Is it?

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

it is not as though

love can outrun the shadows 

thrown by the long stones

Posted in haiku, poetry | Leave a comment

Year B Easter 6: water and blood, a Mothers Day proclamation

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

“This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.”

I don’t know how many of you were following the news out of Central Florida’s Episcopal Diocese this past week. The story broke pretty much while we were in church last Sunday. On Saturday, a new father had posted on facebook the sad story of how his son’s baptism had been called off at the eleventh hour because some in their adopted congregation did not want to adopt them back. By Sunday, the story was being shared all over the internet, the Dean of the cathedral – which was the parish church involved – and the bishop were issuing holding statements, and a petition was being organized. A lot of words were exchanged, not all of them offered in the spirit of Christian kindness. On Thursday, the bishop met with the family, and by Friday, separate statements had been issued affirming that baby Jack will be baptized at a date to be announced, at the cathedral church, where a lot of healing has still to be done.

Last week, we read the story of the Ethiopian bigwig on the road back to the royal palace, who on hearing the good news of Jesus Christ stopped his chariots and ran to the river saying, “Here is water! What is to prevent me being baptized?” And Philip offered no argument, but baptized him, and he went on his way rejoicing. In this week’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is having a small argument with those who consider that Gentiles are not sufficiently clean to be baptized. The Spirit of truth has her way, astonishing the crowd by blessing even these, and they, too, are washed in the water.

And why does this matter to us? I have a comforting level of confidence that if Jack and his two fathers had arrived at this church looking for a spiritual home and a font to mark the foundation of their son’s Christian life, they would have been welcomed with open arms. I know that if they’d gone to our cathedral church, they’d have found the same welcome. But I’m not comfortable with sitting back and patting ourselves on the back. As long as Jack is being turned away, for however long or short a time, anywhere, our joy is not complete, and our work is not done.

God help us, so far, Cleveland has avoided the fires and frenzy of Ferguson and Baltimore, in the face of some fierce provocation. But even if we are able to receive the verdicts in the Brelo case with grace and calm, and however far into the future the Tamir Rice investigation, too; even so, we know full well that our joy is not complete here, either.

And when our dreaming sports teams still treat domestic violence as a joke suitable for showing on the big screen to gin up energy between plays, our work is so not done.

While death stalks every disagreement, our joy cannot be complete.

The idea that anyone need be clean to be baptized is a bit of a reversal, I think. The conservative blogger who suggested that Jack’s parents should separate themselves from their sin and from one another, breaking up the family to bring the baby to baptism, forgot that (a) no one separates themselves from their sin, but it is through the water and the blood of Christ and the anointing of the Holy Spirit that any of us is able to stand before God with integrity; and that (b) the only sin baby Jack carries so far is the sin he has inherited from the sinful systems around him, the ones that exclude instead of embracing, belittle instead of loving. The kind of systems that cause unrest in hearts, souls, and cities. Only by the grace of God and the water and blood of Christ and the anointing of the Holy Spirit can Jack hope to live out of these systems into something better, and to deny him the sacramental means to do so is, to my mind, straight up sin itself.

It is the besetting sin, that we set ourselves up as gateways to God’s grace. But, says 1 John, it is not the water only that we need, nor even the water and oil, but the water and the blood of Christ and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is indiscriminate in where she falls, including Gentiles with observant Jews, outcasts and outlaws with the inner circle, people of all kinds of nations and backgrounds and families.

It is the besetting sin, that we deny the means of grace to baby Jack and his fathers. It is the besetting sin, that we deny the means of grace to the young black men of this country, incarcerating instead of embracing them, in numbers that are hard to believe: almost one in every ten young black men between the ages of 25 and 34 is in prison, according to Bureau of Justice statistics. In Ferguson, a Forbes report found that there were two African American women in that age range for every one African American man. “Half of Ferguson’s Young African-American Men are Missing,” ran the headline.

And it matters to us because whenever we hear these stories of exclusion, we have a responsibility to wonder where our blind spots are, to wonder whom we are excluding, to examine our own besetting sin, and to repent of it.

I know this is uncomfortable. But we have a responsibility to face the discomfort and embrace the call to love through it.

Because it is the besetting sin that we deny the means of grace to those we do not like, those of whom we do not approve, those whom we fear, those who are different to those among whom we grew up and feel comfortable. It is the besetting sin that even when we might invite them to baptism, we draw the line at sharing the sacrament of coffee with them after the service.

Jesus, at table with his disciples, men and probably women too, on the last day of his freedom, before his arrest, trial, and execution, told them that they had not chosen him; he had chosen them. He had called them out of their lives of safety and comfort to follow him to Jerusalem, to dangerous confrontation with the authorities. He had called them to witness his death and his resurrection, to spread the gospel to all who would listen, to watch for where the Spirit might fall, indiscriminately, and regardless of background, family or status, bring that one to baptism, into the fold of the church, where all was shared and all equally embraced.

You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, says Jesus, to love one another, so that your joy may be complete.

Jesus chose us for joy. And Jesus chose not us only, but all whom God loves. Jesus is not our choice; we are his. And it is not our choice to turn away anyone whom Jesus has chosen for himself. We are called only to love.

Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, a crusader for the abolition of slavery and for peace, offered this call to love on the occasion of the first Mothers Day in 1870:

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Let them solemnly take counsel as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after her own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God, the mark of the cross indelibly inked by oil and the Holy Spirit at baptism, offered to all, indiscriminately, and with as much love as we can muster.

Amen.

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I am from…

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

have you ever done one of these? I was introduced to the “I am from” form at a conference this week.

Honestly, as an adoptee, an immigrant, an exile from my own history I don’t do well with the perennial “where are you from?” questions that go with the accent. Talk to me of roots and I see an uprooted tree, waving helplessly to the gardener, pleading for replanting.

Not that I am unhappy with the soil that sustains me. I am in a good place. No regrets (as someone important once told me).

I am from nobody and nowhere.
I am from a city never seen,
a father never met,
born in regret.

I am from a fairy tale,
a babe in the woods plucked up
with wild mushrooms
in a basket, carried home.

I am from the church porch,
darkening trees dripping rain;
cries rise like prayers,
fall back with the solid air.

I am from the solid air where
the Spirit crowd-surfs all the saints,
lifted by the ancient chants
that makes the high candles dance.

I am from the father invisible,
born of a knitted womb.
I am from the dust to which I will return,
or else I am from nowhere, and from no one.

Posted in poetry | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Year B Easter 5: abide with me

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Abide in me, says Jesus. Abide in me as I abide in you. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

And so we assemble our little list, and we submit our requests to God in the name of Jesus, and we wait.

We wait.

I knew a man, a Christian leader who thought that gambling was a terrible sin. What he didn’t know was that his wife played the lottery. When her ticket came up with just the right amount of money to repair their roof, which was in dire straits, he decided that he must have been wrong after all, and that clearly God’s will was that they trust God to provide for their needs by means of Lotto.

I can’t help but think that to judge God’s will by the outcome of our prayers that way is a pretty dangerous sort of reverse-engineering.

Jesus doesn’t say, abide in me and ask whatever you wish and if you get it right, I’ll grant you three wishes, and if you get it wrong, I’ll turn you into a pumpkin. Prayers are not wishes on a birthday candle and God is not a genie in a lamp.

Abide in me, says Jesus. Abide in me as I abide in you. Love me so closely that our heartbeats sync up. Follow me so nearly that your footsteps trip into mine, that we leave one set of footprints behind. Abide in me, let me words abide in you so that when you speak, you speak with my voice, and together we will do great things.

Because apart from the vine, the branches can do nothing. And without branches, the vine bears no fruit.

Abide in me. Stay with me, work with me here. Seek me out and find me where your need is, find me where you are needed. Let me words abide in you, so that when you speak, you speak with my voice. Sit at table with those outcasts and sinners that your peers reject, find out their stories, seek their souls. Tell the oppressors, the agents of Rome that they have no power, they have no authority to destroy the life that God creates. Tell death that it does not have the final word, but that we will continue to rise up. Speak my words on the streets of Baltimore, in the courtrooms of Cleveland, the classrooms of Euclid, the church everywhere. Abide in me, let my words abide in you.

Abide in me, when the earth falls around you, when the world breaks apart before you, when all else fails you, abide in me, let my words abide in you, so that you may know that I am with you, to the end of the age and beyond, and that whatever you ask of me, I will do for you. Only abide.

Jesus says all of this as he is at the last table he will share with his disciples before his death. Abide with me, stay with me, he says, knowing that they will scatter, knowing that they will fall and fail and hide. Knowing that even so, he will seek them out and find them, that however life and death intervene, he will not fail them, that even when all looks to have been lost, he is already on his way back to restore their hope, renew their resolve, resurrect their faith.

If they were to look at the cross and decide that this was God’s way of answering their prayer, of telling them they had got it wrong all along, following this Jesus down the road that leads only to death, well, then their reverse-engineering of God’s will would have got them nowhere.

Abide in me, says Jesus, as I abide in you, and still, we will rise up. Amen.

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Scarred

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Love came upon me like a wound,
got under my skin and stretched me
out until something must give;
drew me in, knit together ragged.

Long acquaintance dulls sensation,
the red seal fades to a silver thread;
the abiding sign of a life all sewn up,
and my imperfect healing.

Posted in poetry, prayer | Tagged | 2 Comments

on the edge

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Smoke obscures the view,
tears blur the vision once
clearly anunciated,
lost in translation.
There is no safe way
that you can
see for yourself.
Will you wait, then,
to find out who’s left
standing when the smoke clears?

Posted in poetry | Leave a comment

Seasonal allergies

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

(because it’s not all resurrection and roses)

My body defies resurrection,
denies the rites of spring,
answers the eruption of blossom with
its own eructations of tears.

Defeated, it turns toward the tomb,
rolls the seal across the doorway,
countering life’s opening bid
with fine filters and linen cloths.

Posted in poetry | Leave a comment

Year B Easter 4: What’s in a name?

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Eric Garner. Freddie Gray. Freddie Mercury. Machiavelli. What do these names mean to you?

Try Jerry Falwell. Billy Graham. Denzel Washington. George Washington. John Paul II. John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Mother Theresa. Mary.

Then, of course, there’s Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Peter says, “there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

We are not unfamiliar with the power of names. If we hear someone shout, “Stop!” on the street, without our name, we might wonder who is to stop. If we hear, “Stop! In the name of the Law!” we will stop and make sure they don’t mean us. If we hear “Stop! In the name of love,” we might expect to encounter a flash mob, but that’s another story.

Name recognition wins elections; powerful names beget more power. We startle, involuntarily, when we hear our own names. The use of our full names: first name, middle name, last name, used with deliberation and in order, strikes fear and guilt into our hearts. Many of us were named for others, in hopes that the name would bring us luck or virtue. We know the power in a name.

We read today the sequel to last week’s story in Acts, in which Peter and John heal the man born lame, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Peter has told the people that all power and piety that he might possess is nothing, but the power of the name heals all, forgives all, saves all. After they are arrested as rabble-rousers, he and John repeat their argument, “for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

Whatever might be done in the name of Caesar, in the name of the High Priest, in the name of the king, in the name of the law; whatever power and authority those names might signify, they pale into insignificance, they fade into silence when the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is spoken. The boldness of Peter’s claim is wild; this man has just been tried and killed as a criminal. This man, this mortal man, died on a cross. And now you claim the power of healing and forgiveness, you offer God in his name?

We know that names carry power, that the right name wields authority beyond its bearer, that the wrong name closes doors before they are even knocked upon. Did you know that having the right name can buy you an advantage in the job market? Researchers found that identical resumes, in terms of education and experience, were treated differently depending upon the racial and ethnic connotations of the name at the top of the page, even when employers thought they were treating everyone equally.

There are names that enter the social imagination and become more than the men or women for which they stand. Mention Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, and you know the hurt that goes with having to assert over and over again that yes, black lives matter. Washington, Gandhi, Lincoln evoke the pride of nations; Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela the hope for something better than our broken systems of social disorganization.

Of course, context matters. The significance of names can change over time: Hitler still evokes horror, but throw his name into any online debate and the desperation of your position is on display for all to see. His name, once strong and terrible, has become the weakest link in any contemporary argument.

We hear Peter’s words, about Jesus’ name, differently than did his contemporaries, a few short weeks after the crucifixion at the hill of Golgotha. Strange stories about unaccountable deeds and happenings were no mystery to the people of our first century; but Jesus was, because he was nobody, born to nobody, laid in a borrowed tomb, no family mausoleum from which to rise.  This sort of thing might happen to anybody, but not to nobody. Robin Meyers writes, in Saving Jesus from the Church,

There is simply nothing unique about claiming that some notable person had been raised from the dead. What was utterly uncommon and turned human history on its axis was the claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead. It reset all the clocks in the Western world. Easter was God’s ‘yes’ to a peasant revolutionary, and God’s ‘no’ to the Roman Empire.*

It was the story of the Magnificat, the new structure of the kingdom of God, that had come to life. In one way, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was God’s reclaiming from Caesar what should have been rendered unto God.

To them, it was madness; to us, it has become dogma. To them it made no sense because of what they had witnessed. For us, unless we are careful, it is stripped of all meaning by endless repetition, adulation, and the decay and dilution of centuries of use and misuse.

Just as the image of the shepherd, which in the days of King David was the fierce protection of one who would wrestle bears and lions to protect his flock; just as that image of the down and dirty shepherd whom you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley after midnight has been cleaned up and dressed in pastel colours for his portrait, so the power of the name of Jesus has divorced from its backstory, retouched and recoloured to the tastes of those who find it useful.

If we are careless, the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth becomes a rabbit’s foot charm or a talisman. If we are foolish, we believe it will be a magic word, an incantation. If we take pride in our own righteouness, it becomes a weapon. If we are sophisticated, or scornful, it has become a joke. And yet martyrs still die with the name of Jesus on their lips.

In our first century, it was an ordinary name, the name given to a boy born out of time to a young woman pregnant too soon and her fortunately faithfully compassionate husband. It was the name by which she called him in to dinner, praised him and scolded him. It was the name that his friends tossed around, that his teachers called upon to see if he had learned his lessons. It was the name bonded to him by blood in the temple on the eighth day, when his mother was warned, “and a sword shall pierce your own soul, also.” It was the name written in contempt above his head as he hung in the noonday sun, dying for the love of God: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.

Its power was precisely in that it was an ordinary name, like Freddie, or George, or Gina. It was an ordinary name, and its very ordinariness spoke volumes of the love of God for ordinary people, whose power resided not in the empires or the economy of inequality inflicted upon them, but in the equal love of God; ordinary people whose salvation lay not in the hands of saints or of sinners, but in the saving love of a faithful and forgiving God.

Of course, the name of God remains: HaShem, Allah, Adonai, the Almighty; Jesus is the only name given among mortals, says Peter, to carry with it the connotation, the power, the authority of salvation. In the realm beyond our mortal ken, God knows the sheep of every other fold, and will call them each by name. I have no worries on that score.

But the name of Jesus was given to him and has been given to us to remind us that each of us may find resurrection in the power and faithfulness of God in our own, ordinary lives; that each of us is beloved of God, called each by name.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, our everyday companion and our Risen Lord. Amen.

*Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus (HarperOne, 2009), 91 

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Growing pains

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

They say you can do anything
you set your mind to; then they ask you
what you want to be when you grow up.
When you answer them,
the thorns begin to show.

I told them I would be a priest;
they said I wasn’t man enough.
I told them teacher, journalist;
they said my skin was way too thin,
that I could not hold the attention of…

I grew into my too-thin skin
while they were looking the other way.
I told them I would be a priest;
my weaknesses became the tender spots
where who I am bleeds through to what I do.

Posted in poetry | Tagged | 4 Comments

Year B Easter 3: joy and disbelieving

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Did you ever feel as though you came in halfway through the story? I mean, that’s not always a bad thing: in film school, they teach this technique called in media res for opening sequences, meaning start in the middle of the action; grab the audience’s attention, let them become curious about how we got here, what’s this guy’s deal?*

That’s kind of what happens in this morning’s reading from Acts, which opens with Peter telling the temple crowd, “What’s so surprising about what I just did?” without actually explaining what Peter, in fact, just did. So let’s back up a little bit and fill in the prequel.

One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o’clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, ‘Look at us.’ And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, ‘I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,* stand up and walk.’ And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

While he clung to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s Portico, utterly astonished. When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, ‘You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?

Which is where we came in: “Why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?”

Then we flashback to that moment in the gospel where the disciples are in their joy still disbelieving and wondering, and Jesus has to choke down some broiled fish to convince them that he is not a ghost.

The disciples are in the same state, when Jesus comes to them after Easter, as these temple-goers are today, as Peter addresses their astonishment and wonder at the raising up of the man unable to stand up for himself. They know the power of God – each of them knows the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob and all of their ancestors. They know the stories of God’s power, but they are astonished and wonder if they are imagining things when they see it manifested before them.

But that is exactly what happened in the person of Jesus, Peter tells them. God’s glory was made manifest in him, in his life, his death, his resurrection; and yes, he might add, we were just as surprised as you are, and just as doubtful and disbelieving, even as we rejoiced. But he was, he is, the real deal. He proved it to us, as he is proving it now to you.

Because, Peter goes on to say, it is not by our own power or piety that we lifted this man up, who was previously unable to stand up for himself, but by the power in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

Peter knows that left to his own devices, despite his best intentions, he was overwhelmed by fear, circumstance, and status into denying Jesus when he was at death’s door. He knows that had Jesus not returned to him, speaking words of peace, and reassurance, that he would have remained hidden behind locked doors for as long as it took for time to run out on him, for life to run out.

Peter knows that it is only by the power of the new life that Jesus brought along with his resurrected body – the breath of the Holy Spirit, the renewal of the power of prophesy and the knowledge of the love of God – only by this power, and not by his own piety, does Peter have the wherewithal to lift up the man unable to stand by himself.

And he offers his fellow Israelites, the chosen people of God, the same power; even those who out of jealousy, shame, and sin went even further than he did in denying the life of God in Jesus, when Jesus was at death’s door. Peter, who has heard the word of peace offered by the risen Christ, known his forgiveness and healing reconciliation, offers the same to the rest of the people of God, inviting them to join in the deeds of power made possible by the Holy Spirit.

Likewise we are not to be restricted by our own sense of shame, inadequacy, failure or betrayal, even when we doubt the difference we can make; because it is not by our own power and piety that we are invited to reach out our right hands to lift up those hindered from standing up for themselves, but by the power of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, given to us at baptism; by the power of the resurrection, lifting up life over death; by the power of God, whose glory has been revealed to us in the Risen Christ, and once seen, can never be forgotten; is seen even in the scriptures that preceded him; which has been known to us since the beginning of time, if only we had eyes to see and ears to hear.

Peter does three things, when he meets this man at the Beautiful Gate. He looks him in the eye, intently, seeing in him the divine image, the spark of the Holy Spirit deep within his body and soul. He takes him by the right hand, holding him like a brother. He offers him the name in which our healing is given: healing from sin, from sorrow, from shame and exile.

Do not be astonished at what can be accomplished by the Spirit of God, working in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, through the everyday encounters of those we meet along the way. Only wonder when that power will manifest itself in one whose eyes you meet, and greet the divine image in another; one whose hand you reach for, to lift up those hindered from standing up for themselves; and when you see it, give thanks to the living God, leaping and praising God for all to see and wonder.

In the name of Jesus, the Risen Christ. Amen.

* I’ve never been to film school, but someone told me this was true.

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment