Category Archives: lectionary reflection

Custody of the eyes

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” Gruesome stuff. And what on earth does he mean by it? I remember when our youngest child was newborn, and sleeping in my arms in the living … Continue reading →

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the light of the world

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

When you hide your face, the sky falls. Stars burn cold; the sun slumps, refusing to rise to the occasion; the moon gapes like a dumb rock. When you look away, ashen shadows coat everything with their fingerless touch. Turn … Continue reading →

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A Gethsemane prayer

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

For once, just for once you tried to lay your burdens, those acquired from crowds and children, a collection of tax collectors, sinners and scribes along the way – for once, just for once you tried to lay them on … Continue reading →

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Day 36: remaining

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

Originally posted on Epiphany's Bible Challenge:
Exodus 40; Psalm 30; Mark 3 “Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey; but if the cloud was not taken…

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Year A Advent 1: starting in the middle

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

In the middle of the story, in the middle of the day, when two women are in the middle of a studied silence over the millstone. They are not speaking. One of them is not speaking so hard, she disappears. … Continue reading →

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Christ the King

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

The honest thief Don’t tell me you are saving me while we hang here side by side in searing pain under a searing sun; don’t talk to me of gardens of ease where mercy falls down like a river when … Continue reading →

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Anything but straightforward

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

“Those who will not work will not eat:”  There are several nuances to the seemingly harsh sentence that we miss when we reduce it to a slogan. … …  there is the description of work itself. We use the word work … Continue reading →

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Year C Proper 27: No such thing as a stupid question?

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

You know how we always tell each other, and especially our children, that there’s no such thing as a stupid question? I have to think that the Sadducees were pushing the envelope on this one. It wasn’t because they were … Continue reading →

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Responding to a Sadducee

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Resurrection is not “a conjuring trick with bones,”* nor is the resurrection a reality-tv show about the life of seven brothers and their unnamed widow-sister-wife Resurrection is not undone by the cynicism of the resurrected one blinking, bewildered in the … Continue reading →

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Prayers, overheard

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Each stood away from the other, his face turned anyway but there, no meeting of eyes for these two, let alone hearts, minds. One looked up to heaven, his prayer belying his blindness to the other, “Thank God I am … Continue reading →

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