Category: Galatians (Page 4 of 5)

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

July 7, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us pray:

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

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

Legion . . . Silence: A Contrast – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C) – June 23, 2013

June 23, 2013 / eric / 1 Comment

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This sermon was preached on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 23, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 5 (Proper 7, Year C): 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalms 42 and 43; Galatians 3:23-29; and Luke 8:26-39. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Schizophrenia Illustration from Vimeo At the beginning of the sermon, following the reading of Gospel lesson, five readers scattered among the congregation, rose and loudly read the following five passages simultaneously:

Voice One: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Voice Two: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Voice Three: “You can’t do anything right and never will be able to. Everyone hates you. You have no friends. You are the most useless, worthless human being on the planet. You know this is true, and you are powerless to change it. You should just end it right now. There’s no reason for you to keep living.”

Voice Four: “In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and two teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.”

Voice Five “Mr. Dursley, a well-off Englishman, notices strange happenings on his way to work one day. That night, Albus Dumbledore, the head of a wizardry academy called Hogwarts, meets Professor McGonagall, who also teaches at Hogwarts, and a giant named Hagrid outside the Dursley home. Dumbledore tells McGonagall that someone named Voldemort has killed a Mr. and Mrs. Potter and tried unsuccessfully to kill their baby son, Harry.”

One of the many ways in which modern scholars try to make sense of the story of the Gerasene Demoniac is the suggestion that he was, in fact, schizophrenic. For example, the Dean of St. Alban’s Cathedral in England, Jeffrey John, writes:

Anyone presenting the symptoms of the Gerasene demoniac today would be rapidly committed for treatment of multiple schizophrenia – and quite rightly. It would be very foolish to do otherwise, or to discount the huge, God-given progress that has been made in our understanding and treatment of mental illness since biblical times. (The Meaning in the Miracles, p. 91, Eerdmans:2004)

A Roman Catholic writer who identifies himself only as “John” tells of accompanying a priest making his Eucharistic ministry rounds at a psychiatric hospital. He describes what happened when they arrived at the ward where the most seriously disturbed patients were housed:

My friend began to say the prayers and all was relatively calm until he raised the Eucharist. This very motion acted like a trigger for one of the patients who began to shout expletives, spit and hiss. This set off most of the others; he had to be restrained while we administered the Eucharist to those who wanted it and lined up to receive it. Amidst the cacophony I heard one thing that he shouted which remains with me to this day; he shouted “why are you coming in here tormenting us?” (John’s Ramblings)

He then comments, “It wasn’t until some time later that when meditating on the Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac . . . that I shuddered to a halt and recalled that event in the psychiatric hospital.”

Schizophrenics hear voices. This is the most common type of hallucination in schizophrenia. The voices may talk to the person about his or her behavior; they may order the person to do things; they may speak warnings of danger. Sometimes the voices talk to each other; sometimes they talk over one another, several voices speaking at once. What we experienced as these five people read these differing texts was a crude demonstration of what some schizophrenics experience, or what the Gerasene Demoniac seems to have suffered.

The great English author, C. S. Lewis, once wrote that we human beings are a “myriad of impulses, a cauldron of evil desires.” The Gerasene Demoniac certainly was. When Jesus asked him (or the demon within him) his name, the answer was, “We are legion.”

That is a very scary answer! That word, legion, is a Roman military term. In the Roman army, a legion consisted of six thousand men. We heard only five voices in our little demonstration. Can you imagine what it must have been like to hear thousands upon thousands of demonic voices? No wonder he would break his chains and shackles and run into the wilds to live in the cemetery among the tombs!

John, the Roman Catholic blogger, suggests that “all disorder, all conflict whether we call it civil, political, doctrinal, psychiatric, psychological, social or personal disorder, . . . anything that creates or contributes to disorder or conflict is the presence of evil at work in the world.” I believe he is correct, the message of the Prophets is that that disorder, that chaos is not, and never will be, the last word.

As dramatic counterpoint to the Gospel story today, we have another story of the Prophet Elijah. The Lectionary, as you remember, has had us bouncing around in the First Book of Kings reading stories of Elijah, but not in the order they are presented in that book. Instead, we have been getting the texts from First Kings as they may relate to the stories from Luke’s Gospel; today’s pairing seems to be a good example. What we see here is the stark difference between the chaotic disorder of evil, represented by demon possession (or schizophrenia), and the order of holiness, represented by the “sheer silence” in which Elijah encounters God.

You recall the story. Elijah has just killed the 450 prophets of Ba’al, which has royally angered the wicked Queen Jezebel. She has sent word to Elijah saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” In other words, “Look out, Dude! I’m gonna kill you!” So Elijah, in fear, flees into the desert and in a fit of depression prays that God will take his life. However, an angel appears and tells him that’s not going to happen. He is instructed to eat something and then travel to “Horeb, the mount of God.” This is understood to be the very same place where Moses received the Tablets of the Law. When he gets there, God asks what his problem is: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah answers that all the prophets of Yahweh have been killed (by Queen Jezebel and her army) and only he is left. So God tells him to stand at the mouth of his cave because God will pass by.

He does so and there is a storm, and then an earthquake, and then a fire. All of these things represent that disordered chaos which the Demoniac in the Gospel experiences, and God is in none of them. Instead, God is in the “sheer silence,” as the New Revised Standard Version translates the Hebrew. A literal translation of the Hebrew would be “the sound of gentle blowing,” and the King James Version translated this by that wonderful turn of phrase “a still small voice.”

So we have this wonderful juxtaposition of an image of loud, confusing, demonic chaos — the Gerasene Demoniac, a person in a situation which is overwhelmingly evil, permeated with and being buffeted by a legion of devils, thousands of incoherent voices, pulling him in every direction, ruining his life — with an image of calm, peaceful, gentleness — the still small voice of God present in sound of sheer silence, the sound of gentle blowing.

We, I hope, are not possessed of demons, nor suffering from schizophrenia or some other form of delusional mental illness. But we all inhabit a world of many, many voices, all talking to us, all telling us what to think, or do, or say. No matter how old we are, we will always have the voices of parents and grandparents playing in our heads; we have the voices of politicians, news reporters, bosses, spouses, our own children, their teachers, doctors, lawyers, tax advisers . . . and occasionally preachers . . . all telling us what to do. There are times when all of that noise can get us down, when we can all relate personally to the lament in today’s gradual psalm: “Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me?”

Several years ago, there was a job opening on a cruise ship; a new communications officer was need. There were several applicants seeking the position and all were told to come to a particular office at the same time on the same day. They arrived and were shown in to a waiting room. While they waited to be interviewed, the conversed with one another and soon the room was filled with the sounds of conversation. After quite a long wait, another applicant who was late came in and sat down; everyone else was busy talking, so she just quietly waited for a few minutes, but then suddenly, she jumped up and walked through a door marked “Private.” A few minutes the personnel manager walked out of that door and announced that the position had been filled; the late-arriving applicant had been hired. The other applicants were extremely angry, “We were here first! How could she go ahead of us and get the job?” To which the personnel manager replied, “Any of you could have gotten the job if you had just been quiet long enough to pay attention to the message on the intercom.” “What message?” “All the time you were talking the intercom was broadcasting in Morse Code, ‘A ship’s communications officer must always be on the alert. The first person who gets this message and comes directly into my office will get the job.'”

I believe that God’s still small voice is like that coded message. It’s there if we will but take a few moments of silence and listen for it. And if it seems like we do not have the power to do so on our own, if we are unable to still the storms, the earthquakes, the fires, the voices . . . the story of the Gerasene Demoniac reminds us that Jesus can, because personal exorcism is not what this story is really about. “Rather,” as Jeffrey John reminds us, “it is about the promise . . . of God’s ability to defeat and re-order the disordered powers that afflict both individuals and communities.”

Life can sometimes, indeed, life can often be permeated with great evil that is almost beyond human comprehension and beyond our ability to handle. In those moments, we may be tempted to just give up and give in to the intensity of evil around us. Like the Psalmist we may cry out, “Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me?” Like Elijah we may be tempted to just sit down in the desert and say, “Let me die.” But God does not give up; Jesus does not give up. Jesus faces the demons with his healing and his peace. There is no situation so bad that Jesus cannot or will not bring his healing power.

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?
and why are you so disquieted within me?
Put your trust in God;
for I will yet give thanks to him,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God.
Amen.

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

Honoring Women on Fathers’ Day – Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6C) – June 16, 2013

June 16, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 16, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 4 (Proper 6, Year C): 1 Kings 21:1-21a; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Today, I would like to talk about women. I know it’s Fathers’ Day but as my friend and colleague (someone known to many of you) the Rev. Jennifer Leider recently remarked, “The lectionary is no respecter of secular holidays.” On this 4th Sunday after Pentecost, looking at the lessons for Proper 6 in Lectionary Year C, we have some readings from Scripture which draw our attention to women: women as active agents in the world of men, as subjects who act rather than as objects which are acted upon. Given the cultures, the political realities, and the social mores of the times and places in which these stories happened and were recorded, that’s really quite amazing! So, it may be Fathers’ Day, but let’s take a look at these biblical women.

The first woman to consider is the wife of King Ahab of Israel, Queen Jezebel. Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre, the Phoenician empire. She was a powerful woman who commanded her own army and had considerable control over the religious establishment of her homeland. According to the Scriptures, she converted her husband to the worship of Ba’al and convinced him to have many Jewish prophets killed. As we heard a couple of weeks ago, she brought 450 prophets of Ba’al into Israel and the Jewish prophet Elijah challenged them to a competition, which he and Yahweh won, and he then had the prophets of Ba’al slaughtered. This made Jezebel his enemy and, out of fear for her, he fled the country. In today’s lesson from the First Book of Kings we see her wielding this power and manipulating her husband’s acquisition of a vineyard by getting the legitimate owner, Naboth, falsely accused of and executed for blasphemy. This was not a woman to be messed with; she had political, military, and religious power.

This was not so with the second woman we meet in Scripture today, a woman described in Luke’s Gospel as a “notorious sinner” who interrupts a dinner party to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears, dry them with her hair, and anoint them with costly oil poured from an alabaster jar.

In all four of the gospels there is a story like this. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all relate a tale of a woman who, at a dinner party, comes and anoints Jesus with a jar of balm described as extravagantly expensive. In each story someone objects to the waste of the valuable ointment (or the money spent on it). In each story someone questions Jesus’ credentials as a religious person. In each story Jesus defends the woman’s action.

In Matthew’s Gospel the event happens “while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,” just a few days before the Crucifixion; “a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table.” When the action is challenged by the disciples, Jesus defends it as an anointing for his burial. (Matt. 26:6-13) Mark’s version is essentially the same as Matthew’s.

John says that it was Jesus’ feet that were anointed, rather than his head, but agrees with Matthew and Mark this event took place just a few days before Jesus’ execution. Like Luke, John describes the woman as washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. But John identifies the woman as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

Luke is the only one who doesn’t put relate this story as part of the narrative Jesus’ passion and death. In this version, Luke takes the story of anointing, places it in the house of a Pharisee, adds the parable of excused mortgages, and gives us a story forgiveness, not a story of preparation for death.

In each of the other stories, especially John’s telling, there is some suggestion that the woman has a legitimate right to be at the dinner, or at least in the house. This is not the case here. As I said a moment ago, this woman is described by Luke as “a notorious sinner.” She is clearly not an invited guest; she is not a member of Simon the Pharisee’s household. She just comes in off the street and does this remarkable, surprising thing. We might wonder how this could have happened; how could she have gotten all the way into the dining room to do this? To answer that question, we need to imagine ourselves in First Century Palestine.

Imagine that world for a moment. There are no telephones, neither cell phones nor land lines. There is no air conditioning. There is no refrigeration. Nothing electric at all. Furthermore, there is no credit; lending or credit are forbidden in the Law of Moses. Whatever was needed for daily life, especially food, had to be purchased with cash everyday. Whatever communication there was need of had to be done in person or through a messenger, usually a servant or slave employed specifically to run messages around town. Whatever business was done was usually done from the home, not from an office somewhere else. There were no schools; whatever education a child may have gotten was done at home by parents or, if the family was wealthy, by servants or hired tutors.

So people were constantly coming and going; members of the household going out to shop everyday and returning with their purchases. Messengers from others delivering family or business communications; the households own messengers taking messages to others. Servants coming and going.

Houses of the sort a prominent man like Simon the Pharisee would have had had a central courtyard with a number of rooms opening off it. The courtyard would have been separated from the public street by a wall and a gate, the gate usually open to all that coming and going.

The other three sides of the courtyard was surrounded by rooms, which would have been open to the courtyard to provide ventilation and cooling. Their inner walls would have been finished with a smooth coat of clay or plaster, decorated with elaborate frescoes. Wide benches of stone for sitting and sleeping, and shelves for storage would have been built into the walls. Stairs or a ladder would have led up onto the roof, which was used as an outdoor room most likely for bathing and laundry during the day and for sleeping at night during summer heat.

These rooms tended to be small and dark, so the courtyard and the roof were the important parts of the house; here those activities needing good light, spinning and weaving, food preparation, and dining would have taken place. In the courtyard of a First Century house you might find:

the mikveh, a pool of clean rainwater used for ritual cleansing
a kitchen area where food, purchased day by day, was prepared
a covered area where people worked and socialized, where they ate

This was the center of activity and socializing; it was here that all that coming and going took place. It was here that a woman might enter the gate right off the public street and interrupt a dinner in progress.

And that is what this woman did. A “notorious sinner,” an outcast, one of the lowest of the low, took matters into her own hands. Knowing that Jesus was there and knowing that he might be able to help her do something to end her abject abnegation, she felt herself empowered. She had heard, no doubt, about the several times he had healed and forgiven others even when others thought it violated the Law in some way (Luke, Chapters 5 and 6). She might have heard about (or even been present at) his Sermon on the Plain. When he said:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. (Luke 6:20-23)

she might have understood that he was speaking to her. And when she heard him say:

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back. (Luke 6:37-38)

she may have made her plan to give everything she had, to spend whatever she had on that costly jar of oil, to give him her best in thanksgiving for the forgiveness she felt had been given her. So she took matters into her own hands, bought that ointment, and walked through that gate and into that dinner party. Jesus rewarded her boldness and confirmed her forgiveness in the parable he told the Pharisee and in the words with which he thanked her and sent her on her way, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The last image of women we have in today’s lessons is not a single woman, but a group of women. Luke tells us that, shortly after this extraordinary dinner party, Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming the good news, and that with him where the twelve and “some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.” (Luke 8:1-3) Here we have a picture of women of who in one sense are like Jezebel: they are independent women of means, some married, some unmarried, who own their own property and resources, women who have the authority to do as they wish. But in another sense they are like the woman with the alabaster jar; they give from their resources to provide for Jesus in his ministry.

So these are the three pictures of women in today’s scriptures: a woman of wealth and power who used who wealth and power to corrupt and manipulate; a woman of absolutely no status whatsoever who felt empowered to give probably everything she had in gratitude for the forgiveness brought to her by Jesus; and women of independent means who made their own decisions to work for the betterment of the world, who (in this particular instance) supported Jesus in his ministry of forgiveness. It is certainly not like Jezebel, but like the others that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion encourages and hopes to help women to become through our adoption of the Third Millennium Goal: to promote gender equality and empower women.

Not only in this Gospel story, but again and again in the Gospels we see Jesus meeting and interacting with women in ways that honor them, raise them up, and empower them. There is the woman who argued that “even the dogs get to eat the crumbs under the table” as she begged for healing for her daughter, whose faith Jesus applauded. There is the widow he observed who gave all she had to the temple treasury, whom Jesus praised for putting the wealthy to shame. There was Mary Magdalene, who became the first witness to the resurrection, the first evangelist of the Good News of the Risen Christ.

These are women whom Jesus empowered to be something other than the role their society would have put them in, to act with confidence that they, like the men around them, were created in the image of God.

Many women around the world today live in circumstances that make it difficult, if not impossible, to act with similar confidence. News reports daily document the level of violence against women: rape as a weapon of war (or as a possible danger of military service), so-called honor killings, sex trafficking, and other horrors suffered by women simply because they are women. In the United States today, homicide is the third leading cause of death for girls aged 1 to 4 and also for young women, 15 to 24, and most are killed by someone they know.

We are called by Jesus and by the church to emulate his ministry of forgiveness and empowerment, to offer women throughout the world the opportunity to choose life in a world ravaged by war, hunger, disease, and death; to promote gender equality so that women and men have equal opportunities and equal roles in decision-making throughout society. To promote equality between the sexes is to promote the healing of our world and to further the church’s ministry of reconciliation.

Yes, it’s Fathers’ Day, and as Jennifer Leider said, “The lectionary is no respecter of secular holidays.” But as it happens, Time Magazine decided to celebrate Fathers’ Day this week by asking some famous fathers to write open letters to their daughters, and those letters echo remarkably the message of today’s lectionary readings. Senator Marco Rubio wrote to his daughters Amanda and Daniella: “My hope for my daughters is that they will grow up to be strong, confident women who understand that they can be whatever that want to be in life.” Chicago mayor Rahm Immanuel wrote to his daughters Ilana and Leah his hope that they would be “smart, fearless, independent . . . strong, trailblazing women.” And producer Aaron Sorkin wrote this advice to his daughter Roxanne: “Be brave and know that the bravest thing you can do is be willing to not fit in. Never take pleasure in someone else failing. Dare to fail yourself. Be the one who doesn’t care as much about clothes as the person wearing them. Be kind, be compassionate and be humble.”

Our call as Christians, the message of today’s lessons, is that we are to help build a world where that is possible, where no woman need be as conniving and manipulative as Jezebel, where no woman should be as put down and subjected as the woman who interrupted the dinner party, where every woman can be as independent and resourceful as those who followed Jesus and supported his ministry of forgiveness.

Today’s Gospel teaches us that the best way to honor fathers is empower their daughters.

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

Offal Theology Beats Awful Theology – Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5C) – June 9, 2013

June 9, 2013 / eric / 4 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 9, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 3 (Proper 5, Year C): 1 Kings 17:8-24; Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; and Luke 7:11-17. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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Jesus Raises the Son of the Widow of Nain You may remember that last week, as we were looking at the story of Elijah competing with the prophets of Ba’al, I said that Elijah was an unpleasant person. Well, this week we have another story of Elijah and another example of his unpleasantness. The Rev. Lia Scholl, a Mennonite pastor who writes sermon helps on a blog called The Hardest Question, said, “Every time I read this passage, my first reaction is, ‘Elijah is a jerk!'”

She points out that doesn’t ask for a drink of water or a morsel of bread, he demands them. Listen again to what the First Book of Kings says, “When [Elijah] came to the gate of [Zarephath], a widow was there gathering sticks; he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a little water in a vessel, so that I may drink.’ As she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, ‘Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.'” He doesn’t introduce himself; he doesn’t explain himself; he just insists that the widow take care of his needs. “It’s just jerk behavior,” says the Rev. Scholl.

For the moment, though, let’s forgive Elijah his jerkiness, his unpleasant personality, and take a close look at this story. If it is an historical event (and about that there is some considerable doubt), and if the Books of Kings are intended to be a chronological record, then our lectionary has had us read about events in Elijah’s life out of sequence; this story is told one chapter before the sacrifice competition we heard about last week. The reason for us reading the stories out of order is pretty clear; our lectionary editors want us to hear and consider this story in connection with Jesus’ raising of the son of the widow of Nain.

This story about Elijah would have been very familiar to Jesus and those who witnessed what he did in Nain, and it’s possible that this Elijah story was known to Luke. They may have believed it to be an historical fact, but modern scholarship considers it unlikely that this is a factual story. It has the appearance of being a legend or folk tale intended by the author of First Kings to enhance Elijah’s standing as a prophet. First, there is the matter of the magic flask of oil and the magic container of flour, these vessels that never run out during the course of the three-year drought that is said to be affecting the land. (By the way, Elijah is credited with both causing and ending the drought with just a word, but other than this story in First Kings, there’s no evidence in any other historical or archeological record of there being a drought around his time.) Second, there is the manner in which Elijah brings the widow’s son back from the dead. Here’s the way it is described: “He [meaning Elijah] stretched himself upon the child three times.” This is what folklorists and anthropologists would call “sympathetic magic;” Elijah mimics the death of the boy, then acts out his desired resurrection, then utters some sort of magical formula, in this case a prayer to his god, Yahweh.

Now I said that those who witnessed Jesus raise the son of the widow of Nain probably knew this story and probably thought of it as factual. It is this prayer that Elijah speaks, and in fact the whole theology of the story, that makes me glad that we can look back at it and say it probably isn’t!

Listen to what the widow of Zarephath said to Elijah when her son died: “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son!” This is awful theology! The widow blames herself for her child’s death. She believes that something she has done has caused her son to die. We still hear this kind of thinking today; we’ve all heard people in fits of grief cry out, “What have I done to deserve this?” Worse, she blames God because God’s prophet, Elijah, has come to her and this (she believes) has caused her sin to be recalled by God; in turn, because of that recollection, God has caused this terrible judgment (the death of her son) to happen. Now the poor woman in her grief, I suppose, can be forgiven this awful theology.

But Elijah in his prayer, his magic incantation after stretching out on the body of the deceased and enacting the boy’s resurrection, says exactly the same thing to God: “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” According to the theology of this story, God punishes the sinful behavior (what ever it may have been) of parents by murdering their children!

I am often called upon to engage in conversation with atheists who want to tell me why they don’t believe in God. I don’t go looking for these conversations, but wearing a clerical collar in an airport or a restaurant or wherever they just seem to happen. And when they tell me why they don’t believe in God, in addition to all the allegedly scientific reasons about there being no credible experimentally verifiable evidence, there is always some variation on, “I can’t believe in a god that would allow (or cause) children to die.”

“Well, guess what?” I tell them. “I don’t either!” I don’t believe in the god that this story of Elijah portrays. I do not believe the theology of this story is correct! And that’s why I’m glad that I can say, “Modern biblical scholarship strongly suggests that this story never happened.” It was and is merely folklore preserved to enhance the reputation of this jerk Elijah as a powerful, miracle-working prophet of God.

But as I suggested, the people who witnessed Jesus’ action in raising the son of the widow of Nain revered Elijah’s memory and probably did believe it to be factual, and that’s why what Jesus did was so important. Let’s set Elijah and his awful theology aside for a moment and just focus on the gospel story.

First of all, let’s make note of the fact that this story is one of only three in which Jesus raises someone from the dead. One is the raising of the synagogue leader Jairus’s daughter told in all of the Synoptic Gospels. The second is the raising of Lazarus told only in John’s Gospel. And then there is this story told only by Luke.

In the first two, Jesus is asked by the grieving father, or by Lazarus’ grieving sisters, to come and heal their sick relative, but before he comes the patient dies. In this story, there is no request at all, and Jesus’ first knowledge of the death is when he happens upon the funeral procession. Luke writes, “As [Jesus] approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her.” That’s it, that’s the key to this story. Jesus had compassion for the widow.

What does that word mean to you? When someone is said to be “compassionate,” what do you understand them to be saying? I asked some high-schoolers what it meant to them and one of them volunteered, “Well, it means you feel sorry for someone.” The rest all agreed with that. I suppose to most modern American folk that is what it means. We feel sorry for someone, so maybe we lend a hand if we have the time, or give a few dollars to charity, or if it’s someone we know we bake a casserole. The root of our word “compassion” is Latin for “feeling with” and feeling someone else’s sorrow, feeling “sorry for them” is part of that.

But that doesn’t hold a candle to the word Luke uses to describe Jesus! The Greek text here is the verb splanchnizomai. You know how some words just stick with you? When I was learning Greek that was one that did – splanchnizomai – I just loved the sound of it. It derives from the noun splanchna, which refers to offal, to inner organs – intestines, spleen, liver, kidneys – we would say “guts” today. Jesus didn’t just “feel sorry” for the widow of Nain; he felt this woman’s pain and grief down here, down deep, down in his offal, down in his guts . . . and he was determined to do something for her.

So Jesus does the unthinkable; he interrupts a funeral procession and takes hold of the corpse! In any culture that would be a violation of, at the very least, good taste, but amongst First Century Palestinian Jews this was an act of unspeakable uncleanness; it was a sacrilege! One simply did not touch, let alone grab hold of a dead body!

I was present at both my father’s and my paternal grandfather’s funerals. They were open-casket funerals because of their Lodge affiliations – my father was member of the BPOE; my grandfather, a Mason. Both groups have special funeral services that require an open casket. I remember that the morticians had arrange their hands so that they were laid across their chests, and I remember that both my mother and my grandmother at the conclusion of the services went up to the coffin, reached out, and grabbed hold of their husband’s hands. I’m certain that both of them, if they could have, would have pulled them out of those boxes and made them live again. They couldn’t, of course, but Jesus could do that for the widow of Nain. He could do it and did do it because he had compassion; he felt her pain and her grief right down there in his gut, and he gave her back her son.

And that is what makes this story so different from our Old Testament story!

The theology of the story of Elijah with widow of Zarephath tells of a god who punishes parents’ wrong doing by murdering their children. Jesus showed that theology to be not merely wrong, but awful, monstrously awful! God is a god of life, not of death. God is a god who not only does not murder children to punish their parents, God gives dead children back to their parents.

God moves powerfully beyond our theologies, especially our monstrous theologies, to give new life, to perform a new creation. God is a god of compassion, a god who feels our pain and our suffering and our grief down deep in God’s guts. (One might say that the offal theology of Jesus is beats the awful theology of Elijah.)

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
because the Lord feels their captivity in his guts.

the Lord opens the eyes of the blind; *
because the Lord feels their blindness in his guts.

the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
because the Lord feels their degradation in his guts.

the Lord sustains the orphan and widow.
because the Lord feels their pain and grief and loneliness in his guts.

The offal theology of Jesus beats the awful theology Elijah! Hallelujah!

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

Ten Authentic Years – Sermon for Pentecost 2 (Proper 4C) – June 2, 2013

June 2, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 2, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Pentecost 2 (Proper 4, Year C): 1 Kings 18:20-39, Psalm 96, Galatians 1:1-12, and Luke 7:1-10. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.)

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10th Anniversary Ten years ago yesterday, June 1, 2003, I became Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Medina, Ohio, Inc. We didn’t celebrate that “new ministry” until sometime in October because of difficulties scheduling bishops and other dignitaries, but on Sunday, June 1, 2003, I presided at the Holy Eucharist for the first time in this space.

It was different then. One of the things we’ve done in the past ten years is remodel this space (thanks to a gift from Verna Bruckmann in memory of her late husband Jack whom many of us remember with affection). We’ve also upgraded the parish library, refurbished the dining room, and improved the parish hall (thanks to the good fund-raising efforts of the Episcopal Church Women). We’ve purchased additional real estate, torn down the derelict houses that were on it, incorporated those lots into our landscaping, and replanted nearly all of the decorative gardens, mostly with volunteer labor.

But more important than the building and the grounds are the ministries through which we have touched peoples’ lives. In these ten years, there have been more than 1,500 celebrations of the Holy Eucharist in this sanctuary! That means just here, in this space, there have been more than 250,000 administrations of Holy Communion; more than a quarter of a million times communicants have received the Blessed Sacrament, this sacrament which (as one of our prayers of thanksgiving says) is “the pledge of our redemption” through which the grace of God brings us “forgiveness of our sins, strength in our weakness, and everlasting salvation.”

During these ten years, since we started the Brown Bag Concerts in 2007, there have been more than seventy free concerts and recitals in this space, which means something on the order of 4,000 concert-goers have received the gift music which (the poet Berthold Auerbach said) “washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

There have been more than seventy baptisms, more than forty-five weddings, and more funerals than I care to remember. Each summer up to fifty children have come into this worship space to sing songs, act in skits, and learn the stories of the faith at our annual Vacation Bible Schools.

And downstairs, twice month, 220 times in these ten years, the Free Farmers’ Market has opened its doors and provided sustenance to those unable to afford it in the stores. I suppose a statistician or an economist would invent some measure for what has been distributed like a “family-week of groceries” — we’ve distributed something like 16,000 or more “family-weeks” of food and other items to hundreds of needy households. All told, nearly a half-million pounds, 250 tons, of food have been given away by this parish.

And that’s just a small sample of the statistics we could boast. There have been home visits, picnics, hospital communions, confirmations, study groups, foyer groups, potluck suppers, and so much more.

It’s been a good ten years. So . . . Happy Anniversary!

I’ll come back to consideration of our decade together, but for now, let’s take a look at the lessons for today.

What we have in our three selections from Scripture this morning are stories of authority, but more than that, they are stories of authenticity. Let’s take a look at each one in turn.

First, we have the story of a competition between Elijah, a prophet of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and the priests and prophets of Ba’al, who was the god (or perhaps the pantheon of gods) of the Phoenicians. Elijah was a well-known prophet. We know that he was known in Syria and in Egypt and in other places because the Bible tells us this, that he was known as “the man of God.” Not simply as “a man of God” but as “the man of God.” He was well known as a prophet, but he was not well known as a pleasant fellow – I’ll get to that in a moment.

In our story today, “the man of God” is dealing with a competing religion. Ba’al worship had been brought to Israel when King Ahab married a woman whose name is familiar to all of us, Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, King of Tyre. The marriage of their king to this Phoenician princess and his allowing her to set up temples and practices of her native religion in Shechem, the capital of the northern kingdom, caused a problem for the people of Israel. Should they continue in their old religion (represented by Elijah) or in this new religion followed by their queen and, eventually under her influence, their king? Being politically astute, they did the logical thing – a little bit of both. And this is where we enter the story in today’s reading from the First Book of Kings.

An assembly is called and Elijah says to everyone, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Ba’al, then follow him.” Nobody says a word . . . . So Elijah proposes a contest. “Let’s do this,” he says, “well set up two altars and put a bull carcass on each one. The priests of Ba’al will call on their god to consume his bull with fire and I’ll call on my god to consume his bull with fire, and the one that actually does it will be acknowledged as the god to be worshiped in this country.”

I love the way the New Revised Standard translation gives the people’s response: “Well spoken!” they say. It’s like he was just giving a speech – the Gettysburg Address or something. The actual Hebrew is “good utterance.” The American Standard translation renders it better as, “That is a good idea!” Everybody loves a sporting event; everybody loves a good contest! Good idea!

So they do it. The priests and prophets of Ba’al set up their altar and do their best. They chant and dance and even cut themselves in an attempt to get their god’s attention, but nothing. Then it’s Elijah’s turn. But before he prays, he tells those present to make it really hard to burn up the altar and the bull sacrifice – “Douse it with water,” he says, “douse it good.” Three times they flood it, until water is running everywhere and the whole place is a muddy mess.

That’s when he says, basically, “OK, God, do it!” And God does it – a lightning bolt or a pillar of fire or something – and all the wood, the water, the bull, the whole shebang is burnt up!

But this is where our lectionary gives us a false impression of the story. Our “official” reading cuts off a verse before the story actually ends. We are left hearing that all the people “fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.'” It sounds like everybody, including the followers of Ba’al, agreed Yahweh was the real deal and lived happily ever after. Not so . . . .

The next verse:

Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.” Then they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon, and killed them there. (1 Kings 18:40)

You see, Elijah was not a particularly pleasant person. We know this from the story of Elijah cleansing the Syrian leper, the general Naaman; he wouldn’t even bother to talk to Naaman, just sent him a message to bathe in the Jordan. That really annoyed Naaman. And we see it in spades here. Elijah had won this battle. God was proven to be the true God and Ba’al was shown to be powerless. But Elijah can’t just leave it there; he has to drive the point home by slaughtering those who had served the false god. This really annoys Queen Jezebel who will send her army to find and kill Elijah. You all know the story of Elijah hiding in the cave and living through a storm, a mighty wind, and an earthquake, but finally hearing the voice of God in the silence. This little competition with and killing of the prophets of Ba’al is why he was hiding.

So this is a story of authority – the authority of Yahweh as the true god and the authority of Elijah as his prophet – but it is also a story of authenticity. Elijah made no bones about who and what he was; he was not a pleasant fellow. And everyone knew it. Nonetheless, they clearly respected him. Despite his unpleasantness, this defect in his character, they respected his role and office as a prophet of the living God. And God empowered him as and who he was.

So . . . second reading — the introduction to Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Reading one of Paul’s letters it is always best to remember that almost all of them were written to solve problems.

Paul’s method of evangelism was to ride into town, spend time getting to know the people, gather a group of folks interested in the story of Jesus, share the gospel with them and instruct them, identify the leaders in the group, empower those leaders (ordain them, if you will) to carry on and minister within the community, and then move on to some new town and start the process all over again. What would happen then is that the community would have some problem and someone would contact Paul – “Dear Paul, you aren’t going to believe what is going on . . .” – and he would write a letter giving his advice on how to deal with it.

This is what has happened in Galatia. After Paul left, two other groups of Christian missionaries showed up and tried to convince the Galatians that Paul had been wrong. The first group were the Gnostics. The Gnostics had been around since before Jesus, but they’d sort of adopted Jesus as one of their own; some who were exposed to the Gnostic teachings found in Jesus the sort of teacher they’d had before. Gnosticism gets its name from the Greek word for “knowledge” and their approach to religion and spirituality was based on the idea that through special knowledge one could escape the evil of the material world. They thought that the material world was bad and that salvation was achieved by leaving it behind, and the only way to leave it behind was through initiation into this special or secret knowledge. Christian Gnostics taught that Jesus had given the secret knowledge to the Twelve and they had then passed it on to a few special leaders who passed it on to chosen initiates, and so forth. To them, Paul’s response was, “No way! The Gospel is open and transparent. It’s for everyone!”

The second set of folks who were causing the Galatians problems were Jewish Christians who taught that before you could be a Christian you had to be a Jew. We call them “the Judaizers.” They were teaching that a Gentile had to first convert to Jewish law and practice. Gentiles had to “keep kosher” (as we would currently say), then they could be baptized and be followers of Jesus’ Way. For example, they taught that adult males had to be circumcised. (I think it may have been one of those adult males who wrote to Paul – “You aren’t going to believe what these people are saying!”)

Paul’s response to the Judaizers was also a big “No way!” What he wrote to the Galatians was that Jesus and Jesus’ good news redeems them where and as they are. They do not need to become something else, something different. Rather, they need to be authentically themselves. It is as their authentic selves that Jesus redeems them and empowers them to be better Gentiles; they don’t have to become Jews.

Again, it is a story of authenticity and of God’s respect for people as and who they are.

Which brings us to the gospel lesson from Luke, a healing story told in both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, but in Luke’s version it is unlike any other in all of the Gospels. In no other healing story does Jesus never talk to the person making the request, nor address the person being healed, nor even see (let alone touch) the person being healed, but that is exactly what happens here according to Luke. As Jesus arrives in Capernaum, some Jewish elders come to him and tell him about this Roman Centurion who has been very good to their community. Apparently there is someone in his household who is very important to him and this person is gravely ill. The Greek is unclear — the word used is pais which could mean “son” or “servant” or “slave” or, even possibly, “beloved” — but what is clear is that the Centurion would like this person healed.

Jesus is convinced by the elders to do so and sets off for the Centurion’s house. Before he gets there, however, the Roman sends messengers saying, “You don’t need to come. I’m unworthy to have you to enter my home. Just say the word and my son/servant/beloved will be healed.” Perhaps the Centurion knows of the Jewish custom forbidding an observant Jew from entering a Gentile home. In any event, his messengers convey his explanation: “Like you, Jesus, I am a man under authority. I answer to those above me, and I expect and get obedience from those below me.” He is saying that he recognizes that Jesus is under the authority of Heaven, and that as such he can expect and get the obedience of the powers of the world. Just say the word; it will be done.

In response to this message, Jesus praises the Roman’s faith: “Not even in Israel have I found such faith,” he tells the crowd. The word here translated as “faith” is pistis, the root of which is peitho which names the quality of having trust, or of being trusted, or trusthworthy, and confident. So while this, too, appears to be a story about authority it is, at its heart, a story about authenticity. This Roman was being true to who he was; not a Jew, he felt unable to appeal directly to Jesus or to have Jesus enter his home. Nonetheless, he had the confidence that Jesus would honor him and heal his son/slave/beloved. And Jesus does so. Jesus honors his honesty and authenticity.

Which brings me back to our 10th anniversary . . . .

Ten years and a few months ago we, this parish of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Medina, Ohio, and I began the courtship which is the way we Episcopalians pick and choose our clergy leadership. This parish, as any parish in search of a rector would do, did a self study and prepared a parish profile which was then entered in to our denominational dating computer in New York City. As a priest seeking a new call, I had done a personal profile and had it in entered into that same ecclesiastical “match-dot-com” system. The dating computer ran its algorithms and matched us up, and you all selected me as one of the priests to contact, so we started our conversations.

Now you all know that Evelyn and I are originally from Nevada, so while this was going on, she was praying that we would end up somewhere (as she put it) “western.” She didn’t disallow my consideration of a parish in Ohio, but she wasn’t really all that thrilled about it. One of the things that had attracted me to St. Paul’s Parish was your written profile, this booklet that parishes write and publish with pictures and financial reports and so forth, describing themselves, their town, the ministries they do, etc. etc. etc. Most of the time these profiles are not really very accurate; instead of being a description of the parish as it is, they describe what the congregation wants to be — they are “wish lists.” Sometimes, even worse, they are simply “what someone in the diocesan office told us we had to say if we wanted to get a priest.” St. Paul’s Parish Profile was different. It seemed to be honest and authentic. It told a story of a lot of good stuff, but it also admitted to some not very positive, not very inviting aspects of the church, as well. I remember one line, in particular, in the closing paragraphs of the booklet: “This is who we are . . . warts and all.” (I now have some suspicion about who probably wrote that line!)

At the same time, I tried to be honest and up-front with you, as well. While Evie was praying that I would get a call to someplace “western,” I kept telling her not to worry; each time I would answer one of your search committee’s requests for more information about me, or for a copy of a sermon, or for my position on some controversial issue, I would say to her, “Well, after they get this, they won’t be calling me.”

And then there was the face-to-face interview, the visit when we got to know one another. You told me what you were looking for in the future, what you hoped to be, what your problems as a church community were. I told you what my strengths and skills in ministry were and are; I told you what I didn’t (and still don’t) do well. Let’s face it — there are some things I’m pretty good at . . . and there are some things I’m really quite bad at! And after our last, extremely honest conversation, as we sat waiting to board the plane back to Kansas, I said to Evelyn one more time, “Well, after this, they won’t be calling me.” But you did.

I tell Evie that she got exactly what she prayed for! Where did we end up? In the “Western Reserve”! (I tell her now that she has to be more specific in her requests of God.)

Throughout our so-far-ten-year relationship we’ve stayed honest and up-front and authentic with one another. I think that’s how we’ve been able to accomplish the things we’ve done. And let’s be very honest about that — all of those statistics, the hundreds of worship services, the thousands of communions, the dozens of concerts, the tons of food distributed, I can’t take responsibility for those. I believe we have been able to do all of that because we have been authentic; I believe that God blesses those who are authentic, open, honest, and up-front with themselves, with one another, with the world around them, and with God. Just as Yahweh answered Elijah’s prayer, just as Jesus blessed the Centurion and healed his son/slave/beloved, God has answered our prayers and blessed our ministries.

I didn’t do those things. You did them. We did them together. About the only thing I can lay entirely at my own feet, the only statistic that I can take full responsibility for over the past ten years, is that I have gained about 70 pounds! I’m not happy about that, and I intend to change that.

But we together have done a lot, and I believe we have a lot more to do, and I believe that we will accomplish it together – openly, honestly, and authentically. It’s been a great ten years! Let’s have ten more! Amen.

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

A Promise Beyond the Horizon – Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – February 24, 2013

February 24, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, February 24, 2013, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Lent 2, Year C: Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27; and Luke 13:31-35. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page. At St. Paul’s Parish, during Lent, we are using the Daily Office of Morning Prayer as our antecommunion; therefore, only these two lessons and the psalm were read. The epistle lesson, Philippians 3:17-4:1, was not used.)

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Abraham Friend of God, artist unknown Several years ago – 33 to be exact – Bruce Dern starred in a little-remarked movie entitled Middle Age Crazy; it dealt with the main character’s midlife crisis of turning 40 years of age.

Dern’s character is a construction company owner who has made it big by building taco stands for a successful chain. He’s married to Anne-Margaret (at least, Anne-Margaret plays his wife). He has a nice car, a nice house, a swimming pool and (as a friend reminds him) a jacuzzi. By the standards of success in 1980, he’s doing very well. But turning 40 has him questioning all of that.

At one point during the movie, he is attending his son’s high school graduation and begins to fantasize what he would say to the graduating class. He would start, he thinks, by criticizing graduation speeches that tell the kids they are “the future.” That’s nonsense, he says: “You can’t all be the future. There’s not that much future to go around.”

“If you’ve got any sense,” he tells the high school seniors, “give ’em back their [bleep] diplomas. Give ’em back their silly [bleep] hats and stay 18 for the rest of your life. You don’t want to be the future. No, no. Forget the future.” The future, he tells, them is absolutely awful! In the context of a story about a man dealing with a midlife crisis, it’s a very funny scene . . . but the truth is, it’s a tragic speech. (You can see the speech on YouTube. Be warned, however, I’ve cleaned up the quotations; Dern drops the “f-bomb” several times.)

It not only fails to be forward and future looking, it positively rejects the future, preferring a static and juvenile present. That is a tragedy!

In contrast, we have our spiritual ancestor Abram . . . 75-year-old Abram, as-good-as-dead Abram (according to both Paul and the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews), set-in-his-ways Abram, but willing-to-move-into-the-future Abram.

In Chapter 12 of the Book of Genesis, Abram is told by God to leave his home in Ur and travel to a land that God will give to him and to his offspring, and that God will make him the ancestor of many nations, and Abram does as he is told. But after journeying through several lands, all the way down into Egypt and then back up into Canaan, Abram and Sarai still have not had any children, so we find him in today’s reading in Chapter 15 a little bit anxious about that. He is afraid that this “offspring” are really going to be the children of his servant Eliezer of Damascus.

Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Gen. 15:2-6)

There are the important words in this story: “He believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

Unlike the character in Middle Age Crazy, Abram trusted in the promise of the future. The trouble with promises, of course, is that they entail waiting. No one likes to wait, but Abram is content to do so. Waiting on a promise of God, trusting in God, is what we call “faith”. Abram, or Abraham as he came to be known, is the prophet of faith; in fact, one of the titles given him in religious tradition is “the Father of Faith”.

Several years ago when our children were very young, we took a family “road trip” from our home in the Kansas City area back to Las Vegas so I could take part in a friend’s wedding. We stopped along the way to see the sights such as the Palo Verde Canyon in Texas, the Acama Pueblo in New Mexico, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and so forth. Each morning we would tell the kids where we were going and what we expected to see and, of course, not long after we hit the road each day one of them would ask, “When will we get there? Are we there yet?” I don’t recall when I finally lost my patience with their impatience, but somewhere along the way I cautioned them as they got into the car, “We will get there when we get there. Don’t keep asking if we are there yet – understand?” We’d driven for a while, maybe an hour or two, when our son Patrick spoke up and asked, “Will I still be alive when we get there?” A promise of the future entails waiting, and sometimes we are just too impatient to wait.

Abraham the prophet of faith is presented to us in Lent, I think, as a challenge. Abraham’s faith in God’s promise that he would have offspring, despite all appearances to the contrary, challenges us to ask whether we have believed in the future God promises us with the kind of belief that can be reckoned as righteousness.

Now, please note one thing. Abraham believed God about the promise of offspring, but still asked God how he could know that the promise of possession of the land would be fulfilled. And God accepted his questioning, and offered as proof a demonstration of God’s power: “Bring me,” said God, “a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” (Gen. 15:9) Abraham did so, and when it was dark, “a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between [the] pieces” Abraham had prepared from the sacrificial animals. At that point, God said to Abraham, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” (vv. 17-18)

There are two things about this promise: first, it is for a future Abraham would never see because it is to his descendants that the land will be given; second, it is a promise of something that cannot be fully seen by anyone. This tract of land stretches from the Nile in the southwest to the Euphrates in the northeast; wherever one may be in this vast territory, most of the promised area is beyond the horizon.

This text reminds us that a life of faith, a life lived in reliance on God’s promise is not about immediate gratification nor even about our own benefit. Living a faithful, righteous life is about moving forward into a vision that extends beyond our own lives. A faithful, righteous life is lived in deep expectation coupled with patient belief that God’s promises will be fulfilled.

This is the life to which the People of God are called, all of the descendants of Abraham, not only the Hebrews, not only the people of ancient Israel and Judah, not only the Chosen People of the Covenant, but also ourselves. For as St. Paul assured the Galatians, “those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.” (Gal. 3:7) And it is the failure of God’s People to believe in and trust that promise that the prophets decried in ancient Israel. When the prophets declared God’s judgment, it was their intent that those upon whom the judgment would fall might know their predicament, repent, and be rehabilitated. The prophets pronounced judgment in the hope of salvation. When the prophets lamented over Jerusalem, their sadness over a distressing state of affairs assumed that God would hear their cry and has turn that which was lamentable into something good.

The powers-that-were in Jerusalem, of course, did not want to hear this. They had no more patience with the future, no more vision for it, than did Bruce Dern’s character in Middle Age Crazy. They were perfectly happy with the status quo and, like that character, wanted to stay 18 forever! In terms of Jesus metaphor in the gospel lesson today (Luke 13:31-35), they wanted to remain chicks forever!

That is an extraordinary metaphor, by the way. As theologian William Loader says, “It speaks of being like a hen seeking to gather chicks throughout Jerusalem’s history. It cannot refer to Jesus’ short ministry. How can he speak as though he has been regularly present in Jerusalem over centuries? The context indicates that each prophet has been an embodiment of the hen gathering her chicks.” As the Logos of God from the beginning of time, Christ was present in the prophets. Jerusalem, the center of political and religious power, refused to heed the prophets in whom Christ himself was present; instead, it killed them. Unlike their ancestor, the descendants of Abraham were not people of faith who believed the promise and waited patiently for its fulfillment.

Dr. Arland Hultgren, a Lutheran theologian, says, “It is right, even inevitable, when dealing with this text, to ask about the present. Who or what is the ‘Jerusalem’ of the day in which one lives? Is it the political and civic sphere? Is it the religious sphere? Or is it both?” Maybe it’s us . . . .

Lent gives us the opportunity to reflect upon that question, to examine our own lives; it permits us to heed God’s call to live a faithful life, a life moving forward into God’s vision for us, for our church, for the world, knowing (as Abraham knew) that that vision may extend far beyond the horizon of our own lives. And, God assures us, it will be reckoned to us as righteousness and the promise will be fulfilled. Amen.

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

Special Days, Sacred Time – From the Daily Office – February 4, 2013

February 4, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From Paul’s Letter to the Galatians:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Galatians 4:8-11 (NRSV) – February 4, 2013.)

Antique Clock We are still reading through Paul’s correspondence with my Celtic friends of Anatolia. And, again, Paul is exasperated with them. They seem to be backsliding. I must admit, however, to some confusion here. Paul complains that they are “observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years.” What, I wonder, is wrong with that? Certainly the Jews, from whom Paul and Jesus came, observed special times, feasts, and seasons; and I’m pretty certain the earliest Christians observed Sunday as a “special day” – we still do.

Paul’s point, I know, is that the observance of “special days” in and of itself is not a meritorious work earning one salvation. But human beings need holidays — holy days — to mark the passage of time, to give it significance and meaning, to remember and perpetuate momentous events, to honor the cycles of life, not as meritorious acts but as memorials. The observance of “special days” creates a connectedness to other people and gives life events a spiritual meaning.

With some clergy colleagues I’m reading a book about being overly busy, especially as ordained ministers. In it the author includes this quotation (and I’m sorry I don’t know who it’s from): “Time is about God and the universe and all things human. Time is everywhere and it permeates everything: the cosmos, our solar system, the earth’s past, present and future, sociological existence. As such it has suffused knowledge since the dawn of humanity. It has occupied such a central place in the history of ideas and cultural practice because the temporality of being confronts us with the immemorial, existential issues of life and death, origin and destiny.”

While time itself is not sacred, times are redeemed and sanctified as human beings celebrate and participate in the eternal by “observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years.” These sacralized times join us as Christians in the Body of Christ across the generations, draw the worshiping community into a broader union with Christ, and connect us with the world. Sanctified and redeemed time focuses Christians on the great feasts celebrating the events of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, events which we find echoed in the events of our own lives.

The observance of certain days in not in itself meritorious, but it can be redemptive. We human beings need our special days.

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

A Gospel That Makes a Difference – From the Daily Office – January 28, 2013

January 28, 2013 / eric / 0 Comments

From the Letter to the Galatians:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Galatians 1:6-7 (NRSV) – January 28, 2013.)

Diversity Logo I confess to a certain fondness for the Galatians. I’ve never been a really big fan of Paul the Apostle and I sometimes wistfully wonder how our Christian faith might have developed if he had not been its principal post-Ascension spokesperson. What if the Johanine community that produced the Gospel of John and the three letters that also bear his name had been more prominent? What if James and his insistence on works of mercy because “faith, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17) had been more influential than Paul’s assertion to the Romans that salvation is “by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works” (Romans 11:6)? Well, we’ll never know . . . but apparently the Galatians were listening to someone suggest an alternative to Paul’s understanding of the Christian gospel and, as a result, he wrote them this letter. Anybody that could so upset Paul that he would call them “you foolish Galatians” (Gal. 3:1) gets high marks in my book! That the Galatians were also Celts with whom I, as an Irish-American, share an ethnic heritage gives them additional credit.

But I have to admit that Paul does have a point about “a different gospel” and that “there is [not] another gospel.” What there are are differing interpretations of the gospel, different understandings of its import, different emphases on points of its message. What I really don’t like about what Paul is saying is the implication that his and his interpretation only is correct and that, therefore, anyone who disagrees with him “wants to pervert the gospel of Christ.” I believe it is entirely possible to have disagreement on this things, to have unity without uniformity. In fact, I would say it’s desirable, but here in his letter to the Celts of Asia Minor Paul doesn’t seem to think so.

Elsewhere Paul used the metaphor of the body when he tried to share with the church in Corinth the fundamental importance of unity. In the body metaphor in the 12th chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul demonstrates how a body is made up of diverse members: “If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.'” (1 Cor. 12:19-21) Unity among diverse elements comes through inclusion of the various members of the body of Christ in deep sharing and mutual responsibility.

Of course, Paul was thinking of varying and diverse roles within the body of a congregation – apostle, evangelist, pastor, catechist, preacher, and so forth. He does not extend the body metaphor to those with differing opinions about the nature of faith, the person of Christ, the doctrine of atonement, the nature of salvation, and so forth. How much more lively might the church be if he had? How much more lively might the church be if we would?

If instead of thinking of the church as a community in which to find “the right answers,” we thought of it as a community in which to explore questions, how much more relevant and helpful to people’s lives might it be? So long as unity is seen as uniformity, we will be stuck trying to find (or convince others of) right answers. But if we can see unity in diversity, we will be able to hear a variety of responses; some responses will be useful for some seekers, and others will be useful for others. None will be “right” and none will be “wrong,” but all will be relevant.

This must be the church’s quest in the 21st Century, unity in diversity which makes the gospel relevant in the lives of all. No longer should we hear anyone address another as “you stupid Galatian!” No longer should we hear anyone condemned as “perverting the gospel.” We are not to preach “a different gospel,” but we are to offer a gospel that, with all its varied emphases and diverse applications, makes a difference.

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

Scattered Thoughts about Trees – From the Daily Office – November 28, 2012

November 28, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Luke’s Gospel:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 19:1-4 (NRSV) – November 28, 2012)

Jesus Addresses Zacchaeus in the Sycamore Tree Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see Jesus. So today’s reading got me thinking scattered thoughts about trees. The weeping willow in my childhood backyard. The peach and cherry trees in my grandfather’s garden. The pinion pines of my native Nevada. The eucalyptus trees that were everywhere on my college campus. The huge ornamental pepper tree that shaded the first house my wife and I bought. I close my eyes, think of those trees, and I see my parents, my childhood friends, my college roommates. Trees are filled with meaning and memory; they bear the fruits of remembrance.

Zacchaeus hung in a tree to see Jesus. It won’t be too long before Jesus will be hung on a tree. Paul will write to the Galatian church, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.'” (Gal. 3:13)

The tree Zacchaeus climbs is a Ficus Sycomorus. This tree produces an edible fruit, an inferior fig which the poor gathered. When I think of trees bearing fruit, I sometimes remember my grandfather’s peach and cherry trees. I sometimes remember the orange orchards around my parents’ retirement home. I sometimes remember the apple trees in my yard in Kansas that enticed my neighbor’s cows to break down the fence. And I sometimes remember a song sung by Billie Holiday; I remembered it as I thought of Zacchaeus and Jesus and the trees on which they hung. The song is entitled Strange Fruit and concerns the lynching of blacks in the American South:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Words by Abel Meeropol.

The tree on Calvary bore a strange fruit, too. It bore the fruit of salvation. Because of that fruit, in a few weeks Americans will place trees in their homes (if they haven’t already) to commemorate the birth of the One who hung on that tree and offered that fruit to all. Those evergreens in American homes will also bear fruit. The fruit of good will, of families gathered in love, of traditions and family customs. Some will bear bitter fruit; not every family gathering will be happy, not every family will join in love. Families, like trees, bear different kinds of fruit, some good, some not so good, some downright bad. But the fruit borne by the tree on Calvary is for all, and that’s why we bring trees into our houses at Christmas. Those trees, like Zacchaeus’s sycamore, help us to see Jesus.

Scattered thoughts about trees. Trees fill our lives and we seldom notice them, but they bear all sorts of fruits. Strange fruits. Fruits of emotion and memory. Fruits of salvation. Zacchaeus climbed a tree to see Jesus.

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

You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught – From the Daily Office – November 24, 2012

November 24, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

From Luke’s Gospel:

Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 8:9-14 (NRSV) – November 24, 2012)

Lieutenant Cable and Liat from "South Pacific" Although from a modern perspective, the prayer of the Pharisee is rather bigoted, but we should try to see it from his perspective and from within his culture, which Jesus shares. When we do so, we can see that Jesus is not criticizing the individual, but rather condemning an entire system of religion which divides and categorizes people. Jesus is denouncing any system, religious, social, or political, which separates people on the basis of bigotry and fear.

We know that from the early Second Century some rabbis taught that every Jewish man was obligated to recite three blessings daily, and it is not too much of a stretch to imagine that these, or some earlier version, were in use in Jesus’ time. These three blessings express gratitude to God for one’s status or position through negative comparisons with others. The man blessed God that God had not made him a gentile, a woman, or a slave (or, alternatively, a boor). Modern scholars call these the “blessings of identity.” They may not have been universally required prayers at first, but we know that by the Fifth Century they were part of Judaism’s most authoritative teaching, The Babylonian Talmud, and at the end of the first millennium they had become part of the preliminary prayers of the Jewish daily morning service. So, again, it doesn’t take much imagination to think that perhaps Jewish men were saying something similar in the time of Jesus.

And they weren’t alone! Such divisive, negative, comparative thanksgiving was not and is not limited to the Jews. Thales of Miletus (d. 546 BC), traditionally the first of the Greek philosophers, reportedly gave thanks to Tyche, the goddess of fortune, “that I was born a human and not a beast, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian.” Similar sentiments have been credited to Socrates (d. 399 BC) and Plato (d. 348 BC)! Scholars have wondered whether the blessings of identity might actually be of Greek origin, a bit of Greek philosophy that was “Judaized” and crept into the Jewish morning prayers by the First Century.

Whether of Greek or Jewish origin, it is this sort of divisive thinking that Jesus condemns in today’s Daily Office gospel lesson, not merely the self-congratulatory, self-righteous, and fine-tuned religious conceit of the Pharisee. It’s not pride that Jesus denounces; it’s bigotry. Paul would be the first to understand this well and spread Jesus’ gospel beyond its Jewish origins. To the Romans he would write, “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.” (Rom. 10:12) To the Colossians, “There is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Col. 3:11) And famously to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28) A modern 20th Century hymn familiar to all Episcopalians picks up the strain:

In Christ there is no East or West,
in him no South or North,
but one great fellowship of love
throughout the whole wide earth.

In him shall true hearts everywhere
their high communion find,
his service is the golden cord
close-binding all mankind.

Join hands, disciples of the faith,
whate’er your race may be!
Who serves my Father as a son
is surely kin to me.

In Christ now meet both East and West,
in him meet South and North,
all Christly souls are one in him,
throughout the whole wide earth.

(Words by John Oxenham, 1908)

The Jew praying in the temple was doing only what he’d been taught, but that is the nature of bigotry. Bigotry, prejudice, fear and hatred of the other are not natural. They have to be taught. There’s a short, little remembered song from the musical South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable as he struggles with whether to marry Liat, an Asian woman with whom he has fallen in love, You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught may be the most powerful song of the show:

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

Well . . . this is getting a bit long for a simple morning meditation, but the point is that Jesus isn’t simply comparing two individuals and saying one is better than the other. That would be no different from the divisive prayer he condemns. Jesus is denouncing a religious system, any system, that builds up some at the expense of others. Better to stand before God and acknowledge who we are, and where we fall short of God’s expectations, than to enlarge ourselves through negative (and most often wrong) comparisons with those who are different from us. To do either, however, requires that we be taught to do so. You’ve got to be carefully taught.

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

Category: Galatians (Page 4 of 5)

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

Legion . . . Silence: A Contrast – Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C) – June 23, 2013

Honoring Women on Fathers’ Day – Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6C) – June 16, 2013

Offal Theology Beats Awful Theology – Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5C) – June 9, 2013

Ten Authentic Years – Sermon for Pentecost 2 (Proper 4C) – June 2, 2013

A Promise Beyond the Horizon – Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent – February 24, 2013

Special Days, Sacred Time – From the Daily Office – February 4, 2013

A Gospel That Makes a Difference – From the Daily Office – January 28, 2013

Scattered Thoughts about Trees – From the Daily Office – November 28, 2012

You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught – From the Daily Office – November 24, 2012

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