Year C Proper 22: opening thoughts

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Whether the Psalm is spoken or sung or whispered behind closed doors, there is no softening that last line, with its vicious dreams of vengeance. We might be tempted to ask what it’s doing in our Bible, or at least in our lectionary; language like this with its life-for-a-life ethic, its yearning for atrocity. But here’s the thing: if we were to hide our history of bitterness and anger, of envy and regret; if we were to cleanse our collective spiritual autobiography of oppression and violent revolt, we would be tempted to deny that such emotions, such actions could ever take hold of us again. Whereas we see in Syria children gassed to pay back their parents for their disobedience and dissidence; we see in our cities gang violence: a life for a life, an atrocity for an atrocity; we see in the online comments section of the local papers vitriol and vindictive language, cruel intent. We are not immune to the despair that afflicted the Judeans carried off by the Chaldeans, weeping by the rivers of Babylon; and we are not immune to poisonous and paralysing anger.
So what are we to do? If human nature is so fatally flawed by the Fall, how are we to hope for a better future?
“Lord, increase our faith.”

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Brought to you by:

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

I wish I could give you the details.
I’m a little hazy on them myself.
I can tell you that today was brought on entirely by prayer.
It wasn’t the words, God knows, nor the miniscule, mustard-seed faith that wrote them.
It was something subtle, something sacramental.
God reaching through the universe to say,
“I hear you. I see you. Here, this day is my gift to you.”
This is the day that the Lord has made, and I am bewildered, and awestruck, and thankful.

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Drafting angels

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Like any other, I crave the pastor’s Sunday afternoon nap. Instead, I find myself out on my bike, winding out the day and running out whatever needs to be let go so that I can sleep at night. On a feast day for St Michael and All Angels (of whom I am quite fond; we were married in their church), this is what results:

Drafting Angels

Drawing circles with my cycle
in the air and on the Tarmac,
gyroscopic,
the eternal arc.
Nothing to hear but the wind in my ears;
John Donne, randy poet priest
considered angels to be
disturbances in the air.
The rush of a passing semi truck-
those that don’t kill you make you strong-
the rest is stillness, silence, except for
the demons urging you on.

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Year C Proper 21: The rich man and Lazarus

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

So we have reached the finale of the season of rich man parables.

You will remember that in these parables, the phrase “a rich man” is used to indicate not simply someone who has a lot of stuff, but someone who “stores up treasures for themselves, but is not rich towards God,” as Jesus says elsewhere. It is like the hymn which speaks of “our wanton, selfish gladness, rich in things and poor in soul.”[1]

This rich man’s crime is not to have wealth, nor even to wear purple and eat feasts, but his sin is the neglect of his neighbour, Lazarus who lives at his gate. The Law of Moses was very clear about the poor who live outside the gate, and the duties and responsibilities of those who were better off to care for them. It was a scandal and an outrage that this man, this rich man, should let Lazarus fester with the dogs. The outrage is compounded in the scenes after death, when the rich man still wants to treat Lazarus as a servant to do his bidding; even from Hades he is issuing orders! Yet when he was alive, he was not willing to feed him, or to let him live in the house, or to offer healthcare beyond the licking of his dogs. He was rich in things, but poor in soul.

God, rich in mercy, has sent the angels to sweep Lazarus up into the bosom of Abraham, a picture of paradise. In one of the many, funny little asymmetries of this parable, although Lazarus gets a name and the rich man doesn’t, the rich man gets a voice, but we never hear Lazarus speak, so we don’t know much about Lazarus except that he was poor; nothing about his moral character or religious beliefs or observance. We only know that God, rich in mercy, has seen fit to receive and comfort him.

We know a little more about the rich man, and the parable paints a picture of a journey that we would not want to follow. The rich man thinks about it, and realizes that he does not want his brothers to follow his same path either “Send Lazarus to warn them,” he says. Why doesn’t he ask to go himself? He has a voice! But we have never heard Lazarus speak.

Back in the days of the parable when Jesus described those who store up treasure but are not rich towards God, he was telling his dinner host to stop inviting his rich friends to fill up his house, and instead to invite the likes of Lazarus to gather around his table; partly to feed them, of course; Lazarus longed for the crumbs that fell; but also because around a table people gather to do more than eat. They talk. They tell stories. They listen. They learn about one another. They become neighbours; maybe, if they’re lucky, even friends.

The rich man was deficient in charity, but he was also deficient in his relationships. He neglected Lazarus, and he demeaned him by leaving him to the dogs. He also failed to see Lazarus’ inherent worth and value even when he was clasped to Abraham’s bosom! No wonder Abraham did not hold out great hopes for the rich man’s scheme to change his brothers’ hearts and minds. The tragedy of Lazarus’ life is not only his hunger and his sores, but his silence. That, too, the rich man could have remedied if he’d had just a moment to listen instead of giving out orders.

Another line of that great hymn goes, “Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore.” We are not to be resigned to injustice; we are not to be silent about the plight of those who have no voice.

And yet there is hope. The rich man did want to warn his brothers. He had begun to think beyond himself, and repentance has a wonderful way of re-building bridges that sin has burned; perhaps, even, a bridge across that chasm that has opened up between himself and Lazarus, between Hades and the bosom of Abraham.

Repentance has a wonderful way of rebuilding bridges that sin has burned.

Jeremiah bought a field, defiantly proclaiming that justice, economic and otherwise, would return to his land. The writer of the letter to Timothy demanded that his hearers be rich in good works, to be generous and to share the blessings with which they have been abundantly blessed. There is so much joy to be had in the sharing good things. But repentance, of course, is not just about giving money.

This series of parables, the ones that revolve around a rich man, has reached its climax in the reversal of fortunes predicted at the beginning of Luke in the Magnificat – God has raised up the lowly, and sent the rich away empty. These stories have been about our relationships with money – how we use it, and whether we let it use us; and about our relationship with God – whether we truly consider God to be our core value, our centre and our goal, our foundation and our pinnacle, or whether we have allowed something else to edge God to the outskirts of our lives. We can’t have it both ways.

They are also about our relationships with one another. They are about restoring generosity, kindness, empathy and sharing as central values of our ethical lives. They are about sharing fellowship with those we are least likely to invite to dinner, and listening to them, laughing with them, learning them, loving them. They are about loving our neighbours as ourselves, something the cartoon character rich men had long forgotten how to do.

We had a wonderful first Euclid prayer walk yesterday – forty people at least gathered and walked and prayed, or stayed in the chapel and prayed. People came from different churches and we met our neighbours, we talked with one another, I heard so many stories of people’s lives. Today, as some of you know, is the feast day for St Michael and All Angels, and as one woman told me her story yesterday of angels in New York City on one dark September day some years ago, I got serious goose bumps.

There are stories we would never hear, people we would never know, blessings we would never apprehend if we never looked outside our own doors, outside our own circles, to invite people in.

In the end, there is hope, I think, for this rich man. Repentance can rebuild bridges that sin has burned, and he is beginning to turn. Our prayer walk vests yesterday included in their logo the slogan, “Love God, Love Your Neighbor, Change the World.”  Repentance changes the landscape; it rebuilds bridges where there had been dust and ashes, and reconnects us to one another and to God. It can change our world; it can change the world.

Here’s one practical way that some of you might be able to change someone’s world during October, to give a voice to one who has been silenced through violence and fear. During October, churches have been asked to speak out about domestic violence and abuse, so and we’re going to be collecting used cellphones for recycling by the Domestic Violence and Child Advocacy centre. If you have an old phone that you have replaced, which is still languishing at home doing nothing and doing you no good, it can literally give a voice to those who are crying out in silence.

And do join us next month for our Euclid prayer walk. It is a truly wonderful way to build bridges between neighbours.

Of course, God has been changing landscapes since Creation began, and Jesus of Nazareth, raised by a carpenter, knew plenty about building bridges and engineering solutions to the problems caused by the chasms that open up between us. Jesus teases us with these parables, because he knows that in the end, we are each of us as arrogant and haughty as the rich man, and each of us as needy and as pitiful as Lazarus, and repentance will heal the breach in our own souls, too. So he invites us to his table – sit, eat, drink – and serves us with that sumptuous feast, the bread of heaven, the cup of life everlasting, the true and eternal treasure.

And so, as the hymn draws to an end: “Let the gift of thy salvation be our glory, evermore.”

[1] God of grace and God of glory, Words by Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Hymnal 1982, According to the Use of the Episcopal Church #594/595

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Year C Proper 20: The parable of the dishonest manager

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

We all knew, in the old westerns, who the bad guys were by the colour of their hats. These days, if you go to a movie and a smooth character speaks to you in a somewhat refined British accent, you are going to keep an eye on that character: he’s probably up to no good.[1] From Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, to Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Wars, even the voice of Jeremy Irons as Scar, the wicked uncle in the Lion King, it’s a pretty good bet that if you hear an English accent, the movie maker is trying to semaphore to you a message: this is not the character you want to be rooting for. [If you are reading this online and don’t know me, imagine, if you will, that I sound something like Helen Mirren. Or maybe Judi Dench. If you do know me, humour me.]

In Luke’s gospel and beyond, the phrase, “a rich man,” serves something of the same purpose. It is a marker, an indicator that tells you more than the simple presentation of a man with a lot of money could. It is not clear that having possessions is in itself enough to make you the bad guy; after another “rich man” parable, Jesus speaks of those who store up treasure for themselves, but are not rich towards God (Luke 12:21). That is the kind of person that we are meant to imagine when a parable begins with the words, “a rich man:” those who store up treasure for themselves, but who are not rich towards God.

Remember that Jesus was sitting at dinner with the Pharisees, then he went out and was eating with the tax collectors and sinners, to the Pharisees’ chagrin. He told them all some stories about who was lost and how they were found, and how delighted God was to welcome them home. Now, he tells a different story.

Jesus, never one to flatter much, describes the character of the manager in weak and whiny terms: oh my, what shall I do, I could never hack manual labour, I couldn’t bear to beg … all I know is how to manipulate money to make it do what I want. So he continues, despite having lost his job over it, in the same vein as he has been going all these years. He calls in his master’s debtors, falsifies their loan documents, and tells them they owe him one. He is the opposite of the model of repentance, of seeing the light and amending a life; despite his protestations, he does know how to dig and he is digging in ever deeper.

The surprise twist comes when the master returns and is pleased with what the manager has done; actually, I think that he laughs at him, and slaps him on the back, and says, “Well played, my son!” Remember, this master is “a rich man,” not only wealthy but one who stores up treasures for himself without regard to God or his neighbour. He is not a model we want to follow, but he sees that his manager is out of his same mould, he knows the game, he is “one of us.” The student has pleased his master after all, although we are not told if he gets his job back.

A man was incarcerated in a high security prison on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England. Whilst there, he had fallen under the wings of one of the most notorious criminal families in England, the Krays, south London gangsters with a fearsome reputation. This young man somehow charmed the brother of the infamous Kray twins and entered his circle of protection through the prison drug programme. It was always the same way with the family: they looked after their own. Even while they were causing menace and mayhem in south London, the gangsters were known for their kindness to their old mum. If you were one of them, you were safe. If you were one of them, you were protected, for at least as long as the friendship lasted.

“Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into their eternal homes.” Making friends by means of dishonesty – like the corrupt manager, like the Parkhurst prisoner – will earn you favours with those in the know, and this may come with real and tangible benefits. But this is not a story of repentance, of seeing the light and amending a life, and it does not have the same happy ending. Look at the home into which they welcome you: a top security prison; a lifetime of servitude to a selfish rich man, or worse. It’s hardly the loving and joyful embrace that welcomed the lost sheep, the lost son.

No, Jesus tells the tax collectors and sinners, and the money-loving Pharisees, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t make money your priority at any price, and still consider yourself servants of God. You can’t treat your neighbour dishonestly and turn around to God and say, “I didn’t mean it, honestly.” To quote Shakespeare, “All that glisters is not gold.”[2] God longs to give us the true riches of life within the divine embrace, life in the light, life in full, but if our gaze is fixed on filthy lucre, we will only see its dim reflection.

Here’s what I hear Jesus saying: Be dazzling as children of the light. Be so astonishingly upright and transparent in your dealings that you blind the children of this generation with your honesty and leave them bewildered. You can’t serve two masters, you can’t have it both ways, so choose the way that leads to eternal life, to the eternal home that is worth inheriting, not a top-security prison but a loving home with a warm embrace and a fatted calf.

When I was a student, the first time around, long ago, juggling financial forms, a priest told me, “You know, there is such a thing as being too honest.” I have to tell you, according to this parable, according to Jesus, he was just plain wrong. You can’t have it both ways, no matter what wise men and Pharisees might say!

The Church of England had a little public embarrassment recently when the new(ish) Archbishop of Canterbury blasted short-term lenders and vowed to drive them out of business with ethical investments, only to have the Financial Times reveal the following day that the Church, in fact, had investments in just such a company within its portfolio.[3] To his credit, the Archbishop admitted the error and launched immediate action to correct it, but it just goes to show, no matter how high and holy you may be, you can’t have it both ways.

The bottom line is that Christians are called to scrupulously ethical dealings with money; they are called to engage with economic justice, fairness, and even generosity; they cannot claim to play the worldly games of chance and trickery, of greedy acquisition and sharp dealing and still serve God. The law of Deuteronomy warns, “Do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought” (Deut 15:7b,9a).

It’s a tough line, and it must have sounded as high-minded and unrealistic to the tax collectors as it does to us today; it’s certainly a tough line for our politicians, fighting over budget priorities, where food stamps and health insurance fight against  bombs, bailouts and bureaucracy; it’s a tough line, but it is our calling. It is our choice every day, in every transaction we make, to serve God, through means of honesty and fairness, supporting economic justice and true generosity; or to serve money, letting it control us, making the bottom line the boss of us. We cannot have it both ways, says Jesus. Each decision that we make, of where to spend our money, where to shop, how to save, to whom to give our money is an ethical choice, a decision to serve God or our own bottom line.

It’s a tough line, but if you were in the movie, which hat would you want to wear; what accent would you want to use to deliver it?

The reward of repentance is so much richer than a night on the couch in the home of a crooked friend developed by dishonest means and shrewd dealings. The reward of repentance, of seeing the light and amending a life, is that loving embrace that rushes out to meet the prodigal son on his return home, the party of angels celebrating the return of the lost lamb, the delight of the One who made us when we finally turn our face towards heaven, even heaven on earth.

You can’t serve God and money, warns Jesus, but trust me, God is worth more, lasts longer, never runs out and is never overdrawn. And you can take that to the bank.

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Year C Proper 20: Thick as thieves

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

An extract from tomorrow’s sermon:

A man was incarcerated in a high security prison on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England. Whilst there, he had fallen under the wings of one of the most notorious criminal families in England, the Krays, south London gangsters with a fearsome reputation. As with many dishonest people, it’s difficult to get to the truth of the story, but it sounds as though this young man somehow charmed the brother of the infamous Kray twins and entered his circle of protection through the prison drug programme. It was always the same way with the family: they looked after their own. Even while they were causing menace and mayhem in south London, the gangsters were known for their kindness to their old mum. If you were one of them, you were safe. If you were one of them, you were protected, for at least as long as the friendship lasted.

 “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into their eternal homes.” Making friends by means of dishonesty – like the corrupt manager, like the Parkhurst prisoner – will earn you favours with those in the know, and this may come with real and tangible benefits. But this is not a story of repentance, of seeing the light and amending a life, and it does not have the same happy ending. Look at the home into which they welcome you: a top security prison; a lifetime of servitude to a selfish rich man. It’s hardly the loving and joyful embrace that welcomed the lost sheep, the lost son.

 No, Jesus tells the tax collectors and sinners, and the money-loving Pharisees, you can’t have it both ways…

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Guns kill people

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Guns are not choosy. Guns just kill people. It’s their modus operandi. It’s what they do.

We are hearing more, bit by bit, about the latest victims of the latest shooting rampage. Each detail chips a little more flint from our hearts. The sister who sneaks up and holds your hand. The mother of the bride. The older man with the inimitable friendly greeting. The woman who could not respond to increasingly frantic texts, because no, she was not all right. No, she was not safe. The son who spoke to his mother just the day before, as though nothing were amiss, because back then, nothing was. God heal their souls from their violent passage and bring them to peace; God help his mother, her brother, her daughter, his friends; God console all those who are in grief.

Including the soul and the family of the thirteenth person to die, the one plagued by paranoia, who had called for help with voices and radiation machines and sleep-stealing vibrations, who had difficulty, apparently, telling nightmares from reality. The one to whom we sold a gun.

A lawyer for the gun dealer assures us that the transaction was legal. The requisite background checks were run. I guess there was no mandated waiting period. This man was allowed, was invited by us to buy a shotgun and ammunition. A man who could not tell reality from nightmare was handed the responsibility for controlling a deadly device, a machine manufactured to kill.

We failed that man on Saturday [corrected from Sunday following NPR’s similar correction], and because we did, we failed a dozen more people on Monday, and their families, and their friends, and our own children to whom we now have to explain yet again why the news is so sad, so scary, so damn wrong.

At the risk of repeating myself, and with all respect to the dead and those who mourn them: Guns kill people. It is their raison d’etre. That being the case, we must control them. We must clip their wings and limit their clips and we must do it before more blood is shed, because if we do not, that blood is on our hands.

We, the people, run this country, so our laws say. Guns kill people. We, the people, need to fight back.

this post has been updated to credit news sources

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Year C Proper 19: God’s unrelenting love

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Does anyone think that the scribes and the Pharisees might be just a little bit jealous? For the past few weeks of story, Jesus has been at their house, eating at their tables, messing with their seating arrangements and telling them who they should and shouldn’t invite for dinner: and now he’s ditched them for this other crowd, and they are either not invited or wouldn’t darken the doorway if they were; and they’re feeling a little bit petulant. It makes you wonder, at least a little bit, just who it is Jesus thinks might be lost.

We lost my elder brother once. It was in a department store in Bristol, England, where we used to live. Our parents, in those seemingly innocent days, would park us in the toy department while they looked at boring stuff like kitchen appliances or clothes or goodness knows what. Anyway, that day they came back and found me playing with the teddy bears (I had a certain weakness for stuffed animals), and asked me where my brother was, and I looked around and shrugged – I hadn’t seen him in a while.

We searched the toy department. Then we went to customer service and got them to put out an announcement over the tannoy. We waited. Store security poked about in fitting rooms and unlikely corners, and came up empty. He was not in the store.

We went to the police station. I remember our parents giving them his description: it was strange, hearing him reduced to height and hair colour and the clothes on his back. There were no cell phones back in the olden days, so they told us to go home and wait there for their call.

We walked back through the department store, retracing our steps, searching and seeking about, until we reached the multi-storey parking garage where we’d left our old, maroon Ford Cortina, and there he was, sitting on the ground, leaning against the wheel arch. It turned out, he didn’t even know that he was lost. He was simply sitting, waiting to be found.

I believe that we ate chip-shop fish and chips out of the newspapers that night, a humble celebration saved for the most special of occasions, and a sure sign that our mother was both exhausted and elated.

In the readings that we heard this morning, we rehearse the cycle of a father, of a mother, of a lover who has lost the one most precious to their heart. Jeremiah proclaims God’s anger, God’s regret, God’s undoing of Creation: Genesis has gone into reverse – lo! Let there be no light! Lo! Let there be no land! Lo! Let there be no life! My children are stupid and foolish and leave me behind, and I will have none of them. (Oxford Bible Commentary, John Barton and John Muddiman, eds, OUP, 2001, 493)

But God has been here before, and God promised Noah never again to say never again; never again to make a full end, so that even in the face of betrayal and anger and grief and pain, God will not say, never again will I love you. Indeed, in the first letter to Timothy, the author (who may or may not have been Paul himself, but who considered himself at least under Paul’s mantle) describes himself in the terms of a foolish child, ignorant and in need of patience; but God sought out Paul when he was Saul, persecuting the people of the risen Christ, and saved him from himself. A Pharisee who thought himself firmly on the road of righteousness, nevertheless Saul was lost until he was found on the road to Damascus and blinded so that he might see. “Amazing Grace” might have been his theme song, if it had been written yet.

And then in the Gospel, the denouement: the lost child, the wanderer, the fool who in his heart said there was no God, has been found, and is brought home to great rejoicing, relief and tears, and dancing on the edge of heaven.

Have you seen those aging images that they use to portray how children who went missing ten or twenty years ago might look now? There are those who never give up searching, who cannot let go of hope. We had a lesson in that this year, after a decade of three girls gone who have been restored to their families; and despite the hardship, despite the horror, there was great rejoicing that they had been found. How could there not be?

And if we, who are sinners and Pharisees and scribes, know how to rejoice when someone is found, and brought home, how much more our Father, our Mother who is in heaven?

The scribes and the sinners and the Pharisees with their dinners can argue till the cows come home over who is last and who is first and who is lost and who is found – Jesus tells them, no matter what, no matter when, God delights in all of God’s children, even you, even me; God delights to receive us in a loving embrace, no matter how, no matter why; God never gives up searching, never gives up calling, gives up sweeping the floor to find us, no matter how, no matter who. God never loses hope.

It is a matter of great delight; it is a saying worthy to be received, that God never gives up hope of finding our faces turned toward heaven, and the joy that is freely offered from on high.

And we can grumble with the Pharisees – what, God loves them, too? – whoever “them” is for you – or we can say, Jesus Christ; my God; I never knew how lost I was until I was found by you. Amen.

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Lost in the department store

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Frantic, fleeting moments in the old department store,
for each passing second a hundred possibilities; few of them good.
Disembodied voices broadcast fear across the floors:
“Have you seen this child? Wearing a blue coat with a hood.”
Elevators, escalators, all head down and out the door,
into the town where strangers stand in shadows at high noon.
Reduced to the clothes on his back, his height and hair colour,
adrift in the wilderness of the city, someone’s beloved son.
Imagine the moment they see him, as if he’s been born all over again,
counting his fingers and toes, hugging him tight,
shouting aloud to the heavens above:
here is the one who was lost; now rejoice. He’s alright.

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Psalm 14 (53)

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Psalm 53 is included in today’s Daily Office readings. It is almost exactly the same as Psalm 14, which is included in this Sunday’s Revised Common Lectionary, except for the penultimate verse(s). The text of Psalm 14 is included below, from the Book of Common Prayer translation.

Bread

They eat up my people like bread,
kneading and wheedling them,
seeking to get a rise out of them,
baking them and slicing them.
They eat up my people like bread,
stealing them in desperate times,
stuffing them into their children’s mouths
to quiet their hungry cries.
They eat up my people like bread,
morsels divided, dissolving on the tongue,
washed down with wine;
there is none who does good; not one.
They eat up my people like bread;
they crumble them between their hands,
throw them to the birds,
dust them off with a brisk slap.
They eat up my people like bread,
ask for more, day by day,
and I, the fool, feed them;
I find I cannot turn away.

Psalm 14 Dixit insipiens
1 The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” All are corrupt and commit abominable  acts; there is none who does any good.
2 The Lord looks down from heaven upon us all, to see if there is any who is wise, if there is one who seeks after God.
3 Every one has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad; there is none who does good; no, not one.
4 Have they no knowledge, all those evildoers who eat up my people like bread and do not call upon the Lord?
5 See how they tremble with fear, because God is in the company of the righteous.
6 Their aim is to confound the plans of the afflicted, but the Lord is their refuge.
7 Oh, that Israel’s deliverance would come out of Zion! when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice and Israel be glad.

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