That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Page 78 of 130

Passing On the Stories – From the Daily Office – July 22, 2013

July 22, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

We have heard with our ears, O God, our forefathers have told us,
the deeds you did in their days, in the days of old.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 44:1 (BCP Version) – July 22, 2013.)

Bible Title PageI am often complimented on my knowledge of biblical history, especially the lesser known stories of the Old Testament. Some members of my parish tell me how much they enjoy it when I make an exegetical digression in a sermon to explain the background of some bit of text. Yesterday, a retired clergy colleague extended the compliment to “your seminary professors,” who, he was sure, did a much better job of teaching the Scriptures than had his own mentors.

Responsibility for what I know of the Bible (and I consider my depth of knowledge shallow and inadequate) cannot be laid at the feet of my seminary professors. As many know, I read for Holy Orders rather than attend seminary and obtain the typical three year Master of Divinity degree. After being ordained a deacon, I went to a seminary for one academic year, during which I took only a New Testament survey course and a Greek language course which used the Epistle of James as its principal text. No . . . what little knowledge of Scripture I have is not a result of a seminary education.

There is one person who can claim the credit, my grandfather Charles Edgar Funston, Jr. My grandfather was a Methodist layman who spent nearly fifty years teaching Sunday School to all age groups in his local parish. During the summers of my childhood, which my four cousins and I spent living with our grandparents, he drilled his grandchildren in bible study. We heard with our ears what our grandfather told us, the deeds God did in the days of old.

One ritual, in particular, which committed bible verses to memory during those summer sojourns in our grandparents’ home was grace at the evening meal. Each morning before he went to work and we went to do whatever chore or mischief was on our agenda, C.E. (as my grandfather was called) would give us each a verse to contemplate and memorize during the day, and he would tell us something of its context. At supper, he would call upon one of us to offer a grace which was to incorporate the verse; we were not simply to parrot back the Scripture, but to use it or paraphrase it in a thanksgiving prayer of our own creation. We never knew whom he might call upon, so all of us had to be prepared. If you weren’t, there was no penalty . . . except Granddad’s disappointment, and no one wanted to risk that!

I suspect that that sort of familial instruction in the Holy Scriptures was rare enough at that time, and that it is practically nonexistent in today’s world. Few folks in my generation, or our children’s and grandchildren’s cohorts, will have received biblical education in the church, let alone at the feet of a grandparent. I find that most congregations to whom I preach are, as a result, largely biblically illiterate. Reciting Psalm 44 today for most people will not be a statement of their personal reality, merely an historical curiosity out of the Hebrew past. That’s a tragedy, I think.

I’ve long forgotten the exact words of many (indeed, nearly all) of those verses of the King James Bible memorized during those childhood summers, but a general knowledge of the stories of Scripture remains. More importantly, my grandfather provided me with a foundation on which to build the structure of faith, a knowledge of the past from which to move into the future. Sometimes I wonder, how is the faith community to move into the future? How is it to transmit the faith if children do not hear with their ears, from their forebears, the deeds of God did in days of old? How are children do develop the same sort of foundation if they do not learn those stories? And how can they hear those tales if their parents and grandparents themselves don’t know them?

The church’s task of Christian formation and Christian education gets more and more difficult with each passing year, each passing generation, as fewer and fewer people know the stories of faith. Those who do know them have an enormous responsibility to become storytellers and pass them on, so that recitation of this psalm becomes a reflection of reality, not merely an historical, liturgical curiosity.

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

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

The One Thing Needful in a Market Economy – Sermon for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11C) – July 21, 2013

July 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 21, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 9 (Proper 11, Year C): Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; and Luke 10:38-42. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Fruit BasketIn last week’s sermon I talked about the first three prophetic visions God reveals to Amos: a plague of locusts devouring the crops of ancient Israel, a catastrophic fire destroying everything in the nation, and the plumb line set in the midst of the nation’s people demonstrating that they were not upright. This week Amos is shown a fourth prophetic vision.

The eighth chapter of this prophet opens with God showing Amos a basket of summer fruit, such things as peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, and figs. We aren’t told the condition of the fruit, but some commentators suggest that it may be fruit that is over-ripe, maybe on the verge of going bad. They suggest this because God tells Amos that this vision means that “the end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.” God’s explanation continues with visions of dead bodies in the street, wailing and lamentation in the temples, the nation destroyed, and the survivors wandering lost.

Well, it may be that the fruit is going bad, but in truth what God is doing is making a pun in Hebrew, a play on words that simply doesn’t translate into English. In Hebrew, the word for “summer fruits” is qayits; the word for “the end” is qets. The are spelled differently, but pronounced almost identically. Qayits . . . qets . . . God is making it clear that with respect to Israel, God is calling it quits! The finality of the passage is clear; Israel has no recourse.

And why has it come to this? Again, God is very clear, it’s because of economic injustice. God will punish the nation because its upper class, its wealthy merchants “trample on the needy.” They can’t wait Sabbaths and holy days to get over so they can resume their fraudulent business practices. They sell partial measures of wheat weighed on false scales that are overbalanced so that what is shown as a sheckel of wheat is far less. They measure ephahs of grain that are less than the regulation 35 liters. They “buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” That they are described as “selling the sweepings of the wheats” suggests either that they are selling chaff as if it were good grain, or that they are selling even the gleanings which are required by the Law of Moses to be left for the homeless and the beggars. In short, God is more than a little unhappy about the disparity between the wealthy merchants and the poor who must buy from them.

In our world, as in ancient Israel, the overriding organizing principle of society is the market economy, profit at the bottom line: the measure for nearly everything is profit and how it can be increased. It is a principle which works on paper, yet it is not helpful when we encounter the most pressing issues in our society. By “society” I do not mean simply our nation, I mean our entire global society, but we do see this played out in our local and national communities.

We are concerned when our local superintendent of schools seems to abuse his financial privileges because we see our education system not keeping up in a world market. We complain about the cost of salaries and benefits for those who teach our children, and yet paradoxically use the superintendent’s apparent misuse of funds as an excuse to vote against school levies or otherwise reduce school budgets, as if cutting costs will improve our children’s education.

We have all witnessed the damage done to our environment by the continuing use of fossil fuels, and there is plenty of good scientific research indicating that it has resulted in man-made global climate change that is costing billions of dollars in storm damage, and disrupting (if not ending) the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. However, when solutions are proposed, the objection is always that it may impact the profitability of business.

The truth is that profitability is the wrong measure, that the market is unable to deal with these issues. The gap between rich and poor, between haves and have-not is huge when measured in dollars-and-cents; it is even more staggering when measured in education and quality of life, and it is continuing to grow.

Are we able to hear God’s word of justice spoken to Amos as applying to us? Do we even understand how clearly it applied to the ancient Israelites? Do we even remember that what was prophesied by Amos against them did, in fact, come to pass?

God’s word was given by Amos in approximately the year 750 BCE during the reign of Jeroboam II of the Kingdom of Israel. This is not the united monarchy of Saul, David, and Solomon; this is the northern kingdom which rebelled against Solomon’s son Rehoboam in about the year 930 BCE and set up Jeroboam I as a separate monarch in the region we now know as Samaria. These rebels included the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, and Manasseh, ten of the twelve tribes. Only the tribes of Benjamin and Judah remained loyal to the House of David.

Ten tribes. Ten tribes. That ought to ring some bells; that ought to tickle something in your memory. These ten tribes are legendary, known to history as “the ten lost tribes of Israel.” Lost because less than twenty years after Amos prophesied that “dead bodies shall be cast out in every place,” it came to pass. Less than twenty years after God told them through Amos that their end would be bitter and that any survivors would “wander from sea to sea and from north to east . . . seeking the word of the Lord” and never finding it, that is exactly what happened. The Assyrian Empire invaded the northern Kingdom of Israel in 732 BCE and wiped . . . it . . . out . . .

Are we able to hear God’s word of economic justice spoken through Amos as applying to us? Not us the nation, but us the global economic society which cannot seem to divorce itself from the organizing principle of profit no matter what the issue may be, even when that organizing principle cannot address the issue. If we believe the witness of Holy Scripture, the ten lost tribes were lost, utterly destroyed, wiped from human history because God will not tolerate economic injustice!

Let’s leave that question for a moment and turn our attention to the Gospel lesson which seems at first glance to have little if any relationship to our Old Testament lesson. It is the familiar story of Jesus visiting his friends Mary and Martha of Bethany. He arrived and, like good friends and hosts, they held a dinner party. Luke does not tell us that others were present, but it would have been very much out of the ordinary for Jesus to have been alone with these women, so we can assume that others, at least their brother Lazarus, were there for the meal.

Martha, anxious for the comfort of their guest, busied herself with all the details of hospitality — setting the table, cooking, filling the glasses, bustling about will all of that sort of thing. Her sister Mary, however, did not pitch in to help. Instead, she sat with the other guests at Jesus feet, a student attentive to her teacher, listening to his words.

Martha, seeing Mary seeming not to care, became annoyed and ungracious. A word to her sister would probably have been sufficient to secure her help, but rather than do that Martha impatiently complained to Jesus: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”

Jesus answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” This text is commonly understood to contrast Mary’s attention to Jesus words — good — with Martha’s busy distraction — bad. But that’s overly simplistic and isn’t true to the spirit of Jesus teaching.

Martha has done the right thing; she has invited Jesus into her home and busied herself with the obligations of hospitality, something that Jesus values. The problem is that, as a hostess, she hasn’t been gracious; she hasn’t spent time with Jesus, her other guests, or even with her sister. She has let these tasks distract her. And worse, rather than speak with Mary directly and ask Mary directly for help, Martha did what we are all warned against; she dragged someone else into her tiff with her sister. It’s called “triangulation.” Like a school girl angry with a friend, she won’t talk directly to Mary, even when she’s in the same room: “Jesus, tell Mary (who was right there in the same room) to help me.” It’s a contentious move; it creates conflict.

It isn’t her busyness with hospitality and hosting, or her sister’s attention to his conversation, that Jesus referred to when he said, “There is need of only one thing.” Putting Mary to work at Martha’s task wasn’t what was required. It was something else. And to understand what it was, we have to step back from the gospel lesson and see this episode in context.

This visit with Mary and Martha happens immediately after Jesus has told the story we heard last week, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Remember that that story came in response to a question from a lawyer, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

In answer to that question, Jesus asked the lawyer what the Law of Moses says, to which the lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. ”

Jesus told the lawyer that his answer was correct and then said, “Do this, and you will live.” The lawyer had given a two-part answer: love God — love your neighbor. But to Jesus it was not two things, but one. He did not say, “Do these.” He did not say, “Do those two thing.” He said, “Do this” — singular — one thing. Love God, love your neighbor. To Jesus, it’s one thing, one needful thing. (And, please, remember! This is not sloppy, emotional romantic love! This is Biblical love – chessed in Hebrew; agape in Greek – love which respects the dignity of human being, which promotes peace, and fosters justice.)

For Jesus, love is above and beyond all else. It takes precedence over every other consideration, every other organizing principle, every other motive. He will live by, and die because of, this one needful thing. He will stay true to this one thing even though it will mean his sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. “Through him,” writes Paul to the Colossians, and through the fullness of God, which is Love, which dwelt in him, “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Love is the one thing needful.

And that one thing is the answer to the economic injustice against which the prophet Amos railed. The answer does not and cannot lie within the context of the market economy itself. Just as taking Mary away from the conversation and putting her to work at Martha’s tasks would not really have answered Martha’s complaints and reconciled what had become the bitterness between them, simply taking money away from the rich and giving it to the poor will not correct economic injustice; it simply perpetuates it, giving the money a new owner, and making a new non-owner filled with resentment. Revolution, elevating the working proletariat above the rich merchant class, switching Mary for Martha, also is not the answer; it simply perpetuates the disparities by reversing the roles. The answer does not and cannot lie within the market economy; it must be found in a different context.

Reducing people to commodities — “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals” — being eager to sell on the Sabbath, shorting measures, and cutting corners were commonplace, if not integral, to the economy of ancient Israel; they are commonplace, if not integral, to all market economies. But these practices and attitudes of markets, like Martha’s bustling busyness, lack one thing needful. They lack love — love which respects dignity, promotes peace, and fosters justice. And because they lacked love, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom became lost, utterly destroyed, wiped from the human history because God will not tolerate economic injustice!

We must come to the realization as a society, as a global economic society, that we are no different from the lost tribes of Israel. That for many aspects of our modern life — health, education, clean air and water, public safety — profitability is the wrong measure, just as it was for them. The market was and is unable to deal with these issues; it was and is the wrong context within which to solve these and many other of society’s ills. As the Psalm for today says, we must stop trusting in great wealth; we must stop relying upon wickedness; we must, instead, trust in the mercy of God. In these areas of our common life, we need to change society’s organizing principle from market economics to gospel values, from profit as the bottom line to biblical love – dignity, peace, justice – as the bottom line.

It is the one thing needful. Amen.

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

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

No One Is Insignificant, Not Even Doeg – From the Daily Office – July 19, 2013

July 19, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the First Book of Samuel:

Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord; his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Samuel 21:7 (NRSV) – July 19, 2013.)

Doeg Slaying the PriestsI often find myself intrigued by the lesser characters we find in the Bible. At one time I started a project of writing short stories, sort of fictional midrash about some of them, but that project never went very far. Still, when a reading includes mention of someone I’ve not noticed before, it stirs my curiosity and my imagination.

Doeg the Edomite is mentioned in only four verses in two chapters of the First Book of Samuel; here and then in three verses of the next chapter. Those verses tell us that Doeg witnessed Ahimelech and the other priests give aid to David at Nob, told Saul what he had seen, was commissioned by Saul to punish the priests, and killed 85 of the clergy. The last mention of him is when David apologizes to Ahimelech’s son Abiathar for being the cause of his father’s death and offers Abiathar his protection:

David said to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I am responsible for the lives of all your father’s house. Stay with me, and do not be afraid; for the one who seeks my life seeks your life; you will be safe with me.” (1 Sam. 22:22-23)

Doeg is identified as an Edomite but paradoxically as a chief shepherd in Israel, the latter term suggesting that he was not a tender of sheep, but rather a member of the Sanhedrin (a sort of parliament) or the Beth Din (a sort of supreme court). Therefore, rabbinic literature suggests that his identification as an “Edomite” merely refers to the land of his birth; it does not mean that he was a non-Jew.

According to midrashic tradition, Doeg was punished by three angels for his betrayal of David and his killing of the priests; one made him forget his learning, one incinerated his soul, and one scattered the ashes in the synagogues and study halls.

One of the minor tractates of the Babylonian Talmud, the Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, makes note of the fact that Doeg was one of three people who spoke the truth and died for it; what he reported about the priests at Nob was true, but it need not have been reported and the report led to needless death. (I don’t know, by the way, who the other two people who died for speaking truth would have been, although I have tried to find out.) Doeg is also listed in the midrashic literature as one of seven people (three kings and four commoners) who are said to have no share in the next world. I’m not sure what that means, whether the implication is that their souls wander aimlessly through nothingness or if they simply cease to exist, but the statement is there for whatever it is worth.

That is what I find most interesting about this minor character, that he has inspired such interest among the rabbis who wrote and compiled the various forms and collections of extra-biblical literature. What this suggests is that, in truth, there are no minor characters . . . in the Bible or in life.

No one is insignificant! One may not get top billing. One may only have a walk-on part, as it were. One may only be mentioned in a few verses of the book of life, perhaps only in one. But no one is insignificant. Not even Doeg the Edomite.

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

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

Tribalism and an Illustration of Compromise – From the Daily Office – July 18, 2013

July 18, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Mark:

The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against [Jesus], how to destroy him.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Mark 2:6 (NRSV) – July 18, 2013.)

Three Elders ConspiringJesus had healed someone on the sabbath; that’s the simple back ground to the Pharisees and Herodians conspiracy against Jesus. This alliance is an interesting one since in generally the two groups hated one another! But their fear of Jesus apparently was enough to get them to work together against him.

It’s an odd alliance, particularly if looked at from the view point of the Pharisees. Their name is taken from the Hebrew word parash meaning “to separate;” they adhered to a strict piety and disciplined adherence to the Torah. They refused to associate with Gentiles or any “unclean” person or thing. They exhibited all of the characteristics of what, in our modern world politics, has come to be called “tribalism.”

Recently a friend and colleague bemoaned what she called “the tyranny of liberalism” noting that those on the political left were “wasting precious energy and time beating each other up.” I suggested to her that the problem is not with liberalism (nor, indeed, with conservatism). Rather the issue in modern society is the “tribalism” that seems to have taken over all of American social thought and civic behavior (including behavior in the church).

Tribes (like the Pharisees) group around and define membership on the basis of some type of purity – purity of thought, purity of belief, purity of blood, purity of precious bodily fluids, purity of whatever. Stray even a little bit from that purity and, like white blood cells, other members of the tribe will attack. A liberal voicing illiberal opinions, a conservative embracing a liberal point . . . they will be pilloried by their co-tribalists much faster than by the “opposition.”

This kind of tribal thinking has infected both political parties, many churches, the liberal and conservative political camps . . . name some segment of current American society and you can identify its tribal attributes. There are Pharisees of all stripes in our national community today. Both houses of our nation’s legislature have succumbed to a deeply seated “us versus them” mentality of political tribalism that goes beyond even traditional partisanship; nothing is getting done and so long as this persists nothing is likely to get done.

Not a single one of us is immune to tribalism; none of us avoids it entirely. However, we can do something about it. We can become aware of it. We can identify our own biases and question our own motivation. We can confess our own sinfulness in this regard and repent, turning away from it in favor of a more constructive way of working together.

In the second chapter of his catholic epistle, James addresses the issue of favoritism:

If a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? (James 2:2-4)

He then condemns this favoritism as sinful: “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” (v. 9) It is, he says, a violation of what Christ called the second great commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. Partisan tribalism, I would suggest, is simply a political form of the favoritism scripture here condemns.

I remember reading once that Christians are called to pledge unwavering allegiance to the Lamb, not to the donkey or the elephant. We are bidden by scripture to pray for our governments and our leaders without regard to their politics or our own. If we will do that, while becoming aware of our own motives and biases, we can eschew tribalism and model a way of doing social business, of being community that will benefit all.

The alliance between the Herodians and the Pharisees, even though it was against Jesus, demonstrates that even those with the most tribal of instincts can compromise and work together. We should foster and encourage such behavior, even if this example might not the best illustration to use.

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

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

The Worms of Pride – From the Daily Office – July 17, 2013

July 17, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Acts:

Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. So they came to him in a body; and after winning over Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for a reconciliation, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat on the platform, and delivered a public address to them. The people kept shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a mortal!” And immediately, because he had not given the glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 12:20-23 (BCP Version) – July 17, 2013.)

Parasitic HookwormOccasionally when studying Scripture I have thought, “This can’t possibly have happened.” I’m sure that what I am reading is meant to be an allegory or a metaphor, or that it is simply pious legend that the biblical author has incorporated into his story. This strange little story of the death of Herod Agrippa I was one of those passages. It’s just a little weird.

It turns out, however, that this story is verified by an extrabiblical source. The Roman Jewish historian Flavius Josephus recounts almost the same series of events. In Josephus’s telling, Herod wears a robe of silver rather than purple, but the meaning is the same: royal pride. In addition, Josephus adds the details that Herod sees an owl perch overhead during the daytime, a negative omen, and that Herod suffered severe and disabling abdominal pain for five days before dying, suggesting that the “worms” may have been intestinal parasites.

Where Josephus and the author of Acts (Luke) most agree is with regard to royal pride. Not only do they both portray Herod in that splendid purple or silver robe, Josephus parallels Luke saying, “Presently his flatterers cried out, one from one place, and another from another, (though not for his good) that he was a god . . . . Upon this the king neither rebuked them nor rejected their impious flattery.” (Antiquities 19.8.2)

I don’t know whether Herod’s parasites, suffering, and death were, in fact, a divine punishment for pride; they may simply have been the result of his prideful behavior. Sometimes out of vanity, we humans can do things that are not good for our health. I’ve been guilty of that myself. Indeed, even during the past few days.

We are undertaking a remodeling project at my parish, expanding the parish hall and rebuilding the street-side entrance of one wing of our building. It is work necessitated by the deterioration of the foundation of a 1960s addition to the church building. That deterioration has been most evident inside a basement storage area we affectionately refer to as “the mushroom farm.” Dark, damp, dank, and smelly, this large closet has suffered most from seepage of ground water through the concrete and cinder block of the foundation. It has been, for a long time, a place of mold and mildew.

Another place where these have grown is in the plenum between the cinder block exterior walls and the interior drywall affixed to them through use of 1″ x 3″ wooden furring strips. Over the years, as water has leaked through the walls, the wood has been stained, has rotted, and has been a medium for growth of mold.

As the workers demolishing these structures in preparation for our new construction have done their work, they have kicked up mold-laden concrete and wood dust. Each day during their labors, I have been walked through the site several times taking photographs of their progress. I want to document the need for and the progress of this renovation. This may be, I will admit, a matter of vanity or pride that I do so.

It’s also rather stupid of me!

One of the earliest instructions that was deeply impressed upon me as a child was to instruct medical people that I am allergic to penicillin. Whenever I do, I am asked, “What happens when you take it?” I have to answer honestly, “I don’t know. I’ve just always been told that I am allergic to it.” Being allergic to penicillin might, you would imagine, suggest to one that there might be an issue of sensitivity to other molds . . . . But I grew up in the desert! Molds were not an issue!

Until I moved to the midwest . . . Twenty or so years ago when I moved to the Missouri River valley (in the Kansas City area) and the high humidity of northeastern Kansas, I discovered seasonal molds play havoc with my health. Then ten years ago I moved to northeastern Ohio – more of the same.

Knowing this, I should be staying completely away from the demolition of the mushroom farm and the moldy drywall furring, shouldn’t I? But I insist on documenting this project . . . so my allergy, like Herods “worms,” is having a field day.

A few years ago, the indie rock group Chaotica put out a tune called Mr. Vanity. Among its lyrics are these words:

Why must you hide
Way inside, Mr. Vanity?
Why do you try to deny
Your own humanity?

So who died? Made you king?
You’re not god of anything.
What are you? Just a man!
Who on Earth gave you
The master plan?
Get a life. Get a clue.
Someone here should humble you.

* * *

Feed your greed
And your pride…
Hope it eats you up inside.

Those lyrics could almost have been written based on the story of the death of King Herod Agrippa I! That story from Acts, which Josephus’s testimony shows to be an historic one, reads like an allegory. It certainly could be one. His pride (in the form of those worms, those intestinal parasites) ate him up inside! Mine is making me sneeze my fool head off!

Pride is destructive. The worms of pride do eat you up inside!

But . . . confession time . . . I plan to keep on visiting the work site and taking photographs. I will put up with the sneezing and coughing! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

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

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

A Pew Poll, A Praying Mantis, And A Toad – From the Daily Office – July 16, 2013

July 16, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

As for me, I will live with integrity;
redeem me, O Lord, and have pity on me.
My foot stands on level ground;
in the full assembly I will bless the Lord.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 26:11-12 (BCP Version) – July 16, 2013.)

Praying MantisLast week, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published the results of a survey testing the esteem in which Americans hold members of ten professions.

Respondents where asked say to what extent each group contributes to the well-being of American society: the possible responses ranged from “a lot” to “not at all.”

The professions were then ranked by the percentage of respondents who said they contributed “a lot” to our societal welfare. Topping the list were members of the military; at the bottom, lawyers. The graphic below shows the rankings of the ten professions (clipped from the Pew Forum article).

Pew Poll

A retired colleague reading the article commented that he had concluded in his personal career that clergy made a low impact on people’s lives and that that contributed to his decision to retire (or, as he put it, “give up”). “I’m told I’m a great preacher,” he said, “but my preaching didn’t seem to change people’s lives. Near as I could tell they were just indifferent.” I sympathize, in fact I often identify with my friend’s comments. There are days when being a clergy person is awful; there are times when one feels (and even worse times when one is told in no uncertain terms) that not only is one not contributing to society’s welfare, one is making it worse!

On the other hand, I rather enjoyed the fact that my current profession ranks above my former career as a lawyer!

Sunday after church I mowed the lawn. I didn’t want to mow the lawn, but I really had no choice. It has rained here quite a bit during the past three weeks and that rain had both encourage the grass to grow and prevented me from mowing the grass. So my one-third of an acre (on a steep hillside, by the way) was beginning to look like native grass pasture land rather than a suburban lawn. Normally, I can cut the grass in about an hour and, if I have to do it, I can get the “weed whacking” and edging done in another thirty minutes. On Sunday, because I had to mow twice (once with the mower deck at high setting followed by another pass at a lower level, both passes going relatively slowly), it took a bit longer. I started at 2:30 p.m. and finished at 6:19 p.m.

On my first pass through the back yard I noticed a bright, lime-green praying mantis struggling through the grass; the insect seemed to be injured, but I couldn’t tell. He (or she) was in the section I would mow on my next pass, so I kept an eye out and, sure enough, there it was in front of the mower when I pushed it back that direction. I stopped and let the mantis move out of the way, headed for the bushes at the edge of the lawn.

A couple of hours later, string trimmer in hand, I was whacking the tall growth around the stone-edged planters, the mail box, and the fire hydrant in the tree lawn, when I came across a small brown-green toad in among the plants I was about the decimate with .93 “fishing line.” I nudged the toad away with my toe (I was going to say I “toed away the toad” but that would be too cute, wouldn’t it?), moving it to safety before I continued trimming the grass.

Earlier in the day I had preached about a familiar parable. The gospel lesson appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for the day was the story of the Good Samaritan, the story of a man on a journey, a man with a purpose of his own to accomplish, stopping to aid a fellow traveler in distress. Stopping to let an insect move out of danger or encouraging a toad to move out of harm’s way is not, I don’t think, equivalent, but the spirit is the same. And as I spent time in meditation trudging along behind the lawn mower, it occurred to me that all three actions provide a response to the Pew Research poll.

Clergy don’t, generally, make a big splash in the world, and the ones who do usually, it seems, do so to the detriment of our collective reputations! Sure, there are the exceptional clerics like Pope Francis, or Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama, but in general most clergy do small things in small congregations in small communities. We don’t make a difference in society at large; if we make any sort of contribution at all, it is in the lives of individual people – sitting at a hospital bedside, baptizing an infant, counseling two people about to get married, celebrating a teenager’s graduation from high school. The church as a whole is supposed to make a contribution to society; the clergy’s job is make a difference in the lives of the people who make up the church.

So, although I do understand my friend-and-colleague’s angst about indifference in society and that low 37% rating by the Pew Research folks, I’d encourage him and other clergy not to give it too much attention. Attend to the praying mantises and the toads, to the poor beggars in the roadside ditches, to the hospital patients and the babies and the newlyweds and the new graduates; do your best to make a difference in the lives of individuals. Do that and you’ll have lived with integrity and you’ll have something to tell about in the great congregation, something about which to bless the Lord in midst of full assembly. Then send the assembly out to contribute to the well-being of society: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord!” It’s really their job!

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

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

Who Is My Neighbor? And Who Is the Good Samaritan? – Sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10C) – July 14, 2013

July 14, 2013 / / 1 Comment

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This sermon was preached on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 14, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 8 (Proper 10, Year C): Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; and Luke 10:25-37. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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The Good Samaritan, engraving by Julius Schnorr von CarolsfeldThe nation’s legal system is corrupt; justice is for sale to the highest bidder. The guilty go free while the innocent suffer and die. The rich are crushing the poor. The affluent, the 1%-ers, are living a lavish life, with their costly perfumes and cosmetics, and their vacation homes with expensive furnishings, pleasure palaces where they can throw extravagant parties with music in every room. They revel in sexual debauchery of all sorts, but try to enforce a puritanical moral code on the rest of society. The poor are at the mercy of predatory lenders who exploit vulnerable families. The rich have more than enough to eat and to waste, while the poorest in the society go hungry. And government and religious leaders not only allow this to happen, they help it happen.

Just a brief summary of Chapters 1 through 6 of the Prophet Amos.

Some of you probably thought, “There he goes again, spouting his liberal politics from the pulpit.” But I’m not; as I said, it’s simply a paraphrase the Prophet Amos’s critique, of God’s critique, of ancient Israel at the time of King Jeroboam II. We just heard most of chapter 7 beginning at verse 7, in which Amos tells of the third of three prophetic visions. In verses 1 through 6, Amos tells of God showing him locusts devouring all the crops of the land and then another vision of fire destroying everything in the nation. Amos pleads with God not to let that happen. Most scholars interpret those visions as omens of what God might do to the nation, but I think perhaps they might instead be striking visions of prophetic judgment against the wealthy of ancient Israel and the rulers and religious leaders of the time. These are not visions of what God might do; they are visions of what those in power will do if not stopped. And God’s judgment spoken twice to Amos is, “This will not happen!” (vv. 3, 6)

So God shows Amos a vision of a plumb line. Do you know what a plumb line is? There’s a picture of a plumb line on the cover of the bulletin this morning. A plumb line is a string with a metal weight, or “plumb bob,” at one end which, when suspended, points directly towards the earth’s center of gravity so that the string hangs perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s surface; it is used to test the verticality of structures, how true to straight up-and-down they are. It sets the standard for up-rightness. God tells Amos that God is setting a metaphorical plumb line in the midst of God’s People and if they don’t measure up to the standard, “the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and [God] will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Well, you say, that’s ancient Israel. What’s that got to do with us?

Let me read you a news item from the past week. This is from the July 9, 2013, issue of the Florence, Alabama, Times-Daily:

Police Chief Lyndon McWhorter said Monday morning’s bank robbery [in Moulton, Alabama] was among the most unusual of his law enforcement career.

“I’ve been involved with several over the years, but none like this,” McWhorter said. “It’s one for the books.”

McWhorter said Rickie Lawrence Gardner, 49, of 7667 Alabama 33, Moulton, was arrested Monday morning while sitting on a bench outside the Bank Independent branch on Court Street in Moulton, minutes after he supposedly walked in and robbed the bank.

“When the officers got there, he was just sitting on the bench, waiting on them,” McWhorter said. “The money was locked up inside his truck, which was parked in the handicapped spot in front of the bank.

“He had a handicap sticker on his vehicle so he even parked legal.”

McWhorter said Gardner told authorities he robbed the bank because he had hurt his leg and wasn’t able to take care of himself.

“So, he decided to get arrested to have a place to live and someone to take care of him.”

Minutes before the arrest, McWhorter said, Gardner walked into the bank just off Alabama 157 and handed a teller a written note explaining that he had a gun and she was to give him money.

Authorities said no weapon, other than a pocketknife, was found when Gardner was taken into custody.

“The only thing he said to the teller was when he asked her to give him a bag to put the money in,” McWhorter said.

With the money in hand, McWhorter said Gardner walked out of the bank, laid the money inside his vehicle, locked the door and walked back to the bench. The chief said Gardner sat down on the wooden bench in front of the bank and waited on officers.

“When officers got there, he did not offer any kind of resistance. He was just waiting on them,” McWhorter said. “This is the first bank robbery I’ve ever worked where the robber was waiting outside the bank for the police to turn himself in.” (Times-Daily)

The Associated Press later reported that Gardner “mentioned the weapon in the note — even though he didn’t have one — because he thought it would get him a longer sentence;” he thought he’d get more time, which would mean more shelter, more food. (AP Story)

The reason you may have thought my opening paraphrase of Amos sounded like an indictment of our own society is simple. It does. The word of prophecy spoken by Amos to ancient Israel speaks directly to us.

You know the interesting thing about Amos’s prophecy is that we can’t even be sure it was heard by the rulers of the nation to which it was spoken. We know Amos wrote it down; we know that someone told the story of Amos delivering his prophecy to Amaziah (who was the high priest at Bethel the religious center of the northern kingdom), but we are told that Amaziah never delivered it to Jeroboam II, the reigning king.

Amaziah instead told the king that Amos was part of a conspiracy to kill him, and then Amaziah told Amos to return to his home which was in the southern kingdom. “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah,” he says, “earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” And this is where Amos speaks one of my favorite lines in Scripture, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.”

Amos’s answer was to indicate that he was not a prophet by profession; he was not a member of one of the official “prophecy schools.” Indeed, as part of the official religious establishment, Amos thought those full-time prophets were as much a part of the problem as the priests, the king, and the wealthy! Amaziah proved that he was part of the problem by failing to communicate Amos’s prophecy to King Jeroboam, so our reading today ends with Amos’s personal prophecy against him: “Your wife shall become a . . . and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword . . . and you shall die in an unclean land.” A pretty pointed prophecy, if ever there was one!

But we, who hear in Amos’s condemnation of ancient Israel at least a bit of a word of warning to our own society, what are we to make of this prophecy of the plumb line? The standard for the People of God in Israel was the ancient law of Moses, the religious, ethical, and social rules we find in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers (Deuteronomy was unknown at the time of Amos). What is it for us? How are we (as Paul wrote to the Colossians) to be “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding?” How are we to “lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him?” How are we to bear fruit in every good work and . . . grow in the knowledge of God?”

Well, that standard is easily stated. A young lawyer does so in today’s Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” It’s easily stated; it’s not so easily understood.

The young lawyer says as much when he asks his follow up question, “Who is my neighbor?” He wants to know what we want to know: are there limits? Is it sufficient to love only the people of my community — for him, Israel; for most of us, white descendants of Northern European immigrants? Does it include Mr. Gardner, the bank robber in Moulton, Alabama? Might it also include other undesirables, Samaritans and Gentiles, the Irish, descendants of African slaves, recently immigrated Asians, Hispanics? Does it include women, people with disabilities, lepers, and others frequently excluded from society? Do we get to define who is our neighbor, or does Someone else?

Ultimately, the answer to our question is the answer to another question: “Who does God love?” Jesus answers the question by telling a parable, the oh-so-familiar story of the “Good Samaritan.” In analyzing this story, Lutheran theologian Brian Stoffregen asks an important question: “Why does Jesus make the hero of this story a Samaritan?” In answering this question he writes:

The idea of being a “Good Samaritan” is so common in our culture, that most people today don’t realize that “Good Samaritan” would have been an oxymoron to a first century Jew. Briefly stated, a Samaritan is someone from Samaria. During an ancient Israeli war, most of the Jews living up north in Samaria were killed or taken into exile. However, a few Jews, who were so unimportant that nobody wanted them, were left in Samaria. Since that time, these Jews had intermarried with other races. They were considered half-breeds by the “true” Jews. They had perverted the race. They had also perverted the religion. They looked to Mt. Gerizim as the place to worship God, not Jerusalem. They interpreted the Torah differently than the southern Jews. The animosity between the Jews and Samaritans were so great that some Jews would go miles out of their way to avoid walking on Samaritan territory. Previously in Luke, the Samaritans had refused to welcome Jesus — the “bad” Samaritans. I’m certain that in the minds of many Jews, the only “good” Samaritan was a dead Samaritan. Note that the lawyer never says “Samaritan.” He can’t call him a “good Samaritan” (a phrase that doesn’t occur in the text). Anyway, we are still left with the question, “Why a Samaritan?”

If Jesus were just trying to communicate that we should do acts of mercy to the needy, he could have talked about the first man and the second man who passed by and the third one who stopped and cared for the half-dead man in the ditch. Knowing that they were a priest, Levite, and Samaritan is not necessary.

If Jesus were also making a gibe against clerics, we would expect the third man to be a layman — an ordinary Jew — in contrast to the professional clergy. It is likely that Jewish hearers would have anticipated the hero to be an ordinary Jew.

If Jesus were illustrating the need to love our enemies, then the man in the ditch would have been a Samaritan who is cared for by a loving Israelite.

One answer to the question: “Why a Samaritan?” is that we Christians might be able to learn about showing mercy from people who don’t profess Christ. I know that I saw much more love expressed towards each by the clients at an inpatient alcoholic/drug rehab hospital than I usually find in churches. Can we learn about “acting Christianly” from AA or the Hell’s Angels? (CrossMarks)

But Stoffregen proposes an alternative response: “Another answer to the question: ‘Why a Samaritan?’ is that we are not to identify with the Samaritan. A Jew would find that so distasteful that he couldn’t identify with that person. He wouldn’t want to be like the Priest or Levite in the story, so that leaves the hearer with identifying with the man in the ditch.” And that raises the further question, “Then who is the Samaritan?” to which there can only be one answer, “The Samaritan is God.”

If the Samaritan represents God, that means that God loves the penniless, the stripped naked, the beaten down, the ones left half dead, the ones passed-by by the leaders of society, by the rulers, by the punctiliously correct, and (I’m sorry to say) by the religious. It makes us realize that God is no respecter of position or wealth, God does not care about social class or religion. The man in the ditch had been stripped of everything that might have indicated his social standing, his religious faith, even his nationality; he was simply a person in need. That is who God loves, and that means that God loves everyone. In the human community, every person is potentially a person in need; truth be told, every person is a person in need.

Who is my neighbor? Who does God love? Everyone. No exceptions. No exclusions. That is the standard, the rule, the plumb line by which God judges society. This again and again is what the prophets of old told us; it is what Jesus told us; it is what our own modern prophets have said over and over. For example:

In the 18th Century, Dr. Samuel Johnson’s biographer James Boswell quoted him as saying, “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.” (Boswell, Life of Johnson)

In her book My Several Worlds (1954), Pearl S. Buck, wrote: “The test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

In his last political speech, Sen. Hubert Humphrey said, “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

And Mahatma Gandhi said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”

Who is my neighbor? Who does God love? Everyone. No exceptions. No exclusions.

Every person is potentially a person in need, and every person is potentially a caregiver, a supplier of that which is needed. When we conclude our worship this morning, several young people and a few adults accompanying them will depart for Franklin, Pennsylvania, to be suppliers of that which is needed. At this point, they don’t know whose needs they are going to be supplying; they don’t know what those needs will be. All they know is that there are people in need and they are going to care for them, because they are our neighbors.

So at this point, let’s get on with the business of commissioning them for the ministry on which they are about the embark.

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

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

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

July 7, 2013 / / 0 Comments

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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.

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Church Interior with Superimposed Question MarkWhat 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.

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

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

Memories Persist – From the Daily Office – July 6, 2013

July 6, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalter:

Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down;
touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
Hurl the lightning and scatter them;
shoot out your arrows and rout them.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 144:5-6 (BCP Version) – July 6, 2013.)

White Convertible 1957 ThunderbirdThe Psalmist might think that this is what has happened in the mountains around my home town of Las Vegas, Nevada.

I belong to a Facebook group of Las Vegas natives and during the past 24 hours other members have posted news of what is called the Carpenter Canyon Fire at Mt. Charleston, about 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and a fire near Kingman, Arizona, called the Dean Peak Fire. Kingman is 100 southeast of Las Vegas. As I write this, about 9,000 acres are reported burning at Mt. Charleston; 5,400 acres at Dean Peak. Neither fire is contained.

It is believed that both fires were started by lightning, or as the Psalmist might have put it, by God, shooting his arrows, touching the mountains, making them smoke! I don’t really think that’s the case (that God caused the fires), but the verses of the Psalm have made me think about the paradox of memory.

Both Mt. Charleston and Kingman are locations that loom large in my childhood memories. I learned to ski at Mt. Charleston, but that was as an adult. As a child my family would go to Mt. Charleston for one day every winter so that my older brother, some of my neighborhood friends, and I could play in the snow. Kingman was a place we stopped along the road when traveling east from Las Vegas to Kansas to visit grandparents and other relatives; it was also the place my father died of injuries sustained in a single-car motor vehicle accident when I was 5-1/2 years old. One of the single most vivid memories of my childhood was the day my mother and I drove to Kingman to claim the remains of my father’s automobile, a 1957 hard-top convertible Thunderbird.

That car figures large in nearly all my memories of my father. It was white with a red interior. During the top-down months of the year, the removable hard top would be leaned against the side of our house, protect from the elements by the grape arbor which functioned as a carport at our home and by a canvas tarp with which Daddy would carefully cover it. (Yes, I’m 61 and, yes, I still call my father “Daddy” – death does that; it freezes time and our ways of thinking about the beloved departed.)

The reports of the fires at Mt. Charleston and Kingman have brought those memories rushing back. For no good reason other than remembrance, my eyes filled with tears when I read of the Nevada fire.

I was angry when I first read of the Mt. Charleston fire; my first thought was, “My memories are being destroyed!” But the truth is that the places in my memories long ago ceased to be. The Mt. Charleston of 2013 is not the Mt. Charleston of 1955. The paradox is that our memories are both persistent and impermanent.

I’m sure it’s long gone, and although I don’t recall its name, I remember very clearly the coffee shop in Kingman where we would stop for breakfast on those eastbound trips. We would always get up and start before dawn; two hours or so later, we would get to the junction of Highway 93 and Route 66 at Kingman. I would have gone to sleep in the backseat of my mother’s car, so I would be awakened as we stopped there. It was the only place and the only time when I was allowed to have a chocolate milkshake for breakfast! My memory of that restaurant is persistent; the place was impermanent.

The same goes for the lodge at Mt. Charleston (still there, but completely different) . . . my dad’s Thunderbird (there are others still around; I’d like to own one, but I don’t have $50,000 to buy it) . . . the house we lived in (remodeled several times). My memories are persistent; the things and the places are not. Most importantly, the people are not. I believe they live on in the Presence of God and in the company of the saints in light . . . but they are not here. So memory is not only persistent, it is important.

The name of this blog is taken from another Psalm, Psalm 78. The first few verses are these:

Hear my teaching, O my people;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.

That which we have heard and known, and what our forefathers have told us,
we will not hide from their children.

We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the Lord,
and the wonderful works he has done.

He gave his decrees to Jacob and established a law for Israel,
which he commanded them to teach their children;

That the generations to come might know, and the children yet unborn;
that they in their turn might tell it to their children.

Memory persists so that it may be shared, that the things which we have heard and known may be told to our children. Share your memories! Too many of us live with an absence of family memories; we hunger to know the past. Don’t let that happen to your children.

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

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

Does “Journey” Make Sense? – From the Daily Office – July 5, 2013

July 5, 2013 / / 0 Comments

From the Gospel according to Luke:

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 23:26 (NRSV) – July 5, 2013.)

Start of a JourneyDo you know where Cyrene was? Its location was in the same place as present day Shahhat, a town in northeastern Libya, about 80 miles northeast of Benghazi and about five miles from the Mediterranean coast. It’s nearly 1300 miles from Jerusalem. Simon had “come from the country” a fair distance! And at the end of that very long journey, he was made to carry the cross up the hill to Golgotha. The journey is a common metaphor of the Christian life; Simon’s long journey could stand as an example. But does the metaphor, does Simon’s example make sense anymore?

In other reading today, I learned that although the United States as a whole has only 87 people per square mile, the average American lives in a metropolitan area with more than 5,000 people per square mile. Two-thirds of Americans live in metropolitan areas with half-a-million or more residents. The long journey may be a Christian metaphor, but it is probably not one that resonates with the personal experience of most modern Americans. Long journeys are no longer part of our everyday corporate experience.

Certainly Americans travel; last year we spent $597 billion on leisure travel and $259 billion on business trips. But living in cities with nearly every need, and most of our family and friends, close at hand, and without a religious or social tradition of pilgrimage, the long journey is not a common practice.

Paradoxically, we seem to be an increasingly mobile and transient society. We don’t do journeys, but we do seem to move about quite a bit. While my small-town (pop. 28,000) church has several long-term members who have been here most, if not all, of their lives, a significant part of our worshiping community is made up of those who have recently relocated to the area because of job transfers, and who expect to leave within just a few years. Indeed, many of those who have left the congregation in the past ten years have done so for the same reason. The long-term leadership of the congregation (and now that I’ve been here more than ten years, I feel like that includes me) has seen many active church members come and go as breadwinners are transferred into the area, work here for three to five years, and are then transferred elsewhere.

As I ponder these contradictory data, a mobile population lacking in experience of journeying, it seems to me that what we lack may be rootedness, a sense of permanent “home place,” an anchoring in space and time. There is a difference between a “journey” and a “trip” – and that difference is time. There is a difference between a “journey” and a life of constant work-related relocation – and that difference is the home place, the anchor point in space.

My family is as un-rooted as most; my personal history more so. Not quite half my lifetime ago, I was required to fill out an FBI background check form; doing so, I realized that by the time I was 35 years of age, I had had 37 addresses! When my children were in the fifth and third grades, we relocated from Las Vegas, Nevada, to an exurban, Kansas-side community of the Kansas City metroplex, where we lived for ten years; the home we owned there is still the place I have lived the longest in my life! Although they were born in San Diego and Las Vegas, it’s very clear that my kids think of Kansas as “home.” My wife and I moved to Ohio after the children had completed high school and they have never lived here. From time to time someone will ask one or the other, “Are you coming home for Christmas?” Their typical reply makes it very clear that they do not consider Ohio “home.” They have a sense of rootedness, and that root is not sunk into this soil.

Unlike my children, I do not have that sense of rootedness. I was born in Las Vegas, but left the place when I was only 8 years of age. For the next several years, my family relocated (always within the Los Angeles area) every twelve to eighteen months. I continued that pattern after leaving home, sometimes moving after only three or four months. As I aged and became employed, my length of stay in any one place grew. But it is only at more than 60 years of age that I can look back and make sense of life through the metaphor of “the journey.” I do wonder how useful this metaphor is for those still in the throes of an unrooted life, relocating every few years as jobs change, perhaps taking “business trips,” and maybe finding time for vacation travel.

Simon had a home, a place where he was rooted, Cyrene. He was on a journey when he encountered Christ on the way to Calvary. He was not on a “trip”; he was not relocating. What can we learn from Simon? Does the journey metaphor make sense anymore?

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

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

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