Fr. Patrick Funston — Easter: The Sunday of the Resurrection; Sermon,...

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Fourth Sunday of Easter; Sermon, April 22, 2018

Topic:  Knowing and Being Known

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
601 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS
10:45am Service
Easter 4B Readings
Main Focus Text: John 10.11-18, 1 John 3.16-24

I know that I already know and have had a chance to speak to many of you, but just in case we haven’t had that opportunity, my name is Dillon Green and I am the Campus Ministry Intern for Kansas State University. I’m so excited that Patrick has given me the opportunity to preach to you today, especially on the same day that we start an Adult Education series on diversity and on the ways in which we, individually and as a church, have gotten in and continue to get in our own way when it comes to understanding, welcoming, and knowing the diverse members of our human family. 

What does it mean to be known? I am the Good Shepherd, we hear Jesus say today in the Gospel of John. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. This image, the image of Christ as Good Shepherd, is a very comfortable, familiar image to us, so comfortable that we use it to name many of our churches. We take comfort in the fact that Christ knows us and, in the Incarnation, allows us to know him as well. I have found, however, that every coin is two-sided; that in every image of comfort, in every comfortable thing, there is something of the uncomfortable, and it is good for us to consider what might be uncomfortable about the things that we have chosen to taken comfort in. Take, for instance, the cross, the central symbol of our faith. It’s a profoundly uncomfortable thing to take comfort in. The central message of Christianity is told through that symbol, that, through death, something I think we all find uncomfortable, Christ has conquered death. Through a miracle, something we’re even more uncomfortable with in this post-enlightenment world, through the miracle of resurrection, He has given us a hope for eternal life. As we hear in John today, Jesus says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” Death and miracle. Let us, then, consider what is uncomfortable about the Good Shepherd, this image that both the Psalmist in Psalm 23 and John in his Gospel give us today, and what is uncomfortable about knowing and about being known.

My most vivid encounter with knowing and being known, with death and with miracle, happened in Costa Rica in the summer of 2012. I was a 21-year-old college student majoring in Spanish and had decided to study abroad for three weeks with a group from my university. It was my first trip outside of the country and my first time on a plane, and I was nervous. I visited my mom, who lived an hour and a half away from me, to say goodbye and to get some much-needed motherly advice and affection before I left. I finally got to Costa Rica and immediately felt uncomfortable. Anyone with five minutes worth of knowledge about me can tell you that I am painfully extroverted and consider myself pretty good in social situations, but those situations are normally in English. Not only could I not speak Spanish very well at that point, but funnily enough a round, VERY white, very loud American is easy to pick out in a sea of sun kissed Costa Ricans. For the first time in my life, I was a foreigner, a stranger in a strange land. We got to CPI, the school where we were going to study, and the administrators introduced us to our host families. As I stood waiting, this squat, old, wrinkled woman with short, dark hair and black horn-rimmed glasses walked toward me with eight other members of her family, and she introduced herself to me as Doña Aida but told me that I could call her my Mamatica. Over those next weeks she would cook me meals, make me coffee, wash my clothes, and muddle through broken Spanish conversations with me, as would her entire family. This was during what I like to call my Catholic period. I was thinking of becoming a Catholic and I told Aida that, so she talked to me often of her faith in God. I asked why she chose to host international students in her house, because I knew that I wasn’t her first student, and she told me it was because she enjoyed filling the role of mother for those students whose mothers couldn’t be there with them. The second Thursday I was there, my father called to say that my mom had passed out at my Nanna’s house, was unresponsive, had been rushed to the hospital and that I might need to start thinking about coming home early. I didn’t want to burden my host family and friends, so I just told my professor and she began the arrangements to have my flight moved. I went to school that next morning, troubled, but I welcomed the distraction of class. I was heavy with regret, with fear, with sadness, and with anger. When I returned to my Mamatica’s house that evening at 6, she told me that my Dad had been trying to contact me, so I called him back, breathless, and got the news that my mom had died at 3:00. I told Aida, sobbing, and she immediately began to hug me and sob with me. I was shaken by her response. 

My lament was not this woman’s lament.
My grief was not this woman’s grief.
But death is a fertile soil for miracle,
and in my mother’s death the miracle of knowing was born. 

Rage and fear and sadness have no language, and so, in that experience, whatever language barriers existed were broken, and my Mamatica knew me. She knew my grief and my pain. And her response was to offer me, someone she’d only known for two weeks, the miracle of love, of understanding, of knowing. It was vulnerable and uncomfortable, but it was holy. In that act of knowing, we were the same. However, that sameness didn’t make our differences go away, but it recognized and celebrated them. We were different AND the same all at once.  Aida was poor, but she and the other members of her family pooled their money and bought me a statue of the Virgin Mary, the Blessed Mother. She took me to the airport, crossed my forehead in blessing and sent me back to America with the certainty that I had known and been known there.

The Good Shepherd tells us that He knows us, and we know Him, but that knowledge, that knowing is not necessarily comfortable. It’s certainly not easy, and it’s never perfect. It takes vulnerability, and it can be awkward, but it’s the object of God’s relationship with us and it’s the reason that God gave us each other, in order to know and to be known by each other in the same way that He knows us. I’ve experienced it most, as I think many of us have, in those deeply troubling, most difficult, most uncomfortable moments of life, when a spot has been rubbed thin in your heart and your normal, fast paced life has been slowed down to a halt by circumstance, when my Mamatica hugged me and sobbed for my mother and for me. I don’t mean to say that we don’t or can’t know God in good times, but it’s when we have wandered, when we are lost that we look around frantically for our Shepherd.

It’s Christ our God, that same Good Shepherd, that John is referring to in his first epistle today. In Chapter 3, verse 17, he says, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” Now, the obvious reading of this is about wealth, about material goods, and that reading has spurred the church and its members to give clothing and shelter and food to many people, and that is a wonderful thing. But as we begin our adult education class on diversity today, I wonder if there isn’t another way to interpret this. I wonder about the immaterial goods that we have, about acceptance, about welcome, about celebration, about being known. I thank God every day that I have those things, and that, when I don’t, people like my Mamatica follow the Shepherd’s example and fill that need by reaching out and knowing me, regardless of our differences, regardless of how vulnerable or awkward it is, regardless of whether we agree about everything. There are communities that are especially in need of being known, of being given the world’s immaterial goods, of being shown love, acceptance, welcome, and celebration. There are some communities that have lacked these things for a very long time. The poor, the homeless, people of color, immigrants, women, the LGBTQ community, people with special needs. As we begin in adult education to look at the ways in which we individually, we as St. Paul’s, and the larger Church have fallen short of God’s call to know our brothers and sisters in these communities and to be known by them, I hope you remember the times in your life when you yourself have needed to be known. Remember who knew you. Remember those who go most of their lives without being known. And then remember John’s question in his epistle, asked in a slightly different way: How does the Good shepherd’s love abide in anyone who has love, who is welcomed, who is known, and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Amen.

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Good Friday; Sermon, April 18, 2019

Topic:  Dead. Thanks be to God!

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
601 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS
7:00pm Service
Good Friday Readings
Main Focus Text: John 18.1-19.42 (especially John 19.18-22)

There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, ‘Do not write, “The King of the Jews”, but, “This man said, I am King of the Jews.” ’Pilate answered, ‘What I have written I have written.’

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Easter Sermon, April 30, 2017

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
601 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS
8:30am Service
Easter 3, Year A
Main Focus Text: Luke 24.13-35

Topic:
God of Grace and Abundance

During our capital campaign (which kicked off on April 23rd), Fr. Patrick will be preaching on the lectionary and our capital campaign prayer:

God of grace and abundance, you continually bless us and empower us to do your will in the world.  As we gather each week in worship, we give you thanks for the generations of St. Paul’s parishioners who have entrusted us with this building, a home for rest and renewal.  Enliven within us a spirit of gratitude and vision as we care for what we have been given, that coming generations may grow to know and love you through worship and formation in this place.  Give us the strength to live abundantly, trusting in your care for us made manifest in the life, death and resurrection of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen

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