Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Liturgy (Page 12 of 16)

Turn, Turn, Turn: Sermon for Pentecost 14 (Proper 17B) — 30 August 2015

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A sermon offered on Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17B, Track 1, RCL), August 30, 2015, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day are Ecclesiastes 3:1-15; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23. The Ecclesiastes lesson may be found in the Oremus Bible Browser; the others may be found at The Lectionary Page.)

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Clock face and calendar composite“This is neither the time nor the place . . . .”

Have you ever heard anyone say that? My mother and her mother were very fond of that saying. If you were doing something they didn’t approve of, that was the sure fire way to stop it. If you were asking something they didn’t want to answer, that was the answer you got. If you wanted to discuss something they didn’t want to talk about, that put an end to the conversation.

“This is neither the time nor the place . . . .” (I learned very early on that, in my mother’s and grandmother’s estimation, there were somethings that never had a time or a place!)

Three weeks ago, you may recall, we heard part of the story of the rebellion of King David’s son Absalom who had set himself up as a rival king leading to a civil war in ancient Israel. At the beginning of the Proper 14 reading from the Second Book of Samuel, David is sending out his army and giving instructions to his generals: “The king, David, ordered Joab and Abishai and Ittai, saying, ‘Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.’” (2 Sam 18:5) But Joab fails to follow the king’s orders and Joab’s armor bearers kill Absalom. As the army is returning to Jerusalem, a Cushite messenger runs ahead and informs the king of his son’s death and, at the end of that reading, we are told:

The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam 18:33)

What we did not read on that Sunday but were given to read this year in our Daily Office lessons is Joab’s rebuke of the king for his mourning. You see, when his soldiers returned they found their king weeping and so, says the writer of Second Samuel, “the victory that day was turned into mourning for all the troops.” (2 Sam 19:2) Joab tells the king “you have covered with shame the faces of all your officers who have saved your life . . . . You have made it clear today that commanders and officers are nothing to you.” (vv. 5-6) He tells David to “go out at once and speak kindly to your servants; for I swear by the Lord, if you do not go, not a man will stay with you this night; and this will be worse for you than any disaster that has come upon you from your youth until now.” (v. 7)

In other words, what Joab says to David is, “This is neither the time nor the place . . . .”

So David did what Joab advised him and nowhere again do we read about him mourning the death of his son. But I have a feeling that David was left to wonder, “If that wasn’t the time, when is it? If that wasn’t the place, where is it? When is the time to mourn the death of one’s child?”

There must be one because elsewhere in Scripture, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, we are told:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance . . . . (Eccl. 3:1,4)

When is the time to weep and mourn the death of one’s child? When is the time to shake one’s fist at reality and exclaim, “It isn’t supposed to be this way! Parents are not supposed to outlive their children!?”

I don’t know the answer to a lot of questions I get asked as a priest, but I do know the answer to that one as I have lived with it most of my life. Both my father and his only brother died before their parents, my grandparents. My only brother died before our mother. I know that the answer to that question is, “All the time and any time.” Oh, one doesn’t cry and carry on every minute of every day, and though pain of loss is never gone it’s not always present, either. One gets on with life, like King David did because as Qoheleth the Preacher (as the author of Ecclesiastes is called) says, there is also a time to laugh and a time to dance and times for all those other things that make up our lives.

Today, we will formally accept and dedicate gifts from two of our parish families who, like my mother and my grandparents, have lived through the loss of their children in whose memory these gifts are given. Susan and Paul _________ have given us a new set of green vestments and hangings in memory of Susan’s son Paul who died of cancer; Nancy and Michael ____________ have given us our new piano in memory of their son Colin who was lost to an immune-deficiency disorder. We are grateful to them for their generosity and hope that, in some way, their ability to make these gifts in memory of their sons eases their weeping and pours some small amount of the oil of joy onto their mourning.

The reading from Ecclesiastes which we heard to as our Old Testament lesson this morning is not the reading prescribed by the Lectionary. I chose to deviate from the Lectionary and use this text for a couple of reasons. One of which will become clear in a bit, but mostly I chose it because several years ago, Evelyn and I had the great misfortune to attend the funeral of a 6th Grade boy who had accidentally killed himself with his father’s handgun. He was a school friend and fellow Boy Scout of our son. The preacher at the funeral used this text, or really I should say “misused this text,” to deliver the message that the boy’s death was “God’s will and we just have to accept it.” I cannot tell you how angry that sermon made me. Death of a child by whatever means, accident or disease or whatever, is never, ever God’s will! “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God,” in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 18:32). This first part of 8th Chapter of Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, so I hated to see it misused that way; I want to set the record straight!

The great folksinger Pete Seeger set the words of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 to music in the late 1950s and in 1965 the British rock group The Byrds covered it and had a No. 1 hit. I’m told Turn, Turn, Turn is the No. 1 pop song with the oldest lyrics. I’ll bet most us who sang along with them during the rebellious 1960s had no idea we were singing words from the Bible. Anyway, it’s a great song with a great message . . . and that message is not that everything happens according to some mysterious and arbitrary plan of God that we just have to accept and it is not that “everything happens for a reason.”

Among those who believe that there is a God and that God created all that is, there is a spectrum of understanding about the involvement of God in the running of the universe. At one end of the spectrum is so-called “Deist” position; this is the belief that was held by many highly educated people in the 18th Century, among them most of the Founding Fathers of our nation. Deists held that God was less in the nature of a father-figure intimately involved with his children, and more like a clockmaker who had set the world running, wound up its spring and then let it function; this clockmaker God really takes little or no notice of what is happening in the lives of human beings. At the other extreme is the notion that “God has a plan for your life … for everyone’s lives” … and that everything that happens in anyone’s life is in accordance with that plan, everything is predetermined, and everything happens for a reason, which is God’s reason and we should just accept that.

The truth is, most likely, somewhere in between and that’s clearly where Qoheleth is. “Things and actions have their time,” he says, “then they pass and other things and actions have their time;” there is a natural cycle to things. (P. Tillich, The New Being, Scribner’s Sons, 1955) Qoheleth starts his enumeration of these things, these natural cycles, with birth and death. The natural cycles of time are beyond human control. We cannot control them and whatever control we may have of time is limited by them. They are the signposts which we cannot trespass.

Ecclesiastes is best known, perhaps, for its refrain, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!” (Eccl 1:2) In this regard, Qoheleth is testifying that “any human attempt to change the rhythm of birth and death, of war and peace, of love and hate and all the other contrasts [which he lists] in the rhythm of life is” a vanity. (Tillich) Instead, Qoheleth encourages us to be aware of these cycles, to understand that within them there is a “right time” to do one thing and not to do another. He does not suggest, in any way, that God is the micro-manager of every human life. Rather, he counsels us to follow these cycles as we exercise responsibility for our lives, do our own planning, and exercise our limited control according to them.

Qoheleth’s assurance that there is a time for everything is part of what another preacher has called “the background operating system of [our] faith,” the core truth that there is a God who is good and that existence. But this “operating system, this core truth “doesn’t come with the assumption that all things, (including all the horrors we might encounter here), have a purpose,” that “everything happens for a reason” known only to God.

That other preacher, the Rev. John Pavlovitz (who writes for Relevant Magazine), suggests such a distortion paints a picture of a god who makes us suffer for sport, who throws out obstacles and injuries and adversities “just to see what we’ll do, just to toughen us up or break us down.” To me, statements that “everything happens for a reason” or that something “is just the will of God” describe an arbitrary god who decides that this child will die of cancer while that one will become a star football player, or that this person will die of an accidental gun shot in the 6th Grade while that one will live to be 91. That is not the God in whom I believe and it is not the God testified to in these verses from Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth’s God and ours does not arbitrarily micro-manage our lives. Rather, God wants to be “be happy and enjoy [our]selves as long as [we] live,” for “it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all” that we do (vv 12-13).

To believe otherwise leads to the religion of what James, in today’s epistle, calls “hearers” who “on going away, immediately forget,” rather than to the religion of “doers” who practice a holy generosity. To believe otherwise leads to the sort of religion that Jesus condemns in today’s Gospel, a religion of arbitrary rules, of “washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles” as Mark puts it, a religion of vain worship “teaching human precepts as doctrines” as Jesus puts it quoting Isaiah. To believe otherwise leads to “wickedness, deceit . . . envy, slander, pride, folly” and all those other “evil things [that] come from within and . . . defile a person.”

Qoheleth’s list of contrasting times, as one commentator has put it, “provides structure rather than a calendar,” a structure within which “individual human moral decision making is possible.” Ecclesiastes challenges us “to be wise, to be ethical, to discern when [our] actions are in keeping with God’s time and then to act decisively.” (NIB, Vol. V, page 308) Then, in the words of the Psalmist, we “may dwell in [God’s] tabernacle,” we “may abide upon [God’s] holy hill.” (Ps 15:1)

“This is neither the time nor the place . . . .” My mother and my grandmother were probably right about that most of the time. But Ecclesiastes is also right, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven . . . .”

I don’t know why some children die before their parents, and some live to ripe, old age; I don’t know why some people get cancer, and some don’t; I don’t know why some people get shot, or have to deal with disability, or suffer with mental illness. I don’t know why there have to be hurricanes, and earthquakes, and parasitic worms that eat children’s eyeballs. But I do know that these things do not happen for some arbitrary God-determined reason, that these things are not the will of God.

What is the will of God is that there is a time to deal with such things and there is a time to live life in spite them. Remember what Qoheleth wrote: “[God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover [God] has put a sense of past and future into [our] minds . . . . [Therefore,] there is nothing better for [us] than to be happy and enjoy [our]selves as long as [we] live.” The Indian poet and sage Kalidasa, about 400 years before the time of Christ, expressed the same thought:

Listen to the exhortation of the dawn!
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the
verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
the glory of action,
the splendor of beauty;
for yesterday is but a dream,
and tomorrow is only a vision;
but today well lived makes
every yesterday a dream of happiness,
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
look well therefore to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn!

Now is the time and now is the place when we give thanks with and to Nancy and Michael, and Susan and Paul, as they remember their sons, not their deaths but their lives, not with mourning but with joy, not with weeping but with generous acts of giving. May we all look well to this and every day and never be overthrown. Amen.

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

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

Life Is A Banquet And Most Poor Suckers Are Starving To Death: Sermon for Ash Wednesday 2015

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A sermon offered on the Day of Ashes, Wednesday, February 18, 2015, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were Joel 2:1-2,12-17; Psalm 103 or 103:8-14; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; and Matthew 6:1-6,16-21. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Banquet“Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!”

When I began contemplating a sermon for the beginning of Lent, that famous aphorism by Auntie Mame, a line from the movie of that name spoken by the character to her nephew Patrick, came to immediately to mind and, as I am sure you may be, I was more than a bit surprised. “What,” I thought, “is that all about? What is the Spirit trying to tell me about Lent, what would the Spirit have me tell you about Lent, with that statement which seems so antithetical to everything we have been taught about Lent?”

We have been taught – haven’t we? – that Lent is about “giving up” something enjoyable? In fact, in a few minutes, I’m going to read the Prayer Book’s Ash Wednesday exhortation and remind you that the next six weeks are intended to be (at least in part) a season of “fasting and self-denial.” (BCP p. 265) So what do we do?

Well, I went online (as I often do) to see what people are claiming to be “giving up” this year. Here’s a partial list: red meat, coffee, wine (that’s a big one), alcohol of all kinds, chocolate (another big one), white sugar, cakes and cookies, desserts in general, potato chips, yeast bread, cheese danish, pizza, soda pop, ice cream, and the list goes on and on.

Is that really what this season is about, though? If Mame is correct and life is a banquet, if our faith is correct and this banquet is provided by God the Father who, Isaiah prophesied, intends to “make for all peoples a feast of rich food [and] well-aged wines” (Is 25:6), and if the Father is truly represented by Jesus of Nazareth who said, “I came that [you] may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10), is turning our backs on food really what this season is about?

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not. If this season of Lent is about giving something up, it’s not about putting on a show of fasting and self-privation, otherwise Jesus would not have said what he said in today’s Gospel lesson about giving of our resources as alms for the poor in a secret way, about praying in private, and about washing our faces and looking content rather than deprived when we do (in fact) fast from foods.

This is a season when we are called to fast, but not from coffee, or wine, or cheese danish, or pizza, although those foods people listed may be symbolic of what this season is all about. We are to fast, as Isaiah said, from injustice, from oppression, from seeing others go hungry and doing nothing about it, from pointing the finger, and from speaking evil. These are the things about which we should weep and mourn, these are the things from which we should fast, rending (as Joel said) our hearts and not our garments. We should fast from these things because they are what prevent us and the other poor suckers from enjoying that banquet, the things that cause us and the other poor suckers to starve to death while God spreads that feast of rich food and well-aged wines.

My colleague in ordained ministry, Lutheran pastor Phil Ressler has put together a list of forty things he suggests we fast from during this season of Lent. I could not improve on his suggestions and so I want to just read Pastor Ressler’s list (and his comments) to you and add my own homiletic endorsement:

  1. Fear of Failure – You don’t succeed without experiencing failure. Just make sure you fail forward.
  2. Your Comfort Zone – It’s outside our comfort zones where new discoveries are made.
  3. Feelings of Unworthiness – You are fearfully and wonderfully made by your creator. (see Psalm 139:14)
  4. Impatience – God’s timing is the perfect timing.
  5. Retirement – As long as you are still breathing, you are here for a reason. You have a purpose to influence others for Christ. Our work is not always tied to a paycheck.
  6. People Pleasing – I can’t please everyone anyways. There is only one I need to strive to please.
  7. Comparison – I have my own unique contribution to make and there is no one else like me.
  8. Blame – I am not going to pass the buck. I will take responsibility for my actions.
  9. Guilt – I am loved by Jesus and he has forgiven my sins. Today is a new day and the past is behind.
  10. Over commitment – Do less better and accomplish more.
  11. Lack of Counsel – Wise decisions are rarely made in a vacuum.
  12. Impurity – Live lives pure and without blemish.
  13. Entitlement – The world does not owe me anything. God does not owe me anything. I live in humility and grace.
  14. Apathy – Life is too short not to care.
  15. Hatred – Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).
  16. Negativity – I will put the best construction on everything when it comes to other people. I will also minimize my contact with people who are negative and toxic.
  17. The Spirit of Poverty – Believe that with God there is always more than enough and never a lack.
  18. Going Through the Motions – The more you invest yourself, the more you will get back.
  19. Complaint – Instead of contributing to the problem, be the solution.
  20. The Pursuit of Happiness – God wants something greater and more lasting than happiness. It is called joy.
  21. Bitterness – The only person I am hurting by holding on to this is myself.
  22. Distraction – Life is filled with distractions that will take our eyes off the prize.
  23. Giving up – God never gives up on us.
  24. Mediocrity – If you are going to do something, then give it all you got.
  25. Destructive Speech – Encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching (see Hebrews 10:25).
  26. Busyness – It is a badge of honor to be busy. But that does not always translate to abundance.
  27. Loneliness – With Jesus I am never alone. He is with me wherever I go.
  28. Disunity – If two of you agree on earth about anything, it will be done for them by the Heavenly Father (see Matthew 18:19).
  29. The Quick Fix – Rarely does true transformation happen overnight.
  30. Worry – God is in control and worrying will not help.
  31. Idolizing – Don’t assign anyone a standard they cannot live up to.
  32. Resistance to Change – Change is certain. It is not if we will change, but how we will change.
  33. Pride – Blessed are the humble.
  34. Small View of God – Don’t tell God how big your problem is, tell your problem how big your God is.
  35. Envy – I am blessed. My value is not found in my possessions, but in my relationship with my Heavenly Father.
  36. Ungratefulness – You have been blessed in a way greater than you realize.
  37. Selfish Ambition – God has a mission for me that is bigger than me.
  38. Self-Sufficiency – Jesus is my strength. I can do all things through him (see Philippians 4:13).
  39. Sorrow – Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5b).
  40. My Life – Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life (John 12:25).

(See Pastor Ressler’s parish website and the original list here.)

I’m going to come back to this list in a minute, but I want to return briefly to Isaiah’s prophesy of God’s great feast. What sorts of foods do you suppose will be set on that banquet table? There is at least one category of foods I’m sure will not be there.

Among nutritionists today one often hears the term “empty calories.” Many of the foods and beverages we Americans like to eat and drink contain these empty calories. In general, they are calories from solid fats and unnecessary sugars added to our diet. These ingredients add calories to the food but few or no nutrients.

Solid fats, by the way, are fats that are solid at room temperature. There are natural solid fats like butter, beef fat, and shortening. There are also unnatural solid fats, such as hydrogenated vegetable oils, that added when convenience foods are processed by food companies or when they are prepared by fast food restaurants. Unnecessary the sugars are sugars and syrups that are added when foods or beverages are processed or prepared.

God’s banquet table, God’s feast of rich foods and well-aged wines, does not – I’m pretty sure – contain any empty calories.

But there are areas in our country where empty calories are nearly the only thing that the residents have available. The USDA refers to these areas as “food deserts” and on the department’s website we find this description:

Food deserts are defined as urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. Instead of supermarkets and grocery stores, these communities may have no food access or are served only by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that offer few healthy, affordable food options. The lack of access contributes to a poor diet and can lead to higher levels of obesity and other diet-related diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease. (USDA website)

The foods and beverages predominantly available in those areas, and to all of us no matter where we live, the foods that provide the most empty calories for Americans include the following: cakes, cookies, pastries, donuts, soda pop, energy drinks, sports drinks, sugared fruit drinks, processed cheese, pizza, ice cream, and processed red meat products such as sausages, hot dogs, bacon, and ribs.

Did you notice something about that list? It’s practically the same as the list of things people said they were giving up for Lent! It is, perhaps, a good thing to give these things up because they prevent us from enjoying the healthier foods and beverages set out on God’s banquet table! The abundant life promised by Christ and for which Lent is to prepare us is a life of health and vitality, not a life filled with empty calories, and this is true both physically and spiritually!

Which brings me back to Pastor Ressler’s list. I suggest to you that the things on his list are the empty calories of our spiritual and emotional lives, and just as the empty calories of our physical life lead to physical diseases the empty calories of complaining, mediocrity, busyness, people pleasing, resistance to change, pride, worry, and all the others lead to spiritual illness and emotional malaise. They prevent us from enjoying God’s abundant banquet of joy, love, hope, and peace.

Auntie Mame was right, “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.” This Lent give up being one of those “poor suckers,” fast from the things that may be causing your soul to starve.

Give up those empty emotional and spiritual calories, and God will “redeem your life from the grave and crown you with mercy and loving-kindness; he [will] satisf[y] you with good things, and your youth [will be] renewed like an eagle’s.” (Ps. 103:4-5)

Amen.

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

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

Making the Organic Connection: Sermon for Advent 3B – December 14, 2014

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A sermon offered, on the Third Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 14, 2014, to the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day, RCL Advent 3B, were Isaiah 66:1-4,8-11; Psalm 8126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; and John 1:6-8,19-28. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Bible and Newspaper “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light. . . .” (Jn 1:6) The baptism of Jesus is never mentioned in the Gospel of John, so John the forerunner is never called “the Baptist” in this Gospel. He is, instead, the one who testifies, the witness who tells the truth.

Truth telling is risky business, as we all know and as John the witness would find out. He told the truth about Herod Antipas and his adulterous relationship with Herodias, and he lost his head over it. Telling the truth is risky business.

John told the Truth to Power. Dressed like a wild man (according to Mark’s Gospel which we heard last week), he stood in the midst of the People of Israel and interpreted for them the signs of the time in light of the words of the Prophets who had preceded him.

The mid-20th Century theologian Karl Barth is reputed to have advised preachers that they should work the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other. Whether he ever actually said that is a matter of some debate, but in a letter to his friend Eduard Thurneysen in November of 1918, he described himself as “brood[ing] alternately over the newspaper and the New Testament” seeking to discern “the organic connection between the two worlds concerning which one should … be able to give a clear and powerful witness.” (Barth to Thurneysen, 11-11-1918) John the testifier of Truth to Power was doing that very thing, making the organic connection between the world of his day and the world of his Scriptures, and giving a clear and powerful witness.

And that is the very thing which you and I and every follower of Jesus Christ are also called to do; it is the ministry not only of the professional theologian, not only of the parish priest and preacher, not only of the prophet; it is the ministry of each and every baptized person to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.” (BCP 1979, page 305) That is the ministry which we promise to undertake when we are baptized, a promise we repeat at every baptism in which we take part.

Today is the second anniversary of the killing of twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. On the Sunday following that awful massacre I stood in this pulpit and told you that I had spent the previous “48 hours following the news reports, weeping, screaming at the television, reading the statements of bishops and other clergy, enraged at the injustice of it, angry because as a society we seem unwilling (not incapable, unwilling) to do anything about the epidemic of gun violence that seems to sweep unchecked across our country.” (2012 Sermon)

I was later advised by a well-meaning member of the congregation suggested that I should turn off the TV, put down the newspaper, disconnect my internet news-feeds, and “just tell the nice parts of the Jesus story.” But I can’t do that, you see, because that wouldn’t be making the organic connection between the world of our day and the world of our Scriptures. That wouldn’t be testifying to the light; that would be lying about the darkness. Psalmist didn’t simply sing about shouldering the sheaves with joy; the Psalmist also paid heed to the fact that that joy follows carrying out the seed with weeping; the harvest of rejoicing comes after the seed is sowed with tears. (Ps 126:6-7)

Rejoicing in the midst of difficulty is the theme of this Third Sunday of Advent! In the tradition of the church, today is known as Gaudete Sunday or “Rejoicing Sunday” because in the medieval church the introit, entrance chant which began the Mass, was Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice,” from Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Phns 4:4), the same message he writes to the Thessalonian church in today’s epistle lesson: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.” (1 Th 5:16)

This year, as two years ago, it is difficult to focus on that theme of thanks and rejoicing. Although we hold in one hand the Gospel of light, in the other we hold the newspaper coverage of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of a report detailing the unspeakable acts of “enhanced interrogation techniques” undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of the so-called “war on terror.” (See, e.g., Mother Jones) It is difficult to focus on thanksgiving and joy when we read about the things done on our behalf . . . and let’s be honest and not try to distance ourselves from that fact, these things were done on our behalf to gain information to ferret out and punish those who had accomplished, and to protect us from other potential, acts of terrorism.

Let’s also be honest and put to rest the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and admit that it is more accurate and truthful to describe the CIA’s actions as torture, as Senator John McCain did in his statement on the Senate floor: “I have long believed some of these practices amounted to torture, as a reasonable person would define it.” (McCain Floor Statement) Unfortunately, the public debate about the CIA’s actions has, in the words of my friend and colleague Tobias Haller, gotten “lost in the utilitarian thicket of ‘did it produce results’ rather than sticking with the basic truth that ‘torture is wrong’.” (Facebook status)

Although it is clear that we, as Americans, can differ on the question of whether torture produces useful information – personally, I agree with Senator McCain “that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence . . . that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it . . . [and that] they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering” – although we can differ on that issue, we need to set aside the “utility” question, this red herring about whether torture produces useable intelligence. “Utility” underlies an ends-justifies-means morality which is contrary to, among other things, the Christian faith we claim to hold.

“Utility” is not and never should have been the basis of discussion or consideration of or decision to use torture to gather intelligence. As Christians we believe that God spoke to and through the prophet and commissioned not only him, commissioned not only Jesus who used his words to begin his public ministry, but commissioned all of God’s People

to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;
* * *
to comfort all who mourn. (Isa. 61:1-2)

As Christians who have accepted this as our own ministry in our baptismal promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being,” (BCP 1979, page 305) we must insist that morality, not utility, is and should have been the touchstone for that decision, and that that decision should have been other than it was.

We must speak that Truth to Power. Some of us may feel called to hold signs in marches and protests, though not all of us need do so; some of may feel called to telephone or write our senators and congressmen, though not all of us need do so; some of may feel called to author letters to the editors of national or local publications, though not all of us need do so. What we must all do, however, is witness to the Truth as we know it in our everyday lives: Jesus said to his disciples and says to us today, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

We are to witness to and rejoice in the moral truth of the simple command, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Lk 6:31) This, as Jesus made clear, is the heart of the Law and the central message of the Prophets. (Mt 7:12) We witness to this truth when we “love [our] enemies, do good, and [give], expecting nothing in return,” when we are “merciful, just as [our] Father is merciful,” when we refuse to judge, when we forswear condemnation, when we extend forgiveness. (Lk 6:35-37)

There was another story in the news this week, one which initially made me quite sad but in which, in retrospect, I find cause to rejoice.

Last Wednesday there was a funeral in Los Angeles, California. People of faith, from several religious traditions, came together to assist the County of Los Angeles in burying the ashes of nearly 1500 people who had been cremated in 2011 and whose ashes, for a variety of reasons, had been unclaimed by family members for three years. They included over 900 men, over 400 women, and nearly 140 infants and children. They were buried together in one grave with a simple stone bearing only the year, 2011.

According to the report in the L.A. Times, those present decorated the grave with teddy bears and flowers; a cellist played a simple, somber tune. Clergy offer Christian and Jewish prayers; a Hindu chant was intoned. The Lord’s Prayer was said in English, Spanish, Korean and a language from the Fiji Islands. Religious leaders read poems by the late Maya Angelou.

I rejoice that people of faith joined together to pray for the repose of those who had been abandoned, that people of faith took the place of the families who had forgotten them, that people of faith provided for these forsaken dead a human community to mourn their passing.

And this is the relationship between these two otherwise unrelated news stories of the past week. Studies of the survivors of torture demonstrate that they are left with intense feelings of abandonment, with a sense of estrangement from their families and communities, with an inability to form or reform human relationships of dependency and attachments, and with muted and inexpressible rage and grief. Those who are tortured are made to feel like those dead and abandoned ashes.

In concluding his statement on the Senate floor, Senator McCain agreed with me that torture’s immorality, not any concern about its utility, is the reason it should not be used. “In the end,” he said, “torture’s failure to serve its intended purpose isn’t the main reason to oppose its use. I have often said, and will always maintain, that this question isn’t about our enemies; it’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be.”

We Christians stand with our Bible in one hand, with the newspaper in our other, making the organic connection between the world of our day and the world of our Scriptures. Making that connection we must face the question, who do we aspire to be? Who are we called to be? Are we called to be those who, themselves or by delegation to others, make the living feel like dead ashes? Or are we rather called to be those who “comfort [and] provide for those who mourn, [who] give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit?” (Isa 61:2-3)

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Th 4:4) that we aspire to the latter calling, the great calling to be Christ’s witnesses, tellers of Truth to Power, to the ends of the earth! Amen.

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

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

Anticipating an Ordination – From the Daily Office – November 7, 2014

From the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach:

The leader of his brothers and the pride of his people
was the high priest, Simon son of Onias,
who in his life repaired the house,
and in his time fortified the temple.
When he put on his glorious robe
and clothed himself in perfect splendor,
when he went up to the holy altar,
he made the court of the sanctuary glorious.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Eccesiasticus 50:1,11 (NRSV) – November 7, 2014)

Ordination and First Mass of Saint John of Matha by Vincenzo CarducciTonight, as my diocese begins its annual governing convention in traditional fashion with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist, we will doing so in the context of an ordination – two ordinations, in fact, one to the diaconate and one to the presbyterate. This morning’s reading from Ben Sira is lengthy description of the glories of the ceremonial priesthood. One might have expected the church to have made this one of the potential readings for a presbyteral ordination, but in its wisdom, it has not.

My personal religious background is as the child of an inactive, not-quite-thoroughly-unchurched mixed marriage of a Disciple of Christ and a Methodist, the disinterested products of two decidedly American expressions of protestant evangelical Christianity. Until I was in high school my church attendance depended on which set of grandparents I was visiting; at home, church was out of the question. My grandparents’ churches were proudly non-ceremonial; the closest anyone came to wearing a vestment was the Methodist pastor’s doctoral gown.

In high school, I encountered the Episcopal Church in an Anglo-Catholic diocese. Bells, smells, chants, rich vesture . . . I knew I had come home! As I read the entire lesson today from Ecclesiasticus, I can almost remember every detail of that first encounter with the ritual of religion.

But the rubrics of the ordination service for a priest of the Episcopal Church do not permit or recommend Ben Sira’s soaring description of ceremonial liturgy and priestly elegance! Instead, we are given these choices from the Hebrew Scriptures:

  • Isaiah 6:1-8, in which the soon-to-be-commissioned prophet cries, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips,” and has his lips seared with a burning coal; or
  • Numbers 11:16-17,24-25, in which Moses is instructed to recruit seventy elders to “bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.”

And then there are the choices from the Psalter:

  • Psalm 43 in which we ask, “Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? and why are you so disquieted within me?” or
  • Psalm 132:8-19 in which we beg God “do not turn away the face of your Anointed.”

In the New Testament readings, Peter reminds us, “Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock” (1 Pt 5:3), a rather different vision than Ben Sira’s description of the magnificent Simon, son of Onias. Paul warns us through his words to the Ephesians to not “be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14), and in his admonition to the church in Philippi he instructs us, “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” Again, a contrast to the picture of priesthood in this morning’s reading.

Don’t get me wrong! I love the ritual and the ceremonial. I love great vestments, incense, chant, trumpets, the clanging of bells – it’s all great show and great fun and adds to the experience of religion for me. But the priesthood is much, much more than all of that.

In my vesting sacristy hangs a simple frame with a printed copy of an address by an Englishman who was a bishop in Africa in the early years of the 20th Century. The Rt. Rev. Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, in his concluding address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923, finished with these words:

If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down this country. And it is folly – it is madness – to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done.

There then, as I conceive it, is your present duty; and I beg you, brethren, as you love the Lord Jesus, consider that it is at least possible that this is the new light that the Congress was to bring to us. You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.

Every time I put on my fine silk vestments from Whipple or Almy, the hand-made stoles and chasubles commissioned from private tailors, or the humble offerings created by members of the congregation, I read those words. The priesthood is not about Simon’s glorious robes and perfect splendor; it’s not about trumpets and thuribles and magnificent altars. That’s just the fun stuff we are privileged to enjoy. As the ordination readings and Bishop Weston remind us, priesthood is about serving God’s people in whom we find the living Jesus.

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

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

I Believe – From the Daily Office – August 15, 2014

From the Gospel according John:

There was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 4:46b-53 (NRSV) – August 15, 2014)

Apostle's Creed in Prayer BookJohn uses the word “believe” three times in this short passage: once quoting Jesus about witnesses to his acts of power and twice regarding the royal official’s state of mind. What, precisely, does John mean by doing so? That is one of the ponderable but unanswerable questions about scripture, the precise meaning of a biblical author.

John wrote in Greek and in each of the three cases here the Greek word used is some form of the verb pisteuo, which is also occasionally translated as “faith” and as “trust.” It does not usually carry a strong sense of intellectual assent to a doctrine or concept, although our English “believe” certainly does. Jesus, most likely, did not actually use a Greek word in his statement; more likely he spoke Aramaic in which (as in Hebrew) the word for “believe” is ‘aman and, like the Greek, it does not carry a strong association with intellectual concurrence to a proposition.

When we read or hear John’s testimony in English, therefore, we have to appreciate both the ambiguity of the original and the rather different thrust of our modern understanding of the word “believe”. What we especially must not do is hear John’s “believe” in the same way that we use the word in the creeds.

Of course, when I make such a statement I am immediately confronted by the realization that I have not the slightest idea what you mean by the word “believe” when you recite the Nicene Creed! Even more so, I am confronted by my own lack of clarity when I recite the creed.

Recently, my friend and colleague in ordained ministry, Presbyterian elder Mark Sandlin, published an essay on his blog The God Article entitled “Jesus Is Not My God” in which he confessed to being a heretic by beginning with the declaration, “I am a believer. Mostly. I believe that there is probably a god . . . .” Mark then followed up with, “I also believe there might not be a god. . . .” So how is Mark using “believe”? I think (notice I avoided using the word “believe”) that he is saying that he can intellectually assent to those propositions.

That’s not, however, how I understand the word when it pops up in the Nicene Creed which, as a liturgical Episcopalian, I recite publicly at least once each week, or the Apostle’s Creed which, as a practitioner of the Daily Office, I recite twice each day. I regularly say that I believe that there is a God, that that God created everything, that God had a Son and that Jesus the Anointed One is that Son, that Jesus was born of a virgin, that Jesus was killed on a cross, that he rose from the dead, that he went to heaven and that I expect him to return.

When I do so, however, I am not limiting myself to merely assent to the factual accuracy of those statements. In fact, I’m not even concerned with facticity when I make these statements of belief. In the discussion in the comments about Mark’s “heretical” essay, I said this:

I have no problem whatsoever saying the traditional creeds (Nicene, Apostle’s), every single word of them – virgin birth, death on cross, resurrection, expected return, the whole kit-and-kaboodle. (Did I spell “kaboodle” correctly?) That’s because I understand that “believe” doesn’t mean “assent to the scientific [or historical, I will now add] factual accuracy” of the statements set forth. “Believe” means I trust that these things mean something — usually something more than I currently understand and certainly something a lot more important than mere scientific [or historical] factual accuracy.

I don’t (I hasten to add) disbelieve the factuality of the statements in the creeds, don’t get me wrong, but if it turned out that Mary wasn’t, for example, a virgin, I would still recite the creedal words without a qualm. They are metaphoric; they are symbolic; it’s what they say about Jesus, not what they say about Mary, that is important. Or suppose someone actually were to find and verify a bunch of bones as being the remains of Yeshua of Nazareth; I would still assert my belief in his resurrection. Why? Because his truth, his gospel, the good news that God loves the human race was resurrected in, made alive by, and continues to sustain us in his church.

Whatever Jesus and John may have meant by the word “believe” in this story of the healing of the royal official’s son, that’s what I understand it to be in the creeds. I trust in the importance of what the creedal assertions point us toward. Far from being answers, the creedal statements are starting points for further spiritual exploration; they raise more questions than they answer. And I believe (I am using the word intentionally) that exploring those questions is a healthy and health-giving spiritual activity.

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

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

Most Definitely – From the Daily Office – August 13, 2014

From the Book of Acts:

Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait at tables. Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.” What they said pleased the whole community, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. They had these men stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 6:1-6 (NRSV) – August 13, 2014)

Coptic Pope Selected by a ChildMy wife refuses to use the word “coincidence.” She claims there are no such things. The concurrence in time of apparently unrelated but complementary and mutually reinforcing events, she asserts, is the intentional activity of the Holy Spirit. Nothing, “coincidental” (in the popular understanding of the word) about it.

Well, today one of these God-incidents, as she calls them, has occurred. When we are given this passage of scripture to read, we are also treated to the announcement of the Joint Nominating Committee for the Election of the Presiding Bishop (JNCPB) that it has issued a Call for Discernment and Profile for the election of the 27th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. (Notice all the “this is terribly important” capital letters in that announcement!) The “Call and Profile” can be found here: it is TWENTY pages long! The coincidence (Sorry, dear!) of this reading and this announcement seems instructive.

Luke (the author of Acts) doesn’t tell us how the apostles and the early Christian community actually called, profiled, [s]elected, and chose the first seven deacons, but I somehow doubt that they spent several months producing a twenty page document detailing the perceived needs, duties, qualifications, objectives, potential ministries, goals, and whatever-else-corporate-America-is-currently-buzzwording-for-CEOs of the job. Granted deacons are not presiding bishops. (Truth be told, I think deacons are more important than presiding bishops.) But diakonia is diakonia at whatever hierarchical level it may be performed.

I think the church has gotten lost. I hate to say that, but I think the church has truly gotten lost in the dark woods of corporate leadership process. We have followed the guidebook of the Harvard MBA and seem no longer to hear (or heed) the promptings of the Holy Spirit. As much as I value the democratic processes that make the Episcopal Church unique among Anglicans and the other branches of the Christian faith which preserve the Catholic Tradition, those processes do not and should not be permitted to make us a religious reflection of a for-profit corporation. What works (assuming it does work) for shareholders, directors, and managers of Wall-Street-traded business entities may not (probably does not) work for the church, but we seem to have adopted those processes and methods lock, stock, and barrel.

We use these methods now to select rectors of parishes, bishops of dioceses, and (now) the Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. I ask, in all sincerity, have they worked? And my answer would be, “Sometimes.” Sometimes I believe the Holy Spirit uses our business methods and processes to do her work and help us select the best person. And sometimes I think our business processes and methods get in the way, and that the Holy Spirit just shrugs her shoulders, sits back, and waits for next time . . . .

When the Episcopal Cafe made note of the “Call and Profile” and posted that article on Facebook, I made this comment:

Put the names of all canonically eligible bishops in a large chalice then have my yet-to-be-born grandchild (who will be 9 months old and in attendance with his/her deputy parents) – or some other available innocent child – draw one name slip from the chalice. Make that person PB. Trust the Holy Spirit and stop all this corporate-America profiling-and-politicking nonsense.

This is a riff on the method the Coptic Orthodox Church uses to select its popes (as reported by NBC News). I believe it would work for us as well as, if not better than, all the profiling, job describing, nominating, and electing we go through; it is just as likely to be used and guided by the Holy Spirit, and maybe even more so. It was, basically, the method the apostles used to select a successor for Judas (Acts 1:15-26) and, in all honesty, I don’t think we’ve improved on it in nearly 2,000 years of adopting, changing, and monkeying with other methods.

My son is a clergy deputy to the upcoming General Convention (and his wife is a lay deputy). I asked if he thought Jr. Funston would be up to the task of selecting a name from a chalice. He replied, “Most definitely.”

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

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

Jesus the Jedi – Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Easter (Year A) – May 4, 2014

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The lessons for the day were: Acts 2:14a,36-41; Psalm 116:1-3,10-17; 1 Peter 1:17-23; and Luke 24:13-35. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Broken BreadSince the early 1970s this day, on the Episcopal Church calendar, this day on which we hear the story of Jesus’ appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus has been known as Star Wars Sunday. It’s because Jesus is very much like a Jedi in this story. I mean, think about it . . .

In the Star Wars movies, Luke Skywalker is mentored first by Obiwan Kenobi, who dies, then by Yoda, who also dies. But both Obiwan and Yoda come back! They appear to Luke and others after their deaths, continue to teach and give sage counsel, and disappear. That’s what happens with Jesus in the story Luke tells us this morning.

It’s still Easter Sunday. (For us, we’re three weeks down the road, but for them it’s the afternoon of the same day on which Mary Magdalene and the others found the empty tomb.) Two disciples, one named Cleopas and the other unnamed (let’s call him “Bob” — although some feminists scholars suggest that the reason this disciple is not named is because she is a woman, so it might be “Bobbie”) are on their way to a village called Emmaus. Luke tells us this village is seven miles from Jerusalem; that’s a long walk — two or three hours. Sometime during this long afternoon journey, they are joined by a stranger whom they do not recognize; the stranger, Luke reveals, is Jesus but Cleopas and Bob can’t recognize him. They have a long talk with him about all the thing that have happened in Jerusalem in recent days, and he gives them sage counsel about the meaning of scripture, particularly the messianic prophecies. They arrive in Emmaus early in the evening and encourage their traveling companion to join them at dinner.

They sit down at an inn for the evening meal and the stranger takes the lead. He takes the bread served by the innkeeper, offers a blessing, and breaks the bread. Now, Cleopas and Bob realize who this is. As he does the same thing he had done with his followers just a few days before, their memory is tweaked and their eyes are opened (which suggests that Cleopas and Bob were in the upper room in Jerusalem on Thursday evening). That’s when they recognize him; that’s when they think they’ve figure out who he is — he’s Jesus the Jedi. And that’s when Jesus vanishes.

Why do you suppose that is? Why does Jesus disappear?

Well . . . let me remind you of what happened earlier in the day as the story is told by John. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, found it empty, and told Simon Peter. Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved (another unnamed follower!) also found it empty, and then returned to their home to tell the others. Mary, however, hung behind and encountered Jesus but, like Cleopas and Bob on the road to Emmaus, she did not recognize him; she thought he was the gardener. Only when he addressed her by name (perhaps because of the tone of his voice) was something in her memory triggered and she realized who he was. She called him “Rabbouni” (which means teacher) and apparently fell at his feet and grabbed hold of them, for Jesus says to her, “Don’t hold on to me.” I think he did so for the same reason he disappeared from the table at the Emmaus inn.

Similarly, remember what happened before they arrived in Jerusalem, when Jesus took Peter and James and John up the mount of the Transfiguration. While they were on the holy mountain, the three disciples witnessed Jesus in conversation with Elijah and Moses. Peter wanted to memorialize the event by building booths, monuments to concretize the moment. Jesus said, “No. We’re not going to do that.” Again, I think for the same reason he disappeared in Emmaus.

That reason is that we cannot pin Jesus down. Jesus cannot be contained; he will not fit neatly into our boxes. When we think we have him figured out, we find out we are wrong. Jesus . . . God is bigger than any notion of him we may have; God is bigger than our conceptions, bigger than our doctrines, bigger than our creeds. And every encounter with Jesus is singular and unique. We cannot hold onto him; we cannot concretize and cast the moment in stone.

We just sang as our sequence hymn the old chestnut In the Garden, and that hymn makes this very point. We, the singer, say that we would like to stay there in that garden, but Jesus will not allow that:

I’d stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

We cannot pin him down! We cannot cast the moment in stone. When we think we’ve got hold of him, we find we are wrong; he disappears and what we are left with are our own notions, our own ideas, our own doctrines, our boxes. Our boxes, however, are too small; God is too big for them.

And the chorus of the hymn reminds us of the singularity and uniqueness of every meeting with our Lord:

And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Every time we encounter Jesus, the experience is unique; none other (not even our earlier selves) has ever had that experience before.

I think that is why it is significant that Cleopas and Bob recognized Jesus as he broke bread. Every loaf of bread is unique, similar perhaps to other loaves but never, ever identical. And every occasion on which bread is share is singular and unique. It may be a family meal or a celebration of the Eucharist; it may be a formal banquet or just friends having a bite. Whatever the circumstances, the situation is one unto itself, not like any other, never to be repeated.

A couple of Christmases ago, Evelyn gave me a set of books about the elements of the Eucharist. One volume is entitled The Spirituality of Wine; the other, which I have here, is The Spirituality of Bread by Donna Sinclair. The author is a Christian (in fact, I think she is an Anglican). I’d like to read you some of what she has to say about the symbolism of bread. About bread and community, she writes:

Jesus may have been lent significance by his association with other gods of bread. But that doesn’t acount for the power of his celebration, which persists daily around the world.

Everywhere, the words are similar: “He took a loaf of bread and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them and said, ‘Take, this is my body.'” And, everywhere, people line up, blue-jean clad or robed, young or old, to receive bits of bread; or they sit in pews and pass tiny chunks on a plate; or they stand in a circle and murmur a blessing as a broken loaf moves from hand to hand.

Sometimes they gather around a sickbed.

Once, I sat in a circle of friends, in a smoky cabin in the bush, after a weekend of tending a woodstove and talking about dreams. We passed the bread around as gently as if it were the heart of the other, which it was.

The ritual has power. I get uneasy if I think I might be left out. Once, reporting on an event, I slipped up to take a photo of Archbishop Desmond Tutu serving Communion, and then paused anxiously. He winked and held out the bread.

Perhaps inclusion is this ceremony’s strength. This bread offers an enormous community, a family that stretches around the world and through the centuries. We don’t want to be left out.

We don’t want to be left out because we don’t want to miss the opportunity for that unique and singular encounter with Christ. Every celebration of Eucharist, like every sharing of bread and every meeting with Jesus, is a moment unto itself never to be repeated, never to be duplicated. We realize that in some way, that this encounter with Christ in the breaking of the bread will never happen again, and we don’t want to be left out.

With regard to bread and sacrifice, Ms. Sinclair writes:

The celebration of Communion is also a powerful experience of metaphor. Bread as body. Wine as blood. Love as sacrifice.

In the Jesus story, it is clear that love has great requirements. There is a price to pay, in an oppressive era, for feeding the unwanted.

It may help to see another story, that of the Celtic Earth goddess Tailtiu, queen of the Fir Bolg, one of the ancient peoples of pre-Christian Ireland.

When Tailtiu saw that her people were starving after an insufficient grain harvest, she took up an axe and, for a solid year, cleared a forest: “the reclaiming of meadowland from even wood by Tailtiu, daughter of Magmor,” is the way it is reported by the anonymous bard of The Dindsenchas, poems about Irish place names.

After the trees had been cut down, “roots and all, out of the ground,” the land became “a plain blossoming with clove,” presumably suitable for planting grain. But the cost was appalling. Tailtiu’s heart “burst in her body from the strain beneath her royal vest,” the bard says. The Celts loved their sacred groves, and the destruction to the enchanted richness of her forest must have broken Tailtiu’s heart.

Aware that she is dying, her courtiers gather around, and Tailtiu whispers her last command. She wants funeral games to be held in her honour each year, just before the harvest. And they are to be peaceful, she says, “without sin, without fraud, without reproach, without insult, without contention, without seizure, without theft.”

Thanks to her faithful foster-child Lugh (later associated with a bountiful harvest), Tailtiu’s wish came to pass. There was always an “unbroken truce” at her fair, and “men went in and came out without any rude hostility. Corn and milk in every stead, peace and fair weather for its sake, were granted to the heathen tribes of the Greeks for maintaining of justice.”

Tailtiu had given up her beloved forest and her life for a vision not too different from that of Archbishop Oscar Romero or of Mondawmin, who brought corn to the Ojibway. “Unbroken truce” and “corn and milk in ever stead,” represent the commonwealth of peace, the kingdom Jesus told his friends was close by. New parents get a glimpse of this kingdom looking at their tiny baby. Their sudden understanding that they would do anything to keep this child safe is the closest we can come, perhaps, to understanding the sacrifice that is part of love’s potential.

Perhaps that’s the power of Communion bread. Some say that it commemorates Jesus offering himself as a sacrifice for our sins, but I don’t think so. I would be appalled by a god who asked for the death of his child, or any child. But like any parent, I believe I would die for my children’s lives, even as absurdly grown-up as they are now.

Perhaps this bread simply expresses our wish to live little closer to the ideal of Tailtiu, Jesus, or Mondawmin, who died to give their people enough to eat. None of us can stand up to greed or selfishness as strongly as we wish. But eating this ceremonial bread with others, who also want to be just and loving, makes us brave enough to try.

Maybe that’s why I am sometimes overwhelmed at these ceremonies. Maybe I am simply terrified by the high sacrifices love assumes. Certainly the part most touching to me in the story of my own bread-god, Jesus, is not his death, but his constant focus on compassion. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he commands. “Love your enemies.”

Every encounter with this God who commands us to love, every encounter with love is unique and singular. Every encounter with this God who commands us to love, every encounter with love is larger than we can describe. We cannot constrain love in our boxes. Whatever our notions, our doctrines, our creeds, our understandings . . . they are too small to contain love, to pin love down, to hold onto and control love. When we try, love disappears, and that is why Jesus disappeared from the dinner table in that inn in Emmaus.

Now . . . I have to confess that, on the church’s calendar, this really isn’t Star Wars Sunday. But as every Star Wars aficionado knows, today is Star Wars Day: “May the Fourth be with you.”

But may Jesus the Jedi . . . Jesus, known in the breaking of the bread . . . Jesus, whom we cannot hold onto and pin down . . . Jesus, unique and singular . . . may Jesus be with you. Amen.

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

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

Magic Hands – From the Daily Office – May 3, 2014

From the Book of Exodus:

Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some men for us and go out; fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the sun set. And Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the sword.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Exodus 17:8-13 (NRSV) – May 3, 2014.)

Illustration from Die Bibel in Bildern by Julius Schnorr von CarolsfeldAt first blush, this just feels like another unbelievable story of religious ritual and “magic hands.” It fits neatly into the pattern of war stories one finds in the Torah that are attributed to the Deuteronomist. For that writer, the Hebrews’ victory in battle always depends not on military preparation, strength of arms, or fighting skill, but on ritual exactitude — perform a religious ritual properly and you win, flub it and you lose.

I recall reading rabbinic commentary, however, that puts a different spin on the story. According to the rabbis, there was nothing “magic” or even particularly noteworthy about Moses’ hands; they were simply a reminder to the Hebrew fighters below to put their faith in God. When they looked up to see Moses’ hands raised, they looked to heaven, trusted in God, and prevailed; when his hands were down, they failed to do so.

When I was in seminary, there was a practicum in liturgics, basically a class on how to do the ritual of the Eucharist. We called it “magic hands.” Our instructor, Dr. Louis Weil, repeatedly advised us to be aware of our hands, to be aware that the congregation would focus upon them and any movement we made, and therefore to make few gestures, but make every gesture one that would not distract the congregation from their worship. I am reminded of Dr. Weil’s instruction by this story.

I’m also mindful that Moses didn’t do this alone. If Aaron and Hur hadn’t been there to hold up Moses’ hands, whether “magic” in themselves or simply a motivational banner to the warriors, the battle would have gone otherwise. The story is a reminder of the importance of community and, for community leaders, of the importance of those with whom they work. No one does the task of leadership alone.

This, too, reminds me of the tradition of the Eucharist that holds that a priest alone cannot say the Mass; he or she must be accompanied by at least one other person: Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Mt 18:20) I am told that in some Orthodox traditions, there must be, in addition to the priest, at least one deacon and one lay person so that the fullness of the church is represented. (That would be impossible in my congregation; as much as I would like to have a vocational deacon or two in our midst, there is none.)

So I think this is a story of more than “magic hands,” more than a story of winning through proper religious ritual. If there is any magic in the hands of leaders, it is found in both the power to which those hands point and in the support on which those hands depend.

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

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

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

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

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

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Simeon's Moment by Ron DiCianni

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Psalter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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