That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Eucharist (Page 32 of 36)

Going Fishing, Finding Grace – Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter – April 14, 2013

April 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Third Sunday of Easter: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; and John 21:1-19. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Palestinian Fishing Boat 1880Several years ago, shortly after my mother died, my step-dad’s business partner also passed away leaving my step-dad to run the business they had created together. Now it is no insult to my step-dad, Stan, who had never before been a business owner, to say that he knew little or nothing about running a business. He’d been a tool-and-die man most of his working life with a brief foray into sales, but he’d never been in the “front office” and he’d certainly never been a manager or executive of any sort. Stan didn’t know accounts receivable from fish, and inventory control was a foreign language to him.

So I took a leave of absence from the parish where I was then rector, left Evie and the kids on their own in Kansas, moved in with my step-dad in Costa Mesa, California, and became the de facto president and chief executive officer of Halogen Valve Systems. The company had been created to manufacture and market an emergency chlorine valve actuator for municipal water systems, a product my step-dad and his partner had invented and patented. I knew nothing about chlorine, water systems, or valves, but I did know computers, accounting, and business management, so I dove right in to the job, searching through computer files, finding blueprints and parts lists, learning supplier names and product numbers, customer contacts, and so forth; contacting suppliers and customers; charting supply and distribution patterns; organizing the warehouse, the manufacturing shop, and the front office. In the meantime, Stan taught me about chlorine gas and water purification and emergency valve actuators.

After a couple of months, I had the business pretty well systematized and was ready to turn it back to my step-dad and an office manager, so it came time to show my step-dad what I’d set up and teach him what he needed to know. We’d sit down in my office together and, at each session, we’d spend about an hour going over some aspect of the management plan. Our time was limited to an hour because each time, at just about the hour mark, Stan would stand up and say, “I’m going out to the shop.” And off he’d go, out to the manufacturing floor to work with the guys who were building the valve actuators. What he was doing is exactly what Peter does in today’s gospel lesson from John.

Stan could only take so much management talk, so much double-entry bookkeeping, so much inventory control . . . at some point, at that hour limit, he was filled up. He needed to do something with which he was familiar, to give his brain and his spirit time to process all the confusion of front office management. He was going back to the part of the business he could understand. Peter does the same thing in today’s gospel lesson. He’s taken as much confusion as he can stand. All the glory and wonder at the beginning of Holy Week, all the terror and sadness of Good Friday, all the bewilderment and relief and joy of Easter Sunday . . . it’s all been just about more than he can take and it’s time to do something he can understand. “I’m going fishing,” he says. “I’m going back to the part of this business I understand.” And the others know exactly how he feels and they chime in with, “We’ll join you.”

So off they go and as they are fishing, a figure appears on the beach and calls to them. It’s Jesus, who gives them some advice about fishing and then invites them to a grilled fish breakfast he is preparing. While they are eating, he and Peter engage in a conversation, but before we get into that, let’s take a look at the other major story of this morning.

Our Lectionary also gives us the story of St. Paul’s conversion in today’s reading from the Book of Acts. It’s a familiar enough story for us here at St. Paul’s Parish. We hear it at least twice a year, and now the Lectionary gives it to us a third time. Saul of Tarsus, a Jew among Jews, a Pharisee among Pharisees, a prosecutor of the heretics who proclaim this upstart rabbi Jesus to be the Messiah, is on his way to Damascus with letters of warrant from the chief priests to arrest and prosecute any Christians he finds there. Along the road, however, he is knocked on his butt, literally knocked off his horse by a blinding light and a crash of thunder and a voice which asks, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” In surprise, he asks the voice who it is that is speaking and he is told, “I am Jesus!” And Saul and Jesus have a conversation.

Saul’s conversation with Jesus is rather abrupt. Jesus simply tells him to get up and go to a certain place in Damascus and there he will be instructed. Peter’s conversation is rather different. Three times Jesus asks him “Do you love me?” Three times Peter answers, “You know I do.” Three times Jesus tells Peter to take care of Jesus’ sheep.

When we read this in English, we miss a very important nuance in John’s use of language and we are apt to miss John’s point. The first two times Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” John uses the word agape to render the question. This word is normally used in the Greek scriptures to describe perfect or “divine” love. When Peter answers Jesus in the affirmative, he uses another word, phileo, which means “brotherly love.” This suggests that he loved Jesus as a brother, not yet fully understanding his Risen Lord’s divinity. Jesus then calls Peter to feed the lambs. Jesus asks the second time, again using “agape.” Jesus at first had not gotten the answer from Peter that he wanted but, again, Jesus receives the same response from Peter. Jesus then repeats the feeding admonition, changing it so that Peter is responsible for feeding the not just the lambs, but the whole flock. The third time, Jesus changes the word and asks Peter the question in Peter’s own terms; Jesus uses the disciple’s “brotherly love” word, phileo.

What is happening in this conversation, indeed with this whole scene, is that Jesus is meeting Peter where Peter can meet Jesus. Peter had to get out of Jerusalem; he had to get to someplace, to doing something, that he could grasp. So Jesus met him there. Peter couldn’t quite yet understand Jesus’ godliness, using a term for human rather than divine love. So Jesus went along with him. Jesus met and interacted with Peter is a manner appropriate to Peter’s situation. Jesus does the same with Saul.

Saul was a fire-brand, a person who so aggressively and energetically promoted his own cause, his own understanding of religion that he encouraged unrest among Jews and kindled strife for the followers of Jesus. And Jesus did with him what he had done with Peter. He came to him in the place and in the manner in which Saul could be reached and led to understand. Saul clearly had heard the gospel message preached by the disciples; he’d heard it and rejected it. The soft and gentle approach hadn’t worked. So, in the alternative, Jesus came to him with flash of light and a clap of thunder, and knocked him on his butt!

The two stories from Scripture today teach us the same lesson. Jesus comes to us when and where and as we are able to understand and appreciate him, gently to some, more aggressively to others. But however he comes, he comes. We call this “grace.” Simply put, grace is the free and unmerited favor manifesting our salvation and bestowing blessings upon us. Both Peter and Paul received this grace in ways appropriate to them, as do we all.

Earlier this week an author named Brennan Manning passed away. Brennan was an American Roman Catholic, a friar, a priest (who had married!), a contemplative, and a frequent speaker at religious events. He lived a fascinating and turbulent life, and wrote many books, one of which was The Ragamuffin Gospel. In it, he wrote this about grace:

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last “trick,” whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

“But how?” we ask.

Then the voice says, “They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

There they are. There we are — the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace. (The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out)

The stories of Peter fishing on the Sea of Galilee and of Saul traveling to Damascus, and of their encounters with Jesus in those places, teach us that Jesus comes to us wherever and however we are, even defeated, soiled, and bloodied, to give us salvation and blessing, to give us the unmerited favor of God, to give us grace. We may have gone out to the manufacturing floor; we may have gone fishing; we may be on a trip pursuing our passion. Wherever we are, Jesus meets us, and there we find grace. Amen.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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

Lord, I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief – Sermon for “Thomas Sunday” (Easter 2) – April 7, 2013

April 7, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Second Sunday of Easter, “Thomas Sunday,” April 7, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; and John 20:19-31. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Doubting Thomas by GuercinoLeslie Dixon Weatherhead (1893-1976) was an English Methodist Minister who served at the City Temple, a Congregational Church in London. He served there from 1936 until his retirement in 1960. In one of his several book, The Christian Agnostic, he wrote, “When people said to me, ‘I should like to be a member of the City Temple, what must I believe?’ I used to say, ‘Only those things which appear to you to be true.’”

Last week at our Easter services, many of us reaffirmed our Baptismal Covenant doing exactly what we are about to ask Graham _____________, or those speaking on his behalf, to do . . . and we will all do it again with them. We will ask one another, “What do you believe?” and in good liturgical fashion we will all answer in the same way; we will answer the questions, “Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?” with responses which are nothing more and nothing less than the ancient Apostle’s Creed. Our Anglican tradition calls this creed “the Baptismal Symbol.”

Not a single one of us is likely to balk in the midst of our liturgy and say, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” And yet I’ll bet that some of us might be thinking something very much along those lines as we dutifully recite the answers set out for us in The Book of Common Prayer. Many people in our world today, both outside and inside the church, do.

And there is nothing wrong with thinking that. Nothing at all. Because, you see, there are varieties of belief. Writing to the church in Corinth, St. Paul said, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” (1 Cor. 12:4-6) I suggest to you that there are varieties of belief, but the same Christian faith throughout the church.

For example, on a regular Sunday, a Sunday when we are not baptizing new member of God’s household, we would recite the Nicene Creed, which begins:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

Now let’s just take the last phrase of that bit, the part that says God is the “maker of all that is, seen and unseen.” Let’s just take the last word of the last phrase of that bit, “unseen.” What, in your understanding, does that mean?

Are you one of those who believes in a spiritual or supernatural realm? One who believes that, as the introduction to an old television anthology series used to put it, “there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit.” Is that what you think of when you acknowledge your belief in God as maker all that is unseen?

Perhaps you think of the microscopic, atomic, and subatomic realms of Newtonian space or Einsteinian space-time. Maybe you think of the multiverse and the infinite number of alternate realities suggested by the probability equations of quantum mechanics. Possibly you give thought to the 13 tightly curled, hidden dimensions of superstring theory. Or perhaps you don’t think of any of that. Maybe you’ve never given it any thought; you just say the words that are put there in the Prayer Book.

Whatever, it’s all perfectly acceptable because, as the Rev. Mr. Weatherhead said, there is nothing in particular that you must believe about God as maker of all things unseen, “only those things which appear to you to be true.” And if we were to make our way through the rest of the creed, whether the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed, we would find ourselves facing a bewildering variety of beliefs as we paused at each phrase or word and teased out the various and sundry meanings we all might give it. One of us might say, “This is what that means,” and another would respond, “I don’t believe that at all!” And yet all of us would nonetheless still be comfortable in saying the creed together because, as Peter said to the Temple authorities, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (Acts 5:29) And the creeds, important as they are, are human authority, the words of bishops and church counsels and church tradition, not the word of God.

Early in our Anglican history, there were those who wanted to impose a single understanding, a single interpretation of the creeds, of our several prayers, of the Sacraments, and of Scripture. They wanted to enforce a single way of worshiping God and they prevailed upon Queen Elizabeth I to enforce that uniformity for them. She declined. She simply required that the English people worship together, but what each might make of that worship, of the words spoken, of the Sacraments administered, or of the Scriptures read she left to each: “I would not open windows into men’s souls,” she declared. Her preference, worked out in Parliament in a series of acts known as The Elizabethan Settlement, has been called the terminal point of the English Reformation and, in the long run, the foundation of Anglicanism and the “via media” (or “middle way”) we still, 550 years later, claim to be. We still do not open windows into each other’s souls; we still treat ascent to the historic creeds as a matter of individual conscience and interpretation.

Mr. Weatherhead, in his book The Christian Agnostic, also wrote this:

I believe passionately that Christianity is a way of life, not a theological system with which one must be in intellectual agreement. I feel that Christ would admit into discipleship anyone who sincerely desired to follow him, and allow that disciple to make his creed out of his experience; to listen, to consider, to pray, to follow, and ultimately to believe only those convictions about which the experience of fellowship made him sure.

Mr. Weatherhead may have been a Methodist, but these words would sum up the understanding of every Episcopalian or Anglican true to our heritage. Being an Anglican follower of Christ, to which manner of life today we welcome Graham _____________, is not a matter of theological system, even though we ask those questions with prescribed, systematic, creedal answers. Being an Anglican follower of Christ is about community and fellowship, a community and a fellowship in which it would be perfectly acceptable to say, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Because more than mere intellectual assent to particular propositions is at stake. Because there are varieties of belief, but the same Christian faith throughout the church.

That is why the Baptismal Covenant does not end with those three questions and those three systematic, creedal responses. The Baptismal Covenant continues with questions about community and fellowship, questions about respect and dignity, questions about behavior and practice, questions about ministry and mission. Five questions:

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Five questions to which the answer is the same: “I will, with God’s help.”

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to Mark there is a story of a man who comes to Jesus seeking healing for his son who is possessed by a demon. The mean tells Jesus that the demon “has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus responds to man saying, “If you are able! – All things can be done for the one who believes.” In the wonderful poetic language of the King James version of the Bible we are told that, with tears, the father cries, ” Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:17-24)

It is that same cry that we utter when we answer those behavioral questions of the Baptismal Covenant, “I will, with God’s help.” Lord, we believe (we have said that in answer to the first three questions; we believe in whatever manner each of us believes) . . . Lord, we believe; help thou our unbelief. Help us to carry through on the way of life which is implicit in those stated beliefs. We will; we’ll carry through “with God’s help.”

Belief is one of those ambiguous words that can mean so many things. In the creedal sense, it means to give intellectual assent to a stated proposition. “Do you believe in God?” in this sense means do you accept the proposition as true that there is a God. Suppose we change the object of question, however. “Do you believe in your wife/husband/child/parent?” It would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it, to interpret this as asking, “Do you accept as true the proposition that your wife/husband/child/parent exists?” We know that the question, that the word belief as used in the question, means something very different. It means, “Do you trust in your family member? Do you have faith in them? Do you expect them to behave in certain ways, to carry through on promises, to have your best interests at heart?” And if you believe in your family member, will you behave toward them and within the community of your family in equivalent and considerate ways?

And that is precisely what the word belief really means in the creeds and in the Baptismal Covenant. Do you trust in God? Do you have faith in Christ? Do you expect the Holy Spirit to act in certain ways in your life? Are you confident that God will carry through on God’s promises with your best interests at heart? Do you believe in God? And if you believe in God, will you behave toward God and within the community of God’s household the church and of God’s world, “all that is, seen and unseen,” in equivalent and considerate ways?

Thomas, known for all time as “Doubting Thomas,” wanted to believe! The words of that grieving father, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief,” could as easily have been his. And they are, most certainly, ours. “I will, with God’s help.” Help thou mine unbelief!

Jesus gave Thomas the help he needed; he showed him his hands and his feet; he invited him to put his hand into the wound in his side. “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.'” Jesus was talking about us, about you, about me, about all of us “who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” And he was talking about Graham _____________ who, if we do as we promise each time we reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, if we continue “with God’s help,” if we persevere “with God’s help,” if proclaim “with God’s help,” if we seek and serve others “with God’s help,” if we strive for justice and peace “with God’s help” . . . if we do all that, with God’s help, Graham too will be blessed as one who has not seen and yet has come to believe, because he will, in fact, have seen. He will have seen Christ in us.

“Lord, we believe; help thou our unbelief.”

And now, “to him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:5b)

The candidate for Holy Baptism will now be presented . . . . .

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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

Monstrous Relief – Sermon for Resurrection Sunday – March 31, 2013

March 31, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Resurrection Sunday, March 31, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, First Sunday of Easter: Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2,14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; and John 20:1-18 . These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Christ Appearing to His Disciples after the Resurrection by Wm Blake

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

So writes novelist and poet John Updike in the first of his Seven Stanzas at Easter from the collection Telephone Poles and Other Poems. Here is the rest of the poem:

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that – pierced – died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

“Let us not seek to make it less monstrous!” I love that line!

Only a poet like John Updike could use the word monstrous to describe the Resurrection of Christ and, in spite of its shock value, or perhaps because of it, it is the perfect word, an ambiguous word that captures the essence of the entire Palm Sunday – Maundy Thursday – Good Friday – Resurrection Day event. Monstrous can, and usually does, mean something like “frightful or hideous; extremely ugly; shocking or revolting; awful or horrible,” and those are certainly good words to describe the way the people of Jerusalem turned on Jesus, the way his disciple Judas betrayed him, the way his other followers denied and abandoned him, the way the authorities both Jewish and Roman abused and killed him. It was all monstrous; there’s no doubt about that!

Monstrous, however, can also mean “extraordinarily great; huge; immense; outrageous; overwhelming.” And those are superlative ways to describe the fact of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead! It is a huge thing! It is immense, outrageous, overwhelming! Yes, the Resurrection is monstrous!

I have been thinking a lot recently about two people who are hardly ever thought of in all the drama and majesty of Holy Week and Easter: one of them is mentioned briefly only by John in his story of Jesus’ Crucifixion; the other isn’t named at all. I refer to Mary and Joseph, Jesus’ mother and foster father.

Of course, we know nothing of Joseph during Jesus’ adult ministry; after that event in the Jerusalem Temple when Jesus was about 13, Joseph is never again mentioned in the Gospels. Some suppose this is because he had passed away, but I like to think that he was just back home in Nazareth working the family carpentry business, making tables and chairs, supervising construction of homes, building hope chests, keeping the family provided for so that Jesus could go about his ministry and Mary could accompany him.

Mary is mentioned in John’s story of the Crucifixion as standing at the foot of the cross and being entrusted by Jesus to the disciple whom he loved. And the legend from which we get the 14th Station of the Stations of the Cross, and which Michelangelo’s exquisitely beautiful Pieta depicts, is that when his body was removed from the cross she held him, dead, in her arms. But there is no mention of her or of Joseph at Jesus’ burial, nor are they mentioned in any of the accounts of Christ’s post-resurrection appearances.

That omission, for I am sure that is what it is, an omission, disturbs me. Yesterday, was the 55th anniversary of my father’s accidental death at the age of 39. His mother and father, my grandparents, were in their sixties when he died. One of my clearest memories of childhood is his funeral. I remember how, as we were leaving the graveside, my grandparents hung back, how they could not step away from nor turn their backs on the grave that held their child’s lifeless body. When, at last, they accepted my Uncle Scott’s physical encouragement to do so, my grandmother said to my mother, “A mother should not outlive her child.” She would know that feeling again just a few years later when my Uncle Scott died of cancer.

And my mother would know it, as well, when in 1993 my only sibling, my older brother Rick, died of brain cancer. I vividly remember doing exactly what my uncle had done, physically moving my mother and stepfather away from the grave, the grave they could not leave on their own. Later that day, my mother said to me, “You’re grandmother was right. A parent should not outlive her child.”

Having seen my grandparents and my parents at the graves of their children, I cannot believe that Mary and Joseph were not there when the stone was rolled into place, when Jesus was buried in that borrowed tomb.

Updike’s description of the Resurrection and his admonition to us, “Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,” so aptly describes the entire event of Holy Week and Easter, because we cannot appreciate the overwhelming wonder of the Resurrection, without taking into account the horror and ugliness of the whole thing, Judas’ betrayal, the other disciples abandonment, Peter’s denial, the trial before Pilate, Christ’s scourging and humiliation, his bitter agony on the Cross, his final self-emptying in death, and his burial at which I cannot but believe his mother and foster father were present. It is all monstrous; painful and ugly and awful in the first sense of that wonderfully ambiguous adjective.

I thought that I had some sense of that because I had witnessed my grandparents’ and my parents’ anguish at the deaths of their children; I thought I understood what old Simeon had said to Mary when Jesus was dedicated in the Temple as an infant, his disturbing prophecy, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.” (Luke 2:35) I thought that I had understood all that until a couple of weeks ago.

As some of you know, two weeks ago Good Friday, sixteen days ago, our daughter disappeared. She stopped posting things to Facebook, which she had been in the habit of doing almost hourly from her cell phone. She stopped answering her cell phone; calls would go directly to voicemail. Her friends checked her home and found her car gone and no one there. She wasn’t at her place of work; she wasn’t at her school; she wasn’t at any of her usual hangouts. My wife, our son, our daughter-in-law, and several of our daughter’s friends looked everywhere they could think of in the area of St. Louis, Missouri, where her apartment is. I played the role of information central, receiving their reports and letting everyone know what everyone knew, which was nothing. We went to bed that night knowing nothing.

Family systems therapists have discovered that patterns of events run in families. Not just habits or ways of handling things, not just customs or traditions, but actual life events repeat from generation to generation. I went to bed convinced that the pattern of a child predeceasing his or her parents was playing out again. I knew in the very depths of my being that my daughter was dead.

Let me tell you, old Simeon in that Temple proved himself a master of understatement. That sword of grief does not simply pierce a parent’s soul; it rips the soul to shreds. That, I now know, is why my grandparents and my parents could not leave those graves, and that is why I cannot believe that Mary and Joseph were not there in that garden when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus buried their child.

Now, lest you believe that this is a funeral oration rather than an Easter homily, let me assure you that our daughter is not dead! As it turned out (Thanks be to God!), she had gone to Kansas City on a personal errand and, while there, had become acutely ill and been admitted to a local hospital on an emergency basis. She had lost her cell phone and because she hadn’t memorized our telephone numbers, she couldn’t call us. (One of the dangers of cell phones, it turns out, is relying on its memory of stored numbers instead of one’s own memory!) On Saturday morning, through a friend, she got word to her mother about where she was, and then her mother called me. Our daughter is now out of the hospital, is back in St. Louis, and is back to her usual occupations. But I cannot tell you how relieved her mother and I were on that Saturday morning! All of the anguish and fear and sorrow and grief of the night before drained away. I cannot say that we were joyful or happy, but we were profoundly, overwhelmingly, monstrously relieved.

Which brings me back to Mary and Joseph and the first Easter morning . . . . I have an entirely new understanding of the Resurrection story. Preachers and theologians toss around a funny word to describe the way we view and interpret Holy Scripture. The word is hermeneutic. It means, basically, the method or principle through which we understand the text; it is the filter through which we appreciate its meaning. There are shared, intellectual hermeneutics, but there are also highly personal hermeneutics. I share my grandparents’ and my parents’ and my family’s recent experiences with you so that I can also share with you, and you can enter into, my new personal hermeneutic for grasping the impact of the Day of Christ’s Resurrection.

Just as I am puzzled by the absence of almost any mention of Mary and Joseph in the narrative of Christ’s death and burial, and I am astounded that there is no allusion to them in the Gospel accounts of that first Easter morning or any time after his Resurrection! The only word about either of them is in the first chapter of the Book of Acts and, again, it’s only Mary who gets mentioned. Luke, the author of Acts, says that following Christ’s Ascension forty days after his Resurrection the apostles “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” (Acts 1:14) That’s it, that one mention! I find that astonishing! Apparently so have many Christians throughout the ages, because there is an extra-biblical tradition that the Virgin Mary was the first person to witness our Lord’s Resurrection.

The Golden Legend, which is a medieval collection of stories about the saints, says that the first appearance of the resurrected Christ on Easter Day was to the Virgin Mary:

It is believed to have taken place before all the others, although the evangelists say nothing about it.. . . . [I]f this is not to be believed, on the ground that no evangelist testifies to it . . . perish the thought that such a son would fail to honor such a mother by being so negligent! . . . Christ must first of all have made his mother happy over his resurrection, since she certainly grieved over his death more than the others. He would not have neglected his mother while he hastened to console others.

St. Ignatius of Antioch (1st C.) claimed it was so, as did St. Ambrose of Milan (4th C.), St. Paulinus of Nola (4th C.), the poet Sedulius (5th C.), St. Anselm of Canterbury (11th C.), St. Albertus Magnus (13th C.), St. Bernardino da Siena (15th C.), and the bible scholar Juan Maldonado (16th C.)

Most recently, the late Bishop of Rome, his Holiness John Paul II, in a general audience in 1997 expressed this opinion:

The Gospels mention various appearances of the risen Christ, but not a meeting between Jesus and his Mother. This silence must not lead to the conclusion that after the Resurrection Christ did not appear to Mary . . . . Indeed, it is legitimate to think that [his] Mother was probably the first person to whom the risen Jesus appeared. Could not Mary’s absence from the group of women who went to the tomb at dawn indicate that she had already met Jesus? This inference would also be confirmed by the fact that the first witnesses of the Resurrection, by Jesus’ will, were the women who had remained faithful at the foot of the Cross and therefore were more steadfast in faith. (Gen. Aud., Wednesday, 21 May 1997)

I cannot but believe that the Risen Christ appeared to Mary and Joseph (if he was present as I prefer to think he was), and that they would have been at least as profoundly, overwhelmingly, monstrously relieved as my wife and I were two weeks ago yesterday, if not more so!

So here’s my new thought, my new hermeneutic of Easter Day. I think that the overwhelming initial response, especially of Mary and Joseph, but also of Mary Magdalene, of Peter, of the disciple whom Jesus loved, of all the others, to the fact of Jesus’ Resurrection was not, as we are usually told at Easter Services, joyfulness! I think it was relief. The dictionary defines relief as “alleviation of pain, as the easing of anxiety, as deliverance from distress.” This is the appropriate experience and emotion of Easter Day, profound relief, not immediate joy or gladness; I think that comes later in the Easter Season and that it comes later in life as we live out our Easter faith. But in the immediate aftermath of the monstrous-ness of Holy Week, in the wake of the horrible ugliness of death, Christ’s or anyone else’s, one is simply not ready to be jubilant and happy. In the face of our own sinfulness and spiritual dysfunction, we are not ready for joy and gladness. But the fact of Christ’s Resurrection relieves us of grief and sorrow; it relieves us of sin and death. The experience and impact of Easter Day is one of profound, overwhelming, (one might even say) monstrous relief.

Perhaps that is why Jesus stuck around for forty days, to continually reassure and sustain the disciples in their relief from fear and sorrow and grief, so that they could move into joy and gladness as time went on. Perhaps that is why Easter is not a single day, but a season of fifty days, so that as it progresses we can . . . like Mary and Joseph, like the Magdalen and Peter, like the disciple whom Jesus loved and all the apostles . . . move from relief into Resurrection joy, so that it provides a pattern with which we can handle the inevitable losses in our lives. As life goes on and as the victory of life over death sinks in, Easter relief grows into Easter joy, something that propels us toward action and compels us to invite others into the Resurrected life of our Risen Lord.

As Christians, we have access through the relief of Christ’s Resurrection into a joy that is unshakable. We must remember, however, that joy is really not an emotion — it is a virtue. Easter joy does not mean being happy all the time or being fine when times are difficult; Easter joy means being sustained by the power of the Resurrection. What Easter joy means is that in the depths of our being, despite the circumstances we may face, despite any fears we may have, despite whatever may be tearing up our souls, despite whatever sin or spiritual malaise we may be in, we are able to get through them, to let go of them, and to find relief and eternal life in the Resurrected Christ, a life into which we invite others.

John tells us that on that first Easter morning, when Jesus called the Magdalen by name, “she turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).” I do not hear joy and happiness in the voice of this woman who had just been weeping in grief and confusion at his grave; I do hear relief. She was so comforted that she grabbed on to him, but he said to her, “Do not hold on to me . . . . .” It has been said that joy comes from letting go — letting go of our attachments, letting go of any thoughts that the present moment should or even could be different than it is, letting go of our expectations. Joy is the virtue of celebrating present, of living in the moment, something to which we come through a process of detachment and release. Resurrection Day is not the end of the process; it is the beginning. “Do not hold on to me,” Jesus said to Mary Magdalen, “But go to my brothers . . . .” Go and invite them into the outrageous reality of which you are now a part.

Easter Day brings relief, overwhelming relief! Through that relief we are able to let go, to release our fears, our griefs, our worries, and our sorrows with absolute abandon, to be completely freed of our sinfulness! In letting go as the Easter Season and as our Easter faith progress, we ultimately find joy, unutterably ecstatic joy, huge, overwhelming, outrageous joy into which we are compelled to invite others!

“Let us not seek to make it less monstrous!”

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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

The Whole World is Irish on March 17 – Sermon for the Feast of St. Patrick – March 17, 2013

March 17, 2013 / / 2 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, March 17, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Episcopal Sanctorale Lectionary, Patrick of Ireland: Psalm 97:1-2,7-12; Ezekiel 36:33-38; and Matthew 28:16-20. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary. At St. Paul’s Parish, during Lent, we are using the Daily Office of Morning Prayer as our antecommunion; therefore, only these two lessons and the psalm were read. The Epistle lesson, 1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12, was not used.)

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Icon of St. Patrick of IrelandIn Ainm an Athar, agus an Mhic, agus an Spioraid Naoimh. Áiméan.

Dia dhaoibh ar maidin, gach duine. Beannachtaí na fheile Padraig oraibh.

That’s more Irish than I’ve spoken in nearly two years! What I said was, “God be with you this morning, everyone. The blessings of the Feast of St. Patrick be with you.” In other words, Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Everyone loves to be Irish on St. Paddy’s Day. Even though we Funstons being descendants of Anglican Irish (or as the Irish would say, “Protestants”) did not have much, if anything, to do with the Irish communities of my childhood, we still (like everyone else) enjoyed St. Patrick’s Day. We would go to the parades, see and hear the pipe-and-drum corps, and all the other traditional sorts of things. On the evening news, we would see the reports of parades in other places, especially the big one down Fifth Avenue in New York City. And we would usually have corned beef and cabbage for dinner.

I have no problem with people dressing kilts (which aren’t really Irish, at all), putting green food coloring in beer, eating corned beef and cabbage (which is also not really Irish), or any of the other silly things people do on this day. It’s all part of the fun. Many like to watch Irish-themed movies on St. Patrick’s Day. My favorite is the heartwarming tale of a boxer’s return home in The Quiet Man, but I also like the mythical nonsense of Darby O’Gill and the Little People, or the intense drama of The Field, or the whacky comedy of Waking Ned Devine. Those movies are the only times I hear anyone say, “Top o’ the mornin’ to ye” or “Faith and begorrah.” At least, I’ve never heard anyone say those things during any of my trips to Ireland.

The worship committee thought we ought to step away from Lent for a day (because March 17 today falls on Sunday) and celebrate St. Patrick. After all, on March 17, the whole world is Irish . . . but the man we commemorate wasn’t Irish and it would be much truer to his memory if on his feast day all the world tried to be not Irish, but Christian.

Patrick, who was a Romano-Brit (meaning a Roman who lived in Britain) was the son of a minor imperial official named Calpornius, who was also a deacon in the church; his grandfather Potitus was a priest. Around the year 406 A.D., at the age of 16, Patrick was kidnapped and made a slave in Ireland to a minor tribal king. After six years, he escaped and returned home to Britain, and then went to Rome. There he was ordained a priest and a bishop and, according to the chronicle of Prosper of Aquitane, was appointed bishop to the Irish by Pope Celestine I; he arrived back in Ireland in 432 A.D. He landed near modern-day Belfast and set up his principal foundation in Armagh, which is now considered the Primatial See of Ireland. He ministered primarily in that part of the country known as Ulster. Patrick was not the first bishop appointed to bring the Christian faith to the people of Ireland. Ciaran and Palladius came before him, but their mission (primarily in Munster and Leinster, further south) did not bear the same fruits as Patrick’s. So today, what we celebrate is not Irish identity or heritage; today, we celebrate the success of a mission to spread the Christian faith.

The choir is going sing a poetic prayer or lorica attributed to Patrick, the famous St. Patrick’s Breastplate, as their anthem. It is attributed to him, but there is disagreement as to whether he actually wrote it. But he did write this prayer:

I give thanks to the one who strengthened me in all things, so that he would not impede me in the course I had undertaken and from the works also which I had learned from Christ my Lord. Rather, I sensed in myself no little strength from him, and my faith passed the test before God and people. (The Confession of St. Patrick)

For St. Patrick it seems the faith which passed the test was deeply Trinitarian and deeply evangelical. He is credited with using the shamrock, now one of the national emblems of Ireland, as an illustration of the Trinity – three lobes, yet one leaf – although that is probably an 18th Century legend rather than a historical fact. And as you heard, the Gospel lesson for his commemoration is the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Christ’s final words to his apostles before ascending into Heaven. This evangelical, Trinitarian faith — not green beer nor Celtic music nor corned beef and cabbage nor Irish-ness itself — but trust in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit shared with and commended to everyone around us, this is what we celebrate when we celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick.

I thought perhaps the lesson from Ezekiel was chosen for his feast because, with its “forty shades of green,” Ireland might make one think of the garden of Eden, and in Ireland there are both ruined towns and towns that are inhabited, some of both walled and fortified. But I think rather that it was chosen because, just as the nations around Israel came to know the Lord, the God of Israel, so the nations to which Irish missionaries went came to know the Lord Jesus Christ. What Patrick started in Ireland in 5th Century by the mid 6th Century was spreading to northern Europe, carried there by Irish priests and monks practicing what was called “white martyrdom.” The term comes from a 7th Century Irish sermon called the Cambrai homily:

Now there are three kinds of martyrdom that are counted as a cross to us, namely, white, blue, and red martyrdom.
It is white martyrdom for a man when he separates from everything that he loves for God, although he does not endure fasting and labor thereby.
The blue martyrdom is when through fasting and hard work they control their desires or struggle in penance and repentance.
The red martyrdom is when they endure a cross or destruction for Christ’s sake, as happened to the Apostles when they were persecuted the wicked and taught the law of God. (O. Davis, Celtic Spirituality, Paulist Press: 1999)

The white martyrs left everything dear to them — homes, families, familiar surroundings, even Ireland itself — to spread the Gospel in distant lands; white martyrdom was a pilgrimage on behalf of Christ that might be extended permanently so that they would never again see their homeland. They went first to Scotland and the north of England, but then further afield to Holland, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and even further. Like the man who had brought Christianity to their homeland, they held a deeply Trinitarian and deeply evangelical faith; and it is that faith which we celebrate when we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

It is that faith we all claim and, when we commemorate Patrick, it is to the spread of that faith that we dedicate ourselves. On the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, a special Litany of Penance is recited in Episcopal Churches. Among the confessions of that Litany we find this petition: “Our negligence in prayer and worship, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us, we confess to you, Lord.” (BCP 1979, page 268)

Let us remember that confession on St. Patrick’s Day and try not so much to be Irish, but try to be better Christians. Let us be like Patrick, who was not Irish, but Christian, and like him let us follow Christ’s Great Commission. If we must be Irish on this day, let us be like those Irish white martyrs of old, and commend the faith that is in us, a faith that is deeply Trinitarian and deeply evangelical.

Let us remember, also, a petition from the Great Litany which we recited on the First Sunday in Lent four weeks ago:

That it may please thee to inspire us, in our several callings, to do the work which thou givest us to do with singleness of heart as thy servants, and for the common good, we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. (BCP 1979, page 151)

Let us pray:

Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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

Fanfare for the Common Man – From the Daily Office – March 12, 2013

March 12, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Paul’s Letter to the Romans:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 7:15-25 (NRSV) – March 12, 2013.)

Trumpet FanfareSt. Paul wrote some great stuff. He’s treatise on love in the thirteenth chapter of the first letter to the church in Corinth is brilliant! He wrote (or, at least, is blamed for) some incredibly stupid stuff, too: telling women to be silent in the very next chapter of First Corinthians, for example, or sending Onesimus back to Philemon without clearly denouncing the institution of slavery.

But I think nothing may have been as damaging to Christian spirituality and theology than this little bit from the letter to the church in Rome. We don’t know what Paul’s personal problem was – an addiction, a sexual dysfunction, OCD, who knows? – but whatever it may have been he attributes it to his own sinfulness and then (here’s the really damaging thing) he universalizes his experience. He claims that everyone is like him, that every single human being who ever lived and everyone who will come after him has been, is, and will be “captive to the law of sin” and completely unable to do anything about it.

Find something like that in the Gospels! Read every word of the four Gospels and see if there is anything like that coming from Jesus’ mouth! There isn’t. Sure, Jesus suggested that we are all sinners (particularly when he breaks up the execution party and prevents the woman taken in adultery from being stoned in John 7:53-8:11), but he never suggests that we have no power to do anything about our sinful behavior. In fact, quite the opposite. Jesus makes it clear that we have the ability to choose to do good, and again and again he commends that choice to us.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the premier of one of my favorite pieces of music, Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. It was commissioned in 1942 by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and its conductor Eugene Goossens as one of eighteen fanfares to begin the next year’s concert performances as an orchestral support for and tribute to the United States effort in World War II. Copland named to piece after a line in a speech by Vice-President Henry A. Wallace proclaiming the arrival of “the century of the Common Man.” Goossens was surprised by the title and wrote to Copland, “Its title is as original as its music, and I think it is so telling that it deserves a special occasion for its performance. If it is agreeable to you, we will premiere it 12 March 1943 at income tax time”. Copland replied, “I [am] all for honoring the common man at income tax time.”

I find the Fanfare to be stirring and uplifting and full of affirmation of the goodness of everyday human beings, a great musical antidote to Paul’s dreary, pessimistic, and almost self-defeating assessment of his (and everyone else’s) inner nature.

Lent is a time of self-evaluation and, sure, we all have our dysfunctions to be honest about and to work on. But I find it impossible to believe that (as the collect for the third Sunday in Lent puts it, paraphrasing Paul) “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.” (BCP 1979, page 218). We do have that power; what we don’t have is the strength of will or the stick-to-itiveness to sustain the effort. That’s how I understand that prayer, not that we asking for some sort of magic pill to give us something we lack, but rather that we are seeking support and help to keep us going through the darkest of times. It’s not simply that we shrug our shoulders and say, “We can’t do this. You take care of it, God.” Instead, we are asking that our own power be supplemented and strengthened by the power, the presence, and the pardon of God, our God who “saw everything that he had made [including humankind], and indeed, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31)

I, for one, find no help in Paul’s words to the Romans in today’s lesson. But on this anniversary of the first performance of the soaring strains of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, I find in that music the voice of hope, the voice of God urging me on.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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

Ambassadors of Christ: Welcoming the Prodigal – Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 10, 2013

March 10, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, March 10, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Lent 4, Year C: Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page. At St. Paul’s Parish, during Lent, we are using the Daily Office of Morning Prayer as our antecommunion; therefore, only these two lessons and the psalm were read. The Old Testament lesson, Joshua 5:9-12, was not used.)

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5 Hands Grabbing Water RingThe picture on the front of the bulletin today is one I found on the internet several months ago and which I just found intriguing. I can’t recall what I was doing or reading or searching for when I ran across it, but it grabbed my attention and seemed to me to be a great illustration for baptism and the baptismal covenant set out in The Book of Common Prayer.

That covenant of five promises is made immediately after the person being baptized or, if an infant, his or her parents and Godparents have affirmed their faith in the word of Apostles’ Creed as we shall do in a few minutes. The baptismal pledges are made in answer to five questions, to each of which the answer is, “I will, with God’s help:”

  • Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
  • Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
  • Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
  • Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
  • Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Think of the ring of water in the picture as representing the sacrament; the five hands trying to grasp it, the five promises of the covenant.

We are told in the Catechism at the back of prayer book that living up to these promises is the way we, as the ministers of the church, both lay and ordained, pursue the churches mission:

Q. What is the mission of the Church?
A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
Q. How does the Church pursue its mission?
A. The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.

“To restore all people to unity with God and each other.” That’s what Paul is talking about in the lesson we have today from the Second Letter to the Church in Corinth: God “reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.” (2 Cor. 18-20)

Reconcile is an interesting word. It has three parts, actually to prefixes and a base verb, all from the Latin. The base verb is calare (or cilire in this combined form); it means to call. The first prefix is “con-” which means “together.” Our word council comes from this combination; a council is called to together to accomplish something, to make a decision, to govern an organization or a political subdivision. The next prefix is “re-” which means “again.” Reconciliation is the act of calling together again . . . and again . . . and again. It isn’t something done only once; it takes time and it on-going effort.

We have a story of reconciliation in the Gospel story this morning, the familiar story of the prodigal son. We all know this story, but let me just quickly recap what it’s all about.

In Jesus’ time in First Century Palestine the typical pattern of inheritance was that the first-born son would receive two-thirds of his father’s wealth, and any other sons would share the remaining one-third. (Daughters got nothing other than their dowries.) In this story there are only the two sons, the younger of whom decides he doesn’t want to wait for Dad to die. “Give me my inheritance now!” is his demand of his father, a demand which is highly insulting to the father. He’s basically saying, “I wish you were dead. I’m done with this family. I’m leaving.” And that is what he does.

The boy takes his money and goes off to sew his wild oats, which he does with a vengeance! He blows the whole thing, the entire sum; however much it may have been, he spends it all. This, by the way, is what “prodigal” means! To be prodigal means to spend one’s money or resources with extravagance, lavishly, abundantly, profusely, often to the point of complete depletion. Doing so is not necessarily a bad thing! In the context of this story, of course, there is an implication of negativity, that the younger son is a wastrel, a spendthrift, a good-for-nothing idler; his older brother, when he returns home, certainly seems to think so. But Jesus’ point is not to criticize the younger brother, and Jesus does not condemn profligate spending of resources. You may remember this story told in Matthew’s Gospel:

Someone came to [Jesus] and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions. (Matthew 19:16-22 NRSV)

So lavishly disposing of one’s wealth is not the moral issue here.

As we are usually led through consideration of this story our focus turns to the father who is said to represent God, a loving and generous parent who forgives the wastrel son and welcomes him back with open arms. Certainly in the father we find an example of the reconciliation which is our baptismal ministry, but if the father represents God, then the reconciliation is God’s doing, not ours . . . and the Cathechism clearly teaches us that we are to be the ministers of reconciliation — or as Paul puts it, we are the ambassadors of Christ.

What if, instead of the father, God is another of the characters in this story? What if God instead is the prodigal who seems so irresponsible? I am here borrowing from journalist and seminarian David R. Henson who asks:

What if God is the God who comes to us in the disguise of those we despise, those who have hated and killed us, rejected us and abandoned us, those who annoy and frustrate us most, those who are excluded?

In the guise of the sinner, the debauched, the prostitute, the unclean, the enemy, the unsavory, God comes to us and challenges us to participate in a radical, irresponsible hospitality that turns the rules of polite society upside-down.

And if God comes to us as this, how do we respond? As the father does, subverting social norms and opening his life to the chaos the prodigal brings? Or as the brother does, maintaining society’s values but closing off his life to loving the Other?

In this parable, Jesus is asking us whether we will entertain angels, even if the angels look to us like demons, like exactly what we fear and loathe. He is asking us whether we can overcome our prejudice and the oppression of religiosity to open our arms enough to embrace the Other, the other who is actually our closest kin. (Patheos)

Katherine Grieb, who teaches at Virginia Theological Seminary, also suggests that the father in the parable is not a figure for God. She writes, “What happens if we focus on the man who had two sons and read this parable as an answer to the question the Corinthians might have asked Paul: What does it mean to be an ambassador for Christ?” In other words, the father is us; the father is the one to whom is given the ministry of reconciliation. The father in the parable “models grace-filled responses [of reconciliation] — to the teenager who says, “You’re the worst parent in the world, I wish you were dead!” — to the awkward penitent — to the passive-aggressive rule keeper.” Grieb recalls theologian Karl Barth who suggested that “if Jesus himself had not left the Father and traveled into the far country to share a table with sinners, we would still be there, eating those pig pods. Shouldn’t Christ’s ambassadors also request a table in the sinners’ section?” (The Real Prodigal, The Christian Century, March 9, 2004, p. 21)

There is a communion hymn that is one of my favorites. It’s not in our hymnal, although I wish it was; I would have selected it for today. It is entitled God and Man at Table Are Sat Down (and I know that’s not “inclusive language” but bear with me and remember that man for centuries was considered a generic term). It begins with a description of the church at worship . . . .

O, welcome, all ye noble saints of old
As now before your very eyes unfold
The wonders all so long ago foretold.
God and man at table are sat down.

Elders, martyrs, all are falling down;
Prophets, patriarchs are gath’ring round.
What angels longed to see now man has found:
God and man at table are sat down.

But then it veers away from that noble and comforting description of the holy people of God gathered from across time, and names a few other folks who are to be welcomed to the banquet:

Beggars, lame, and harlots also here;
Repentant publicans are drawing near.
Wayward sons come home without a fear.
God and man at table are sat down.

In the Episcopal Church we have what we call “the sacrament of reconciliation,” auricular confession to a priest; you can find the formal rite of confession in the Prayer Book beginning on page 447. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to offer that. But I believe the true “sacrament of reconciliation” is what we offer and celebrate at this table. Here, as ambassadors of Christ with a ministry of reconciliation we are to welcome prophets, patriarchs and matriarchs, martyrs and saints, but more importantly we are to invite and embrace, again and again, the beggars and the wastrels, the prostitutes and the pimps, the passive-aggressive rule keepers and the insulting teenagers.

Paul wrote, “From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view,” neither saint nor sinner, neither patriarch nor prostitute, neither martyr nor miscreant; “everything old has passed away . . . [and] everything [and everyone] has become new!”

If we grab that water ring, if we live up to our baptismal pledges, if we carry out our mission of reconciliation, if we are truly ambassadors for Christ, I think the greatest thing that could be said of us is “These people welcome sinners and eat with them.”

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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

Reverence and Intimacy: The Burning Bush – Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent – March 3, 2013

March 3, 2013 / / 1 Comment

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, March 3, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Lent 3, Year C: Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; and Luke 13:1-9. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page. At St. Paul’s Parish, during Lent, we are using the Daily Office of Morning Prayer as our antecommunion; therefore, only these two lessons and the psalm were read. The epistle lesson, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, was not used.)

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Red Berry BushSome years ago, during the summer of 2000 to be exact, I was one of about a dozen adults who chaperoned 87 teenagers on a ten-day tour of northern Italy. One of the pieces of advice given our group by the organizing tour guide was that the young ladies would not be allowed into Italian cathedrals wearing shorts or tank-tops. She suggested that they take with them, and always have on hand a light-weight over-blouse and a large scarf that they could tie around their waist to form a sort of skirt. This caused no amount of amusement among our group 17- and 18-year-old, Twenty-First Century, American girls, but it only took one time being escorted out of a church by a stern Italian nun for them to realize how serious the advice was and to never again forget to put on their overshirts and their wrap-around skirts.

On one occasion at the Duomo in Milan, I had to intercede when one of our young ladies was being hustled out of the church even though she appeared to be appropriately dressed. It turned out that she had slipped off her shoes to cool her feet on the chilly marble floor. Bare feet, it seemed, were as unacceptable as bare legs or bare shoulders.

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A Promise Beyond the Horizon – Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – February 24, 2013

February 24, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, February 24, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Lent 2, Year C: Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27; and Luke 13:31-35. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page. At St. Paul’s Parish, during Lent, we are using the Daily Office of Morning Prayer as our antecommunion; therefore, only these two lessons and the psalm were read. The epistle lesson, Philippians 3:17-4:1, was not used.)

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Abraham Friend of God, artist unknownSeveral years ago – 33 to be exact – Bruce Dern starred in a little-remarked movie entitled Middle Age Crazy; it dealt with the main character’s midlife crisis of turning 40 years of age.

Dern’s character is a construction company owner who has made it big by building taco stands for a successful chain. He’s married to Anne-Margaret (at least, Anne-Margaret plays his wife). He has a nice car, a nice house, a swimming pool and (as a friend reminds him) a jacuzzi. By the standards of success in 1980, he’s doing very well. But turning 40 has him questioning all of that.

At one point during the movie, he is attending his son’s high school graduation and begins to fantasize what he would say to the graduating class. He would start, he thinks, by criticizing graduation speeches that tell the kids they are “the future.” That’s nonsense, he says: “You can’t all be the future. There’s not that much future to go around.”

“If you’ve got any sense,” he tells the high school seniors, “give ’em back their [bleep] diplomas. Give ’em back their silly [bleep] hats and stay 18 for the rest of your life. You don’t want to be the future. No, no. Forget the future.” The future, he tells, them is absolutely awful! In the context of a story about a man dealing with a midlife crisis, it’s a very funny scene . . . but the truth is, it’s a tragic speech. (You can see the speech on YouTube. Be warned, however, I’ve cleaned up the quotations; Dern drops the “f-bomb” several times.)

It not only fails to be forward and future looking, it positively rejects the future, preferring a static and juvenile present. That is a tragedy!

In contrast, we have our spiritual ancestor Abram . . . 75-year-old Abram, as-good-as-dead Abram (according to both Paul and the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews), set-in-his-ways Abram, but willing-to-move-into-the-future Abram.

In Chapter 12 of the Book of Genesis, Abram is told by God to leave his home in Ur and travel to a land that God will give to him and to his offspring, and that God will make him the ancestor of many nations, and Abram does as he is told. But after journeying through several lands, all the way down into Egypt and then back up into Canaan, Abram and Sarai still have not had any children, so we find him in today’s reading in Chapter 15 a little bit anxious about that. He is afraid that this “offspring” are really going to be the children of his servant Eliezer of Damascus.

Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Gen. 15:2-6)

There are the important words in this story: “He believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

Unlike the character in Middle Age Crazy, Abram trusted in the promise of the future. The trouble with promises, of course, is that they entail waiting. No one likes to wait, but Abram is content to do so. Waiting on a promise of God, trusting in God, is what we call “faith”. Abram, or Abraham as he came to be known, is the prophet of faith; in fact, one of the titles given him in religious tradition is “the Father of Faith”.

Several years ago when our children were very young, we took a family “road trip” from our home in the Kansas City area back to Las Vegas so I could take part in a friend’s wedding. We stopped along the way to see the sights such as the Palo Verde Canyon in Texas, the Acama Pueblo in New Mexico, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and so forth. Each morning we would tell the kids where we were going and what we expected to see and, of course, not long after we hit the road each day one of them would ask, “When will we get there? Are we there yet?” I don’t recall when I finally lost my patience with their impatience, but somewhere along the way I cautioned them as they got into the car, “We will get there when we get there. Don’t keep asking if we are there yet – understand?” We’d driven for a while, maybe an hour or two, when our son Patrick spoke up and asked, “Will I still be alive when we get there?” A promise of the future entails waiting, and sometimes we are just too impatient to wait.

Abraham the prophet of faith is presented to us in Lent, I think, as a challenge. Abraham’s faith in God’s promise that he would have offspring, despite all appearances to the contrary, challenges us to ask whether we have believed in the future God promises us with the kind of belief that can be reckoned as righteousness.

Now, please note one thing. Abraham believed God about the promise of offspring, but still asked God how he could know that the promise of possession of the land would be fulfilled. And God accepted his questioning, and offered as proof a demonstration of God’s power: “Bring me,” said God, “a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” (Gen. 15:9) Abraham did so, and when it was dark, “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between [the] pieces” Abraham had prepared from the sacrificial animals. At that point, God said to Abraham, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” (vv. 17-18)

There are two things about this promise: first, it is for a future Abraham would never see because it is to his descendants that the land will be given; second, it is a promise of something that cannot be fully seen by anyone. This tract of land stretches from the Nile in the southwest to the Euphrates in the northeast; wherever one may be in this vast territory, most of the promised area is beyond the horizon.

This text reminds us that a life of faith, a life lived in reliance on God’s promise is not about immediate gratification nor even about our own benefit. Living a faithful, righteous life is about moving forward into a vision that extends beyond our own lives. A faithful, righteous life is lived in deep expectation coupled with patient belief that God’s promises will be fulfilled.

This is the life to which the People of God are called, all of the descendants of Abraham, not only the Hebrews, not only the people of ancient Israel and Judah, not only the Chosen People of the Covenant, but also ourselves. For as St. Paul assured the Galatians, “those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.” (Gal. 3:7) And it is the failure of God’s People to believe in and trust that promise that the prophets decried in ancient Israel. When the prophets declared God’s judgment, it was their intent that those upon whom the judgment would fall might know their predicament, repent, and be rehabilitated. The prophets pronounced judgment in the hope of salvation. When the prophets lamented over Jerusalem, their sadness over a distressing state of affairs assumed that God would hear their cry and has turn that which was lamentable into something good.

The powers-that-were in Jerusalem, of course, did not want to hear this. They had no more patience with the future, no more vision for it, than did Bruce Dern’s character in Middle Age Crazy. They were perfectly happy with the status quo and, like that character, wanted to stay 18 forever! In terms of Jesus metaphor in the gospel lesson today (Luke 13:31-35), they wanted to remain chicks forever!

That is an extraordinary metaphor, by the way. As theologian William Loader says, “It speaks of being like a hen seeking to gather chicks throughout Jerusalem’s history. It cannot refer to Jesus’ short ministry. How can he speak as though he has been regularly present in Jerusalem over centuries? The context indicates that each prophet has been an embodiment of the hen gathering her chicks.” As the Logos of God from the beginning of time, Christ was present in the prophets. Jerusalem, the center of political and religious power, refused to heed the prophets in whom Christ himself was present; instead, it killed them. Unlike their ancestor, the descendants of Abraham were not people of faith who believed the promise and waited patiently for its fulfillment.

Dr. Arland Hultgren, a Lutheran theologian, says, “It is right, even inevitable, when dealing with this text, to ask about the present. Who or what is the ‘Jerusalem’ of the day in which one lives? Is it the political and civic sphere? Is it the religious sphere? Or is it both?” Maybe it’s us . . . .

Lent gives us the opportunity to reflect upon that question, to examine our own lives; it permits us to heed God’s call to live a faithful life, a life moving forward into God’s vision for us, for our church, for the world, knowing (as Abraham knew) that that vision may extend far beyond the horizon of our own lives. And, God assures us, it will be reckoned to us as righteousness and the promise will be fulfilled. Amen.

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A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!

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

The Ash Wednesday Exhortation – Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent – February 17, 2013

February 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, February 17, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Lent 1, Year C: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2,9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; and Luke 4:1-13. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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LentIn The Book of Common Prayer on page 264 you’ll find the beginning of the liturgy for Ash Wednesday. If you were here on that day which marks the beginning of this season we call Lent, or in another church to be marked on your forehead with the cross of ashes, to be reminded of your mortality with the familiar words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return,” you will also have heard the Lenten admonition which the presiding priest reads at each Ash Wednesday service. It begins at the bottom of that page and comes in the service after the reading of the lessons of the day and the preaching of the sermon.

It seems to me that many of us hear those words, perhaps even read along with them (as is our wont as Episcopalians), but I wonder to what extent we actually think about them, consider them, and internalize them. So this morning, as we enter into the Sundays which are in Lent but not of Lent, I’d like to return to Ash Wednesday and look more closely at, and perhaps offer a few cogent comments about, the Ash Wednesday admonition.

Dear People of God, . . . .

. . . . it starts and let’s just stop there and consider what that means. We hear those words, “the People of God,” often in Scripture, and when we do we usually understand it to mean those people long ago, those folks who lived way back then 2,000 or 3,000 or more years ago and way over there in the deserts of the Middle East in Palestine or Judea or Israel or Syria. “The People of God,” we think, are the Hebrews, those folks who Moses helped get their freedom from Pharaoh in Egypt, the ones to whom Moses is talking in the reading from Deuteronomy this morning. Or, perhaps, we believe “the People of God” are the descendants of Abraham, that “wandering Aramean” whom Moses’ audience was to claim as their ancestor. Or, again, maybe we think of the modern Jews as “the People of God,” the Chosen people with whom God has that special covenant.

But here we are addressed in the liturgy of Ash Wednesday as if we are the People of God! Do we think of ourselves that way? And more specifically, does each of us think of him- or herself individually as a “person of God”?

Did you know that that one of my titles, one of the names of the office of ministry in which I work, actually comes from that term? The word “parson,” which describes a parish priest or village clergyman comes from the old or middle English version of the word “person”. The medieval parish priest was the “person of God,” the “parson,” whose job it was to be in the church praying the liturgical hours, offering the sacrifice of the Mass, looking after the spiritual business of the community so the rest of the people wouldn’t have to! They could get on with the planting of crops, the tilling of fields, the harvesting of produce, the care and feeding of livestock. They could do all the other things of daily life and then go to the pub and have a beer because the “parson,” the “person of God” would have have taken care of the religious stuff, the spiritual stuff for them.

That is not, however, the way it’s supposed to be because no one person is the “person of God” — we are all “people of God;” we are all “persons of God.”

The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection . . .

Now pay close attention to that! The focus of Lent is not Lent! The focus of Lent is “our Lord’s passion and resurrection.” The focus of Lent is Maundy Thursday and Jesus’ agonizing night of prayer in the garden at Gethsemane. The focus of Lent is Good Friday and his terrible, tortured death on the cross of Calvary. The focus of Lent is Holy Saturday and his burial in the borrowed tomb, his descent into hell, his freeing the souls of the dead. The focus of Lent is the empty tomb of Easter morning, his resurrection, his fifty days on earth appearing to, teaching, and sending forth his apostles. The focus of Lent is his Ascension into heaven to be always alive and always with us, our great high priest eternally pleading our case before the Father, elevating our humanity into divinity. Lent is never about Lent! Lent is always looking forward. Lent is always about Easter and beyond.

. . . . and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent . . . .

As many of you know, I was not reared in the Episcopal Church . . . I wasn’t really brought up in any religious tradition. On one side, my mother’s, the family were part of the Campbellite tradition, out of which the Disciples of Christ is the largest current denominational body; they didn’t know from Adam about the church year, about Lent or any other season. On my father’s side they were Methodists in the old Methodist Episcopal (South) mold; no liturgical seasons for them! So we didn’t do this Lent thing. I had Catholic classmates in grade school, of course. I knew they were Catholic because they would show up at school on Ash Wednesday morning having come from Mass with a smudge of ash on their foreheads; they were doing Lent.

But the only thing I knew about “Lent” was that in the sort of English my grandmother spoke it was the past tense of the verb “to lend”. I thought the Roman Catholics were maybe paying back to God something they had borrowed from God. And, you know what? That’s not far from being a good description of what Lent is, in fact, all about. In our lesson from Deuteronomy today that is exactly what Moses instructs the people who are about to enter into the Promised Land, these Hebrews which he has led from captivity in Egypt. They are to remember that everything they have or ever will have has been given to them by God, through no merit of their own; they are to return to God at least some portion, the “first fruits”, of that which God has lent to them.

This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism.

Did you know that back in the beginning, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity first legal and then the official religion of the Roman Empire, it was a big deal to become a Christian? It was a dangerous thing because it was illegal, and Christians were often blamed for the Empire’s problems and made scapegoats, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. One could not simply walk into a congregation and ask to become a member. You had to be instructed and tested, and often it took as long as three years to complete all the catechesis needed to be accepted into the assembly, to be permitted to undergo the rite of Holy Baptism, which was commonly done only at Easter. And during these forty days of Lent modeled on the forty days of Christ’s tempting in the desert about which we heard in the Gospel lesson, the catechumens underwent their most rigorous training and testing, with mortification of the flesh, denial of even the simplest pleasures, a severely restricted diet (a “fast” in the dietary sense). Only then could they be baptized.

This was a big deal because baptism was considered a sort of death. St. Paul puts it this way in the Letter to Romans (not in the portion we heard today, but in the Sixth Chapter in a passage we read on Easter morning): “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom. 6:3) The symbolism of Holy Baptism, especially when done in the traditional way by full immersion, is that the water represents the soil of the grave; we are “buried” as we go under the surface and as we come up out of it, we are resurrected: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. . . . If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” (6:6,8)

So Lent was a time for this baptismal preparation, and it was a time that reminded every member of the church of their own baptismal promises, of their own “death” to the world and their new, resurrected life in Christ, of the seriousness of what it meant (and means) to be a Christian.

It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.

There was no rite of private confession in the early church; that was created by the Irish monks in the 6th Century and eventually spread to the whole church after the 9th Century. Nor was there a general confession in the early liturgies such as we now have in the Anglican form of worship that we enjoy. No, in the early church when a member was guilty of some grave sin they had to confess it before the whole assembly, after which they would be excluded from communion and they would be given some penance, some way to make amends before they would be permitted to return to worship with the congregation.

Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

Of course, the congregation would, as the admonition suggests, realize that not only was the repentant sinner in need of forgiveness; they all were — and we all are. You’ll remember the story of Jesus encountering the rabbis and villagers planning to stone the woman taken in adultery. “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” he said. (John 8:7) And not one of them did so because they realized, as Lent calls us to realize, that we are all sinners and all stand in need of forgiveness.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

So this closing invitation to “a holy Lent” just asks us to do a lot of things we hear about every Lent, doesn’t it? Every year someone like me gets up in front of the congregation in every parish and prattles on about things we should do for the next six weeks, which are really things we ought to do year-round, but this time of year we sort of focus on them. We know we’re supposed to “fast” – that means give something up, right?

When people ask me what I’m going to give up for Lent, I always answer, “Chocolate.” It’s easy for me to give that up – I don’t eat chocolate. I should give up . . . I don’t know . . . my Irish whiskey? Good wines? I know! I’ll give up Downton Abbey right after tonight’s episode (the Season 3 finale).

But really, the point of fasting and self-denial is not the “mortification of the flesh.” It isn’t making oneself miserable because we think we ought to join Jesus in his desert misery, his famished hunger as described in today’s gospel lesson. The point of giving something up is to make room in our lives for something else, or to pay over or pay forward that which we give up to the benefit of someone else, or to concentrate on something of spiritual benefit to ourselves.

In the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God questions God’s people about fasting. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” writes the Prophet. Delivering God’s word, Isaiah tells us that God asks, “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” (58:4-5) The answer to these questions is clearly, “No.” The Prophet continues:

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? (58:6-7)

If I give up whiskey for Lent, the money I save not buying it should be given to World Vision International or to Episcopal Relief and Development or to our own Free Farmers’ Market food pantry. If I do give up Downton Abbey, the time I save should be given to study of Scripture, another of the admonitions of this Ash Wednesday exhortation.

The forty days of Lent are, symbolically, our time with Jesus in the desert, our time to emulate our Lord in his preparation for ministry, our time to face our temptations as he faced his. Note how he did so. Each time the devil would set something wonderful before him – food, or world power, or spiritual superiority – Jesus responded by quoting Scripture. Jesus was sustained, strengthened, and empowered by the words of the Law and the Prophets. How many of us could do that?

The truth is that I couldn’t! I’ve never been able to memorize chapter and verse. If you ask me, “Doesn’t the Bible say something about . . . . ?” my response will be to shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know. I’ll look that up.” Don’t get me wrong! I read Scripture all the time, every day in fact. I just don’t have the head to remember it all. That’s what concordances and computer search programs are for! I know what’s in there, I just don’t always know where it is. But just because someone may not have the knack to remember chapter-and-verse is no excuse not to study God’s Word. So I do, and I commend the practice to you, so that, as Paul wrote to the Romans, “The word [will be] near you, on your lips and in your heart.” We are all, as the collect for today confesses, assaulted by many temptations; through study and contemplation of the Bible, we can each find God mighty to save; we can each, like Jesus, be sustained and strengthened and empowered by Scripture.

And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

And then there is a rubric, a word of instruction, saying, “Silence is then kept for a time.” The rubric is not part of the Ash Wednesday exhortation, but those may be the most important words on the page.

When the exhortation and our tradition ask us to “give something up for Lent,” the purpose is to turn our attention from the distractions of the world around us. At the vestry’s retreat the past couple of days, our facilitator asked us to consider the difference between “doing” and “being”, to consider whether the job of the vestry is to “do things” or rather to “be something”. As part of a clergy study group, I’m currently reading a book entitled Beyond Busyness: Time Wisdom in Ministry. The author’s premise is that being “busy” is a bad thing, that when we are “busy” we are allowing a lot of small distractions take us away from the bigger, more important things one which we should use our time. “Busyness” results from concentrating too much on “doing” and too little on “being”.

Keeping silence for a time helps us turn our attention away from busy doing and toward productive being.

There is a lovely verse from the Psalms. (Don’t ask me which verse in which psalm! Remember, I just can’t recall that stuff.) The verse reads, “Be still, and know that I am God!” (46:10) In those catalogs like National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting send out from time to time, I’ve seen a carved stone plaque of that verse which repeats the verse several times, but in each reiteration leaves off a word or two:

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.

So I leave you with the rubric as, perhaps, the most important admonition of Lent: “Silence is kept for a time.” Be still and know that God is God. . . . . Be still and know that God is. . . . . Be still and know. . . . . Be still. . . . . Be.

Amen.

Rector’s Address: “The Dream” by Wesley Frensdorff – Conversion of St. Paul (tr.) – January 27, 2013

January 27, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This address was given on Sunday, January 27, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector. The day was celebrated as the Patronal Feast of the parish by translating the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul from January 25 to this, the closest following Sunday. Rather than preach on the propers of the day (Epiphany 3) or of the translated feast, Fr. Funston offered this assessment of the parish and how well it meets the vision of The Dream, a prophetic piece of prose written more than thirty years ago by the late Wesley Frensdorff, one-time bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada.

(Lessons for the Conversion of St. Paul according to the practice of the Episcopal Church: Acts 26:9-21; Psalm 67; Galatians 1:11-24; and Matthew 10:16-22. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Fr. Funston assisted at the Communion Table by children of St. Paul's ParishMore than thirty years ago, a bishop named Wesley Frensdorff set out his vision for the church in a piece of writing he title simply The Dream. Wes Frensdorff was a good friend to Evelyn and to me. He was her parish priest when she was a child, and her boss when she was the director of the Diocese of Nevada’s summer camp. He officiated at our wedding, and is the person who spoke for God and hounded me into eventually becoming a clergyman. As my Rector’s Report, I’d like to share his dream with you, adding my own brief comments as to how I see this church meeting his vision.

Bishop Frensdorff begins . . .

Let us dream of a church . . .
in which all members know surely and simply God’s great love, and each is certain that in the divine heart we are all known by name.
in which Jesus is very Word, our window into the Father’s heart; the sign of God’s hope and his design for all humankind.
in which the Spirit is not a party symbol, but wind and fire in everyone; gracing the church with a kaleidoscope of gifts and constant renewal for all.

I think that is the sort of church we at St. Paul’s Parish are, a congregation which knows God and God’s Son and in which everyone’s gifts and ministries are welcomed, empowered, and celebrated. We have just received written and oral reports on the many and varied ways in which those gifts and ministries are embodied in our parish.

The bishop continues . . .

A church in which . . .
worship is lively and fun as well as reverent and holy; and we might be moved to dance and laugh; to be solemn, cry or beat the breast.
people know how to pray and enjoy it – frequently and regularly, privately and corporately, in silence and in word and song.
the Eucharist is the center of life and servanthood the center of mission: the servant Lord truly known in the breaking of the bread, with service flowing from worship, and everyone understanding why worship is called a service.

I believe we are such a congregation. We have affirmed often that we are a Eucharisticly-centered parish, a prayerful people, and a place of service. We have an active parish prayer chain; we have groups which meet weekly to read spiritual writings or study the Holy Scriptures (and I wish there were more of those); we have just instituted a new chapter of the Order of the Daughters of the King, whose ministry is one of intentional prayer. This is a parish with an active corporate and individual prayer life.

Let us dream of a church . . .
in which the sacraments, free from captivity by a professional elite, are available in every congregation regardless of size, culture, location, or budget.
in which every congregation is free to call forth from its midst priests and deacons, sure in the knowledge that training and support services are available to back them up.
in which the Word is sacrament too, as dynamically present as bread and wine; members, not dependent on professionals, know what’s what and who’s who in the Bible, and all sheep share in the shepherding.
in which discipline is a means not to self-justification but to discipleship, and law is known to be a good servant but a poor master.

I believe we are or are becoming such a congregation. We are a parish in which leadership of worship is shared, in which many study the Holy Scriptures (though I wish more would do so), and in which the discipline of the Christian life is a matter of trust and grace. This is a parish in which the “sheep share in the shepherding;” in addition to our Lay Eucharistic Visitors, we have many in our congregation who’s personal ministry is keeping in touch with those they may not see in church, those whom they know to be in need of a friendly visit, those who may not speak up when they are lonely. It is a delight to be the priest in a place where many share the pastoral service which is the ministry of the priesthood of all believers.

A church . . .
affirming life over death as much as life after death, unafraid of change, able to recognize God’s hand in the revolutions, affirming the beauty of diversity, abhorring the imprisonment of uniformity, as concerned about love in all relationships as it is about chastity, and affirming the personal in all expressions of sexuality;
denying the separation between secular and sacred, world and church, since it is the world Christ came to and died for.

I believe we are such a congregation. We are a parish which welcomes all regardless of race, origin, or sexuality; we are a parish in a tradition which boldly proclaims that creation is good and which seeks to husband and enhance that goodness.

A church . . .
without the answers, but asking the right questions; holding law and grace, freedom and authority, faith and works together in tension, by the Holy Spirit, pointing to the glorious mystery who is God.
so deeply rooted in gospel and tradition that, like a living tree, it can swing in the wind and continually surprise us with new blossoms.

I believe we are such a congregation. St. Paul’s Parish is a household which welcomes the seeker, the questioner, the curious, and the new, offering not easy, black-and-white answers, but responses and exploration in a community of questioners.

Let us dream of a church . . .
with a radically renewed concept and practice of ministry, and a primitive understanding of the ordained offices.
where there is no clerical status and no classes of Christians, but all together know themselves to be part of the laos – the holy people of God.
a ministering community rather than a community gathered around a minister.
where ordained people, professional or not, employed or not, are present for the sake of ordering and signing the church’s life and mission, not as signs of authority or dependency, nor of spiritual or intellectual superiority, but with Pauline patterns of “ministry supporting church” instead of the common pattern of “church supporting ministry.”
where bishops are signs and animators of the church’s unity, catholicity, and apostolic mission, priests are signs and animators of her Eucharistic life and the sacramental presence of her Great High Priest, and deacons are signs and animators – living reminders – of the church’s servanthood as the body of Christ who came as, and is, the servant slave of all God’s beloved children.

I hope we are becoming such a congregation in such a diocese. We have affirmed and celebrated today the ministry of many of God’s people through the activities and outreach of this parish. I look forward to a time when there may be one or more additional priests to animate (as Bishop Frensdorff put it) our Eucharistic life, when there may be one or more deacons to animate our life of service and servanthood, but whether we have those or not, we are now a community which, nourished on Christ’s Body and Blood, is corporately and individually reaching out in service to our community. The Free Farmers’ Market is our largest and most active corporate outreach ministry; but we have many members who are active in public service as hospital and hospice volunteers, as board members of charities, as tutors, and in a variety of other ways. Their public service is a testament to the Christian witness of this church to which they belong.

Let us dream of a church . . .
so salty and so yeasty that it really would be missed if no longer around; where there is wild sowing of seeds and much rejoicing when they take root, but little concern for success, comparative statistics, growth or even survival.
a church so evangelical that its worship, its quality of caring, its eagerness to reach out to those in need cannot be contained.

I believe we are becoming such a congregation. At a recent meeting of leadership in this parish, one of our people said, “I’m looking forward to failing!” What he meant was that he looks forward to us going out into the community around us with (as the bishop says) “little concern for success,” simply going out and getting something done, spreading the Gospel without worrying about the final outcome, which is always and ever in God’s hands.

A church . . .
in which every congregation is in a process of becoming free – autonomous – self-reliant – interdependent, none has special status: the distinction between parish and mission gone.
where each congregation is in mission and each Christian, gifted for ministry; a crew on a freighter, not passengers on a luxury liner.
of peacemakers and healers abhorring violence in all forms (maybe even football), as concerned with societal healing as with individual healing; with justice as with freedom, prophetically confronting the root causes of social, political, and economic ills.
which is a community: an open, caring, sharing household of faith where all find embrace, acceptance. and affirmation.
a community: under judgment, seeking to live with its own proclamation, therefore, truly loving what the Lord commands and desiring his promise.

I believe this is what we meant when we declared, as a congregation, that St. Paul’s Parish’s reason for being is “to set hearts on fire for Jesus” and that our mission is “to advance the Kingdom of God through liturgical worship, spiritual education, personal growth, and service to others.”

And finally, let us dream of a people
called to recognize all the absurdities in ourselves and in one another, including the absurdity that is Love,
serious about the call and the mission but not, very much, about ourselves,
who, in the company of our Clown Redeemer can dance and sing and laugh and cry in worship, in ministry, and even in conflict.
[Frensdorff was a great lover of clowns who often used the clown as a metaphor or illustration in his preaching about Jesus.]

I recently read an essay entitled Why Does God Need the Church? by Ragan Sutterfield, an Episcopalian who lives in Arkansas. Sutterfield’s answer is that God needs the church “to be God’s real presence in the world . . . a radical and amazing call for a group of people.” But, he wrote, “we need to realize . . . that the buildings, the ecclesial bodies, the liturgies, the hierarchies, the bishops, the priests, the laity, the budgets, etc, etc, etc, are only valuable as parts of the church in so far as they are fulfilling the mission of God. And . . . God’s mission is not nice services for nice people in nice buildings.” (Emphasis added.)

Sutterfield, I think, is echoing Bishop Frensdorff’s vision. In doing so, Sutterfield, proposed two new ways to think of our church congregations. First, as “icon” – an icon, he says, is an image that sparks the imagination to move beyond the image and see God. The question we must ask ourselves is “Are we such a community? Looking at us, visiting us, worshiping with us, being served by us, and serving with us, are others moved beyond us to see God?” I believe that we are such a community and I hope that others see through us in that way.

Sutterfield’s second new image of the church is as a “dojo.” A dojo, as you probably know, is “a practice community within martial arts – it is the place where adherents to a specific form come together to learn how to be better practitioners, both from each other and from recognized masters of the form.” It is, simply put, the place and community where people come to get better at what they do. In the church-as-dojo, the congregation becomes the place where we come together to work at becoming more Christ-like. The church becomes a place where we come not to sing some nice songs and hear an occasionally good sermon, but a community with which we gather to explore the faith with one another, recognizing that some among us are more practiced than we may be, challenging each other and learning from one another how better to practice the way of Jesus.

Sutterfield concludes with a vision not too much different from Bishop Frensdorff’s:

Imagine a church where, after a few months of regularly attending, you are able to recognize that you are less angry than you used to be. Imagine a church that shows you how to forgive the person who hurt you most profoundly. Imagine a church that measures your love of God as Dorothy Day did hers, by how much you love the person you love least. Imagine a church that loves you for who you are, away from all of the facades of the self, and teaches you how to love.

I believe that St. Paul’s Parish is and is constantly becoming such a place and such a community. The reports we have received today, the leadership our vestry and officers provide, the ministries of all of our members, all demonstrate that that is so, and for that I am grateful to each of you and to God.

Let us pray:

Almighty and everliving God,
ruler of all things in heaven and earth,
hear our prayers for this parish family.
Strengthen the faithful, arouse the careless, and restore the penitent.
Grant us all things necessary for our common life,
and bring us all to be of one heart and mind
within your holy Church;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Will you turn to the prayers page of the Annual Journal and join me in the “Disturb us, Lord” prayer attributed to Sir Francis Drake which our Inviting the Future Committee adopted as the guiding prayer for our capital project. After the prayer, we’ll sing I Have Decided to Follow Jesus (which is on the back cover of the Journal) and stand adjourned.

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we have sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when, with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life. Having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity and in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love. Amen.

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