Category: Liturgy (Page 13 of 16)

WYSIWYG World – From the Daily Office – January 10, 2014

January 10, 2014 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Colossians:

Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Colossians 2:16-17 (NRSV) – January 10, 2014.)

Green-on-Black Text I sometimes wonder to what extent Paul, as an educated Jewish citizen of a Greek-speaking empire, was schooled in the classical Greek philosophers. Had he read Plato’s Republic? Was he aware of the conversation portrayed in Book VII between Socrates and Glaucon in which the allegory of the cave is laid out?

In the dialog, Socrates describes a prison cave in which the inmates have lived all of their lives chained in such a way that all they can see is a blank wall. The prisoners watch shadows formed on the wall by things passing between them and a fire behind them. They recognize the shadows, give them the names of the things which cast them, and believe them to actually be those things. The shadows, says Socrates, are as close as the inmates get to viewing reality. According to Socrates, a philosopher is like a prisoner who is loosed, sees the real forms casting the images, and comes to understand that the shadows are not reality at all. He is aware of the true form of reality, not the shadows seen by the chained inmates. The story illustrates Plato’s “Theory of Forms,” which holds that things in the material world perceivable through sensation are mere “shadows” of ideal “forms.” These “forms,” not the “shadows,” possess the highest and most fundamental reality.

When Paul writes things like “these are only a shadow . . . the substance belongs to Christ,” he seems to be buying into this Platonic idea. His famous line from the first letter to the church in Corinth seems to do so as well: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Take these sorts of Pauline statements and mix them with the Letter to the Hebrews (“They offer worship in a sanctuary that is a sketch and shadow of the heavenly one.” – Heb. 8:5) and even a bit of James (“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” – James 1:17), and one can see where the Neoplatonists and even the Gnostics get the notion that the material world is less than ideal, fallen, corrupt, or even evil. That’s a position that, unfortunately in my opinion, has made a significant impact on Christian theology.

It is also not a view to which the Hebrew Scriptures lend much support and one doubts very much that it was the opinion of Jesus of Nazareth! Oh sure, there are hints of it in Hebrew poetry and prayer. For example, King David prays with the assembly of the people: “For we are aliens and transients before you, as were all our ancestors; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope.” (1 Chron 29:15) And Bildad the Shuhite advises Job: “For we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing, for our days on earth are but a shadow.” (Job 8:9) And from time to time the Psalms say things like the description of human beings as “like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow.” (Ps. 144:4) But on the whole, the Old Testament and (I suggest) the Christian faith declare a much different understanding of reality!

Just read the accounts of creation in Genesis! God is not shown to be casting shadows; God is creating hard, physical reality and, at each step along the way, declares it good. In the second account (which is probably the older of the two), God gets God’s hands dirty in all that good, hard, physical reality molding human beings out of the clay. I’m particularly fond of poet James Weldon Johnson’s retelling of that story (which I quoted in last Sunday’s sermon):

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

(“The Creation”, from God’s Trombones)

When I was a second-year student at law school I was a member of the law review where we used some very early word processing equipment and software in which one had to enter the codes for changes in typeface, indentation, and so forth (not too dissimilar from writing HTML code, frankly). What you looked at on the green-on-black computer screen bore no resemblance to what (you hoped) the printer would produce. The next year, when I became an editor, we purchased a new computer and were introduced to a new concept – “WYSIWYG” (pronounced “wissy-wig”) – What You See Is What You Get. What was on the screen looked like what the printer produced!

I believe that’s the kind of world we have been given, one in which what we perceive is real. Yes, I know that quantum mechanics and superstring theory bring that into some question, that at some super-micro-nano-reality level things are not quite what they seem; but that is a different issue than this philosophical nothing-is-really-real shadow-world construct of Plato’s, and a far cry from the fallen, corrupt, evil world of some Christian theologies. We live in a real, physical world, one in which God was pleased to take on flesh and dwell among us (John 1:1-14).

When I see beautiful winter hillside covered with glistening snow, when I taste a sweet-tart bite of homemade cherry pie, when I kiss my wife or hug my daughter, when I listen to a Vivaldi concerto, I am seeing/tasting/feeling/hearing what I get, not some shadow of an unseen and unknowable “ideal form.” Like that mammy bending over her baby, what I am experiencing is real and good; it is the ideal. We live in a WYSIWYG world!

====================

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!

====================

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

Saying “Yes” – Sermon for Advent 4: December 22, 2013 – Revised Common Lectionary, Year A

December 22, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

====================

This sermon was preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The Revised Common Lectionary, Advent 4A: Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Psalm 80:1-7,16-18; and Matthew 1:18-25. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

====================

Maria Theotokos A couple of weeks ago our choir and the brass quartet offered a really lovely service of Advent Lessons and Carols on the evening of Second Advent. We had things set up a little differently than you usually see our chancel and I hear later that someone had asked, “What’s all that Catholic stuff doing on the altar?” I was confused by the question because we always have “Catholic stuff” on the altar!

We have seasonally colored frontals. We have this pure white “fair linen” and this smaller piece of linen with a funny Latin name on which we set the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist. We have a chalice and a patten and a colored veil. We have candles! All of that is “Catholic stuff” and we always have it here on the altar, so I was confused by the question.

Then I realized that what the questioner was asking about were these . . . the icons that we place on the altar during our services of Compline on the last Sunday evening of each month and that I had thought would make a nice addition to the prayerful atmosphere of lessons and carols. This one is a representation of the Madonna and Child known in Greek as Maria Theotokos — which means “Mary the God-Bearer.” The other is called the Christus Pantokrator (the words mean “Christ All-Mighty”) and depicts Christ as a teacher or as the stern-but-merciful, all-powerful judge of humanity. They are actually not so much Catholic as Orthodox. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, icons are an aid to prayer; they are called “windows into heaven.”

Christus Pantokrator For that reason, icons are typically not realistic; they are very “wooden,” very simple, almost cartoonish. Much is left to the viewer’s, the prayer’s imagination. I love to pray with icons and with other “visual aids,” with paintings, photographs, candles, flowers, all that “Catholic” stuff. It is one of the beauties of our Anglican tradition that we understand worship and prayer to be an activity of the whole person, to engage all of our senses. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” the Psalmist wrote. (Psalm 34:8) We take those words seriously and so we don’t exclude any form of prayer or spirituality; we don’t distinguish between what is catholic or what is protestant. If it’s helpful in prayer, if it offers an aid to our understanding or our relationship with God, we thinks it’s fine. We draw on the catholic tradition, on the protestant traditions, on the orthodox tradition, even on non-Christian traditions. We’re willing to say “Yes” to anything that aids our connection to God.

But it’s so much easier to say “No,” isn’t it? I have a suspicion that the person who asked, “What’s all that Catholic stuff doing on the altar?” was also thinking something the along the lines of “We’ve never done that before.” That’s what we mean when we say “No.” “No” means we can keep with the status quo; we don’t have to face and deal with something we’ve never done before. That’s what Ahaz, the king of Judah, tries to do in the reading from the prophet Isaiah this morning. The prophet tells the king to ask God for a sign, but Ahaz declines to lest he be thought to put God to the test and be guilty of what Scripture elsewhere denounces as spiritual presumption. He knows that doing so can cause trouble for the asker, so he prefers to the status quo. He says, “No!” God gives him a sign anyway: “Look! A virgin will bear a son and name him ‘Emmanuel’.”

We’re all a bit like Ahaz; we prefer to stick with the way things are. The status quo may not be comfortable, but it is familiar. We know how to deal with it; we may not know how to handle something we’ve never encountered before.

“Yes” opens the future. It opens us to the unknown; it opens us to what we’ve never done before. Saying “Yes” is pregnant with possibility. But saying “No” is so much easier, so much safer!

The icons came to mind today because of the Gospel story.

On the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we like to say that we honor Mary and, to an extent, that’s true. Usually, in two of the three years of the lectionary cycle, we hear about the Annunciation when the angel Gabriel informed Mary that she had been chosen to bear God’s Son. But this year, we hear the other story, the annunciation to Joseph when an angel, not named by Matthew but often also portrayed as Gabriel, appeared to Joseph in a dream and explained Mary’s condition to him. They were betrothed, almost but not quite married, when it was discovered that Mary was pregnant. Joseph knew he wasn’t the father, but he didn’t want to embarrass this young girl, so he planned to divorce her (in a sense) in a quiet, private way. The angel visits him to convince him otherwise.

The icons came to mind today because when I contemplate Bible stories, when I pray about these tales, I like to use art, to look at the way these stories of the faith have been portrayed by painters and sculptors. There are two paintings, in particular, of this story that I like, and one of the Annunciation to Mary that is absolutely my favorite painting of a biblical tale.

The Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli The Mary painting is by Sandro Botticelli, a Renaissance Florentine painter of the late 15th Century. In his painting, Mary is a Medici princess! She’s all decked out in these Renaissance robes, standing in a beautiful palace in front of window looking out over a lovely formal garden. Not very a very realistic depiction, of course, since she was a 1st Century Palestinian peasant girl! In any event, what is important is not how she’s dressed, but the emotions the painting conveys, and not only hers but also the angel Gabriel’s.

As Mary is depicted, she seems to be flinching away from the angel, holding her hands out as if fending him off. The expression on her face is nearly unreadable, but it is certainly not one of acceptance. Gabriel, also decked out as if he were a Medici courtier but these lovely, golden, semi-transparent wings billowing behind him, is kneeling before her. His hands are reaching out as if pleading. The expression on his face is one of apprehension. You can almost hear him thinking, “Oh, no! She’s going to say, ‘No!’ I’m going to have to go tell God that I blew it!” Of course, she didn’t say, “No.” But . . . what if she had?

St Joseph's Dream by Raphael Mengs The paintings of Joseph are, first, a painting by an 18th Century German Bohemian painter named Raphael Mengs. Other than this painting, I don’t know this painter, but I did see this painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is notable, first of all, for it’s depiction of Joseph as a relatively young man. Usually in art, Joseph is portrayed as an old man because of a legend that he was very old, had been previously married, had other children (who are those identified in the Bible as Jesus’ brothers and sisters), and passed away early in Jesus’ life. Scholars generally disagree with that: most now believe that Mary was probably only 13 or 14 years of age, Joseph perhaps 16 to 20.

In Mengs painting Joseph is perhaps a bit older than that but still a young man. He is fit and muscular, clearly a hard working man; Joseph, of course, was a carpenter. He has fallen asleep at his workbench, and the angel is speaking to him from behind, sort of over his shoulder. Joseph’s sleeping face is somewhat shrouded in shadow and hard to read. Sometimes when I look at this painting, he looks puzzled or confused; sometimes he looks angry; sometimes, simply uncaring. He does not look like someone who is going to readily agree to whatever the angel is telling him.

The Dream of St Joseph by Georges de la Tour The second painting of Joseph is by another 18th Century painter, the Frenchman Georges de la Tour. De la Tour is more conventional. He portrays Joseph as an elderly man, bald with a bushy beard. He appears to be in bed and to have fallen asleep while reading; a book is in his hand. The angel stands next to him; the scene is lighted by a single candle standing on a bedside table between them. We cannot see the candle, but only its light on the angel’s face and on Joseph’s. Joseph appears to be waking up, but not quite awake. He seems to be in that in-between, liminal stage — not quite asleep but not quite awake. I don’t know about you, but if someone tries to get me to do something when I’m just waking up like that, they’re going to get a resounding “No!”

Again, just like Mary, we know that Joseph did not say, “No.” He did not divorce Mary; he carried through with the marriage. Jesus was born and Joseph reared him as his own son. This is terribly important to Matthew, who traces Jesus’ lineage to King David through Joseph; as the acknowledged foster-adoptive son of Joseph, who is a blood descendent of David (the angel addresses him as “son of David”), Jesus also is “of the house and lineage of David.” This, for Matthew, legitimizes the claim that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah predicted by the prophets.

Think, for a moment, what might have happened if either of these young people had said, “No.” If Mary had declined to bear the Son of God, there would have been no Jesus. Oh, surely, God would have worked the plan of salvation in a different way, but it wouldn’t have been the way we know; there wouldn’t have been a Jesus Christ, a Christian church, the history of the world as we know it. We cannot imagine what it would have been, but it wouldn’t have been this!

If Mary had agreed but then Joseph refused, what might the childhood of the Son of God have been like. As it was, he was reared in a typical 1st Century Jewish family. He learned his lessons, worked with his foster father, learned the craft of carpentry, went to school at the local synagogue, learned the Scriptures and the traditions of his faith, obtained all the knowledge that was the necessary foundation of his life and ministry. But if he had been not the son of a merchant craftsman? What if he’d been the illegitimate son of an unwed mother? Again, we can be sure that God would have worked with that, but the story of salvation would have been radically different!

We have made it nearly all the way through Advent, this introspective season of preparation for the Feast of the Nativity, the celebration of the Incarnation of God in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. But it is more than that; Advent bids us prepare not only to celebrate Christmas, but to get ready for what we call “the Second Coming,” the Messiah’s return at the end of time. Christmas (which technically hasn’t even started yet) will be over soon. As a church season, it lasts only twelve days starting Tuesday night. For many of us, it will be shorter than that. The tree will be taken down, the gift wrap thrown away, many of the gifts returned to stores and other gifts already broken long before Twelfth Night! But there’s still that unknown and unpredictable “last great day” when Christ will return to “judge the quick and the dead.”

Between now and then, we will have many opportunities to say “Yes” or “No.” We will have many opportunities to open the future. Will we do so? Will we say “Yes” and embrace the unknown pregnant with possibility? Will we play it safe, maintain the status quo, say “No?”

As we come to the end of Advent, give that some thought, give some thought to Mary’s “Yes,” to Joseph’s “Yes,” and prepare yourself again. Get ready! Keep awake! Be alert! When the opportunity comes remember Mary and Joseph, and say “Yes!” Open the future!

Amen!

====================

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

Shaking Grammy – From the Daily Office – December 14, 2013

December 14, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Haggai:

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Haggai 2:6-7 (NRSV) – December 14, 2013.)

Antique Kitchen I remember a movie scene, maybe a cartoon? A character is picked up by his ankles and shaken, and all the change in his pockets rattles out and collects on the ground beneath him . . . . That is what first came to mind when I read these verses of Haggai, still going on about rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem immediately after the Babylonian Exile.

Then another memory, a memory of being shaken myself.

I spent many childhood summers with my paternal grandparents in a small town in southeastern Kansas. They had moved there in 1919. My grandfather had purchased five city lots. On one he built there home, a three-bedroom bungalow. On another he built a similar home to rent out for income; eventually, it would be the home of my father’s older brother and his family who lived there during those childhood summers. On a third, Granddad built a large structure which might have been called a barn if it were on a farm or a ranch; we just called it “the garden shed.” That lot also was the location of the chicken coop where my grandmother collected eggs every morning. The remaining two lots were my grandfather’s garden and fruit orchard, where I worked and played with my cousins summer mornings; in the afternoon, we would go to the city swimming pool or to the library or to the movies.

My grandfather was a very good gardener, so there always seemed to be plenty of beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, okra, you-name-it for my grandmother to can, make into preserves, cook fresh, blanch and freeze, and so forth. When I think of her, I most often picture her in the kitchen.

Grammy Funston was a small woman. If she was fully five feet tall, I’d be surprised. Because kitchen counters were just a bit too tall for her, she preferred to sit at the kitchen table to do her vegetable and fruit preparation, the peeling, dicing, slicing, sorting, and what-all that is required to cook, preserve, or can garden produce.

Grammy’s kitchen was the way into the house from the garden, the orchard, the play yard, and the work shed: up the back porch steps, into the mudroom, past the stairs to the basement, into and through the kitchen to get to wherever else you might be headed. With all that cooking and canning going on, boiling pots of water on the stove, pans of cooking jams and jellies, stacks of glass mason jar and jelly glasses, it was also a busy and sometimes dangerous place. She didn’t mind people coming and going through her work space, but she had one hard-and-fast rule – no running in the kitchen.

Violate that rule and you would find yourself snagged! For a woman as petite as she was, she was incredibly strong and had a grip like iron. Run past her in that kitchen and her arm would flash out like a bull-whip; her hand would latch on to your upper arm like a vice; and you would find yourself planted right in front of her about to get a stern talking-to. She had a habit of placing her hands on both your upper arms and shaking you as she made her points: “You could get seriously hurt!” SHAKE “Do you understand me?” SHAKE “This is a dangerous place!” SHAKE

“I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations. . . .” I picture God as a grandmother working in her kitchen, making all sorts of good things, and occasionally snagging an unruly creation by the arm, grabbing the world by both shoulders. “This is a dangerous place!” SHAKE “You need to pay attention!” SHAKE “Do you understand me?” SHAKE

It’s the message of Advent, again! “Be alert; I have already told you everything.” (Mark 13:23) SHAKE!

====================

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

Drawing Water from the Springs of Salvation – Sermon for Pentecost 26, Proper 28C – November 17, 2013

November 17, 2013 / eric / 1 Comment

====================

This sermon was preached on the 26th Sunday after Pentecost, November 17, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(The Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 28C: Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6); 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; and Luke 21:5-19. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

====================

Illustration of Chinese Fifteen Buckets Idiom “You shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.”

Their placement in the Book of Isaiah suggests that these words were written early in the career of the first prophet whose writings are collected into this book (there are three), a time when Judah had been conquered by and was a tributary-state of the Assyrian Empire. In the first eleven chapters of the book, Isaiah had prophesied against the Jewish people and the nation’s leaders, condemning their failure to follow God’s Law, their failure to take care of the widows, the orphans, the poor, the resident alien. He had even given his son a prophetic name, Maher-shalal-hash-baz — meaning “He has made haste to the plunder!” — to reflect God’s judgment against them. Isaiah prophesied of desolation and loss, and those prophecies seemed to have come true. It was a time such as Jesus describes in the Gospel today, a time when nation had risen against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Yet, in the midst of it, Isaiah offers this song of hope.

“You shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.”

I once worked with a man who blew, as the saying goes, hot and cold. If you asked him, “How’s it going?” you’d get one of two responses. If things were OK, he’d say, “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.” But on another day he’d answer, “The world’s going to Hell in a hand-basket!” There was no in-between with him, no shades of gray, no shades of anything! Either everything was great, or everything was awful. Isaiah’s message in our Gradual today is a message that even when everything is awful, even if the world is going to Hell in a hand-basket, God’s still in his heaven, God’s still in charge and eventually all will be right with the world.

“You shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.”

One of the things we preachers do is look back to see if we said anything about a Biblical text the last time it came up on the lectionary rotation, so that is what I did. The last time we had the First Song of Isaiah as part of our Sunday worship, it was the Sunday following the Sandy Hook School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. I didn’t preach on this particular text that Sunday, but it would have been a fitting text; it is a message of reassurance for the worst of times.

“You shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.”

So . . . there are three themes or images in this one verse that I’d like to explore with you today: drawing water, rejoicing, and the springs of salvation. And I want to begin with the middle one because that is the way Isaiah begins.

Chapter 12 is only six verses long but, for some reason, when it is used liturgically as a canticle, the first verse is dropped off: we begin with Verse 2, “Surely, it is God who saves me . . . . ” But Isaiah began his song this way: “You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me.” (v 1) “I will give thanks to you, O Lord . . . .”

This is more than a polite “Thank You” note. This is a song of praise that describes, that would accompany a physical expression of gratitude. The Hebrew word here is yadah, which signifies the stretching out of one’s hands in thanks while singing.

It’s like . . . do you know the 1964 movie Zorba the Greek? It’s based on a novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. It is the story of Basil, a young English-Greek intellectual played by Alan Bates, and his encounter with a vibrant Greek peasant, Alexis Zorba, the title character; it is a story full of betrayal, death, and failure. But, at the end, as Basil is preparing to leave Crete (where the story is set) and return to Oxford, he asks Zorba to teach him to dance. What follows is this wonderful scene in which Anthony Quinn, who plays Zorba, lifts his hands and begins slowly to demonstrate the sirtaki. The music, by Mikis Theodorakis, builds as Quinn and Bates dance, with their hands raised, faster and faster, laughing, and overcoming all the darkness and tragedy that has gone before. That is yadah!

That theme is continued in this pivotal verse: “You shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.” The word yadah is not repeated; here we have another word sawsone, which means “joyfulness,” or “mirth,” or even “giddiness,” translated in our Prayer Book text as “rejoicing.” Nonetheless, the meaning is the same: an exultant joy which requires physical expression.

“You shall draw water with rejoicing” — with dancing and singing and laughter and giddiness — “from the springs of salvation.”

The next image to consider is the drawing of water from a well. That’s not something many of us are familiar with, even if we live on farm properties with wells those wells are equipped with electric pumps and we get our water from a tap at the sink; we just turn a handle and the water comes out. Not so in Isaiah’s day or in Jesus’ time, nor even for some of our grandparents. In those days you took your bucket to the well and you lowered down, filled it, drew it up (not with a turn crank, by the way, but by brute strength), and then you carried it into the home, however far away that might be.

That day to day reality would most certainly have been in the minds of Isaiah’s first audience, but perhaps for them it would have been overshadowed by memories of an annual ritual. An important part of the celebration called Sukkoth or the Feast of Tabernacles was the “Festival of Water-drawing.” In this ritual, on each morning of the seven days of Sukkoth, a young priest would take a golden pitcher to the Pool of Siloam and fill it with water. He would then carry the water in a procession with lighted torches up to the Temple where the water was poured upon the altar, and the people broke out into jubilant song and dance.

The ritual of water-drawing was a reminder that God’s Presence is as fundamental and basic to human life as the water that falls from the sky or springs up from the earth. Life-giving water symbolizes God’s power. The image here is of water flowing with abundance, spilling over, and flowing out to the whole earth. In Isaiah’s song, the ritual of water-drawing leads directly to the proclamation of good news to all nations. The good news of God’s salvation cannot be contained; it must reach out to all the world.

Now something lost in the English translation is Isaiah’s use of singular and plural “yous,” his address is first to individuals and then to the community as a whole. In the ritual of water-drawing, it was the priest who drew the water as representative of the community, but in Isaiah’s song the “you” in this verse is addressed to each individual. “You shall draw water . . . .” — not the priest on your behalf — not the community of which you are a part — but you individually, you personally, you shall draw from the well of living water. Each of us goes to the well-spring individually . . . but what a mess it would be if we all showed up and tried to do that at the same time without any coordination!

As I thought about that, I remembered an old Chinese proverb I learned in Asian folklore course in college: Qi shang ba xia, literally, “seven up, eight down.” The full saying is, “My heart has fifteen buckets, seven up, eight down.” The image is from a folktale of fifteen people at a community well, all trying to draw water; seven with their buckets going up and eight going down, all clanging and banging against one another, spilling the water and achieving nothing. It refers to a person or a community faced with a time of uncertainty, fear, or turmoil. The English equivalent is “to be all sixes and sevens,” to be in a general state of confusion and disarray, possibly even a condition of irreconcilable conflict.

That certainly cannot be what Isaiah had in mind with his image of each of drawing out water individually! Surely there is here a lesson about working together in community! Remember that though each of us draws from the well we do so together, with yadah and sawsone, with that thankfulness and joy that expresses itself in dancing. Like Zorba and Basil dancing the sirtaki together, we work together so that our buckets are not “seven up, eight down,” not banging against one another and spilling their water uselessly, but all filled, drawn up, and poured out in proclamation of God’s good news. We never go to the well alone; we go together, and together we fill and draw out our buckets in a purposeful and concerted dance of joyful abundance.

“You” — each of you individually, but all of you together — “shall draw water with rejoicing” — with dancing and singing and laughter and giddiness — “from the springs of salvation.”

Which brings us to the last image of this verse: the springs of salvation.

While reviewing the commentaries and study guides about this text, I came across an alternative translation: “With great joy, you people will get water from the well of victory.” (CEV) At first blush, “well of victory” and “springs of salvation” seem like very different images! Salvation is something we receive, something that God gives us. Victory is something achieved, something that we do ourselves! But when I went to my Hebrew lexicon, I discovered that, indeed, the Hebrew word used here has been translated in other circumstances as “victory” (Psalm 20:5) and also as “prosperity” (e.g., Job 30:1) or as “deliverance” (e.g., Psalm 3:2). The well of God’s grace produces all of these things: deliverance, salvation, prosperity, victory.

In John’s Gospel we are told a story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at the communal well in the city of Sychar. He asked her to draw him a drink from the well, and when she expressed surprise that a Jewish man would ask that of a Samaritan woman . . .

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:10-15)

The word used by the Prophet Isaiah, the word translated as “salvation,” as “victory,” as “prosperity,” as “deliverance,” is also a Name. The word is yeshu’ah; the name we translate as “Jesus.”

Even when the enemy (whoever or whatever that may be) has invaded and all seems to be desolation and loss . . . even when nations rise against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms . . . even when the world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket . . . even in a time of unfathomable tragedy and grief, Isaiah’s words comfort and reassure us. They are a promise of “buoyant and determined hope that refuses to give in to debilitating present circumstances.” (Walter Brueggemann)

“You” — each of you, each of us individually, but all of us together —

“shall draw water” — living water —

“with rejoicing” — with dancing and singing and laughter and giddiness —

“from the springs of salvation” — from the wellspring who is Jesus.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, you promised that you would give to any who asked living water gushing up to eternal life: Make us thirsty for that living water that we may love God with our whole heart and soul and mind, that we may rejoice in your victory and salvation with dancing and singing and laughter, that we may fill our buckets with your abundant prosperity and may pour out your good news for all the world, that we may love our neighbor as ourselves; in your Holy Name we pray. Amen.

====================

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

To Boldly Go: Sermon for a Celebration of Ministry – St. Paul’s, Manhattan, Kansas – October 16, 2013

October 16, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

====================

This sermon was preached on October 16, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Manhattan, Kansas, where Fr. Funston’s son, the Rev. A. Patrick K. Funston is rector. Fr. Patrick was installed as rector, and the appointment of the Rev. Sandra Horton-Smith as Deacon in the parish was also celebrated.

(The Episcopal Church sanctoral lectionary for the Feast of Hugh Latimer & Nicholas Ridley, bishops and martyrs: Zephaniah 3:1-5; Psalm 142; 1 Corinthians 3:9-14; and John 15:20-16:1.)

====================

Ridley and Latimer I bring you greetings from the people of St. Paul’s Parish, Medina, Ohio, where I am privileged to serve as rector. Nearly all the active members of our congregation know and respect Patrick, and have asked me to convey their congratulations to him and to you, together with the assurance of their prayers, as you continue together in a new ministry only recently begun. Of course, none of them know Sandy, but we offer our greetings and prayers for her diaconal ministry among you, as well.

I suppose my son asked me to preach this evening because he believes that in 40 years of church leadership including 23 years in ordained ministry as a deacon, curate, associate rector, and now rector in four dioceses, I may have picked up one or two bits of useful information to pass along. I shall strive, Fr. Funston, to make it so.

Sandy, I have never been a vocational deacon and I have had only a little experience working with deacons in the course of my ministry; nonetheless, it is my hope there may be something in what I have to say that will be of use to you.

We are gathered this evening on the feast of two Anglican martyrs — Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer. They were bishops of the reformed Church of England put to death, by being burned at the stake, during the short reign and attempted Roman Catholic restoration of Queen Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII. During her less-than-six years on the English throne, nearly 300 Protestants were killed, including these two bishops, so she is known to history as “Bloody Mary.”

The bishops’ martyrdom is most notable for the probably apocryphal story that Latimer, as the fires were lighted beneath them, reached to Ridley, took him by the hand and said, “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.”

I’ll skip the other details of Latimer’s and Ridley’s lives and ministries; I bring them up really only to explain the otherwise incomprehensible choices of lessons for this service; one really must stretch to find anything remotely enlightening about parish ministry in Zephaniah’s “soiled, defiled, oppressing city” filled with faithless people and profane priests, or in the Psalmist’s languishing spirit and loud supplications. There may be (indeed there will be) times when both priest and people may feel like the Psalmist in the course of a pastorate (as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the work of ministry will be tested by fire), but dwelling on that hardly seems a constructive way to begin the relationship.

I must admit that I was tempted to use the bishop’s martyrdom as a metaphor for parish ministry, but thought better of it; it would be an incomplete metaphor, at best. I think I’ve found a much better metaphor, but before I get to it, I want to digress for a moment and tell you something about our experience, my wife’s and mine, in raising our son.

When Patrick was in junior high school and high school, his band and orchestra directors said to us, “Your son is a talented musician. He could have a great career in music.”

“Yes!” we replied, “Encourage him in that!”

When he was in high school and college, his mathematics instructors said to us, “Your son is a natural mathematician. He could have a great career as a professor or a theoretician.”

“Yes!” we replied, “Encourage him in that!”

When he decided to major in business, we heard from his fellow students and his professors that he had a great mind for economics and finances, and could make millions as a financial planner.

“Yes!” we said, “Encourage that!”

Earlier in his life, from about the age of 14 on, when he was active as an acolyte, and in youth group, and in the diocesan peer ministry program, people would come to us and say, “Patrick has all the skills and the personality to be a wonderful priest.”

“No!” we cried, “Please do not encourage him that way!”

It’s not that we didn’t want Patrick to become a priest; we’re delighted that he has found his calling amongst the clergy of the church and that he has been called to be Rector in this parish. However, his becoming a priest or Sandy’s becoming a deacon is not something we, any of us, including them, have any business “wanting.” It isn’t something that we or anyone should be “encouraging.” Ordained ministry is something to be discerned and what it is to be discerned is whether the potential priest or deacon can be anything else.

Every potential clergy person is asked, over and over again, “Why do you want to be clergy?” And every priest and deacon here tonight has answered that question. We may have phrased the answer differently, but for each of us it is the same. It’s not that the person called to the diaconate wants to be a deacon; it’s that she must be a deacon! It’s not that the person called to priesthood wants to be a priest; it’s that he must be a priest!

Presbyterian pastor and author Frederick Buechner spoke for us all when he answered the question in his book, The Alphabet of Grace:

“I hear you are entering the ministry,” the woman said down the long table meaning no real harm. “Was it your own idea or were you poorly advised?” And the answer that she could not have heard even if I had given it was that it was not an idea at all, neither my own nor anyone else’s. It was a lump in the throat. It was an itching in the feet. It was a stirring of the blood at the sound of rain. It was a sickening of the heart at the sight of misery. It was a clamoring of ghosts. It was a name which, when I wrote it out in a dream, I knew was a name worth dying for even if I was not brave enough to do the dying myself and if I could not even name the name for sure. Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you a high and driving peace. I will condemn you to death. (Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace, pp. 109-110)

Buechner’s last sentence does call to mind the martyrdom of Latimer and Ridley and so many others: “I will condemn you to death.” As a description of the call to parish ministry it is both terrifying and terrific!

The Christ we follow, the Christ we proclaim, the Christ who said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you,” does call us, does lead us to die! To die to selfishness, to die to ego. But through that death he leads us to life. We die to self to uncover what the Quakers call, “that of God within” or the “inner Teacher” … the True Self. Your call, Patrick, to priesthood and yours, Sandy, to the diaconate … our call to parish ministry is a call to continue dying to self and, as a result, to continue becoming truly alive.

It is, as any priest or deacon here will tell you, a painful process. To be clergy in Christ’s church is, as Paul made quite clear in his letters to the congregations in Ephesus and Rome, a gift; it is a wonderful, precious, costly, and painful gift. It will take you into the deepest intimacy with God’s people, with your people. At times you will be with them in the midst of their worst nightmares – death and divorce, devastating illness and the depths of despair. At times, you will feel put-upon and misused. At times, you will feel left out and neglected. At times, there will be conflict, and it will seem like it is consuming you alive. At times, it may seem that, a bit like Latimer and Ridley, you are being burned at the stake, because people will hurt you, sometimes intentionally and spitefully, sometimes negligently, often simply because they are in pain.

But as I said a moment ago, that would be an incomplete metaphor because the source of that pain is also the source of the most exquisite joy, when that same intimacy will privilege you with sharing God’s people’s, your people’s happiest and most blessed moments – when two people commit themselves to one another for life, when their children are born, when they get that long-sought promotion, when their kids graduate with honors, when children marry, when grandchildren are born, when these people among whom and with whom you minister know themselves to be God’s beloved.

Cherish those intimate moments — both the painful and the joyful — because they are moments of grace. Each of them is unique; never fall into the black hole of thinking you’ve “been there, done that.” There may have been similar moments . . . but that couple has never been married before and never will be again, that baby has never been born or baptized before and never will be again, that teenager has never graduated from high school before and never will again, that man has never died before and never will again. Each intimate moment, painful or joyful, is unique and no one has ever been there before. Each unique intimate moment, painful or joyful, is bursting with the promise and potential of God’s grace!

Do not fear those moments of graceful intimacy; cherish them because it is in them that you and the people of St. Paul’s Parish will die to self and become truly alive, to continue growing in boldness and righteousness, in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and even holiness. It is in those moments when we are in the presence of God, when we stand before the throne of grace.

I think you know, Patrick, that one of my favorite verses of Scripture is from the Letter to Hebrews: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:16 KJV) So . . . if I say to you that our mission in parish ministry is to boldly go into those unique moments of grace where no one has gone before, you probably know that my metaphor for parish ministry is “the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.”

I read somewhere recently that one can consider oneself an unqualified success as a parent if you have raised your child to be a Star Trek fan; by that measure, Patrick’s mother and I were successful.

Star Trek Uniform Socks In the original Star Trek series, the crew’s uniforms were color coded: gold uniforms were command; red uniforms were engineering and security; and blue uniforms were science and medical. Parish ministry entails all three. So, Patrick, I have a little gift for you — a set of three pairs of official Star Trek color-coded uniform socks to remind you of these aspects of pastoral ministry.

Gold — command: Patrick, the canons of your diocese (with which, you may recall, I have some familiarity) provide that as rector, “by virtue of such office, [you have] the powers and duties conferred by the General Canons of the Church, and in this connection shall exercise pastoral oversight of all guilds and societies within the parish, and [you are] entitled to speak and vote on all questions before these bodies.” (Canon IV.6, Diocese of Kansas) The canons provide that you are the chair person of the vestry and that you not only chair the annual meeting of the parish, you are also the final arbiter of who may vote at the meeting.

That’s a good deal of command authority and it should not be taken lightly. Remember two things about it. First, that you share it with others. The canons specify that the vestry “shall share with the Rector a concern and responsibility for the mission, ministry, and spiritual life of the parish.” (Canon IV.5.6(a)) But not only the vestry, all the good people this parish are your co-workers. As our catechism makes clear, “the ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons;” every single baptized person, every member of this church has a ministry. The Rector does not do it alone, nor should he.

You remember on Star Trek: TOS, Captain Kirk went on every away mission. That’s a model of poor leadership; the captain should not have commanded, or even been a part of, every away team. Trust the rest of the crew — the vestry, the staff, volunteers, all the people of the parish — to handle things.

Remember Paul’s opening words to the Corinthians in this evening’s epistle: “We are God’s servants, working together . . . .” You and the vestry and people of this congregation are God’s servants, working together. You as the Rector don’t have to do it all — you do have to know what is happening; you have to be in the information loop and be privy to all the information pertinent to the running of the church and to ministering with and among its members, but you don’t have do it all!

I suspect that if Jesus were to critique Kirk’s style of leadership, he might say something along the lines of “It will not be so among you; whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.” (Matt. 20:26) That is the second thing to remember about command authority in the church. Be like the 6th Century pope St. Gregory the Great and remember that as a leader in the church you are the “servant of the servants of God.”

The red uniforms were for those doing engineering and security, and there is a lot of that in parish ministry. Much of it, knowing where the boilers are and how they work, knowing where the circuit breakers and fuses are, knowing how to fix a leaky faucet or a squeaky hinge or a broken kneeler . . . much of it falls into the category of “things they didn’t teach us in seminary.” But there is also a lot of engineering and security that they did teach us.

The ministry of word and sacrament are the engineering and security jobs of the parish priest; preaching God’s word and celebrating God’s Sacraments, for which seminary did prepare us. They are central to any priest’s ministry, and to do them well takes time and it takes prayer.

Preparing a sermon can easily consume 10-15 hours per week. Similarly, planning liturgies, not only for regular Sunday services, but for weddings, funerals, holidays, and other special events takes time and care. Many people are willing to say their clergy should put in this kind of time, but the only way the rector can have this time is if other demands are otherwise taken care of. I have admonished Patrick not to be Captain Kirk going on every away mission. So I admonish you, the people of St. Paul’s Parish, that you must not expect him to make every pastoral visit, oversee every parish activity, make every administrative decision. As St. Paul wrote the Ephesians, each member of the church is given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift and each member must work to properly promoting the body’s growth. I encourage you to claim the shared ministry of the whole people of God and join with your rector and your deacons in providing pastoral care to one another, in managing parish activities, and in administrative governance.

Patrick, this obligation of the congregation means that you must answer it with a similar commitment. Just like Engineer Scott was always adjusting the “warp coils” and tuning the “dilithium crystals” (whatever those were), you must take time in prayer adjusting your spirit and tuning your psyche. Take the time your congregation gives you to prepare prayerfully for these “red uniform” ministries — preaching and sacramental celebration. Be like Captain Jean-Luc Picard in TNG; take private time in your “ready room;” spend time in conversation with God every day. Other things can wait or someone else can do them . . . but no one else can listen to God for you. You must spend your own time in prayer.

Sandy, I would say the same thing to you. Your engineering and security ministry will be different from Patrick’s, obviously. As a deacon, you are (I’m sure) familiar with the description of the role of the deacon as bringing the world’s needs to the attention of the church and taking the church’s ministry into service in the world. Deacons exemplify Christian discipleship, nurture others in their relationship to God, and lead church people to respond to the needs of the most needy, neglected, and marginalized of the world. Those are definitely “red uniform” tasks, and they too can only be done well with careful and prayerful preparation.

Prayer is also the “red uniform” ministry of whole congregation. The early 19th Century American Presbyterian preacher and seminary professor Gardiner Spring wrote in his book The Power of the Pulpit:

[H]ow unspeakably precious the thought to all who labor in this great work, whether in youthful, or riper years, that they are … habitually remembered in the prayers of the churches! Let the thought sink deep into the heart of every church, that their minister will be very much such a minister as their prayers may make him. If nothing short of Omnipotent grace can make a Christian, nothing less than this can make a faithful and successful minister of the Gospel!

We might express this thought differently today, but Gardiner’s point remains valid. Your prayers, good people, even more than their own, are the wellspring from which flows the water of God’s grace on which Patrick’s ministry as priest and Sandy’s as a deacon so much depend. If you wish their ministries to bear good fruit, do not forget to pray for them, and let them know that you are doing so!

Star Trek:TOS Crew Which brings us, at last, to the blue uniforms, the science and medical corps of the star ship. Mr. Spock the Science officer and Doctor “Bones” McCoy always wore blue. One of the ancient terms that we still use for pastoral ministry is “the cure of souls,” the word “cure” having pretty much the same meaning as it has in medicine. Broadly speaking, this ministry is the care, protection, and oversight of the nourishment and spiritual well-being of the souls committed to the pastor’s care; it may be shared with others, with deacons or with lay ministers, but it is truly the ministry of the parish priest. It is in this “blue shirt” ministry that those wonderful, painful, joyful, intimate moments of grace that I spoke of earlier will happen.

It is customary at these services to ask the clergy about to be installed to stand for an admonition or a charge, but I’m not going to do that this evening. We aren’t here celebrating only the installation of the rector, or only the new ministry of these two clergy; we are celebrating the whole ministry of all the People of God in this parish. So I have a charge for all of you.

I know you expect me to say something like “explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before,” but that would just be too hokey, don’t you think?

No, I have rather more practical and down-to-earth advice.

Give each other time; give one another your attention; support one another with your prayers; respect yourselves and each other; and, most importantly, love one another. (Members of St. Paul’s, I can’t underscore the last one enough. You expect your clergy to remember your birthdays and your wedding anniversaries, to thank you when you perform some volunteer service, to greet you pleasantly when they see you at the grocery store. That’s only natural, and it’s right and proper that you do so. But, please, do the same for them! It is the most important thing the people of a parish can do for their clergy. Love Patrick and Sandy, their spouses and their families. Invite them into your homes. Remember their birthdays and anniversaries. Remember to say, “Thank you” once in a while. Believe me: it really is such little things that make all the difference.)

And, again, remember Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “We are God’s servants, working together.” So together represent Christ, bear witness to him wherever you may be and, according to the gifts given to each of you, carry on his work of reconciliation in the world.

If you do these things, you shall, by God’s grace, like Ridley and Latimer, light such a candle in Kansas, as, I trust, will never be put out.

Make it so! Amen!

====================

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

Irrelevant Shouting – From the Daily Office – August 17, 2013

August 17, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Second Book of Samuel:

David and his men went on the road, while Shimei went along on the hillside opposite him and cursed as he went, throwing stones and flinging dust at him.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 2 Samuel 16:13 (NRSV) – August 17, 2013.)

Shimei Curses David by Otto Elliger Today’s Old Testament reading describes part of what happened during the conflict between David and his rebellious son Absalom. Making his way from Hebron to Jerusalem, David is accosted by a Benjamite, Shimei the son of Gera, who curses and berates him, throws stones and dust at him, and predicts disaster ahead.

It is accompanied by a reading from the Gospel of Mark describing Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem:

Those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Mark 11:10-11)

Quite a contrast, isn’t it? But here’s the thing, neither Shimei’s curses of David nor the Jerusalem crowd’s praises of Jesus accurately predicted the future. Although David’s son Absalom died in the conflict, and to a father that would be disaster, David did not; his rule as king over Israel was long and prosperous, and is considered a “golden age.” Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem would end in less than a week with his death by crucifixion.

That’s something to remember. The voices all around us, whether critical or flattering, whether damning or praising, do not foretell our future. As irritating or pleasant as they may be, they are of little import. What matters is the voice within. What matters is what we tell ourselves and what we believe we hear of the Voice of God, that still small voice that is often drowned out by the irrelevant shouting along the side of the road.

====================

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

Be Dressed for Action — Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14C) — August 11, 2013

August 11, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

====================

This sermon was preached on the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 11, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 12 (Proper 14, Year C): Isaiah 1:1,10-20; Psalm 50:1-8,23-24; Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16; and Luke 12:32-40. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

====================

Children in British Slum, circa 1955 We are used to thinking of the Book of Isaiah as the work of a single prophet, but it is really three books: First Isaiah, comprising chapters 1-39; Second Isaiah, made up of chapters 40-55; and Third Isaiah, chapters 56-66. These three prophets did their work in three different and distinct periods in Jewish history: the late 8th Century BCE; the mid-6th Century BCE, and the late 6th Century BCE, respectively. This is clear from evidence in their writings: their themes vary and each prophet speaks from a different location. First Isaiah is clearly set in pre-exilic Jerusalem; Second Isaiah was obviously written in Babylon; Third Isaiah speaks from post-exilic Jerusalem. Nonetheless, there is a sense of unity in the writings that make up this book. Phrases and themes recur, and there are linkages later and earlier passages. Today’s reading is from First Isaiah and introduces a topic which will be taken up again by Second and Third Isaiah: what constitutes proper worship?

Ritual worship in First Isaiah’s day was centered at the Temple in Jerusalem. Prof. James T. Dennison, Jr., of Northwest Theological Seminary, in an article about today’s reading from Isaiah describes the cultic activity:

At the temple, there were throngs of people. Multitudes trampled the courts of the temple – hustle and bustle, service upon service, activity upon activity. On the Sabbath; at the monthly new moon service; at the appointed feasts – Passover, Pentecost, Yom Kippur, Tabernacles. Why you couldn’t keep the good folks away. And offerings – did they bring offerings! Burnt offerings, peace offerings, grain offerings – why what more could you ask? All that Moses prescribed, they brought. Piety by the bushel; holiness by the herd; sanctity by the sheepfold. And the fellowship – oh, the friends they met and the people they talked to, the news they caught up on and the gossip they passed on. And the motions – why they spread out their hands in prayer. They lifted their arms to the sky – what a pious sight, the smoke of their offerings ascending and the ascension of these holy hands. What ecstasy! What piety! What religiosity! (A Tale of Two Cities: Isaiah and Worship)

“What liturgical hypocrisy!” cries Isaiah. Isaiah condemns this worship as so much theater in the absence of care for the weakest in society; God, he says, rejects liturgical activities devoid of the pursuit of justice and righteousness. The stinging critique of worship that we heard in today’s Old Testament lesson is not an indictment of worship in general. Rather, the prophet tells us that God takes no joy in the pomp and circumstance when it is accompanied by unjust behavior, when in fact it covers up injustice:

When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil. (Isa. 1:15-16)

It is a cry his successor, Third Isaiah, will take up two centuries later condemning hollow, hypocritical ritual fasting: the fast that God chooses, he says, is “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.” (Isa. 58:6) The worship offered those whose hands are full, metaphorically, with the blood of the oppressed will not be accepted; the blood of animals offered in sacrificial worship will not atone for the injustice in the community. The emptiness of the ritual reminds the Divine Judge of society’s crimes against its weaker and less fortunate members.

Isaiah calls on his listeners, the worshipers of ancient Judah and worshipers in modern America, to hear the word of the Lord, the torah of God: “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isa. 1:17)

This is precisely what Jesus says in today’s Gospel lesson: “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Lk. 12:33-34) And then he gives his famously imprecise warning of the Second Coming: “Be alert, be ready, be dressed for action, because you don’t when it will be.” How does one do this? By doing the things Jesus has already mentioned. As Lutheran pastor John Petty puts it:

If one’s treasure has been kept to one’s self, one’s treasure is always at risk. If one’s treasure has been given to the poor, it is “unfailing.” If your treasure is with yourself, your heart is directed toward yourself. If your treasure has been given to the poor, your heart is with the poor — or, in other words, with God. (Progressive Involvement)

“And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” (Matt. 6:28-29) If you have clothed the naked, you are dressed and ready to go. It’s like Jesus said at another time:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. * * * Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. (Matt. 25:35-36,40)

The answer to the “how” question begs the next inquiry . . . when? That the tough one because we are dealing with what has been called “the uncertain certainty of Christ’s return.” Remember, Jesus said no one, including himself, would know when that day would come; like the old television show Candid Camera, it will happen when we least expect it. A ministerial colleague of mine in a more conservative evangelical tradition once commented, “We have focused so much emotional energy on the expectation that we have not done the work to be done before Jesus returns.” It’s just so much theater in the absence of care for the weakest in society. God takes no joy in ritual liturgy or any worship unaccompanied by righteous behavior and justice.

In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, our own Anglican tradition was divided between those who favored a more ceremonial, ritual style of liturgy, commonly called Anglo-Catholics, and those who favored far less ritual in worship. The latter, generally referred to as Evangelicals or as “the Low Church Party” would have said that liturgy such as we usually celebrate now is “hollow and unsatisfying, ceremonial . . . in place of the life-giving Word.” In an Evangelical Australian publication it was denounced in terms nearly as prophetic as Isaiah’s:

We never read once of Paul, or Peter, or of any of the other apostles having lights and swinging censers and vestments and copes and mitres and chasubles, and elaborate processions, and so forth. * * * Seen in the clear light of the Word of God, [ritual worship] is not only blasphemous, but idolatrous. It is absolutely opposed to Scriptural teaching. (The Signs of the Times, August 27, 1923)

Eventually, as common Prayer Book liturgy makes clear, we Anglicans arrived (as is our wont) at a compromise encompassing many styles of worship and settling into the broad liturgical practices of today. But the concern of Isaiah for ritual worship accompanied by social justice was not lost on the Anglo-Catholics.
At the Second Anglo-Catholic Congress held in London in 1923, the Bishop of Zanzibar, the Right Reverend Frank Weston, closed the meeting with an address entitled Our Present Duty. The last words of Bishop Weston’s address, which could as easily be spoken to 21st Century Americans, are these:

I say to you, and I say it to you with all the earnestness that I have, that if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.

Now mark that — this is the Gospel truth. If you are prepared to say that the [Christian] is at perfect liberty to rake in all the money he can get no matter what the wages are that are paid, no matter what the conditions are under which people work; if you say that the [Christian] has a right to hold his peace while his fellow citizens are living in hovels below the levels of the streets, this I say to you, that you do not yet know the Lord Jesus in his Sacrament. You have begun with the Christ of Bethlehem, you have gone on to know something of the Christ of Calvary — but the Christ of the Sacrament, not yet. Oh brethren! if only you listen to-night your movement is going to sweep [this nation]. If you listen. I am not talking economics, I do not understand them. I am not talking politics, I do not understand them. I am talking the Gospel, and I say to you this: 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.

(Our Present Duty, slightly amended. Bishop Weston said “Anglo-Catholic” rather than “Christian” and “England” rather than “the nation” – but with those simple amendments this statement applies as well to church members in the contemporary United States as it did to Anglo-Catholics in the England of a century ago.)

Another Anglican a century and a half earlier summarized the Christian duty somewhat more succinctly. Although it is disputed that John Wesley ever actually uttered what is now known as “John Wesley’s Rule,” it certainly accords with his preaching, with today’s lesson from Isaiah’s prophecy, and with the Gospel:

“Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can.”

This understanding and appreciation for the meaning behind Isaiah’s prophecy, his condemnation of worship not connected to a ministry of social justice has been a part of our Anglican ethos from the very beginning. Shortly after the Church of England separated from Rome, when Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and his collaborators produced the first English Book of Common Prayer in 1549, they included at the end of the rite of Holy Communion a closing prayer which included this petition:

We therfore most humbly beseche thee, O heavenly father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy felowship, and doe all suche good woorkes, as thou hast prepared for us to walke in.

That prayer, or one very much like it, has been used to end Anglican services of the Holy Eucharist for nearly 500 years. In our current American Prayer Book we have a descendent of that prayer in contemporary English which includes the modern version of that petition:

And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.

Floating around the internet recently, being “tweeted” on Twitter and “shared” on Facebook, is a “meme” which also echoes Isaiah. A “meme” is a photograph over which has been superimposed, using Photoshop or some other graphics application, a caption. (Often the caption may seem to have nothing to with the picture.) This particular “meme” shows a man sitting on the floor of a work bay in an auto repair facility. The caption reads: “Sitting in church for an hour on Sunday morning doesn’t make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.” A bit snarky, perhaps, but the message is clearly the same as First Isaiah’s.

Whether that prophet eight centuries before Christ, or Third Isaiah two centuries later, or Christ himself in the First Century, Cranmer in the 16th, Wesley in the 18th, the Evangelicals or Bishop Weston in the early 20th Century, or a snarky Facebook “meme” in the 21st, the message is the same: worship devoid of social justice and righteousness is unacceptable!

“Sell your possessions, and give alms.” (Luke 12:33)

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean. * * * Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. ” (Isaiah 1:16-17)

“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.” (Luke 12:35)

Amen.

====================

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

What Is A Church Building? – Sermon for a Ground Breaking on the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9C) – July 7, 2013

July 7, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

====================

This sermon was preached on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 7, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector. The worship that morning included breaking ground on an expansion of the church’s parish hall.

The lessons were taken partially from the readings suggested in the rubrics of The Book of Occasional Services for a ground breaking liturgy and partially from the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 7 (Proper 9, Year C). The Old Testament reading was Genesis 28:10-17; the Gradual was Psalm 132:1-9. The epistle was Galatians 6:1-16; the gospel lesson was Luke 10:1-11,16-20. The latter two lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.

====================

Church Interior with Superimposed Question Mark What is a church building? It’s a holy place. It’s a place where people gather to worship. It’s a place where people encounter God. It’s a place where God’s people enjoy one another’s company. It’s a place where people get married, where babies are baptized, where funerals are held, where memories are made and lives remembered. It’s a place where the stories of faith are told and retold. It’s a place we teach and it’s a place where we learn.

Our reading from Genesis this morning is a small part of the story of Jacob, the son of Isaac who will later be called “Israel.” Jacob is the least likely of patriarchs. Of all the biblical patriarchs, he is the most enigmatic. He never exhibits either the awesome faith of Abraham or the level-headedness of Isaac. He is, in fact, a scoundrel. He’s tricked his father and cheated his brother out of the blessing of the first-born; his character emerges through a series of deceptions, intrigues, and conflicts. He will wrestle with God and be given the name “Israel,” the name that will identify his descendants for the rest of time. He must be taught by God; he has some learning to do.

In the story we heard today, he is on the run. He is afraid of his brother, whom he has cheated, so he has taken off. His father has told him to flee to Haran (his grandfather Abraham’s original home) and there find a wife. Along the way, he camps near a town called Luz and has this dream that we have all heard of before, the vision of a ladder on which angels are traveling back and forth between heaven and Earth. He learns that, like Moses before him, he is standing on holy ground. He says, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven,” and so he renames it, Bethel, “House of God.” A lot of sermons have been preached about Jacob and his character flaws, or about this vision and what the angels coming and going might mean.

But, today, what I want to call to our attention is what God says to Jacob: “Your offspring [God says] shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.”

The descendants of Jacob would go forth from that place to spread blessing to all the corners of the earth – to west, to east, to north, to south. They would go out from that place to change the world.

I’m particularly fond of an Orthodox Jewish translation of this text: “Your seed shall be as the dust of the earth; and you shall burst forth to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in you and in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” I love that image – Jacob and his descendants would not, could not stay in that awesome place; they could not stay in the house of God or at the gate of heaven. They had to leave, to spread from the Holy Land, to “burst forth” bringing a transformation to the world that would be explosive and dramatic.

We are not gathered in a desert wilderness. We have not gone to sleep on holy stones. We have not seen angels climbing to rocks to heaven . . . but we have gathered in a church building, a place that for many for generations has been an awesome place, a house of God, and a gate of heaven, a place where children have been blessed, where children have been told the stories of God, the stories of Jesus, where hymns of joy have been sung. We are gathered in this place to reaffirm our commitment that heritage and that ministry, to renew this place and to renew the ministry done here.

But like Bethel where Jacob camped for the night, this is not a place to stay; it is a place to leave. It’s a place from which the people of God are sent into the world.

Church buildings are centers of ministry, places of assembly, where God’s people gather to worship, to hear the good news, and to be transformed, not for themselves but in order to be sent back out into the world, to “burst forth” and change the world. Jesus’ last words to his followers were, “Go . . . and make disciples!” (Matt. 28:19)

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus gives his followers their marching orders. “The Lord appointed seventy [followers] and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” Some commentators suggest that seventy disciples were chosen because in rabbinic tradition, seventy represents the total number of nations in the world. Just as the children of Jacob were to spread to every corner of the earth, the disciples of Jesus are to go to every nation in the world. As the descendants of Israel are to be a blessing to others, the disciples of Jesus are to go into the world and announce that “the kingdom of God has come near.”

Church buildings, worship spaces and fellowship halls, are the bases from which the church is sent out to do that, as the disciples in today’s reading from Luke were sent out by Jesus. The Rev. Edward Markquart, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Seattle, Washington, writes this about our gospel lesson today:

What happened is that those disciples first went to a village or town. Those first disciples planted a church, and then went to a second village or town, and planted a church. They went to a third village or town and planted another church. They … whoops. We have to go back to that first village or town and look more carefully. We have to go back to that first village, because before the disciples went onto the second village, they left a group of people in that village who were committed to Jesus Christ. The Greek word is “laos.” They were called the “laos,” which means, “the laity,” “the people,” “the people of God.” The Apostles always left common and ordinary townspeople and villagers whose hearts were on fire, whose tongues were on fire, who hadn’t gone to the seminary, who hadn’t seen Jesus face to face, who hadn’t talked with him in the flesh. These were not the Apostles. These were not the twelve disciples. These were the people of God in each village who spread the Gospel from house to house, and neighbor to neighbor and friend to friend and family to family. That’s the way it always is. That fundamental principle is always true; it is the laity, the people of God, who become inspired by the Holy Spirit. They are the ones, not the twelve, not the Apostles, not the pastors. It is the laity, the people of God, who go about winning souls to Jesus Christ and nurturing those souls into maturity. (Sermons from Seattle)

Church buildings don’t change the world. They may be awesome; they may be houses of God; they may be gates of heaven. But by themselves, they don’t win people to Jesus, nurture souls to maturity, or change the world. Church buildings are meant to be the bases from which the people of God do that. Church buildings are meant to be places of life, living, breathing, growing, exciting places of life. Church buildings are meant to be centers of ministry, places of assembly, where God’s people gather to worship, to hear the good news, to celebrate the meaning of life, and to be transformed, and then “burst forth,” back out into the world to share that life and transform the lives of others.

We have broken ground today on our Inviting the Future project; after four years of visioning and planning, we have, at last, begun this project to improve this center of ministry, not as a monument to ourselves, but as a place from which we might better serve the world, that we might “burst forth” and tell the world that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Poet and priest Sheila Nelson-McJilton, offers a poetic retelling of our Old Testament reading in her poem Who Sleep on Holy Stones: A Meditation on Genesis 28:10-17.

Bearer of curse and blessing,
I left home to stumble into the desert,
Exhausted and empty
I watch fierce sun set over silent stones.
Stars ascend toward midnight,
The wind moans through desert canyons,
And clouds drift across a full moon like shimmering angels.
Broken and empty I come to you, O Lord God.
In a desert midnight,
There is no smell of blessed fields
No grain
No wine
No fatness of earth
No sweet dew of heaven.
Alone I sleep on holy stones,
Under stars that blaze fierce and countless as dust.
The wind moans high above me, through desert canyons.
Clouds veil the moon.
Strong shining faces of angels appear.
Michael Gabriel Raphael
Lean down to earth.
Their glittering swords carve stones into steps to heaven.
Angels descend in silence to gaze into my face.
Angels ascend in silence to bear my deceit away.
Then in a shimmering celestial dance
Of turning wings,
Swirling wings
They sweep aside clouds.
I see a heavenly host as countless as dust.
I hear a heavenly host, their voices joined by joyous stars.
Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth . . . peace.
Their alleluias echoing high above desert canyons,
The Holy One descends from the gate of heaven
To stand beside my stone pillow.
To wrap my empty fears
In an eternal mantle of blessing.
To hallow the ground on which I sleep.
Michael veils the moon with his wings
And the only light I see is God.
I left home, soul that raged with wild emptiness
And in this desert wilderness, angels carve holy names for sleep.
They dance a path between me and You, O Lord God.
You have found me, broken and empty,
On holy stones that ascend to the very gates of heaven,
And you have not cursed me.
In a desert midnight, I know the smell of blessed fields, grain.
I will tell of you, O Lord God,
To laughing children who bless my tent,
To strong children who become tribes as countless as dust.
I will tell them of desert midnights filled with blazing stars
Of fierce angels who carve holy stones
And dance with glittering swords among clouds
Of hymns sung by joyous stars over Bethel
And over Bethlehem.
(from Anglican Theological Review, Winter, 2000)

What is a church building? A church building is a place to leave. From this place, this improved place, this living, breathing and growing place, we will leave. We will “burst forth” to tell in story and in song, in words and in deeds, in actions and in ministries, of the love of God. We will tell of God to laughing children, to strong children, to hungry children, to mourning children, to children in need, to all of God’s children; we will tell them of desert midnights and blazing stars; we will tell them that the kingdom of God has come near!

As we do so, let us never forget the prayer which has guided us throughout this project, a prayer written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu adapted from an original by Sir Francis Drake.

Let us pray:

Disturb us, O Lord
when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.
Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow,
our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

====================

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

The Festal Shout – From the Daily Office – June 24, 2013

June 24, 2013 / eric / 3 Comments

From the Psalter:

Happy are the people who know the festal shout!
they walk, O Lord, in the light of your presence.
They rejoice daily in your Name;
they are jubilant in your righteousness.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 89:15-16 (BCP Version) – June 24, 2013.)

Amen Corner “Festal shout” . . . the Hebrew is teruwah, a technical term for a liturgical response. (The root word is ruwa which is a verb meaning “to shout an alarm.”) It was probably something along the lines of “Hallelujah!” although it was probably not that particular Hebrew exclamation.

Episcopalians are well familiar with liturgical responses. We are almost programmed to make them. Say, “The Lord be with you,” to an Episcopalian, and it will prove very unlikely that he or she cannot help but say, “And also with you!” (Unless, of course, the person may be an old time traditional, in which case “And with thy spirit” will leap off the tongue.) However, familiar was we may be with liturgical responses, shouting them is something we simply don’t do, although in a crowded church we might be a little louder than usual.

And shouting out on our own in response to, say, a sermon? Out of the question!

Several years ago I had the privilege of preaching in a parish of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. I had gotten maybe two paragraphs into my prepared text when a member of the congregation called out, “Amen, preacher!” I must admit to being taken aback; I “stumbled” a bit, but got back on track pretty smoothly. Then it happened again! What had started as a typical Episcopal lecture-style homily turned into a dialog between the preacher and the congregation. We had fun together speaking the word of God to each other; there was joy and jubilation in that church It was great! I loved it! I’d never had a preaching experience like that before, and I’ve not had one since.

I don’t think we Episcopalians need to start shouting spontaneous responses to our sermons (although that might be fun), but I do think we need to cultivate that same sense of joy and jubilation, the vibrancy and liveliness that was evident in that AME congregation. We need to learn the “festal shout,” or at least find its spirit in our worship.

====================

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

Removing the Distraction of Personality – From the Daily Office – June 14, 2013

June 14, 2013 / eric / 2 Comments

From the Book of Jesus Ben Sirach:

He exalted Aaron, a holy man like Moses
who was his brother, of the tribe of Levi.
He made an everlasting covenant with him,
and gave him the priesthood of the people.
He blessed him with stateliness,
and put a glorious robe on him.
He clothed him in perfect splendour,
and strengthened him with the symbols of authority,
the linen undergarments, the long robe, and the ephod.
And he encircled him with pomegranates,
with many golden bells all round,
to send forth a sound as he walked,
to make their ringing heard in the temple
as a reminder to his people;
with the sacred vestment, of gold and violet
and purple, the work of an embroiderer;
with the oracle of judgement, Urim and Thummim;
with twisted crimson, the work of an artisan;
with precious stones engraved like seals,
in a setting of gold, the work of a jeweller,
to commemorate in engraved letters
each of the tribes of Israel;
with a gold crown upon his turban,
inscribed like a seal with ‘Holiness’,
a distinction to be prized, the work of an expert,
a delight to the eyes, richly adorned.
Before him such beautiful things did not exist.
No outsider ever put them on,
but only his sons
and his descendants in perpetuity.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Ecclesiasticus 45:6-13 (NRSV) – June 14, 2013.)

Jewish High Priest in His Ceremonial Vestments Wow!

And some people think an alb, stole, and chasuble are “fancy!”

There are a lot of essays out there on the history, origin, function, and purposes of vestments. Every writer has a slightly different take on the matter.

Here’s what I think: vestments obscure the minister. In a sense, vestments “democratize” the priesthood. Vestments symbolize the office of the priest, minister, or elder. No matter what the denominational tradition – whether they are the richly decorated, colorful vestments of the Orthodox or Catholic traditions, or the simple black Geneva gown of the Reformed tradition – the ceremonial garb obscures the personality of the individual wearing them. Personal differences among and between clergy can be a distraction, and there should be no distractions in worship. The focus should be God, not the presider.

Suppose we didn’t wear vestments (and there are traditions in which the preachers and worship leaders do not). And suppose one worship leader is dressed in a very stylish, well-tailored, custom-made, $3,000 Brooks Brothers suit. Suppose another is dressed in a $150 off-the-rack, polyester suit. Another, in t-shirt and jeans. Each participant in worship will react differently to these three clergy, based solely on their appearance. This difference in reaction may rational or non-rational; it may be volitional or non-volitional. But it will be there.

Now, suppose we have these same three leaders. But over their street clothes all are wearing an alb, a stole, and a chasuble. One cannot see any difference in their attire. That distinction between the clergy is erased.

Whatever the other reasons may be that we wear vestments, I think this obscuring of differences amongst the clergy is the most important. Vestments, fancy or plain, remove the distraction of personality.

====================

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

Category: Liturgy (Page 13 of 16)

WYSIWYG World – From the Daily Office – January 10, 2014

Saying “Yes” – Sermon for Advent 4: December 22, 2013 – Revised Common Lectionary, Year A

Shaking Grammy – From the Daily Office – December 14, 2013

Drawing Water from the Springs of Salvation – Sermon for Pentecost 26, Proper 28C – November 17, 2013

To Boldly Go: Sermon for a Celebration of Ministry – St. Paul’s, Manhattan, Kansas – October 16, 2013

Irrelevant Shouting – From the Daily Office – August 17, 2013

Be Dressed for Action — Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14C) — August 11, 2013

What Is A Church Building? – Sermon for a Ground Breaking on the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9C) – July 7, 2013

The Festal Shout – From the Daily Office – June 24, 2013

Removing the Distraction of Personality – From the Daily Office – June 14, 2013

Looking for Something …. ?

The Archive

Subscribe

Blogroll

News Sources

Administration

Copyright

Looking for Something …. ?

The Categories

The Archive

Subscribe

Blogroll

News Sources

Administration

Copyright