Category Archives: sermon

An Easter message: we are changed

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

What joy it is to return to Easter services together, to be able to gather with loved ones and beloved strangers alike to rejoice that: Alleluia! Christ is Risen! We have missed this, these past two years, huddled around our … Continue reading →

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Good Friday

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

The cross does not narrow down God’s love for the world. It raises up God’s love so that all might see the compassion, the deep and abiding compassion, of God for God’s people, that God would even suffer with us in order to redeem us from our suffering and sin. Continue reading →

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Peter said no

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

How hard it is to let Jesus serve us, save us, and know that there is no repayment necessary nor sufficient, that Jesus does not need us to defend him or protect him. Continue reading →

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Sleep, prayer, grief, and Jesus

Posted on April 10, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus knew that he would conquer death and sin – he had told them over and again that he would rise – but he was grieved and frightened and anguished at the capacity of his human captors for violence. There is no contradiction here: it was from ourselves that he came to save us. That is why he advises his disciples, “Pray that you may not be tested.”  Continue reading →

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Here is love

Posted on April 3, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Here is love that doesn’t bury grief, but anoints it, attends to it. Here is love that doesn’t count the cost, but pours itself out so that it is felt, sensed, perceived far beyond the feet that receive it: “the house was filled with the fragrance of it.” Here is love that inspires others to love. Continue reading →

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Holy ground

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

God said, “This is holy ground.” In the middle of the wilderness, to the side of the path, from the heart of a desert shrub, God spoke, and God said, “This, too, is holy ground.” Because there is no place on earth that God has abandoned. Continue reading →

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“God shall give the angels charge over thee”

Posted on March 6, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

What if when we do these things, taking up spiritual arms against the onslaught of sin, the temptations of selfishness, fasting and praying and strengthening our spirits and training up our hearts to look to God in faith, and in trust; what if it is when we do these things that St Michael and her angels surround us and support us and sustain us, as the angels attended to Jesus in the wilderness after he resisted the wiles of the devil, according to Matthew (Matthew 4:11) Continue reading →

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Ash Wednesday: ice to ashes

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last Saturday, I spent far too much time and energy chipping away at the layer of ice that was left behind after I shovelled the snow. I did it because the sun was out and I knew that if I … Continue reading →

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From the cloud

Posted on February 27, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

We want the revelation of the Christ, the epiphany of the Messiah, to be the brightness of the cloth, but it includes the cloud of the continuing conflict between Herod and the Magi, the worldly and the wise, the kingdom of heaven and the pursuits of a lesser form of majesty. And it is the promise that in all of these things, wherever we find them still active in the world, Christ is at work transforming them through the power of the Cross and the Resurrection that it engendered. Continue reading →

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Love your enemies

Posted on February 20, 2022 by Rosalind C Hughes

The burden of love outweighs all other duties, and not only toward those who love us. Even our secular treaties and rules of engagement declare it to be true. And still, Jesus goes further. Continue reading →

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