Pride

Posted on June 2, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is something heart-breaking about Jesus’ reaction to the Pharisee’s suspicion of his sabbath intentions. He is angry, and he is grieved by their hardness of heart. This is not a case of judgement alone, but of grief that some will not accept the gift of mercy, the blessing of rest, the liberating love of God that Jesus has come to bring, and to demonstrate, and to live out.

The Pharisees are not bad people. They are not being picky for the sake of it, not in their own eyes at least. They are trying to keep the faith in an age of occupation, appeasement of the Romans, questioning of the old ways that, they believe, everyone understood. There are echoes today of their grief, their judgement and anger that led to their hardness of heart. And they are afraid, not necessarily nor only for their own power and influence, but because they genuinely worry that if they let one thread of their tapestry of traditions loose, the whole thing might unravel.

And fear is a distraction to faith. When they attend the synagogue, instead of looking first to their prayers, to the God they know, they watch to see what Jesus will do, this newcomer, this upstart; to see if he is worthy of their condemnation.

It is no way to approach the living, loving, liberating God, and it is a crying shame that they cannot help themselves.

Of course, we’ve each had our own moments, haven’t we, of looking at someone and saying, silently or aloud, “We don’t do that here,” or “That’s not how we do it here,” or even, “How could you even think that?” I don’t think it’s just me. And where does that distraction come from – because it is a distraction? That voice of criticism is a distraction from the great mercy of God that has brought us to this place, despite all of the judgements we have escaped, or been excused, or waded through over the years.

Jesus’ response, as always, is telling. In the first place, walking through the wheatfields, he tries to explain to the Pharisees that the sabbath is not a burden to be shouldered – which would be ironic, given that it is the day to lay down one’s work – but that the sabbath is a gift from God to humanity. It is not designed to rule over us, but to relieve us, to refresh us, to restore us to the joy in which God first created us.

A Jewish friend once described the sabbath as the day on which we do nothing improving, since at the end of Creation God saw all that God had made, and it was very good; the day on which we remember that what God has made is enough for us, and that it is very good, grains and wheatfields and all.

Then, having delivered his lesson, Jesus goes to the synagogue, and when he sees a man in need of healing, he has no hesitation. Because the sabbath is a gift of rest, of release, of refreshment, of joy; because it is a feast of liberation, freeing us to enjoy God’s gifts to God’s creation. And he saw nothing wrong with extending that liberation, that joy, that healing on the sabbath. He saw nothing incongruent between the law that remembers God’s goodness to us, and doing good to another.

The Pharisees did not wish the man with the hand in need of healing any harm. They just wished that he would come back on Monday to have it dealt with. His injury was not life-threatening, they reasoned; why risk infringing upon the law in order to heal it? My goodness, the echoes that we hear of their reasoning today, around the healthcare of pregnant people, the admission of asylum seekers, the making of a ceasefire. How bad to let things get before it becomes worth advocating mercy over holding some philosophical, legal, political, or religious line. See also, gun violence and the obstacles to gun regulation.

We can mean well, but if we do not err on the side of mercy, Jesus is teaching us, showing us, living out for us, then we are in error.

Yesterday, I joined our bishop and several dozen other Episcopalians in the Pride in the CLE parade and festival, amongst other activities. As we processed through the streets of Cleveland, proclaiming with our banners, t-shirts, and presence that God loves you, no exceptions, we encountered only a handful of protesters; literally, fewer than five. But they did make me sad, and perhaps a little angry. I was angry when they hurled insults at friends of mine, just for proclaiming the love of God. I was saddened, grieved at the messages they were sending out to those around us, that they had absorbed into their own hearts: that God’s love is somehow conditional, limited.

Because I think that the message that Jesus is sending here is that we do not need to deny that we are hungry, aching, withered, beloved and loving, marvelously (fabulously) made; but to know that God feeds us, heals us, restores us, loves us; that this is what sabbath is about: resting in the love of God.

On the way out of the festival, I ran into a friend whom I know from our work against gun violence. We watched as a single man remained to tell all who passed by what he thought God’s love meant. And as we watched, we were led to wonder whether, in fact, that stream of love, acceptance, joy that was passing before him and around him might, in time, lead him to conversion, to know the deep and abiding love of God.

Because they would not soften their hearts, the Pharisees went out and found the Herodians, who were no friends of theirs, to plow themselves even further into error. And Jesus was angry, because he knew their hearts, and grieved for them, because he knew what they were missing: the liberating, loving, life-giving gift of God’s creative and tender mercy.

So, let me spend this sabbath not distracted by my own petty judgements, but in awe of God’s gracious mercy, so as not to grieve the heart of Jesus, and so that not to calcify my own arteries with pride, but to shine with the light that God has placed within this earthen body, the spark of creation, the light of the world, the love of Jesus.

Readings include Mark 2:23-3:6 and verses from Psalm 139

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Sabbath

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Sabbath jubilee:
release for the withering will,
slow unfurling of a sharply-curved grasp
to rejoice in defiant mercy,
revolutionary rest;
the gift and obligation to lie
down like a branch strewn
before the quiet feet of God

After a hiatus, #preparingforSundaywithpoetry returns to dance with Jesus, the Pharisees, the wheat field, and the man with the hand in need of healing: Year B Proper 4, Mark 2:23-3:6

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Trinity Sunday: I and we

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Have you ever been in a floatation tank? You know, one of those sensory deprivation set-ups filled with salt water that makes you float as though you were in the Dead Sea; or as though you were back in the womb. Even the pod is shaped like a womb, or an egg.

I know you weren’t expecting that, but bear with me (pun intended). As I was floating there on Friday, I thought of Nicodemus, wondering how a person might possibly be born twice. I contemplated what it might be like to use this time to ask God what new life I might be called into today, emerging from the salty waters of the pod, since God, whose Spirit first brooded over the waters of creation, is always making all things anew.

Nicodemus’ question, though not unreasonable, is the question of one who misses the metaphor that is the Word of God; a Word that represents so much more than himself. But there is merit to Nicodemus’ attempted analysis of birth and rebirth.

When we are first born, we become individuated for the first time, taking our own breath, our own nourishment, completely dependent still, but beginning to differentiate ourselves as “I”. One of the early learnings of a baby is that she is herself, and not someone else; that she has a body that is not someone else’s body, and a mind that is curious about everything that is not “I”, or “me”. She hasn’t learned grammar yet.

When we are reborn, by water and the Holy Spirit, the instruments of baptism, we are reborn into community. We are learning to remain differentiated, but also to be reintegrated into the Body of Christ. We are both “I” and “we”, “me” and “us”.

On a human level it makes so much sense. When we are born as individuals, we are placed in the arms of another: a mother, a father, a kinship carer, nurse or midwife, eager adoptive parent – someone who continues to hold us as the waters of creation cradled us in the womb. Rarely, and tragically, are we alone.

When we are reborn into community, into the Body of Christ, we remember that, for all the work one has done to become oneself, we belong to one another, and not to ourselves alone.

The Trinity, the way in which we understand God as both Three and One, if I might venture onto thin theological ice, is illustrative of this. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are three Persons, each one an “I”, a “me”; yet they are One God. They are, you might say, the epitome of the royal “We”. They are differentiated, yet indissolubly united.

I’m going to back away quickly now. As soon as we step onto the theological ice, it begins to crack. As Jesus tells us, if we can’t even understand on a human level that dance between I and We, Me and Us, individuality and community, the ways in which we belong to one another – well then what hope is there for us to understand the heavens and their eternal dance?

And we do misunderstand so often. We set up individualism against community, when each of us was known by God before we were formed in the womb, as unique as a snowflake; and each of us is made in the same image, the image of God. We are fractals, made to fit together. Each of our stories is part of the story of the love of God for the world, for the people that God has made. Together, only together, do they become something greater than each one, a metaphor, a word that speaks beyond itself.

We have a habit, as humans, of choosing one thing over another, insisting that it must be this way or that, “I” or “we”, “us” or “me”; worse, “us” or “them”. Earthly or heavenly things, when Jesus has already shown us that he can be both, and and that through him, looking to him, even we mortals may know eternal life. When the Trinity has shown us that they can be both One and Three, “me” and “we”, without ever making it about “us” and “them”.

And it is a dance, a balancing act. If we succumb to groupthink, to being only “we”, we miss the unique gifts that God has given each one, the unique truth of each life. That is when “we” strays into the territory of “us” and “them”; and how can we love one another if we will not see one another as neighbours, as distinct people crafted in the dignity of the image of God?

But if we fall the other way, into “my way” and no other, how can we dance together?

Well, enough theological rabbit holes, thin ice, dance parties, and mixed metaphors.

The Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer describes the mission of the Church as being “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”

And isn’t that what we’ve just been talking about? The re-membering of that unity which honours the diversity of persons, just as the Trinity so elegantly demonstrates for us; that unity with God and with one another that makes us whole, that makes us strong, that brings such joy, that is so necessary in these divided and divisive times.

And, to Nicodemus’ question, I think that does require that we are born anew again and again in the Spirit, that we are open enough, humble enough, trusting enough to ask the question, Who is God calling me to be today, in the context of community and a changing world? To place ourselves repeatedly into the process of adoption as children of the living God, and heirs of eternal life. Not to fall into the polar traps of “us and them” or rugged individualism, nor to give up our identity – which is a gift from God – but to offer it as a gift to our neighbour, in gratitude to God, and ready, by repentance and restoration, to remain curious about the ways in which others can help us to find our place in the Body of Christ, in the fractal image of God.

Throughout our scriptures, God uses the pronouns “I” and “We” interchangeably, and we are each one made in the image of God. We are the Body of Christ. What we shall become, as the first letter of John (1John 3:2) tells us, has not yet been revealed, except that we shall be like God, in blessed unity, diversity, and love. What joy there is in that!

 Thus may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, evermore (2 Corinthians 13:14). Amen

Texts: Romans 8:12-1; John 3:1-17

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Pentecost – Prophesy!

Posted on May 19, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Prophesy!

Prophesy to the four winds, prophesy to the dry bones, prophesy to the lit up and to the broken down. Prophesy.

What shall we prophesy?

Prophesy a gospel that is not dry as dust but living and fresh, drunk on its own good news, that Jesus loves us, that God is with us, that the Holy Spirit is as close as your next breath, and as animating.

Prophesy because the gospel of mercy is not irrelevant nor to be relegated to the pages of the Bible; it is essential for our lives together; mercy for the sinner, even more than for the saint. Prophesy because we need more faith in the power of forgiveness if we are to live together.

Ezekiel saw graphically the aftermath of war and how it desiccates our humanity, makes it brittle and corruptible, but the power of God is not depleted by our capacity for conflict. God does not give up even on the dry bones.

Prophesy!

What is it that is holding us back? Are we afraid to appear foolish, drunk on the Holy Spirit, naïve to be so full of new hope? They said it all of Jesus, too. They said that he was drunk, that he was mad, that he had been deceived by a demon. They were wrong.

Or are we afraid of disappointment? Oh, we of little faith, do we worry that each setback, each assault of the world will be the one to finish our faith, and so we ask too little, and sink beneath the waves? How, we ask, can we prophesy life when death is all around us?

Ask Ezekiel. Prophesy!

Perhaps we just don’t know where to begin.

The disciples were gathered all in one place, as they did regularly for prayer and fellowship, and the breaking of bread. When the Holy Spirit blew the doors open and let loose the dream of the kingdom of God, the vision of the Risen Christ into the marketplace, they did not hold back. And though they might readily have feared being misunderstood, the Holy Spirit herself made translation, and though some mocked, many joined them in hope. And where else was hope to be found, in those days?

Prophesy!

Take heart, be of good courage, for we have the help of the Holy Spirit, the advocate who is by our side to testify for us, the comforter who enfolds us and will not let us fall, our sustainer, who is closer than our breath, and more life-giving.

The breath of the Holy Spirit is stronger than the dry kiss of death. Ask Ezekiel.

It is not naïve to preach peace in the midst of war, nor disarmament in a country that has turned homes into arsenals and loaded them with danger. It is not naïve to advocate instead for mercy, for grace; it is the will of God that these dry bones should live, and be filled with the Spirit of God, the dream of the kingdom of God, the vision of resurrection.

Prophesy, then. Imbibe freely from the Gospel, the word of new life. Rehydrate our faith in the waters of baptism. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit fan a passion for the love of God. Then you shall know that when God has spoken, God will act; for the Word of God that was in the beginning has never fallen silent yet, but still calls forth light, life, order from the chaos, humanity from the dry ground.

Prophesy, that these dry bones may live.

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This world

Posted on May 12, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after the Ascension, at the Church of the Epiphany, Euclid. This sermon draws on elements of the homily I delivered on Ascension Day at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland

Even those of us who didn’t grow up memorizing Bible verses know by heart John 3:16. For God so loved the world …

When Jesus prays for his disciples, when Jesus prays for us, who will become his disciples generations later, when Jesus prays he casts the world as a dangerous place, even an ugly place in its tendency toward hate; and yet still, he sends his disciples into the world, just as Jesus himself was sent into the world, that all who know him and see God’s love in him might know the life that is eternal. That they may know the joy that God takes in the world, the joy that Jesus knew in this world, despite everything.

Despite everything. It is tempting to look upon the state of the world and see only the negative aspects that present themselves to us only too readily. We see too much of war and of division, of sin and of despair. We see too much of death.

Some of you see and take notice of the board that stands in the hallway, tallying the deaths from gun violence this year alone, in this country alone, not even including deaths from suicide, since those data are squirrelly of late. Some of you probably prefer to look away. We all hate to see the numbers rise, whatever we think of the stories behind them. This week, we know at least one story behind the rise in the number of children who died. One of those numbers lived down the road from here, a toddler of two years old who found a loaded gun. 

And now, of course, we know of one of the adults, too, who was killed last night just along our street.

Sometimes we wish that Jesus had prayed to take his disciples out of this world. But, “God is not elsewhere”,[i] as I heard in the words of Esther de Waal at a retreat this week. God is not elsewhere.

Jesus is praying these words right before he gets up from the table and heads out into the Garden where he will be arrested, put on trial, and crucified. We hear them days after the Feast of the Ascension, when the disciples watched with wonder as the Risen Christ was taken from their sight once more, and lifted up to heaven. And what we hear is how much God loves this world.

The Ascension is not the anniversary of Jesus leaving us, but the confirmation that he is God with us, Emmanuel.  Ascension completes that perfect cycle of incarnation and glory. It confirms that the heavens are not so removed from the cares of God’s children that they cannot be heard. Jesus shows us that God is not immune to the cares and sorrows of this world, nor helpless against them, despite the evidence of the Cross, and our ongoing wars and sin, the mess that the world is in. No matter, it is not God-forsaken. They saw him die, yet he is living. They saw him leave, yet he is very near to us. They heal in his name, cast out demons, raise the dead. For God so loved the world …

In his prayer, Jesus asks God to sanctify his disciples, to sanctify us, in the truth, and he is the truth, and the way, and the life. Jesus asks God, then, to steep us in his life, so that God’s love for the world might seep into our souls. And he asks God to send us, to send his disciples into the world, that the world might know that love. Because God knows, the world needs it badly.

To sanctify and to send. We talked on Tuesday night at Bible study about how this is the ordination of Christ’s disciples, of us as Christ’s disciples. We are sanctified, and we are sent into the world to proclaim the good news of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all people, to respect the dignity of every human being, to continue in the fellowship and the prayers as disciples of the living and loving Lord Jesus Christ. All of us, not only those we call and collar as ordained, but every one of us for whom Jesus has prayed is sanctified and sent, steeped in his life so that it might seep into our souls and bring to the world the love for it in which God delights. 

I didn’t know what to do with that news when it came out, about the child, so I did what I could. I prayed, and I reached out to those I know to have been involved in serving that family and that scene, the first responders who had to swallow their own feelings in order to be present to others in that moment. I told them how much I felt for them, and that they are in our prayers. We will continue in the work that has been given us to do to offer an avenue to remove unsafe guns from unsafe homes and hands, but in this moment, all that we could do was offer our love.

After the Ascension, Luke writes that the disciples went down from the mountain praising God and singing, filled with joy and thanksgiving. There would still be crosses lining the roadsides outside Jerusalem, bandits on the steep road down to Jericho, but the disciples were not discouraged by the state of the world, because Jesus had sanctified them, and sent them into it with the determination of love and the challenge of joy. 

Alistair McGrath describes in “I Believe”, through “the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us that the disciples left the mountain of the ascension and plunged themselves headlong into the needs of the world for which Christ died. They preached and healed; they proclaimed the good news to all by word and deed.”[ii] Doesn’t that sound familiar?

They embraced and embodied the learning that Jesus is no longer confined to a single time and place but has shown us the love of God that is not confined nor constrained, that it is present and available in the exercise of love, humility, in every act of mercy made to everyone made in the image of God. Ubi caritas, ibi Deus est: where there is love, there is God. 

God is in the tears. Christ is in the tender hands that wipe away the water and the blood. The Holy Spirit is in the prayers that hold the broken-hearted, in sighs too deep for words. God is in the aid vehicles and the ambulances. Christ is in the homes of the hostages, occupying the empty seat. To paraphrase the Revd Dr Munther Isaac of Bethlehem, God is under the rubble of our world, and has overcome it.[iii]

And yes, God is in the joy, too, the love that makes the heart sing. God is not elsewhere, for so God loves the world.

And so we are in it, ordained, sanctified and sent, to steep the world in the love of Christ, to let his love seep into its soul. And as we go about that business of mercy, Jesus is still praying for us, thanks be to God. 

[i] Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict (Canterbury Press, 1999), 49, via Google Books

[ii] Alister McGrath, “I Believe”: Exploring the Apostles’ Creed (InterVarsity Press, 1991), 74

[iii] “God is under the rubble” is the title of a sermon by the Revd Dr Isaac Munther, pastor of the ELCA Christmas Church in Bethlehem. https://sojo.net/articles/god-under-rubble-gaza

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Destined

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

One was destined to be lost
so that the ninety-nine could wonder
why a good shepherd would leave them
alone to go looking for the lamb of perdition,
imagining him already fallen beyond rescue
into the valley filled with shadows and death.
Why look for trouble, they bleated,
turn your ankle searching low and high
for the touch of his nuzzle when you find him
ready to run from you again?
So go the ninety-nine, safe in the fold,
piling their secret and insecure sins
upon the name of the one they call
lost beyond redemption;
so goes the shepherd, taking up the staff again
and calling, calling out the name
of the one destined to be lost.

#PreparingforSundaywithpoetry early edition. Year B Easter 7 John 17:12b

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If …

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter. The theme tune for this sermon was “If”, by Bread. (No, I don’t usually give sermons a theme tune, but this one just seemed to lend itself …)

There is a word in the English language, small and insignificant in appearance, that is the gateway to a multitude of possibilities, a plurality of parallel universes. That word is, “If”.

It’s a word that Jesus uses more than once in this final discourse with his disciples over that last supper. “If you keep my commandments; if you do what I command you.” We have heard over and over that God’s love for us, to us, is unconditional – what greater love than to become human and to give that humanity, that life, for us, for creation, for God’s beloved world.

So what do we make of this word, “If”?

We are used to thinking of “if” as a hurdle, an obstacle, a door to which we need the key. If you don’t eat your supper, you can’t have dessert! We say, “If only”, thinking of all that keeps us from complete joy. If only I had this, if only I had not done that, if I only knew.

We place conditions on God with our “ifs”. If you will help me get this job, or this parking space. If you will bring her safely home. If you will make me win the lottery, then, Lord, will I love you.

If you respect me, then I will respect you, we say self-righteously, conveniently forgetting that we just promised at our last renewal of the baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being, with God’s help, but without conditions.

But like one of those optical illusions, where we see “if” as a barrier, Jesus is an open door. There is, let’s face it, nothing conditional about Jesus. He held nothing back. Nothing.

He is the Key of David, the Wisdom, the Way. The “if” that Jesus sets before his disciples, before us, that he lays on the table beside the bread and the wine, the oil, that “if” is the one that opens up a world of new possibilities, new life.

The author of 1 John puts it another way: When we love God, and God’s commandments, then we conquer the world. And this is the commandment that Jesus sets on the table between his disciples: love one another.

How can love be commanded? We think that such a demand would crucify love. Ah, but Jesus isn’t saying love me, love ME. He is saying, love one another.

Gentleness can be commanded, the salve, the oil, the compassion of the Samaritan toward his enemy.

Resistance, too; the turning of the cheek away from violence, presenting another way.

“Feed my sheep” – that can be commanded. Break the bread, spill out the wine, wash the feet and wipe them with tears, lay down in the dirt of the grave of a friend – all of these can be commanded. Do they add up to love?

Love one another as God has so loved the world. Love one another as I have loved you, calling you, healing you, giving the power to cast out demons, raising the dead, restoring your life, forgiving your betrayals and denials, washing your feet, laying down my life for you. Jesus says, in this your joy will be complete, if you love one another. When you love one another.

We know that we are better, we are closer to heaven, to the kingdom of heaven, when we keep the commandments of love; when we are guided by Christ’s undying love. We forget, sometimes, because of the ways of the world or the ways we grew up or the disappointments of unrequited love; we forget that we cannot make God love us any more or any less than God so loved the world from the beginning, and to the end of ages. We forget that the “if” of Jesus’ commandment to love is not a threat, but a promise.

We are not commanded to love so that God will love us, but because God loves us. There is nothing conditional in Jesus; he has held nothing back. If we keep his commandments, to love God and one another without reservation, we will see heaven. 

Easter 6 Year B: 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17                 

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How to command love

Posted on April 30, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

Can love be commanded?
Does the demanding not crucify love?
Gentleness can be commanded, surely –
the salve, the oil –
resistance, too, the other cheek
slowly turned to point away
from violence. Feed
my sheep can be commanded,
break the bread, spill out
the wine, wash the feet
and wipe them with tears, lay
down in the dirt of the grave
of a friend; but love?
Can love be commanded?

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God is love

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter at the Church of the Epiphany. 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Jesus tells his disciples, you cannot bear fruit unless you abide in me. Jesus is the love with which God so loved the world as to become incarnate, to live and die among us, to give his life for his friends, and whom did he call friend? Sinners, tax collectors, Pharisees, fishermen and women alike. Indiscriminate in his love, he demonstrated in word and in prophetic action what the love of God looks like. He showed in his body the wounds it is prepared to suffer. He showed in his life its defiance of the powers of evil and death.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. 

Whom shall we love? I tell you, it has become a fraught question in these divided times. Shall we love our enemy? Shall we forgive our friend? Shall we pretend that we are practicing “tough love” when we choose to turn away, when we prefer not to choose love; when we are afraid to choose love? Afraid of the judgement of others, of being accused of being soft on sin, of showing the cracks in these hearts of stone, the erosion that love causes.

This is not the same thing, by the way, as assuming that everyone is equally correct, that every opinion, every action, every faction stands on similar moral footing. Jesus did not excuse the political authorities that put him to death, nor did he seek to appease their oppression. Never did he justify their breach and denial of all that is holy, still less their violence. But he forgave them, from the cross.

It makes us uncomfortable, doesn’t it? The thought that our love might truly have to extend to our enemies, mercy to tormentors, grace to the inexcusable? What does that even look like, we wonder, when we still have a world to live in with innocent lives to preserve and protect and when the truth seems more vulnerable than ever to violence?

I’ll tell you something that happened to me a long time ago, on another continent. I was a teenager alone, far from home, staying for a little while in a divided city in a divided country. I took a taxi home one night, because it was late and dark. The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror as though I were his niece or his daughter and said, “You should be careful. Always call me for a ride. Do not get in a cab with one of those other men. They will … and kill you.” I thought it sounded a little extreme, but I said nothing.

A few days later, I was on the other side of the city, and I needed a ride. I flagged down a cab driven by one of those other men. He looked at me in the rearview mirror and sighed when I told him the address. “You should be careful, he said. Always call me for a ride. Do not get in a cab with one of those from over there. They will … and kill you.”

It struck me hard, how they used the same words for one another, that they saw each other, their closest neighbours, not even as enemies, but as animals, when each of them had exposed themselves as nothing but human to me.

Jesus, Son of Man, the perfection of humanity tells his disciples, you cannot bear fruit unless you abide in me. Unless you remain so rooted and grounded and grafted to me so that my sap runs in your veins, you will shrivel. You will find yourself putting out sour grapes instead of sweet; your bitterness will consume you; or else you will become brittle, breakable. But if you abide in me, nothing will be impossible for you.

The call to love recognizes that if we seek vengeance, it will be a poor parody of God’s justice;
if we seek superiority, we might as well admit that we, too, are only human;
if we seek morality, we had better find mercy for our own shortcomings first;
if we seek to hate only sin, we had better be careful that hate does not end up planting its insidious seeds in parts of our hearts and minds that we had thought were reserved for finer things; for weeds grow, too, among the vineyards;
if we celebrate cynicism, we will find that our grapes are sour, while the fruit of the Spirit: hope, faith, love, is sweet.

The call to love is the call of the cross; the call to be true to God’s mission of redeeming love for the world in the face of all that is against it. It is the memory of Jesus in the Garden, resisting evil not with violence but with a healing touch; submitting his own human will for control to the knowledge of God’s power to create new life even out of the compost of this world’s decay. Rooted and grounded in him, what could we become?

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Love does not deny the truth, and love does not rejoice in wrongdoin. But love does remember our humanity, and the love of God that createds, sustains, and redeems it. 

Do not be afraid, then, to love, in the Name of the One who loves us first; for perfect love casts out fear.

Amen

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Good Shepherd Sunday: no other Name

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for St John’s Episcopal Church, Canandaigua, NY

I bring greetings to you all in the name of love from the Diocese of Ohio and from the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, my home parish.

Ohio is my home, but you might guess by my accent that I didn’t always live there. I grew up in England and then halfway through my childhood our family moved to Wales. If you know anything at all about Wales, it likely has to do with sheep. There are sheep, and there are more sheep, everywhere you go. There are sheep on the roads and in the hedgerows. There are sheep on impossible ledges on the mountainsides, and at the bottoms of impossibly steep valleys. Coming back from church one rainy Sunday I saw a whole dozen or more sheep crowding into a bus shelter to get out of the weather. They get everywhere.

You rarely see a shepherd, but each sheep bears the mark of someone who has claimed it, named it, and who has the ultimate responsibility and care of it.

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.” He says that his sheep know his voice, that they know, we know, who cares for them and who keeps us. He is the shepherd who guides us through the valleys of deep shadows, who will not let our foot slip on that steep ascent back into the sunlight. He is the shepherd who not only lays down his life for us, but who takes it up again, returns to the scene of the crime in resurrection, so that we may know the abundance and persistence of God’s life and love for us.

There is, Peter says by way of the Holy Spirit, no other name given among mortals that will save us, that will heal us, that will make us whole.

This scene, in the fourth chapter of Acts, is still following on from the miraculous healing of the man beside the Beautiful Gate the previous day, in the previous chapter. Perhaps you already talked about him here, but if not, he had asked Peter and John as they were passing for money, and Peter told him, “Silver or gold have I none, but what I have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”

There followed, you may imagine, quite the commotion around the temple, and we heard last Sunday how Peter upbraided his fellow Israelites, saying, in effect, “Why are you surprised? God has always been active among us, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and now see how God has glorified Jesus, the Christ. It is by his name that this man has been made strong. It is by his name that we are made whole.”

This, by the way, as the Lectionary Lab podcast reminded me as I was studying this week; this is in no way a rejection of God’s promises to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, nor to any of their inheritance. It is in perfect consonance with those covenants that Jesus would lay down his life for the sheep of every fold, and it does not undo the continuing covenant that God has with the Jews, nor with all flesh, as God covenanted after the Flood and the Ark and the rainbow.

Rather, Peter says, you need nothing more. You need look no further, you need no one else to show you the wholeness and healing power of God’s life-giving mercy.

Still, the authoritiesd came and arrested them and imprisoned them, as they did with Jesus, because they were afraid of the power that had erupted in their midst. And now the next morning they ask, “What is this power? Where does it come from?” And Peter again tells them, “It is Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

It is no secret power, no special magic. There is no trickery here. This is exactly what it looks like: the resurrecting power of the risen Christ making whole, healing and transforming the lives left behind. Jesus is still the Good Shepherd, gathering up the lame sheep and restoring it to green pasture, still waters.

We, on the other hand, have a tendency, as chief priests and elders and lawyers, to look for power that we can control, that we can wield, that we can own.

You know that I was invited here this weekend to talk about gun violence, and the ways in which we as people of faith can counter its inculturation among us – and, by the way, that’s why we are wearing orange stoles today. Orange is the colour that hunters use to say, “See me; don’t shoot me,” and it’s the colour chosen by a group of young people in Chicago to protest and lament the death of a friend, which is now used to represent our lament and our commitment to ending gun violence around the nation.

We talked yesterday about the statistics that tell us that there are more guns in the United States today than people – millions more. We have tried to take the power of life and death into our own hands, into our own homes, with frankly devastating results.

We discussed yesterday how nearly three-quarters of guns in civilian ownership were purchased or kept for personal defense, when the numbers tell us, all thing being equal, that a home and its inhabitants appear to be less safe with a gun than without one.

We had a surprisingly hopeful conversation about all that yesterday. We talked about economic solutions and research-based solutions and interventions based in health and equity and law, and all of it was good and valid and hopeful, because there is never nothing that we can do. Because with God nothing is impossible, there is never nothing we can do.

But first, yesterday morning, we spent significant time in prayer, in scripture, in the intentional presence of God, because if we turn to our own devices, instead of leaning on the rod and the staff of the good shepherd, and following his lead through the valley of deep shadows, how will we find our way back into the light? Because unless we remember where our healing comes from, unless we remember how we are made whole, unless we remember who is our shepherd, we will stray, each to her own way, and become scattered, and less strong, and less whole.

The author of the letter of John writes, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

The truth is, I am tempted to say, Let us not pretend that there is any name – Smith, Wesson, Glock, Remington – by which we may be saved, but only the name of Jesus. Let us not pretend that there is any power in us to save ourselves, except the power of love that Jesus has demonstrated for us, to lay down our lives, little by little, piece by piece, for our neighbours, for love, for the love of God.

And when we are tempted to protest, “But this is the real world; let them disarm first,” I am tempted to say, let’s remember that Jesus did just that, in the garden, when they came to arrest him with swords and clubs, and he responded with mercy, and the disarming of his disciples.

He did not run away like a hired hand, neither did he leave them to the wolves, for here he is, still speaking, still acting, still healing through Peter and the Holy Spirit.

I am tempted to say all of that, but I know, I know that sometimes we feel more like the sheep huddled in the bus shelter, dripping with rain, wondering when someone is coming to take us home and dry. I know that there have been times when we have waited in the valley, wondering how long it will take for the light to break through and show us the way out. I know that sometimes, we are afraid that the rod and the staff will break if we lean too hard upon them with our prayers.

They will not break.

For here is God, once more spreading a table before us in the face of all that troubles us. Here is the Good Shepherd, once more gathering us as a flock, through water and oil, reminding us to take strength and courage from one another, to encourage one another to hear his voice. Here is the wine, the cup running over with the mercies of God. Because, like those impossible sheep on the mountainside, no matter where we find ourselves, we are marked and claimed and cared for by the one who has called us each by name, and by whose Name we are made whole.

Amen.

  Lectionary texts

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