Pentecost 2013

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

It was Pentecost. The disciples were gathered all together in one place. And the Holy Spirit came among them like a rush of wind, like the breath of god, the sound of a mighty exhalation, god whispering in what might seem to the vastness of the universe like a still small voice; a whisper which deafened the disciples like the roar of a hurricane, with the timbre of a tornado, rushing and beating and throbbing and insisting,
I am here.

They all knew the stories of Moses. They were Jews; they had been raised on the Exodus and the covenants and the burning bush, so when tongues as of fire divided and settled on each person’s head, then their neighbours saw and recognized the sign of the Angel of The Lord, the presence of god come to earth, the fire that burns but does not consume.
Their shoes would already have been removed, since they were indoors; truly, surrounded by burning women and men, every one knew themselves to be by the sign of the others to be in the presence of the divine.

Did each know that his own head burned, too? Yes; he must have seen the flames reflected in his astonished sister’s eyes.

Silence. First the noise, then the shear shock robbed them of words, of their sense almost. Then, as the wind died down and the flames began to diminish, the impulsive one said,

“Dude! Your head was on fire!”
And the dude said, “Ja, ganz recht es war!”
And another said, “C’est incroyable!”

Whose idea was it to go outside and try out their new voices on the crowd? One who remembered, perhaps, Jesus’ injunction to them: you will do even greater things than these, after I have gone to the Father.

These were people who knew their history, who knew the wonderful deeds that god could do when a bush was set on fire in the path of a reluctant refugee like Moses. They had recently witnessed much greater deeds than these, travelling with Jesus before and after his execution, his resurrection. They knew, by now, to take his predictions and his promises seriously. They knew their history, and they gathered together in one place to rehearse that history, to praise God and pray together, so that when the call came, the urging of the Holy Spirit upon them, they were ready to do great things. They went out declaring, so the crowd reports, the wonderful deeds of god, confident that they would be understood, even if they themselves weren’t entirely sure what they were saying.
Jesus said, you will do greater things than these.
They were ready to rock Jerusalem’s multicultural world.

Do we believe that? Do we really claim the baptism of the Holy Spirit poured out upon us? Do we read our salvation history and expect that we, like they, will be touched by a burning flame, passionate and lively, powerful yet gentle, and sent out to proclaim, to demonstrate, the greatness of god in the world? Do we look for the tell-tale signs of God’s presence with us, among us, the tongues of fire, the blaze of the Spirit of God within everyone we meet? Do we remove our shoes to acknowledge the ground upon which they stand, upon which we meet, as holy ground, touched by the presence of God?

Jesus has promised that the Holy Spirit is with us, is in us. The Holy Spirit is God’s continuation of the Emmanuel story, the story that tells how god lives among us and loves us intimately, pouring upon us the life of the divine, eternal life.

All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, says Paul. For we do not receive a spirit of slavery, but of adoption. We are not mean minions, cowed and bowed before God, but we are heirs with Christ, children adopted into the family of God. Adoption means that whatever has been, wherever, whoever we have been, whatever names we bring with us, we are from henceforth now and forever family, with all of the rights and responsibilities, privileges and advantages of blood-born children. We are God’s family, and we can do anything, be anything that we are called to be, in the family business.

I met a woman once who had given up praying because she felt unworthy any more to approach god. I asked her what would it take for her to know that god still loved her, that god missed her and wanted to invite her back into the relationship that she once enjoyed through her prayer; that God forgave her,. She said she would need a sign.
This was well before I was ordained. I wasn’t at all sure that I had the authority to say what I was about to say, but since she had asked for a sign, I suggested that maybe god sending someone to listen to her, and then to tell her unequivocally that god had forgiven her and loved her and wanted her to come back into the divine embrace – could that be a sign? She agreed that could work, and together we prayed.
I was afraid, honestly, to claim that I might be a sign from god to anyone, but I am convinced that the Holy Spirit was indeed burning in that room, between her and me, and that the power of that flame was what burned away enough guilt, shame and fear from both of us to achieve and pretty great outcome.

In the Holy Spirit, with the Holy Spirit, you have become the signs of God’s presence in the world, the dwelling place of God. In the Holy Spirit, we know ourselves to be children of God, with all of the rights and responsibilities and privileges of family. It is a bold claim, but we are not given a spirit of fear but of fire, to do great things. In the Holy Spirit we have the boldness, the confidence to do great things, and those great things can start with a simple word, spoken to someone in their own language. And they can happen anywhere: at work, at play, on the bus, on the beach, even at church.

Teilhard de Chardin says,

“There are, of course, certain noble and cherished moments of the day – those when we pray or receive the sacraments. Were it not for these moments of more efficient or explicit commerce with God, the tide of divine omnipresence, and our perception of it, would weaken until all that was best in our human endeavour, without being entirely lost to the world, would be for us emptied of God. But once we have jealously safeguarded our relation to God [thus] encountered …, there is no need to fear that the most trivial or the most absorbing of occupations should force us to depart from him. … Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see …Try to realize that heaven itself smiles upon you, and through your works, draws you to itself; then, as you leave church for the noisy streets, you will remain with only one feeling, that of continuing to immerse yourself in God.”[1]

We come together, continuing in the apostles’ teaching and in the prayers, so as to equip one another, to draw water from the well of god’s praise, to rekindle the flame of passion for God’s mercy and love, then we are sent out to proclaim god’s greatness in many different ways and languages; the language of work, of play, or forgiveness and love, of generosity, of music and the arts, each of them the language of the family of God.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came … divided tongues, as of fire, … and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.” And as they looked at one another, and recognized the presence of God in each and every one around them, each saw reflected in their neighbour’s eyes that same fiery passion of God anointing their own heads.

Amen.

[1] Teilhard de Chardin, The  Divine Milieu (London: William Collins Sons & Co, Ltd and New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1960),  pp. 65-66

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Scary monsters at play

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

This may be irreligious, but…

Have you ever had that person in your life (perhaps you are that person) who thought that it was funny to jump out from behind the sofa and yell “Boo!” at the climactic moment of a suspenseful horror movie? The ones that think that it is hilarious to scare the living daylights out of you, because they know it’s all ok, they know they would do anything to save you from a real monster, so it’s all just a bit of fun, right?

You may be getting an inkling of how I feel about having my dignity undermined by an undeservedly provoked screaming session.

Bearing that in mind, here is a verse from this Sunday’s psalm:

Yonder is the great and wide sea with its living creatures too many to number, creatures both small and great.
There move the ships, and there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it. (BCP)
The CEV, “as well as the Leviathan, the monster you created to splash in the sea.”
The New American Bible for Catholics, “here leviathan, your creature, plays.”
The NIV has it formed for frolicking.

I could go on, but I think that the point is made: God made sea monsters – big hulking, scary monsters, Nessie, lurking in the Loch, the dragons that “here be” on the old maps – for fun. As a little splashy, scary joke.

Well colour me Queen Victoria.

I guess it’s good to know that God has a sense of humour, and it may be even more reassuring to those on the giving, rather than the receiving end of the behind the sofa late night horror movie ambushes.

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Year C Easter 7: the shadow side of miracles

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

I think that this has been the week for miracles.

Finding Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight along with a young child alive felt pretty miraculous, didn’t it?

Then on Friday’s news, maybe you heard as I did that seventeen days after a garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, a woman worker was found alive and relatively unharmed, and she was restored to her family. Everyone described it as a miracle.

And in between times, on Thursday, Jesus ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God, as it is described in the Gospel according to Luke,

“He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.” (Luke 24:50-51)

It does seem to have been quite the week for miracles. But miracles, as it turns out, are not quite as straightforward as they might seem.

Look at the lesson from the book of Acts. First of all, Paul, is fed up to the back teeth of being followed around by a pointing, teasing spirit who is in the possession of a young girl, even though it seems to be telling the truth and maybe even giving them some free advertising; still, Paul is fed up with the constant refrain of “I know who you are,” and he orders the spirit out of the girl to get a bit of peace and quiet.

That’s miracle number one, and the flipside of the miracle is that the girl’s owners – owners, because she was a slave – see the spirit leaving and taking all of their money with it, all of the earning potential of this girl, all of her powers of divination. So they have Paul and Silas arrested, dragged into the marketplace, beaten, and thrown in prison. So much for peace and quiet.

At midnight, there is a miraculous upheaval in the earth that knocks down the prison walls and shakes free the shackles of the prisoners – good news for some, but the jailer is about to kill himself for fear of what the others might do to him when they find out that he has accidentally let all of the criminals in the country loose to do what they will.

Miraculously, however, they are all still there, and Paul and Silas are able to use the jailer’s gratitude as a way into conversation with him, as a way to convert him to the knowledge of the love of God that is found in Christ Jesus.

It is miracle after miracle, and yet at the end of the story, although soothed and bandaged, Paul and Silas are still prisoners, at least until the next day, and the jailer will still have to account for any other prisoners who might have taken advantage of the earthquake to make a break for it. Not to mention that the slave girl is no doubt very worried for her own position in the household for which she is no longer a source of great income. I do have to wonder what happened to that girl. I worry for her.

I sometimes think that the reason that we don’t see more miracles than we do is that they may appear to create as many complications as they solve.

The women who escaped from a decade of imprisonment and abuse in Cleveland this past week, and the little girl born in captivity, whilst their survival and their restoration is miraculous, will have so many complications to deal with, many sorrows and trials. So much has already been lost that this miracle will not restore. Of course, it is good news, it is wonderful news that they who were lost have been found; but it is not altogether a happy ending, because their suffering will, unfortunately, last a lot longer.

And the woman who was pulled from the rubble in Bangladesh – what a miracle! After seventeen days living on scraps dropped by fleeing fellow workers who had brought their lunch to work, hoping and praying to be found, she has been raised up and lifted out; but on the same day that she was found, the death toll of those lost rose above one thousand.

Miracles are not straightforward. The universe cannot bend so far without some warping and creaking. That simply is not the way that it is made. We live in a physical world bound by certain limitations.

At his Ascension, Jesus left his disciples alone once more, waiting, watching. We would kind of like Jesus to stay here with us, to be with us in the same way that he was with them. But if he had stayed as he was, he would have continued to be limited to being in one place at a time, healing one person in place of another, making one miracle in place of another. While Jesus was incarnate, while he was in one place talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, that other woman, the one with the blood, she was hemorrhaging money to doctors, so that by the time she met Jesus she was not only desperate but destitute. Miracles are not uncomplicated, because they happen in the midst of complicated lives. The wine at the wedding in Cana may have delighted the steward and the bridegroom, but there were most likely some sore heads the next day, maybe even a midnight brawl or two. Even miracles have their shadow sides.

So what should we do? Should we give up hoping and praying for miracles? By no means! Miracles continue to give us hope where we had given it up, ten years from the date of a disappearance, seventeen days from disaster. Miracles remind us that there is more to life than we can see from day to day, that there is always reason to persevere. We should give thanks where we notice them, and especially if they happen to happen to us.

We just need not to make idols out of them not, not to hang more hope on them than they can bear, give them more weight than they can carry. A miracle is not the same as a happy ending. Endings only happen when there is nothing that comes next. Miracles happen in the middle of everyday, complicated, continuing lives.

And after the miracle is made, and the earth stops shaking, there is still work to be done: there are factories to be reformed so that the workers can make a living without risking death; there are jailers to be brought to baptism, turning from evil to the truth, because no one is altogether beyond redemption; there are slave girls to be freed, who will need a lot of help to live into that newfound freedom; there are neighbourhoods to be redeemed from fear and division; there are always wounds to be soothed, folks to be forgiven and set free.

Yes, miracles are complicated, and they happen in the middle of already complex, continuing lives. But when they do happen, when the lost are found, when those we had resigned to death are found alive, those complicated little miracles remind us always to have hope, to live with steadfast and stubborn faith that good will come, that righteousness will prevail, that life and love will win out, come what may. They restore in us that sense of wonder that left the disciples looking upward into heaven, watching transfixed as Jesus ascended into the glory which was his from the beginning of time.

After they watched him leave one last time, Luke says that the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God, not because they knew that from now on life would be easy, or that they would live happily ever after. The imprisonment and beating that Paul and Silas suffered were just drops in the ocean compared to what the early church would go through. But in Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the disciples found new hope. Jesus had promised that he would return to them, and he had. Jesus had promised to be with them always, and his ascension allowed him to transcend the limitations of his Incarnation, so that he might be with all of us, always.

That’s a miracle worth celebrating.

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Between

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is a chasm between birth and being
where stuff falls, collects and,
hidden by the distance and the dark,
smoulders, sending up smoke, ciphers
breathed in the language of the unborn
and forgotten, known only to their God.

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Mother’s Day

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

I’ll make a deal with you. It is this:
that for every single rose you give to a mother walking through your Sunday morning doorway, you say a prayer for the child whose parent left him alone and hungry in the evening shadows night after night. You’ll find him over there, wearing the mask of an old man with moist eyes;
that for every saccharine hymn to mothers, you sing with their mothers a funeral dirge for the babies lost before they were born;
that for every round of applause for the mothers who made it to church with their great-grandchildren, you offer a quiet prayer for the terrified-looking teenager over there;
that for each pink carnation handed out you will lay a flower on the grave of a mother lost this year, whose children turn away from the receiving line and slip out of the back door (and if that child is you, and you cannot turn away, please accept my condolences);
that for every smiling compliment to motherhood you offer a silent prayer for the pregnant woman worried about her test results and her future as a mother of an unknown child;
that for every mother you praise, you give thanks for a father who takes up the slack, and the fathers who mother together;
that for every mother whose name you remember, you remember the mothers who do not know their own children, who gave them up or gave them away or never call them any more; and remember their children, too.
If you will do these things, I will celebrate with you, with your mothers and your children, I will smile and sing and between us, we will see to it that the others know, too, that they are beloved.

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Some things ascend (others do not)

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

The skylark, singing.
Clouds; but those that reach the mountaintop
fall as rain, giggling and gurgling.
A swan, slow to start, duckpond runway,
lifting largely, broad wings set free.
Incense laden with prayers,
pious particles.
A child on a trampoline, up, up,
down to earth with a bounce and up again.
A balloon making a break for it;
tears running down a red face.
A jump jet, improbably vertical, pregnant with fire.
Smoke and steam, volcanic ash
blankets the atmosphere, straining away,
orbiting with the satellites and the space junk
and Jesus.

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Good news

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

I am confused by the good news. It is such bright, good news, overlaid with shards of loss which cast their light, prismed through fractured pieces, across its tear-stained joy:
the loss of innocence
the loss of a mother who never lived to see the day
the loss of little lives
the loss of years, and months, and weeks, and days, and minutes, and countless moments of freedom
the loss of a neighbourhood which will never again let its children out to play in the summer street where shadows gather
the loss of unformed memories
the loss of those unfound.
And yet the colours shine with astonished life, unlooked for redemption. It is, indeed, confusingly good news.

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Year C Easter 6: Light

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

Light is really special.

During the last couple of centuries, scientists began to discover some really quite counter-intuitive things about light, the way that light moves, acts, has its being. We  think of light as beams, rays, waves. But light is not only found in waves. Max Planck and Albert Einstein discovered that they couldn’t predict the behaviour of light waves as they should be able to; they had to divide light up into parcels, bits, photons. Light is not only wave, but particle too. It depends how you observe it as to which property it will exhibit; it depends how you look at it as to what you will see. Actually, I am told that this is applicable to all particle physics; but it began, as I understand it, with our learning about light.

Then, too, we have all played with prisms and seen how the different wavelengths within the spectrum of visible light translate into all the colours of the rainbow. But back in the nineteenth century, it was discovered that not all light is easily visible to the human eye. Infra-red and ultra-violet light may lie beyond the spectrum that we usually see; and yet we have heard them called light. The idea of light that we can’t see is quite something, when you think about it.

Light is really quite special.

Without light, we cannot grow, we cannot grow food, we cannot survive. Without light, we cannot survive. When a total eclipse of the sun occurs, reports say that even the birds fall silent. There is an eerie drawing in of breath as the world waits to find out if its light support system will indeed return.

In the beginning, at the start of Creation, the first creature that God spoke into being was Light. This was a couple of days (in the poetic world of Genesis) before the sun and the moon were hung in the sky to divide the daylight from the lesser light of the night sky. It’s not science, but the theological message of this evolution and delegation of light is that all light comes directly from God, and it is God who created the messengers of light that we now see, the sun, the moon, the stars, even our electric lights. Light, like us, was made in the image of God, whose face shines upon the heaven and the earth.

On the first page of our Bibles, light is created, and at the last, in the final chapters of the final book of our biblical canon, God lights us up without the need for the mediation of the moon or the sun; the Lamb is the lamp, and the face of God shines on all of the newly created heaven and earth.

Like any creature, our light can fail, and light can be abused. We hear of the problems of light pollution, the disturbances to our equilibrium that it brings. And there are old stories from the coast of Cornwall, that thin finger of land which points from the southwest of England out towards the Atlantic, whose tip is named Land’s End, about the wreckers. The wreckers were people who lay in wait for ships returning from the Americas filled with the wealth of the new world. Weary from their long ocean crossing, their spirits were lifted by the first sight of light from the mainland, the lighthouses of southwestern England.

The wreckers would take those lights and swing them on the beaches, near the shoals and the reefs, and lure the ships onto the rocks and live by their plunder; landlocked pirates, you might say. The wrong light in the wrong place was deadly.

It was one of the cruelest of crimes; not only because of the weariness of the sailors and their long months and even years away from home, but to use the very light that was meant to protect them, to bring them safely home, which raised their spirits and roused their hope – to foul that faith was diabolical.

John, the one who wrote the Revelation, lived in dark, dangerous and even diabolical times. The Roman emperor Nero had demonstrated the depths to which the worldly powers and principalities would stoop, and there did not seem to be an end to their evil. The light that Isaiah looked for to illuminate the holy city and draw the nations to God seemed to be failing. The temple was gone. These were dark days.

So John looked instead to a new creation, a new beginning, beyond anything he and the churches were now experiencing, when they would know and see and experience with fullness and certainty and safety and joy God with them, the glory of God shining upon them.

But here’s the strange thing. Back in the nineteenth century, scientists discovered that there is light that we cannot always see, which is naturally occurring in creation, which surrounds us, whether we know it or not. John’s vision is one of completion, of contrast, of a new creation. But we know that God is with us in this creation, in this life, in these times, whether or not we see the light. The consummation of John’s vision may be yet to come; but its light already shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.

Amen.

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The water cycle

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says The Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earths so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as rain and snow fall from the heavens and return not again, but water the earth,
Bringing forth life and giving growth, seed for sowing and bread for eating,
So is my word that goes forth from my mouth; it will not return to me empty;
But it will accomplish that which I have purposed, and prosper in that for which I sent it. (Book of Common Prayer, p. 87)

One morning before ordination, before church, before everyone else arrived, and we were talking about the future and the fears and the falling rolls and the failure of nerve and the fact that I was probably not going to be the person called to reverse the rot;
the conversation was full of what I could not do.
So I went into the empty chapel and knelt before the empty altar and prayed in a certain tone of depression and desperation,
“So what do you expect me to do? Go down with the ship?”
And God answered with unusual, unexpected and irregular clarity,
“It’s not your ship.”

Between the Second Song of Isaiah and the reflection upon it at Morning Prayer today, I was reminded of this little incident in the middle of a little Sunday morning, and how the word of God will accomplish God’s purposes, how God’s word will prosper, whatever our own depression, desperation and defeatist prayers.

Back then, I got up, got dressed for the liturgy, and prayed fully and fervently, “Your will be done.” And just like that, hope returned.

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Breathing room

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Rosalind C Hughes

I have expanded since she left,
as though she wedged me tight,
her elbow in my side,
that space whence God had made
my other self; restored
my second lung inflates;
her voice still susurrates
as I exhale.

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