewed sense of kinship with God (“Into your hands, I commend my spirit”).

What is joy? A connection with God, a relationship in which we are fulfilled not by our own efforts, not by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, not by anything other than the Presence and grace of God. Even in the hardest and most troubling of situations, even hanging on a cross, we can know joy.

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

So Many Martyrs – Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, RCL Year A – May 18, 2014

May 18, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5,15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; and John 14:1-14 . These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Lynching of Jesse Washington Does the name “Jesse Washington” mean anything to you? It’s unlikely that it does. If I tell you that Jesse Washington died in 1916 in Waco, Texas, would that spark any memory? Have you ever been taught about the incident in which Washington was killed? Have you ever heard of what came to be called “The Waco Horror?”

Probably not. It’s not one of the incidents of American history that gets regularly taught in our schools. If I hadn’t taken a course in African American history when I was a college sophomore in 1970, I wouldn’t know anything about the death of Jesse Washington on May 15, 1916. It’s not the sort of story that makes a white person comfortable. But I do know about it, and the fact that its anniversary falls during the week when I was preparing a sermon on, among other passages from Scripture, Luke’s description of the martyrdom of Stephen in the Book of Acts struck me as significant. Both Stephen and Jesse Washington were murdered by mobs because they were different.

Jesse Washington was a 17-year-old African American farmhand. On May 8, 1916, he was accused of raping and murdering Lucy Fryer, the wife of his white employer in Robinson, Texas, not far from Waco. Jesse and his entire family (his parents and a brother) were questioned; the others were released, but Jesse was not. He was taken to Dallas, where he eventually signed a confession which some legal historians believed was coerced. There was little, if any, evidence that he was actually guilty.

Washington was tried for murder in Waco, in a courtroom filled with locals who had been provoked by local newspaper reports which included lurid, and demonstrably false, details about the crime. His defense counsel entered a guilty plea and Washington was quickly sentenced to death, but he had no opportunity to appeal.

After his sentence was pronounced, the teenager was dragged out of the courtroom and lynched in front of city hall. Over 10,000 spectators, including city officials and police, gathered to watch. Members of the mob castrated the boy, cut off his fingers, and hung him (still alive) over a bonfire. He was repeatedly lowered into the fire and raised again to prolong his agony and death. After he finally succumbed, the fire was extinguished and Jesse Washington’s charred torso was dragged through the town; parts of his body were actually sold as souvenirs. A professional photographer took pictures as the lynching progressed; these were printed and sold as postcards in Waco.

As a Christian society, we remember Stephen as the first Christian martyr and as a hero of our faith; his is a unique story told in the Book of Acts. As a Christian society, we don’t remember Jesse Washington, at all; he’s just one of thousands who were lynched. Historical reports indicate that between 1882 and 1968 there were over 4,700 lynchings in the United States. One history text estimates that between 1882 and 1930 in America at least one black person was lynched every week. (Tolnay, S., & E.M. Beck, A Festival of Violence, University of Illinois Press, 1992, p. ix) We know the numbers, but we don’t know their names.

We Americans, however, aren’t even in the minor leagues when it comes to martyring people for being different. Writing about Stephen’s death, Professor Daniel Clendenin reminds us that there have been so many more martyrs, that martyrdom is not ancient history. It is a very contemporary and present reality:

Millions more have been martyred for reasons other than religion — for their ethnicity (Jews, Armenians, Tutsis), for economic ideology (farmers, land holders), social prejudice (intellectuals, artists), race (American blacks), and gender (women around the world like the inspirational Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan).

Christians are just one group among many that honors their martyrs. Very few times, places or peoples have been spared mass murder.
If you can bear to read it, I recommend the book by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Worse Than War; Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity (2009). Goldhagen estimates that between 127–175 million people were “eliminated” in the last century.

These people came from all regions of the world, and from all social, economic and political groups. The vast majority of these victims were killed in their own countries, by their fellow citizens, by willing and non-coerced murderers, and almost never with any substantial dissent. Eliminationism is thus “worse than war.”

The numbers are mind-numbing, and therein lies our challenge. They bring to mind the infamous remark by [Joseph] Stalin in 1947 about the famine in Ukraine that was killing millions: “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” (The Stoning of Stephen)

Clendenin concludes, “The martyrdom of Stephen disabuses us of a sentimental gospel. It roots us in the real world of industrial scale slaughter. The one man Stephen helps us to remember the individual humanity of the millions of people we might otherwise forget.”

Now I want to draw our attention away from mass murder and martyrdom, and focus instead, for a moment, on one another. I’d like you for just a few seconds to look around the room, and just take note of who and what you see here. (A short, silent pause)

What did you see? A bunch of living stones? The members of a holy priesthood? A chosen race? A royal priesthood? A people chosen and named by God? This is what Peter says we should see, the building material for a spiritual house, eternal in the heavens, not made with hands, that mansion in which there are many rooms where Jesus assures his disciples there is a place for all of us. But is that how we see one another?

Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father and Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” I sometimes wonder if Jesus’ answer would perhaps have been different if Philip had asked, “Show us God.”

In the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis we are told, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) If Philip had asked Jesus, “Show us God,” might Jesus not have said, “Look around you, Philip.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu is fond of reminding people of those words from Genesis and suggesting that we should genuflect to one another! In a paper entitled Religious Human Rights and the Bible, he wrote:

The life of every human person is inviolable as a gift from God. And since this person is created in the image of God and is a God carrier a second consequence would be that we should not just respect such a person but that we should have a deep reverence for that person. The New Testament claims that the Christian person becomes a sanctuary, a temple of the Holy Spirit, someone who is indwelt by the most holy and blessed Trinity. We would want to assert this of all human beings. We should not just greet one another. We should strictly genuflect before such an august and precious creature. The Buddhist is correct in bowing profoundly before another human as the God in me acknowledges and greets the God in you. This preciousness, this infinite worth is intrinsic to who we all are and is inalienable as a gift from God to be acknowledged as an inalienable right of all human persons. (Emory International Law Review, Vol. 10 (1996): 63-68)

Which brings me back to Stephen and Jesse Washington, and to a strange little short story by the author Shirley Hardie Jackson entitled The Lottery that was first published in The New Yorker in June, 1948.

Set in a small, contemporary American town, a small village of about 300 residents, the story concerns an annual ritual known as “the lottery” which is practiced to ensure a good harvest; one character quotes an old proverb, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” As the story opens, the locals are excited but a bit anxious on the eve of the lottery. Children are gathering stones as Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves make the paper slips for the drawing and draw up a list of all the families in town.

When they finish the slips and the list, the men put them into a black box, which is locked up in the safe at a local coal company. The next morning the townspeople gather at 10 a.m. in order to have everything done in time for lunch. First, the eldest male of each family in town draws a slip; there’s one for every household. Bill Hutchinson gets the one slip with a black spot, meaning that his family has been chosen. In the next round, each member of the Hutchinson family draws a slip, and Bill’s wife Tessie gets the black spot. Each villager then picks up a stone and they surround Tessie, and the story ends as Mrs. Hutchinson is stoned to death while the paper slips are allowed to fly off in the wind.

Shortly after it was published, Ms. Jackson said of her story that she had hoped that by setting the particularly brutal ancient rite of stoning (the same thing that was done to Stephen) in the present she would shock her readers with “a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in [our] own lives.” (San Francisco Chronicle, July 22, 1948.) Her story suggests that we human beings are more capable of honoring our rituals and our preconceptions than we are of honoring one another.

I think the true stories of Stephen of Jerusalem, of Jesse Washington of Waco, Texas, and of those millions of martyrs who have been “eliminated” amply demonstrate that she was right. Not only are we more capable of honoring our rituals and prejudices that we of honoring one another, we are demonstrably willing to murder one another to protect them.

We are because when we look around at our fellow human beings we do not see one another as divine; we do not see living stones; we do not see members of a royal priesthood. Blinded, or perhaps just numbed, by familiar ritual, by preconception, by the simple human need to conform, we do not appreciate one another as fellow citizens of a holy nation, “chosen and precious in God’s sight,” as bearing the image of God.

“Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” Jesus asked. I’m not the least bit surprised in Philip, however; we human beings, made in the image of God, have been with each other for a long, long time, and we still do not know each other. Dr. Clendenin suggested that the martyrdom of Stephen helps us to remember the individual humanity of the millions of unnamed martyrs we might otherwise forget; may it also help us to remember the divinity of each of them and of each other.

Let us pray:

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (For the Human Family, Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal Church, 1979, page 815)

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

Psalms Are Not Science – From the Daily Office – May 17, 2014

May 17, 2014 / eric / 4 Comments

From Book of Psalms:

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 139:13-16 (NRSV) – May 17, 2014)

Human Fetus Let me make one thing clear: I do not want to get into the abortion debate! I never want to get into the abortion debate!

Whether and when to end a pregnancy is a personal and painful decision, one which I believe is ultimately to be made by one person, the pregnant one. Others may offer her advice and counsel, but when it comes right down to it no one other than her has any business making the decision. Abortion should not be a debate; it should be a private, medical decision by one person.

But I find myself rather frequently pummeled by those who do want to get into the abortion debate, beaten over the head by one side or the other with their particular arguments — most often, I must admit, by the so-called “Pro-Life” side. As a Christian pastor, I get mail, emails, and phone calls from (mostly) the anti-abortionists encouraging me to support their current efforts to restrict access to medically supervised termination of pregnancy.

And nearly every piece of literature they provide includes somewhere the assertion that “human life begins at conception.” And very often that statement is coupled with a citation to this part of Psalm 138.

So let’s make another thing clear: the psalms are not science. The Psalter is poetry and metaphor; the purpose of the psalms is primarily to praise God and secondarily to teach God’s people that the Almighty is to be praised because of the intimacy with which God loves us. These verses simply do not mean that God creates the inmost parts or the unformed substance of every fetus in every womb; nor do they address the issue of when human life begins! Even taken literally, all that this psalm is saying is that God made plans for David; it has nothing to do with when David’s, or any, life began or begins.

That is, basically, what the entire abortion controversy boils down to: when does human life begin? When does a fertilized ovum become a human person? That is a question with so many dimensions — theological, legal, moral, scientific, medical, spiritual, and more — that I’m not sure I can count them!

What I notice about these verses today is that all they name are the physical parts of the body: inmost parts, frame, substance. The spiritual aspect of human life is not mentioned; there is no thought given here to the soul, the spirit, the breath.

In Jewish and Christian theology a human person is only a human person when there is unity of the physical body with the spirit. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew noun nephesh is often translated as “soul,” but it is most often found in combination with adjective hayyah, meaning “living” or “alive.” In combination, the two are rendered “living being” or “soul alive,” but perhaps the best translation is “person.” There is human personhood only when there is both physical body and living spirit.

So when do they come together? The technical theological term is ensoulment. To ask “When does human life begin?” is to ask when ensoulment occurs.

In Jewish tradition, a baby is not considered to be a human person until its head emerges from the birth canal. According to the Talmud, “the fetus is the thigh of its mother,” which means that it is not considered an independent person until after birth. Indeed, some medieval Jewish sages held a child was not a bar kayyama or “lasting being,” i.e., a viable human being, until a month after being born. Obviously, traditional Jewish law and medieval Jewish wisdom did not give Psalm 138 the meaning our contemporary “Pro-Lifers” give it.

Christian tradition has been all over the board on the question.

Some sects (Mormons, for example — and another debate I don’t want to get into is whether members of the Latter-Day Saints are Christians) believe that the soul pre-exists the body, that God has parented or created numerous “spirit children” who await physical bodies in this world.

Some of the earliest theologians, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Gregory of Nyssa, taught that the egg and the sperm each carried a soul derived from the souls of the mother and the father, and that at conception these two proto-souls merged to form a new and distinct soul. This theory, called traducianism, is a direct and necessary development of the doctrine of Original Sin, which teaches that our sinful nature is passed from parent to child via concupiscence (sexual desire) and its (sinful?) satisfaction.

Interestingly, Augustine, who was responsible for much of the formulation of Original Sin, rejected traducianism; he favored what came to be known as Creationism, which is not the creationism which today does battle with evolutionary science.

Traducianism was rejected by the theologians of the Middle Ages — Thomas Aquinas, especially — and in favor of creationism. This view, based in part on Genesis 2:7 (“The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being”) and Hebrews 12:9 (which distinguishes between our “human parents” and God who is the “Father of spirits”), holds that while the body is formed gradually the soul is directly created by God and enters the body when it is ready to receive it (a determination made by God).

Creationism was the accepted teaching of the church from the Fifth Century on . . . until recent times. In fact, from the late Middle Ages until the end of the 19th Century, the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (and the generally accepted position of most of Christianity) was that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of “quickening,” when the mother first feels movement.

So when does the soul enter the physical body? When does a fertilized ovum become a human person?

I don’t know.

Years ago I sat on a panel discussing abortion law and religion with an older colleague from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. He made this statement which I will never forget: “I would rather counsel a woman about legal abortion than bury a woman who’s resorted to an illegal one. And I’ve done both.” I have had to do the former, both before and after the procedure; that’s why I know so much (and so little) about this theology. Fortunately, unlike my colleague, I’ve not had to do the latter and I hope I never will.

I don’t know when “human life” begins, but I do know this: I do not want to get into the abortion debate, ever, even though I am often forced to. And I know this: abortion is a private, personal, and painful decision which is ultimately to be made by only one person, the pregnant one. And I know this: the psalms are not science.

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

Lust and Sepulchres – From the Daily Office – May 16, 2014

May 16, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From Matthew’s Gospel:

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 5:27-28 (NRSV) – May 16, 2014)

Private Mausoleum It has been almost 40 years since presidential candidate Jimmy Carter admitted to Playboy magazine, “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.” Caused quite a stir and, some say, marked the beginning of the erosion of presidential privacy, the start of an era of leadership toxicity in American politics when partisan reporters feel free to reveal any fact or rumor, no matter how irrelevant, if it will hurt a politician of the opposite party or position. I’m not sure that that’s the case; a good argument can be made that the current polarized, hyper-partisan atmosphere started building during the Nixon, or even Johnson, years. That, however, is not what I’m thinking about this morning.

I’m thinking about the impossibility of Jesus’ hyperbolic morality! To be honest, I think Mr. Carter was overstating the “looking with lust” thing. As I understand the Greek used here, epithumeo, what Jesus is talking about is passionate, heated, covetous desire. I can’t imagine that just looking at someone other than one’s life partner, appreciating their attractiveness, and acknowledging one’s own attraction (even with a little wistful wondering….) would rise to the level of “lust.” If it does, then I guess we’re all in trouble, because no one can live up to such a standard.

That Jesus is being hyperbolic is made clear by the fact that he goes on to counsel his followers to cut off their hands and pluck out their eyes if those members cause them to sin! I mean — come on, folks! — does anyone not suffering from a mental illness think Jesus was doing anything more than making a rhetorical point? I certainly don’t. But his rhetorical point, hyperbolic though it may be, needs to be taken seriously.

Thoughts and attitudes are as important as actions, for even if they do not directly control our actions they give them flavor and nuance. A husband may not often be “lustful” towards other women, one may never be unfaithful, but a regular habit of giving thought to the notion is a form of disrespect for one’s wife and may lead to more outright, more visible, and more damaging forms of disrespect. Further, such a regular habit and the attitude from which it springs cheapen the intimacy between spouses. Motives and motivations, and their authenticity, give substance and meaning to our actions; spousal intimacy that is not truly respectful of the spouse has little substance or meaning.

One of my favorite of Jesus’ similes is spoken to the scribes and the Pharisees later in Matthew’s Gospel, and I like it best in the Authorized translation: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Mt 23:27, KJV) When inner motivation and outward action are not in harmony, when the action is inauthentic because the motivation dishonest, the action . . . no, the actor is a “whited sepulchre,” lovely in outward appearance but filled with rot.

I believe that Jesus’ hyperbolic language about lust makes the same point, and it applies not just to marriages, but to all human interactions and relationships. It may be hyperbole and it may be (indeed, it is) impossible to live up to it. Nonetheless, we must examine our thoughts and attitudes, our motives and motivations; we must look inside and work on our mindset so that our outward actions are authentic. Why? Well, one reason, as Jesus will shortly remind his listeners in a different context, is that our Father “who is in secret . . . sees in secret.” (Mt 6) A more important reason, however, is that anything less violates the second of the two great commandments: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt 22:39)

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

Howling and Prowling – From the Daily Office – May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Psalms:

Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 59:6 (NRSV) – May 15, 2014)

Feral Dog Pack I usually prefer the Prayer Book Psalter to the NRSV translation of the Psalms, but in today’s readings I find the latter rather more compelling. The NRSV makes it clear who the “they” is in this verse (which is repeated again at verse 14). “They” are “the nations,” which in the Hebrew bible always refers to ethnic groups other than the tribes of Israel. The BCP version refers to “the ungodly,” which is decidedly unclear; it could refer to individuals and, further, could refer even to persons from within the Jewish people, neither of which understandings would be accurate.

With regard to this specific verse (which is numbered 7 or 16 in the BCP), the notion of returning late in the day from some unspecified and perhaps unknown other location is lost: “They go to and fro in the evening; they snarl like dogs and run about the city.” They (whoever they are) could have been at rest within the city during the day, but the Hebrew shuwb ‘ereb is clear: “They return at sunset.” The nations have been somewhere else during the light of day, but where is unknown (at least, it is not stated in the psalm).

The NRSV text is also much more poetic than the BCP version (which is something of a surprise, frankly). The evocative rhyming of “howling . . . and prowling” is so much more effective than “snarl . . . and run about.” It casts a disturbing vision of a dog pack roaming, possibly hunting, through the darkened city streets.

Dogs, of course, are considered unclean in Judaism. They are scavengers which will eat any sort of refuse and carrion, even excrement. Although mothers do tenderly care for their young, dogs do not pair bond and have no sexual loyalty. They urinate and defecate wherever they wish. Left on their own and untrained, dogs are pretty unsavory characters!

They also have a social order that is decidedly not a human one. 21st Century research into the organization of packs of both canis lupus (wolves) and canis familiaris (dogs) has demonstrated that the “alpha male” aggression-dominance model of pack behavior is nothing more than a human projection. Dog packs are (I use the word very loosely) organized in a much more fluid and changing way, a way not easily appreciated by human observers. For all intents and purposes, dog packs mostly appear to us to be disorganized mobs.

So these are the ungodly (to use the BCP’s word): gone when it is light, showing up in the darkness, decidedly unclean in their habits, leaderless, disorganized, and dangerous. They are like feral, untamed dogs. And, yet, dogs have shown themselves not only willing but eager to give up these ways! Dogs are more than happy to associate with humans, to acknowledge humans as their leaders, to behave in ways humans deem acceptable. And we have been happy to accept them on those terms as pets, as friends, and as co-workers.

Last Sunday’s Gospel lesson was from John — Jesus declaring himself to be the good shepherd. Shepherds are nearly always assisted by dogs to whom none of the negative characteristics implicit in this psalm could be ascribed. My pastoral theology instructor (as I told my congregation in my extemporaneous children’s sermon) objected to the word pastor as a descriptor of clergy; pastor, he pointed out, means “shepherd” and there is only one shepherd. Clergy, he insisted, should be thought of as sheepdogs.

The good shepherd made a few other claims for himself. “I am the light of the world,” for example, and “I am the way.” (Jn 9:5, 14:6) For those who are leaderless, living in darkness, howling and prowling the night-time streets, Jesus offers an alternative of light and direction.

Years ago, when I was a college student in southern California, my friends and I would visit the border towns of northern Mexico. There always seemed to be plenty of ownerless, feral dogs running about. From time to time, I would notice that a feral dog would gingerly approach and befriend (possibly another human projection) a domesticated dog and, with and through that dog, would approach its owner. More often than not they were kicked and shooed away, but occasionally the human would be willing to share some food; perhaps this was the beginning of a longer relationship — I don’t know; I never stuck around or went back to find out.

Remembering those wild dogs seeking, through a domestic dog, the friendship and protection of a human being . . . thinking about the picture of dogs set out in the psalm today . . . and putting meat on the bones of my theology professor’s objection to pastor, I think there is a lesson for me and my fellow sheepdogs here. Or, more correctly, there is a question: are we in the right place?

Are we (and the flocks we are tending) in the places where the howling and prowling, the wild and feral, the leaderless, those in darkness and hunger, can gingerly approach and possibly, through us, meet the good shepherd?

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

Category: Theology (Page 51 of 94)

Doing Something – From the Daily Office – May 24, 2014

Sabbath with Frank Lee – From the Daily Office – May 23, 2014

I’m Done with the Cassock-Alb – From the Daily Office – May 22, 2014

Curmudgeonly Conversations – From the Daily Office – May 21, 2014

The Scapegoat – From the Daily Office – May 20, 2014

What Is Joy? – From the Daily Office – May 19, 2014

So Many Martyrs – Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, RCL Year A – May 18, 2014

Psalms Are Not Science – From the Daily Office – May 17, 2014

Lust and Sepulchres – From the Daily Office – May 16, 2014

Howling and Prowling – From the Daily Office – May 15, 2014

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