There’s a Woman in the Pulpit

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Disclosure: I have a horse in this race, aka a bug in this bed. My own contribution, “Blessed Bedbugs,” infests the of the book entitled, “They Don’t Teach That in Seminary.” Yep. True story.

“She said she wanted the whole family to take Communion together before she dies,” said Dad. “She must have been rambling.”

She wasn’t rambling. I remembered how she wept when I served her the wine for the first time. My mother died that summer, while I was deciding to apply for ordination in the Episcopal Church, across the ocean from my parental home. So of course, when I read Patricia J. Raube’s essay, “Couldn’t You Wait Until I’m Dead?” about her own journey to ordination and her own mother, I wept.

One of the remarkable things about this collection of essays, stories, poetry and prayers, curated and edited by Martha Spong, is the way that it reaches out into eternity and telescopes it down into the splash from the keel of a newly-launched ship hitting the Clyde; the waters of baptism, sufficient whether all-encompassing or delivered from a pipette onto a newborn baby’s brow; the grain of salt left in the corner of an eye after the unspilt tears dry out.

Then out again into the blue, via the plains, the mountains, the oceans.

If Raube reminded me of my mother, then Sharon M. Temple’s story of picking girls up off the church steps and driving them to get their first tattoos reminded me of my own daughters. Elizabeth Evans Hagan and her “Moses Basket” reminded me of the child I never met. Robin Craig, “Preaching Ahead of [Her]self” reminded me of myself, and the struggle to preach a gospel which has not always manifested itself without dirt or ambiguity in my own life; preaching the hope anyway, because what else are we called to do?

There is much hope in this book. There is so much to relate to and to remember. This is a book for women who are pastors, who are mothers, who are sisters, who are daughters, who are human. Of course, it is not only for women. It is for anyone who finds glimpses of God in stories shared of faith, struggle, our love, our lives.

I would recommend it as a gift, but don’t keep it till her ordination. Give it to her before she sets foot inside the seminary. Give it to her the first time she says, “I’ve been thinking…”

I am blessed to be a part of this RevGalBlogPals circle. I am blessed to find myself in such humbling and holy company as in this book. I am blessed to be a woman in a pulpit.

Posted in book review | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Damien and Marianne of Molokai (and Robert Louis Stevenson of Scotland)

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

One of the things I love about preaching Evensong at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland is that I always learn something from the saints we celebrate from our book of occasional commemorations, Holy Women, Holy Men. But Damien and Marianne of Molokai came with an extra treat: an open letter by Robert Louis Stevenson, whom I have loved since childhood, and who wrote my homily for me. You can read his whole letter here.

Very briefly, a background. Molokai is an island of Hawaii with a peninsula surrounded on three sides by sea, and on the other separated from the bulk of the island by steep cliffs. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it seemed the perfect place to isolate those suffering from leprosy, since the disease was running riot and quarantine seemed the only solution to stop its progress. After seven years of pitiful conditions, the colonists received assistance and comfort in the person of one young Belgian priest, Damien, come to do what he could to lift their spirits, bind up their broken hearts, bandage their wounds, and build them a church. Later, Marianne and other Sisters of St Francis came, and added their care and labour to the colony, paying special attention to the children orphaned or isolated by the illness. Damien died of leprosy after sixteen years, with Marianne at his bedside; she survived disease-free, dying in peace at the age of 80.

One of the problems of plague is how society determines who is deserving and who undeserving of its punishment. We have seen it time and again, since the earliest accounts (with which we are familiar); the Egyptians are decimated while the chosen people of God escape unharmed across the Red Sea. There is a narrative of judgement and redemption that runs through our relationship with illness and disease: watch the movie Philapdelphia; remember last year’s uncomfortable treatment of Ebola volunteers and sufferers coming home.

There is a narrative of judgement that frames our fear of disease, and especially of those contracted between persons, passed between lovers, mother and child, strangers seated together in a sealed metal tube flying through the night; the ones that tell the story of where we have been, what we have done, whom we have embraced.

So it is decided that Marianne, that brave and selfless lover of souls, was preserved from contracting leprosy, or Hansen’s disease as we have come to know it, because of her virtue and God’s grace. But then what of the islanders she served? Were they all less virtuous than she? Or less useful, or less favoured by God? And what about Damien, the priest she came to help and relieve of his duties as he succumbed himself to the dread disease?

Perhaps the letter of Charles McEwen Hyde would have disappeared into the oblivion of history, had he not received an acerbic rebuttal from none other than Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of such bestselling books as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and, yes, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (I checked the dates. Stevenson had written Jekyll and Hyde before he ever set foot in Hawaii; his character’s name was a happy coincidence, nothing more.)

But Stevenson quotes Hyde’s letter in his own:

… About Father Damien, I can only reply that we who knew the man are surprised at the extravagant newspaper laudations, as if he was a most saintly philanthropist. The simple truth is, he was a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted. He was not sent to Molokai, but went there without orders; did not stay at the leper settlement (before he became one himself), but circulated freely over the whole island … He had no hand in the reforms and improvements inaugurated, which were the works of our Board of Health, as occasion required and means were provided. He was not a pure man in his relations with women, and the leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and carelessness. Others have done much for the lepers, our own ministers, the government physicians, and so forth, but never with the Catholic idea of meriting eternal life. – Yours, etc., ‘C. M. HYDE

Stevenson had himself spent an 8-day week spent at the leper colony, where he must have met Marianne; he quotes others who knew Damien with all of his faults, and has no quarrel with the description of a coarse, dirty, headstrong and bigoted man. He doesn’t describe a shining saint but a man with “slovenly ways and false ideas of hygiene.” He called Damien,

“a man of the peasant class, certainly of the peasant type: shrewd, ignorant and bigoted, yet with an open mind…; superbly generous in the least thing as well as in the greatest, and as ready to give his last shirt (although not without human grumbling) as he had been to sacrifice his life; essentially indiscreet and officious, which made him a troublesome colleague; domineering … but yet destitute of real authority, so that his boys laughed at him and he must carry out his wishes by the means of bribes.”

At last, Stevenson addressed the accusation that Damien was impure in his relations with the women of the settlement. He had not heard it even as gossip on the island itself, but he admitted,

This scandal, when I read it in your letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before; and I must tell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu; he, in a public-house on the beach, volunteered the statement that Damien had ‘contracted the disease from having connection with the female lepers’; and I find a joy in telling you how the report was welcomed in a public-house. A man sprang to his feet; I am not at liberty to give his name, but from what I heard I doubt if you would care to have him to dinner in Beretania Street. ‘You miserable little – ‘(here is a word I dare not print, it would so shock your ears) – ‘You miserable little -,’ he cried, ‘if the story were a thousand times true, can’t you see you are a million times a lower – for daring to repeat it?

Stevenson argued with Hyde in an open letter not because he needed a clean and sanitized picture of Damien the saint to be published; surely it was not his grace and virtue that polished his halo, unlike the unblemished Marianne. Rather, it was the character of those who would sit in judgement of one who gave his life for the love of the God he served and the people God had made that made Stevenson mad. It was the blissful criticism of one who lived a life of privilege and power, the healthy and wealthy who had never seen the houses of the lepers, sat with their families, set foot the inside of the church they had built for themselves. It was the willful projection of the sins of inequality, of oppression, on to the souls of the oppressed that stuck in Stevenson’s craw.

We all do it. The real miracle of Damien’ and Marianne’s service (and of R L Stevenson’s) was that they were able to resist that temptation to divide our brothers and sisters into the deserving and the undeserving, to use the sin of others as our justification. Marianne, Damien, and Robert were rare precisely in their ability to embrace the lepers as their equals in health, grace, and humanity, without spiritual, mental, or physical reservation.

“When John heard what the Messiah was doing, he sent word and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ Jesus answered, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see:”

that the blind see beauty, the lame leap for joy, the deaf are sung lullabies, the lepers are loved, a dead faith finds new life and poor souls have good news brought to them.

“’And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’”

Or, since I feel as though Robert Louis really is preaching for me tonight,

“The man who tried to do what Damien did, is my father, and the father of the man in the [Apia] bar, and the father of all who love goodness; and he was your father too, if God had given you grace to see it.”

Blessed is anyone who takes no offence at the expansive and indiscriminate embrace of God’s grace. Amen.

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

Survivor guilt

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

It occurred to me this morning, while vacuuming my daughter’s room – mostly rat bedding, cat fur, and the occasional leftover yard-long hair, dyed black, from before she shaved her head – that my mother and I do not often talk anymore. It is as though, since she died, our worlds have diverged, and the longer each of us walks on our new paths – she wasn’t here when I was ordained, when the children grew up and left home, when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, when, when, when; and God only knows what she’s been doing – the further apart we drift, so that no amount of calling out can bring us back within conversational distance, let alone the whispering closeness of family secrets, intimations of mortality.

I know that when we go over this summer, my father will expect me to visit her with him. He will be talking to her in that fake jolly voice, but the corners of his eyes will be bent towards me, watching for my reaction. My teenaged self will come back to haunt me with its Sphinx-like resolve not to give him the satisfaction, although really, he isn’t asking for much. A nod, a tight smile, maybe a tear or so.

Perhaps I’ll persuade him that I would be better going alone, although he will still expect a report on my return. “Did you talk to her?” he’ll say, and how can I tell him that I didn’t find her there, that she left me behind long ago?

Once he is gone, I don’t suppose I’ll be back. That is why she didn’t want a grave, a marker that could become a mark of neglect, over time. He needed it, though, and I assured him that in his time of grief she would let him have whatever he wanted. I wonder, sometimes, if I did the right thing.

She hated to walk in graveyards overgrown and overcome with the abandonment of the dead, the unfeeling coldness of the living. It was her greatness ambition to be beloved.

Posted in other words | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Year B Easter 2: that our joy may be complete

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

That which we have  heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life– this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us– we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

I have spent every day since Eater Sunday immersed in our Spring Break Vacation Bible School, and it was a good week.

On Monday, we reviewed child safety policies and boundaries (not the most pleasant part of the project, but necessary and sound), and distributed lesson materials amongst the leaders, checked our schedules, prayed for the week to come. On Tuesday, the children arrived. In a whirlwind. We spent six hours of each day together till Friday, then yesterday morning the children brought their families to show them what we had done together, what we had heard and seen with our eyes, what we had looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, not to mention playdough, jump-rope, painted t-shirts and soft toys.

One of the daily features of the week was our God-sightings project; bunting created out of paint and old t-shirts, and pictures of God.

The God sightings were, of course, a variation on the theme that we introduced last year with the simple question: Where have you seen God?

At first, when we introduced the question, the children were doubtful. We had just learned a song which calls God “invincible,” which led to a small investigation of the difference in meaning between “invincible” and “invisible;” but when it came to seeing God, it was God’s invisibility that raised doubts and caution in the children’s minds. How could they hear God with their own ears; see God with their own eyes; touch God with their own two hands?

It is Thomas’s dilemma, and it is the human condition, to wonder how to trust the evidence of our sense when they are working beyond the realm of the visible, audible, smellable, touchable world in which we live and move and have our being. The world, I might add, that God gave us.

The other disciples tried to persuade Thomas of what they had seen and heard, but he was doubtful, at least at first. By the end of the week, though, when Jesus returned once more, Thomas was ready, and his only recorded words at that meeting are not of doubt but of joyful worship: “My Lord and my God!”

Had his brother persuaded him? Or at least sown the seeds of doubt in his mind at his own stubbornness, the resistance of his senses?

We do influence one another, in the way that we see or don’t see God; in the way that we look upon the world that God has made. Choosing to look for God’s actions within it helps us to know where we are called to act in union with God’s will; to know where it is that Jesus is beckoning us to hold his hands, touch his side, follow him.

There is a strong theme of thunder in the t-shirts hanging downstairs. The children found God’s voice in the thunder; they recognized God’s power in the storm; and they saw the light split open the darkness. By Wednesday or Thursday morning, when the thunder rolled in before dawn, before my alarm went off, I found myself rolling over and rumbling back, ”Good morning, God.” The children at our VBS had influenced where I found God, heard God’s voice, calling me to rise to another day.

This morning, I awoke to the sound of a flock of geese. The ancient Celts thought that these were a sign of the Spirit; how else, they wondered, could they know how to fly in a perfect V formation, except by divine inspiration. In the half-light this morning, I imagined the V of the geese flying the line between the light and the dark in the sky, bringing the light to life: Good morning, God.

These fifty days of Easter are a strange and troubling time, when the risen Christ walks abroad, taking his disciples by surprise on the road, by the water, behind closed doors, murmuring of Peace. They are days when the signs of God are all around us, the signs of resurrection, calling us into the good news that the kingdom of God has drawn near. But as the disciples trembled to recognize Jesus – Mary in the garden, the couple on the road to Emmaus; Thomas, hearing the news second-hand – so it is easy for us to dismiss and even willfully ignore the signs of Christ’s presence, unless we choose otherwise; unless we choose to walk in the light, with our eyes open.

It is easy; it is too easy to see the dark side. It is never hard to find; it never was, from the rise of Rome to its falling; history turning in its grave. It is our vocation to find the new life of the light of Christ, whether in a historic handshake or the embrace of brothers; and it is our vocation to share the good news of the risen Christ at work in the world; to tell the story of God’s love for the world, of Jesus who returns with a greeting of Peace; because we have influence in the way that the world lives and moves and has its being, when we choose to share what we have heard and seen and touched concerning the word of life.

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life … we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us… so that our joy may be complete.

We have seen the Lord.

Amen.

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

Easter 2015: on not winning

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Our Sunday School children know the rule about running at church – the one that says, “Please don’t run in the church.” This morning, the rule was suspended for five minutes – set on a timer – so that the story might be told.

Mary Magdalene comes and tells Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple about her discovery of the empty tomb. SP and the BD run to the tomb – somewhere along the way it seems to turn into a bit of a race. The BD gets there first. He looks inside, but doesn’t go in. Although he arrives second (and maybe more short of breath), SP has no such hesitation, and dives headlong into the empty tomb.

[During the reenactment of the race, two by two up the centre aisle, I had not expected my first SP to be quite so shy; I had not, in other words, expected to have to dive through the empty tomb, aka packing box, myself, to lead the way. Fortunately, I made it through to the other side, though there were some worrying moments.]

So who, technically, won the race? Who got to the tomb first?

The BD, who arrived first at the door? Simon Peter, who was the first to enter? What about Mary Mags, who had already been there and back before the boys were even awake?

What about Jesus?

In a way, it doesn’t matter who got there first, because Jesus isn’t there. Instead, he comes back for them, calling Mary by name, walking on the beach with Peter, watching over the BD, even returning twice to the same place for Thomas, trying again.

Jesus is not a prize we win. He comes freely to each of us, to call us by name. We don’t always recognize him. But he comes back for us, not only when we’re winning, but especially when we’re sad, or lonely, or lost.

But when he does come back for Mary, lost and lonely in the garden, he won’t let her hold onto him; when he does come to her, and call her name, he tells her to share the good news.

Jesus is not a prize we hold onto, but the good news that we share.

*

This is not a religion for winners. I saw a billboard once, for a church, that said, “Where Winners Worship, And God is Praised,” and my first thought was, well, that’s nice.

But what about the rest of us? Where do the losers go to worship. And is God praised when they do, or do you have to win for it to count?

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with winning. A number of basketball players and fans are counting on that this weekend. The fast, the strong, the agile and the able, the smart and quick-witted, each have their place at the table. But it is the best news to some of us that this is not necessarily the religion of winners.

Jesus ended up losing his life on a cross, for all his winning ways. And even after the resurrection, there were no winners amongst his disciples; Jesus was not a prize for the fastest, the boldest, the bravest. We would love to win the right to decide whom God loves, but that’s just not how the gospel works.

No one gets to hold onto God’s love and dole it out like candy prizes, rationing the deserving and the undeserving.

It can get quite uncomfortable, sharing God’s love with those we find it impossible to love. But even from the cross, Jesus invoked God’s forgiveness on his own murderers. There are those we find it inconceivable to love; but for God all things are possible, and God made each of us, all of us, for the love of God.

This is not a clear-cut Christian story. The Gospel is rather a messy, unfair, unkempt story of failure and death, angel encounters, winnerless races, empty grave clothes, and the destruction of evil, the undoing of death, the reversal of the Resurrection of Jesus, who comes back for each of his disciples, to call them by name and assure them of his love for each last one of them, even if they mistake him for the gardener; even if he has to come back to the same place twice.

We love the idea of winning. But isn’t it even better to know that we do not need to win God’s love? That God has loved us all along. And Jesus is the living proof of that love.

Posted in sermon | Leave a comment

Easter Vigil 2015: ready or not

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last night, I buried Jesus under the apple tree.

Good Friday, and the daytime of Holy Saturday, are the only times in the Christian year in which the Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving, is not celebrated. Instead, on Maundy Thursday at the commemoration of the first Last Supper, enough bread and wine are consecrated to serve those present that night, and those returning on Friday to contemplate the Cross. Between those two services, the bread and the wine, the Body and its Blood, remain in the garden of Gethsemane, suspended, awaiting trial and crucifixion in a room full of flowers and light, an imitation of Eden.

After the Good Friday service, with the aumbry hanging open and its sanctuary light extinguished, the garden dismantled and the lights turned out, there is nothing to do but to consume what is left of the sacred mystery. Jesus’ body is hidden from us in the tomb, and we may not hold onto it.

Of course, the priest’s dilemma is that of any host trying to predict how much food and wine will be needed for a two-day open house. There must be enough for anyone who shows up; which generally means there is too much, which leaves us with leftovers.

After everyone had left in silence and the dark, I came into the Sacristy to finish the work of Good Friday, and I was faced with half and pound of bread and half a bottle of wine. The wine was easy; we have what is called a piscina, which is a special drain that goes straight into the ground, designed specifically for disposing of sacred elements that cannot be consumed. Which left half a pound of bread, the Body of Christ.

The two universally agreed-upon ways of disposing of sacred elements are burying or burning. There are those who scatter the Bread for the birds, and I have nothing but respect for them, but I cannot personally bring myself to break and throw and walk away from the Body with which I have formed an intimate connection. I thought also of an online colleague who had the genius idea of turning her leftover Bread into Bread Pudding; I wished, briefly, that I could be the person who could take it home, transform it into delicious dessert, resurrect it to a new life for Easter. But again, I couldn’t see myself driving it home, breaking down the Body of Christ, soaking it to bits, adding eggs, baking it, bringing it, watching the crumbs at the coffee hour, worrying about the leftovers all over again.

So instead, in the dark and the rain, I slunk past the AA meeting and got a shovel from the garage; using stepping stones to avoid too much mud, I dug a new grave, and I buried it under the apple tree.

One of the gifts of the Easter Vigil is its beginning in darkness, while the earth still rests under the shroud of Christ’s death on the cross, his entombment. On Easter morning we get all sorts of silly, with noisemakers and egg hunts and children’s sermons where anything goes – seriously, if you’re here again in the morning, remember it’s only Easter once a year and don’t think too poorly of me when I play a little loudly with the children at the mouth of the empty tomb.

In the morning, in the daylight, all is forgiven and all is revealed and restored and reawakened; but in the darkness before the dawn, we are still stumbling back towards the graveyard, retracing our steps to the tomb, and we are not sure yet what we will find.

The people of Israel, leaving Egypt under the cover of night. Ezekiel, in the valley of dry bones rising. The women, in fear and trembling wondering what, who they will find at the tomb. The deliverance of God defies death, denies the powers of evil, restores us to new life; and yet it is frightening, the power that is present, the mystery of God’s love for us, so steadfast and straightforward; incomprehensible. In the gospel which we will hear shortly, the women are afraid to tell anyone what they have seen and heard. They tremble at the thought of Jesus’ return, even as they rejoice at his rising.

We are familiar with this suspense, this conflict of desire, of hope, and the apathy of fear. A friend wrote today that it is here, in the darkness of Holy Saturday, perhaps, where we spend most of our time: in that in-between space, life-locked, nothing to do but await resurrection. And when it comes, we are barely ready, so sunk into our Saturday slough, our tombs sealed shut, our bodies running on empty, our minds run out altogether, our hearts turning over like an engine out of gas, an irregular, hollow wheeze, rattle, and thump. We are barely ready for resurrection.

And so we gather in the darkness before the dawn, and pray with those caught in the empty spaces between death and life. The ones in Kenya, shocked by sudden death; the ones whose grief has smoothed the walls of their hearts and left them hollow; the ones locked out of life by illness or addiction or despair or by locked doors, locked-up minds, locked-out hearts, the ones who wait for resurrection, and tremble at its coming.

The ones who bury the Body, because they cannot bear to see it left out for the birds, because they need to seal up the tomb.

We are barely ready for resurrection. But it is coming. Whether we are ready or not, God has never been unprepared to restore us to life, to hope, to joy;

We come together, in the darkness before the dawn, like the people of Israel gathered on the shores of the Red Sea, like the bones drawn together to await the breath of life, like the women clinging to one another, coming in fear and trembling towards the empty tomb. Whether we are ready or not, Jesus has plumbed the depths of hell and found them wanting; he has spring-cleaned the tomb and left it empty.

We come together, in fear and hope of coming face to face with new life, the power of God played out in the mystery of resurrection, the power of life over death, life let loose, unlocked, let out.

Whether we are ready or not, he has returned to jump-start our empty, wheezing hearts; to feed us with bread pudding, heavy and sweet, to restore our appetite for life.

Ready or not, resurrection is coming.

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

Good Friday 2015: Bury me at the crossroads

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

I nail my sins to the cross,
not because I blame God, or believe that Jesus should bear my guilt.
I have often heard myself cry “crucify,” but this is not that.
This is some strange, new hope that comes from
seeing the crucifixion from the other side,
knowing that when Jesus died,
what we used to nail him to that tree
was our own blasphemy;
the ways in which we deal death where God would give us life:
extremism, terrorism, state-sponsored execution, murder;
our jealousy, hypocrisy, our feigned innocence,
washing our hands of “accidental” death from the guns that we make,
the drugs that we supply;
the demand that we populate with twisted desire.
Anti-Semitism, every kind of phobia; racism, sexism,
and the everyday slights which we offer one another,
the paper cuts of daily life together.
Our ignorance and indifference;
our design and our distraction,
all become the destruction that we nail into the cross,
the cross of Christ.
But from the other side, we see him take them down,
down with him to the netherworld.

So nail my sins to the cross,
a dubious memento to take to the grave,
and leave them there,
if you would save us from ourselves.
As you open the doors of hell, lift Lazarus out,
bury my malice, seal up my lust.
Let rage run cool, my heart grow molten
to merge with the rock of my salvation
which is fallen so far from the heavens,
a meteor splitting the ground;
falling further than evil can follow,
Nail my sins to the cross,
take them with you,
leave them there,
if you would save us from ourselves.
Bury me at the crossroads.
Let your grave be my destruction,
your rising my resurrection.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.

Posted in holy days, poetry, prayer | Leave a comment

Maundy Thursday 2015

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

The last time that someone washed my feet in a real-life situation (not that liturgy is not real life – it should be, it should represent to us the realest of realities, life fully lived – but we often fail to take it that way, so let me put it this way for now); the last time that someone washed my feet in a real-life situation was more than quarter of a century ago. I had argued that morning with my mother. We loved each other very much, but I had disappointed her, and she was in the process of disappointing me with her response. My rejection of her values felt to her like a betrayal; her refusal to accept my independence felt like betrayal to me. We argued, then, each out of our own sense of injured love; but life goes on, and I went out for the day.

When I came home, my foot was bleeding from a cut acquired through the wearing of open-toed sandals in a dirty and dangerous city. My mother came into the bathroom where I was going through the tortured motions you have to go through in order to get your own feet under running water and into clean bandages. Without hesitation, my mother took my feet out of my hands, washed them, anointed them with antibiotic ointment, and bandaged them for me. As she worked, she offered from her knees and from her heart her forgiveness, her acceptance, her love; and I found myself doing the same. Neither of us had changed our position, yet love and mercy won, and we were reconciled.

We ask our annual ritual of foot-washing to bear a lot of freight. Once a year, we become the disciples, receiving grace without understanding; we are Peter, trying to deny, to resist; we are Judas, scalded by the touch of mercy; we are the woman, washing Jesus’ feet with our tears and drying them with our hair, anointing them with ointment and with kisses. We are Jesus, with a towel around our waist. No wonder are tempted to sidestep the real issues of betrayal and forgiveness, murder, mayhem and humble reconciliation, true love; no wonder we are tempted to turn it into a parable of pretense, a re-enactment; rarified ritual, performance religion, humbler-than-thou, obsequious servility, anything but reality.

Jesus was not play-acting with his disciples. This was not a stunt; it was a prophetic action, a parable played out. He knew that Judas would betray him. He knew that Peter would deny him. He knew that all of them would wonder if they had been wrong all along, if they had fallen under the spell of a madman. He needed them to know, too, that they were loved, to the end; only then would they stand any chance of obeying that new commandment, to love one another.

He needed them to know that they were forgiven for their doubts and their faltering faith, that they were accepted and reconciled and that God’s steadfast love and mercy ran through Jesus’ veins and through his hands and through the water that was poured upon them.

We ask our ritual of foot-washing to bear a lot of freight, if we do it right. Just as the breaking of the bread should make us shudder at the memory of the body broken, quaking through our own brokenness, yet bringing sweetness to the tongue; so the water should make us shiver with its knowledge of all of our betrayals, yet soothe us with its forgiving touch.

If our liturgy is to connect to our real life, a whole life lived in the light of Christ, then what we bring to our ritual is our real selves, our own betrayal, our own faltering faith, our own forgiveness, our own injured and imperfect love. Our love that is injured by injustice; restricted by our freedom to discriminate, rendered imperfect by our self-righteousness before God, our false humility before one another. We betray one another by our failure, our refusal to see Christ in those whose feet he would have washed without a moment’s hesitation.

If our liturgy is true, then we no longer become Peter, or James, or John. We are not play-acting, re-enacting, pretending humility, forcing familiarity. We are not the unnamed woman with the tears and the ointment. We are not Judas, and we are not Jesus.

We are children of God, hasty and rebellious. We are the Body of Christ, bearing God’s witness to the world, reconciling power and authority with love.

By this, said Jesus, shall they know that you are my disciples: that you love one another. Indiscriminately, showing a serious lack of judgement, all-loving, all-serving, all-forgiving.

When we allow the ritual to speak to our own realities, our own foot-washing becomes a prophetic action, calling us and compelling us to confession of our sins against God and against one another, our injured and imperfect love; recommending reconciliation, offering forgiveness and fortitude, strength for the journey as servants of Christ, apostles of the gospel of God’s love for all whom God has made; made for the love of God and of one another.

We become the Body of Christ, not only our feet but our hands and our heads and our hearts; a Body, injured, wounded, even broken, but resurrected always by the risen life of Christ, the love of Jesus, the everlasting mercy of God.

Amen.

Posted in holy days, sermon | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Everyday holiness

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

Although they had warned him against her,
there was nothing untoward in her touch.
The salt of her tears drew out his skin as though
it reached back toward her.

She dried his toes with her hair, barely tickling;
no one could accuse her of teasing,
her grave solemnity undoing any laughter at its source,
demanding understanding, willing complicity.

He thought it was worth a try, to let them know
how much they had meant to him,
their company, their frank, dumb friendship,
before he was shorn like a lamb for the slaughter.

Posted in holy days, lectionary reflection, poetry | Tagged | Leave a comment

Liturgy of the Palms and the Passion

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Rosalind C Hughes

From yesterday morning’s Palm Walk (the monthly Euclid Prayer Walk gone seasonal, complete with flowers and fliers to hand out to passers-by, inviting them to Holy Week at any or all of the mainline churches on Lakeshore Boulevard), through yesterday evening’s Saturday service with its centre on the Palms and its end in the Passion, to this morning’s more traditional BCP service (by the time the third person came into my office to ask about “rumours” that we would or would not be processing outside, I was given to opine that this was less rumour and more rebellion…). Hot on the heels of Friday evening’s divine rendition of the Seven Last Words, it has been a full and heartfull weekend. One sermon did not seem to cover it, so here are two briefer responses, one to the Palms and the other to the Passion, the best this soul could do this weekend, although in reality, my spirit was mostly left speechless.

Palms

The children are playing “parade.” They cut branches and leaves and grass to wave like flags. They throw their coats on the earth to make a colourful parade ground. They ride on their neighbour’s baby donkey and their friend’s large dog. They take turns riding, while the others sing and shout and laugh, Hosanna! – a childish parody of Pilate’s parade processing in by another gate across the city.
The stranger comes in through their little decorated gate. They have heard of him; strange stories, wonderful things. He is riding a small donkey, as though he were one of them.
The children sing and wave their branches. Their parents join them, laughing and singing “Hosanna!”
“Blessed is the One who comes in the name of our Lord!”
Their voices trail away as they listen to what they say, and the stranger continues to smile and to wave and wink at the children …

Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan, writing on The Last Week of Jesus, compared and contrasted the Palm Sunday procession, as we have come to know it, with Pilate’s procession into Jerusalem coming in through the front gates on their armoured warhorses. Jesus and the Jews are making a mockery, they suggest, of Roman and its perceived power and might, by their own little ragtag parade of donkeys and cut branches, the symbols of the power of their humility before their God.

Jesus “did not regard equality with god as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,” says the letter to the Philippians. Even at his highest hour, with the crowds laughing and bowing before him, he knows enough not to let it go to his head, even the Messiah, knowing that to a man, the people here would die, that as a man, he was as vulnerable to the evil of this world as the next man.

And it was precisely because he knew what it was to get down amongst the children, to laugh at oppression and blow raspberries at pompous parades of power; it was his very humility that made him strong, strong enough to know, as Caesar did not, that no mortal man is equal to god, nor woman either, although they are made in the divine image, although they are not slaves but cry out with a spirit of adoption, Abba, father, even though he, Jesus, is God Incarnate.

There is something in the divine wisdom and love which has a heart of humility, a heart to offer for the world, rather than to lord it over the world. We humans struggle to find such humility within ourselves; we want so often to compete with God for attention, adulation, even just a little extra control. But there is something in the heart of the divine which has the humility we humans harden ourselves against.

It is that humility which allows Jesus to find himself at the heart of the parade, and keep his focus on God. It is that very softness which is the strength that allows him to stand before his own people, rejected and betrayed, before the strength of the state of Rome, and be silent, stay himself. It is that facility for the offering of himself that lets him forgive them from the cross, love us even to death.

Next week the story will be very different, strange and wonderful and very different. This week, we travel with urchins and agitators, priests and politicians through dangerous territory. We are tempted to hold on to our power, but Jesus, at the heart of it all, offers himself humbly for the sake of us all.

What can we offer him in return for such humility, such forgiveness, such love? Nothing except our own humility, our little attempts at mercy, our small, quiet acts of love.

And it is enough. He doesn’t require of us the pomp and circumstance of the Roman circus. It is enough to invite him into our scattered ceremonies, our tattered celebrations, our humble, holy lives.

I pray for you a Holy Week filled with small celebrations, echoes of majesty, humble holiness; hints of the humility of a God who rides on a donkey, and gets down among the children to play at parades.

*

Passion

When I got home yesterday, there was a gaggle of girls in my living room sporting slightly scary facial masks and discussing slightly scary movies. We began to reminisice about youngest daughter’s early adaptive behaviour in the face of the minimally scary stuff found in the Disney cartoons that her older brother and sister would watch. As soon as the drama began to rise, daughter would fall asleep. “Not dealing with that,” her baby brain would say.

The line in the Passion Gospel which caught me with its poignancy was this:

“He found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they didn’t know what to say to him.”

One of the hardest things that we do, in my experience, is to keep vigil with someone who is in pain, or despair, or at the point of death. To sit still and witness to their suffering, without relieving it, without denying it, without leaving. I sat with a dying woman once who she told me, in so many words, that her circle of friends had become divided into those who would hold her hand, and those who would shift away, slide away, leave her alone even while they sat a few minutes longer at her side.

There’s a very simple answer to the seemingly profound question of why Jesus had to die, and it is this: that he was human. If he had come down from the cross, if he had been swept up to the skies by flaming chariots like Elijah, or even done a disappearing act like Lord Lucan or Jimmy Hoffa, we would not trust God; it wouldn’t count. The whole Incarnation would be for nothing, if it didn’t end just as we all end our lives on earth. With or without resurrection, the whole thing would come undone if Jesus didn’t die.

And why death on the cross, unjustly accused, unfairly executed, oppressed, rejected, betrayed and agonized?

Because none of us should be able to say to God, it’s ok for you; you got off easy. Try my life for a change.

Of course, we say it anyway; but the drama of Holy Week, the highs and the lows, the pinnacle of fame and good fortune, everything falling into place – go find that donkey, and there it is; red carpets and paparazzi all the way into town, and a good meal with good friends at the end of the day – for all of that to disappear in a moment, to turn on a dime into torture and the mercilessness of murder at the hands of the state, the protectors, the peacekeepers; the denial of disciples and the falsity of friends, the collusion of the clergy and the hypocrisy of the faithful; all of that drama is part and parcel of Emmanuel, God with us, the God who gets it, who knows our lives inside and out, the lows and the highs and the fragile fortunes of the brave.

As we go through Holy Week, following Jesus’ precipitous descent into darkness and death, if we can stay with him, hold onto him, bear with him even through his suffering, we will know the strength of which we are capable, when we are needed by another. We will know the comfort that comes from being a comfort, the blessings of blessing another.

And if we can bear with Christ in his suffering, we will find that he bears with us in ours; that he shares in our highs and our lows; that he is with us when the crowds are shouting glory, and with us when the silence is almost too loud to bear. That he is in the circle of those who hold our hands.

Because none of us should be able to say to God, it’s ok for you; you got off easy. Try my life for a change. Or when we do, at least we will know that God, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, is right there with us, saying yes, yes my child, I know.

Amen.

Posted in holy days, homily, sermon | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment