Get thee behind, Satan

Posted on September 11, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A piercing crown of loneliness,
seductive pain plays behind the eyes;
a weary hand passes over
as though palming pennies for the dead.
Easier to surrender now to sleep
and rise in glory than to die.
Who then, though, to carry
the manufactured mortality of the cross,
to settle once for all the victory
of death over evil, life over its inhumanity?

Mark 8:31-33

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Humanity

Posted on September 8, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus had gone into the Gentile lands on purpose. He didn’t have to go there; he could have stayed in Galilee, or gone back toward Jerusalem. Unless he intended to extend his ministry of healing and of the good news of the kingdom of heaven beyond his own borders, it made little sense for him to be in Tyre.

He knew, too, that what was said about bread and crumbs was nonsense. He had just fed five thousand people with a few loaves and fish. There was no question of anybody going hungry.

When Matthew tells this story (Matthew 15:21-28), it is the disciples who petition Jesus to send the woman away, because she is bothering them. Perhaps it is for their benefit that he holds up a mirror to their bias and prejudice, before breaking it open, healing the child and reassuring the mother.

As if to reinforce the lesson, he next comes across a man who can neither hear nor speak the good news, and sets him free, opens him up to the gospel, so that everyone across that heathen, Gentile region can hear about it.

Reams of words, oceans of ink have been written to try to explain why Jesus was so rude to the Syro-Phoenician woman who had come to him begging healing for her sick child. Was it a test, and she passed with flying colours, and otherwise what would have happened to her child? Was it a test of Jesus: was he biased, and she cured him of his xenophobia? That has been posited, in the past and probably in pulpits today.

Yet we are told, and we proclaim, that he was without sin, and the scriptures that we read today surround us with the message that bias, prejudice, treating one human being as inherently better than another, is sinful. So what was going on here?

Perhaps it is our bias, and prejudice, and selfishness, that Jesus is confronting, and breaking open, transgressing as he is wont to do the customs and boundaries that we have set up.

It is sinful to treat one person, any person, as less than human. We encounter the temptation on a daily basis, mostly because we humans have a tendency to act in inhumane ways on the regular. We see online calls for summary executions of those who commit acts of violence – and trust me, I am as angry as anyone about those. We hear gross generalizations about people who vote one way or another, people who like cats, people who like guns. We see on the news whole peoples corralled into camps, and we make our own judgements about the people with the power to control their water, shelter, blood, and about the people they control.

We find ourselves in a moral haze, unsure what it means to respect the dignity of every human being when some of them, some of us, refuse to respect the dignity of the image of God within us; when others seem to pretend that they are God.

Jesus goes to the lands where the Gentiles live. He is presumably doing the same work, preaching the same message, as he was south of the border, since his fame is spreading here, too, and he is easy to find. When a woman comes to him, out of time and out of bounds, begging for her child, he at first gives the conventional, acceptable response. But this woman has heard of the mercy of God, that it is not only for the chosen few, but that the creator of world hates nothing and no one that God has made. She is in on the secret. She shares it with Jesus.

The man of Sidon, who hears no evil and speaks no evil, but sees everything; he sees Jesus looking up to heaven, and finds himself opened to the glory of God. Life, from now on, is going to be in some ways easier, but a whole lot more complicated. Still, he knows that God’s mercy is a gift, and that there is no one who deserves it less, or more, than any other.

Look, says James, there is no point in saying you love your neighbour if you are not prepared to act like it. The Spirit might whisper, the same goes for your enemy, remember. There is no grace in acting superior and failing to serve the sinner standing before you. That is not how God serves the poor in spirit, the depleted in dignity, even the morally bemused. Jesus serves them all with the same word: repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom in which there will be no rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, them or us, but only the richness of God’s mercy, the poverty of true humility, the knowledge that all that we are and all that we will be depends upon God alone, God who will not forsake those who make their boast of God’s mercy.

This is not a call to lawlessness – far from it. It is not a call to suspend judgement of wickedness, to do what we are able without sin to drive out violence and oppression from among us. It is a call, in the meantime, in the fallen time, not to lose sight of the love of God working among the least expected of all. Remember Saul, who held the coats of those who martyred Stephen (Acts 7:54-60), whom God nevertheless converted into the foremost apostle to the Gentiles.

It is a call not to lose sight of the humanity of Jesus at work in the most difficult situations, even among the demons.

It is a call not to lose heart, and not to lose our hearts, not to let them stray from the mercy of the living God, to share with Jesus the secret of the love of God, who has done everything well; in whose image we each last one of us is made.

Amen. 

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23, Psalm 125, James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17, Mark 7:24-37

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Ephphatha

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

The risks of cracking ajar the teeth,

loosing the tongue of fire fanned by vague spirits,

unstopping the ears, allowing the world

to pound its wares upon its drums

outweighed in an instant by the shriek

of an eagle drafting the turtle dove,

the astonished and astonishing laughter of the child.

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For the love of God

Posted on September 1, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

You have to wonder how the Song of Songs ever made it into the Bible. Scholars of scripture have explained the inclusion of the love poetry of the Song in sacred scripture by making it an allegory of God’s love for the chosen people of the covenant, or Christ’s love for the people of the new covenant, the church. However we spiritualize it, there is no mistaking the ardour, the physicality, the intimacy of the love that is described. The poem never explicitly mentions God, but if we read it as sacred story, then we affirm and proclaim that this is God’s love for us; this is God’s love song.

That’s what I wanted to preach about this morning. Then, the night before last, there was a mass shooting outside the high school down the street. Five teenagers were hospitalized. One of them has since died. [Update: news that came out during our service time reports that a 15-year-old has been arrested for the shooting.]

God loves those children too much – God loves these children too much for us to continue to let this happen.

You remember the t-shirts we had on this lawn earlier in the summer. They each told a story. One of the stories that stayed with me was of a 17-year-old who was shot and killed after he came into Euclid to buy a gun. He had been sold the myth that he would be safer if he had a gun, and it killed him. 

If there is one overarching theme from this morning’s lessons that I can find, it is this: mind your hearts. Jesus says, you need to pay attention to your heart, to what flows from it, from what fills it. James agrees: if your heart is filled with anger and self-righteousness, it will not produce God’s righteousness. 

Every time we turn away from the love of God, the nonviolence of Jesus; every time we buy into the myth that more guns, more armed guards, more militarism, more anger, more violence will save us, we promote that myth to the children around us. Every time we act out of fear and loathing, arming ourselves against our neighbours instead of loving our enemies, we set that example for the generation of children and teens growing up around us, the first generation for whom gun violence is the leading cause of premature death.

And yet the heart of God is filled with love and turtledoves. 

We proclaim a Christ who would rather go to the cross than take up arms against his persecutors. Or are we merely hearers of the word, speakers of the Creed, and not doers?

It is a paradox. We cannot save ourselves by human ritual and tradition, rules and regulations, and yet we must create a structure in which every child of God might flourish and live, and know the love that God has for them; respect the dignity of every human being, as our baptismal covenant has it. We have to organize; but we have to do it out of the humility of love, knowing that we are but shadows of our Creator.

Mind your hearts, beloveds. Take care where they rest, and in whom they place great trust. Let them not be deceived by anger nor crushed by the burdens of the world. But let them take sing with mercy, the kindness of love, the justice of grace, the love of God, that every child of God might hear it. 

We are but fleeting shadows, and yet, see, and hear, how God loves each of God’s children (and let us, for the love of God, do likewise). 

Year B Proper 17 includes readings from the Song of Songs, James, and Jesus’ teaching on the human heart according to Mark

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Hungry

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

Now I could quibble and say that elsewhere Jesus said that a person does not live by bread alone – but since Jesus is, also, the very Word of God, I think he has that covered.

So what does it mean for him to say, “Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”?

Surely it cannot mean that I don’t need my electricity back on after all!

It doesn’t mean that I’m wrong to long for the love of another human being, or even a cat; no, because Jesus is all about loving one another.

How does this verse sound to a child in Gaza, months into a humanitarian crisis, a war-mongered famine? Or to her parents, at their wits end on how to feed her?

Jesus said, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. … Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” And yet everyone who heard him has since died, and we will too, one day.

So what does Jesus mean in saying that he is the living, breathing, satisfying, undying bread, that we who come to him will want for nothing more, forever?

In the earliest days of the church, when Jesus’ disciples came together, everyone shared what they had and no one was in need of anything (Acts 2:44-45; 4:34). No one was in need of anything. They had given their all to following Jesus. They had trusted him to death and beyond, and now they continued to trust in the way of Jesus, in the way of love, in the way of life. And no one wanted for anything.

What Jesus is talking about is the kingdom of heaven, the way in which we would live if we truly trusted in God, in the promises of providence, instead of walking in our fallen ways, our human, humble, stumbling ways.

This past week, I saw online a post meant for those whose food stamp food had perished in the storm, about how to get a replacement. This post was meant for those most in need, who couldn’t afford food to begin with, let alone to buy it twice. It was meant to help. But the post, unfortunately, was followed by the meanest comments, from those who said, “If I can’t have it, why should they?”, but in less kind terms. Instead of working out how we can help one another, those comments turned away from love of neighbour and into miserliness. It was as though the boy with the five loaves and two fish had refused to share them with Jesus, and scuppered the miracle that fed the multitude. But if we trust Jesus, he can do more with our little than we can ask or imagine.

Every time I saw someone post online that their power had come back on, I had to practice being grateful for their good fortune. It helped me to remember that every crew that finished working on someone else’s problem was a fraction of a step closer to fixing mine; it shouldn’t take a selfish motive to be grateful for someone else’s relief, but sometimes it helps.

If we all were able to lean into the way of love, the way of life, the way of Jesus, perhaps we would find that we could all eat our fill, and no one would be in need.

If we were able to lean into the way of love, the way of Jesus, the way of life, then perhaps we would find ourselves so full of life that we could want for nothing. Perhaps.

At the last day, Jesus says, all will be revealed and restored and raised up. At the last day, we will know that abundant life and bread and have our fill of love, when the kingdom comes.

In the meantime, what does it mean for us, that Jesus is the bread of life? That whoever believes in him, trusts in him, leans into him will not go hungry?

I think, in part, it means that if we have an appetite for justice, we will find ways of feeding it, through the way of love, the way of the cross, the paths of the prophets. I had a conversation earlier this week about the prophets as political animals: they were not politicians – far from it. None of them sat in nor sought the seats of power. But they were interested, and involved, and influential in the political landscape around them. They argued for the poor and condemned the corrupt and whispered God’s truth into the ears of kings and their consorts. They had an appetite for justice, and they found ways to feed it. 

If we have an appetite for mercy, we will find ways to satisfy that. Acts of kindness, acts of humility, acts of selflessness, acts of gratitude, all feed that appetite for mercy. We find that when we show, demonstrate, make evident mercy to another, we find our souls sing out in response. We love kindness, as Micah prophesied. 

If we are hungry for love, we know that God loves us, no exceptions. We know that Jesus has room for us, time for us, walks with us. 

I know that it is hard sometimes, many times. That we still hunger, thirst, even die. But Jesus tells us, believe in me, trust in me, stay with me, for I will not let you down. And he never has, not yet. He is the bread of life, and he still feeds me. He is living water, and he refreshes me. He is living bread, and he has saved my life more times than I can reckon.

Believe in him. Trust him. Stay with him, for he is the bread, and the Word, and the way, and the truth, and he is life.

Amen.

Year B Pentecost 12/Proper 14: John 6:35, 41-51

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Body parts

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

I don’t know about you, but I read the epistle differently these days than when I was a little younger.

Paul writes of “the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly…”

I didn’t used to notice quite as loudly the part about “as each part is working properly” when all of the parts of my own body were a little more reliable than they are these days. Still, I can read the hope, and the intent – I know what my hips and knees are supposed to do, working together – and we know that with God all things are possible, even if they are not always convenient, easy, or pain-free.

Here’s the thing: if every part of the body were working properly, joined and knit together with smooth and stretchy ligaments, to promote the body’s growth in building itself up in love to him who is the head, that is, Jesus Christ – if everything were working perfectly, we would no longer be here, but in the kingdom of heaven.

As it is, we work with what we have: our imperfect, slightly broken, somewhat pre-worn selves, and each other, to do what we can “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called in love,” as Paul also says. 

And we have been called in love. We have been called into being and into being together by a God who loves us, who has created us, who heals us, who sustains us, who welcomes us home. There is nothing in our slightly broken or worn bodies that can undo the love with which God has called and created us.

Now, to push the metaphor a little further, there are different kinds of brokenness, and different levels of pain, that require different interventions.

A break may be ugly, open, prone to infection, like the running sores of racism and contempt that continue to plague our country and its discourse. This will not heal itself by running its course. It requires a more radical intervention, and we had better look out for the signs and symptoms in ourselves, too, excise from our speech and actions the tendency to contemptuousness, the conscious or unconscious bias that distorts our perception of the image of God in another. We had better look for the antidote of justice.

There may be a lesser kind of injury – a strain or a sprain – that simply needs support and rest, warmth and elevation. Grief, regret, disappointment might fall into this category. There is a balm in Gilead; there is a balm right here in the heart of a loving community, to soothe the troubled soul.

And there is pain that is productive – ask anyone who has been in labour. My God, it does hurt. But it is a generative use of muscle and strength that brings new life into being. Elsewhere Paul writes of the whole creation groaning to bring into being the kingdom of God; here he invites us, each one, to bear down upon love, to support one another in the work of love, cry out the truth of God’s justice and mercy, to breathe the love of Christ into being.

Don’t give up, Paul might say, despite the worn and broken nature of the world, despite our own limitations, whether every part works or not. For we are each formed by God and called together in the love of Christ, and when we work together, to support and to encourage and grow one another’s faith, we will discover and do more than we can ask or imagine, by the love of God.

 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:16)

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Abundance

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jesus was a good teacher. He himself knew what he was going to do to feed the crowds before him, but first he asked Philip, “What would you do?” He invited Philip, and the others in class, to consider for themselves how to engage with the work of feeding the flock – because this is the same crowd as we encountered last week, upon whom Jesus had compassion, because they were as sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:30-34).

Later, after he was risen from the dead, Jesus at breakfast on the beach with these same disciples would tell Peter, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17) Today, the lesson begins: Feed these people, the ones before us, the ones gathered around us.

Jesus knew what he was going to do. First, he gave thanks to God for the abundance of God’s grace upon him and among them, for God’s providence in the world of all that we need to live and to grow and to know God’s presence with us, feeding us, sustaining us. Having given thanks for what he had, instead of worrying about what he lacked, he began to distribute the bread and the fish.

You know that if you divide a loaf of bread in half, and then in half again, and then in half again, that sequence can go on into infinity; but you will very quickly find yourself in the realm of invisible crumbs. This is not what happened on that lakeside. This was not a division but a multiplication. It was, after all, a miracle; but it was a miracle whose purpose was not only to fill the bellies of the crowd, who would not suffer terribly if they went hungry for just one night. It was a miracle designed to demonstrate the abundance of God’s providence, the wideness of God’s mercy, the tenderness of God’s faithful loving-kindness.

I love that there were left-overs. I love that Jesus told his disciples to gather up every last crumb so that nothing would be wasted. There was enough bread and fish to feed five thousand and more people, with plenty to spare – and he would not allow a morsel of God’s mercy to be wasted. Rather, it would be used up and consumed and allowed to continue the work of reminding all who received it of the abundance of God’s faithful loving-kindness.

Whenever they ate it, they would remember.

We gather at the table and we remember, in the bread and in the cup, the overflowing mercies of God and how they have sustained us and continue to provoke us to share the blessing, to proclaim good news to those in sore need of it, to recommend the faithful loving-kindness of God to a world that has become, too often, cruel.

Sometimes, we wonder how we will make it happen, whether we can really make a difference in a big world from our small place in it. Six months’ wages, we cry with Philip, would be a drop in the ocean of need.

Sometimes, we want Jesus to overrule our enemies and solve our crises and mandate the mercy of God on those whom we would have mercy, at least.

The people tried to make Jesus king; did you know that five thousand is the number of soldiers in a Roman legion? The people wanted Jesus to take charge of an army and impose his rule over the empire – they knew he could do it better. But Jesus instead slipped away to pray. He knew that there was another way to save the world; the way of love.

He asked his disciples, he asks us, what will you do about it? How will you remember God’s mercy, recommend God’s faithful loving-kindness to a world that fights over power and authority as though it were the answer. Elsewhere, he tells his disciples, the Gentiles lord it over one another, but you are called to serve.

To feed my sheep.

Like a good teacher, Jesus leads his disciples toward the answer by example. He gives thanks to God for all that is, for all that will be; he has faith that God is good, that God will provide what is necessary and more. He takes care of the abundant resources that God provides: he will not waste a crumb leftover, but gathers them up so that they can continue the good work once begun. He will not be distracted by ego nor by power but he withdraws instead to pray, to centre himself repeatedly in the relationship he has with God. Notice how this miracle begins and ends in prayer. Without it, we can do little.

And notice, too, how Jesus does not divide the bread and the fish but allows them to multiply. How he refuses the mathematical draw down to infinity, but challenges our understanding of how the world works with the alternative reality of grace. It is a miracle, and it is the reality of God’s relationship with the world, with us, that the grace and love of God cannot be divided up but only shared out.

We live in a world, in a country and a community, hungry for love, starving for mercy, thirsty for good news. We have all that is needed to provide those essential nutrients to the people before us, around us, among us. And that is exactly where Jesus asks us to begin.

Day by day, week by week, he provides the reminder in the bread and the cup and the prayers, not divided but shared between us, of the faithful abundance of God’s loving-kindness. And he asks us, What will you do?

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Year B Proper 12 John 6:1-21

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Walking on water

Posted on July 26, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Because the clutch between creation and Creator is solid.
Because the Word that spoke light into being fills 
the space between waves and atoms so that none is wasted, 
so that there is not room between one thought of God 
and another to slip between the cracks. 
Because he has knit together wind and water, earth and heaven; 
because he would not dip his sole into that division.
Because mercy is buoyant and humility light. 
Because love, rising, lifts all.

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Leftovers

Posted on July 24, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

One made bread pudding, another, croutons for soup.
One mashed them in milk next day for the baby’s breakfast.
The important thing was, they got to keep the crumbs,
got to bring bread home, swapping hunger for sufficiency,
sharing recipes for remainders;
that their very bodies should remember;
he was all about that.

from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets

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The compassion of Christ

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid, 21 July 2024

I have to admit, I was uncomfortable this morning reciting the line from the Psalm that invokes – or evokes – a phrase that has become a tinderbox in today’s conflicted society. But if David’s realm once extended from the Great Sea to the River (Psalm 89:25), God’s reign is greater. Jesus, Son of David, is not confined by any borders drawn or redrawn on a political map, nor did he confine his healing activities to one side of the Jordan or the other, nor did he despise nor reject the Gentiles, the Syro-Phoenicians, the Canaanites, the Samaritans, the inhabitants of the lands that have been complicated and contested, it seems, since before time lifted them out of the ocean. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Ephesians 2:14)

If only we had Jesus’ compassion for one another.

When his disciples returned from their travels around the region, where he had sent them to heal and to cast out demons and to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom drawn near to them – when his disciples returned full of good and weary joy at all that they had seen and done and wrought, Jesus had compassion on them. He knew what it is to be worn out even by good and faithful and rewarding work. He knew how the Holy Spirit can fill and can wring out a soul, overwhelm one with its power. He told them, come away and rest awhile. For he knew that there would be more, so much more, to follow.

And the crowd saw them going, and because celebrity-spotting is nothing new, they sprinted around the sea to meet them on the other side, so that when they landed, they were not in a quiet place but one of commotion and clamour and a mess of human need. And Jesus had compassion on the crowd, too, and tended to them.

Filling everybody’s needs, he healed, and he fed the thousands that had gathered, and he shielded his disciples from the extra work – he sent them back out on their boat into the night, to be at peace upon the water. He took upon himself the burden of the shepherd, because he had compassion for the sheep.

Even so, even Jesus did not put off forever his need for private prayer, for quiet communion with God. When everyone was fed and healed and put away for the night – we didn’t hear this part this morning, but it’s there, between the lines that we did read – in the night, he went up the mountainside alone, to pray.

No one can keep the well of compassion full without refreshment, without leaning into the providence of our shepherding God, who leads us beside still waters, and in green pastures, who feeds us and anoints us with the oil of gladness and of healing. Even Jesus did not put off for too very long his need to be apart, and to pray.

Provocatively enough, Martin Luther once wrote, “The Kingdom [of heaven] is to be in the midst of your enemies. And [t]he [one] who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ.”[i]

The people who raced around the countryside to cut off Jesus and the disciples’ access to solitude were not their enemies, but they were the enemies of their intentions and desires for solitude, and of their peace in the moment. In order to have compassion upon them took the love of God made manifest in Christ.

Another way of saying this might be that we cannot will ourselves toward compassion for our fellow human, especially when they are at their least convenient, or most demanding, sheepish, or bestial. Yet if we belong to Christ, that is the compassion that is available to us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that, while “human love is directed to the other person for [their] own sake, spiritual love loves [them] for Christ’s sake.”[ii] Bonhoeffer argues that because human love desires to bind itself to the other, or rather to bind the other to oneself, by persuasion or coercion, if fails in the face of the enemy; human love cannot abide rejection, nor resistance. But the love of Christ can overcome all. “Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of others is wholly dependent upon the truth in Christ”[iii] It’s a kind of letting go and letting Jesus love them.

The most direct path towards the compassion of Christ is prayer. The most essential action of love is prayer. Jesus knew it, practised it, modelled it in the night, on the mountainside; and his compassion was such that it overcame even death.

The compassionate life is tricky enough in the everyday, and my guess is that even the least political among us will find our last nerve twanged by the rhetoric and anxiety and all that will pile onto the social psyche in the coming months. We may be tempted to try to love our enemies into submission. We may be tempted to try to grind out compassion through our clenched teeth. We will not succeed unless we are grounded in the love of Christ, in letting God love those whom we cannot stand, made as they are in the image of God; unless we abandon ourselves to prayer. Unless we abandon ourselves, our preferences and prejudices, and hand the whole lot over to Jesus for healing.

And when we seek Christ, we will find him ready to shepherd us, full of compassion for us, ready to feed us with bread and fill us with stillness and anoint us with healing oil. We have only to reach for him. For he is our peace. (Ephesians 2:14a)

May [the peace] and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore (2 Corinthians 13:14). Amen. 

[i] Quoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together (Harper & Row, 1954), 17

[ii] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 34

[iii] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 36-7

2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

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