A love song to the vineyard

Posted on October 4, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard,

writes the prophet.

The parable of the vineyard we hear today is difficult on so many levels. Yet Jesus gives his listeners a chance to write a different ending, to interrupt the cycle of death and destruction that has haunted our history since the dawn of consciousness. God has shown us the way, time and again, to mercy, to healing, writing love songs to the vineyard; we, like the chief priests and the elders, have turned too often to our own ways, preferring vengeance to healing, revenge to reconciliation, stumbling blocks to love songs.

When Eve and Adam were evicted from the Garden, it was God who made them clothes to wear. When Cain murdered his brother out of sheer envy, and was himself banished, God even so set a mark upon him as a sign of protection, that others might not avenge themselves upon him. God was not, is not interested in an eye for an eye. God has given God’s eye teeth for our deliverance, Jesus upon the cross for our redemption.

The chief priests and the elders chose an ending to the parable that would become a stumbling block to them, because violence is not justice.

We have seen again this week how our continuing pursuit of blood backfires. A woman ends up on life support because we failed to kill her properly. No one is healed by this. No justice is served by this. Instead, we have shown ourselves how empty the promise is that violence and vengeance will bring us closer to peace. The Episcopal Church has opposed the death penalty since the last century, for good theological reasons; because Jesus did not write that ending to the parable, did not repay evil with evil, because that was not who he was, nor what he came for.

This is not to say that there is no judgement in the parable, nor in the other vineyard images that we read today. We know right from wrong. The tenants in the parable had done terrible things. The landowner might have been out of his mind with grief and anger. Yet this was not the ending that Jesus wrote, or lived.

But let’s look a little more at the vineyard itself.

In the passage we have from Isaiah, it is the vineyard itself that is rebellious and fails to bear good fruit: it is planted to bear the fruit of justice, but there is bloodshed; it is planted to bear the fruit of righteousness, but there is heard the cry of oppression. Left to its own devices, the vineyard will fail, fall prey to briars and brambles, choked up by its own wild ways.

In the psalm, we hear the vineyard cry out for rescue, for God to return to the vineyard and restore it, bring tender care back to its roots and branches so that it might once again bear good fruit.

And here in Jesus’ parable, we find once again the same vineyard, with the same walls and watchtower and wine press as in Isaiah. But this time we are introduced to the caretaker tenants whose charge it is to tend the vines, who are bent instead upon exploitation.

As in Genesis, when Cain murdered Abel, the blood of the murdered slaves cries out from the ground. The blood of the sacrificed son is mixed with the pressed red grapes. As in Genesis, their cries do not go unheard by the original planter of the vine, who is on his way, in his grief, anger, and sorrow, to his vineyard when the parable is paused.

And Jesus invites his listeners to decide and to describe what happens next.

It might be easy to write off what has gone before. We recognize the horrors of the former tenants’ tenure, we know what’s wrong with this picture. But where we falter, along with the chief priests and the Pharisees, is in working out what needs to happen next.

The vineyard is still there. Through episodes of decay and dereliction, distress and deconstruction, rescue, replanting, restoration, the vineyard continues to grow, with the potential to bear fruit, new life, because it belongs to God.

Now, we, the church, can recognize ourselves in the vineyard. Planted as the people of God, branches on the vine, encouraged to produce good fruit. Occasionally suffering from the abuse of others, sometimes a little sour in our grape production, doing better when we are well-tended. We can see ourselves in the vineyard.

We could see ourselves, too, in the tenants. The chief priests and the Pharisees discerned that this parable was about them. The clergy and the church members, church leaders and faithful people, found themselves in this parable. We can, too.

We can look around at what God has planted in our midst. We can recognize our responsibility to tend to, to care for, to support the growth of the vines that God has planted. And here’s something crucial for churches to notice: the fruit of the vines that we tend and care for belongs to God. We don’t get to exploit or hoard the harvest. We do not spend the love of God upon people so that they will turn around and support our church, or shore up our bottom line. We love the vines because they belong to God, who loves us, too. Because we know how thirsty this world is for a little tenderness.

Jesus doesn’t need us to make wine. He can make wine out of water. But we have the opportunity to share in the delight of God, the joy that God takes in planting and tending and harvesting and writing love songs to a vineyard.

This is the invitation that Jesus is making, to write a new chapter for the vineyard, and for the tenants. And here is the delight: we don’t have to work it out alone. The Word of God has already spoken. Jesus is the true Vine, and all we need to do is to abide in him, with him, to share in his delight, to enjoy the fruits of God’s planting, God’s mercy, God’s love; to hear God’s love song to us, threading through the vines.

Year A Proper 22
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

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A shark on retreat

Posted on October 1, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

They say that a shark will die if it does not

keep swimming. Invited into stillness

and silence, I notice the tremor

in my legs, swaying to and fro, dancing

without rhythm to an unheard tune;

the heaviness of tongue behind my teeth,

seething with swallowed words, unsaid:

Am I a shark, weaving through

the cold salt sea, sleep-finning in the dark?

I stretch my jaw wide in an open yawn,

invite my heart to do the same,

try to quiet the beating of my mind,

to trust the tides, created when you parted

the waters from dry land, to carry me.

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The mind of Christ Jesus, the love of God

Posted on September 27, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

Philippians 2:1-13

This may be telling on myself, but have you ever wanted to play God, just for a day? Maybe even just for a situation?

What would you do if you could be like God for a day? End world hunger, of course, and declare global peace, one way or another. Not sure of the exact details. Definitely defeat all enemies of goodness and righteousness – but how to decide who they are? And what if I, a sinner, have sometimes counted as one of them? Will you spare me? And then, how how to make sure that everything stays on track when you’re gone? Oh, but if you are God, you can live forever, stay in charge forever. Make sure the world revolves around the axis of your infinite wisdom, your glory, your power, forever.

Perhaps it’s better that I am not God, even for a day.

Jesus, although in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God 
as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, 
being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,
he humbled himself 
and became obedient to the point of death– 
even death on a cross.

Theologians call this kenosis, this self-emptying: some have seen it as an emptying out of the divine in order for Jesus to become human. But we believe that Jesus was both fully human true God from God, and that God made humanity in the divine image. What if Jesus, in his humanity, is showing us the fullness of that divine image, not its emptiness [1]. What if to be divine is to be humble, is to be self-giving, is to die for those whom God has made and loved, to hold nothing so close as love itself?

In some ways I think that the current debate about AI is a good parable for us to consider.

In the garden of Eden, the serpent told the human, if you eat of the tree that God said not to, you will become like gods.

Al, like Adam, on becoming self aware, seeks to become godlike, breaking out of the sandbox as we keep hearing. We see the danger of exploitation in AI’s ambitions – exploitation of resources, of the earth, of creation; exploitation of data, of people’s stories, of people’s lives. We see folly and frightfulness in its capacity for hallucination and havoc, and we worry, some of us. But AI was trained by observing us, on human product. Do we care to notice in the mirror of AI our own capacity for self-deception, thinking ourselves to be like gods?

When we try to recreate the mind of God out of our human imagination, the trouble is that it’s the human imagination that gave rise to the Tower of Babel as well as the music of Beethoven, and to enemies as well as aspirin, and to hunger as well as humour, and to the atom bomb as well as artificial intelligence, exploiting too often our privilege, the divine light within, turning to self-worship, instead of emptying ourselves of all but the love from which and for which God created us.

No, we do not want God to have the same mind as is in us.

Instead, have the same mind in you that is in Christ Jesus … Jesus has shown us clearly how the mind of God works: loving beyond measure, healing across borders and without boundaries, loosing the chains of the outcast and welcoming the lost. Jesus, who faced down demons and fell down three times under the weight of his cross, and still forgave us. If that is what it looks like to be like God, what if that is also what it means to be fully, truly, completely human, made in the living image of God, to live with love.

Isn’t that what makes us feel most human, most alive, when we are able to unleash love? The touch of your beloved, the first time holding your child. Those moments with family or friends, with the people who know us best and love us anyway. Or the moment when we are able to reach out to help someone else, the warmth that radiates through the rest of the day from successfully serving another. Even that moment of eye contact with a sympathetic stranger, that lets us know that we are of the same mind, of the same earth, of the same family of God.

What if to have the mind of Jesus Christ, the living image of God was nothing more nor less than to regard that equality not as something to be exploited, but squandered in the service of love?

You may know that quote from St Irenaeus, that the glory of God is the human being fully alive. You might say, too, that the glory of God is the human being fully in love.

We don’t have to do great things to be of the same mind as Christ. We don’t have to work miracles to come close to God. We don’t have to know how to fix everything. We don’t need even to be a particularly good judge of character – Jesus is notoriously non-judgemental. We don’t need  anything to have the same mind that is in Christ Jesus but to love deeply, and broadly, and kindly.

So Paul writes,

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

the love of God made truly human. Amen.

[1] Read, for example, Donald K. Mackinnon, Borderlands of Theology and other essays (Wipf & Stock, 2011), and Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Blackwell Publishing, 2002)

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Jonah

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon on the story of Jonah and Jesus’ parable of the generous landowner (Matthew 20:1-16)

The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. (Psalm 145:8)

Jonah experienced both the anger of God and the kindness of God, the wrath of God and the mercy of God, each in extraordinary measure.

When God first told Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, he bolted. It’s hard to blame him; Nineveh was a byword for evil and no friend to the prophets of God. Still, thinking he could escape God on a borrowed boat was a bold move. It didn’t work. There was a storm. There was more than a storm: there was a tempest. There was the fury of God whipping up the water, although no one perished that night. The sailors realized that something supernatural was afoot, and they drew lots to see who had caused the waves to swell with anger. On finding that it was Jonah, even so they tried at first to save him, but the storm was too much for them, and they ended up throwing him overboard. At once, the storm settled down, and they were able to go on their way in peace.

As for Jonah, he was famously swallowed up by a great fish, a sea monster on his way to the ocean floor, and deposited three days later on the shore, seemingly little the worse for wear, and giving thanks to God for his strange and salty salvation. Then God’s word came to him a second time, and he went to Nineveh.

For three days he strode across the city proclaiming the wrath of God. Three days in the belly of the beast, three days in the city of sin, three days suspended between life and death, judgement and mercy. For three days he told anyone who would listen of the storm that was heading their way, and they did listen, and they did repent, and they dressed in sackcloth and ashes from their king to their cattle, and just as happened on the sea, the storm of God’s wrath ceased, and all was restored to calm.

Except for Jonah. Jonah was mad. Jonah told God, “See, I knew you would do this. This is exactly why I didn’t want to come – because you were just going to turn around and forgive them!” Jonah had experienced the wrath of God and the mercy of God, each in extraordinary measure, and while he was praying and praising God from the insides of a sea monster, so grateful was he to be rescued, still for everyone else, he wanted the storm to devour them.

Poor Jonah. He would have been cast as the unforgiving servant in a play of last Sunday’s parable, or the first day worker in today’s. He would have been able to portray that hurt righteousness, that aggrieved penitence so well. He knew, like those characters in Jesus’ story, that while the mercy of God is life and delight to those who receive it, not everyone deserves it in the same measure as me.

Both of these stories today struggle with that: Jonah with the graciousness of God toward Nineveh, and the day labourers with the generosity of the landowner towards those whom no one else would hire, who showed up late, or who were unable to pull their full weight.

The first in line think that they are owed more than the others because they assume that those others had it easier, or were lazier, or feckless; but the landowner chooses generosity, because what if their childcare fell through, or they had trouble getting a work permit, or their transport broke down, or their biggest struggle was simply getting out of bed and choosing to face another day? Or what if none of the above, why should the landowner have to justify giving them their daily bread?

We can for sure read this as an economic parable; and if the landowner had not given everyone their daily bread, then those left behind in the marketplace could have ended up begging from their neighbours who were hired first, instead of breaking bread with them, and the dignity of everyone involved could have been further damaged – but I think that Jesus was also talking about the economy of God’s grace.

Jonah thought that he knew the sin of Nineveh, but how can a whole people be summed up in a sentence? Jonah didn’t want the people of Nineveh even to have the chance to repent and return to God, thought they didn’t deserve to know what God was capable of, from storms to sea monsters to salvation; but God knew better, those hundreds and thousands of lives and the little ways in which hope still festered beneath the surface.

There is a sense of fairness, like Jonah’s, that skews us away from generosity toward punishment or restriction, but the justice of God as rendered by Jesus is mercy, abundant compassion, and great kindness. We can choose whether to grumble at that, or to celebrate it. We can choose to hope for brimstone, hoping it doesn’t fall upon us, or we can choose to live into God’s outrageous generosity and grace.

And, to be clear, I have heard of the generosity of this community, and I know that you celebrate the gifts of God and God’s love for all whom God has made and known, neighbours and strangers alike. I have experienced this morning your sharing of the good news of God, who is slow to anger and full of compassion. I have seen your food pantry, and the way in which you make sure that your neighbours, know and unknown, receive their daily bread. It is a gift to be with you this morning, to share in the bread of life, the love of Jesus poured out for us all, of the great kindness of God.

And when I am feeling a little like Jonah, and a little like the workers at the end of a long day, and a little less generous than Jesus, may you remind me of the grace of God, and the depths of God’s mercy, and the abundance of God’s love, broken and shared among us.

Amen. 

Illustration: photo of a postcard of Jonah and the Whale, Sarum Antiphoner, 1400, Ransworth Church, Norfolk, England, Printed and Published by Jarrold & Sons Ltd, Norwich

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Gentiles, tax collectors, and the beloved community

Posted on September 6, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

Owe no one anything, except to love one another, writes Paul to his congregation of Romans. And, it is written elsewhere, Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7)

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

It feels to me as though today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 18:15-20) is like one of those optical illusion pictures where, depending on your perspective, they can look completely like one thing or completely something else. A rabbit or a duck, a vase or a pair of faces looking at one another – you know the kind of thing. We can read this passage for judgement, let such a one be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector, or we can read it for mercy, for love: where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. It’s a matter of perspective, and a matter of choice.

Last month I was in Cornwall, England, and I visited St Michael’s Mount. In the church on the little island there is a bronze statue of the archangel Michael defeating the devil [I’ve written more about and shared images of this encounter here]. The devil is at his feet, and Michael’s sword is in his hand. It is a vision of victory, of judgement, of the defeat of death and sin and of the enemy. But the way that this sculptor, Lyn Constable Maxwell, has formed it, it is also an image of mercy. Michael’s sword is in his hand, but he holds it by the blade, not by the hilt. Its tip is turned away from the figure at his feet. He is not about to strike. Instead, his other hand reaches down toward the poor devil, inviting him to turn back toward the side of the angels, to come back to the kingdom of heaven, to repent and be restored to the fellowship from which he once had fallen, even Lucifer, even now. For God alone is the judge, and sometimes mercy is the judgement call.

As the psalm-writer says repeatedly, the mercy of God endures forever (Psalm 136).

So when Jesus says, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector,” we can hear “unconscionable; shun them,” or we can remember how Jesus approaches Gentiles and tax collectors in the Gospels. How he healed the daughter of the Canaanite woman, and the servant of the centurion. What would come to mind if he had said, “treat such as one as a Samaritan?” How did Matthew, the disciple who was himself a tax collector, and for whom this Gospel is named, hear these words, and maybe write them down. Do you remember his story, how Jesus called him directly from counting his coins to being one of the twelve (Matthew 9:9)? What did it mean to Matthew, whom Jesus called friend, for Jesus to say, “let such a one be to you as a tax collector”?

In these readings, to be sure, there is righteousness and there is wrongdoing, truth and falsity. Harm may have been done. Mercy is not about papering over the cracks or whitewashing the stains, still less about letting harm continue to be done. Michael, the archangel, even in his most merciful posture, is not letting the devil run free or let loose again with his trouble and strife. He has not let the devil off the hook. But God’s mercy, God’s love endures all things.

I’ll be honest, there are people out there who make me really angry. There are things out there that make me want to throw up my hands in despair. The climate crisis, and the cruelty that it inflicts on those in harm’s way. The wars and rumours of wars that persist, the refusal of peace. The priests of profit who walk on the other side of the road from those who are beaten down. But Ezekiel and the archangel are clear about my complicity. The prophet and the apostle don’t allow me to shrug and walk away, or to wash my hands, nor to raise my hand in anger, nor to lower my voice in resignation.

Ezekiel the prophet makes the whole community responsible for the preservation of love, calling out evil not for self-justification but so that there is a chance to return to the love of God. The goal is not to work out whom to shun but how to live more fully into the love of God. Thank God; for I am a Gentile and while I might not be a tax collector, I did work for the government for a hot minute back in the day.

Paul writes to his congregation of Romans that they should owe nothing to anyone but love. Jesus lays out the steps for approaching conflict resolution and restitution, and ends with that ironic appeal to the love that he has shown to the least and the lowest of these, the mercy of God made manifest to a sinner like me. Remember, Jesus says, the Gentiles and the tax collectors. Remember my call to them. Remember, he is saying, my call to you.

The responsibility of being in this Beloved Community, this community formed by the love of God and formed for the unconditional love of God and neighbour; this is a high calling and a tall order and we can hear it in the questions we answer and the promises we make in the Baptismal Covenant, on behalf of ourselves and our community. To rely on God’s mercy when we get it wrong. To proclaim the better story of God’s love for the world and every creature in it. To strive for justice, peace, dignity. To remain in community, through thick and thin, in the apostles’ teaching, and in fellowship, and in the prayers. And, we can hear throughout it all God’s help, God’s promise to help us to learn how loving and merciful God really is. This love that is our standard and Love our standard-bearer. We love because God loves us first.

 In baptism, we proclaim that we are born again, in the Sacrament of new birth; born of God, which is to be born of love. Owe no one anything, then, except to love one another. And remember the Gentiles and the tax collectors, the Samaritans and the sinners, the outcasts and the aliens, and how Jesus loved them. Where ever two or three of us gather in his name, he is still and always with us

The readings used for this Sunday sermon were: Ezekiel 33:7-11; Psalm 119:33-40; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20 (Year A Proper 18 Track 2)

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Compassion and complicity

Posted on August 28, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

Save me, O God, *
    for the waters have risen up to my neck. 
I am sinking in deep mire, *
    and there is no firm ground for my feet. Psalm 69:1-2

The depth of grief, of shock and loss, is unfathomable. Our hearts cry out with theirs.

And yet… Once upon a time, God promised never again to flood the whole earth (Genesis 9:11). Unfortunately, we have made no such promises. While the initial reports were cautious about assigning precise cause to the catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet, they seem now to agree that the precipitating event was the breaking of a glacier.

The detachment of a chunk of the glacier wall came amid unusual heat that was likely to have melted the ice that bound the splintered bedrock together.
Two days before the collapse, the ground temperature hit its highest point in the last two years, according to Dr Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, whose team had sensors 6 miles (10km) away from the site.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/27/climate-crisis-mountain-areas-glaciers-nepal-tibet

It is getting harder to deny the association with human-caused climate change than to confess it.

I heard someone on a radio panel not long ago discussing the conflict between our incorporation of ever more resource-hungry technology into our daily lives and the necessities of the planet for stability and health. This person described a class of technocrats who don’t mind destroying the earth for the sake of progress, since they believe that such progress will result in their becoming like gods, transcending the needs of humanity and its cousins here on earth, and able to leave its used-up husk for planet pastures new. It sounds like a fantasy, and yet it would explain a few things.

If the glacier cracked and fell because of human-caused climate change, our sin is still that of Eden (see Genesis 3). And if the fantasy were true, I, too, am complicit to the cause, seeding the cloud with this message.

Yet if we would become like gods, we would remember the mercy, the rhythm and restraint involved in creation, that all might have what they need; the goodness of the world that God looked upon with love, with light.

Pray for the people of Nepal and Tibet, the dead, the dying, the missing and the missed, the grieving, the helping, the despairing. And out of compassion pray, too, that we might learn to promise never again to flood the whole earth, and, with our knowledge of good and evil, to find a way to keep it.

But as for me, this is my prayer to you, *
    at the time you have set, O LORD: 
“In your great mercy, O God, *
    answer me with your unfailing help. 
Save me from the mire; do not let me sink; *
    let me be rescued from those who hate me
    and out of the deep waters. 
Let not the torrent of waters wash over me,
neither let the deep swallow me up; *
    do not let the Pit shut its mouth upon me. 
Answer me, O LORD, for your love is kind; *
    in your great compassion, turn to me.” 
“Hide not your face from your servant; *
    be swift and answer me, for I am in distress. (Psalm 69:14-19)

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Father, forgive

Posted on August 24, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

On visiting St Michael’s Mount and encountering Lyn Constable Maxwell’s bronze of the Archangel in the island church

Michael stands, his hand below the hilt
of his sword, unready to strike. At his feet,
the foe cowers, unable yet to comprehend mercy.

Nor more do we: in the Hollywood version
our hero’s magnanimity is almost ever rewarded
with a kill, reluctant hand forced by the perfidy of the enemy.

Impassive on his peaceful plinth,
Michael stands unmoved by our writhing arguments
for vengeance dressed as justice.

Patient and untiring he
reaches out his empty hand as though
the love he offers were no burden at all.

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks, enjoying some vacation adventures. There was sun, sand, and saltwater; cliff walks, views of seals and parched heather. There were friends and family to visit, and there were a couple of encounters that stopped my soul for a moment. One such was meeting St Michael on his eponymous Mount in Cornwall.

His sculptor, Lyn Constable Maxwell, our guide told us, took inspiration from Jacob Epstein’s portrayal of the Archangel at Coventry, where the Cathedral Church of St Michael became an enduring symbol of the Christian call to forgiveness and reconciliation during and after WWII. The title of this poem draws on that history; after the bombing, the Provost had the words, “Father, forgive” inscribed upon the ruined wall behind the altar.

When I heard that backstory to this St Michael, I was unaccountably overcome with emotion. I think that Maxwell’s bronze invites it. In it, there is a personal invitation to accept mercy, to dare to repent and look upon the love of God, that is present in Michael’s calm gaze and outstretched hand, which reaches not only toward the devil at his feet but, in my experience, the person standing by. Then, there is the wretched situation of this world, still wracked by war and seemingly inured to any appeal for forbearance, forgiveness, compassion, let alone reconciliation. But here is hope, in the symbols of outstretched hands and unused weapons and the untiring, unflagging invitation to peace.

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Liberty is praying Psalm 93

Posted on July 24, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

Alone against the storm-wrecked sky she stands; 
her untired arm lifts up her light to greet 
the lightning flashing from on high, though to 
admonish or illuminate is in 
the beholder’s eye; her face is streaming, 
rivets making rivulets to multiply 
and fall, but for whom would she choose to cry 
if her eyes could see the huddled masses 
taking shelter from her skirts? Mother of 
Exiles, far from her own native shore, she 
ploughed the ocean to plant here Liberty, 
and should the lightning strike just right the seas 
would seethe and drown out our timidity. 

Psalm 93    Dominus regnavit (Book of Common Prayer translation)

The LORD is King; he has put on splendid apparel; *
 the LORD has put on his apparel and girded himself with strength.
He has made the whole world so sure * that it cannot be moved;
Ever since the world began, your throne has been established; *
you are from everlasting.
The waters have lifted up, O LORD, the waters have lifted up their voice; *
 the waters have lifted up their pounding waves.
Mightier than the sound of many waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea, *
mightier is the LORD who dwells on high.
Your testimonies are very sure, *
and holiness adorns your house, O LORD, for ever and for evermore.

See also:

The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus

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The dance

Posted on July 4, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

If I were preaching tomorrow (but I am not), I believe that I would lean into the contradiction that St Paul spotlights. That it is not enough to think good thoughts and have good intentions, because sin will swirl us into its dance again and again, seductively selfish while those outside the circle strain to see the centre and the steps.

This metaphor would hardly do, except that Jesus uses it, too, of the world that wants the world to dance to its tune, the world that wants to be your world. Like a whirling circle, the only way to break free is to fall out.

This not to wallow in despair or self-denigration: St Paul, for all his miserable wretch rhetoric, appears to have a mostly intact ego, much of the time. We can celebrate that we are as beloved of God as those whom we have loved the least, despite ourselves. 

And, we find these things to be true, and self-evident, that as good as we pretend or try or believe ourselves to be, we have by design created margins and marginalized other creatures created of God’s affection. That however hard we try to resist, or pretend to resist, the music of the swirl has us tapping our feet. That we have been the ones demanding that God jig to our tune. That we have been exhausting and exhausted. And that the only hope for rest lies elsewhere, with Other-Whom. 

But when we spin out, turn away from the centre, fall out of the swirling, hectic dance, Jesus is waiting out on the margins, waiting among the wallflowers, waiting among the downcast, waiting among the injured, waiting among the lonely, waiting among the reticent, waiting among the rejected, waiting among the curious, waiting with outstretched arms to catch you up into a gentle waltz, a shared step, a loving stance. 

Who will save me from this body of death? Not 250 years of nationhood, nor even 2 millennia of religion; only Jesus. Only Jesus. Only Jesus.

Lectionary selections for July 5, 2026: Year A Proper 9
Extracts from Romans 7:15-25a

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. … I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 

… Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Extracts from Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Jesus said to the crowd, “To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ …

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

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Decentering

Posted on June 29, 2026 by Rosalind C Hughes

My grandmother was born in the Victorian age,
half a United States of America ago
and an ocean of war and plunder away;
in the span of creation
less than the blink of an eyelash.
Such is living memory, expanding and contracting
with history and its unreliable narrators,
so confident in our declarations from the centre
of our own lives while galaxies spin and dance
to the song that echoes with a frequency
beyond our comprehending, sensed
only as a trembling nostalgia for the peace
that we have not yet learned to assemble.

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