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The Lonely Golden Years – From the Daily Office – December 7, 2012

December 7, 2012 / eric / 1 Comment

From Luke’s Gospel:

Jesus looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 21:1-4 (NRSV) – December 7, 2012.)

All she had in her golden years were two copper coins . . . . The tale of the widow’s mite is a familiar one, an especially poignant one as we make our Christmas preparations in Advent. It brings to mind all those poor and under-priviliged who are unable to prepare as we do, who see the advertisements for goods and services, the news reports of Black Friday, the television specials featuring warm homes and large family meals and know that those luxuries are not for them. I have visions of the family of Bob Cratchit huddling before a poorly fed coal stove trying to keep warm.

I suspect, however, that the toughest thing for them, especially the elderly who may, in fact, be widowed, is not the poverty nor the meagreness of their meals. I suspect the hardest part of the holidays is the loneliness.

As I made mention yesterday, anyone who has lost friends or family can have a hard time with the holiday season. This is especially so with our elders. Growing old does bring the wisdom of years for many people, but there are unavoidable losses that come to even the healthiest. Many lose their mobility; they can no longer walk as well as they could before and many, for a variety of reasons, can no longer drive their own cars. A lot of older folks have had to relocate to assisted living facilities or nursing homes. Often even those well enough to remain in their own homes can feel friendless and isolated because their neighborhoods have changed. Worse are the losses of spouses, relatives, and friends who are ill or who have died. The holidays can bring the sense of loneliness and isolation to a head.

A recently published study found that people over the age of 60 who feel lonely and isolated have a 45% higher risk of death than those who feel well-connected and supported by family and friends. Researchers found that the risk of death for people who are lonely is 23%, as compared to 14% for those who aren’t. I have heard that the death rate among the elderly goes up during the holidays and I suspect that the increased feeling of loneliness has a lot to do with that.

What can you do for an elderly acquaintance during the holidays? Give them the most valuable gift you have, your time. Your time is precious. Most of us have a spouse, children, friends, and other relatives who need us, but if you know of an elderly widow or widower who is without family at this time of the year, can you stop by their home for a short visit? Do what you can without stressing yourself. Being relaxed when you visit is important; sensing that you are in a hurry can be distressing to the elderly. It’s better not to visit than to make a rushed call. But if you can make a relaxed visit to let them know someone remembers them, your best efforts will be more than good enough. They will be moments of gold for someone in their golden years.

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

Blue Christmas – From the Daily Office – December 6, 2012

December 6, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Luke’s Gospel:

Jesus said: “The fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him another question.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 20:37-40 (NRSV) – December 6, 2012.)

Blue Christmas Tree Ornaments “When those blue snowflakes start falling, that’s when those blue memories start calling,” runs a line from Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas. While most of us are getting ready for happy family reunions during the holidays, and clergy and liturgical ministers of all sorts are preparing for one of the year’s biggest crowds, we may forget that Christmas can be a time of great sadness for many. Mental health professionals note that the Christmas season may be one when many people avoid church. Millions of Americans suffer from the “holiday blues.” I know this all too well because December 21st is the anniversary of my mother’s death.

Her death was not unexpected. I’d been at her bedside in Southern California just days before, but my obligations pastoring a congregation in the Kansas City area at Christmas time meant I couldn’t stay. I had returned to Kansas before she died. It was the custom of my parish to offer Evening Prayer at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday evenings in Advent. At 6:00 p.m. I was vested and ready to lead the service when the phone rang; it was my step-father telling me that Mom had just died. We commiserated for a few minutes and I assured him I would call later in the evening, after the service was over and I had gone home.

I ended the call, took a deep breath, and entered the church; perhaps 20 people were there for the service. I gave the organist the signal and we began. After the opening hymn, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me . . . .” was about as far as I got into the opening sentence of the service before I choked up and could go no further. I swallowed the lump in my throat and explained to the congregation why I was having trouble.

The altar guild director and her husband were in the congregation. In the silence that followed my explanation, they left their pew and came to me. She took my prayer book from me and he took me by the arm and guided me to the back of the church. She began the service again and I sat down in the back pew, blowing my nose and listening to but not really hearing the familiar and comforting words of confession, Phos Hilaron, and psalm.

I don’t remember what the lessons were that evening, but years later on another December 21st I took part as the homilist in an ecumenical “Blue Christmas Service.” Typically offered during these Advent days, and often on the winter solstice, the longest night, these services are for those who have suffered a loss through divorce or the death of a loved one; Blue Christmas Services gives us a chance to say that sadness is OK in this season. It’s not abnormal to shed a tear at Christmas time. As we planned that service, I chose this lesson for the focus of my sermon: “God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

Our departed loved ones are gone from our lives. Nothing can change that and if we are healthy and realistic, we know that and we work through it. But the days leading up to Christmas can be tough, especially if their loss is recent or, as in my case, the anniversary is near to the holiday. To us they are dead, but our faith teaches us that to God all of them are alive, and the community of faith sustains us in our grief. We are surrounded by people like my altar guild director who took over and led the service when I could not, like her husband who sat with me through the service, like that congregation that continued the service of comforting prayer. We are, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote, “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” the communion of saints, the living and the dead, including our loved ones, “for to him all of them are alive.” With that assurance, we can share the joy of the holidays.

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

Swords Into Ploughshares – From the Daily Office – December 5, 2012

December 5, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Isaiah:

Out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 2:3b-4 (NRSV) – December 5, 2012.)

In the Turtle Bay neighborhood of New York City, at the northwest corner of First Avenue and 42nd Street is a small municipal public park, Ralph J. Bunche Park named in 1979 for an African-American diplomat who had been instrumental in the working out of the 1949 Palestinian Armistice Agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In 1950, Dr. Bunche became the first African-American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The park is across the United Nations Plaza from the UN headquarters building. There is a granite staircase there which, since 1981, has been named the Scharansky Steps in honor of Soviet dissident Natan Scharansky. On the northern wall of the steps, now known as the Isaiah Wall, the latter part of this quotation from the prophet is inscribed. The stairway with the wall and inscription were originally built in 1948.

I made my first visit to New York City in the spring of 1968 when I was 16. On a trip to the UN, I saw that wall and was immediately transfixed. I love Isaiah’s words and every time I have returned to the city, visiting that wall has been a priority. It’s something of a pilgrimage for me, visiting a shrine to a vision of a dream not yet achieved.

We read a lot of Isaiah during Advent, or we hear a lot of Isaiah images – the peaceable kingdom, infants playing with poisonous snakes, lions eating straw with the oxen – “and a little child shall lead them.” (Isa. 11:6) There’s good reason for that; after all, it is in Isaiah that we read, “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (Isa. 7:14)

As we go through this season of preparation, reading these particular words, I know there’s not much any one individual can do to move the nation toward not learning war any more or to prevent the nation from lifting up the sword against another. Those are decisions “above my pay grade” as the saying goes. However, I wonder if I have some personal, metaphorical swords that could be beaten in the spiritual ploughshares, some spears I could bend into pruning-hooks.

According to Freud and his followers, our psyche is a battlefield; instinctual urges and drives at war with societal norms, constraints on our ego at odds with our impulses. As a result we all have defense mechanisms, e.g., denial, repression, fantasizing, acting out; there are dozens of these psychological defenses. Some are mature and constructive; some are not. During Advent, could it not be possible to convert some of the destructive psychological defenses, these mental swords and spears, into constructive behaviors, into emotional ploughshares and pruning hooks? I’m not a psychologist or a therapist, so I make no suggestion how this would be done, but I have faith that that it could be done. Like most things, however, it won’t be done unless we take the first step.

Advent is the beginning of the Christian year. A beginning seems like a good time to take first steps, especially first steps toward beating swords, real or metaphorical, physical or emotional, into ploughshares.

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

The Audience of One – From the Daily Office – December 4, 2012

December 4, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From First Thessalonians:

We have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – 1 Thess. 2:4-6 (NRSV) – December 4, 2012.)

I would like to have a word with the clergy, music directors, musicians, choir directors, altar guild mistresses, sacristans, choristers, Sunday School superintendents, lay readers, acolytes, and a score of others about all the things many of us are doing to get ready for Christmas.

I’m sure that you, like my colleagues and me, are planning liturgies, choosing music, decorating sanctuaries, casting church school pageants, rehearsing anthems, laundering vestments, practicing readings, learning how to swing thuribles, and doing dozens of other preparatory tasks as the special events of the holiday loom every closer. Your looking forward to your Sunday School Pageant, to the Christmas Cantata, the Christmas Eve Family Service, the Midnight Mass, or whatever the “big event” may be in your congregation. You’re hoping, expecting that there will be a large turnout of appreciative people, probably many who only show up at Christmas (or maybe also at Easter), but you’re really hoping that a big crowd of parishioners will be there.

Last Sunday evening my parish’s choir did a wonderful job of offering a service of Lessons and Carols. It was the shorter version of that model of worship: six lessons each followed by a hymn or choral offering. Other music included a prelude, a couple of additional hymns at the beginning and end, an offertory anthem, and a postlude. A chanted vesper responsory and a few chanted collects were thrown in for good measure. The music was beautifully performed. The six readers of the lessons had obviously practiced and all read very well. Members of the choir had provided, and some non-choir volunteers had laid out, finger food and snacks for a reception in the parish hall following the service.

Barely 40 people attended. Not even a quarter of the Nave was filled. Those who attended all praised the choir’s, the officiant’s, and the readers’ efforts; they said it was a lovely experience. A couple of people said something to this effect, “It’s too bad more people weren’t here.” The spouse of a chorister was rather more critical and wondered why everyone had even bothered with all the planning, all the rehearsals, or the offering of the service when so few parishioners turned out.

Why? Paul directly answers that question in this bit from his first letter to the church in Thessalonika: “We [do it], not to please mortals, but to please God.” We do it for an audience of One.

A service of worship has many of the elements of a dramatic presentation or a musical concert, and much of the preparation we do for worship is the same as is done for those sorts of events. In many ways, worship is a drama . . . but in one important way it is very different. There is no difference between performer and audience; there is, in fact, no human audience. Every man, woman, and child who participates is an actor, not an observer.

For generations the church has acted as if these were roles of worship: The worship leaders (clergy and liturgical assistants, choir, liturgical musicians) are the performers of worship; the congregation is the audience; and God is the prompter of worship, i.e., God tells the worship leaders what to do. My favorite theologian-philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in the 19th Century wrote that that was all wrong. In corporate worship, he suggested, the people should be the performers, the worship leaders are to be the prompters, and God is the audience.

It doesn’t matter that only a few people turned out for the service of lessons and carols, or for any service. If we do all these things we are doing, all the liturgical design, all the musical rehearsal, all the polishing of silver and decorating of the church, and no one shows up on Christmas Eve but ourselves, it will not be for nothing. We do what we do, not to please mortals, but to please God.

So clergy, music directors, musicians, choir directors, altar guild mistresses, sacristans, choristers, Sunday School superintendents, lay readers, acolytes, and the scores of others doing all the things we are all doing to get ready for Christmas . . . do them to the best of your ability. We are doing them for the audience of One.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.

Advent Cleansing – From the Daily Office – December 3, 2012

December 3, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Isaiah:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Isaiah 1:16-17 (NRSV) – December 3, 2012.)

Advent is a time of preparation. We are getting ready for the annual feast of remembrance of the birth of Christ; we are getting ready for that unknown time that will come like a thief in the night when the Lord returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

When I was a kid one of the rituals associated with going to visit someone, or when someone was going to come visit us, was the cleaning up. Taking a bath or shower, scrubbing behind one’s ears, brushing one’s teeth. The latter I could understand; bad breath was to be avoided. But the cleaning behind the ears . . . was somebody going to look at the backs of my ears? Were the people we were going to visit, or the person coming to visit us, really going to inspecting my ears?

Those childhood pre-visit baths come to mind when I read Isaiah’s admonition to “wash yourselves” and “make yourselves clean.” Of course, ears are not the issue here; personal spirits, individual consciences, and social injustices are. What can I do this Advent to seek justice? How can I rescue the oppressed? What measures can I take to defend and plead for the orphan and the widow? Each of us must answer these questions for ourselves, and then act on them. In the midst of shopping, baking, partying, gift-wrapping, decorating, and all the rest, we need to find time to do more than throw a few coins in a red bucket. That may be a start, but earlier in this reading today, the Lord says clearly that “bringing offerings is futile.” (v. 13)

When the king returns, he will be looking at our lives, not our offerings (as important as those may be to us). It is not enough to pay someone else, even a church or a well-deserving charity, to take care of the poor. When the king like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, to those on his right hand he will say, “You gave me something to eat or drink or to wear. You visited me.” He will not say, “You paid for someone else to do these things.” That won’t have been enough; it has to be personal. Each of us must undertake personal actions of justice and kindness; this is how we make ourselves clean.

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

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

December 2, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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“The days are surely coming….”

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

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

“Heaven and earth will pass away….”

The End Is Near!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Say a Little Prayer . . . for Yourself – From the Daily Office – December 2, 2102

December 2, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Matthew’s Gospel:

Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 25:1-13 (NRSV) – December 2, 2012. Please note, this is the Daily Office gospel for today, a Sunday, not the gospel from the Eucharistic lectionary.)

I have to admit that I’ve never liked this parable! I mean, isn’t the point of the gospel of Jesus Christ that we are “all in this together” and that we’re supposed to help one another, share what we have, take care of our brothers and sisters who have less than we do? But here “wisdom” of five bridesmaids is to be selfish and not share their oil! That just doesn’t sit well with me.

But, of course, that’s not the point of the parable, is it? The thing about parables is that they are are extremely limited in their application. Parables, especially Jesus’ parables, are usually intended to make a single important point, and living in community, sharing what we have, and helping one another is definitely not the point of this parable. This little story is about being ready, being prepared, getting one’s act together.

As a reminder for the first day of the new Christian year, the first Sunday of the season of Advent, this story is most apt. In the midst of all the running about that most of us are doing at this time of year, buying presents, decorating homes and businesses, planning liturgies (those of us in the church business), planning menus, baking fruit cakes, making candy, taking care of travel arrangements . . . the list of pre-Christmas activities goes on and on . . . it is good to take a moment to look beyond the big day. Are we ready for something else? Are we ready for what lies beyond Christmas? Beyond this life? Are we ready for the bridegroom’s return? Will the bridegroom know you when he comes back?

The way to be known to cultivate a relationship; the way we do that with Christ is through prayer. Forty-five years ago this month, Dionne Warwick made the charts with the Burt Bacharach tune I Say a Little Prayer. The song describes several times each day, during every day activities, when the singer said a short prayer for her beloved. That’s really all it takes, a short prayer in the midst everyday life.

Here’s a simple exercise in tending one’s lamp and making sure one’s stock of oil is filled: each time you get into or out of your car say this words – “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Nine short words. Say them in connection with that one specific action. It won’t take long but it will cultivate the habit of prayer; it will add a little oil to your store; it will trim the wick of your lamp just a little.

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

An Angry Jesus – From the Daily Office – December 1, 2012

December 1, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Luke’s Gospel:

As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, “It is written, “My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.” Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 19:41-48 (NRSV) – December 1, 2012)

When I was eight years old, my grandparents gave me an illustrated copy of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. More than 50 years later, I still have it. It is rather small, a little bigger than a standard paper-back novel, and has a zippered leather cover. There are perhaps thirty glossy color plates with (one must admit) mediocre depictions of various biblical events. My favorite has always been the depiction of Jesus cleansing the Temple.

In that picture (not the picture I’ve appended to this post, I’m sorry to say), Jesus stands like some comic-book superhero, eyes blazing with righteous fury, his hair and the skirts of his robe flaring out as if he were some rapidly pirouetting dancer, arms outstretched, cat-o-nine-tails whipping about his head. Tables are crashing to the ground, animals are scattering, and the money changers and merchants are fleeing in terror. You can almost hear the panicked cries of the animals and the men.

Throughout the years, as I would go to Sunday School (not very often) or take confirmation instruction (required at my parochial high school) or attend college classes on “the bible as literature”, I would use that bible and look at those pictures, especially that one. I couldn’t really relate to the wise and gentle Jesus sitting on a hillside rock preaching the Beatitudes, nor to the suffering victim hanging on the cross under a stormy and darkling sky. But I could relate to the superhero furiously chasing the bad guys out of the Temple.

Many years later, I was practicing law as a trial lawyer and serving as the chancellor of my diocese. An older priest of the church during some council or committee meeting, or perhaps during the annual diocesan convention, in support of some position or other on some important issue of the day made the assertion that, “of course, Jesus never lost his temper.” What? thought I. You’ve got to be kidding! I’d grown up with a picture of a very angry Jesus kicking butt in Jerusalem!

But . . . as the years have passed, I have seen his point. Jesus was angry, but Jesus didn’t lose his temper. To be angry, even demonstrably angry is one thing; to lose one’s temper, however, suggests something more. Consider the synonymous descriptions we use: blow a fuse, fly into a rage, hit the roof, hit the ceiling, have a cow, have a fit, go ballistic, fly off the handle, flip one’s wig, flip one’s lid, blow one’s stack, throw a fit, blow up. They all describe a loss of control.

That’s the point, I believe, my older, more seasoned colleague was making. Jesus was angry, but Jesus was not out of control. Luke does not elaborate in his description of the cleansing of the Temple, nor do Mark or Matthew other than to add that he overturned the merchants’ tables. John, however, has a more interesting description:

In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:14-16)

Jesus was angry, but he was not out of control. He did not “lose his temper”. What he did was deliberate and determined. This was an incident of symbolic prophetic action, like Jeremiah breaking a clay pot, Isaiah walking naked through the city, or Hosea marrying a prostitute. This is Jesus very carefully and very consciously acting out the last verse of the prophecy of Zechariah: “There shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.” (Zech. 14:21)

So, after all these years, even though that superhero picture in my illustrated bible remains my favorite, I think the artist was wrong in his or her depiction of Jesus. If I were going to paint that scene now, everything might be the same except for Jesus’ eyes. I would not paint them flashing with terrible, uncontrolled rage; I would show in them the same kind of disappointed, almost sad, displeasure I sometimes saw in my parents’ eyes. That’s the only sort of anger I can imagine Jesus expressing . . . controlled, deliberate, and so very, very disappointed.

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

Shouting Stones – From the Daily Office – November 30, 2012

November 30, 2012 / eric / 1 Comment

From Luke’s Gospel:

They brought [a colt] to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 19:35-40 (NRSV) – November 30, 2012)

Duddo Stone Circle

In the rock opera Jesus Christ, Superstar Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is set to music in the song Hey Sanna Hosanna . In it, Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees is set in rhythm:

Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd?
Nothing can be done to stop the shouting.
If every tongue were stilled
The noise would still continue.
The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing

That’s one of my favorite verses of scripture and one of my favorite songs and, whenever I’m traveling and come across a stone monument of some sort, the image of shouting stones and the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice pop into my head.

In northeastern England there is a circle of standing stones at Duddo in Northumberland. I visited those stones in the summer of 2011, spending a lonely afternoon with them, loudly singing the music of Superstar all by myself in the English countryside. To reach the circle, you park your car at the side of a narrow country road and hike through a farmer’s fields for the better part of 40 minutes.

No one is quite sure what the Duddo Stone Circle is all about. It may have marked a burial site, but that cannot be proven because Victorian and early 20th Century excavations disturbed any cremation chamber that may have been there. It may have been a religious site of some sort, but who can tell? It is dated to the Bronze Age principally because of its size. Archeologists tell us that the final phase of stone circle building occurred during the early to middle Bronze Age (c. 2200–1500 BCE) which saw the construction of small circles like Duddo, probably by family groups or clans rather than the larger population groups needed to build the larger circles and henges, such as Stonehenge or huge stone circle that encompasses the village of Avebury in Wiltshire.

The purpose of stone circles and henges is forever lost to us. They may have been religious; they have been astrological or astronomical observatories of a sort; they have been talismanic. Still, whatever their purpose and whoever their builders, they remain today as monuments to community and cooperation, to the human need to communicate and connect with that which is greater than the individual. Though the stones at Duddo have fallen and been stood up again over time, they continue (perhaps 4,000 years after their initial placement on that hillside in Northumbria) to shout that message of human need.

I think that’s what Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees is all about. It’s an acknowledgement that our human need to connect with that which is larger than ourselves can never be silenced. Standing circles, henges, temples, church buildings, cathedrals are all evidence of that, even though they are nothing more than stones. They are stones artfully arranged to shout out, to sing glory to the heavens, to celebrate our connection to the infinite. Even when we are silent, like the long-gone builders of the Duddo Stone Circle, the stones themselves continue to cry out.

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

The Wounds on my Chest – From the Daily Office – November 29, 2012

November 29, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Prophet Zechariah:

On that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more; and also I will remove from the land the prophets and the unclean spirit. And if any prophets appear again, their fathers and mothers who bore them will say to them, “You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the Lord”; and their fathers and their mothers who bore them shall pierce them through when they prophesy. On that day the prophets will be ashamed, every one, of their visions when they prophesy; they will not put on a hairy mantle in order to deceive, but each of them will say, “I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the soil; for the land has been my possession since my youth.” And if anyone asks them, “What are these wounds on your chest?” the answer will be “The wounds I received in the house of my friends.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Zechariah 13:2-6 (NRSV) – November 29, 2012)

Chest Wound I know I’ve read this bit of Zechariah before, but I don’t think I’ve ever paid any attention to it. This morning, the image of parents “piercing” their own children who happen to be prophets and that of “the wounds I received in the house of my friends” really hit home! Strife within families and between friends is here the recompense paid by God to false prophets, but it seems to be the lot of the prophet, the priest, or the ardent advocate in any age. I am reminded of Jesus’ quoting Micah to the effect that “your enemies are members of your own household.” (Micah 7:6; cf Matt. 10:35-36 and Luke 12:52-53) Speaking on behalf of God or any god or any cause is never easy; it leads to misunderstanding and conflict – just look at what happened in many families during the recently passed political campaigns.

That strife and that wounding seem to happen most severely when someone is focused on a particular issue of great importance to them to the exclusion of all others. We referred to them as “single-issue voters” during the election. In recent years that single-issue in politics has been abortion, but the phenomenon is not limited to that particular matter.

I have a friend who is particularly dedicated to the cause of marriage equality. He is a faithful member of an Episcopal parish where he regularly worships, but because of the failure of the 2012 General Convention to adopt a rite for marriage of same-sex couples for use across the church without restriction he has vowed to give nothing of his time, talent, or treasure to the Episcopal Church. The issue came up in our conversation because of a church appeal for donations to assist those affected by Hurricane Sandy. He refused, “Not one red cent.”

That refusal felt like a stab in the gut, like a wound on the chest! We, the church, do so many things that are worthwhile and yet, because of his principled stand on that single issue, they are treated as nothing, as worthless, as unworthy of his consideration. He is unwilling to contribute to the support of what I dedicate my life to everyday. I understand why he is doing so; I even share his position on the marriage equality question. And yet I feel wounded by his refusal.

I would have to have a lot more fingers and toes to count all the times this sort of thing has happened in the church through the years over much less serious matters and much less principled positions. People, myself included, get bent out of shape over silly things – the kind music chosen for a service, the type or color of flowers on the altar, you name it – and the next thing you know parishioners are withholding contributions, or not attending worship, or even transferring their membership. Piercings! Gut stabs! Chest wounds!

I do not claim the mantle of prophecy by any stretch of the imagination, but I can surely relate to Zechariah’s oracle! Years ago, when I would bring up these sorts of things with my spiritual director (who was a parish priest of many years experience), he would just look at me with gentle eyes and ask, “And how did they treat Jesus?” In comparison, although they hurt, I guess I can live with the wounds on my chest.

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

That Which We Have Heard & Known

Page 94 of 130

The Lonely Golden Years – From the Daily Office – December 7, 2012

Blue Christmas – From the Daily Office – December 6, 2012

Swords Into Ploughshares – From the Daily Office – December 5, 2012

The Audience of One – From the Daily Office – December 4, 2012

Advent Cleansing – From the Daily Office – December 3, 2012

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

Say a Little Prayer . . . for Yourself – From the Daily Office – December 2, 2102

An Angry Jesus – From the Daily Office – December 1, 2012

Shouting Stones – From the Daily Office – November 30, 2012

The Wounds on my Chest – From the Daily Office – November 29, 2012

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