Solstice

Posted on December 20, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

When the night is longest, stretching

deep and dark beyond our sight,

light a candle;

see its flame flicker as the breath of God

inhales our prayers,

sighs out a shimmer of hope.

 

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Advent I

Posted on November 29, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

It is not as simple as the poet makes it

sound to transform the form of metal,

a sword into farm equipment.

Just hit it with a hammer,

the prophecy implies,

and all will fall,

seeds into their furrows and nations

in obeisance to the Prince of Peace.

Yet rumours of the spoils of war

echo in the ears of rulers,

and fear forges weapons from the elements.

Still, when the fire of the Spirit burns

and melts the hearts of humanity,

something new will breathe,

rising and falling through clouds

of smoke and glory,

fermenting life from dirt and ashes.

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. – Isaiah 2:4

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Seven

Posted on November 5, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

And then, imagine it from her point of view:

seven lifetimes of love, regret, loss, laughter.

Seven lifetimes of abuse – pray not.

Seven lifetimes of blessing, despite the woes,

hope despite it all. Seven lifetimes and here,

in eternity, she was no one’s to own:

the richest woman with lifetimes to spare

in a sky-blue heaven, the angels attendants,

white cloud gown, bridegroom waiting

since before the lifetime of earth for this

glorious consummation

 

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” – Luke 20:27-38

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Woe to you who are self-satisfied

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

We know that the words of Jesus are timeless. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away, he says elsewhere (Matthew 24:35). And yet, on this particular weekend, in this particular country, to preach that those who are hungry are blessed can feel out of step.

Jesus, of course, was echoing the song his mother sang when she was carrying him, the one we know as the Magnificat; the one that includes the lines,

God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty – Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. (Luke 1:53; 6:25)

And Mary, in turn, was riffing off of Hannah, who sang so many centuries before.

Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry are fat with spoil – Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. (1 Samuel 2:5; Luke 6:21)

Timeless. For so many centuries, that see-saw of hunger and satisfaction, blessing and warning, joy and mourning has been rising and falling in song and in society, without, apparently, any resolution as yet.

I’m not here to talk politics. I believe that there are choices as a nation that we could make to bless the hungry and raise up the poor and put-upon in spirit. And, the choices that Jesus invites us to make go beyond the politics of the moment. They are fundamental. They are timeless.

Here is what Jesus offers by way of instruction after he repeats his foremothers’ song:

Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer, and do not wit hhold. Give without asking for return. Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:27-31)

That’s where the see-saw balances, isn’t it? Do to others as you would have them do to you. Love one another, love your neighbour, love your enemy. Love God before all and the image of God in every person, as you would have them see you, beloved of God and worthy of the love of neighbour. This is the pivot point of the see-saw, the fulcrum of the lever: the love of God.

I don’t think that it’s much of a stretch to say that this balance is present when we come to baptism, or to the commemoration of All Saints and All Souls. In each, death and resurrection, a new life, are represented and made visible. Regret is turned into repentance and the communion of saints murmur absolution; oil and water meet at the font; mourning and singing mingle at the altar.

And in each of these commemorations we recognize that we are none of us Christians alone, none of human alone; that each of our blessings and woes adds to the movement of the see-saw.

It is a joy and a privilege to return to this place, where I learned – where you taught me – so much about how to become a priest. And as I look out among the pews, I see so much that has changed, and so much that remains the same. I see the memories, spirits of people who are no longer here, who have joined the Communion of Saints, the cloud of witnesses, or simply moved on. I see new life that has emerged to join this crowd of witnesses and worshippers. What a joy and a privilege to be part of the sacrament of baptism this morning, the promise of a future filled with the Holy Spirit, the breath of life.

When we are baptized into the Body of Christ, we join ourselves with something that is dynamic, living and therefore ever-changing; and yet which is eternal, and thereby constant. Whatever the ups and downs of this life, the foundation of the church, Jesus, stands. That is a comfort, and a constancy that we need in these tumultuous times – and when are the affairs of humanity ever not tumultuous?

And as we stand on that foundation, swaying a little, but trusting, Jesus says, Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray.

Be the blessing that will bring us closer to the kingdom of God that Mary and Hannah sang of. Do the good in this moment, at this time that will let others know the enduring love of God, who feeds us on bread and wine. Listen, heed the warnings that Jesus offers to those who think that they are untouched by the needs of others. Love God, love your neighbour, change their world, change our world.

Archimedes is widely reported to have said, Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world (to paraphrase a diocesan tagline).

The love of God, unfailing, unflinching, all-blessing, baptizing creation God’s mercy: that is the support, the pivot point, the fulcrum upon which the lever rests. All we are asked to do is to lean into it.

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All hallows

Posted on October 31, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

It took so long to get the fire lit,

even though the wind blew

as though the Holy Spirit fanned

the flames of Pentecost herself.

The children in their costumes came

and went without judgement, candy-sweet.

When the tinder finally caught, I sought

bric-à-brac of twigs from across the neighbour’s yard

to keep it fed. Consider, I thought,

the fires of heaven, and us poor fuel,

damp and easily consumed,

yet within each the spark of holiness.

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Contempt and condemnation

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

There’s a deep irony to this parable, that whenever we read it, we are tempted, aren’t we, to mutter, “Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee!” (Luke 18:9-14)

Jesus told this parable to those who trusted in themselves, instead, it is implied, in the deep and abiding mercies of God. There is a tragedy in the telling of this parable, which is that the Pharisee, who does everything right, everything good and well, cannot be satisfied without comparing himself to the tax collector, without finding someone else to scapegoat, someone to be better than.

Jesus told this parable to those who trusted in themselves, and regarded others with contempt.

In the modern psychological mode, we might see the Pharisee as an overgrown child, still cowering in fear before a strict parent, unable to trust that love will prevail, casting anyone and everyone else in front of him to shield himself from judgement: I’m a good child! He’s the bad one! He did it! We might even feel sorry for him. Which makes us even less likely to want to be like him. And so the spiral continues.

The irony of this parable and its type-casting of the Pharisee deepens when we consider biblical historical scholarship that suggests that Jesus might himself have been closer to the Pharisees than we often assume. Now, this is something of a mystery, because the historical record itself is sparse regarding Pharisees, but the story goes something like this (and here I’m drawing on opinions from Amy-Jill Levine, Jewish New Testament scholar [i], and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, who has written a series of researched blog posts on the subject [ii]; but don’t blame them if I’ve made any errors below):

In the first century, there were several distinct groups within Judaism that we know something about. One was the Sadducees: we see them in the Gospels. We know that they are associated with the Temple, and that they don’t believe in resurrection. They are the ones who ask Jesus the question about the man whose widow marries seven brothers in succession, hoping to trip him with the technicality of who will possess her in the afterlife. Jesus artfully escapes that snare by setting the widow free (Luke 20:27-40).

Another was the Essenes: the ascetic band who lived in the caves of Qumran and gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls. You may have heard speculation that John the Baptizer was one of those.

Apparently, the Essenes called the Pharisees “seekers after smooth things”, because they did not live in the caves but, as Jesus describes elsewhere, liked to wear long robes and swirl them around the marketplace (Luke 20:45-46; Matthew 23:1-12). The definition of the word Pharisee is itself murky, but one strong contender is that to be a Pharisee means to be an interpreter. An interpreter of what? An interpreter of the Law. As such, the Pharisees are often considered the ancestors of the rabbis who continued the Jewish traditions after the destruction of the Temple, reinterpreting and continuing the ancient traditions into a new and devastated landscape.

Who were the Pharisees in relation to Jesus? They argued points of the Law with him, and he argued back. They were Saul of Tarsus, later Paul, who boasted in his Pharisaism (Acts 26:5; Philippians 3:5). They were Gamaliel, Saul’s teacher, who argued on behalf of Peter and the apostles before the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:34-39). They were Simon, who invited Jesus to dinner (and whose invitation Jesus accepted; Luke 7:36), and Nicodemus, who came to Jesus at night (John 3), and who helped Joseph to bury him in a new tomb after his shameful and false execution (John 19:38-42).

So, was Jesus one of them? Does it matter? Well, only if we consider that the parable he is telling is not about comparing one group to another: Pharisees bad, tax collectors good; Pharisees proud, tax collectors humble; Pharisees fraudulent, tax collectors true. That would be a good parable, in that it turns communal wisdom on its head and shocks its listeners into a new understanding; but it wouldn’t really ring true, and it would only reinforce the tendency I think Jesus is aiming to subvert.

Because the Pharisee in the parable, and the ones listening, were righteous. They did, by and large, pray regularly, tithe willingly, fast rigorously, keep the Law. And the tax collectors were too often downright cheats and collaborators.

The point of the parable is not to elevate one group of people and condemn another, but to undermine the very bases for comparison that society uses to stratify human beings made in the image of God.

Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and regarded others with contempt. It’s the contempt that he is condemning in this parable, not the righteousness. Because he was willing, always and everywhere, to reach beyond his own and embrace the lost, the lonely, the unloveable. He literally broke the mould.

When the Pharisee says, “Thank God I’m not like him,” he’s really saying, “God, that one’s really not your best work.” Excuse me? That person, made in the image of the living and loving and liberating God is a reject? I don’t think so! And when we read the parable and think, “Well, thank God I’m not a Pharisee!” don’t we risk making the same mistake? And if there’s just a hint of a chance that Jesus was also a Pharisee, might that make us more careful of it?

Stereotyping is dangerous. It is deadly. Painting Jesus as just another rabble-rousing Jew at Passover, casting him as a Zealot, led those in authority to crucify him. You know how dangerous and deadly stereotyping can be. You know how deadly stereotyping can be, and you know how the solidarity of the Gospel undermines it.

When we pause to see each person as God’s image in human form; when we live out our baptismal promises to seek and serve Christ in all persons, we undermine the stereotyping that leads to contempt, to dehumanizing, to death. When we cast ourselves on the mercy of God, we are saved.

Because this is the truth of the Gospel: that none of us is saved not by our own righteousness, not by belonging to the right group, or the right church, or the right practices. We can do everything right, and still die. We can do everything right, and still, we die.

But Jesus is one of us. He has been there with us and for us. This is the truth of the Gospel, that Jesus lives for us, loves us, and will be with us to the end of the age, Emmanuel, God with us, God one of us. So look up, take heart, and live.

[i] Podcast: The Bible for Normal People, by Pete Enns and Jared Byas. Episode 278: Amy-Jill Levine – Who Are the Pharisees Actually?

[ii] Jesus and the Jews (Part 1) https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/pharisees/, Jesus and Beit Hillel (Part 2!) https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/jesus2/, Wrapping Up Jesus (Part 3) https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/jesus3/

 

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Persistence (a sermon)

Posted on October 19, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Persistence, in and of itself, is not a virtue. One may persist in doing good; another may persist in doing evil. We do not know, from this parable, whether the widow’s lawsuit was just or extortionary; we know that the judge didn’t care. We know, too, that God does care: that God so loves each piece and person of this world as to give God’s life to us, and for us. We see, throughout the Bible, throughout the holy scriptures and the story of our salvation how persistent God is in mercy, in justice, in love.

So we might consider that what we persist in is at least as important, much more so, than how insistent our persistence is.

In fact, we might consider that the theme of the parable and the other readings we hear today is less about the holy grind itself, and more about what it is we are hoping to achieve by persisting in prayer, being faithful to our bible study, refusing to lose heart when justice does seem delayed, or far away, or out of reach.

Because that is the itchy grain of sand that lies beneath this pearl of a parable, isn’t it? Jesus, for once, tells his disciples exactly what it means, and he tells them, he tells us that God will not delay long in administering justice to and for those who cry out for it, that God will be swift to come to their aid. And we see all around us people crying out for justice, for aid, for peace, for dignity, for humanity. And we wonder how long it will really take for justice to be done, for peace on the earth, goodwill to all who are made in the image of the living, loving God.

And some may wander away, looking for justice elsewhere, even inventing their own story, even if it is but a shadow of the joyful justice of the kingdom of heaven.

There was an image going around the internet a couple of weeks ago of a man in a crowded arena, a man dressed in fine clothes and shouldering a cross. But the cross had training wheels on the bottom, so that it simply trailed along behind him. There is a difference between persistence and performance, persistence and pretence, persistence and parody. We cannot invent new ways of carrying the cross to make it easier to wait upon the justice and mercy of God.

Some of you perhaps read the columns of David French – I do only occasionally, but one caught my eye this week. He pointed out that every real renewal of the Spirit begins with repentance. Our faithfulness to prayer and to the promises of God begins not with the condemnation of others – fake justice, rooted in self-righteousness and revenge – but in the quiet soul-searching that brings us alongside the Holy Spirit, praying right along with us in sighs too deep for words.

Paul tells Timothy, and Jesus tells his disciples, to remain faithful to the hope that God has set before us, believe in the promises that God has made to us, that God is good, and that God’s justice is worth waiting for.

I can always be wrong, but it seems to me that this parable, and Paul’s advice to Timothy, is less about being stubborn, right or wrong, and more about being persistent, resilient, faithful, steadfast – that’s a good biblical word, right? – steadfast in our pursuit of the justice and the mercy and the promises and the love of God. Because God is not slow to compassion, nor late in administering mercy, nor unmoved by the cries of God’s people, nor lacking in love. God forbid that we should make such accusations.

But we, we human people, made in the image of God, but as in a glass, darkly, we are a bit slow, to be honest, to grasp the full implications of the commandments to love God completely, and our neighbours, friends and enemies alike, as if they were ourselves. As if they mattered as much as us, deserved as much as us, hurt as much as us.

You’ve heard it said that prayer is not about changing God, but about changing us. That, I think, is what this parable and these teachings are about. God is not slow to love every piece and person of creation; so let’s pray persistently and consistently and robustly and resiliently until we are changed into God’s likeness, and enabled and equipped and encouraged to act in God’s image and will, and in solidarity with those crying out to God for the justice that is mercy.

That means, dare I say it, that what we do in here, praying together, reading the scriptures together, taking Communion, truly ingesting God’s grace together, is so that we might be changed in order to change the world. What we do here doesn’t stay here, but showing up faithfully here is what keeps us from losing heart, what keeps us from losing our way, what keeps us from wandering like lost sheep, bleating in the wilderness that is this world.

There’s a story by Graham Greene[1] that has always stayed with me, about a village where the doors remained open and the lights on, and the fire lit, even while it appeared empty. The story explained that one winter some years earlier, a stranger had come into the village, looking for shelter, but all of the houses were locked. The inhabitants were all at church, since it was Christmas. When they returned to the village and found the stranger frozen to death, they understood the difference between performative and transformative religion; religion that builds a nativity scene and religion that makes room at the inn.

 What happens here is not performative, but practical. We are participating in the apostles’ fellowship and the prayers, we are participants in the saving grace of Jesus at the Table and on the Cross. We persist in this so that when we are let loose into the world, we know what Jesus looks like, we know the promises of God when we see them, and we are able to come alongside those who cry out for mercy, and pray and stay with them, that this world might be changed, and without further delay.

Amen.

[1] Graham Greene, “A Visit to Morin”, in Collected Stories (Viking Press, 1973)

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, Luke 18:1-8

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The little flower

Posted on October 1, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily on the commemoration of Therese de Lisieux

Therese de Lisieux did not live a long life. Perhaps that’s why the impression I get of her spirituality is one of lightness; despite her knowledge of pain and grief, a joyful wisdom, a certain pureness of prayer. 

I find it curious that the lection chosen to pair with Therese, the little flower, comes from the curious book of Judith. A part neither of the Jewish nor any more of the Christian canon, Judith is likely a novel, according to my commentary,[i] written about 100 years before Jesus was born, and now contained in our apocryphal, or deuterocanonical writings: useful for the broadening of our understanding of God and our relationship to God, but not used in our Church for the development of doctrine. This is important, for reasons I’ll come back to.

Judith, so the story goes, is a widow. Her husband has died of heatstroke while working in the fields. Judith is a model biblical widow. Beautiful, wealthy, and devout, she devotes herself to fasting and secludes herself on her roof, not in the community of a convent, but at least in the company of her maid (not to speak of the slaves left her by her husband). Hearing that her city was under siege from the evil empire, she summoned the leaders and they obeyed and came before her. Judith asked them,

“Who are you to set yourselves up in the place of God in human affairs? … You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart or understand the workings of the human mind; how do you expect to search out God, who made all these things, and find out the mind of God or comprehend the thought of God?” (Judith 8:12-14, paraphrased)

The rest of her story is written for you to discover in the books between the Testaments, if you don’t already know it. Remember, though, that we do not base doctrine nor direction nor direct action on the words of the apocrypha, and that this book was written as a novel, not an instruction manual; Judith’s story is violent, and we have had quite enough of violence. Enough of that. 

You understand what I’m saying: we have some distressing and frankly dangerous texts in our Bible, but we have, too, the words of Jesus: the commandment to love our enemies; and the actions of Jesus, disarming his disciples in the Garden, saying, “Nor more of this!” Enough of that. (Luke 22:51) Let’s be really clear about that: about Jesus, for us the Word of God, as the context of our Evening Prayer.

Therese did not aspire to as dramatic a life as Judith’s. But Therese wrote that while her heart occasionally aspired to the flight of an eagle, that heart was contained within a little bird, never destined to fly so high, yet sheltering under the same sky, the same Divine Sun, the Star of Love, so that it should never be afraid. She knew that she would not live a long life. But she knew, too, that she could live a deep life, and a full life, if she stayed close to Jesus. She wrote, as if for us,

I understood it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES…. IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL![ii]

Therese did aspire to find out the mind of God, to plumb not only the depths of the human heart, contained in her convent sisters, but the heart and mind of Jesus, her love. 

Over and again, in so many words, Therese describes herself as a very little soul [who can] offer God only very little things. Yet neither does she underestimate the value of a life – her life – devoted to the love of God and prayer for God’s world.

Here perhaps is where Therese and Judith coincide after all: Judith in fasting, ashes and sackcloth on her rooftop, and Therese in the cloister. 

Therese wrote, 

For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.[iii]

Both women, through prayer, aspired to expand their souls to unite themselves to God.

We live, my friends, in troubled and troublesome times. Perhaps we feel besieged. Perhaps we feel breathless, as Therese in the convent infirmary. Perhaps we aspire to the eagle’s flight, yet find ourselves earthbound. 

Perhaps the message of these two women, and their sister, the widow at the Temple gates; perhaps their message tonight is to remain in prayer, to be steadfast in faith, to remember that the faithfulness of God will not leave us bereft, despite the sufferings of the world and ourselves within it. Our vocation is to strengthen community wherever we find it, to direct love wherever it is most needed. If we are faithful to that call, we will please Jesus.

And, the salvation of the world is not in our hands, but the promise of prayer is. And while the peace of God passes our understanding, it is at hand. It is found in the smallest act of love, a little flower growing between the cracks of a fractured and fractious world, persistent in its beauty, brave in its striving, and unstoppable in its reach toward the sun.

[i] The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume III (Abingdon Press, 1999), 1075

[ii] Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower), by St. Therese of Lisieux [The Authorized English Translation of Therese’s Original Unaltered Manuscripts], Kindle Edition, 213.

[iii] Ibid., 260  

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Prayer for a BANI world

Posted on September 19, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jamais Cascio introduced the framework of BANI in 2018; I’ve been learning about it in the past couple of years, but he writes that

I first developed BANI in mid 2018. Before the pandemic. Before the attempted insurrection in the United States, and just before the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil. Well before the invasion of Ukraine. Before you could make deepfake videos on your phone. Before world leaders finally admitted that massive wildfires and heatwaves and floods and storms that had become commonplace were driven by global warming. Before all of that, yet we could still see chaos everywhere.

BANI, if you haven’t come across it, stands for Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible. It addresses the unpredictability of our current historical climate. Ironically, as a framework, it appears to predict the increasing (galloping?) elements of BANI that we recognize all too well.

How does BANI translate into prayer? I have no idea of Cascio’s spirituality. But he does say this:

BANI is not a magic wand to reveal solutions. Arguably, most of the kinds of system breaks that BANI encompasses don’t actually have solutions, at least not in the conventional sense. We can look for responses and, better yet, adaptations.

So when I’m asked about what can be done to withstand the chaos of a BANI world, I go to human elements and behaviors like resilience, empathy, improvisation, and intuition. The chaos of BANI doesn’t come from changes in a geophysical system or some such, it comes from a human inability to fully understand what to do when pattern-seeking and familiar explanations no longer work.

For people of faith, there is one reliable place to turn when human understanding no longer works. Hence this prayer:

Dear God,

This world is anxious. Your church is anxious. We are worried and distracted by many things.[1] But let us cast all of our anxiety on you, because you care for us.[2] May we be anxious only for the coming of your reign, for your will to be done on earth as in heaven.

This world is nonlinear, as are you: omnipresent, omni-chronological, without beginning or end. Help us to remember that as labyrinthine as this life gets, we cannot be lost as our origin and end are in you.

This world is brittle, and so are we. When we are shattered, let us dedicate each and every fragment to you, for in you is our hope of resurrection.

This world is incomprehensible, but then so is your peace, passing our understanding.[3] May we find our rest, our wisdom, our peace in you.

Amen.

 

[1] Luke 10:41

[2] 1 Peter 5:7

[3] Philippians 4:7

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Jealousy vs joy

Posted on September 14, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Now, I don’t want to give away too much in spoilers, but these two parables are not, as it were, the end of the story. There is more to come – a truly revealing third parable. But we don’t hear that one today, and by next Sunday, strangely, we’ll have moved on to another.

In the meantime, in the shepherd’s hut and the woman’s home, all is celebration. One of the beautiful things about this pair of parables is the way in which neither person can contain their joy – they won’t even try to keep it to themselves. Instead, they throw open their homes, and their hearts, and they invite their friends and neighbours to rejoice with them. So is the joy in heaven in the presence of the angels, when one who was lost returns, is found by the grace of God.

Spoiler alert: back here in our world, this perfect picture will not last beyond the next parable. The reason Jesus started this set of stories was because of the grumbling of certain jealous and joyless people who resented the relationship Jesus had with those of whom they did not approve. Jealousy is perhaps the quickest and surest way to puncture joy, let out its air, so that it droops and flops. Not so in heaven, in the presence of the angels of God. But we are a little earthier than angels, aren’t we?

I notice that the woman and the shepherd are not afraid that someone will say, “Well, what’s the big deal?” or, “She should have kept a closer eye on it in the first place,” or, “Nice for some to have a hundred sheep.” They are not afraid of envy, jealousy, ridicule, or worse. They are all innocence as they share the good news that they have.

This zero-sum game that we play with one another, its maths doesn’t add up in the divine economy. There is no hint in these parables that the shepherd doesn’t love the ninety-nine other sheep, or that the woman sees no value in the other nine coins – what sense would that make? Instead of rejecting anyone, these stories tell us that for God, ninety percent is not enough. God loves everyone whom God has made, no exceptions, as we so often tell one another. Meatloaf may have sung, “Two out of three ain’t bad,” but for God, even ninety-nine percent is not a good enough grade. For the joy of the community – sheep, shepherd, friends, neighbours, tax collectors, sinners, scribes, Pharisees to be complete, there can be no exceptions.

One of the characteristics of a parable is that its meaning of the parable is determined by the experience of the hearer as well as the intentions of the teller. It is mutable. So I imagine that this particular pair of parables hits a little differently, somewhat tenderly, today, when the community is missing some of its members, has lost some of its sheep, misplaced some of its valued and invaluable assets.

So let’s also recognize this: There wasn’t much the ninety-nine sheep could do to bring back their friend, still less the silver coins to find their complete set. Instead, it is the shepherd, the Good Shepherd who seeks and finds. It is the woman – creative, resourceful, persistent, and divine, who sweeps and finds. It is the grace of God, the transformative love of Jesus, that makes the difference. The work of the community – sheep, coins, friends, neighbours, scribes, sinners, Pharisees, and all, is to be ready to celebrate, to share in the joy of heaven over the repentance and return of one miserable sinner, when and whenever it happens.

This might be a good time to mention that the third parable, the pinnacle of this set that Jesus tells those grumbling and jealous people, is the parable of the prodigal son. He tells it not only to describe the warm and eager and expansive embrace of the father welcoming his lost child home. He tells it to the elder brothers, the ones who refuse to celebrate, who shut themselves out of the feast, out of jealousy, and to their own loss.

Jealousy, as I said, is the thief of joy. It keeps the elder brother from the family reunion. It prevents the citizen from celebrating the rescue of the refugee, the wealthy from celebrating Jesus’ announcement of good news for the poor and the meek. It resents the love of God for its rival, and leads to the casting of golden calves to spite them all. It clouds the vision of the scribes so that they do not even recognize the Word of God when he is standing right in front of them, telling stories from heaven.

I heard, during the tumult and terror of this past week, someone speaking from the highest office in the land, saying that he “couldn’t care less” about bringing people back together. It sounded, I hope, as though what I heard was grief lashing out, as grief will. But these parables remind us that God, God literally could not care less than one hundred percent. It is who God is, to love without end, without giving up on any of us.

Love. It is love that turns away the wrath of God and the violence of humanity. Love converts sinners into saints, Saul into Paul, persecutors into preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the love of God for this world made manifest. It must have seemed impossible, but with God, nothing is impossible. Love celebrates each and every step towards the joy of heaven, the reign of God, the community of the beloved made whole; each sheep, each coin, each brother, each sleepless night spent searching for the way back home.

Jesus tells these parables to the scribes and the Pharisees, the tax collectors and sinners, the disciples, the curious, and the concerned. He invites them to leave their grumbling and their jealousy, to drop their superiority and their self-righteousness, their self-loathing and their doubt, and just come, come join the party.

“Rejoice with me,” he tells them, for such is the joy in heaven, in the presence of the angels, when you, when I, when the last, lost sheep, shows up at the feast that God has laid out, laid on for us. 

Readings for Year C Proper 19 include Exodus 32:7-14, Psalm 51:1-11, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10

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