Category: Eucharist (Page 28 of 36)

The Looking Glass – Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent (Year A) – March 9, 2014

March 9, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the First Sunday in Lent, March 9, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Genesis 2:15-17,3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; and Matthew 4:1-11. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Eve and the Serpent by Max Klinger Today, as we step further into the season of Lent, this season of self-examination when we liturgically join Jesus for his forty days in the desert, we are treated to what is traditionally known as the “Fall of Man.” Genesis, chapters 2 and 3 set out the Bible’s first story of human temptation and the first act of human disobedience in the garden of Eden, brilliantly portrayed by the Victorian-era lithographer Max Klinger in the etching on the cover of your bulletin in which the serpent presents Eve not just with an apple but with a mirror, a looking glass in which to examine herself.

The popular understanding of this story is that it explains why human beings do not live in a world of perfect comfort, why there is evil in the world, blaming it all on the Devil and on the weakness of the woman. That popular interpretation, however, is based on some frankly erroneous assumptions.

First, that God created an absolutely perfect and static world.

Well, that’s clearly wrong. The world that God has created in the Genesis accounts includes the raging sea, which has been divided into two waters – the water above the firmament and the water below the firmament. In the theological and cosmological understanding of the ancient middle eastern world, the sea was the place of chaos; God’s Spirit moves over and subdues that chaos, declaring to it (as the voice from the whirlwind in the Book of Job puts it), “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped.” (Job 38:11) Far from static and far from perfect, God’s world contains the chaotic, the unsettled, and the creative.

And let’s not forget the serpent who “was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made;” I’ll come back to him in a moment. He’s a part of this creation, which clearly is neither perfect and static.

The second erroneous assumption often made is that Eden was a luxurious paradise in which humans lived with no responsibilities.

We can only have that incorrect understanding if we overlook the first sentence of our reading: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” (Gen. 2:15, emphasis added) The humans in this garden had work to do! One might quibble with the translation, however.

The traditional rendering of the Hebrew word ‘abad as “till” reflects the agriculturally based culture of 17th Century England; the word has been rendered in this manner (or by the equivalent word “cultivate”) since the Authorized Version of King James I & VI. But the Hebrew is better translated (and more frequently rendered throughout the rest of the Old Testament) as “serve;” it is the root from which the word “slave” derives. The distinction is significant. “Tilling” implies some control of the garden and suggests that the human can make it better or more productive. But the humans were not, in fact, in control at all; they were to be the servants of the soil, working in partnership with it to make the garden fruitful.

And then there’s the word translated “keep” — shamar in Hebrew. In common modern English, “keep” has the sense of ownership, of having a claim on the garden, the Hebrew really means “to keep safe, to guard, or to protect.” The humans were to serve the garden and to protect that which they were meant to serve. They were given neither control nor ownership.

But whether to cultivate and maintain or to serve and protect, the humans were given work and responsibility in this garden. No luxurious paradise, this Eden.

The third incorrect assumption is that the serpent was evil.

Actually, this error is a bit more serious than that. This mistake, in fact, holds that the serpent was Satan intent on bringing evil into God’s perfect creation, one of the central points of the popular interpretation.

But, again, one has to ignore the very words of the text to believe that about the serpent. As I pointed out a moment ago, the serpent is described as a “wild animal that the Lord God had made.” The serpent is a very clever and very conversational animal, but that’s all – an animal. This crafty old snake is just one of God’s own creatures who simply poses some questions and offers some alternative explanations about God to the humans who could have, if they’d chosen to do so, told the serpent that he was full of it and asked him to please go away.

The wily serpent is, one commentator has suggested, a “metaphor, representing anything in God’s good creation that is able to facilitate options for human will and action.” God has created a world in which human beings have choices, alternatives to the will of God. And in this world human choices count; our relationship with God is not predetermined and our response to God is neither coerced nor inevitable. The story reveals that there was and is something in human nature that resonates to the suggestion of suspicion that the serpent offered about the words and actions of God, and we’ll come back to that in a moment. So the serpent is not Satan and he does not bring evil into the picture; he’s a clever animal who introduces the humans to wariness and skepticism.

The fourth traditional, but wrong, supposition is that it was Eve alone who succumbed to temptation and so she alone is responsible for bringing sin into the world.

When we listen to people discuss this story, the impression is that they believe that Eve was all by herself, had this conversation with the snake, ate the apple, gained for herself the “knowledge of good and evil” (more needs to be said about that, by the way), and then went and tempted Adam to do the same. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The plain meaning of the words is that Adam was there all along: “She took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” Just as, at any point in the conversation, the humans could have told the snake to get lost, Adam could have spoken up, at any point, and suggested to Eve that she discontinue the dialogue with the snake. But he doesn’t. While Eve converses with the serpent, expressing her knowledge of God’s command, Adam just stands there silent, and then he eats with no objection.

And take note! That’s when things start to happen. It isn’t until both of them have consumed the fruit that “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked . . . .”

That last simply wrong understanding is that the “knowledge of good and evil” has something to do with morality.

It doesn’t. Hadda-‘at towb wara’ is simply idiomatic Hebrew for knowledge of everything; saying “good and bad” in Hebrew is like saying “lock, stock, and barrel” in American English.

The two most important words spoken by the crafty serpent are “God knows,” because they arouse suspicion. They carry a corollary suggestion: “God knows . . . and you don’t.” God, the snake hints, has not told you the full truth. And the surprising thing is that the serpent is telling the truth! The serpent may not tell the whole truth, but then neither has God.

Which brings us back to the question of suspicion. At its deepest level the issue of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of everything, becomes an issue of trust. Can human beings trust God? Can Adam and Eve, can any human being, trust that God has our best interests at heart?

Until they ate of that fruit, Adam and Eve were oblivious to their nakedness; after eating it, they find themselves hiding from God out of shame. Scholars and sages from the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius to the 20th Century psychologist Eric Erickson have noted the intimate linkage between mistrust and shame. The moment Adam and Eve ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of everything, they began to experience a profound sense of vulnerability, a sense of distrust of God, perhaps even a distrust of one another and of the serpent with whom they (well, Eve anyway) have been conversing like old friends.

We all know what happens next, right? God shows up and asks what’s happened. Adam points to Eve, “She did it. She made me eat the fruit.” And Eve points to the snake, “The serpent tricked me!” This sense of shame and mistrust is grounded in their failure to fully realize that they were made in the image and likeness of God.

That is why I put that Victorian etching by Max Klinger on the cover of our bulletins this week. It is one of six panels in a work made by Klinger in 1880 entitled Eva und die Zukunft (“Eve and the Future”). In it the snake is holding a mirror and Eve, standing on tip-toe, is viewing her own image. The serpent’s appeal is to her (and to Adam’s) vanity. “God knows . . . and you don’t.” Invited (as we are during Lent) to examine herself, she cannot see the image of God in the mirror; she can see only her own suspicious visage.

So if this story is the story of a “fall” or “falling,” what sort of falling is it? Is it a falling down from some supposedly higher level of perfection? I think not. The initial creation was not a set-piece of static perfection. Is it a falling up into some greater human maturity as Iranaeus and other early theologians suggested, a leaving behind of some childlike innocence? In the story, the human beings, before the fruit, aren’t really presented as childlike or innocent, and afterwards Adam and Eve certainly don’t exhibit much in the way of adult maturity when confronted by God. So, I don’t really believe that interpretation works either.

The Lutheran theologian Terrence Fretheim has suggested that if this is the story of a “falling” it is a “falling out,” the story of a breach in relationship leading (as the rest of the Bible clearly demonstrates) to estrangement, alienation, separation, and displacement, an ever-increasing distancing of human beings from Eden, from each other, and ultimately from God.

That suspicious alienation is symbolized by the clothing Adam and Eve make for themselves: “they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” As the ancient Hebrews knew all too well, the leaves of Mediterranean fig would not make a particularly comfortable garment; they have a rather rough and sandpaper texture and their underside is covered with fine spiny “hairs”! Those loincloths would have been scratchy and prickly and uncomfortable — a great metaphor for a relationship broken by distrust and shame.

Which brings us to the Gospel lesson.

The snake in the Genesis story may not have been Satan, but here he is at the beginning of our Lord’s ministry and he’s doing with Jesus exactly what the serpent did with Eve; he’s appealing to his vanity. “Are you the son of God? Well, then, act like it! Show these people! Do something really incredible — turn stones into bread, throw yourself off the Temple steeple, rule the world!”

Jesus, however, turns each temptation aside with a quotation from Scripture. Each is different, but each of his responses boils down to the same thing – “I trust God.” And his life and his gospel will bear that out even to the end. Even then, in the most painful of circumstances when death is imminent, he will live out that trust: “Not my will but yours” (Luke 22:42) . . . “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). And, in the end and for eternity, he is clothed as John of Patmos saw him and reported in the Book of Revelation, in a flowing white robe of righteousness, crowned with many crowns, and seated at the right hand of God.

“Great are the tribulations of the wicked,” says our psalm today . . . their tribulation is like wearing a rough and scratchy garment of fig leaves . . . “but mercy embraces those who trust in the Lord.”

In this season of self-examination, in we which are asked to look at ourselves in a spiritual looking glass, like Eve’s mirror in Klinger’s etching, we must ask ourselves the question, “Which is it to be for us?” The rough, painful garment of alienation, or the flowing robes of mercy and righteousness?

We live in a world in which we have choices, and our choices count. Which is it to be? Do you trust God? Amen.

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

Jesus the Lens – Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, RCL Year A – March 2, 2014

March 2, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Last Sunday after Epiphany, March 2, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; and Matthew 17:1-9. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Bible and Magnifying Glass Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra . . . .
[silence]
Shaka, when the walls fell.
[silence]

Obviously, there is no one here who was a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation! “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is a line from an episode of that show entitled Darmok in which Picard, the captain of the Enterprise, and the captain of an alien vessel are marooned on a planet called El-Adrel. The alien race are called the Tamarians and their way of communicating is by making metaphorical references to legends, myths, and incidents in their history.

“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is the alien captain’s way of trying to say that he and Picard, the Tamarians and the humans, though strangers can become friends and allies — the reference is to a story in which two strangers become allies against a common enemy. Picard, of course, does not understand and so the Tamarian captain in frustration says, “Shaka, when the walls fell,” a metaphor for failure.

That episode and the Tamarian way of communicating came to mind as I considered the story of the Transfiguration as told by Matthew in today’s Gospel lesson (and referred to in the epistle lesson, as well). The point of the episode is that we all communicate by way of analogy and metaphor; the fictional Tamarians were simply an extreme case. So is religion. All talk of God, all religious language, is metaphorical.

There are anti-religious writers who fail to understand that. I call them “anti-theists” or “evangelical atheists” — they are so sure of the truth of their Godless vision of the universe that they insist on trying to destroy religious faith, to spread the “truth” of their atheism. When they consider the story of the Transfiguration, they insist that it is a made-up story. They point to the fact that the story combines elements of earlier stories of the Hebrew people and say the Gospel writers were simply inventing something.

And, yes, they are right about the earlier stories. In the Book of Daniel, Daniel tells of seeing a vision of heaven in which one he calls “the Ancient One” is clothed in “clothing [which] was white as snow,” (Dan. 7:9) like Matthew (and Mark and Luke) describe Jesus’ clothing on the Holy Mountain. Daniel tells of seeing one “like a son of man” (a title claimed by Jesus, by the way, even in today’s reading) who he describes this way: “His face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze.” Matthew doesn’t go into such detail, but he describes Jesus’ face as shining like the sun.

Another earlier story is that of Moses receiving the law from God at Sinai, the story we heard this morning. On that mountain, Moses encountered the Shekinah, the glowing cloud of the Lord’s Presence, not unlike the cloud the Gospel describes on the Mount of the Transfiguration.

What happened on that mountain? I really don’t know. I take the Gospelers’ word for it that something important, something incredible happened. I believe they tried to describe it using stories familiar to their people. Like the fictional Tamarians of Star Trek:TNG, they were reaching back into their history to communicate, by metaphor and analogy, the meaning and importance of a present reality. They were not “making it up,” they were describing it in a way they hoped would make sense. They were trying to communicate that something important happened on that mountain, that in some way Jesus was changed and God spoke to them. I believe that what was of most importance is summarized in three small words: “Listen to him.”

Peter in his second letter — and I know there are scholars who doubt that Peter wrote the second letter attributed to him, but for the moment let’s just go with tradition — Peter in his letter relates his experience on the mountain, and I find it interesting that in doing so, he left out those three words: “[Jesus] received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.” Peter set a pattern for the church which has continued for nearly 2,000 years. We fail to heed those three small words; we fail to even remember them — and we do not listen to Jesus.

We listen to Paul in his several letters! We listen to John in his three, and to James, and Jude, and Peter. We listen to John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation. We listen to those who came earlier, to Moses, to those who wrote or edited Leviticus and Deuteronomy, to the Prophets, to David in the Psalms. We listen to all of them . . . but we do not listen to Jesus.

All talk of God, all religious language is metaphorical . . . so let me suggest a couple of metaphors that might help us to do so.

I think it was Brian McClaren who said that the way we read the Bible can be likened to an hour glass, which all of the Old Testament being the sand in the top of the glass, and the writings of the New Testament being the sand pouring through the tiny middle, Jesus being that little hole in the center of the glass. We read all that sand in the top as pointing to Jesus, as prophesying Jesus, as explaining why Jesus was going to come. We read all that sand in the bottom of the glass as pointing back to Jesus, as explaining Jesus, as prophesying his return. We read Jesus through the lens of the Old Testament writers or through the lens of the Epistle authors. We listen to what they tell us about Jesus . . . but we do not listen to Jesus.

We should stop treating Jesus as the central stem of an hour glass to which all Old Testament sand points forward and to which all New Testament sand points back. We should think of Jesus as the lens of a microscope, or a telescope, or just as a magnifying glass. We should read Paul through the lens of Jesus, not vice versa. We should read Revelation through the lens of Jesus, not vice versa. We should read the prophets, the Psalms, Moses, the whole of the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus. When a biblical writer has something to say about a particular matter, we should hear what that writer has to say, but we should then critically question that writer’s words by asking, “Did Jesus say anything about that?” We should listen to Jesus.

There are many in our society who purport to speak for the church — truth be told, they purport to speak for Jesus — on a variety of topics. For example, we are told that Jesus is opposed to abortion. But when you question that, when you ask for the Biblical basis of their argument, they will cite Genesis: “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27) and then tell you that “when it comes to human dignity, Christ erases distinctions. St. Paul declares, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave or free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). We can likewise say, ‘There is neither born nor unborn.'” This is an actual quotation from an antiabortion website. Notice what was done: Christ, we are told, erases distinctions, but it is Paul who is cited. This is reading Jesus through the lens of Paul; this is listening to Paul, not Jesus.

Did Jesus ever say anything about abortion? No. Never. What did Jesus say? “Love God; love your neighbor as yourself.” Sometimes our neighbor must make very hard, very painful decisions, but never did Jesus suggest we are to make her decisions for her, or to prevent her from making her own decisions, or to question the decision she may make. Quite to the contrary, he said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” (Luke 6:37) Listen to him.

We are told that Jesus condemns those who engaged in sexual immorality, but did Jesus do so? On one occasion, he encountered a crowd which was intent on executing (as the law demanded) a woman who had been exposed as an adulterer. What did he do and say? He convinced the crowd to abandon their plans. When the crowd left while he was looking away, Jesus said to the woman, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:10-11) Jesus had a lot to say about sexual immorality, but when dealing with some accused of it, he followed his own rule: Love your neighbor, and do not judge. Listen to him.

We are told that Jesus condemns homosexuality, that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons should be excluded from ministry, that they should be forbidden to marry the person they love. Did Jesus ever say anything about same-sex relationships? No, never. Leviticus has something to say about, though scholars are in conflict about whether that has any application to committed, loving adult relationships. St. Paul had something to say about, maybe. There is the same doubt about the application of his words to committed, loving adult relationships. There is even some doubt about whether Paul’s words are anything more than a cut-and-paste use of a Greek rhetorical form. But Jesus? Jesus never even said anything about which there could be doubt; about homosexual relationships, Jesus said nothing . . . nothing other than “Love your neighbor, and do not judge.” Listen to him.

We do this over and over again throughout history, whatever the issue of the day may be. Go back about a hundred years; go back to the temperance movement of the early 20th Century. Members of the Church campaigned against “demon rum” on the grounds that Jesus was against drinking. Did Jesus ever say anything about alcoholic beverages? Yes! He said to drink them! And, especially, he said to do so in his memory. Listen to him!

My systematic theology professor, Jim Griffis, was very good at dealing with students who wanted to read Jesus through the lens of other Scripture. He would listen to them cite the Old Testament or Paul or Revelation, and then ask, “What does Jesus say?” “The Gospel,” he would say, “trumps the Bible.” The Gospel of love: Love God; love your neighbor; do not judge. Understand everything else through that critical filter.

Something happened on the mount of the Transfiguration, something so important that those who later wrote about it and preserved it, analogized it to the important stories of their past. Like the Tamarian captain looking back to Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, they looked back to Moses receiving the law at Sinai, to Daniel seeing a vision of heaven.

There is one more similarity between those earlier bible stories and the tale of the Transfiguration. In Daniel’s vision, the one “like a son of man” says to Daniel, “Pay attention to the words that I am going to speak to you.” (Dan. 10:11) The three most important words spoken on the Holy Mountain are “Listen to him!” — Listen to Paul, listen to Moses, listen to John of Patmos, listen to the prophets, listen to David . . . but, most importantly, listen to Jesus and understand all the rest through that lens: “Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do not judge.”

“This is my son, the beloved; in him I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

Amen.

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

Living With Integrity – Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany (Year A) – February 23, 2014

February 23, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, February 23, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18; Psalm 119:33-40; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23; and Matthew 5:38-48. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Integrity Venn Diagram Jesus doesn’t ask much, does he? Only perfection! “Be perfect,” he tells us, “as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Of course, Jesus is simply echoing the words Moses spoke on God’s behalf delivering the Law to the Hebrews: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” What can this mean? How can we be expected to be perfect and holy like God? How can we do that, especially when both Moses and Jesus insist that that means, among other things, loving our enemies, not seeking redress, not holding a grudge, and not getting that to which we are sure we are entitled?

Let’s first be certain that we know what we’re talking about! Let’s remember that these English words are translations of ancient Hebrew and biblical Greek, and that there may be connotations and nuances in those older languages that the English interpretations obscure.

The Hebrew in our reading from Leviticus is qadowsh and is derived from a root word meaning “set apart” (qadash). This, of course, was the purpose of the Law which God, through Moses, was giving to the Hebrews: it was to set them apart from other nations, other peoples. They were to be consecrated to God as a “holy nation” – a nation separated from the rest of humankind for a God’s special purposes.

God, through Moses and then repeatedly through the prophets, makes it clear that this does not mean that they are in any way better than other nations; they are simply different in that they will be used by God to accomplish God’s purposes. The prophet Amos, for example, reminded the Israelites that God had relationships with other nations: “Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? says the Lord. Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir?” (Amos 9:7)

The modern Orthodox Jewish view is that God chooses and sets apart many nations for differing purposes. The former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Immanuel Jakobovits, expressed it this way:

I believe that every people—and indeed, in a more limited way, every individual—is “chosen” or destined for some distinct purpose in advancing the designs of Providence. Only, some fulfill their mission and others do not. Maybe the Greeks were chosen for their unique contributions to art and philosophy, the Romans for their pioneering services in law and government, the British for bringing parliamentary rule into the world, and the Americans for piloting democracy in a pluralistic society. The Jews were chosen by God to be “peculiar unto Me” as the pioneers of religion and morality; that was and is their national purpose. (Commentary Magazine, August, 1966)

So this is what “holiness” means in our reading from Leviticus – to be set apart for God’s use in a particular way. It does not mean that the ancient Jews, nor we as the grafted-on “new Israel,” are expected to be God-like or sacred (whatever that means) or divine or particularly righteous or pure. It means, rather, that we are to be prepared, like a tool is prepared, to be used for God’s purposes.

In echoing Moses, however, Jesus chose to use another word, the word perfect. In the koine Greek of the New Testament, the word is teleios which signifies wholeness and completion, something brought to its intended end; it derives from a word meaning “the end” (telos) which carries with it a nuanced suggestion of a goal or a purpose. It is not identical to the Hebrew word used by Moses, but it carries much of the same implications. Jesus is not admonishing his hearers, then or now, to some sort of moral perfectionism, but rather to becoming what God has intended, to accomplishing one’s God-given purpose.

And so the question for us in response both to Leviticus and to Matthew’s Gospel is, “How do we do this? How can we be holy as God is holy? How can we be perfect as the Father is perfect?” We find the answer close at hand both in God’s giving of the Law and in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

The Levitical admonition to holiness is followed by several exemplary commandments, none of which are particularly religious! Leave something in your fields for the hungry to glean. Don’t lie to one another. Don’t defraud one another. Don’t steal from each other. Don’t mistreat the handicapped. Don’t be partial in your judgments. Don’t hate anyone or seek vengeance or even bear a grudge. That’s what holiness is; that’s what being set apart for God’s purposes is.

In the section of the Sermon on the Mount in today’s Gospel, Jesus continues with the rhetorical form he began in last week’s Gospel reading, the antitheses in which he contrasts the Law with his own teaching: “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you . . . .” You have heard the rule of justice, “an eye for an eye,” but I say to you, “Don’t insist on it. In fact, offer more. If you’re struck on one cheek, offer the other. If someone takes your cloak, give them your shirt, too. If you are pressed into service to carry a burden, carry it twice the distance.” You have heard it said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy” . . . . (Now, that one puzzles the scholars because although the Law does say, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” there is no commandment to hate one’s enemy. There are plenty of Old Testament examples of hating one’s enemy, but no commandment along those lines. In any event . . . .) You have heard it said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” but I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Why? Because God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike; God gives sunshine to both the good and the evil. God treats everyone impartially – and so should you. God is good to everyone impartially – and so should you be. That’s what it means to be perfect, to be whole and complete and living according to God’s purposes.

Another word for this is integrity. Integrity is that sort of wholeness that we experience or perceive in someone when their life is integrated – when who they are matches what they do. And more than that it’s that wholeness that we sense when a person not only “practices what they preach,” but when it all seems to flow from the very core of their being, when their preaching and their practice all seem to be in accord with God’s purpose for them. When we meet such a person, say for example Jesus, we know that they have no trouble forgiving their enemies and praying for their persecutors, don’t we? We’re sure of it!

So, how do we live an integrated life? How do we live with integrity? It’s really easy for a preacher to stand here and tell you to do that by imitating Christ, by living out God’s generous and unrestricted grace, mercy and love in all your relationships, with friend and foe alike. But that just begs the question! That’s just saying, “Live with integrity by living with integrity” and it’s not fair for a preacher to do that because we all know that there are times when being gracious and merciful and loving just isn’t all that easy, such as those times when we are called to love our enemies and those who do us wrong.

Frederick Buechner, the great Presbyterian story teller, wrote about this in his book Whistling in the Dark in an essay entitled Enemy:

Cain hated Abel for standing higher in God’s esteem than he felt he himself did, so he killed him. King Saul hated David for stealing the hearts of the people with his winning ways and tried to kill him every chance he got. Saul of Tarsus hated the followers of Jesus because he thought they were blasphemers and heretics and made a career of rounding them up so they could be stoned to death like Stephen. By and large most of us don’t have enemies like that anymore, and in a way it’s a pity.

It would be pleasant to think it’s because we’re more civilized nowadays, but maybe it’s only because we’re less honest, open, brave. We tend to avoid fiery outbursts for fear of what they may touch off both in ourselves and the ones we burst out at. We smolder instead. If people hurt us or cheat us or stand for things we abominate, we’re less apt to bear arms against them than to bear grudges. We stay out of their way. When we declare war, it is mostly submarine warfare, and since our attacks are beneath the surface, it may be years before we know fully the damage we have either given or sustained.

Jesus says we are to love our enemies and pray for them, meaning love not in an emotional sense but in the sense of willing their good, which is the sense in which we love ourselves. It is a tall order even so. African Americans love white supremacists? The longtime employee who is laid off just before he qualifies for retirement with a pension love the people who call him in to break the news? The mother of the molested child love the molester? But when you see as clearly as that who your enemies are, at least you see your enemies clearly too.

You see the lines in their faces and the way they walk when they’re tired. You see who their husbands and wives are, maybe. You see where they’re vulnerable. You see where they’re scared. Seeing what is hateful about them, you may catch a glimpse also of where the hatefulness comes from. Seeing the hurt they cause you, you may see also the hurt they cause themselves. You’re still light-years away from loving them, to be sure, but at least you see how they are human even as you are human, and that is at least a step in the right direction. It’s possible that you may even get to where you can pray for them a little, if only that God forgive them because you yourself can’t, but any prayer for them at all is a major breakthrough.

In the long run, it may be easier to love the ones we look in the eye and hate, the enemies, than the ones whom—because we’re as afraid of ourselves as we are of them—we choose not to look at, at all.

“Pray for them a little, if only that God forgive them because you yourself can’t . . . .”

When I read those words I was reminded of an incident in my own life which I’m pretty sure I have told here before. Back when I was a practicing attorney defending doctors and dentists in malpractice cases, I had occasion to defend a maxillofacial surgeon whose hobby was sculpting. One of the pieces he showed me was a crucifix on which the face of Jesus was contorted in extreme rage. When I asked him what that was all about, he asked if I remembered Jesus’ words in the Gospel according to Luke: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) He said he’d never heard those words as expressing forgiveness on Jesus’ part. Quite to the contrary, he said, he heard Jesus saying, “You forgive them, because right now, I can’t!”

Jesus was put in that place on that cross because he was holy – set apart for God’s particular purpose. Jesus was put in that place on that cross because he was perfect – he had a goal, a purpose, to be good, to live according to the law of love, to demonstrate God’s love for all humankind. If he was truly to live that life, to show that love, his integrity required that he do and say the things that put him in that place on that cross. But if my dentist client was correct (and I think he may have been), the best that even he could do in all his holiness, in all his perfection, in all his integrity, was turn forgiveness over to God; on his own on that cross, Jesus couldn’t do it.

And there is the answer to our question: How do we live with integrity? How can we be holy and perfect? Well, it’s what I suggested earlier, by imitating Christ, and that means by turning things over to God. On his own on that cross, Jesus couldn’t do it; on our own, we cannot do it. The Psalmist put it this way:

There is no king that can be saved by a mighty army; *
a strong man is not delivered by his great strength.
The horse is a vain hope for deliverance; *
for all its strength it cannot save. (Ps. 33:16-17; BCP version)

and again

Though my flesh and my heart should waste away, *
God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. (Ps. 73:26)

In our human weakness, we may be (we probably are) unable to not hate anyone, unable to eschew vengeance, unable to let go of our grudges. We may be (we probably are) unable to love our enemies or to pray for those who persecute us. But that’s OK. Because if the best we can do is pray, “God, you forgive them, because right now, I can’t!” that will be enough.

Let us pray:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP 1979, page 816)

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

Choose Life! L’Chaim – Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany – February 16, 2014

February 16, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, February 16, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20 (used as the gradual); 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; and Matthew 5:21-37. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Alphabet Chart As I have mentioned here more than a couple of times, I went to high school at a boarding school in the middle of nowhere . . . a place called Kansas. At the time, my family was living in Southern California in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, so I was very far from home. Truth be told, nearly all of us in the cadet corps of St. John’s Military School in Salina were far from home; there were very few Kansans in the student body.

The dormitory at the school was called “the barracks” but, in truth, it wasn’t barracks-style living with everyone sharing one big room. We had discrete two-, three-, or four-bed rooms; there were also single rooms, but those were reserved to the highest ranking officers of the cadet battalion. At the end of each year, you could request a particular room for the next school year. Each size of room had its particular advantages; the four-bed rooms were newer, had better study carrels, nicer beds, and larger closets. So at the end of my first year, I requested a four-person room for the coming year.

You could also request particular roommates but that didn’t always work out. It usually would if it was just two people agreeing to share a two-bed room, but even then you couldn’t be guaranteed a roommate. I really didn’t care, so I just asked for the size of room I wanted and trusted to the luck of the draw for my roommates.

We got notice in late July what our room assignments were and who are roommates would be. As it turned out, two other continuing students with whom I was good friends got assigned to the same room, as did a new kid. I think they may have assigned him to room with me because, like me, he was from Southern California — San Diego, to be exact.

So I get this notice and it tells me that my roommates will be the two guys I knew and someone named “Joseph Joachim __________.” Well, with a name like that I was pretty certain that he was going to turn out to be Roman Catholic and Latino, specifically, since he was from San Diego, I figured he’d be a Mexican-American. So in August, when I reported to school, I was expecting to meet someone with brown skin and dark hair, and probably smaller than me. (This is an object lesson in never forming expectations based solely on someone’s name!)

What I encountered, instead, was a young man who stood about 6′ 2″ and towered over me! Plus, he had flaming red hair and a face full of freckles. He looked as Irish as Brian Boru! And turned out to be Jewish.

We became good friends and through that friendship, I had my first introduction to Judaism. Jojo (that was his nickname, Joseph Joachim shortened to “Jojo”) took me with him to a Chanukah party at one of the local — actually, I think, the only synagogue in Salina, Kansas, and it was there, also, that I experienced a Passover Seder for the first time. It was also because of my friendship with Jojo that I first experienced a traditional Jewish wedding.

I was attending college in San Diego, Jojo’s hometown. Jojo, though a year behind me in high school, had graduated from college before me, and shortly after completing his degree decided to get married. He invited me to be a part of that celebration and I accepted. One of the traditions of a Jewish wedding (as in every wedding) is the offering of toasts and one frequently given is the Hebrew salutation, “L’chaim!” — “To Life!” It is a wish for a person’s, or in this case the couple’s, health and well-being.

Jojo’s father was the first to offer the toast. I was standing beside him as he did so, and I may have been the only person to hear a muttered after-thought that he spoke when giving the toast. He said the usual few words about how proud and happy he was, loudly proclaimed “L’chaim!” and then muttered, “And don’t screw it up.”

That is precisely what Moses is saying to the people of the Hebrews today in our reading from the Old Testament: “L’Chaim! – And don’t screw it up!”

Remember where we are in this reading. The Book of Deuteronomy is supposed to be the farewell address from Moses to the people he has led across the desert for forty years. The first generation that had left Egypt has died off — you may remember that they angered God with their stiff-necked whining so God had sworn that none of them could enter the Promised Land, even Moses! God has promised Moses, however, that he would be able to see Canaan, even though he couldn’t go in.

So in Deuteronomy, we are standing on a high hill looking over the border into Canaan-land and Moses is reminding the Hebrews of their past. In a series of three discourses, Moses reminds them of their time of slavery in Egypt, of their liberation at the Passover, of their trek through the desert, and of God’s giving of the Law at Sinai. He has recounted the Ten Commandments and the rest of 613 mitzvot required in the Torah. And he is now, in the third discourse, consigning the Hebrews to the leadership of his assistant, Joshua the son of Nun, and encouraging them to success in the land God is giving them.

In the portion that was read this morning he says to them, “I am laying before you a choice between life and death. Choose life.” And then he tells them that doing so successfully is really a very simple thing; there are only three elements, three things that have to be done. There may be ten major commandments and 613 little rules and regulations, but really there are only three things that are required for them to live a good life in the land God is giving them: love God, obey God, and be faithful. He underscores this by saying it twice in this short passage: “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live . . . .” (v. 16) and again “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him . . . .” (vv. 19b-20) Love God, obey God, and be faithful. Choose life!

Or as Jojo’s father put it, “L’Chaim! And don’t screw it up!”

In our epistle lesson, Paul is writing to the Christians in Corinth. He’s gotten word that they are screwing it up! The church he planted there has become split; there is conflict; people are following different practices and different teachings, dividing themselves according to whomever they were converted or baptized or taught by. “It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people,” he says in the beginning of this letter, “that there are quarrels among you.” (1 Cor. 1:11) The followers of Apollos were at odds with followers of Paul and both were at odds with the followers of Cephas.

In correcting them, Paul basically tells them that they are acting like children! He reminds them that in proclaiming the Gospel to them he spoke to them as if they were children: “I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready . . . . (1 Cor. 3:1-2)

Paul made the same point about religion, really about maturity in religion, in his letter to the Galatians when he spoke of the Jewish law (the Torah, the same law of ten major commandments and 613 mitzvot about which Moses had spoken to the Hebrews on that hill overlooking Canaan) as a “disciplinarian”:

Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. (Gal. 3:23-26)

The actual Greek word is paidagogos which is more accurately translated as “tutor” or “schoolmaster.” It is the word from which we get pedagogy.

Traceable Letter A As I thought about this image of learning, this metaphor of the Law as schoolmaster, I thought about the way we all learn to write, by first learning to letter (or “print” as some people call it). I’m sure we all started in the same way, with those workbooks with very wide ruled lines, maybe 1/2 inch? And there were dashed lines over which we traced with our pencils. We started with the straight-line letters . . . I . . . then added a crossbar at the top . . . T . . . or a bar at the bottom . . . L . . . then two bars . . . F . . . and so on. Eventually, when we had mastered the straight lines, we learned to make diagonals . . . X . . . and . . . Z . . . and then . . . Y And after that came the curved letters . . . O . . . then . . . C . . . then . . . S. And I remember that . . . Q . . . was last because it had that little squiggly addition.

What was the point of that? Were we learning to trace dashed lines? Not really. The rule was to trace the dashed line, but what we were learning was lettering, writing, and really not even that . . . what we were learning was a means of communication! The point was not to trace dashed lines; the point was to communicate.

As I thought about that further, I remembered my grandfather Funston. I’ve mentioned him a time or two and told you how I spent my childhood summers with my grandparents. My grandfather, when I knew him, was an insurance salesman, the owner of the Funston Insurance Agency on Fourth Street in Winfield, Kansas (another part of the middle of nowhere). But earlier in life, before he “retired,” he was a school teacher, and he had been a certified Palmer method penmanship instructor. So one of the “fun” things his grandchildren got to do during their summer vacations was learn to write in cursive. Does anybody do that anymore? Write what we used to call “long-hand”? Email begat texting and texting begat tweeting and it seems no one writes notes or letters in beautiful flowing script anymore. But my grandfather made sure that my cousins and I learned to write that way!

There was one sentence that we practiced over and over. Later, in high school at St. John’s Military School, when I learned to type from a retired baseball player named “Lefty” Loy, I encountered that sentence again. And when my mother and I bought my first typewriter for college, we used that sentence to test the key action — and still to this day when I test computer keyboards I type out that same sentence. It’s one that I am sure is familiar to many if not most of you: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy white dog.” An English sentence containing every letter of the Latin alphabet.

The quick brown fox . . . .

Writing that sentence again and again, typing it over and over, was I learning about brown foxes or white dogs? No! The rule was to write or type the sentence, but the goal was to learn yet another means of written communication. The dashed lines in the workbook, the constant repetition of that sentence were training us in an underlying principle. In Paul’s words, they served as a schoolmaster until we had internalized the lessons. The Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, the 613 mitzvot, served as schoolmaster until the Hebrews had (as Moses said) learned to love God, obey God, and be faithful. Until they had learned to choose life.

But over time, the rules and regulations, the commandments, the laws, and the ordinances had become more important than those underlying principles. They screwed it up! So that the tracing of the dashed lines was more important than the communication. Then, through God’s grace, Jesus came “so that we might be justified by faith,” so that we might be set free from a disciplinarian, from a schoolmaster which had become more important the lessons the schoolmaster was supposed to teach.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus is on a hillside beside the Sea of Galilee delivering what we have come to know as “The Sermon on the Mount.” And here in this section we hear a part of what are known as “the antitheses” in which Jesus deals with this very issue. He takes apart the Torah and shows that beneath its specific rules is an underlying principle by dealing with several of the commandments in this fashion: “You have heard it said . . . . but I say to you.” You have heard the rule, but I tell you something more basic, something that is the foundation of the rule.

For example, he begins with the commandment, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, `You shall not murder’; and `whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.'” (v. 21) So, why do people commit murder? The last time you murdered someone, why did you do it? Statistically, we know that most murders are committed in what the law calls “the heat of passion.” In other words, people mostly kill other people because they’re angry! They’re mad as hell and lose control. So Jesus says, “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment.” And he continues to say that if you act on that anger in any way you will be liable to damnation. It isn’t the rule against murder that is, in and of itself, important; it is the underlying principle of not losing control to anger. The commandment is a schoolmaster; the commandment is a dashed line; the commandment is a repetitive sentence teaching us the foundational lesson to control our passions. And so Jesus continues with the commandment against adultery and its relationship to foundational issue of lust and covetousness, and with the commandment against false swearing and its relationship to the foundational issue of honesty. And so it goes for all of the Ten Commandments and all of the 613 mitzvot. And the foundational principle for the whole of the Torah is what Moses taught on the hill overlooking Canaan: Love — love God, obey God, be faithful — choose life.

You recall that Jesus was once asked what the greatest commandment was and you remember how he answered: the greatest commandment is this, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And, he added, there is a second, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In so answering, Jesus was not declaring anything new; his answer was straight up traditional rabbinic teaching.

There is a story about a rabbi contemporary to Jesus, Rabbi Hillel, the leader of one of the influential schools of Judaism at the time. A story related in the Jewish Talmud tells about a gentile who was curious about Judaism. This man challenged Hillel to explain Jewish law while he (the gentile) stood on one foot. Accepting the challenge, Hillel said: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Now, go and read it!”

Jesus and Hillel, good First Century rabbis, were simply saying what Moses had said to the people of the Hebrews standing on that hill looking into Canaan-land so many centuries before. There are a lot of commandments, a lot of rules, a lot of ordinances . . . but they are simply schoolmasters, disciplinarians teaching an underlying, foundational principle: Love God, obey God, be faithful. To do this is to choose life; to do anything else is to choose death.

Choose life!

L’Chaim! And don’t screw it up!

Amen.

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

City on the Hill, Obscured – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany, Year A – February 9, 2014

February 9, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 9, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; and Matthew 5:13-20. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Listen again to the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

Listen again to the words of our Savior Jesus Christ:

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

If you read my blog of meditations on the Daily Office readings which I post to the internet everyday and offer to this parish and to others through Facebook, you will already have read some of what I have to say this morning. This is because earlier this week the Daily Office lectionary included the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, at the end of which, after Abraham has shown himself willing to do this humanly unthinkable thing at the command of God and thus demonstrated his faithfulness to God, the angel of the Lord addresses Abraham saying, “By your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” It is the first mention in Scripture of the over-arching purpose of God’s People, the ministry that will be Israel’s and then will be the church’s: to be a source of blessing for all people, not just to be the recipients of blessing, but to be the source of blessing for all nations, to be (as Jesus says in this morning’s gospel) salt and light for the world.

This is and has always been the mission of God’s People; it is repeated again and again throughout the Old Testament. Isaiah prophesied to Israel that “in days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” (Isa. 2:2) Psalm 72 includes the prayer for the king of Israel that all nations may be blessed in him (v. 17), and Psalm 87 proclaims that God will say of all people from every nation that “this one was born” in Zion (v. 6). Ben Sira refers to the promise to Abraham when he writes, “To Isaac also he gave the same assurance for the sake of his father Abraham. The blessing of all people and the covenant he made to rest on the head of Jacob.” (Ecclus. 44:22-23)

We were reminded last Sunday that this mission was inherited by Jesus when old Simeon took the infant Christ in his arms and proclaimed that he was to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Lk 2:32) And now this week, as an adult rabbi, Jesus passes on that mission to his church, the new Israel (as St. Paul would later call it). Jesus instructs his disciples, those present at the Sermon on the Mount and all those to follow them through the ages, right down to you and me, to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Mt 5:16) He has commissioned us to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world,” and reminds us that “a city built on a hill cannot be hid.” (v. 14)

The Puritan preacher John Winthrop, who became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, took up that image when he proclaimed the Puritan colonists’ covenant aboard the vessel Arbella in 1630; he admonished his band of pilgrims to set an example of righteousness for the world. He concluded a very long sermon with these words:

Now the only way . . . to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. “Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,” in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.

Therefore let us choose life,
that we and our seed may live,
by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him,
for He is our life and our prosperity.

Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made use of the “city on the hill” metaphor in their inaugural addresses; Reagan conflated it with Jesus’ lamp on a lampstand by adding the adjective “shining” . . . America, said President Reagan, should be a “shining city on the hill.”

Now, I would be the last person to stand in a pulpit and tell you that I believe the United States of America was founded to be a “Christian nation.” I know my history far too well to offer that canard. America was not founded to be a Christian nation; it was founded to be a religiously free nation, a pluralist nation, a spiritually diverse nation. But America is a Christian majority country; it is a nation in which Christians have had influence; it is a nation in which Christians still have influence; and it is a nation in which Christians should act like Christians! It is we, the Christians — the followers of Jesus Christ — to whom Jesus gave the mission to be the “city on the hill,” to “let our light shine before others.”

Governor Winthrop, in his address to Puritan pilgrims, made reference to the Prophet Micah and made specific reference to that prophet’s proclamation: “[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8) Isaiah’s prophecy read today puts flesh on the bones of Micah’s admonition: we do justice, love kindness, and walk with God when we feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked.

We Episcopalians are pretty good at those material things. We run food pantries like our own Free Farmers’ Market. We run soup kitchens like the phenomenal ministry at Church of the Holy Apostles in New York City. We plant public gardens like our brothers and sisters at our own diocesan cathedral have done. We support shelters for the homeless and the abused, like our local Battered Women’s Shelter. We provide financial backing and volunteer labor to programs like Habitat for Humanity. Our own youth group and their adult supporters have traveled on mission trips to the Gulf Coast, to Appalachia, to central Pennsylvania, and to north-central Ohio to participate in housing improvement projects. We participate in Blanket Sunday programs to provide warm blankets and clothing to those in need. Our own knitting groups make shawls for the sick, and mittens, scarves, and woolen caps for merchant seamen. And we are just one of thousands of parishes around the country doing these things and many others.

We Episcopalians are pretty good, really, at the material mercies of feeding, housing, and clothing those in need.

But Isaiah didn’t stop fleshing out Micah’s call to justice, kindness, and humility with only those material ministries. He added that we have to “remove the yoke from among [us], the pointing of the finger, [and] the speaking of evil.” This is what Governor Winthrop was addressing when he said:

We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

I’m not so sure we Episcopalians . . . I’m not so sure that we mainstream American Christians of any denomination . . . have done such a good job in these areas.

Last Sunday was notable not only as the Feast of the Presentation, on which we heard that story of Simeon declaring the infant Jesus to be the light of the world, it was also Super Bowl Sunday. During the broadcast of that game, Coca-Cola offered an advertisement featuring several people of differing ethnicities singing in a variety of languages a rendition of the song America the Beautiful. It was, I thought, a lovely commercial. I enjoyed it. It reminded me of the same company’s ad from nearly 40 years ago when a crowd of folks on hillside proclaimed their desire to “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”

Apparently, however, there were others who saw the ad differently. Almost immediately after its showing, the internet social media was flooded with statements of outrage demanding that the Coca-Cola singers “speak American,” condemning the singing of “our national anthem” in any language other than English, and threatening a boycott of Coke. (As much as I might want to, I’m not going to address the issues that are raised by someone referring to the English language as “American” or by someone not knowing that America the Beautiful is not the national anthem of the United States.)

I must admit that I was both shocked and puzzled that people whom I believe would claim to be Christian, and who clearly claim to be Americans, would be upset with a successful American corporation advertising its product in a commercial in which people from all over the world extol the beauty of our country. The only explanation I can conceive is some sort of misunderstanding of what national unity is, and a misapprehension that uniformity of language promotes such unity. Indeed, that is the tenor of many remarks I’ve seen in the internet social media since the Super Bowl advertisement was aired. In many of those comments, the old image of America as a “melting pot” has been invoked.

Many of us may remember that image from grade school and junior high civics lessons; I remember a junior high school civics and history instructor who suggested another image. Our society is not and never has been a melting pot, he told us. A melting pot, he said, blends everything together. If our country was a melting pot, there wouldn’t be Hispanic barrios, black ghettos, Little Italies, Chinatowns, Levittowns, lace-curtain Irish neighborhoods, and all the other ethnic enclaves that have existed for decades and even centuries. We’re not a melting pot, he said. We are a tossed salad, a lively, tasty, vibrant, salty (to use Jesus’ metaphor) tossed salad. It is our diversity that makes us exciting and makes us strong, unity in diversity, not uniformity, which is what the critics of the Coca-Cola ad seem to want.

Ethnic diversity, however, is the biblical model. All the nations of the world receive a blessing through Abraham and his descendants, but they do not become Israel; they do not become Jews. Even as the nations stream to the mountain of God as Isaiah prophesied, even as God enrolls them as Psalm 87 describes declaring their birth in Zion, they remain Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia, and all the other nations of the world. As immigrants come to be part of America, even as they may become naturalized citizens, they retain their histories and identities as Moroccan, Thai, Xosa, French, Maori, and all the rest, with cultural heritages to be honored, languages to be spoken and sung, and diversity to be celebrated. The shining city on the hill shines with diversity, the diversity shown in the Coke commercial!

I hope you saw the ad. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. I hope you didn’t send any of those tweets and other messages condemning it and calling for people to “speak American.” I hope you didn’t receive any of those messages from acquaintances, but I have to tell you that I did. And I have to confess to you that it wasn’t until a few days later that I was able to reply to them. I have to confess to you that in failing to immediately respond and to gently rebuke, I failed to “remove the yoke from among [us], the pointing of the finger, [and] the speaking of evil.” I failed to “uphold a familiar commerce in meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.” I failed to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” And in that failure I allowed the bushel of hatred and malice to cover the light set upon the lampstand; I allowed the darkness of injustice and oppression to obscure the city on the hill.

And . . . I’m sorry to say . . . I don’t think I’m untypical as an Episcopalian, even as a mainstream American Christian. We are very good at the material ministries of food, housing, and clothing. Not so good at the spiritual ministries of unity and peace. We need to get better — I need to get better — at expressing the Christian faith in public. When someone tells a joke that is racist or sexist or homophobic, when someone makes a statement that demeans another, when someone speaks in any way that promotes injustice or oppression, we need — I need — to not be silent, but to respond immediately with “all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality.” Otherwise all of our material works of mercy, all the feeding, all the housing, all the clothing, will be obscured; the city on the hill will be hidden; our light will not shine for all to see; and none will glorify our Father in heaven.

Let us pray:

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart and especially the hearts of Christian people throughout our country — especially our own hearts — that any barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that we recognize that diversity is not division and that unity does not require uniformity. Help us to confront injustice and oppression without hatred or bitterness, to struggle for justice and truth with gentleness and patience, and to work with everyone with forbearance and respect, that our city on the hill may not be obscured and that our light may shine before others so that they glorify you, our Father in heaven, through your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

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

Costly Funeral – From the Daily Office – February 6, 2014

February 6, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Book of Genesis:

Abraham bowed down before the people of the land. He said to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, “If you only will listen to me! I will give the price of the field; accept it from me, so that I may bury my dead there.” Ephron answered Abraham, “My lord, listen to me; a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver — what is that between you and me? Bury your dead.” Abraham agreed with Ephron; and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants. So the field of Ephron in Machpelah, which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it and all the trees that were in the field, throughout its whole area, passed to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, in the presence of all who went in at the gate of his city.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Genesis 23:12-18 (NRSV) – February 6, 2014.)

Funeral Home Cartoon I seem to recall from studying Genesis each time I have had to preach on it that this purchase of the cave at Machpelah has been a subject of much rabbinic speculation over the centuries. Why, the rabbis seem to wonder, is Abraham willing to pay what is clearly an exorbitant price for the cave and the field (a field he doesn’t even actually want)?

“Four hundred” is sort of Old Testament code for “a whole bunch,” and when it comes to this particular episode it means something like 10 pounds of silver for this tiny piece of real estate. (On today’s market — I looked it up this morning — silver is going for $20 per ounce; so this purchase price would be about $3,200. That doesn’t seem terribly high, but clearly it was “back then,” whenever “then” was.) An interesting note is the relationship of the price to the location where the deal is struck, Kiriath Arba. The name means “the City of Four,” so the number 400 would be significant to the residents and the Hittites — 100 times the “number” of their city, 100 times the value? In any event, Abraham is willing to pay a whole lot of money for a burial plot.

My favorite of the rabbinic flights of fancy is the kabbalistic notion that the cave was known to Abraham to be the burial place of Adam. As the story goes, after God tossed Adam and Eve out of Eden, God carved out a cave that he would use to bury the first man and, after him, the patriarchs of God’s Chosen People. Sure enough, when Adam died, God buried him there as planned; God lit an eternal candle whose light would be visible only to certain humans and the presence of Adam’s body gave the cave the scent of Eden which, like the light, could be detected only by that select group.

Eons later, when Abraham was visited by three men (who turned out to be angels of God) at the oaks of Mamre (Gen. 18) he served them a roasted calf. The story goes that he had to chase the calf, which ran into this very cave where Abraham saw the light of the candle and perceived the scent of Eden. He also heard a voice saying, “Adam is buried here, and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob should be prepared for this place as well.” So, that day he became determined to eventually take possession of the cave and Sarah’s death ended up being the opportunity to do so. (One of the rabbis who tells this story asserts that he did not do so earlier so as to avoid arousing suspicion.)

There are other (mostly less outlandish) rabbinic speculations, but none of them strike me as anymore likely than the most obvious. Abraham is grief-stricken. He has lost his life partner, his wife of several decades, the mother of his son and heir. He simply is not thinking straight. He seems to be, but he’s just going through the motions. He doesn’t even try to bargain with Ephron! This is Abraham, for pity’s sake, a man who has bargained with God, and he doesn’t haggle one bit over the excessive price of the cave.

I’ve seen it time and time again, particularly with the death of a spouse or a child. The survivors, left to figure things out, to go on alone, to honor their departed loved one, spare no expense on the funeral. An entire industry has grown up and become profitable — highly profitable — catering to (preying on?) the grief of the American people.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect most of the funeral directors with whom I have worked. They are good people trying to be of help at a difficult time. But, let’s be honest, the costs associated with burial today can be outrageous — they put Abraham’s paltry ten pounds of silver to shame. You might get a casket for that value, but then there’s the plot, the embalming, the hearse and limousine rental, the flowers, and on and on and on . . . . Funerals are costly — and when someone is numb with grief, they can be even more so!

That’s why I’ve made pre-arrangements and planned my own funeral, and why I counsel parishioners and friends to do the same. Abraham would have been much better off if he and Sarah had purchased Ephron’s cave ahead of time. (Although that would have meant that we wouldn’t have some really fantastic and outlandish rabbinic tall tales to enjoy.)

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

I Saw the Light! – Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation – February 2, 2014

February 2, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Feast of the Presentation (“Candlemas”), February 2, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 24:7-10; Hebrews 2:14-18; and Luke 2:22-40. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, *
according to thy word;
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, *
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people,
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, *
and to be the glory of thy people Israel.
(BCP 1979, p. 66)

Some texts just need to be recited in the language of an earlier era. I have said that canticle almost every night since I was 14 years old and first became an Episcopalian, and although I find the truth perhaps better spoken in the more modern translations that we find in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and in the modern language of the Rite II Evening Prayer service, there is an elegance to the poetry of the earlier Books of Common Prayer. Simeon’s song is known liturgically as the Nunc Dimittis, and I find it comforting as a bedtime prayer.

Old Simeon had been hanging around the Temple for many years, a devout and orthodox Jew, hoping to see the coming of the Messiah; indeed, he believed he had been promised by God that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. One day, this young couple of poor, country folk came in to perform the sacrifices of purification and redemption, the restoration of Mary to ritual purity following childbirth and the pydion haben or redemption of their first-born male child. As soon as he saw them and the baby they brought, he knew his hope was realized, that God had kept God’s promise.

I’ve always heard behind the older translation, “now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,” a hint of Simeon’s own death, a sort of “now I can die happy” statement. The more modern translation of the NRSV, however, has none of that dark foreshadowing: “Now you are dismissing your servant” has no hint of death in it, but it lacks the exuberance of the Prayer Book’s Rite II version, “You now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised.” In Simeon’s encounter with the Child, he is set free! I can almost hear him breaking into Hank Williams’ joyful country hymn I Saw the Light:

I saw the light; I saw the light;
No more darkness, no more night.
Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight.
Praise the Lord! I saw the light!

I can just see him dancing in the Temple holding this Holy Infant! Simeon is not just dismissed; he is set free, not to die, but to live! He can, of course, die happy; but before that he can live free. He is among the first of the redeemed.

In bringing the infant Jesus to the Temple, Mary and Joseph are continuing what they began at his circumcision; they are raising this child to be an observant Jew, they are teaching him to be a child of the Law, a participant in the Covenant from birth on. Mary comes to be restored after giving birth, which according to the Torah, rendered her ritually unable to participate in the religious life of her people. The Law of Moses in the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 12, prescribes:

If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days . . . . On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Her time of blood purification shall be thirty-three days; she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purification are completed. . . . When the days of her purification are completed . . . she shall bring to the priest . . . a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering. . . . If she cannot afford a sheep, she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering.

With this ritual, Luke conflates the ritual of redemption, the pydion haben. In Exodus, Chapter 13, God says, “You shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. . . . Every firstborn male among your children you shall redeem.” (vv. 12-13) In the third chapter of Numbers, this command is repeated: “All the firstborn are mine; when I killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both human and animal; they shall be mine. I am the Lord.” (Num. 3:13) The price of redemption is then set at five “shekels of the sanctuary, a shekel of twenty gerahs.” (v. 47) Luke leaves out this detail, but it is very likely that Mary and Joseph carried through as required by the Law.

Joseph and Mary, as my colleague Juan Oliver has noted, “are the embodiment of the majority of Jews, who, illiterate and too poor to offer any sacrifice, lived perennially in a state of ritual defilement or ‘sin.'” We observe in their adherence to these rituals, in their making of these offerings, the lowliness of Jesus’ family and their marginalized position in society, but more importantly their participation in the full life of their faith. It is from that fullness of faith that Jesus’ self-understanding and his mission flows. Because of his parents’ faithfulness to the Law, Simeon sees in this infant “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of [God’s] people Israel.” Hope flows even from places of extreme poverty when those with the least embrace the rituals of an abundant life.

We began our worship this morning with one of our own “rituals of an abundant life.” From very early on in the life of the Christian community, it has been a tradition to carry candles on this day, and to bless the candles that the church will use throughout the coming year. For that reason, an alternative name of this Feast of the Presentation is “Candlemas,” the Mass of the candles. The tradition of blessing the candles dates to the mid-Fifth Century, and the candle procession is first attested to in the Diary of Egeria which describes such a procession in Jerusalem in middle of the Fourth Century.

An 11th Century Cistercian abbot, Blessed Guerric of Igny (c.1070-1157), preached of the symbolism of the Candlemas procession:

Behold then, the candle alight in Simeon’s hands. You must light your own candles by enkindling them at his, those lamps which the Lord commanded you to bear in your hands. So come to him and be enlightened that you do not so much bear lamps as become them, shining within yourself and radiating light to your neighbors. May there be a lamp in your heart, in your hand, and in your mouth: let the lamp in your heart shine for yourself, the lamps in your hand and mouth shine for your neighbors. The lamp in your heart is a reverence for God inspired by faith; the lamp in your hand is the example of a good life; and the lamp in your mouth are the words of consolation you speak.

Go forth then from this place and, like Simeon, speak of the freedom Jesus gives us, speak words of consolation, spread the light of Christ, the light to enlighten the Gentiles. Go forth and sing, “I saw the light! I saw the light! No more sorrow! No more night! Praise the Lord! I saw the Light!” Amen.

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

The Neighbors Can See In! — Sermon for the Annual Parish Meeting — January 26, 2014

January 26, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Patronal Feast Sunday of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector. It was the Sunday of the Annual Parish Meeting and, as part of the service, a newly built Gallery addition to the parish’s fellowship hall was dedicated.

(The lessons for the day were for the Conversion of St. Paul from the Episcopal Church’s sanctoral calendar: Acts 26:9-21; Galatians 1:11-24; Psalm 67; and Matthew 10:16-22. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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St Paul's Church -- December 2013

A few decades ago when I was studying law I was introduced to the term “officious intermeddler.” In law, an officious intermeddler is someone who, on their own and without any authority either by invitation or pre-existing legal duty, interjects himself into the affairs of another, and then seeks some sort of recompense for doing so. That pretty much describes young Saul of Tarsus and at least his initial quest to rid Judaism of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. He was simply a rabbinic student, not any sort of priest or religious official when he began his crusade against Peter and James and the others. I don’t think he was doing it for money, but I do think he might have been looking for a pay-off in the form a religious reputation; if he was successful, he would become a powerful rabbi among the Jewish the people.

Saul was born and raised in the Greek city of Tarsus and apparently received a good education both in orthodox Judaism and in Greek philosophy; Tarsus was a center of Stoic teaching and we see a good deal of Stoicism in the letters he wrote after becoming a Christian missionary. While still fairly young, Saul was sent to Jerusalem to receive rabbinic instruction at the Hillel school under Gamaliel, one of the most noted rabbis in Jewish history. This would have exposed the young rabbinic student to a broad range of classical literature, philosophy, and ethics. Not a lot more is known of his background before he decided to make a name for himself dealing with the pesky proclaimers of what he considered to be a pernicious heresy.

Until the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. the followers of Jesus of Nazareth were simply one of many subsets of Judaism; there were few, if any, Gentile followers of Jesus and those Gentiles who wanted to be a part of the new group were required to convert to Judaism before being allowed to join the Jesus group. Judaism at the time was much like Christianity is today; there were different “schools,” similar to our denominations.

We are familiar from the Gospel stories with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, two of the competing versions of the faith; we may also be familiar with the Essenes who were part of the mix. In addition, influential rabbis had their groups of followers: John the Baptizer had had his disciples; Gamaliel had his; perhaps Nicodemus, who became a secret follower of Jesus, had his own school; and, of course, Jesus had had his. On the major feasts and liturgical days, all Jews would observe the Temple rituals together, but for their sabbath observance and instruction they would go to the synagogue which adhered to the school they found most convincing, or where their rabbi taught. They recognized each other as Jews; they just didn’t agree on some particulars. No big deal. And, usually, when their rabbi passed away, their group disbanded.

Except for the disciples of Jesus, those people who followed what they called “the Way.” Their rabbi was dead; the whole city had seen him crucified. But unlike the followers of other dead rabbis, these people didn’t disband; they claimed that their rabbi was still alive and they still met to proclaim his teachings. They even went so far as to suggest that he was divine; they were claiming that he had ushered in a new kingdom of God. In the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, some sought to have them kicked out of the temple, but Saul’s own teacher, Gamaliel, defended them. The Book of Acts reports his words to the Sanhedrin:

Fellow Israelites, consider carefully what you propose to do to these men. For some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him; but he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and disappeared. After him Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them — in that case you may even be found fighting against God! (Acts 5:35-39)

Apparently Saul did not agree with his teacher. He became an officious intermeddler, a self-appointed — that’s really what “officious” means — a self-appointed policeman protecting the purity of the Temple; he was going to get that Jesus crowd kicked out. In his letter to the Galatians he would confess that prior to his conversion he “was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.” (Gal. 1:13) It is in the description of the martyrdom of the first deacon, Stephen, that we first encounter Saul in the New Testament. We don’t know whether Saul was an instigator of the events that led to Stephen’s death, but we know that he was there.

The 7th Chapter of Acts tells us that Stephen preached a sermon in the presence of the Temple council, an admittedly rather inflammatory homily, after which “with a loud shout [those present] rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.” (Acts 7:57-58) We are told that “Saul approved of their killing him.” (Acts 8:1) Saul didn’t take part, really; he just stood at the road side looking on.

After that, Saul became more and more openly and actively involved in the persecution of the Jesus movement, “ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” (Acts 8:3) Eventually, this officious intermeddler received his remuneration — recognition and ratification of his activities by the high priest from whom he sought, and received, letters of warrant empowering him to go to Damascus, “arrest any who belonged to the Way, men or women, [and] bring them bound to Jerusalem.” (Acts 9:2) It was while journeying to Damascus that the events he described to King Agrippa in the reading we heard this morning occurred. It was while on that road to Damascus that the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which he had been unable to see, was revealed to him. As he wrote to the Galatians, God “was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.” But in the experience, we are told in Acts, something like scales covered his eyes as if symbolizing the blindness of heart he had suffered, and until he learned the fullness of the Gospel he was unable to see.

I will return to Saul and his conversion in a moment, but before I do I want to review a little bit of our parish history. So for the moment, let’s put Saul aside but keep in mind his story, especially those scales that eventually fell from his eyes.

We are beginning the 197th year of the life of St. Paul’s Parish. Founded in 1817 in Weymouth, the congregation moved to this location in the 1830s. After about 50 years in a wooden Greek revival structure, in 1884 the congregation built the stone church in which we are worshiping today. When weather permitted they would gather for after church fellowship on the lawn, fully open to their neighbors’ view and could invite the neighbors to take part.

In 1903, they built the Parish House in which our present day Parish Hall, kitchen, and dining room are located. It was a separate structure with one of those wide and inviting Victorian front porches. When the congregation gathered after church for fellowship, education, or other activities, they came and went through the front doors of the church, onto that veranda, and in and out the front door of the Parish House, again fully visible to their neighbors whom they continued to invite to participate.

Another fifty or so years later, the congregation built Canterbury House and linked it together with the Parish House and the church building with the concourse that came to be known simply as “the hallway.” The hallway replaced the Victorian veranda with fortress-like stone wall; it cut off the neighbors’ view of the congregation’s comings and goings, and blocked the neighbors’ appreciation of the church’s fellowship and other activities. The hallway incorporated a new entryway off the driveway leading to a parking lot that was built at the rear of the church property, and it was through those doors (and other doors at the rear of the Parish House) that members began entering the church building. The front doors of the Parish House and the church building fell into disuse, and the parishioners stopped invited the neighbors.

If anything was going on inside the Episcopal Church, you couldn’t tell it from the street. Stained glass windows on the church building, opaqued windows on the hallway, that imposing stone wall, and a set of large red doors which could not be opened from the outside blocked the public’s view of whatever it was the Episcopalians were doing.

Interestingly enough, the Episcopalians couldn’t see out, either. But until the new Gallery was built, and the sunshine and view of the street let in, we had failed to notice that! We were simply unaware that when we were inside this church’s physical plant we were visually cut off from the world around us; we just didn’t notice. We sat at here at the road side, but we were disconnected from the world going by on the major trafficway outside.

To be sure, there was plenty going on inside the church. Things were booming. It was the 1960s and the World War II and Korean War generations were coming to church, raising their children, participating in church clubs, holding fundraisers, even reaching out in overseas mission. The Episcopal Church was an active place . . . you just couldn’t tell it from the street.

And that story was true for the Episcopal Church as a whole, as a national institution, as well. We were pretty much a self-contained and self-reliant denomination. Someone not born into the Episcopal Church might occasionally wander through our doors, become fascinated with our peculiar style of being Christian, and join us, but we didn’t go out and encourage that sort of thing. Billy Graham and people like him might go out and evangelize and try to convert people, but that just wasn’t our style. We were doing quite well behind our stone walls and opaque windows, and our understanding of evangelism was that it was something other people did. After all, as one grand dame of the era is supposed to have put it, “Everyone who should be an Episcopalian already is one.” The world outside the Episcopal Church didn’t know much about us, and we were fine with that.

Then came the 1970s and things began to change. Social change was in the air both in the secular world and in the church. It was not comfortable. Women started suggesting that some of them might have a call to ordained ministry, and some of our best theologians supported them and agreed; behind our stone walls and opaque windows we were fighting like cats and dogs about it. The outside world only got a glimpse of it when a few very angry people threw open the red doors and stormed out, proclaiming themselves to be the only real Anglican Christians and the rest of us heretics, doomed to Hell. We got a lot of press, but not the kind of attention we really wanted. As soon as we could, we closed the red doors and regained our composure behind our stone walls.

But then, not very many years later, the General Convention approved a new Prayer Book. The process of revision had been going on for nearly 20 years but most of us hadn’t been paying attention. When the new book was approved in 1976 and then ratified in 1979 it seemed to many that the church was being completely overturned. The outside world got another glimpse of us when some more very angry people threw open the red doors and stormed out, proclaiming that they used the only real Anglican Prayer Book and that the rest of us were heretics, damned to Hell. Again, we got a lot of press, but once again it was not the kind of attention we really wanted. As soon as we could, we got back behind our stone walls.

Things were quiet for a while, but then the people of the Diocese of New Hampshire decided to elect their Archdeacon to be their Bishop and, horror of horrors, it turned out (they had known all along) he was a homosexual living in a committed, long-term relationship with another man. All hell broke loose behind our stone stone walls and opaque windows as we dealt with that. The arguing got so loud that the neighbors could hear us and, again, a group of very angry people threw open the red doors and stormed out, proclaiming themselves to be the only real Anglican Christians and the rest of us heretics, definitely headed straight to Hell. Again, we got a lot of press, and again we tried to regain our composure behind our stone walls. But we couldn’t because, finally, we started noticing something.

We noticed that the church was getting smaller. Fewer people were attending. Fewer children were enrolling in Sunday School. Fewer teens were coming to EYC meetings. Fewer dollars were getting deposited into the bank. And we decided, because we had gotten out of the habit of looking outside, that it was because of something we had done — it was because we ordained women; it was because we’d changed the Prayer Book; it was because we had a gay bishop. We were wrong, however. If we hadn’t been shut up behind our stone walls and opaque windows, we might have noted that the same thing — lower attendance, fewer children, fewer teens, less income — was happening to the Lutherans, and the Methodists, and the Presbyterians, and also to non-church groups like the Masons, and the Elks, and local bowling leagues. There was a societal change going on and, unable to see out through our stone walls and opaque windows, we couldn’t see it. We couldn’t figure out why the church was leaking membership because we weren’t looking in the right place.

And while all of that was going on . . . every time it rained there was water pouring into the church basement. Every time there was a heavy snow and it melted, there was water pouring into the basement. We got used to seeing buckets in the entryway and water stains on the basement ceiling because we couldn’t figure out where the leak was and we couldn’t figure out how to stop it. Physically, as well as metaphorically, we couldn’t figure out why the church was leaking.

We’ve learned a thing or two in the Episcopal Church in the last decade. We’ve learned that the church fails to grow not because of our internal failures; it fails to grow because of our external failures. The church has failed to grow because we have sequestered ourselves behind stone walls and opaque windows, and have failed to engage with our neighbors, who cannot see what we are doing and to whom we have not been paying attention. Out of this have come movements and experiments to get our denomination back out, on the other side of our stone walls, back into public engagement.

We are seeing new ministries such as “Church Without Walls,” an experiment in the Jacksonville, Florida, which calls people from all walks of life into partnership with “the least of these.” “Church Without Walls” describes itself as “a community of presence made up of individuals looking for the spiritual companionship and connection that give meaning to life.” The community seeks to welcome everyone — the homeless and the affluent, the addicted and those in recovery, the churched and the un-churched, the spiritual but not religious, the believer, the doubter and the seeker. They are grounded in the reality that “by opening ourselves to strangers, the despised or frightening or unintelligible other, we will see more and more of the holy.” (Description from the Diocese of Florida website.) And similar communities are being created in San Jose, California; Springfield, Pennsylvania; Bentonville, Arkansas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and elsewhere.

We are seeing experiments in public liturgy such as “Ashes to Go” — an effort to give people an opportunity to receive the mark of repentance and encourage them to give thought to their spiritual lives without requiring them to attend a full Ash Wednesday service. The first such public imposition of ashes was offered by the cathedral in Chicago, Illinois, and has since been offered in a variety of locations throughout the country, including some places here in Ohio.

What the Episcopal Church has learned through these and other programs is that we have to tear down the stone walls and break out the opaqued windows that have separated us from our neighbors. When we do that and the church again engages with the world around it, the leaking stops; the church begins to grow again. Like Saul, after the scales fell his eyes when he was baptized and took the name Paul, by which we know him better, we have seen the truth and know that we, too, are “to open [the eyes of those around us] so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in [Jesus].” (Acts 26:18)

And here we are in a congregation that has quite literally removed its stone wall and its opaqued windows, whose neighbors can now see clearly what is going on in the Episcopal Church, and who can see our neighbors even when we are inside our building. We have opened ourselves to engagement with the world around us. We are not a “Church Without Walls,” but we have become a church that lives in glass house . . . the neighbors can see in and we’d better make sure that what they see is good stuff!

If you have picked up a copy of the 2014 Annual Journal, you will see some interesting data. We are at the beginning a new period of growth. For 2013 we have a mixed bag of membership statistics: 21 new members joined the congregation by baptism, confirmation, reception or transfer; we had larger congregations for both Easter and Christmas services; we had more Sunday services. On the other hand, our average attendance is down slightly. The task before us is to grow both in membership and active commitment. The foundation is here. For 2014, we have a 7% increase in the number of pledging households; total pledging is up (compared to last year) by over 4%. We have a committed membership.

Our outreach to the community is strong. The Free Farmers’ Market, our food pantry, assisted 5,333 individuals during the past year, distributing nearly 50,000 pounds of food. The volunteer effort to accomplish that is phenomenal, and all members of the coordinating committee and all the volunteer workers are to be commended. Our support of the regional Battered Women’s Shelter expanded this year as, in addition to the regular monthly collection of supplies, our new Lenten Rose Chapter of the Daughters of the King oversaw a special drive for personal hygiene items and, through the effort of our Senior Warden, we provided several dozen stuffed toys to the children sheltered there. Our youth group also continued their annual tradition of making and giving away teddy bears to needy children at Christmas time.

Outreach of a different sort is exercised in the monthly Brown Bag Concert program which is entering its seventh year. Our music director is to be commended for the excellent work she does in recruiting performers and hosting our guests at those events. Because of the construction of the new Gallery, we did not hold any “Fridays at St. Paul’s Concerts,” but we are looking forward to the return of that program as early as this coming May when the chamber ensemble of the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra will be performing in this sanctuary.

Fellowship continues with the men’s breakfasts, the Episcopal Church Women, the new Daughters of the King chapter, the Sunday morning breakfast group, and the return this month of the Foyer Group dinner program. Christian education for children and youth is going strong with Godly Play and the Episcopal Youth Community; many of our EYC members are recognized leaders in the diocesan youth programs and are to be commended for that. Many of them are not here today because they have spent the weekend in training to lead the next “Happening” retreat for young people. For adults we have a regular weekly bible study and, starting last September, an Education for Ministry seminar group going strong.

By nearly every measure, this is a vibrant and lively parish. This church is no longer leaking! It is not leaking rain water into the basement; it is not leaking membership. Both the literal and the figurative stone walls have fallen away, like the scales that fell from St. Paul’s eyes, and the vibrancy and life of this parish is visible for all to see and for all to be invited into.

We were blinded and confused by our stone walls and our opaque windows, whether figurative or literal, but in the end, we know that we are called, as Paul was, to share the wonderful news that the risen Jesus, the Son of God, is Messiah and his kingdom is here now. Our experience of engaging in the Inviting the Future Project and building our beautiful new Gallery, is our “ Damascus Road ” experience. A new day for St. Paul’s Parish is shining through the windows of the Gallery and our calling is to insure that the neighbors — who can see us once again, just as they could in 1884 and in 1903 and in every year up to 1960, and (more importantly) whom we can now see — our calling is to insure that they can see the kingdom of God shining out, that they are invited to come into it.

Let us pray:

Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany)

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

Gimmicks Distract – From the Daily Office – January 11, 2014

January 11, 2014 / eric / 1 Comment

From the Psalter:

Hallelujah!
Praise God in his holy temple;
praise him in the firmament of his power.
Praise him for his mighty acts;
praise him for his excellent greatness.
Praise him with the blast of the ram’s-horn; *
praise him with lyre and harp.
Praise him with timbrel and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe.
Praise him with resounding cymbals;
praise him with loud-clanging cymbals.
Let everything that has breath
praise the Lord.
Hallelujah!

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalme 150 (BCP Version) – January 11, 2014.)

Clown Presiding at Communion The musical Godspell debuted in 1971 (my junior year in college); in it, Christ is portrayed as a clown. Whether it was an expression of or the catalyst for the phenomenon of offering clown eucharists as an edgy, avant-garde presentation of the Christian Mysteries, I really don’t know. The two are inextricably linked in my memory.

And . . . to be honest, I never cared for either. And . . . being further honest, that may be because I have never like clowns. I find them creepy. On the other hand, a bishop of whom I was very fond and for whom I had great respect, loved Clown Eucharists. He had a set of clown-decorated vestments made; he offered a clown eucharist at least once each year (often at diocesan convention) throughout his episcopate. They may have resonated for him because, unlike me, he loved clowns.

But I didn’t (and don’t) and so the clown eucharist was, for me, a distraction. I couldn’t get passed the gimmick, the clown images and the circus music, to the Christ at the center of mass. The clown gimmick, not the foolishness of God to which it was supposedly pointing, took over and seemed to be the point of the whole thing.

Some years later, when the music of U2 became popular and new generation were finding spiritual meaning in the band’s lyrics, someone put together a celebration of the Holy Mysteries in which that music played a part — the major part — it was the only music — and promoted the event as a U2charist.

“Right,” I thought. “The clown eucharist in a new guise.” Again, for me, the gimmick (the U2 music) distracts from the principal focus. I attended a U2charist and, for me, all I heard was the band’s music; I didn’t hear the gospel. That’s not to say it wasn’t there; it may have been. I just couldn’t hear it through the distraction of the soundtrack.

Since then I have heard of (but not attended) celebrations of Holy Communion in which the music was all from the Beatles canon, or all “oldies” from the 1960s, or all Broadway show tunes . . . and I wouldn’t be surprised if there have been other similar “thematic” eucharists. All, I think, the descendants of the clown masses of the 1970s — attempts to package the Christian Mysteries in edgy and avant-garde ways to present them to a target audience, to sneak the gospel message in under the guise of entertainment.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Let me hasten to say that I think entertainment is fine. If clowns float your boat, go the circus! If you like the music of U2 (and I do), listen to it! If you like Broadway musicals (and I do), go to the theater! And if you find something of spiritual import in those entertainments (and I do), great! Make use of it in your spiritual life and, even, in church services and celebrations.

The last of the psalms encourages the people of God to make use of many forms of entertainment, symbolized by musical instruments — trumpets and horns (the ram’s horn), stringed instruments, percussion, wood winds — and dance, in their worship. So I believe it’s fine to make use of clowns, to use of U2’s music, to sing the Beatles’ lyrics, to offer the tunes from Broadway shows as part of the liturgy.

But when these things become the reason for the service, when we name the service for the clowns or the bands or the theater district, the tool meant to be used for praising God has become the object of praise. The psalm says, “Praise God with strings and pipe,” not “Praise the strings and pipe;” “Praise God with resounding cymbals,” not “Praise the cymbals.”

Others, I am quite certain, will have found the U2charists a path to God. Other, I know, will have found in the Beatles mass and in the Broadway eucharists the truth of the gospel. After all, that bishop whom I really did love found Christ in clowns no matter how creepy I may have found them!

But for me, these feel “gimmicky” — one or two Beatles songs might be used to good effect, but nothing but Beatles music through the whole service? Not so much. U2’s Gloria could certainly stand as a liturgical piece, but all U2 music throughout the mass? Too much of a good thing. I’m not sure that I can say anything positive about clowns . . . but someone might, perhaps. My point is that themed eucharists like these, in which the theme predominates, feel like gimmicks. It feels to me like we have stopped praising God with the clowns and have started praising the clowns; the gimmick distracts. Praise God with the gimmick, but don’t praise the gimmick!

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

A Theology of Gift Giving – Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas – January 5, 2014

January 5, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Second Sunday of Christmas, January 5, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The Revised Common Lectionary, Christmas 2A: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Psalm 84; and Matthew 2:1-12. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Gifts of the Wise Men Very recently in the church office mail there was this small envelope addressed to me personally — the address has been typed out on a separate sheet of paper, cut therefrom, and glued onto the envelope. There is no return address and the postmark is a Cleveland, OH, cancelation. Inside there was no personal note of any kind, just a page torn from the last quarter’s Forward Day by Day devotional. One side, as you can see, has been scribbled all over; clearly not the side I am supposed to read. The other is the meditation for October 30, 2013, which begins:

Have you ever suffered because you sat through a really boring, abstract, incoherent, and disconnected sermon? Most of us have. Believe it or not, some people report that after enduring something like that, they decide never to go back to that particular church or any church at all. Sermons can make or break some people’s relationship with the church.

(The entire meditation can be read at Forward Day by Day.)

I have to be honest — my first reaction on receiving this was to think, “Well, that’s not something I wanted to get!” And immediately I was reminded of one Christmas when our children were quite young.

Our family tradition is to wait until Christmas morning to open our packages, so even if we’d been to the Midnight Mass we would rise early to see what Santa had brought. On the Christmas I recalled, our daughter rushed down the stairs from her second-floor room to the tree set up in our first-floor den and tore open the largest of her gifts, ripping to shreds the wrapping paper with obvious excitement. However, when she saw what was under the wrapping her expression changed to disappointment and she cried out, “That’s not what I wanted!” I don’t remember what she had wanted; I don’t even remember what we had given her. But I remember that reaction.

It got me to thinking about the reasons we give things to one another, the how of it and the why of it. What is the “theology of gift giving?” The gifts of the wise men to the Christ-child help us to explore that question.

The first element of such a theology would be the recognition that the giving of gifts is perfectly acceptable! There are some who teach that it is not, but we have plenty of examples in Scripture including, of course, the very story we are told in today’s gospel reading of the visitation of the Magi. More basically, we have God’s own example starting with the gift of life to plants, animals, and human beings as described in the Creation stories and exhibited most clearly in God’s self-giving in Jesus Christ. Generosity and charity are fundamental to an active Christian faith. Giving is the very thing that defines our belief: God-made-human gave himself entirely so that we might be free to give ourselves entirely back to God. As James said, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” (James 1:17, NRSV) Gift-giving, in a sense, is the purpose of the Incarnation, so it is something strongly encouraged.

The second element of a theology of gift giving is that giving gifts allows us to be ministers of grace, the free and undeserved help of God. The gifts of the wise men were symbolic: the hymn “We Three Kings” lays out in verse what these are. Gold is a symbol of kingship, frankincense (used for incense in worship) is a symbol of deity, and myrrh (an embalming oil) is a symbol of death. (By the way, did you know that that hymn is quintessentially Episcopalian? It was written by John J. Hopkins in 1857 for a Christmas pageant at General Theological Seminary, the Episcopal Church divinity school in New York City.) In other words, they are symbolic of the full grace and mercy of God incarnate in Jesus. Every gift we receive, especially those from God but really from anyone, is a demonstration of God’s grace because, after all, grace is undeserved. How many times have you opened a present and sat there with the gift still in the box, looking at the giver with eyes and thinking to yourself, “What done to deserve this?” That question, of course, is rhetorical. The answer is “Nothing.” Gift giving is a form of grace by which we imitate the behavior of God and model the character of God.

The third element of a theology of gift giving is that it give us opportunity to display the love of God. “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver,” wrote Paul to the Corinthians. (2 Cor. 9:7, ESV) And, of course, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” (John 3:16, NRSV) Every gift should be a reflection of that love. If a gift is a real gift it is given with no thought of return. It’s not about starting an endless series of gift exchanges. It’s not about buttering someone up. It’s not about impressing someone or trying to get someone to do something for you. A real gift is an act of unconditional love, with no demands, no hints, no requirements of any return. Love, as Paul reminds us in the First Letter to the Corinthians,

is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. (1 Cor. 13:4-6)

Our gift-giving character should be one of genuine love. By giving a gift, we are symbolically recalling the gift of Christ for our salvation because “God so loved the world.”
The final element of a theology of gift giving, the element to which the first three point, is that it is relational. When the Magi encountered the Christ-child, they worshiped him: “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.” Worship is an expression of relationship at its deepest. However we define the word worship, it has its center in how we relate to God; it is the very reason, Scripture tells us, that we were created.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite poets is the African American James Weldon Johnson. At funerals, I often use one the poems from his collection God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. Another poem in that book is entitled The Creation; it explores this truth of our creation. The poem begins —

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
“I’m lonely —
I’ll make me a world.”

The poem continues, as Genesis does, detailing the creation of earth, the seas, the plants, the animals . . . and then goes on —

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,
And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And God said, “I’m lonely still.”

Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man!”

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;
Then into it He blew the breath of life,

And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

“Like a mammy bending over her baby . . . .” We are created for relationship — relationship with God and relationship with each other. Like the gift giving of the Magi, that’s what our gift giving to one another is all about. It is a tangible expression of relationship; although gifts are given out of love with no expectation of reciprocation, they do provoke a response. They are relational, and in the way we relate to each other, especially in our giving of gifts to each other, we exhibit how we relate to God.

I’ll be honest. I was upset by this anonymous gift. But in the end I’m grateful for it because it is a reminder of this most important element of the theology of gift giving, this relational aspect. After that rather brutal opening paragraph, the Forward Day by Day meditation examines what it calls “Jesus’ methodology” of preaching by story-telling and then concludes, “In spite of all of our media gadgets, communications systems, and technological tools, we still need to truly perceive, listen, and understand.”

My mentor, the late Fr. Karl Spatz, taught me to think of a sermon as a conversation and as a gift. A sermon is not a lecture and it has many participants. Preaching is grounded in community, and like gift giving is relational. Preaching is not me or any clergy person standing in the pulpit telling you what we think that you should hear. A sermon is an exploration of the things we all struggle to understand, the troubles we all have to deal with, the things we all try to do better, the joys we all celebrate. A sermon is a priest’s prayerful and considered reflection upon these things, offered humbly as a gift to the gathered community. The congregation’s part in the conversation is to receive the gift and, as the meditation says, make the effort “to truly perceive, listen, and understand.” That may sometimes mean that we continue the conversation at a later time, perhaps through notes like this one — but we can only really continue the conversation that if I know who you are . . . .

When all is said and done, any gift giving (including any preaching) is an imperfect thing. It is an imperfect thing that seeks the perfection of the one true gift, the gift of Jesus for the salvation of the world. Amen.

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

Category: Eucharist (Page 28 of 36)

The Looking Glass – Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent (Year A) – March 9, 2014

Jesus the Lens – Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, RCL Year A – March 2, 2014

Living With Integrity – Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany (Year A) – February 23, 2014

Choose Life! L’Chaim – Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany – February 16, 2014

City on the Hill, Obscured – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany, Year A – February 9, 2014

Costly Funeral – From the Daily Office – February 6, 2014

I Saw the Light! – Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation – February 2, 2014

The Neighbors Can See In! — Sermon for the Annual Parish Meeting — January 26, 2014

Gimmicks Distract – From the Daily Office – January 11, 2014

A Theology of Gift Giving – Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas – January 5, 2014

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