All rights reserved
© Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, 2011-2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
https://bookstore.upperroom.org/Products/1921/a-family-like-mine.aspxWhom Shall I Fear: Urgent Questions for Christians in an Age of Violence
https://www.amazon.com/Whom-Shall-Fear-Questions-Christians/dp/0835819671-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
RevGalBlogPals
Meta
Category Archives: lectionary reflection
Palm Sunday 2018: outsourcing peace
It is hard to keep up with the Prince of Peace, but I learned a valuable lesson years ago from a philosopher named Tony whose day job was selling burglar alarms. Continue reading
Show me Jesus
Imagine that they ask you, “Sir, sister, stranger, where can we find Jesus?” What would you tell them? What might you show them? Where would you take them? Who would you call for back-up? Continue reading
Idols made of metal
The bronze serpent was not an amulet, but an icon of futility; an emblem of the impotence of evil in the sight of a gracious God.
The modern casting would be an AR-15 made into a museum piece, rendered harmless, useless, toothless by its irrelevance, not empowered by false reverence. Continue reading
Sinners at the cross of angry Jesus
I’m not going to go through the Commandments one by one, because frankly, unless we can reconcile our fundamental issues with the first three and the prohibition on killing, not to mention loving our neighbour, I do not see a way for us to achieve any kind of passing grade. Continue reading
Cleansing the temple
Christ, cleanse our temple courts where money changes hands to purchase sacrificial lambs offered on the high altar hymned with thoughts and prayers and the black sheep, tethered, set aside for the devotions of white-robed acolytes, while mourners shuffle ceaseless intercessions … Continue reading
Their cross, our cross
I have been trying to imagine how the words of Jesus to the pre-resurrection people would have sounded. We cannot hear of the cross without spiritualizing it, sublimating it post-resurrection. To have the same impact today as he had on that crowd in first-century Galilee, what might Jesus say? Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon, story
Tagged Jesus, repentance, righteousness, salvation, take up your cross, Year B Lent 2
Leave a comment
A fleeting vision of glory
If Epiphany is about its revealing, then Lent is about our looking for it; but we have the assurance, as we enter the search, the forty days of wilderness wandering, that it has already been found, and that God, the God of Abraham and Hagar, of Ismael, Moses, and Elijah, the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ will not let us wander alone, nor fail if we falter. Continue reading
This is not Sunday’s sermon
On Sunday, I may speak of mountaintop miracles, the art of the divine fuller, bleaching all blemishes out of our vision of God Incarnate, revealing glory. But today is Friday. The week was long and the mountain high and hard. … Continue reading
Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, prayer, sermon preparation, story
Tagged Epiphany, Jesus, Transfiguration
Leave a comment
Good news!
A sermon for Annual Meeting Sunday at the Church of the Epiphany, and the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany. “Have you not known? Have you not heard?” The good news of the gospel is bursting out of today’s readings. … Continue reading
Sharkbait
If we give up on Nineveh, we run the risk that instead of becoming fishers of men, we become like Jonah, in need of a fishing vessel to rescue us from the deep water we get ourselves into when we turn our backs on the grace and mercy that God has for all that God has made. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged discipleship, fishers of men, forgiveness, God, Jonah, Nineveh, politics, repentance
Leave a comment
over the water 