Category: Eucharist (Page 34 of 36)

Pluck the Fruit, Pay Attention: Sermon for Advent 1, Year C – December 2, 2012

December 2, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, December 2, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Advent 1, Year C: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; and Luke 21:25-36. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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“The days are surely coming….”

“Be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus….”

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars….”

“Heaven and earth will pass away….”

The End Is Near!

We don’t actually pay much heed or give much credence to crazy talk like that now, do we? We’ve heard plenty of preachers on street corners, on the radio, on the television predicting the end of the world. Remember Harold Camping last year? And, of course, the so-called Mayan prediction that we all have only nineteen days left now. We’ve heard these sorts of things often enough over the years that we just don’t pay any attention to them.

On top of that, we’ve become thoroughly scientific and modern. Everything has an explanation. We know how the world works. And we’ve turned all of it into a product; everything is for sale in one way or another. There seems to be no more mystery in anything. Our materialistic progress has almost overshadowed any sense of the spiritual. We have analyzed, demystified, commodified, and commercialized everything. In 1802 William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet bemoaning exactly that:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

“Great God! I’d rather be a Pagan!” wrote Wordsworth more than 200 years ago. We modern Christians, he said, “have given our hearts away. We are out of tune” with the rhythms of the world. We no longer see the signs in the natural world. But here they are in scripture, the signs of the end of the world, reportedly predicted by Jesus himself. “Look at the fig tree and all the trees,” he says, “as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place [these signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars], you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

We human beings, whether Pagan or Christian, have proven incredibly bad at understanding the signs of the times insofar as they apply on a global, or universal, or apocalyptic scale. We keep getting it wrong. You’ve probably heard someone say something like this: “The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.” Those particular words were found inscribed on a clay tablet from ancient Assyria, a tablet dating from about 2800 BC, and there are similar words on a grafitto on a wall in ancient Pompeii – so I’m not sure Wordsworth was all that right about the pagans. They weren’t any better at it than we are.

But here’s the thing. Jesus didn’t tell us to look at the forest. He told us to look at the trees, at individual trees, at the fig tree in particular. The end of the world doesn’t come, or at least it hasn’t come, in a big global, universal apocalypse. It comes to each of us individually. Today is the end of the world, right now, for somebody. All over the world, today is the day of judgment. For thousands, possibly millions, of individual people today is the end of the world; they will die today. For millions of others, there will be some important turning point their lives. For each of those people, the end – in some way or another – is close at hand.

Why do you suppose church tradition has us thinking about such things at the beginning of the Christian year, the First Sunday of Advent, with only twenty-two days until Christmas Eve, getting ready for one of the most joyous events of our year? Well, it’s because Advent isn’t just about getting ready for Christmas; it’s not even primarily about getting ready for Christmas. It’s about getting ready for Christ’s Return; it’s about getting ready for the Second Coming. Advent, in fact, means “coming” and the season is about getting ready for the coming of Judgment Day, the end of this life.

And how do we do that? By paying attention and by praying. As Jesus says, “Be alert at all times, praying . . . . ”

During this season while we get ready for Christmas, try not to get all caught up in the commodification and commercialization of everything. A friend of mine, Fr. Marshall Scott, who’s a hospital chaplain in Kansas City, commented recently, “It seems to me that the problem is not too little Christ in Christmas. The problem is too many ads in Advent.” Don’t get caught up in all of that! Take a breath; pay attention to the rest of life. I’m tempted to say, “Pay attention the real things in life.” Take time to pray, today; take time to give thanks, today. Because, although it sounds like a cliché, it’s the truth of Advent, today may be the end. And if it is, be assured that at the end stands Jesus.

So live expectantly; fill each day with meaningful activity. “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

The 20th Century poet Denise Levertov penned an answer to Wordsworth. Where he wrote, ” The world is too much with us,” in her poem O Taste and See she wrote, “The world is not with us enough.” This is her poem:

The world
is not with us enough.
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

That is Advent’s message: taste and see, bite and savor, cross the street, pluck the fruit, stand up, raise your head, pay attention, be alert. Amen.

Christ the King Among the Amish – From the Daily Office – November 25, 2012

November 25, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Peter’s First Letter:

In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Peter 3:15-16 (NRSV) – November 25, 2012)

Amish Buggy and Cart in Ohio Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost called “the Feast of Christ the King.” A relatively new feast on the calendar of the church, it was instituted by a 20th Century pope and originally set in late October as a response to the Protestant celebration of “Reformation Sunday” on the Sunday closest to October 31, the anniversary of Luther’s posting on the Wittenburg chapel door. The latter, I would suppose, started with the Lutherans but has spread throughout American Protestantism; I know of Presbyterian, Reformed, UCC, and Methodist churches that mark it. I know of no Episcopal congregations that do so. Episcopalians did take to Christ the King, however, and since Paul VI moved it to the last Sunday of the Christian year, every congregation I’ve been a part of has celebrated it. With the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary, it is now an official part of our tradition.

Today, my congregation will be celebrating it without me. My spouse and I have taken a break and, since Friday, have been staying in a retreat facility not that far away from our home geographically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually a very, very long distance separate this place from that. We spent yesterday indulging our hobby of “antiquing” – wandering aimlessly through several of the amazing collections of junk one finds in the abandoned supermarkets, retired barns, and former garages now called “antique malls.” There are several in the Amish Country of Ohio, where we are.

The Amish are an interesting people. They quietly and steadfastly maintain a traditional way life hundreds of years old, one dating back to their formation as a Protestant sect in German-speaking Switzerland. Eschewing automobiles, they drive boxy black buggies down the state highways and country roads. Claiming not to use electricity, they have gas lights or kerosene lanterns in their homes and businesses, except when they don’t – I admit to being befuddled by this; I can’t figure out when it is OK to use electricity and when it isn’t. And then there is the use of batteries by those who “have no electricity” (as one shopkeeper put it); batteries power buggy lights and sometimes business lighting (but “we have no electricity”). I don’t get it it, but that’s OK – that’s not what this meditation is about.

What makes the Amish most interesting is that they go about this odd, set-apart way of life “with gentleness and respect.” I nearly wrote above that they maintain their traditions “unobtrusively,” but that really wouldn’t have been accurate. They are obtrusive! Come upon a horse-drawn farm cart plodding along a 55-mph-speed-limit highway or a buggy on a 35-mph country lane, roads which are winding and hilly and have limited visibility, and (believe me) it’s an obtrusion! Often a deadly one for the Amish if the automobile driver doing so is not paying attention or has poor reactions.

In stores, the Amish men with their broad-brimmed hats, long beards, and plain rugged clothing, and the Amish ladies with their long skirts, dark sweaters, and hair done up in buns under starched linen caps, are very noticeable, whether they are service personnel or are themselves customers. In restaurants, which they rarely but occasionally patronize, their large families pausing to say grace in antiquated German before eating are a reminder that while they are sanctifying the Lord, we are not. That’s obtrusive . . . but oh so gentle and respectful.

That is the nature of the King whom we sanctify today on this special day of remembering his lordship. He gave vent to flashes of anger, of course, and there are plenty of hints throughout the Gospels that he was, rather often, frustrated and unhappy with this followers, but we mostly remember him as gentle and reverent. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” is a phrase I remember from a hymn we learned in my Methodist Sunday School days of long ago.

The Gospel lesson for today’s celebrations of the Holy Eucharist is from John: Pilate questioning Jesus before his crucifixion. Jesus, the epitome of gentleness and respect, answers Pilate calmly, or stands silently, when he could have taken complete control of the situation, called down the wrath of God, and established an earthly kingdom right then and there. Instead, he takes complete control of the situation in another way, the way of gentleness and peace.

I think that’s what I find most compelling and oddly attractive about the Amish. They are in complete control of their lives, as narrow and confined as they may seem to a modern outsider like myself. They go about their traditional ways in the midst of the madness around them, the speeding cars, the frantic shoppers, the hurried diners too busy to say grace; they don’t give in to modern pressures. They just keep plodding along like the horses pulling their carts and buggies, doing faithfully what they know they are called to do. They are a Protestant’s Protestants, children of the Reformation started when Martin Luther nailed those theses to the Wittenburg door, but more than any Solemnity declared by pope or any dictate of the lectionary, they stand testimony to the power of gentleness and respect, a potent reminder of Christ the King.

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

The Most Important Election . . . NOT! – Sermon for Election Day – November 6, 2012

November 8, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Lessons selected for the Mass were Isaiah 26:1-8, Romans 13:1-10, and Mark 12:13-17, from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer’s lectionary for various occasions, “For the Nation”; the gradual, Psalm 146, was selected by the preacher.)

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Romney Campaign Button "Most Important Election" “This election is the most important, ever. If that candidate is elected, it will be the end of the world!” The first time I heard that was during the campaign of the first presidential election I paid attention to: the race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. I heard it as my family watched the televised debate; it was said by my older brother who was then a freshman studying history and political science at the University of Texas, so of course he knew everything. “That candidate,” by the way, was Richard Nixon. We heard it again in 1964; remember the television commercial with the little girl plucking petals from a daisy and the atomic explosion? “If Barry Goldwater is elected,” it suggested none too subtly, “it will be the end of the world.” We hear it every election, “This election is the most important election of our lifetimes.” And, to be honest, that is a correct statement. Those in the past are no longer important; they’re done and other with. Only this election can impact the future so, at this time, up to now, it is the most important. But truth be told . . . none of them, including this election, are really all that important in the grand scheme of things.

In the Daily Office Lectionary of the Episcopal Church, the cycle of bible readings to be read each morning, today’s New Testament reading was from the Book of Revelation which records the vision St. John of Patmos had of “the new Jerusalem,” of heaven. In the lesson, this is what John reports:

I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb:
“Great and amazing are your deeds,
Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
King of the nations!
Lord, who will not fear
and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship before you,
for your judgments have been revealed.” (Revelation 15:2-4)

This song of praise was a wonderful reminder with which to begin Election Day: God is the king of the nations; he alone is holy. As we went to the polls today, we were casting our ballots for political leaders, not religious ones, and certainly not a savior. Today we chose between candidates for various offices, all of whom are simply human beings like ourselves, fallible human beings whom we hope will strive to overcome whatever their faults and frailties may be, and govern to the best of their abilities. Whether the candidates for whom you or I happened to vote are elected is not, at this point, of any real importance; what is of importance is that we respect and honor our system of governance, and support and pray for whichever candidates are ultimately placed in office.

The Psalm which we recited just a few minutes ago reminds us:

Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them.
When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish.
(Ps. 146:2-3, BCP version)

We are admonished not to rely, although we surely do, on our earthly leaders. We repose more trust, and certainly more expectation, than we ought in our elected leaders, forgetting that they are no different from, nor more perfect than we.

This evening we do not celebrate nor do we extol any political party, any platform, any candidate, any elected office holder. Instead, we give thanks for the freedoms we enjoy, for the country we love, and for the electoral process which allows us to maintain both through peaceful changes in government. We give thanks for the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, for the insight of the framers of the Constitution, for the bravery and sacrifice of those who have defended our rights and liberties, and for the commitment of our fellow citizens who have participated in our democracy and voted in this election. We give thanks for all these things to the one upon whom all this rests, to the one who is the foundation of our existence, to the one who is our ultimate concern, to the one in whose service we find perfect freedom.

When we gather to give thanks for and to pray for our national life, the lectionary of our church asks us to hear and consider the story of the Pharisees and Herodians asking Jesus about taxes: Is it lawful to pay them to Caesar? To which Jesus’ makes his famous reply, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” This gospel story, says theologian Daniel Deffenbaugh

. . . calls us to be neither enemies of the state nor its staunch allies. Rather, we should think of ourselves, in the words of Stanley Hauerwas, as “resident aliens. ” We do not refuse to give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, even when – much to our dismay – their utilization defies our most deeply held convictions. This is as true of the right as it is of the left, and in this we can take some solace. But the affections of our hearts and minds must always, and with greater fervor, be focused on the more urgent clause in Jesus’ directive: “give to God the things that are God’s.” (Allies or Enemies?

This, he says, leaves us in a “posture of perpetual discernment,” constantly trying to distinguish our steadfast devotion to God from our obligations to the nation.
The Cathechism of the Roman Catholic Church interprets this gospel tale as teaching that we should “give to God everything, but give Caesar his due.” Thus, we are called to take part in our national culture for the common good. “It is necessary that all participate, each according to his position and role, in promoting the common good. This obligation is inherent in the dignity of the human person.” (CCC 1913) To the best of our ability, we should all participate in the public arena for the good of the society. Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees and Herodians gives each person freedom to act in that public sphere, but with that freedom come awesome responsibilities, none more awesome than the privilege and obligation to participate in democratic elections, even if we do so in a “posture of perpetual discernment.”

We do our best in that state of constant decision-making. We study the issues and the candidates. We make our choices. We participate in the public arena. We vote. And then we trust . . . not in rulers, not in political parties, not in the candidates, not in any child of earth . . . We render our trust not to Caesar nor anything that is Caesar’s, but to God. It is not that our vote is unimportant, but it is not of ultimate concern.

In the Anglican Communion on November 6, we commemorate one of our greatest theologians, Archbishop William Temple, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury near the Second World War. He served in that post only two years, from his appointment in 1942 to his death in October, 1944. He served in the episcopate for 23 of his 63 years, first as Bishop of Manchester, then as Archbishop of York, and finally in the See of Canterbury. Throughout his life, he was a prolific author of philosophy and theology.

While serving in York, he addressed the 1938 Lambeth Conference, the decennial gathering of Anglican bishops, with these words which, I think, are a good reminder for us today:

While we deliberate, God reigns.
When we decide wisely, God reigns.
When we decide foolishly, God reigns.
When we serve God in humble loyalty, God reigns.
When we serve God self-assertively, God reigns.
When we rebel and seek to withhold our service, God reigns –
The Alpha and the Omega, which is and which was,
And which is to come, the Almighty.

John of Patmos in his apocalypse, the Psalmist in Psalm 146, Archbishop Temple in his address to the gathered bishops . . . they all remind us that no matter how we decide, no matter who is elected today, God reigns. As the graphic on the cover of our bulletin says, “No matter who is president, Jesus is king.”

Let us pray.

O God of light and love, inspire us, we pray, that we may rejoice with courage, confidence, and faith in the Word made flesh, Jesus our King, and that through our participation in our national culture and our democratic processes we may establish that society which has justice for its foundation and love for its law; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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

Unbind Him, and Let Him Go! – Sermon for All Saints Sunday – November 4, 2012

November 4, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, November 4, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, All Saints, Year B: Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; and John 11:32-44. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Orthodox Icon of the Raising of Lazarus Today, following church tradition, we step away from the calendar of Ordinary Time and, instead, commemorate the Feast of All Saints. That festival is specifically held on November 1, but tradition allows us to celebrate the saints also on the Sunday after that date, so here we are.

Anglicans and Episcopalians for generations have been used to hearing the Beatitudes from Matthew’s gospel (Matt. 5:1-12) or the similar Blessings-and-Woes from Luke’s version (Luke 6:20-26), but since the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary we also, every three years, hear the story of the raising of Lazarus from the gospel according to John. The listings of who is blessed in the other two gospels make sense as lessons for this day; the story of Lazarus, not so much. It may make us wonder why those who created our new lectionary made that choice.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to that question, if there are any answers at all. The development of the lectionary is a creature of time and custom as much as it is of purposeful selection. Lectionaries develop over the centuries. Typically, a lectionary will go through the scriptures in a logical pattern, and also include selections chosen by the community for their appropriateness to particular occasions. The ecumenical scholars who set up our current lectionary looked back over these centuries of development and selected lessons which had the broadest consensus for use on particular days, like today’s celebration of the feasts.

But why that consensus may exist is lost in time. There are no legislative notes indicating why communities thought a particular lesson, like the story of Christ raising Lazarus, fit a particular feast, such as All Saints Day. We who have inherited the tradition must read the lessons and figure out their message for ourselves. On a feast day, the Prayer Book gives us some filters, if you will, to aid in our reflections and our understanding; these are the collect (or prayer) of the day and the “proper preface” said (or chanted) before the Great Thanksgiving. Let’s take a look at the collect again:

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. (BCP Page 245)

The focus of the prayer is the “communion and fellowship” of the saints, the community of the church, which is “knit together . . . in the mystical body” of Christ, which shares in “virtuous and godly living” and together enjoys the “ineffable joys” of eternal life. Likewise the preface focuses on the community:

For in the multitude of your saints you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses, that we might rejoice in their fellowship, and run with endurance the race that is set before us; and, together with them, receive the crown of glory that never fades away. (BCP Page 380)

The emphasis is on the “great cloud of witnesses” (a phrase borrowed from the Letter to the Hebrews 12:1) who rejoice in fellowship and together are crowned with unfading glory.

So in our contemplation of any of the lessons for today, we should look for the ways in which the lesson exemplifies or speaks to the community of faith, and in the raising of Lazarus that comes at the end of the story: “The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go’.” (John 11:44)

“Unbind him, and let him go!” These may be the most powerful words in the story, because with them Jesus not only frees Lazarus, he empowers the community of faith. The community assists in the resurrection; it is the task of the People of God to complete the action of Resurrection. Jesus has called Lazarus out of the tomb, but he is still wearing the clothing of death, his funeral wrappings; the community removes those burial shrouds and dresses him for life.

I love that old Southern Harmony hymn we sang in procession today, especially the chorus which says

As I went down in the river to pray,
Studying about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the robe and crown?
Good Lord, show me the way.
(“Down in the River to Pray”)

“Who shall wear the robe and crown?” is a reference to the vision of St. John of Patmos recorded in the Book of Revelation, a vision of heaven where “there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (Rev. 7:9)

Last Thursday, which was actually All Saints Day, one of the lessons for the Daily Office of Morning Prayer was from the apocryphal book of Second Esdras. In it Ezra reports seeing a similar vision of heaven.

I, Ezra, saw on Mount Zion a great multitude that I could not number, and they all were praising the Lord with songs. In their midst was a young man of great stature, taller than any of the others, and on the head of each of them he placed a crown, but he was more exalted than they. And I was held spellbound. Then I asked an angel, “Who are these, my lord?” He answered and said to me, “These are they who have put off mortal clothing and have put on the immortal, and have confessed the name of God. Now they are being crowned, and receive palms.” Then I said to the angel, “Who is that young man who is placing crowns on them and putting palms in their hands?” He answered and said to me, “He is the Son of God, whom they confessed in the world.” So I began to praise those who had stood valiantly for the name of the Lord. (2 Esdras 2:42-47)

This vision differs from that in Revelation in that the presence of the Son of God is among the crowd, crowning them and putting the palms in their hands. I have to say, I rather prefer this vision to John’s because of that difference. There is something compelling about the Son of God being there with the saints, not high and exalted on a throne, as the Lamb is in the oracle of Revelation, but down with the people. This seems much more like the Jesus described in the Gospels, much more like the God he revealed.

This vision of Christ with the masses, yielding his glory and mixing in with his people, seems somehow quite in keeping with our celebration of all the saints. Today we don’t commemorate only those whose names are known, those who are portrayed in art with golden halos, those in whose particular memory churches and schools are dedicated; today we commemorate those whose names are not known. Ezra’s vision in Second Esdras of Christ mingling with these unknown but godly people appeals to me.

An early 20th Century Roman Catholic Lithuanian archbishop, George Matulaitis, once wrote:

May our model be Jesus Christ: not only working quietly in His home at Nazareth, not only Christ denying Himself, fasting forty days in the desert, not only Christ spending the night in prayer; but also Christ working, weeping, suffering; Christ among the crowds; Christ visiting the cities and villages. (Renovator of the Marians)

This is the Christ of Ezra’s vision; this is the Christ of the saints whom we remember today, Christ among the crowds. Indeed, John of Patmos in our reading from Revelation today describes God among the people: “[God] will dwell with [mortals] as their God; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.” (Rev. 21:3-4)

When Jesus, this Christ among the crowds, this God dwelling with mortals, tells those around him, “Unbind him, and let him go” he is speaking not only to them, but also to us. When we hear those words we should remember another time when he empowered his church to unbind others. In Matthew’s gospel, in conversation with Peter, Jesus said: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 16:19)

And again later to the apostles he said: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 18:18)

Here the Greek verb luo is translated as “loosen”, but it is the same word in our reading today translated as “unbind”. We have the power and the obligation to unbind and set others free. “Unbind him, and let him go” is Christ’s empowering command to all the saints everyday. It is Christ’s command to us to unbind others and give them their freedom; this is Christ among the crowds, God dwelling with God’s people, showing us the way that we and others can wear the robe and crown.

We unbind others and set them free when we work to alleviate the desperate plight of those who lack material means of survival, whether they are in our own communities, on the Gulf Coast or the eastern seaboard, or in distant countries. We unbind others and set them free when we act to console a brother or sister crushed by loss or fear or despair. We unbind others and set them free when we strive to empower rather than intimidate. We unbind others and set them free when we commit ourselves to justice for all, not merely for ourselves. We unbind others and set them free when we extend to others the mercy we have received from God. Whenever and wherever we find someone bound by sin or system or circumstance, we are to unbind them and set them free, not keep them tangled up in the old affairs, the old clothing, the old funeral wrappings of sin and death; those burial shrouds constrict them and damage everyone. Whenever and wherever we find someone struggling to be free, we are to unbind them and let them go so that we may all wear the robe and crown.

Today we commemorate all the saints, that great cloud of witnesses, that great multitude that no one can count wearing their robes and crowns, the community of the church throughout time and space charged with, committed to, and constantly striving to unbind others and set them free. Amen.

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

The Patients of Job: Part Four – “Can You Love What You Can’t Control?” – Sermon for Pentecost 22, Proper 25B – October 28, 2012

October 28, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 28, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 25B: Job 42:1-6,10-17; Psalm 34:1-8; Hebrews 7:23-28; and Mark 10:46-52. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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"So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning" by William Blake So here we are at the end of the Book of Job and the last of our sermons in this series entitled The Patients of Job. Let’s review the lessons we have learned, the spiritual remedies we have found in the medicine chest of this book.

First, in the introductory scenes in which the character God gave Satan leave to torment Job in ways he did not deserve, we learned that stuff sometimes happens in a person’s life, as it does in the story of Job, that he or she does not merit and for which he or she is not to blame! Stuff sometimes happens in your life that you do not deserve, and you are not to blame for it! The first bit of medicine we found in the Book of Job was the lesson to give up the “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” ways of thinking, and stop beating ourselves up over things we can’t control! We also learned from the first part of Job’s story that life is a set of questions and that if there is truth to be found in this book, or in any of the books of the Bible, it is to be found in the process of struggling with those questions.

You’ll remember that, in the second reading we heard from this book, Job had decided to take God to court but had a problem: he didn’t know where to find God. In contemplating Job’s quandary, we recalled that our Christian faith assures us that in our times of pain and suffering, God comes to us in the loving acts of others. In illness, for example, God comes to us in the ministrations of the medical professionals who treat us. In emotional distress, God comes to us through those who offer us encouragement. In moments of deep need, God is there in a mysterious way through those who care for us. This gives us hope and courage. We need not cry out as Job did, “Oh, that I knew where I might find him;” (23:3) God knows where to find us. This is the balm for our souls, the spiritual medicine that we found in our second lesson from the Book of Job, that in our times of need, God knows were to find us and that, indeed, God does come to us.

In our third reading, last week, God spoke to Job but did not directly answer Job’s legal complaints. Instead, God’s response to Job was an invitation to us to participate in creation, to get creative. God let Job and us know that the answer to life’s problems is to get creative, to do something unexpected, to think outside the box. That is spiritual medicine for us because neither our problems, nor our world, nor our God will fit neatly into our preconceived boxes.

So those are the Book of Job’s spiritual medicines so far: stuff happens – don’t let it get you down; life is a bunch of questions, not a set of answers; God knows where to find us; and think outside the box.

Between last week’s lesson and this week’s reading, God continues to speak to Job about creation, describing its wildness, its beauty, and its uncontrollable nature; in Chapters 40 and 41, God specifically mentions the great bests Behemoth and Leviathan which cannot be captured and which overwhelm any who see them. The descriptions of nature in these ending chapters are suffused with the love that God has for God’s creation. This overwhelming and uncontrollable world which God created and which God loves is the answer God gives to Job’s self-pitying “Why me?” a question which clearly makes no sense in such a world.

Which brings us to the end and the epilogue but, frankly, these don’t make much sense. They seem to contradict everything we’ve learned so far. The whole book up to this point has seemed to be an argument against the old “wisdom religion” with its system of retributive justice, its idea that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, that whatever happens to you, good or bad, is because you deserve it, so just accept it. But here at the end of the book that seems to be exactly what is happening: Job is rewarded for his righteousness by being reimbursed for his losses. “The Lord restored the fortunes of Job . . . the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” Furthermore, God replaces Job’s ten dead children with ten new children, as if children are fungible commodities. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar seem to have been right all along.

But if that’s what this Book of Job is all about, then it offers no spiritual medicines to us at all, for we know that the world simply doesn’t work that way! The righteous aren’t always rewarded; the wicked aren’t always punished; in fact, it’s all too often the other way around. If we read the end of the story in that way, we must be missing something. And indeed we are.

The lesson to be learned here requires that we compare the Job who is “restored” with the Job who existed before all of his losses. That earlier Job was a man who sought to control his world. We are told that that Job “would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number [of his children]; for Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ This is what Job always did.” (1:5) The restored Job, having been shown how uncontrollable the world is, turns loose of control; even before his death would require him to, he gives an inheritance to his children, his daughters as well as his sons. (42:15)

Ellen F. Davis, Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke University Divinity School, in her book Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cowley:Cambridge, MA, 2001), characterizes God’s speeches to Job, just the opening part of which we heard in last week’s reading, as posing for Job and us this question: “Can you love what you do not control?” (pg. 140)

You may be familiar with a popular saying that goes something like this: “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was yours.” God’s admonitions to Job and his restoration of Job’s fortunes affirm the first part of that, but call into the question the bits about return. The point here seems to be that even if it does return, it was never yours, at least it was never yours to control. In God’s descriptions of nature, of the unruliness of the weather, of the harshness of the wilderness, of the violence of the seas, of the wildness of the beasts, God made it clear that God made Creation wild and free, but God nonetheless loves Creation. This new, restored Job has learned to love his family in the same way, respecting their dignity and freedom, not seeking to control their world.

So the lesson for us to learn, the spiritual medicine for us at the end of the book, like the first lesson at its beginning, has to do with our lack of control. From the early scenes, we learned to accept that we cannot control the world; at the end, we learn to love it anyway. Love it even its most out-of-control, darkest times, because the lesson at the end of this Book of Job tells us that when the dark, uncontrollable night is over, the sun always rises. There is always the promise of hope. That is not only the balm at the end of Job’s story, it is the recurring message of the story of God and God’s People told again and again.

In the time of Noah, it rained for forty days and forty nights; water covered the earth for nearly a year. There was nothing Noah and his family could do about it; they were not in control. But, eventually, the dry land appeared again and God hung a rainbow in the sky.

For generations, the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt. There was nothing they could do about; they were not in control. But then God sent Moses and they were freed.

For forty years they wandered the desert because they were not in control, but eventually Moses led them to, and Joshua led them into, the Promised Land.

The Babylonians sacked Jerusalem and carried away the leaders and a goodly portion of God’s People to Babylon. They were exiled for seventy years; there was nothing they could do about it; they were not in control. But, eventually, God raised up Cyrus the Persian who defeated the Babylonians and set the Israelites free to return and rebuild.

Bartimaeus was blind. There was nothing he could do about it; he was not in control. But, eventually, the Son of God happened by and his sight was restored.

The Son of God himself was beaten, mocked, crucified and killed, laid in a tomb that was not his own. There was nothing he could do about it; he had given up control. But, eventually, there was Easter!

The last verse of the Book of Job as we have received it is, “And Job died, old and full of days.” But in some Greek-language texts there is one more verse added, “And it is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up.” The end of the Book of Job is a reminder to love what we cannot control, to love what is wild and free, because as bad as things may get, as dark and out-of-control as they may be, eventually there will be something very much like resurrection. And that is balm for our souls, that we like Job “will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up.” Amen.

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

The Patients of Job: Part Three – “What Is Half of 11?” – Sermon for Pentecost 21, Proper 24B – October 21, 2012

October 21, 2012 / eric / 3 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 21, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 24B: Job 38:1-7,34-41; Psalm 104:1-9,25,37b; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page. At St. Paul’s Parish, the whole of Job 38 was read as the Old Testament lesson.)

The illustrations which follow in this sermon were presented as PowerPoint slides during the homily.

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This is our third installment in the sermon series The Patients of Job and we begin with a diagnostic question: What is half of 11?

Job 38:1-7, (34-41) Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b or Isaiah 53:4-12 Psalm 91:9-16 Hebrews 5:1-10 Mark 10:35-45

Think about that for a while and we will return to this question in a moment. First, however, we need to catch ourselves up-to-date on the story of Job.

When we left Job last week, he and his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had had a long conversation about Job’s condition, his various misfortunes, and his own purity or blameworthiness; they then waxed philosophical about a hypothetical and stereotypical wicked man, being rather unclear whether that man was, in fact, Job. We were left with Job determined to take God to court where he would plead his innocence, but in something of a quandary because he was unsure where to find God.

Despite his confusion and bewilderment about the whereabouts of the Almighty, Job then spends the next nine chapters laying out his case. Bildad interrupts him briefly, but other than that the three friends do not speak further. There is a brief excursus in Chapter 28 about creation and wisdom, and scholars are unsure if Job is actually the speaker of that portion; it may be that this is one of the friends or even the narrator of the story speaking, but the text is unclear. When Job finishes, a newcomer begins to speak, Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite. He comes on the scene unannounced, expresses his anger at Job and his friends because of their lack of understanding about God, and picks holes in some of their arguments. Most scholars think this a later addition to the book because Elihu’s speeches really add nothing and interrupt the flow between Job’s final speech and the appearance of the character God whose first speech in response to Job we heard today as our Old Testament reading. (I asked our lector to read the whole of Chapter 38, not simply the selected verses required by the Lectionary.)

My friend and colleague Steve _________, who is now the priest-in-charge of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Mayfield Village, recently characterized the Book of Job, and this chapter of it in particular as “Job asking, ‘Why am I, a righteous man, suffering so?’ and God’s answer is ‘I am God and you are not.'” As Steve noted, that is not an entirely satisfying answer! I’ve often thought of the book and God’s answer in even less positive terms; it has frequently seemed to me that God’s response is (pardon the expression!), “Who the hell are you?”

But as I re-read the whole of the story in preparation for these sermons, and again as I have written each homily, I think that Steve and I have been wrong about this story. I don’t think God’s answer is either “I’m God and you’re not” or “Who the hell are you?” I think God’s answer is “What is half of 11?” And, again, I’ll come back to that.

I mentioned Chapter 28 earlier; that chapter really sets the background for God’s response to Job in this chapter. Chapter 28 has been called “one of the most exquisite poetic compositions of the entire Bible” (New Interpreters Bible, Vol. IV, Abingdon Press:1996, p. 528); I encourage you to read it! In Chapter 28, the speaker (whether Job or someone else) addresses the paradox of wisdom which cannot be found because it is everywhere. “Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold to be refined,” it begins. (v. 1) “But where shall wisdom be found?” it asks, “And where is the place of understanding?” (v. 12) In what is really a hymn to wisdom and creation, the speaker sings of precious metals and prized gemstones, of the animals of nature, of the phenomena of weather, and of God who understands the way of wisdom because God “looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens.” (v. 24) Human beings, says the speaker, find wisdom through participation in creation in two particular ways. First, by what the speaker calls “the fear of the Lord,” a biblical term for piety or prayerful mindfulness; second, through “departure from evil,” which is to say moral action and uprightness. In these ways, human beings participate in the integrity of creation and understand the interrelatedness of all things; in a word, human beings find wisdom through creation and in creativity. This, then, is the background for what God says to Job in Chapter 38.

Job has laid out his legal case and made his arguments. God appears on the scene and rather than answer the lawsuit, he turns the tables on Job and starts asking him a lot of questions about nature. He asks about the seas, about wild animals, about storms and clouds and thunder, but says not a word about any of the points Job has laid out so carefully in his legal case . . . not a word. Instead, God’s address to Job is characterized by an “unrelenting use of rhetorical questions: ‘Who?’ ‘Where?’ ‘How?’ ‘What . . . can you . . . have you . . . do you know?'” (N.I.B., p. 598)

“What,” says God, “is half of 11?” Well, not actually. “What is half of 11?” is a question asked by my friend John O’Keefe. And, of course, we all know the answer, don’t we? Half of 11 is 5.5. You take 11; you divide it by 2; you get 5-and-a-half. Done.

5.5

But are we? In John’s book, The Church Creative (CreateSpace:2012), he suggests we ought to open ourselves to considering the question “What is half of 11?” from different and unexpected perspectives. (See also John’s website, The Church Creative.)

What if we visualize or understand this question not as “What is half of the number 11?” but “What is half of a character made up of two 1s, two vertical strokes?” Then half of 11 is . . .

. . . and the second half is . . .

1 & 1

Or what if we think not in Arabic numerals but in the Roman numerals?

What Is Half of XI?

Then the first half of XI is an X . . .

. . . and the second half is an I.

X & I

Or, we could just slice the figure horizontally so that there’s a top half . . .

Top of XI

. . . and a bottom half.

Top & Bottom of XI

Here’s another thought. Think in terms of words, not numbers. “What is half of e-l-e-v-e-n?”

What is half of eleven?

Obviously, the first half is “e-l-e” . . .

ele

. . . and the second, “v-e-n”.

ele & ven

Or, half of the word “eleven” is made up of the vowel “e” . . .

eee

. . . and the other half is made up of consonants.

eee & lvn

I suggest to you that God’s numerous rhetorical questions are meant to get Job to look at himself, his situation, his losses, and his current condition, from a different perspective, to understand God in a different way. God’s response to Job is like asking “What is half of 11?”

Just like us, when we read that question as being only and solely a math problem, Job has a particular way of seeing the world, a particular way of understanding reality, a particular way of understanding God. His frame of reference, if you will, was the social structure of his world, the village, clan, and family structure within which his life was lived. Job’s theological imagination was framed by that structure; the metaphors through which he sought to understand God came from that structure. Just as Job, acting as a person of honor, would hear and respond to a complaint from one of his employees or one of his children, so he believed God would hear and respond to his case. “Job’s image of God is developed out the highest and best values of his society, values that Job has always tried to embody.” (N.I.B., p. 556) This is fully in keeping with the Biblical tradition of “thinking about God by means of metaphors drawn largely from the realm of human relations.” (Ibid.) The problem, of course, is that such metaphors are limited and inadequate. God is not simply an ideal human person; God is “wholly other”, and God will not fit completely into the neat and tidy lines of our metaphors. Job is only partially correct about God. God will (and does) deal with Job as a loving Parent might deal with a child, but not in the way Job anticipates.

My daughter Caitlin recently shared with me an essay she wrote for one of her college courses. In it she related a story about my uncle, who was a very talented professional artist, teaching her to draw. This is her story:

My great uncle Richard was the first person to let me loose with a tool and tell me that I had the power to create “Art”. Sitting under an orange tree in my Grammy’s backyard, he handed me some colored pencils and told me to draw my favorite thing; at the time it was flowers. My geometric and organic patterns turned into a kid’s rendition of paisley. Once I got that flower thing down I wanted to move on to something more awesome. I couldn’t think of what to draw, so Uncle Richard decided to teach me a Surrealist technique to ease the imagination process. He told me to take a black pen, and without thinking about it too much, draw one continuous line all over the paper, “Just scribble it all up.”

After I scribbled the most extreme mess on the page, he told me to “make the ends meet.” I found the point at which I began my crazy doodle, connected the dots and then colored in the shapes between the lines with a myriad of color as he suggested. The great American painter Jasper Johns said the way to make art is to “Do something, then do something to that, then do something to that.”

My uncle had my daughter do something like this . . .

Squiggle

. . . and then do something like this to it.

Squiggle Colored-in

In this way, Uncle Richard taught Caitlin that she had (as she put it) “the power to create.” It must have worked; last year Caitlin painted this watercolor . . .

and, with it, won a scholarship at the University of Missouri.

God’s response to Job, all those rhetorical questions – “Who?” “Where?” “How?” “What . . . can you . . . have you . . . do you know?” – were God’s way of getting Job to “just scribble it all up,” of getting Job to stop being confined within the lines and limits and inadequacies of his metaphors, of getting Job to think creatively, of helping Job to find wisdom by participating in the integrity of creation and through understanding of the interrelatedness of all things. God’s response was not asking Job “Who the hell are you?” and God wasn’t answering his complaint with “I’m God and you’re not.” God was, however, saying, “I’m God but not in anyway you’ve ever considered, understood, or even imagined.” God was saying, “Neither I nor the world I created will fit within the neat lines of your metaphorical box.”

God’s response to Job is an invitation, and therein is the balm for us as “Patients of Job”, the prescription for whatever sickens our souls, for remedy for whatever ails our realities. God’s response is an invitation to Job and to us to participate in creation, to “scribble it all up,” to do something, then do something to that, then do something to that, to answer “What is half of 11?” in unexpected ways, to be creative in our problem solving. The answer to Job’s problem is not to sit on his pile of ashes moaning and complaining, disputing legalisms and “did I deserve it?”s with his friends; the answer to Job’s problem is not to sit on his pile of ashes framing legal arguments and preparing to sue God! The answer to Job’s problem is to get creative, to do something unexpected, to think outside the box. And that is spiritual medicine for us because, just like Job’s, neither our problems, nor our world, nor our God . . .

. . . will fit in our neat metaphorical boxes. Amen.

The Patients of Job: Part Two – “I Don’t Know Where to Find God!” – Sermon for Pentecost 20, Proper 23B – October 14, 2012

October 14, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 14, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 23B: Job 23:1-9,16-17; Psalm 22:1-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; and Mark 10:17-31. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Lost and Confused Signpost In last week’s reading from the Old Testament, you will remember, God gave Satan permission to test the righteousness of a man of integrity named Job. First all of Job’s possessions and his family are taken from him: his oxen and donkeys are carried off by Sabeans; his sheep are burned up in a fire; his camels are stolen by the invading Chaldeans; and the collapse of a house kills all of Job’s ten children. But Job, being a righteous man, does not curse God; instead, he shaves his head, tears his clothes, and says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job does not sin or curse God. (1:21-22)

Therefore, Satan returns to God and seeks permission to cause Job bodily, suffering as well. God agrees saying, “He is in your power; only spare his life.” (2:6) Satan, therefore, afflicts him with a loathsome skin disease. Job’s response is to scratch his skin with broken pottery and sit down in a pile of ashes. Job’s wife prompts him to “curse God, and die” but Job answers that she is speaking foolishly, and she departs the scene and will not be heard from again. As Chapter Two closes, Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, having heard of his calamity, come to comfort him. When they arrive, they join him in mourning, tearing their own clothes, weeping loudly, throwing dust on their heads, and sitting with him in silence for a week.

After that week of silence, a dialog ensues between the friends and Job. Each speaks in turn in three cycles of addresses, and Job answers them. In the first cycle – and I admit that this is a very simplistic summary – Job curses the day he was born, but essentially holds that he is blameless and does not deserve what has befallen him; this indeed, will be his position throughout the rest of the book.

Eliphaz is the first of his friends to speak; basically, he asserts his agreement with Job that Job is blameless. “Is not your fear of God your confidence,” says Eliphaz, “and the integrity of your ways your hope?” (4:6) So Eliphaz advises him to “seek God, and to God . . . commit [your] cause.” (5:8) Eliphaz is sure that if he does so, Job will live to a ripe old age. But Job, in his misery is not able to hear what his friend says; he continues to complain of “the anguish of [his] spirit” and “the bitterness of [his] soul.” (7:11) “I loathe my life,” says Job, “I would choose death.” (7:15-16)

The next to speak is his friend Bildad. Bildad also speaks of Job’s innocence and integrity, but in a somewhat more conditional way. He’s not quite as sure as Eliphaz: “If you are pure and upright,” he says, “surely then [God] will rouse himself for you and restore to you your rightful place.” (8:6) Job is more responsive to Bildad. He acknowledges that what his friend says is true, but then rejects his advice asking, “How can a mortal be just before God? If one wished to contend with [God], one could not answer him once in a thousand.” (9:2-3) Although he rejects Bildad’s advice, this is an important turning point in the story, I think, because it is here that the seed of the idea of contending with God in a lawsuit is planted in Job’s mind. Nonetheless, he still complains of the bitterness in his soul and says he’d rather die.

The last of his friends to speak is Zophar. Zophar isn’t buying the blamelessness argument. He believes that punishments and rewards in life follow directly from our actions; if Job has suffered these calamities, Job must have committed some great sin. He simply assumes that Job is guilty: he condemns Job for babbling and for mocking the Almighty. “Shall no one shame you?” he asks Job. “Know this, Job! God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.” (11:3,6) But Job will have none of Zophar’s condemnation: “I am a just and blameless man,” he asserts. (12:4) “I may be a laughingstock, but I am a just and blameless man.”

Now the idea of taking God to court has rooted firmly in Job’s imagination: “I would speak to the Almighty,” he declares, “and I desire to argue my case with God.” (13:3) As the first cycle ends, in fact, Job is starting to formulate his arguments.

In the second cycle of speeches, the characters leave behind the specific issue of whether Job is blameless or guilty, righteous or sinful. In fact, the second cycle of speeches seems to have little or nothing to do with Job himself. Instead, the characters debate the issue of whether, in fact, the retribution that sometimes falls upon the wicked is a result of their own blameworthiness, and all of the friends seem to be in agreement that it is. Whether this debate has anything to do with Job’s situation is somewhat ambiguous; none of the friends identifies Job as the wicked person they describe in their speeches. In answer to each of them, Job complains that their words are not a comfort to him. At the end of the second cycle, he tells them, “You comfort me with empty nothings” and “there is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.” (21:34) Apparently in reply to Job – it’s not really all that clear that it is a response, however – Eliphaz tells him that he should follow the advice of the righteous who say, “Agree with God, and be at peace; in this way good will come to you.” (22:21)

This is where the lectionary has brought us today, to Chapter 23, most of which is today’s Old Testament lesson. We are more than halfway through the Book of Job; the first two cycles of speeches have been made; and Job’s mind seems to have been made up. He is determined to take God to court and argue his case. “I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.” (23:4) In the verses the lectionary has left out, Job continues to argue his innocence, asserting that

[God] knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold. My foot has held fast to his steps; I have kept his way and have not turned aside. I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured in my bosom the words of his mouth. (23:10-12)

Job’s problem now, he believes, is that he doesn’t know where to find God! “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.” (23:8-9) This uncertainty seems to shake Job’s confidence in his case: “God has made my heart faint,” he says, “the Almighty has terrified me.” But faint and terrified though he may be, Job does present his case. None of the friends speak again, except Bildad who interrupts to ask Job’s own question, “How can a mortal be can righteous before God?” (25:1-6) Job pleads his case with eloquence and at the conclusion of the third cycle, his three friends have “ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes.” (32:1)

So what are we to make of today’s lesson from Job, this brief chapter in which we find Job wondering where to find God? What balm for our souls, what spiritual medicine for the “Patients of Job” does it offer?

Job’s confusion and anxiety at the elusiveness of God are echoed in today’s Psalm whose first verse is familiar to us from the story of Christ’s Crucifixion:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
and are so far from my cry
and from the words of my distress? (Ps. 22:1)

God seems to be so far away that God cannot be found: “He is not there . . . I cannot perceive him . . . I cannot behold him . . . I cannot see him.” Job feels that he has been abandoned by God. But wait! Job knows that God has tested him; Job has known God’s terrifying presence. Job finds this reassuring; although Job cannot see God, God can perceive Job! God’s knowledge of Job is his comfort; it will assure his vindication. Although Job does not know where to find God, God knows where to find Job and this convinces Job that he can, in the words of today’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, “approach the throne of grace with boldness.” In fact, he shall do so, and so can we!

Not knowing where or how to find God is the existential problem of modern life. Baptist theologian Brooks Ramsey sums up the problem nicely in this question: “It is easy to sense God’s presence when things are going right. But where is God when things fall apart?” While the Book of Job offers no easy answers to this question, it does assure us that God is there even though we, like the character Job, may be unable to perceive God’s presence. The French Reformed theologian Jacques Ellul wrote in his book Hope in Time of Abandonment that it is in those times when we share Job’s frustration that hope is truly born:

Hope comes alive only in the dreary silence of God, in our loneliness before a closed heaven, in our abandonment . . . Hope is a protest before this God, who is leaving us without miracles and without conversions, that he is not keeping his Word.

Now, I don’t believe that God is ever truly silent, nor that God does not keep God’s promises; but I do know that there are times in our lives when we are all like Job – we cannot seem to find God; we do not sense God’s presence; and we do not know where to look for God.

Hope, as Ellul said, is humanity’s answer to God’s apparent silence, to God’s elusiveness, and it is through hopeful prayer that we demand the fulfillment of God’s promises; it is through prayer that we, like Job, approach the throne of grace and plead our case. We do not need to know where to find God in order to pray; we do not need to know where to find God in order to have hope.

Our Christian faith that assures us that in our times of pain and suffering God comes to us. God finds us and comes to us in the loving acts of others. In illness, God finds us and comes to us in the ministrations of the medical professionals who treat us. In emotional distress, God finds us and comes to us through friends, family members, and others who offer us encouragement. In moments of deep need, God finds us and comes to us in a mysterious way through those who care. This gives us hope and courage. We need not cry out like the character Job, “Oh, that I knew where I might find [God];” (23:3) God knows where to find us.

This is the balm for our souls, the spiritual medicine that we, the “Patients of Job,” find in today’s lesson from the Book of Job, that in our times of need, God knows where to find us and that God does, indeed, come to us. Amen.

God Has Done Great Things – From the Daily Office – October 9, 2012

October 9, 2012 / eric / 1 Comment

From the Psalms:

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 126:1-4 (BCP Version) – October 9, 2012)

Jesus Clapping and Shouting for Joy (artist unknown) Have you ever visited a church which as part of its normative worship service gives congregants an opportunity to voice aloud their own prayers to God? It may surprise some that the Episcopal Church is one such religious group. In the typical service of the Holy Eucharist in the Episcopal Church, following readings from Scripture, the sermon and a recitation of the Nicene Creed, the congregation is led in a responsive cycle of prayer called The Prayers of the People.

A rubric (a direction for the conduct of worship services) in The Book of Common Prayer outlines what is to be included in these prayers. It states that

Prayer is offered with intercession for
The Universal Church, its members, and its mission
The Nation and all in authority
The welfare of the world
The concerns of the local community
Those who suffer and those in any trouble
The departed (with commemoration of a saint when appropriate)
(BCP, Page 359 or 383)

Six forms of suggested prayers are provided in the BCP, but other forms conforming to the rubrical requirements may be used. Each of those forms provides opportunities for silence during which the People are encouraged to speak their own petitions, intercessions, or thanksgivings. The sixth form even includes this specific invitation, “The People may add their own thanksgivings.” (Page 393)

I have visited a lot of Episcopal Churches. I have heard many prayer leaders invite the People’s prayers during those silences. I have seldom heard anyone laugh, shout with joy, or express gladness because the Lord has done great things for them. Why do you suppose that is? Garrison Keillor (who is an Episcopalian, by the way) has suggested that “Episcopalians believe in prayer, but would practically die if asked to pray out loud.” That may be doubly true of giving thanks out loud.

I have no answer to the question. Keillor suggests that Episcopalians are known for our blandness, our excessive calm, and our fear of giving offense, and maybe that’s part of it. I don’t know. But I do wish in prayers and worship that we would laugh a little more, shout with joy from time to time, and let our gladness show when God has done great things for us, because God has done great things for us!

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

The Patients of Job: Part One – Sermon for Pentecost 19, Proper 22B – October 7, 2012

October 7, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 7, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 22B: Job 1:1; 2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12; and Mark 10:2-16. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Job's Repentance (Artist Unknown) I know two things today that I didn’t know earlier in the week. First, I know that people read our sign. I got two telephone calls and one email telling me that we had misspelled “patience” on the sign. Second, I know that people won’t believe you when you tell them you did it on purpose. But I really did name this sermon series “The Patients (P-A-T-I-E-N-T-S) of Job” for reasons that I hope will become clear very shortly.

Before diving into that subject this morning, however, a word about the Lectionary. For the next four weeks our lessons from the Old Testament will be from the Book of Job as we follow what is called “Track One” of the Revised Common Lectionary.

Track One is a semi-continuous reading of major Old Testament books. The idea this is that we tend to short-change the Old Testament in our Sunday Eucharistic lectionary, and that we need to hear more of the Old Testament and be more familiar with it. So Track One is set up so that we can see the development of some of the great Old Testament stories over the course of successive Sundays; this gives us peculiar opportunities for preaching series like the one we’re embarking on today. The assumption, of course, is that the congregation each Sunday is made up of who actually come to church every week to hear the unfolding of the Old Testament readings in this way. That’s not always a valid assumption. Many of our people, because of work schedules or whatever, do not make it to church every Sunday and so are likely to miss huge chunks of the story. So each week in these sermon there may be a bit of repetition to bring these folks up to speed; I hope weekly congregants will bear with us on that score. (For those of you who may not be here every week, the sermons and lessons will be on the internet for you.)

There other thing about Track One is that, unlike Track Two, which is a Gospel-related track in which the Old Testament reading is selected because it has some sort of thematic connection to the Gospel reading appointed for the day, there is no specific link between the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures and the lessons from the Christian Scriptures. For example, today we heard part of the backstory of Job’s suffering (we’ll return to that in a moment), while the Gospel focused on Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce. I suppose one could draw a connection between the little spat Job and Mrs. Job have at the end of the Old Testament reading and what Jesus has to say, but I’m not going to go there. So for the next few weeks, please don’t expect much exegesis of the Gospel lessons.

So, now, let me answer the signage critics and explain why I chose to (apparently) misuse the word “patients” on our sign. Obviously it is a play on the familiar statement made of a long-suffering individual that he or she has “the patience of Job”. That’s an odd turn of phrase because, as we shall see, Job is not particularly patient; he is at turns angry, demanding, petulant, and sullenly silent, but he is not patient. Nonetheless, I chose to play with and make a pun on that old concept because the story of Job is one to which we can turn are in need of balm for whatever turns in life may beset us.

The great preacher St. John Chrysostom, in a sermon on the Gospel of John, said of Holy Writ,

The divine words, indeed, are a treasury containing every sort of remedy, so that, whether one needs to put down senseless pride, or to quench the fire of concupiscence or to trample on the love of riches, or to despise pain, or to cultivate cheerfulness and acquire patience – in them one may find in abundance the means to do so. (Hom. 37 On John.)

In a sermon on St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he likened the Bible to a medicine chest:

Listen, I entreat you, all that are careful for this life, and procure books that will be medicines for the soul . . . . If grief befalls you, dive into [the Holy Scriptures] as into a chest of medicines; take from there comfort for your trouble, be it loss, or death, or bereavement of relations; or rather do not merely dive into them but take them wholly to yourself, keeping them in your mind.” (Hom. IX On Colossians)

This is especially true of the Book of Job.

This book, as I made mention from this pulpit some weeks ago, is a work of fiction, but that does not stop it from being a work from which we can learn great truth. Or perhaps I should say “great truths” for, more than any other book in the Bible, Job offers what some might call a “post-modern” or pluraform vision of truth. Job, in the midst of his suffering, is visited by his wife, his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and a fourth man, Elihu (who may just be a passerby). Each of them offers an explanation of why life has treated Job so shabbily and offers advice as to how he should respond. Job’s answer to each of them is basically, “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me!” The character Job could be the patron saint of our post-modern age, and the Book of Job offers us a variety of remedies, a selection of alternative truths for whatever besets our spirits; it also provides a glimpse at the over-arching meta-truth that sustains our lives, namely the awesome power of God. We all come to this book, as we come to all of Scripture, as patients seeking medicine for the soul; we are all the “patients of Job.”

When we first open this text we are treated to two scenes involving the characters God and Satan. (I put it that way very advisedly, very carefully. Please always remember that this is a work of fiction and so we have a character named “God” and a character named “Satan” who may or may not behave in the ways the Creator and the Adversary actually interact with the world.) In both of these scenes these two characters make and continue a wager regarding Job. In Chapter 1, all the heavenly court appears before God, including Satan whom God asks where he has been. Satan answers that has been “going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” (1:7) God asks if he has seen God’s servant Job who is a good and righteous man. Satan replies that he has, but then challenges God about Job’s virtue suggesting that Job is only righteous because God has provided him a good life. So they make a wager; Satan bets that if Job loses everything he has, he will curse God. God gives Satan authority to strip him of his wealth and possessions, but forbids him to lay a hand on Job. The next thing we know, Job is struck by calamity after calamity all within a very short time. Four servants come to him, one after another, the next coming before the one before has even finished speaking, telling him that Sabaeans have come and stolen his oxen and donkeys, a fire has destroyed his sheep, Chaldean invaders have killed all his servants, and a collapsing house has killed all his sons and daughters. Job is left with nothing; he tears his clothing, shaves his head, and falls to the ground, but the narrator assures us that “in all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.” Rather, he blesses the Name of God! (1:20-21)

Which brings us now to our reading for today and the second scene in the heavenly throne room. Again, the court is assembled; again, Satan is there having come “trom going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” (2:2) Again, God asks if Satan has considered Job; and again, Satan makes a bet with God. It’s all well and good that he’s lost everything, but he’s still alive and healthy; “touch his bone and his flesh,” says Satan, “and he will curse you to your face.” (2:5) “Very well,” says God, “you can cause him illness, but do not take his life.” So Satan “inflict[s] loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.” (2:7) Job’s response is different from his actions in the first chapter; he engages in no new acts of mourning or worship. Instead, he picks up a piece of broken pot, scratches at his sores, and sits down on a pile of ashes. At this point Mrs. Job (she isn’t given her own name in the text) says to her husband, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.”

One commentary points out that the concept of integrity in the Old Testament has two prongs. First, it “denotes a person whose conduct is completely in accord with moral and religious norms.” Second, it describes someone “whose character is one of utter honest, without guile.” (The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IV, Abingdon Press: 1996, page 356) Mrs. Job seems to sense that for her husband to “persist in his integrity” in this situation, he cannot do both. She seems to be arguing that “if Job holds on to integrity in the sense of conformity to religious norm and blesses God as he did before, . . . he will be committing an act of deceit. If he holds on to integrity in the sense of honesty, then he must curse God and violate social integrity, which forbids such cursing.” (Ibid.)

Job, however, tells her she is being foolish. In fact, the Hebrew here is rather stronger – the commentary notes that a more accurate contemporary translation would be that he tells her she is “talking trash”! Job insists that there is no conflict between religious integrity and personal honesty. We are again assured by the narrator that “in all this Job did not sin with his lips.” (2:10)

This is where our reading this morning ends, but it is not the end of Chapter 2. As the chapter ends, Job’s three friends – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite – hearing of all of his troubles meet together to come to console and comfort him. On seeing his state, they tear their own clothes, weep loudly, throw dust upon their own heads, then sit down in the dirt with him. For a week they sit there with him in silence.

So what are we to make of these initial scenes from the story of Job. If St. John Chrysostom is right and there are “medicines for the soul” to be found here, what are they? I suggest there are a couple of things to be learned here which may be of some comfort in our modern age. The first is found in this book’s rejection of the facile answers of an older “wisdom religion” tradition.

I am sure that we have all, at one time or another, faced the death of a loved one, the loss of something or someone precious to us, or some other personal tragedy or difficult situation; or that if we have not, we surely will. And I’m equally sure that in such a situation we are all prone to ask an interior question along the lines of “Why me?” or “What have I done to deserve this?”

That older “wisdom religion” which runs through our faith tradition encourages that sort of thinking. Elsewhere in Holy Scripture, in the Book of Proverbs, for example, we are told:

Walk in the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the just. For the upright will abide in the land, and the innocent will remain in it; but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. (2:20-22)

And again:

The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the abode of the righteous. Toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he shows favor. The wise will inherit honor, but stubborn fools, disgrace. (3:33-35)

The message seems clear: “Do good, you’ll be rewarded with good. Do bad, you’ll be punished with bad.” It suggests a sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for “after this, therefore because of this”) assumption that if something bad has happened to me, I must have done something bad to deserve it. And it’s not too far to the next thought, “I’ve not only done something bad, I am bad.” But post hoc ergo proper hoc is a logical fallacy and that line of reasoning is just plain wrong, as the story of Job clearly demonstrates.

Although this Book of Job is part of the “wisdom literature” and firmly grounded in the wisdom tradition, it offers a sound critique of that tradition. The character Job, an upright and righteous man, a man of integrity, is visited by loss and calamity through no fault of his own. He does not deserve what happens to him. His story avoids the clicheic simplicity of the older wisdom tradition and rejects that “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” thinking to which we are all prone. His story “is, in fact, an impassioned assertion of the awareness that the simple moralism of most wise men is hardly enough.” (Jay G. Williams, Understanding the Old Testament, Barrons Educational Series: 1972, page 267)

Stuff sometimes happens in a person’s life, as it does in the story of Job, that he or she does not deserve and for which he or she is not to blame! Stuff sometimes happens in your life that you do not deserve, and you are not to blame for it! That is the first bit of medicine we find in these introductory scenes in the Book of Job. Give up the “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” thinking, and stop beating yourself up over things you can’t control!

The second bit of “medicine” is the book’s apparent rejection of religious ritual as a touchstone of goodness and integrity. It is important that Job is afflicted with “loathsome sores” because, according to Jewish law in the Book of Leviticus, a person inflicted with a skin disease is ritually impure and an outcast from society. Such an individual is referred to in Hebrew as a metzorah. Jewish law as set forth in the Book of Leviticus requires the metzorah to be shunned; the person must live alone outside the confines of the community. In chapter 13 of Leviticus we read that he or she must show their sores to the local priest, and then

. . . shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, “Unclean, unclean.” He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease; he is unclean. He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp. (Lev. 13:45-46)

Job, however, does none of this; he does not follow any of the Levitical requirements, nor do his friends. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar do not shun him, nor leave him alone outside the community. Integrity, this story assures us, does not rest in conformity to religious norms.

This should come as good news, as balm for our modern and postmodern souls, because, as Emerging Church blogger Drew Tatsuko has pointed out, “religions that make these exclusive claims to Truth demand conformity; religions that demand conformity tend to abuse non-conformists . . . ; and, in history God is [most frequently] revealed among the non-conformists.”

Now this does not mean that, in its rejection of the wisdom tradition, the Book of Job is telling to not live a good and honorable life, or that in its rejection of religious ritual as definitive of personal integrity the book is telling us to abandon our norms of worship and behavior. Rather, what we should take from the story of Job is that life is a set of questions. If there is truth to be found in this book, or in any of the books of the Bible, it is to be found in the process of struggling with those questions. We will wrestle with the questions of Job throughout this month during which our Old Testament readings will be drawn from it. The book has 42 chapters so, clearly, in four weeks of readings we are not going to cover it in depth. But I hope to demonstrate over the course of these sermons that, as my friend Greg Jenks who is Academic Dean at St Francis Theological College, Brisbane, Australia, says, Job “is a biblical text that celebrates the lack of a compelling answer, and instead calls us to faithfulness that sees beyond suffering to a meaning beyond human comprehension.”

I hope you will find, as I said at the beginning of this introductory sermon, that Job is a book which offers us a variety of remedies, a selection of alternative truths for whatever besets our spirits; it also provides a glimpse at the over-arching meta-truth that sustains our lives, namely the awesome power of God.

Simple Wisdom from Above – Sermon for Pentecost 17, Proper 20B – September 23, 2012

September 23, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, September 23, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 20B: Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1,12-22; Psalm 54; James 3:13-4:3,7-8a; and Mark 9:30-37.)

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Wisdom Highway Sign The collect for today from The Book of Common Prayer:

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

On the positive side, the side of “things heavenly,” there is the “wisdom from above [which] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” On the negative side, the side of “earthly things,” there is “wisdom [which] does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, [and] devilish;” the story from the Wisdom of Solomon demonstrates what this sort of “negative wisdom” leads to. How do we learn wisdom and how do we learn to choose one sort over the other?

One way, of course, is from our elders. We learn by watching them, by listening to them, by doing what they do. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not so good, but as the old saying goes, apples don’t fall far from the tree. For most of us, the ways we do things, the ways we make choices and decisions, the ways we react the world around us are pretty much the same ways our parents or grandparents did. I know I’m not alone in having those moments when I hear myself saying something and then think, “O heavens! When did I turn into my father (or into my mother)?”

But the world changes rapidly and we don’t always find ourselves in situations where the “wisdom of the elders” can be used. We face new contexts and different challenges; we deal with a reality that they never encountered.

My wife’s father passed away a couple of weeks ago and last weekend we were away in Nevada for his memorial service. (Our thanks to the many of you who have expressed your condolences.) Paul was 95-1/2 years old, and as we celebrated his life I thought about the way the world has changed in the almost complete century of his life. The Wright brothers flew their plane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, just 14 years (almost to the day) before he was born. Look what has happened to the air transportation and space flight since then. Paul’s entire working life was spent in the telephone communications industry and look what has happened in that business and its offshoots, cell phones, smartphones, the internet, Facebook, and all the rest. The world has changed dramatically in just the span of his life, and the wisdom of the early 20th Century is sometimes woefully inadequate in dealing with the 21st Century.

Sometimes we humans can’t deal with change, particularly when it comes at us rapidly as it has in these past several decades. Our reaction is often to try lock things down, to try to stop the change. But we can’t really do that; the world changes anyway. Wisdom, the right kind of wisdom, the “wisdom from above” as James calls it, recognizes that. It is, he says, “willing to yield.” Earlier in his letter, in fact in its very first words, James writes, “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” (1:2-3) For James, it is a simple thing: ” Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” (4:10)

James understands, and he wants his readers, you and me, to understand that nothing is ever locked down, that change can never be stopped, it can only be embraced; for James this is as true for changes in ourselves as it is for changes in the world. In this letter, James writing to the whole church; unlike Paul’s letters which were written to particular congregations to solve particular problems, James’s epistle is written to all Christians in every place at every time. Therefore, he knows he is writing to people who are in different and widely differing circumstances, to Christians who are at different stages of spiritual maturity. But he is able to address each of us, no matter where along the journey we may be, because even our faith is not locked down.

Conversion to Christ is not a one-time thing; it is an on-going, life-long process. We aren’t brought suddenly in a blinding instance from darkness fully into the light so that everything before some point of conversion is left behind and all ambiguity removed. It just doesn’t work that way. Conversion is an on-going process. Every day we have to leave behind our anxieties about earthly things, and learn again to love things heavenly; every day we have to turn away from the wisdom from below, from envy and selfish ambition, from disorder and wickedness, toward the wisdom from above, toward peaceableness and gentleness, toward simplicity and mercy.
I spend some time each day in prayer and one of my favorite resources is this book, Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community in northeastern England. In it are readings for each day of the year. This was yesterday’s taken from another book entitled Hebridean Altars: The Spirit of an Island Race by a Scots Presbyterian minister named Allistair MacLean:

When the shadows fall upon hill and glen;
and the bird-music is mute;
when the silken dark is a friend;
and the river sings to the stars:
ask yourself, sister,
ask yourself, brother,
the question you alone have power to answer:
O King and Saviour of all,
what is [Your] gift to me?
and do I use it to [Your] pleasing?

That is a wonderfully wise, spiritually simple question to ask everyday, a question which we each are only able to answer for ourselves in prayerful conversation with God: What is God’s gift to me and do I use it to God’s pleasing? It is a question which can help us to turn from earthly things, from envy and ambition and disorder and wickedness, toward heavenly things, toward peace and gentleness and mercy. It is a question which we, God’s children, should ask everyday in prayerful conversation with the Father.

In today’s Gospel lesson from Mark, when the disciples are arguing amongst themselves about envy and ambition, Jesus took a little child and put her among them; Jesus took the child in his arms and said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” When Matthew tells this story, Jesus also says, “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 18:3-4) In Mark’s Gospel he will say this in another setting, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)

As a child, we look to our elders to learn wisdom; as children of God, we look to our Father to learn the wisdom from above. In that way, we receive the kingdom of God; we enter the kingdom of heaven. In today’s reading in Celtic Daily Prayer, also from Hebridean Altars, this is the very image presented, the image of a child reaching up to and being lifted up by the Father:

Often I strain and climb
and struggle to lay hold
of everything I’m certain
You have planned for me.
And nothing happens:
there comes no answer.
Only You reach down to me
just where I am.
When you give me no answer
to my questions,
still I have only to raise my arms
to You, my Father
and then You lift me up.
Then because You are my Father
You speak these words of truth
to my heart:
“You are not an accident.
Even at the moment of your conception,
out of many possibilities,
only certain cells combined,
survived, grew to be you.
You are unique.
You were created for a purpose.
God loves you.”

In our world today, the search for spiritual answers, the search for religious certainty, the attempt to lock things down does more to divide than it does to unite. It is a misguided quest governed more by the wisdom from below than by the wisdom from above. The wisdom from above does not try to lock down an unchangeable certainty, but rather turns daily to God with childlike simplicity to ask, “What is your gift for me today?”

In 1848, in the spirit of James’s epistle and Christ’s metaphor of childlike welcoming and faith, Elder Joseph Brackett of the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine, wrote one-verse song describing a simple children’s dance as a paradigm for gaining wisdom. It is entitled Simple Gifts, and these are the words:

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

You’ll find this song in the hymnal, Hymn No. 554. Will you stand and sing it with me today and then everyday remember to seek the wisdom from above by asking that simple question of God: “What is your gift to me today, and do I use it to your pleasing?” Shall we sing?

Category: Eucharist (Page 34 of 36)

Pluck the Fruit, Pay Attention: Sermon for Advent 1, Year C – December 2, 2012

Christ the King Among the Amish – From the Daily Office – November 25, 2012

The Most Important Election . . . NOT! – Sermon for Election Day – November 6, 2012

Unbind Him, and Let Him Go! – Sermon for All Saints Sunday – November 4, 2012

The Patients of Job: Part Four – “Can You Love What You Can’t Control?” – Sermon for Pentecost 22, Proper 25B – October 28, 2012

The Patients of Job: Part Three – “What Is Half of 11?” – Sermon for Pentecost 21, Proper 24B – October 21, 2012

The Patients of Job: Part Two – “I Don’t Know Where to Find God!” – Sermon for Pentecost 20, Proper 23B – October 14, 2012

God Has Done Great Things – From the Daily Office – October 9, 2012

The Patients of Job: Part One – Sermon for Pentecost 19, Proper 22B – October 7, 2012

Simple Wisdom from Above – Sermon for Pentecost 17, Proper 20B – September 23, 2012

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