That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Worship (Page 90 of 107)

Shout! Good Liturgy! – From the Daily Office – September 11, 2012

September 11, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalms:

Clap your hands, all you peoples;
shout to God with a cry of joy.
* * *
God has gone up with a shout,
the Lord with the sound of the ram’s-horn.
Sing praises to God, sing praises;
sing praises to our King, sing praises.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 47:1,5-6 – September 11, 2012)
 
ShoutI love this Psalm – it’s about liturgy and worship, something dear to my heart!

There’s a children’s song based on this song that we used to sing in the Cursillo movement (maybe they still do – I haven’t been to a Cursillo event in years). Our church school children learned to sing it at Vacation Bible School this year and had a great time doing so. I went surfing through YouTube and found this recording of Pat Boone teaching it to some kids:

The song, like the Psalm, has great energy. I have no idea how the Psalm was performed in the Temple, but how could a Psalm that calls for clapping, shouting, playing trumpets, and singing praises not be vibrant and energetic. That’s how liturgy should be.

It doesn’t have to be all kids’ songs, however. This same Psalm was sat as a choral anthem by Ralph Vaughn Williams. Here’s a YouTube of Williams’ O, Clap Your Hands performed by the Louisville Collegiate Choir.

It, too, is vibrant and energetic, but totally unlike Pat Boone’s children’s tune. Vibrancy and energy is not a matter of “style”; it is an issue of authenticity, of life, in the liturgy.

I love good liturgy! Good liturgy involves clapping, singing, praising, and even shouting done with authenticity and feeling! I love good liturgy!

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

“Average Sunday Attendance” – From the Daily Office – September 10, 2012

September 10, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Acts of the Apostles:

The next sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy; and blaspheming, they contradicted what was spoken by Paul.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 13:44-45 – September 10, 2012)
 
Forest“Average Sunday Attendance” – also known as “ASA” – has become a hot topic in church circles. It’s how we gauge the health of congregations, not that it’s a very good measure of that, but what other easily accessed metric to governing boards and denominational judicatories have? If the parish priest, pastor, senior minister, whatever he/she may be called is doing a good job, the assumption is, the pews are going to be full. So if we count the number of seats in the seats, voila! we know if things are good.

Well, maybe. I’m not convinced that attendance figures are that good a metric of clergy performance; I’m not even sure there is a metric that measures the effectiveness of pastoral ministry. But here’s an interesting observation. Go to Google. Put in “Average Sunday Attendance” as your search term. In the first several pages of search results, the majority of websites will be Episcopal Church related! We are obsessed with this measurement!

So, it’s a hot topic and one way it pops up is when folks compare attendance in traditional, so-called mainstream churches with the numbers who throng to revival-type events offered by popular evangelists. It’s one thing to compare our mainline, denominational parish ASA to the weekly attendance of a non-denominational evangelical congregation; there may even be some validity to such a comparison (though probably not as a measure of clergy competence). But comparing our weekly numbers to the crowds at a one-off rally-type event strikes me as less than legitimate.

That is what the Jewish synagogue leaders are doing in today’s lesson from the Book of Acts! Here in Chapter 13, Paul and Barnabas have come to the city of Antioch in Pisidia on what is basically a preaching mission. They are offering something new, something out of the ordinary, something which diverts from everyday run-of-the-mill existence, so they get big crowds. (Yes, I know that Luke ascribes the big numbers to the work of the Holy Spirit, but let’s just look at the story as secularists for a moment; the new thing gets a lot of attention.) The synagogue leaders, comparing their weekly sabbath attendance to the crowds coming to see the missionaries, are jealous. In their envy, the Jewish leaders impugn Paul’s and Barnabas’s message and are condemned here by Luke as blasphemers.

But Luke is making the same mistake the synagogue leaders are making, the same mistake we make when look to ASA as a metric of performance. Attendance figures don’t measure message; attendance figures don’t estimate effectiveness; attendance figures don’t rank repentance; attendance figures don’t calculate commitment. Attendance figures measure . . . attendance, that’s all! High attendance is good, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that people’s lives are being impacted. Personal lives are at least as important as the size of the crowds, if not more so! When we see only the aggregate numbers, the individuals get lost.

The focus on ASA blinds us to other measures, other metrics. It raises blood-pressure; it raises blinders; it raises barriers. Have you ever noticed something like this? – When I am angry or upset about something and my blood pressure goes up, my sense of hearing is affected. I don’t know what it is, but I hear something like a rushing wind inside my ears (maybe that’s the blood pressure) and it interferes with my hearing. That’s maybe what happened with the Jewish leaders. The synagogue leaders couldn’t hear the message preached by Paul and Barnabas because their of anger over the attendance figures; it interfered with their perception. To switch to visual metaphor, they couldn’t see the trees for the forest. Seems it’s the same today.

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

An Instant of Transforming Grace – Sermon for Pentecost 15, Proper 18B – September 9, 2012

September 9, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, September 9, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 18B: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-17; and Mark 7:24-37.)

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Yellow and Purple WildflowersIf you are a political junkie like me, you’ve been following the campaigns, watching the conventions, reading the editorials, and generally getting angry with one side or the other or both and the whole process. You may have noticed, as I have, that candidates are never alone. They are surrounded by a whole corps, an entire gaggle of handlers, some of whom have the responsibility to make sure the candidate stays “on message”, that he or she makes no “gaffs”. Jesus was surrounded by a gaggle, as well, but these were not handlers and there was no one to keep him “on message” except himself. In fact, the gospel witness is pretty clear that even right up to the end the gaggle that followed him around really didn’t understand the message!

To be honest, it’s not clear in today’s lesson whether the gaggle is even around. Mark doesn’t say anything about them and the way he writes this story it sounds like Jesus may have gone without them to the city of Tyre, a gentile town north of the sea of Galilee and on the Mediterranean coast in what is now Lebanon. But whether they were with him or not, he doesn’t have anyone there who can stop him making a really awful racist gaff, from calling this foreign woman “a dog”! O.M.G.! Can you imagine what Fox News or MSNBC would have done with this?

Gentle Jesus, meek-and-mild Jesus, love-everyone Jesus, welcome-the-sinner Jesus has just said about the worst, most insulting, most awful thing he could say to a woman who wanted nothing more than to get medical help for her daughter! And make no mistake about it, that is what he has done. He has uttered a racial slur!
Immediately we want to say, “That can’t be! Jesus couldn’t possibly have been racist!” But Mark’s story of Jesus’ encounter with this Syrophoenician woman says otherwise. Jesus has called this woman, who simply wants a cure for her child, a dog, a dehumanizing ethnic slur common at the time. We can do some theological dancing, some interpretive two-step to avoid this uncomfortable reality, but eventually we have to face the truth. Jesus, with no handlers nearby to stop him making a “gaff”, has uttered a racial insult.

The difficulty of this passage is that we, as 21st Century Christians, want Jesus to be the simple, easy answer to all of our problems and to all of society’s problems. When faced with the problem of racism, whether personal or institutional, we would prefer to think of Jesus as always loving all people regardless of skin color or ethnicity. But Jesus the First Century Palestinian Jew doesn’t give us those easy 21st Century answers. He had a real life and real feelings. He was born and reared in a real culture with all of its trappings.

As a good Jewish man, Jesus would have given thanks daily that he was born a Jew not a Gentile, a man not a woman. He would have said the siddur prayer every day, one version of which praises God “. . . who has created me a human and not beast, a man and not a woman, an Israelite and not a gentile, circumcised and not uncircumcised, free and not slave.” (From the Cairo Genizah.) Even the best of humanity, the Incarnation himself, could get entangled in the sexist and racist snare of this tradition, could get caught up in its inherent system of oppression, its culture of supremacy.

The great lesson of his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman is that it teaches us how the cultural dynamics of racism, of prejudice of any kind, can be overcome in a real moment of conversion. Jesus’ understanding of what he was called to do was changed and expanded because of this gentile woman’s challenge. From that moment, he moved forward, and went about his work with an expanded awareness of who the Good News was for, healing the woman’s daughter and then going deeper into gentile territory.
Mark masterfully combines this story with the tale of healing the man with the speech impediment which seems also to have taken place in gentile territory. Mark writes that Jesus returned to the Sea of Galilee by way of Sidon; if you look at a map, that makes no sense. The Galilean Lake is south of Tyre and inland; Sidon is a considerable distance north of Tyre and on the coast. Like Tyre, it was and is a gentile settlement. The way Mark tells the story it may have been here that Jesus restored the hearing of the man with impeded speech. Mark combines the stories because because the second story explains the first. Jesus metaphorical ears, his ethnic or socio-political ears (if you will) were opened by the woman in the same manner that the deaf man’s physical ears were opened by Jesus. That Jesus went deeper into gentile territory and there healed the deaf man, probably himself a gentile, shows the impact of the woman’s words on Jesus. The man’s ears were opened by Jesus, his tongue was loosened, and he no longer spoke his slurred speech; Jesus’ “ears” were opened by the woman, his traditional upbringing was loosened, and he no longer uttered ethnic slurs.

What is noticeable about both “healings” is their surprising quickness. The Syrophoenician woman challenges Jesus and in a single instant of profound grace his heart is changed; Jesus speaks a single word and in an instant of profound grace the man’s ears are unstopped and his speech restored. These gospel stories of sudden and immediate transformation are combined for us today with a short lesson from the prophet Isaiah who likens the coming of God’s power, the time when the ears of the deaf will be opened and the eyes of the blind will be given sight, to one of the briefest moments in the desert, that time when the spring rains come and the desert quickly blooms.

There’s nothing quite like springtime in the desert! One is never sure when it will happen but one spring day a storm moves in and for a few hours the dry burning sands are covered with pools, the thirsty ground runs with streams that rush through the desert often to the point of dangerous flooding. In just a few more hours, the wilderness blooms with an intensity that truly has to be seen to be appreciated. Around my hometown of Las Vegas, the spring rains produce an incredible variety of blossoms. There are all sorts of different yellows: bear poppy, bristly fiddleneck, buttercups, and desert dandelion, to name a few. There are vivid pinks: beardtongue and arrowweed and the mojave thistle. There’s a red-spotted purple flower called “desert five spot”. There’s a flower called “desert bell” that is the most vivid blue you’ve ever seen and, of course, there are the red-orange California poppies all over the place. It’s just incredible! And it happens almost instantaneously and then, in just a few hours, the desert goes dry again . . . and the brilliant rainbow of desert color is gone, but for that brief moment the desert has been transformed and, truly, it will never be the same again.

Isaiah tells us that that is precisely the way the power of God comes, with that same sort of startling swiftness, in a moment of magnificent immediacy. That’s the way new hearing and new understanding came to the deaf man and, surprisingly, to Jesus, as well. And that’s the way it comes to us. We may study Scripture for years; that’s a good thing to do and we gain knowledge and understanding that way. But it is not through that study that we are transformed. We may attend worship services weekly or even daily; that’s a good thing to do and we show our love of God in that way. But it is not through liturgy that we are transformed. We may regularly give of our time and talent in ministry to the poor; that’s a good thing to do and we serve Christ in others in that way. But it is not through that service that we are transformed. It is, rather, through the swift and surprising in-breaking of God’s power and Spirit that we are transformed! And it is through that transformation that we are empowered to serve with new vigor, to worship with new thanksgiving, to read Scripture with new understanding.

Isaiah assures us that when the waters of God’s power break forth in the wilderness of our lives, when the streams of God’s Spirit flow through the deserts of our existence, then the burning sands of our souls become pools, the thirsty ground of our hearts become springs of living water. Through the words of the Syrophoenician woman it happened to Jesus; through the ministry of Jesus it happened to the man with the speech impediment; and through the power of the Holy Spirit it happens to us. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews declares that God in Jesus became like us “his brothers and sisters in every respect” that he might be “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 2:17, 12:2) so that, as John says, “we will be like him!” (1 John 3:2) It happens in an instant, like the transformation of the desert in the spring rains or, as Paul said, “in the twinkling of an eye.” (1 Cor. 15:42)

Let us pray:

Almighty and merciful God, how wonderfully you created us and still more wonderfully transform us. In moments of surprising grace, you send your Holy Spirit into our hearts to reform our lives; you constantly renew us through your redeeming love, refreshing us as rain refreshes the wilderness. We thank you for the wondrous streams of your mercy, for the pools of your love, for the water of life which restores our parched spirits and transforms us ever more closely into the likeness of your Son, through whom in the power of the Holy Spirit, we join with the whole Church to give you praise, now and for ever. Amen.

There Are Those Times – From the Daily Office – September 8, 2012

September 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Job:

Eliphaz the Temanite answered: “Can a mortal be of use to God? Can even the wisest be of service to him?”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Job 22:1-2 – September 8, 2012)
 
PulpitFrom time to time, people tell me that they have appreciated something I’ve said or done and I try to remember to say, “Thank you.” But inside, I really don’t think about compliments very much. It’s not that I don’t appreciated them, but I don’t do what I do to be complimented, and I really don’t think that I have much to do with it when whatever I do has gone well or had a positive impact on someone. I sort of take Paul’s attitude from the Letters to the Romans and the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 20:2) and “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me” (Rom. 15:18). So I do think, generally, that the answer to Eliphaz’s question is, “Yes.” Mortals can be of use to God. But there are times I would answer otherwise.

I’ve been a clergy person for not quite 21-1/2 years. I was ordained to the Sacred Order of Deacons on May 8, 1990, the Feast of Julian of Norwich; I was priested on June 21, 1991, the eve of the celebration of St Alban, first martyr of Britain. Before ordination, I was a lay preacher, a communion minister, a catechist, a seminarian. At the age of 21 (nearly 40 years ago) I was the youth minister in a major Southern California parish, and since then I have served the church in a variety of ways – vestry member, treasurer, diocesan chancellor (chief legal officer), diocesan trustee, standing committee member, various commissions and committees. Throughout those not-yet-ordained years I taught Sunday School, teen and adult education classes, and courses of ministry preparation for locally licensed ministers, and preached more than few sermons. Since ordination, I’ve done more of the same and preached a sermon nearly every week.

The message of those 22+ years of sermons can probably be boiled down to this: “In Christ Jesus, God loves and forgives you. Love and forgive one another.” I truly feel, all the flowery rhetoric aside, all the exigesis aside, all the sermon illustrations aside, that that simple message is what I’ve been trying to say every Sunday for more than two decades.

I don’t pay much attention to compliments or to critiques, frankly, but I do pay attention to behavior. When someone tells me they won’t do something for reasons having to do with a refusal to forgive, when someone fails to respond to a need, when someone treats another in ways that betray a lack of respect . . . and when those someones are people who’ve been listening to my sermons for a long time . . . that’s when I begin to feel that the answer to Eliphaz’s question is “No!” That’s when I begin to feel like maybe mortals, even wise mortals, just get in God’s way. That’s when I begin to feel like maybe that’s all I’ve done.

Of course, I know that’s not true, and I know when I feel that way that not too much time will pass before (in the words of today’s morning psalm) that God will turn my mourning into dancing, that God wil take off my sackcloth and clothe me with joy. (Psalm 30:11) Still . . . there are those times . . . .

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

Dealing with Grief – From the Daily Office – September 7, 2012

September 7, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalms:

Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I am in trouble;
my eye is consumed with sorrow, and also my throat and my belly.
For my life is wasted with grief, and my years with sighing;
my strength fails me because of affliction, and my bones are consumed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 31:9-10 (BCP versification) – September 7, 2012)
 
Tear of GriefThis was today’s morning psalm, about which I am writing late in the evening. Today’s meditation was delayed by sad news in our family: my wife’s father passed away early this morning. She was unable to be with him since we live far away from her original home where he had continued to reside. We are comforted that his wife (my spouse’s stepmother) and two of his sons were with him.

Grief is part of the human condition. None of us are immune to it, and the loss of a parent is one of the hardest grief’s to bear. Both of my parents have been gone for several years; my wife lost her mother 16 years ago (tomorrow is the anniversary of her death, as it happens).

So tonight . . . no pithy thoughts, no deep meditation. Just joining my wife in her grief. There is an old proverb (from Central America, I think): Grief shared is half grief; joy shared is double joy. I hope it’s true.

Most merciful God, whose wisdom is beyond our understanding: Deal graciously with my wife and her siblings in their grief. Surround them with your love, that they may not be overwhelmed by their loss, but have confidence in your goodness, and strength to meet the days to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (From the BCP 1979, page 494).

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

Crooked Lines – From the Daily Office – September 6, 2012

September 6, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Acts:

The magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 13:8-10 – September 6, 2012)
 
Tangled wiresAs I look at life, crooked lines abound. It’s what human beings do. Bar-Jesus (as the magician Elymas is also named in the Book of Acts) may have been making the straight crooked with evil intent, but I suspect that most human beings just do it out of habit, out of an inability to do anything else, out of (maybe) some sort of primate instinct to make a mess. My mother used to admonish me, in a lot of circumstances, “Don’t get bent out of shape!” At sixty years of age, I have come to suspect that there is no way to avoid life getting bent out of shape! Crooked lines abound.

Way back when I was in college I had a good friend whose job was taking care of the animals used in our psychology department’s experimental work. He took care of pigeons and rats and cats and all sorts of critters, including some kind of monkeys (don’t ask me what kind . . . I don’t think I ever knew). I remember once visiting him at work and watching the monkeys play. Someone had given them a length of copper house wire (that thick 12-gauge stuff) and they were happily bending it into a mass of crookedness, then trying (unsuccessfully) to straighten it out.

That, it seems, is what happens in life. We get our monkey hands on things, even things that are straight, and we bend them up. And then we can’t unbend them on our own. Have you ever tried to straighten a bent-up mess of wire by yourself? Can’t be done. But there is an old rabbinic proverb, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” With God’s help, things can get straightened out. Wire, lives, relationships, paths to salvation. I don’t think Paul really had to worry about Elymas; God can take care of God’s paths. It’s our crooked lines that we need to worry about; with God’s help, we need to get them worked out, straightened out, or at least a little bit untangled.

One of my favorite prayer resources is the book Celtic Daily Prayer from the Northumbria Community in England. In it there is this lovely prayer picking up on the rabbinic proverb, acknowledging the bent-out-of-shapeness of our lives, and seeking God’s help with straightening things out:

O God,
I cannot undo the past,
or make it never have happened!
– neither can You. There are some things
that are not possible even for You
– but not many!
I ask you,
humbly,
and from the bottom of my heart:
Please, God
would You write straight
with my crooked lines?
Out of the serious mistakes of my life
will You make something beautiful for You?
Teach me to live at peace with You,
to make peace with others
and even myself.
Give me fresh vision. Let me
experience Your love so deeply
that I am free to
face the future with a steady eye,
forgiven,
and strong in hope.
Amen.

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

The Eternal Now – From the Daily Office – September 5, 2012

September 5, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From John’s Gospel:

Jesus said: “Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 8:56-59 – September 5, 2012)
 
Salvador Dali, Persistence of TimeI’ve been sort of mulling this over all day. It’s one of those interesting mixed-tense things; Jesus uses the past tense for Abraham (“Abraham was”), but the present tense for himself (“I am”), while placing his presence before Abraham’s past. I think what he’s trying to do here his describe eternity. That’s not easy to do!

There was a sort of “pop theology” popular when I was getting my education for ordained ministry which made a distinction between two “kinds” of time: chronos (one of the Greek words for time) and kairos (another Greek word for time). The former is described as the former refers to our experience of sequential time; it is “human time.” It’s the time Steve Miller sang about with the lyric, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.” (Fly Like an Eagle) Kairos signifies a time of indeterminate nature in which something special happens; it is “God’s time.” It is, I suppose, eternity.

There’s a similar difference between “eternity” and “forever”, and I think it’s the same difference. “Forever” is an extension of sequential time. It’s the way in which time, as we experience, just keeps going on and on and on. But “eternity”, if it is kairos, is somehow outside of the linear sequence of our temporal experience. Eternity encompasses linear time. It was “before” time; it will be “after” time; it is “outside” of time. Forever might come to an end; it might slip into the future to point where it stops. Eternity or kairos, however, doesn’t, can’t, won’t – the concept of an end of eternity is meaningless.

Kairos or eternity, however, is also not the cyclical time of the Eastern religions. It isn’t the wheel of time or kalachakra of Hinduism and Buddhism. The problem (in my estimation) of that concept is that it makes existence seem a bit like a continuous-loop tape recording that plays over and over again, but never gets worn out. Nothing can be avoided; nothing can be changed. There is no final destination and, ultimately, there is no purpose to anything. As the French writer and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau said, “Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere.”

Cocteau, continued, however, “The moment is the only thing that counts,” and this (I believe) is where Jesus’ understanding and statement of who he was and is led him and leads us. When asked to teach his disciples to pray, Jesus taught them to focus on the moment: “Give us today our daily bread.” (Matt. 6:11; Luke 11:3) In the sermon on the mount he said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matt. 6:34) Rather than worry about one’s clothing or food or drink, he encouraged his followers to “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” (v. 33) Be focused on the moment, the eternal now, eternity, kairos.

Ideas of past and future are just baggage. It has been said that depression results from trying to live in the past; anxiety comes from trying to live in the future. Psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.” As Jesus made clear, it is a major component of spiritual wellness, too. Jesus ministry, among other things, was to bring eternity “into” time, kairos into chronos: “Before Abraham was, I am” is a statement of now, the eternal now, kairos.

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

Pray Naked – From the Daily Office – September 4, 2012

September 4, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Psalms:

Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and mind.

From the Book of Job:

Job answered: “But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Job 12:3; Psalm 26:2 – September 4, 2012)
 
Bliss Dance, Statue at Burning Man Festival 2010 (Northern Nevada)This morning I was struck by the absolutely opposite attitudes displayed in these two readings. The morning psalm invites God to try the worshipper; the first reading of the day demands the right to try God. I think these poles really do represent the spiritual pendulum on which most humans swing; they circumscribe our ambivalent and ambiguous relationship with the Almighty.

At least they describe MY relationship with God! Some days my prayer life, my ministry, my personal life, my bodily feeling, all of it just seems great. “Bring it on, God! Whatever you want my to do today, I can handle it!” The next day I can feel just like Job: “Why me, God? I have been truly put-upon; I have been emotionally mistreated.” I come before God with the words of Moses:

Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? * * * I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once – if I have found favor in your sight – and do not let me see my misery.” (Numbers 11:11-12,14-15)

I’m just like Job; I want to “speak [with God] and let come on me what may.” (Job 12:13) And so I do; I talk to God!

It’s called praying. Prayer comes in many forms. Whether I am telling God to “bring it on,” to test me, or whining about how hard it all seems and pleading my case, what I am doing is praying. Praying isn’t all praise and hallelujah; praying isn’t all supplication and intercession; praying isn’t all thanksgiving and gratitude. Praying runs the gamut of human emotion. Praying, at its best and most honest, is a conversation with God, baring the soul and the psyche in whatever condition they may be, trusting that God will handle them with love, gentleness, and care, sometimes tough love, sometimes a rough gentleness, but always with care.

This means that prayer is often difficult. It isn’t easy to bare the soul, to open the psyche, because there are things I’d rather not face. When I was in seminary, one of our classes in church history included a discussion of the ancient practice of nude baptism. Following that class, a group of us had some t-shirts made with the words “Pray Naked” emblazoned across the chest; they were certainly conversation starters when we wore them in public! They were a joke, but like most humor there is a kernel of seriousness buried therein. In genuine prayer we strip ourselves of all those things in our souls, our psyches our hearts which keep us from true openness before God, from true fellowship with Jesus.

Whether we are challenging God to try us, challenging God to be tried by us, pleading with God, praising God, thanking God, crying before God, or laughing with God, our souls, our hearts, the whole of our being should naked before God. Wherever you may be in the pendulum swing of your ambivalent and ambiguous relationship with God, pray naked!

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

What Is the Truth that Will Set Us Free? – From the Daily Office – September 3, 2012

September 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From John’s Gospel:

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 8:31-32 – September 3, 2012)
 
Anglican Compass RoseLook at the Compass Rose emblem of the worldwide Anglican Communion and you will find these words, “The truth will make you free,” emblazoned on it in Greek. As an Anglican, I think that’s great. But there are times when Pilate’s question to Christ, “What is truth?” (John 18:38) makes a lot of sense! What is truth? What is this truth that will set us free?

It seems like a very simple question, but it isn’t simple at all. Many people confuse truth with facticity. The dictionary offers answers such as “conformity with fact or reality” and “actuality or actual existence”. But these definitions are unsatisfactory; they merely beg the question, encouraging us to ask, “What is fact? What is reality? What is actuality?” And then there is the issue of objectivity versus subjectivity How does individual perception affect “the truth”? Answers beget questions and more answers beget more questions. For the philosophically or religiously inclined, “truth” is just not that easy to nail down.

Philosophers have many theories of what the nature of truth is; they go by titles such as “the correspondence theory,” “the coherence theory,” or “the redundancy theory.” They apply argumentative techniques such as pragmatism, recurcivism, realism, deflationism, minimalism. Philosophical discussions of truth and last for hours and go nowhere. They’re fun, but in my opinion are ultimately fruitless. The question, “What is truth?” remains.

For the Christian, truth is not a concept, or an idea, or a philosophical theory. For the Christian, truth is a Person. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” said Jesus. (John 14:6) Philosophers and skeptics will dismiss Jesus’ claim, but for the Christian, it answers Pilate’s question.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote of Jesus: “We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said, or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.”

I can’t do better than that. What is this truth that will set us free? Jesus. Jesus is Truth.

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

Arise, My Love, My Fair One, and Come Away: A Baptismal Sermon – Pentecost 14, Proper 17B – September 2, 2012

September 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 17B: Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2,7-10; James 1:17-27; and Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23.)

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I want you for just a minute to close your eyes. Just sit back and relax, and imagine that you are hearing not my voice, but the voice of your beloved, the voice of the one person in this world who loves you more than any other . . . .

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Those words, of course, are from Scripture, from the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, one of the oddest books in the Holy Bible, for it is nothing more nor less than a love song, a sensual and even erotic love song.

Our psalm this morning is also a love song. It is a marriage song which the Bible tells us was written by the Korahites or “Sons of Korah” for the wedding of a king. In fact, the Bible tells us a lot about this psalm, information that we don’t find in the Book of Common Prayer Psalter. First, it has an instruction: “To the leader: according to the Lilies.” Apparently this tells the choral director the tune or melody to which the psalm was to be sung. Second, it tells us that it was a song “of the Korahites” who were a musical guild (probably hereditary) in the Temple. Third, the psalm is described as a Maskil – this word is derived from a Hebrew word meaning “understanding” or “insight” and, thus, it is believed that Psalms so described are “insight-giving” or especially instructive. And, finally, it is described as a love song.

The insight comes, perhaps, in what is the third verse of our abbreviated recitation this morning:

Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever,
a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom;
you love righteousness and hate iniquity.
(Verse 7 in the BCP; vv. 6-7a in the NRSV)

In this verse, which has puzzled scholars for generations, though the singer seems still to be singing of the King, he names him “God”! The psalm appears to ascribe divinity to an earthly king which is something quite foreign to ancient Judaism. This is underscored by the last verse of the Psalm:

I will make your name to be remembered
from one generation to another;
therefore nations will praise you for ever and ever.
(Verse 18 in the BCP; v. 17 in the NRSV)

Here, this remarkable psalm lavishes on the human king the type of praise generally given to God! Christians, therefore, read this psalm as referring to Jesus, as we also read the Song of Solomon. The usual interpretation of both is that the Bridegroom or King is Jesus and the Bride or Queen is the church. However, in the middle ages the monastic mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. Bernard of Clairvaux suggested a much more personal interpretation. In their commentaries Bernard and Teresa envisioned the love between Christ the Bridegroom and his bride, the individual soul, and they noted the way in which that love overflows to others.

For Bernard, the Song is about the manner in which the “thirsting soul” can rediscover the power of God’s love. “What a great thing is love, provided always that it returns back to its origin,” he writes; “flowing back again into its source, it acquires fresh strength to pour itself forth once again.” (On the Songs of Songs 83:4) Our journey to God’s love does not consist in our finding the path, but rather in being found on the path by Christ the Bridegroom who passionately seeks us. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away,” are words spoken by Christ to each one of us as he invites us to follow him. But the divine love is never intended to be, and is not complete if it is, purely individual and personal.

Bernard writes that the human soul aflame with the love of God “strives to win [other] souls with its habitual fire and renewed courage.” (58:1) “Love reveals itself,” he writes, “not by words or phrases, but by action and experience.” (70:1) Thus, says St. Bernard, love of God is not merely a personal experience; it is never complete unless it leads us to love our neighbors.

For Teresa of Avila, similarly, the Bridegroom’s call leads the soul back from a lack of love to love most fully realized:

Along how many paths, in how many ways, by how many methods You show us love! …[Not] only with deeds do You show this love, but with words so capable of wounding the soul in love with You that You say them in this Song of Songs and teach the soul what to say to You. (Meditations on the Song of Songs 3:14)

Using the sisters Martha and Mary of Bethany, as examples, Teresa, like Bernard, writes that the Song propels us to an exterior expression of love of neighbor. Only disciples who both pray with fervent desire and care for their neighbors, she writes, “imitate the laborious life that Christ lived.” (7:8)

So with the background of these songs of a divine love that compels us to share the love of God with those around us, we turn to today’s Gospel story of Jesus being confronted by and answering the Pharisees. The confrontation is over an issue of ritual cleansing, the failure of Jesus’ disciples to wash their hands before eating. Jesus, however, quickly turns that objection aside quoting from the 29th chapter of Isaiah, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me . . . . ” For Jesus the question is not one of ritual, not one of purity, not one of custom, not one of tradition. For Jesus the issue is love. “Their hearts are far from me.”

“Look,” he says, “the issue is not what’s on the outside. What’s on the outside cannot defile you. The issue is what’s on the inside. If the human heart is not filled with love, all sorts of filth results. If the human heart is not turned toward God with love, the result is disastrous.”

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Understand, the Pharisees weren’t bad people. They were trying to be good Jews. As the People of God, the Jews believed that God wanted them to be separate from other nations and peoples, that God wanted them to be pure and spotless. The word Pharisee means literally “separate ones.” They believed that the better and more stringently you observe the ritual practices, the more you were separate from, different from, and therefore more holy than others. Jesus was just telling them they were wrong, so he quoted from Isaiah about the heart and about love. This was the same prophet he quoted when he began his public ministry in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. There, he read a passage from the 61st chapter of Isaiah. As Luke reports,

the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:17-19)

Where the Pharisees sought to be separated from the unclean around them, Jesus preached the love of God which compels us to serve those around us, especially the ones who are considered unclean. Where the Pharisees were concerned about cleaning cups and washing hands, Jesus was concerned about cleaning lepers and washing their wounds. “Love reveals itself,” St. Bernard writes, “not by words or phrases, but by action and experience.” Only disciples who both pray with fervent desire and care for their neighbors, writes St. Teresa, “imitate the laborious life that Christ lived.”

This is the theme James takes up in today’s reading from his epistle: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father,” writes James, “is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

And this is what the Baptismal Covenant is all about. In a few minutes, we will baptize an infant, Finn, and an adult, John. Together with them and their sponsors, we will all reaffirm our own Baptismal Covenant as they make theirs. We will be asked, “Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?” Answering these questions, we will prove ourselves to be hearers of the word. But that is not the end of the Baptismal Covenant.

We will then be asked these five questions:

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

In other words, we will be asked, “Will you be doers of the word, and not merely hearers?” Our response will be, “I will, with God’s help.”

In Baptism, the Christ the Bridegroom embraces us as his own. “Arise,” he says as we come up out of the Baptismal waters, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Come away not to be separated from others, but come away to share God’s overflowing love with them. Come away to strive to win other souls with habitual fire and renewed courage. Come away to imitate the laborious life that Christ the Bridegroom lived. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Amen.

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