Year B Proper 25: What do you want?

Posted on October 25, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

“What do you want me to do for you?”

When I heard Jesus asking this of Bartimaeus, I was struck by the coincidence that two Sundays in a row we have heard basically the same question.

“What is it that you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked James and John last week. “What do you want me to do for you?” he now asks Bartimaeus, the bold blind man who will not be quelled by the crowd, who will be heard by the Son of David, the Messiah, who will use his faith to find his saviour.

It’s a really good question, because it goes to the heart of the matter. It is not a wish-fulfillment flannel – “What do you want most in the world?” It demands relationship, it demands discernment of the resources at hand, of what can be done, what should already have been done for ourselves, what might be: “What do you want ME to do for you?” asks Jesus.

I know a Christian physician who says that he uses this question to get to the heart of the visit that his patient makes to his office. The patient might have a million different concerns; but there is a reason that he has come to this doctor on this day. There is something that she thinks this person can do for her, which no one else can provide, and it is finding out what that thing is that can be a challenge, tuning in among all the static. Asking, “What is that you want ME to do for YOU?” can help both parties focus, and can help with the process of healing.

One of the aspects of wisdom that this physician had learned from Jesus was not to take for granted the insight that he already had into the other person’s needs. Bartimaeus is waiting by the side of the road for Jesus to pass by, and he calls out for mercy. Of course, we think, he wants his sight, he wants healing, and we are right. But Jesus has to ask, because he is not a mercy dispensing machine. This is about relationship. This is about what you need from me, what I need from you, specifically. It is about seeing the person in front of you.

When I was working my hospital chaplaincy internship, I learned to ask the question a little differently. I could sit in a patient’s room for an hour, listening to their stories, hearing their complaints, their pain and their sorrow. I could wrap it all into a prayer at the end, lifting to God the concerns I had heard; or I could ask, “What is it that you want Jesus to do for you? What do you want to pray about today?”

Pretty soon I learned that this was where the healing visit really began. A patient facing an arduous orthopaedic surgery really wanted to talk to God about her teenager, about his struggles, her fears for his safety, his sanity, his life. Another was afraid to go home. Yet another wanted God to get on and take her to heaven right now, where all of her loved ones already lived; they came to her in her dreams.

I learned to ask the question earlier in the visit, so that we could get to the point while I still had time to sit and listen as the patient finally and faithfully articulated just what it was they wanted Jesus to do for them.

So by now, if you are anything like me, you are sitting in your pew, lifting up items from your deepest needs and desires, weighing them and sorting them, deciding whether they rise to the level of what you want Jesus to do for you; whether you dare ask for them, or whether they are things you should have done already for yourself. In a crisis, it is easy to know what to ask.

“Jesus, my little daughter is at the point of death.” “Jesus, if you will, you can make me clean.” “Jesus, they have run out of wine.”

Some things are not ours to ask, as Jesus tried to tell James and John.

Others are things that Jesus has already done for us: “Save me!”

And so I want you to take a few moments now, if you feel safe doing so you may close your eyes, and see Jesus standing right in front of you, asking you, “What is it you want me to do for you?”

Do not listen to the voices of the crowd shouting you down. They don’t know what they are talking about; Jesus calls you to stand before him.

If you are so inclined, you may want to write something down. Otherwise, hold it in your heart.

“What is it that you want me to do for you?”
…
However you use this time, this prayer, this encounter with Jesus, I encourage you, as the week goes on, each time you pray to revisit that question, to spend a little time standing face to face with Jesus, who is asking, “What do you want me to do for you?”.

Take some time to find out what it means for your relationship with Jesus, to ask and to answer that fairly fundamental question honestly. To seek Christ’s company in the heart of your life, in your deepest needs and desire.

Do not be discouraged by the voices that would shout you down; persevere in prayer. Hear instead the shouts of encouragement:
“Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”

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Middle age

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Three, even two years ago, my shoulder didn’t burn, my hip didn’t pop,
my knee didn’t stab me in the back halfway round the supermarket.

Since the spring, we have been on cooler terms,
tending to the necessities with icy politeness, my body and I,
feigning ignorance of the Damoclean stalactites,
our mutually assured destruction, gathering overhead.

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Year B Proper 24: glory

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” (Mark 10:35-37)

Thomas Merton stood on the corner of Fourth and Walnut Street in Louisville, and he had a vision, in which he realized, he says, that he loved people; all of the people; that they were his people, and he was theirs.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes; yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. … I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.*

James and John had it partly right, when they asked to be with Jesus in his glory. Of course, they had it partly wrong, as well, and Jesus set them straight.

What we miss in the telling of this story this Sunday is that the twins are responding directly to Jesus’ latest warning to his disciples that their journey to Jerusalem, to the seat of God’s glory, by tradition; that their journey to Jerusalem will end in ignominy, and insult, and death.

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed him were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” (Mark 10:32-35)

And you have heard the rest.

If we read them with a cynical eye, we might think that James and John are looking for some kind of trade-off: Ok, we’ll follow you through all of this unpleasantness in Jerusalem, IF you will guarantee us our reward on the other side.

It could be simple naivete: Ok, so it’s going to get unpleasant in Jerusalem, but then after three days, when you rise again, then comes the glory, right? and we kick out the Romans and take our places in the palace, at your left and right hand.

What they have failed to notice, apparently, despite all of their days and weeks and months on the road with Jesus, is that he is already shining with the glory of God. They were on the mountaintop, when he was transfigured into dazzling light, with Moses and Elijah at his left and right hand, by the way – and still they are waiting for the glory. Waiting in the presence of Jesus Christ for the glory of God. Do you see the irony?

They are sitting in the presence of the living Lord, Jesus Christ, waiting to enter into the glory of God.

You may find it strange if I say that we are living in an age of glory. We are not blind to the problems and pitfalls of the present day: the spitting and insults, the death and destruction, the unpleasantness, the condemnation that comes from the religious people and the Gentiles. We know the way of the cross. We have seen its suffering, even if we have escaped its baptism ourselves.

Still, we live in the presence of the living Lord, Jesus Christ, who died, and who lives, and who is seated at the right hand of God (which presumably answers the question of who is sitting at his own left hand, if we choose to take the seating arrangements literally). We live in the presence of Christ, in the knowledge of the kingdom of God that has drawn near, that does break in with all of its glory – if we have eyes to see it.

As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. … member[s] of a race in which God Himself became incarnate.*

Last month, at the end of the community meal, some of the volunteers gathered to celebrate the completion of a twelve-month cycle since the meal was relaunched last September. It was a bit of a weary gathering, after all of the cooking and serving and especially the washing up, and there was a certain amount of grumbling about who had stayed to help and to celebrate, and who had ditched before the clean-up was over. We probably sounded a bit like those disciples, gathered around Jesus and still grumpy with James and John and the long road to Jerusalem left to travel.

But there was a celebration. There was cake, and conversation, and there was prayer in the falling darkness, light in the deepening shadows.

There were also two little boys, who have become regulars at the meal. The youngest is so proud to write his own name on his name tag each time! They sit with their family and eat as many seconds as they think they can get away with. The boys had heard on the grapevine that the volunteers were staying on afterwards, and that there would be cake, so they trailed around after the other guests had left, looking for something to do to be of help, some service they could offer so that they might be counted among the volunteers. They found an empty coffee cup to bring to the washing up window.

Of course, we gave them cake. They sat in the narthex eating it as we gathered in the chapel. They were in no hurry to leave that night. And as the candles were lit, and the hymn of light was lifted into the evening, the youngest crept into the chapel, and slid into a chair, and one of our volunteers slid along the row and held out her hymn book so that he could follow along, and he did, and it was a glorious way to end the day, joined together in service to one another, and in celebration and in prayer offered through Christ, with cake.

There is the glory that is to come. There is the kingdom that is to come; and there is the here and now, life lived in the presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ, and it is glorious, and there is no waiting for it, no line, no exceptions.

We live our little lives full face in the glory of God, whether we recognize it or not.

Thomas Merton, caught up by glory on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God … This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.  … It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely … I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.*

James and John got their question wrong only because they forgot that they were already sitting at the right and left hand of Jesus in his glory, Jesus Christ who is the glory of God.

May you see your own glory, given to you by the love of God, in whose glorious image you are made.

Amen.

_________

* Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Crown Publishing Group, 2009), 153-6

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Gloriana

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

[Sometimes, the search for a sermon feels like a game of free association – chasing words down rabbit holes and across parklands, trying to track down an idea, the spirit of an idea, and bottle it. This week’s wild goose is chasing glory. 

Picture credit: “Elizabeth1England“. Attributed to William Segar – http://www.artfund.org/what-to-see/exhibitions/2013/10/10/elizabeth-i-and-her-people. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.]

Gloriana

Behind the furs, the velvet touches,
behind the flaming hair and fierce reputation,
behind the rosebud lips, she knew herself

to be a bastard, born of a woman lost
to adultery and the sword which severed
her daughter’s umbilical inheritance of glory;

behind the lead paint, her face falling
into disrepair, she locked her despair
in a closet next to her crown.

None of us chooses
glory for herself, nor sees it shine,
mercurial, through the looking glass.

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Mind the gap

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Holy One,

your creativity is infinite;

our ability to respond to your

expansive imagination

is not.

I do not think that you forget our frailty.

Perhaps we forget that you have made us

a little lower than the angels;

another mark of the divine capacity to dream.

Whatever the reason for this rift between

your mind  and our mundanity,

I wish you would,

of your fabled compassion,

think about meeting us halfway;

at a time and place of your own

considerable convenience,

of course.

Amen.

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Year B Proper 23: of camels, elephants, and us

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

You may have heard the story that there was, in olden times, a gate into Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle, through which a fully-loaded camel could not go without shedding its burdens of material goods, getting down on its camel knees, and camel-crawling through.

It’s a good story, but completely without foundation. Since the theory was proposed in the middle ages, no evidence of such a gate has been found. What we have found is that there was a parable in oral rabbinic tradition that replaced the camel with an elephant, saying much the same thing. Add to that the obvious objection that no one would unload their camel and squeeze it through a gap too narrow for it when there’s another gate a few hundred feet along the wall, and we begin to realize that Jesus meant what he said, absurdity and all. He was making a point for us, not for some hypothetical camel drivers.

The people who proposed the narrow gate theory were like the disciples who did not want to accept the premise of Jesus’ statement to them, or his advice to the rich young man, whom he loved. Whom he loved.

The man had many possessions, and he was grieved and shocked when Jesus told him to leave them behind for the use of others and follow him. His grief was natural. It would be not only his material possessions that he would leave behind if he unpacked that camel.

Money buys prestige, reputation, name recognition. How many impoverished famous people can you name? How many billionaires? Money buys airtime, advertising. Money raises profiles, puts faces in front of the public. Money talks.

Money buys privilege, which means, literally, private law. You have heard it said that there is one rule for the rich, and another for the rest. Maybe a democratic society tries to close the gap, but we know that if we were in trouble, we would do better if we had money to bail ourselves out, buy ourselves sound legal advice. Would Jesus have been crucified if he were a wealthy man? Money brings privilege.

Money buys influence. It buys access to the people of power; it buys their attention. A word or two at a fundraising event: deal or no deal. Money is a lever to move the world. Our world.

Our world? No, hang on a minute; I meant to say, God’s world.

And there is the problem that Jesus identifies and the rich man recognizes. No matter how willing we think we are to unload the camel, or the elephant, we still want to hold on to the beast itself. We want to know that we can attain eternal life, that we can bring God’s kingdom to bear on our world, that the world is ours to change.

The rich man brings all sorts of wealth and gifts to offer to Jesus’ campaign, and Jesus tells him to leave it all behind for the good of others who can use it. Jesus doesn’t need his campaign contributions. Jesus doesn’t need his influence, his political ability. Jesus only needs his love. No wonder the man went away shocked, aggrieved,

“What you bring is not enough,” Jesus told him. The man failed to hear the rest: “What you are is what I want, heart and soul.”

Jesus wasn’t aiming for rejection, but conversion.

We each suffer the rich man’s delusion that we can buy our way into eternal life, whether with money, or influence, or even by good deeds. We know that we are not supposed to worship at the altar of mammon, of worldly wealth and greed; but we want to keep for ourselves something special, some privilege, some inalienable rights, some back-pocket security that we think we deserve and that we think we can use responsibly and still give away just enough, just enough to follow Jesus.

We believe that if we use what we have responsibly, and righteously, and well, we can save ourselves. We believe that we can save Jesus. We buy into the idea of self-righteous ideology that elevates us into saviours.

We might, grudgingly or gladly, unload the camel, but still we cling to the beast itself. We will push it through that gate without regard for its knees. We will not give up the camel.

Or, in the rabbinic version, the elephant. The elephant in the room.

Honestly, there are so many elephants around these days that it’s starting to look like a 3-ring circus. It is time to start calling some of them out: the ones named racism, inequality, and yes, I will name it again: gun violence. I will name it again because our Euclid schools were threatened this week, because there were at least three shootings in schools around the country on Friday alone, because we know that these elephants will not make it through the needle, that they do not belong in the kingdom of God.

It is time to start naming them. It is time to start giving away our name recognition, our power, our political influence – we all know how to contact our representatives and make our voices heard. It is time to give up our privilege and our possessions in the service of those who are getting trampled by the elephants in the room.

It is time to divest ourselves of those things that keep us from following Jesus, faithfully, wholly, truly.

That is what the rich man did not want to hear, what the disciples did not want to hear, what we, what I, frankly, do not want to hear.

But here’s the thing. There is no gate. There is no Eye of the Needle Gate, Camel Gate, no Elephant Gate. There is only us, looking at Jesus through the eye of a needle.

There is no amount of negotiation that will get us through that narrow gap. There is no bargaining with God.

The only way through is conversion into something that will fit, something fit for the kingdom of God.

We have to sacrifice some sacred cows, put out the camel, give up the elephant in room.

We have to admit that our ways are not the ways of God, our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. We have to shed our saviour complex and submit to God’s kingdom, God’s will, God’s way, even if it turns out to be the way of the cross.

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”

Just because Jesus loved him, he said, come, follow me. Just because Jesus loves us.

Amen.

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Threading the needle

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

First, unpack your camel.

Divest it of its commodities:

sugar, salt, and spices,

unguents, oils, perfume,

all excisable goods must go;

hold a trunk sale if you must.

Next, take off its defences;

not only the cannons and

the turret (hump) tower guns, 

but the concealed snipers and 

the heavy armour and

the compact package of last resort.

Strip it of its saddles,

blankets, bridle, and bit;

it may want to run at this point.

Hold it still while you 

draw out its marrow,

unpick its bones, carefully

roll its empty skin as tightly

as you can.

Eye the needle. Realize

this is not going to happen.

Reassemble your camel;

let it go, poor creature;

this is not about the camel.

Think again.

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St Michael and All Angels

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

They were not created on the first day.
They are not light, nor dark; they live
in bright shadows in between.

They do not rise nor set; they were not
created on the fourth day.

They are not reputed to seed themselves
or to slither or creep, neither to swim;
they have been mistaken for men,
but they are not we, and we are not them.

Either they were made between
the cracks in time,
outside of day or night,
so that only when we fall through
do we seem them in the bright shadows
of dying, dark light;

or else, perhaps, on the seventh day,
as God was resting,
the divine mind dreamed of angels.

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Year B Proper 21: the hell with it

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

From this morning’s gospel:

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell., And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.

Well, that escalated quickly…

The apostle Paul said somewhere to the Corinthians:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” (1 Corinthians 12:21)

And in Genesis we are told:

So God created humankind in his image; in the image of God he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Paul to those Corinthians again:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:19)

And finally from the Gospel according to Luke:

While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said to him, “Judas, is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?” When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, “Lord, should we strike with the sword?” Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him. (22:47-51)

It is dangerous – and we do it all the time, but it is dangerous – to take snippets of chapter and verse away from the context of the Gospel message that God created us for God’s own delight, in God’s own image; that we are temples, vessels of God’s Holy Spirit; that Jesus came to strengthen, and to heal us, body, soul, and spirit.

It is only in that context of that Gospel message that we dare to read this morning’s chapter and verse, from the Gospel according to St Mark. Because the Gospel makes it clear that Jesus did not come to frighten or to punish or to wound God’s people; quite the opposite.

But then what do we make of these verses?

The first words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel account are a call to repentance, but that call is couched in gospel terms, placed firmly in the context of good news:

Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:14b-15)

For Jesus, repentance is really, really important, and a vital part of his gospel message. And it is good news.

And placed in that context, I don’t think that we hear Jesus trying to frighten his friends into being on their best behaviour. On the contrary, I believe that he is recognizing aloud how hard their road to holiness is. His own road will go through the cross – Rome could devise no more exacting and prolonged torture for its enemies.

He knows that the disciples are already finding it hard to hoe the row that he is leaving them – instead of humility and service of God and neighbour, instead of love they exercise jealousy, and entertain arguments about who is the greatest, and about who should be allowed to own and to use the name of Jesus. It is difficult to repent of the ways of the world, having been thoroughly raised in them. And Jesus recognizes this and names it for them.

When Jesus talks to his disciples about hell, he uses the name Gehenna. Gehenna was a real place, a valley outside Jerusalem formerly known as a site of child sacrifice and horror, now a rubbish dump where fires did burn without ceasing and worms did live continually and without end. It had become a byword among first-century Jews for eternal torment; but it was a byword based not on the imaginings of Dante and Milton that we have inherited, but on the reality of a rubbish dump, burning eternally on the site of old atrocities. [1]

His disciples are not afraid that Jesus will throw them onto the city rubbish heap. That is not why they follow him so closely, to the end.

It is, unfortunately, we, the church, who have turned Jesus’ words into threats instead of promises.

But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear, and healed him.

Amy-Jill Levine, prominent Jewish scholar of the Bible, writes,

If the body is in the image and likeness of the divine, is torturing it to be celebrated or condemned? What purpose does eternal punishment serve, other than certain revenge fantasies of those who are not being tortured? Schadenfreude may be a source of emotional pleasure, but it is not nice. [2]

Nor is it theologically correct. “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” admonished Jesus. Not once did he say, “Give them hell!”

Repentance is difficult. It involves giving up our fantasies of revenge, in this life and the next. It involves forgiving ourselves as God forgives us; it involves forgiving others as God forgives them. It involves, as Bill Countryman puts it, giving up “the right to have higher standards [for forgiveness] than God.” [3]

It involves submitting ourselves to the grace and mercy of God, letting go of greatness, setting envy aside, living truly in love. It is not easy. Giving up a grudge is about as painful a process as cutting off a foot. Learning to see someone in a new light feels like clawing out our eyes to borrow a better, brighter pair.

The disciples were not afraid that Jesus would throw them on the rubbish heap. They did not hear a call to self-mutilation; they had seen, over and over again how Jesus would rather heal than hurt, would rather rescue than condemn, sit at table with sinners than sit in judgement over them.

And none of this removes our responsibility to repentance; but not for the sake of harming our bodies or our souls, but for their healing.

Richard Holloway, one-time Bishop of Edinburgh, puts it this way:

There is a powerful metaphorical truth in the idea of hell and eternal burning, because shame and guilt can burn into our very souls and destroy our peace of mind; but it is this very burning that Jesus wishes to rescue us from, not plunge us into. [4]

The fires and the worms no longer dominate Gehenna. The valley today is a green and pleasant place; even hell has been redeemed.

But let us let Jesus have the last word, as he was the first:

“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News.”

__________

[1] Richard Holloway, Another Country, Another King (HarperCollins, 1991), 130-131
[2] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: the enigmatic parables of a controversial rabbi (HarperOne, 2014), 265
[3] L. William Countryman, Forgiven and Forgiving (Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 23
[4] Holloway, op cit., 140-141

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After the visit

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Then they had left,
the front door slamming like
a rapidly deflating balloon.
The house looked to fall an inch or more.

Into the silence that fell with
the shroud of exhaust over its face,
her home dropped the creaks and pops
of its ancient joints and props;

as though taking her cue,
she shed her shoulders,
unlocked her knees,
gratefully embraced the floor.

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