That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Evangelism (Page 5 of 6)

Fruitful House of Bread – From the Daily Office – October 13, 2012

October 13, 2012 / / 1 Comment

From the Prophet Micah:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are one of the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
from ancient days.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Micah 5:1 – October 13, 2012)

House of BreadThis obscure little verse in the book of the Prophet Micah is best known to Christians from the story of the visitation of the wisemen in Matthew’s Gospel:

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ “

I’ve always been intrigued by the word Ephrathah (which Mattew does not quote). Apparently it is a place name; one source indicates that Ephrathah, or Ephrath, is the ancient name for the town of Bethlehem in Judah, in the southern part of the land of Israel. Micah uses both names in order to distinguish the town from another Bethlehem in the north. Another source tells me the name means “fruitful”.

The name Bethlehem means “house of bread” which always intrigues Christians who see it as somewhat prophetic of Jesus words at the Last Supper identifying the bread as his own body.

When I hear that Ephrathah means “fruitful” I am immediately put in mind of two other verses of Scripture. First, God’s admonition to Adam and Eve in Genesis: “Be fruitful and muliply.” (1:28) The second is Christ’s admonition to his disciples: “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” (John 15:16)

In the name of Jesus’ place of birth as set forth in Micah, I hear a call to evangelism. Nurture and sustained by what comes from the “house of bread,” we are “to go and bear fruit;” we are sent out to “be fruitful and multiply,” The fruit which we are to bear is an increase in followers of the Way, an increase in the number of disciples (not simply the fruit of individual good works, nor only the “fruits of the spirit” in our own lives). Our efforts, our ministries, our prayers, our daily lives are to be the means by which the “house of bread” will truly be “fruitful.”

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

Eyewitness Testimony – From the Daily Office – September 24, 2012

September 25, 2012 / / 1 Comment

From the Gospel of Luke:

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Luke 1:1-4 – September 25, 2012)
 
Bible Beat“Just as they were handed on to us . . . .” Those eight words from the introduction to Luke’s Gospel are often overlooked; in fact, I’d be willing to bet there are members of the church who’ve never heard or read them! The prologue to Luke’s Gospel is a very formal, brief, and somewhat vague introduction, but these eight words may be the most important in it. They ought to be heard as a caution to those who would treat this (or any Gospel) as absolute truth; Gospels are not histories, nor are they eyewitness accounts. As the writer makes clear, it was someone else who witnessed the things he writes about; he learned them because they were “handed on” and because he has done his research.

Not that eyewitness testimony would be all that great! As a former trial lawyer, I can verify from personal experience that eyewitness evidence is notoriously unreliable. This is because human beings don’t actually remember what we see; we reconstruct what we believe we have seen. Memory is a reconstruction, not a record. Research has shown that memory traces are, at best, highly impoverished versions of the original perception. Eyewitnesses often have insufficient information in their memories, so they reconstruct events adding pieces of information from other sources. There are two main sources of additional information: 1) pre-existing stereotyped mental models of objects and events, and 2) other memories. When people recognize a situation, either in perception or in memory, they invoke the most applicable steretypical model, or another similar memory, and unconsciously fill in missing information in order to complete the picture. This is why two eyewitnesses will describe an event in very different ways. This (in part) is why there are four Gospels, each telling Jesus’ story in a different way.

So even though Luke “investigated everything carefully from the very first,” his Gospel cannot be taken as 100% historical fact; none of the Gospels can. That’s no reason not to read them, study them, read, mark, and inwardly digest them. But it is a reason not to beat other people over the head with them. The Gospels are part of the story “handed on to us” and like Luke, we have to do our research and do our best to discover the truth.

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

KJV Paul or NRSV Paul? – From the Daily Office – September 22, 2012

September 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Acts:

Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 17:22-23 (NRSV) – September 22, 2012)

St Paul Window, St Paul's Church, Medina, OhioEvery Sunday I stand in front of a stained-glass window depicting this scene, the altar window of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Medina, Ohio. St. Paul stands magisterially among a group of attentive Athenians, his right arm raised, his index finger pointing to heaven; the Parthenon is scene in the background; a banner lost amidst Victorian decoration declares (in good King James English), “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” (v. 23)

The contrast between the modern (New Revised Standard) and older (King James) translations is absolutely striking! In verse 22 of the text as translated above, Paul praises the Athenians as “extremely religious.” In the KJV translation, he condemns them as “too superstitious.” In the translation of verse 23 above, they worship God as “unknown”; in the KJV, they worship “ignorantly.” In the modern translation, Paul is respectful of the Athenians; in the Authorized version, he addresses them with contempt.

In the Greek, the first term is deisidaimonia which can have either affirmative (“religious”) or negative (“superstitious”) meanings. The second term is agnoeo which is related to our English word agnostic; it directly translates as “not knowing”. Paul uses it frequently in his letters to mean such things as “unaware,” “uninformed,” or “not recognizing.” Like the first term, it can have either affirmative or negative meanings depending on context.

How should we read it? Like the good bishops and scholars who translated the Authorized Version under warrant of King James in the early 17th Century, or like the modern scholars who translated the NRSV in the late 20th Century? And which version ought we to emulate in our dealings with non-Christians?

It should come as no surprise to anyone that my preference is for the later translation. Although Paul is often forceful in his rhetoric, neither his letters nor Luke’s portrait of him in the Book of Acts suggests that he was ever deliberately rude. He was, rather, respectful of his audiences; I believe we should give him the benefit of the doubt and translate his conversation with the Athenians in that light. I believe, also, that as we engage those who are not of the Christian faith it is that same attitude of respect and courtesy that we should adopt.

The Athenians of our day are our neighbors, our friends and co-workers, who have adopted a new version of agnosticism, who say, “I am spiritual but not religious.” It is these “SBNRs” (as some current writers of church literature have labeled them) to whom we are commissioned to present the Gospel. Several months ago, I read a blog post by an author I like and respect which, I’m sad to say, takes the KJV attitude towards such folks. The post is entitled Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me. In it the author, a clergy person, describes the experience many of us ordained have had of sitting next to an SBNR on an airplane; she complains that she finds such persons, these folks who “find God in sunsets,” simply uninteresting:

Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn’t interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.

Thank you for sharing, spiritual but not religious sunset person. You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating. Can I switch seats now and sit next to someone who has been shaped by a mighty cloud of witnesses instead? Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community? Because when this flight gets choppy, that’s who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church.

Now, as I said, I like and respect this author, but I can’t applaud the attitude betrayed by this particular comment. This is the attitude of the KJV Paul condemning the Athenians as superstitious and ignorant! This attitude is not going to win any converts. I sympathize with the author; I know how dull and boring those on-board conversations can be. I know what it’s like to get onto an airplane hoping for a little “down time” only to have to do the work of being a “professional Christian”. It’s hard work, but guess what? It’s the work we were baptized to do (not ordained to do, baptized); it’s the work to which all Christians are called – to love our neighbor as ourselves, to spread the Gospel, to make the faith attractive to others. We do that when emulate the NRSV Paul; we fail if we follow the example of the KJV Paul.

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

Guilt Tripping Jesus – From the Daily Office Lectionary – September 13, 2012

September 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Martha by David Leiberg, Visual Meditations on the GospelFrom the Gospel of John:

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – John 11:20-21 – September 13, 2012)
 
Today, my wife and I are traveling to her home town to bury her father who died last week. I hope beyond hope that no one will say to her, “I wish you had been here.”

My mother died thirteen years ago just before Christmas and those very words were said to me by my stepfather. Can you say, “Guilt trip”? I know that wasn’t his intent, but that’s sure how it felt. I had visited her a few weeks before the end, and my wife and daughter had been there just a few days before she passed away, but none of us were able to be there the week she died. The week before Christmas parish clergy and their families just don’t leave home! (Especially those of us who have no assistants, no staff to pick up the slack!) So I wasn’t there; I couldn’t be there; I regretted not being there; and the last thing I needed to hear was someone drive that point home! (A few years later when my stepfather died, I was en route to visit him when he died just a couple of hours before I arrived. My stepsister said, “I wish you could have been here” . . . . Déjà vu all over again!)

I’m pretty confident Martha wasn’t guilt-tripping Jesus (nor is her sister Mary a few verses later when she says exactly the same thing), but it sure sounds like it. Maybe she was. In fact, I cannot read her words without a tone of anger; try as I might, when this lesson comes up in the lectionary to be read at public worship, that’s how I read it. Parishioners have remarked on that, that they hear it even when I try for some other tone of voice.

Maybe she was angry. Anger, as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross taught us, is the second of the five stages of grief, right after denial. So it’s entirely possible that she was angry with Jesus. After all, she knew him well. She may have witnessed one or more of his acts of healing; she probably had expected him to come before her brother Lazarus’ death and make him well. But he didn’t and Lazarus died. That would be enough to piss you off! So maybe she was angry at Jesus.

And that’s OK. Jesus can take it. He does take it. He takes people’s anger all the time. As a parish priest I see it again and again. Angry people pissed off at God about whatever is wrong in their lives. They’re ticked at the Almighty and, somewhat contradictorily, they feel guilty about it. I tell them it’s OK, that there’s nothing to feel guilty about. “God’s a big boy,” I tell them, “he can take it.” (Hey! Don’t get all feminist and inclusivist on me. I know God’s not a boy. It’s a metaphor! OK?) And I tell them the story of Martha and Mary and how they got angry at Jesus and how Jesus accepted that and dealt with it lovingly. Go ahead, be angry. The best people to be angry with are the ones who love us. Like God.

But please, don’t guilt trip people who are also grieving and angry. Don’t say, “I wish you could have been here” (even though it’s true and even though you don’t mean it as a criticism). Mary and Martha had some reason to say it to Jesus; they knew he could have done something! None of the rest of us have his gifts.

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

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

September 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We will then be asked these five questions:

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

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

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

Missing Millennials – From the Daily Office – August 7, 2012

August 7, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Psalms:

He gave his decrees to Jacob
and established a law for Israel, *
which he commanded them to teach their children;
That the generations to come might know,
and the children yet unborn; *
that they in their turn might tell it to their children;
So that they might put their trust in God, *
and not forget the deeds of God,
but keep his commandments.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalms 78:5-7 (1979 BCP Version) – August 7, 2012)

Just a few days ago the Public Religion Research Institute issued a new report entitled A Generation in Transition: Religion, Values, and Politics among College-Age Millennials. A “millennial” is somone currently 18 to 24 years of age, the youngest cohort of adults. (From my point of view at nearly 60 years of age these are children; my son and daughter are both older than this group!) According to the report, these young adults are more likely then the general population to be religiously unaffiliated; one-quarter of them so identify themselves. Interestingly, most of those who do so were reared in religiously affiliated households. The greatest movement away from religious affiliation was seen among those raised in Catholic and white mainline Protestant families. It would appear that we have not been doing a very good job of teaching our children “that they in their turn might tell it to their children”!

Exactly what the causes of this movement are is anyone’s guess. A lot of author’s have made suggestions. Ross Douthat in his recent book Bad Religion blames it on the churches’ movement away from conservative dogma toward a liberal agenda. Diana Butler Bass in Christianity After Religion, on the other hand, suggests a failure of religious institutions to continue an awakening begun in the mid-20th century, falling instead into a reactive fundamentalism reinforcing conservative dogma in the last quarter of the century. Local pastors give anecdotal evidence of parishioners drifting away from Sunday church services to other alternatives including youth soccer and little league, major league sports offerings, Sunday morning TV programs, or spending the morning with the New York Times; they say American families have become “over programmed” and have relegated religion to the hopper of optional activities. Everybody has a different story to tell about what’s gone wrong with American religion; everybody has a different story to tell about how someone else has gotten it wrong.

I don’t know which of these and many other suggestions is most accurate, which story truly tells the tale of the American church. I suspect that to some extent they are all correct and that for every person, millennial or older, who has left “organized religion” behind there is a mix of stories reinforcing one another. And what this means for the church is that the answer to attracting the millennials is not going to be a single program, a single style of worship, a single ministry style, a single outreach, a single anything. There is no silver bullet, no quick and easy answer.

I nearly wrote “attracting the millennials back” in that last paragraph and then stopped myself, because a lot them were never here in the church to begin with. They represent a new mission field, not a lost membership group. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious” because, truly, they’ve never been a part of religion. They may be spiritual; all human beings are if St. Augustine of Hippo was right that “our hearts are restless till they find their rest in” God. If we in the church are to attract them to a religious expression of that spirituality, it is going to take hard work, time, and most of all its going to take integrity.

The past half-century has seen the church lose its integrity. Various parts of the church have taken up competing political and societal positions, so that the church has fractured even beyond the denominational divides of the Reformation. Instead of focusing upon the core values and teachings of the undivided church, we have taken up social causes that, though important, have divided us. Each faction seems to be telling a different story, so that the church can no longer claim (as it once could despite denominational differences) to be one. Because of the differing stories, the church can no longer lay claim to a unity based on shared moral and ethical principles. The church needs to recover that, to stop fighting with itself, to stop telling these contradictory stories.

If we could just do that, we’d be a much more attractive venue where the millennials (and everyone) could explore the spirituality they claim and clearly have. Just that . . . if we could just stop the internal bickering and fighting, stop telling stories about each other and, instead, tell stories of God. Wouldn’t that be novel?

Well, no . . . as the psalm suggests, it’s an idea that’s been around for a few years. “He commanded them to teach their children, so that they might put their trust in God, and not forget the deeds of God.”

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

How Is It We Hear? – From the Daily Office – August 3, 2012

August 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Book of Acts:

“How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 2:8-11 – August 3, 2012)

These are the words spoken by the great crowd of Jews and others who thronged the streets of Jerusalem for the Festival of Shavu’ot when the Twelve, empowered by the Holy Spirit, begin to tell the story of Jesus in languages they had never before spoken. Shavu’ot is a celebration with both agricultural and historical significance in Judaism. It is known as the “festival of the first fruits,” a harvest feast when the first fruits were brought as offerings to the Temple; it is also known as the “festival of the giving of the Law,” a celebration of the handing down of Torah on Mt. Sinai. It was called Pentecost, a Greek word meaning “fiftieth”, because it always falls on the fiftieth day after the Passover. That year it fell on the fiftieth day after the Resurrection and, thus, the Christian feast of the Holy Spirit carries that name, as well.

Twenty centuries later, the Jews still celebrate Shavu’ot and Christians still celebrate Pentecost, but what a different world we inhabit. Can we still find meaning in the notion of offering the first fruits to God? Does the giving the Law still have significance? And what of all those languages and the Apostles’ unprecedented immediate linguistic skill?

For us North American Christians an agricultural feast seems a distant and remote idyllic pastoral fantasy. We are no longer connected to the land. Our culture has moved away from an agrarian basis, through the industrial revolution, even beyond a manufacturing basis; we now live in what is being called a “service economy”. We no longer generally produce anything tangible! What are the “first fruits” of non-productive labor in a service economy? It just boils down to money, I guess.

And what about the myth (a word I use with no disrespect intended and with no suggestion that the story’s point is untrue) of God giving the stone tablets to Moses? In a time when that Law has been largely set aside by Christians and even many Jews – in a time when most people have separated the secular civil laws of everyday life from religious observance and custom – in a time when we conceive of the law as something made (“like sausage”) by a group of bickering, nasty, polarized, do-nothing elected officials – in such a time, how are we to give thanks for “the law”? Do we even want to?

Which leaves me to ponder that gift of languages? There are still plenty of them and there are more, in a sense, than ever before; even as actual, spoken tongues die out for lack of use, new means of communication arise – emoticons and email abbreviations have birthed tweets and hashtags – Facebook and LinkedIn and their ilk are the new “crowded streets” – night-time Twitter conversations are held by church people discussing ways “social media” can be used to spread the Gospel – tongues of flame seem to dance on computer monitors and laptops, on tablets and smartphones.

How is it we hear? How is it we understand? How is it we grasp the ancient truths of receiving the Law, the offering the first fruits, experiencing God’s deed of power? I’ve no doubt that hearing and understanding and comprehension are going on . . . but I often wonder if the church (the institution, not the people) is playing any part in that process of communication and comprehension. I hope and pray the Holy Spirit will alight upon us all and give us the gifts we need to do so, so that all may hear and understand in whatever “language” they best comprehend.

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

A Prophetic General Convention – Sermon for Pentecost 7, Proper 10B – July 15, 2012

July 15, 2012 / / 3 Comments

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This sermon was preached on Sunday, July 15, 2012, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio, where Fr. Funston is rector.

(Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 10B: Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; and Mark 6:14-29)

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In our lessons today, we have two stories about silencing the prophetic voice. First, a snippet of the not-very-familiar story of the Prophet Amos which is, frankly, cut from its context so badly that some explanation really is necessary. Second, the almost-too-familiar story of the beheading of John the Baptizer.

Amos, as he is at pains to say to the priest Amaziah, is not a professional prophet: “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” Nonetheless, Amos was commissioned by God in the middle of the 8th Century before Christ to leave his home in the southern kingdom of Judah, travel to the northern kingdom of Israel, and deliver there a condemnation of Israel, its monarch and its people. In this portion of his story, he tells of God showing him four quick visions, of which the plumb line is the third. First, he is shown a swarm of locusts, illustrating that God will wipe out Israel just as locusts wipe out a crop. Second, he is shown a shower of fire that would “eat up the land.” After each of these, Amos speaks up in defense of Isreal and God relents. Third is the vision we heard in the lesson, the plumb line; Amos, however, does not defend Israel after this vision. Instead, the series of visions is interrupted by the tale of the priest Amaziah and his attempt to silence this prophet.

Amos has delivered his message to Amaziah, a message to the whole of the country, but Amaziah, who is high priest at the king’s shrine at Bethel, has edited it before delivering it to the king. Instead of a message to the whole of society, he has made it sound like nothing more than a personal threat against the king and now, certain of the king’s reaction, he warns Amos to flee, to return to the south to make his living as a prophet there, but never to prophecy again in Israel. This is where Amos protests that he is not a professional prophet, but earns his living in agriculture; and this is where the lectionary reading ends. But it is not where the story ends.

Because of his attempt to silence the prophecy, Amos speaks a word from God for Amaziah, predicting that his family will fall in ruin and dishonor and that he himself will die “in an unclean land.” Amos then tells of the fourth of his visions, a bowl of fresh fruit which God explains illustrates that God’s patience with Israel is at an end. It’s a pun in Hebrew, the word for fruit being qay’its and that for end being qets. In English, I suppose, we would say that God is calling it quits with these people. The story ends with God’s final word to Amaziah, to the all of Israel, and to anyone who would muzzle his prophets: “Be silent!” Those who would interfere with God’s word to God’s people are themselves to shut up or face consequences like those promised Amaziah!

Which brings us to the gospel lesson and the beheading of John the Baptizer. It’s so familiar it hardly needs rehearsing, but let’s just refresh our memories, anyway.

Herod imprisoned John in an attempt to appease his wife Herodias because John had been raling against her and her marriage to Herod, who was her brother-in-law before he was her spouse and, therefore, John considered the marriage adulterous. (Some suggest that Herod did so to prevent Herodias from killing John herself.) At a birthday party he threw for himself, Herod witnessed a dance by his step-daughter and was so taken that he made a rash promise to give her anything she might ask for, up to half his kingdom. Consulting her mother, the girl asks for John’s head on a platter. Hoist on the petard of his public promise, Herod has no choice but to give her what she asks, even though he was quite fearful that John was, indeed, a prophet of God. Not recorded in the Bible is the fact that not too long after the events portrayed in the Gospels, Herod was deprived of his kingdom and all his property, and died in squalid poverty exiled to Gaul. Silencing God’s prophets, again, is obviously a really bad idea!

While I would be the last to suggest that the Episcopal Church or any of its leaders are equivalent to Amos or John the Baptist, I do believe that from time to the Church does speak with a prophetic voice. I believe that, in part, because of Christ’s promise that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matt. 18:20) and because it has been the tradition and belief of the church since the very first Ecumenical Counsel that (as some Lutheran bishops recently put it) “we trust that God’s Spirit will form the wisdom of God’s faithful people gathered in deliberative assembly.” (ELCA Conference of Bishops, March 10, 2009)

Over 1,000 Episcopalians on Thursday concluded the bicameral deliberative assembly known as The General Convention of the Episcopal Church: 165 bishops participated as voting members of the junior house; 844 lay and clergy deputies, as voting members of the senior house. They were presented with over 440 pieces of business ranging from courtesy resolutions commending the host hotel’s staff to the adoption of a budget for the next three years to the approval of new liturgies to the election of new leadership. Much of that was done quickly, with little fan-fare and hardly any notice. Much of it was done with the boring, long-drawn-out tedium that careful legislative work often seems to entail, but again with little notice. Some of it has received and will receive the attention of a secular press itching for scandal and sensationalism, eager to sell its advertising by selling the world a picture of a church gone (as Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina, in fact, urged it in his keynote sermon) crazy! (Of course, Bishop Curry was encouraging the church to go “crazy for Christ,” something the secular press will overlook.) Some of what the church did at the 77th General Convention will, I believe, be seen in years to come to be truly prophetic, in the best sense of that word, speaking God’s Truth to a world in need of hearing it, and I suspect that there will be those who try to silence the Convention’s message or stop its actions as Amaziah and Herodias did those of Amos and John the Baptist.

Of all the work done by the Convention, there were three areas in which I believe its actions are the most important. First, it acted in regard to marriage and the promises couples make to one another when forming life-long, loving, and committed relationships. Second, it affirmed the church’s traditional understanding of the dominical sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. Third, it committed the church to structural and organic reform.

With regard to life-long interpersonal commitments, the Convention called for an in-depth study and proclamation of the church’s contemporary theology of marriage. This, in my opinion, has been needed for many years. Holy Matrimony is one of the five sacramental rites of the church which our Articles of Religion tell us arise from “states of life allowed in the Scriptures” but which have neither “visible sign [n]or ceremony ordained of God.” (Art. XXV, BCP page 872) Marriage is one of those “Traditions and Ceremonies” that it “is not necessary . . . be in all places one, or utterly like.” (Art. XXXIV, BCP page 874) Since it was first identified as a sacrament in about the 10th Century, marriage practices “have been divers,” and the Articles of Religion assure us “may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners.” (Ibid.) After a thousand years of monkeying about with marriage willy-nilly, and believe me we have done just that throughout the church’s history, taking a good, hard, methodical look at our theology and practice is a great idea!

In the same area, the Convention approved a provisional rite for the blessing of the committed, life-long relationships of same-sex couples. This is the one action that I am sure will be most discussed and most mischaracterized in the secular press. The Standing Liturgical Commission, which developed this rite, and the deputies and bishops who adopted it, have been quite clear that this is not marriage liturgy; it does not confer the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Furthermore, it is a provisional rite, which means it may only be used provided certain conditions are met. I confess that I have not read the enabling legislation, but it is my understanding that this liturgy may only be used in those States or foreign jurisdictions where the civil authorities have either made the legal state of marriage open to same-sex couples or have created some other form of legally recognized civil union for such couples. Furthermore, it may only be used with the permission of the local bishop.

The second area of important action was in regard to the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. There was a motion put forward by the Diocese of Eastern Oregon to change the canons of the church so as to permit, as a regular matter, those who are not yet baptized to receive the Sacrament of the Altar. This would have changed what has been the practice and tradition of the church since its very beginning; there has never been a time when it was not considered necessary that a person be baptized before being invited to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. While we do not check ID’s at the altar rail or communion station, and while we do now open our communion to all who are baptized in any Christian tradition (no longer restricting the Eucharist to those confirmed in the Episcopal Church), the General Convention was not willing to make that change. Instead, in a substitute resolution, the bishops and deputies affirmed that it is the normative practice and expectation of this church that Baptism precede reception of Holy Communion, and affirming that the Episcopal Church invites everyone to be baptized into the saving death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.

The third and, I believe, most important of what I have called the prophetic actions of the General Convention is to take the first step toward reorganization and restructuring of the Episcopal Church. We have a national, provincial, and diocesan structure which is often top-heavy, unwieldy, and counter-productive. One of the buzz-words of recent Convention was “nimble” – that is not a word that in any way, shape, or form describes the Episcopal Church! It doesn’t even describe one of our parishes let alone the entire national organization! All too often we find ourselves standing in our own way, tripping over our own feet. In passing the resolution to re-imagine and restructure the church and calling for a task force made up of new and younger leaders to do so, the General Convention has said that we will get out of the way; we will get out of the Spirit’s way; we will get out of our own way!

There is much work to be done, but it seems to me that the hardest work will be the letting-go and stepping-aside . . . letting go of old ways of doing and being church, letting go of expectations of how things have always been done and how we think they ought to be done, letting go of office and power by those who have governed the church for generations, letting go of the hurt and pain of change . . . stepping aside to allow those newer, younger leaders to come forward, stepping aside to let the Holy Spirit come in, stepping aside to free the center so that it may be filled with something new and different. I hope that the hard work of letting-go and stepping-aside will get done, although I’m not convinced that it will.

Shortly after adopting that resolution, the House of Deputies was given an opportunity to elect newer and younger leadership. It chose instead to elect as its president someone who has been a General Convention deputy eight times and who has had a seat in the highest councils of the church for years. It elected as its vice-president someone who has been a deputy at every General Convention since 1973. I know both of these individuals and I know that they are faithful, dedicated, and capable, but I have to be honest – these folks are part of the well-entrenched, long-experienced cadre of church governors; this is leadership that is anything but new or young (and it pains me to say that since the new president and I are essentially the same age). Still, I live in hope that they can and will, in fact, facilitate and accomplish the change that is needed, because (as I said earlier) I trust that God’s Spirit forms the wisdom of God’s faithful people gathered in deliberative assembly.

So let me bring us back to our lessons for today. What might they be teaching us about how to respond to the actions of our recently-concluded General Convention?

Well . . . first, I suggest that the story of Amos and Amaziah, and the story of the Baptizer and Herodias, these stories in which someone sought to silence the prophetic word encourage us to be aware of the distortions we may hear from both the religious and the secular media. Just as Amaziah misrepresented and tried to silence Amos’s prophecy when relaying it to King Jeroboam, so too may we find the reports distorting the actual words and actions of the Convention in an attempt to undermine and stop them. Just as Herodias sought to behead John, so too we may find the detractors of our church trying to assassinate the character of our leaders.

Secondly, the defense of prophecy in the Book of Amos with its pronouncement of judgment against Amaziah or the end to which Herod and Herodias came might stand as cautionary tales against our own tendency to silence whatever it is that we find unpalatable in the prophetic voices of our church’s Spirit-led Convention, voices calling us to change in those areas in which we as a church and as individuals may be in the greatest need of reformation.

Finally, we might find encouragement that we, like Amos and John, despite the dangers in doing so, might heed God’s call to exercise our own prophetic voices in our communities, in our workplaces, or among our circles of friends speaking on behalf of our church which welcomes all and proclaims the Good News that God loves everyone, no exceptions.

Sympathetic Magic or Sympathetic Faith? – From the Daily Office – July 8, 2012

July 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From the Acts of the Apostles:

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that when the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the sick, their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some itinerant Jewish exorcists tried to use the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit said to them in reply, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” Then the man with the evil spirit leapt on them, mastered them all, and so overpowered them that they fled out of the house naked and wounded. When this became known to all residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, everyone was awestruck; and the name of the Lord Jesus was praised. Also many of those who became believers confessed and disclosed their practices. A number of those who practised magic collected their books and burned them publicly; when the value of these books was calculated, it was found to come to fifty thousand silver coins. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 19:11-20 – July 8, 2012)

The readings for the Daily Office on a Sunday depart from the daily flow of the lessons for the rest of the week; they are also unrelated to the lessons in the Eucharistic lectionary (especially since our adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary). On Sundays in recent weeks, those who recite the Daily Office have been treated to excerpts, like this, from the Book of Acts. I’ve set out the whole of today’s lesson, instead of simply quoting a verse or three, because of the symmetry of the passage: we start with magic (Paul creating magical amulets of handkerchiefs and aprons) and we end with magic (magicians burning their valuable grimoires). I find this sort of biblical pericope troubling and difficult to handle. ~ Many Christians wear crosses and medallions, carry prayer cards, wear scapulars, and use “prayer napkins” blessed by bishops, priests, revivalists, and television evangelists. The tradition of the church teaches that these talismans derive their power, not from anything inherent in or given to the object, rather from the firm faith and Godly devotion of the believer. But the handkerchiefs and aprons described here by Luke, the author of Acts, seem more like fetishes, given healing powers through what can only be called contagious sympathetic magic; these objects touched Paul, now they heal – the belief or faith of the sick person healed has nothing to do with it. ~ At the end of the passage, we are told that many “who practiced magic” became believers and burned their books of spells. They seem to have done so not through any conversion, but because Paul’s magic was greater than their own. ~ I’ve read several commentaries and sermons exegeting this passage, and all attempt to differentiate Paul’s “sweat rags” (as one might also translate the original Greek) and working aprons from magical talismans, but all, in my opinion, fail. Luke’s story boils down to “our magic is better than their magic.” In the 21st Century, I find that singularly unhelpful! ~ But here’s what this story makes me think about: contagious sympathetic magic is supposed to pass magical power from one person or object to another that it touches; I don’t think that actually happens, but I know that faith can be contagious, passing from one powerfully faithful person to others whose lives and hearts he or she may touch. And that powerful faith can set hearts on fire rather than books (don’t get me started about burning books)! It is neither through magic handkerchiefs nor through burning grimoires that the word of the Lord spreads and grows mightily and prevails: it is through shared faith setting hearts on fire for Christ.

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

Summary of the Budget – From the Daily Office – July 7, 2012

July 7, 2012 / / 0 Comments

From Matthew’s Gospel:

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Matthew 22:34-40 – July 7, 2012)

Disclaimer: I adore the Summary of the Law! If there was one thing in the liturgy of the Episcopal Church that just grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go when I first encountered it as a high school freshman, it was the Summary of the Law. And if there is one thing that disappoints me about the 1979 American prayer book, it is the removal of the Summary of the Law from the standard Sunday service of Holy Communion. So this is an admittedly biased suggestion. ~ A few days ago I responded here to the Episcopal Presiding Bishop’s proposed budget for the church’s next triennium, noting that she had created it around the Anglican Communion’s five “Marks of Mission.” That’s a good idea. My response suggested that something lacking in the five marks is any specific mention or theological reflection acknowledging that those marks are based in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A reader took me to task noting that at least the first two imply a Christian basis, and I agreed. But the third, fourth, and fifth do not; I think the church should explicitly say how those marks contribute to the spread of the Gospel. ~ Here’s a simple suggestion for testing the ministries of the church, its structures, its programs, everything it says and does: test them against the Summary of the Law. For example, let’s say the church budgets $500,000 to promote “environmental justice”. Fine, that seems to fit the fifth mark of mission, which is “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.” Next question: In what way does a program to promote “environmental justice” evince the church’s love for the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind? Or how does it encourage and enable the church’s people to do so? And if it doesn’t . . . let’s move to the second question: In what way does such a program enhance our love of neighbor as self? ~ In parishes, especially as parishes develop vision and mission statements, set goals, and adopt budgets, we are often encouraged to test our programs against our goals. Does this parish activity support the vision, mission, and primary goals of the congregation? If not, can it? And if not, can it! It seems to me the national church could test its budget and programs in the same way, not against some vision committee’s product, but against the vision and mission set by our Founder: the Summary of the Law together with the Great Commission. Unless someone can lay out a simple apologia for a budget item, making it plain how that expenditure gives witness and support to love of God or love or neighbor, or contributes to the making of disciples, that item ought to be challenged. ~ Structure the budget around the five marks of mission, good idea. But test the structures and programs in the budget against the vision and mission of the Founder: love God, love neighbor, make disciples! A summary of the budget ought to pretty well track the Summary of the Law.

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

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