Zechariah finds his voice

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

This week, we get to read the Song of Zechariah, the loosened tongue of a man whose loins have finally produced an heir after decades of longing and loss; the praise of a priest who was struck dumb by the appearance of an angel who predicted this child, whom he did not, could not believe; the faith of a family man who has finally come home to his wife, his son, his God, a priest provoked into faith finally by the birth of a child.

This is the poem I wrote last year for Zechariah:

Speechless

Tongue-tied and frozen,
teeth on a knife-edge,
overwhelmed and overcome;
if he could have spoken,
told them what he had seen,
where would he find the words?

This year, he wrote his own Advent canticle, and sang it as a lullaby to his sleeping son:

The Song of Zechariah (after Luke 1: 68-79)

When I saw you I knew, for once and finally, that it all was true:
the old stories in which God wins, in which God’s people persevere
despite the odds, they are at liberty to be set free because God is good;
he promised them mercy, the ones who followed David, the ones who believed in
round-table relics and legends of power and peace
and the advent of Abraham long, long ago.
When I saw you, I knew, for once and finally, that it all will come true,
in the end,
because your face was brightened by my tears of joy,
and in your eyes the light of the angel’s promise shone,
and the glory of the Lord threatened to break free like the cry of a newborn child.

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Unexpected gifts: Saint Nicholas

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily for Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland’s Evensong celebration of the Feast of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra

As a child, I heard the story of Jesus welcoming the children and he was the antidote to unfriendly adults, the ones who frowned on childish behaviour or my constant questions, the ones who told us to play quietly and stay out of the way. Jesus understood, we were given to understand from the story, what it was to be a child and to need that person who would stop whatever they were doing and pay attention to us, recognize our need for recognition, embrace and love us.

As a parent, I hear the story and I am so grateful to Jesus, not only for loving me as a child, but also for loving my children, for welcoming them, for embracing their littleness, their childish behaviour, their entirety. They’re older now, but still, I am grateful whenever anyone sees my child for the lovable and loving creature that he is, when they appreciate my child’s beauty and talent, when they welcome her with open hearts, open minds, open arms. It can be a cold, dark world out there, and no parent can offer quite enough warmth and light entirely to counter that. It takes others. It takes great love. It takes Jesus.

So when Jesus unexpectedly sorts out his disciples and takes them to task for trying to keep the children out of sight and out of mind – not so much seen but not heard as unseen and unheeded – his gift is not only to the children but to their parents and everyone who loves them. It is for those who enjoy the childish giggling and wriggling, and it is for those who need to learn how to love them. His disciples thought that they knew what Jesus needed and wanted from them in regard to the children, and they were wrong, but he put them right with his unexpected grace.

I am reminded, when I hear this story, of a December church service that I attended fifteen years ago – long ago and far away, as they say. I was, let’s say, as stately as a galleon in full sail, hugely pregnant with our youngest child. Our son, who was a lively and large twenty-one-month-old toddler, decided that hymn-singing time was a great opportunity to shed some excess energy by running circuits of the church, up the side aisle and down the centre, round and round he went. As long as the music lasted, only one or two people wrinkled their noses, and I let him be. But as the last notes died away, and the congregation shuffled expectantly, settling themselves for the Eucharistic prayer, I tried to intercept him and persuade him to cease and desist from his circuit training. He was not impressed by the request. The more I tried to catch him as he passed, the faster he ran and the louder he giggled. His unborn sister was something of a handicap to wrestling with the little darling, and I did not know quite what to do next.

The priest was by this time reaching the part of the prayer where everyone joins in the Sanctus, the Holy, Holy, Holy. Without missing a beat, without changing his tone, his timbre, his volume, his rhythm, he stepped out from behind the altar, came around and just as my son swooped by, scooped him up and sat him squarely on his hip. They returned to the altar together, and I watched my son watch my friend from close quarters, transfixed and firmly pinned to his side as they continued to celebrate the Eucharist together, the bread becoming body, the wine becoming blood, my astonished son becoming a part of the priest’s prayer.

The gifts of that December day were abundant. The Communion, offered as always as a sign and a means of God’s grace and glory given freely to us, God’s children. The respite and relief offered by a sympathetic friend to a pregnant mother. The image, one which never left me and which guided my vocational journey, of the possibility of celebrating Communion with a baby on one hip; I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes, so by the time I was ordained, my son is rather more likely to carry me than I him, but still, it has always been important to me, to my call, to know that this thing happened and that God, I think, smiled on it.

And what gifts did my son receive that morning? What possibilities opened up for him in that moment of grace? What did it mean for this young child to be lifted up to the table and brought close to Christ rather than shut down, told off, sent away by Jesus’ disciple?

When we offer gifts, especially the unexpected, unrequited, even the unrecognized ones, we change more than we see, we give more than we give away.

Funnily enough, that church was named for Saint Nicolas. True story.

We don’t know a whole lot about Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, and the legends around his name might be true or they might be something else; but imagine for a moment that this one happened just as we were told: that three sisters, expecting nothing but an uncertain future, or worse, a future certain to bring them disgrace, dishonour and distress, found instead one morning a bag of gold sufficient for each one’s dowry, in their stockings or their shoes, seemingly fallen from the sky down their chimney. That gold did more than pay their way into society. It raised their imaginations out of the fireplace and up the chimney and into a world with a wide blue sky. It gave them the certainty that mystery is a way of life, that the world can be kind, that virtue is rewarded, that wonders never cease. Those gifts fell into their stockings like glitter or confetti to decorate the gold, and they probably lasted longer in their possession.

And what of their father? How did he feel to find that he was not alone in caring for his family, that he did not have to shoulder the burdens of his whole world, that there was lightness and a bright future beckoning after all? The Nicholas of legend gave that family far more than gold.

Other legends of Nicholas – the saving of sailors, the relief of famine – continue to tell the story that the world is fuller than our imaginations, that help is closer than we think, that wonders never cease. A description by Joe Wheeler says that, “When [Nicholas] taught the gospel, people said listening to him was like receiving precious gems.”[1] His unexpected gifts gave to his people more than he gave away.

Which makes me think that one might not need three bags of gold to follow in his footsteps, nor even a silver tongue; but with only a generous spirit and a heart to give, a little kindness, a little imagination, a little playfulness, the smallest gift – a smile, a word, an embrace – can become a sign of God’s unexpected grace.

Jesus’ unexpected embrace of the children was just one small sign of the unimaginable love which had broken into a cold and dark world. In the uncertain season of Advent, with its business and bustle, its preparations and parties, its wondering what will come next, God’s unexpected gift is just around the corner, never out of reach, already here, but still worth waiting for; that swaddled bundle of Christmas joy, the long-expected, but surprising and really quite unusually small and childlike Saviour of the world.

[1] Joe Wheeler, Saint Nicholas (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 12 – via books.google.com

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Year C Advent 1: New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I think that it was the phrase, “dissipation, drunkenness and the worries of this life,” heard just now in the gospel according to Luke, that made me think of New Year’s resolutions.

New Year’s resolutions. We’ve all made them. We’ve all broken them. Some of us might even have kept one or two. They are plans rather than products, aspirations more than achievements. They are often quite negative in their tone: I have to give up smoking, stop biting my nails, cut down on spending, or cakes, or caffeine. Less often, they are positive and hopeful: I want to do more exercise, learn a new language, improve my health, my finances, my relationships.

Look at the gospel of Luke: they’re all there, the negative resolutions and the positive. For the sake of the weight around your heart, give up dissipation, drunkenness and the worries of the world – classic new year’s resolutions – and keep alert, praying at all times.

Now, you know that Advent begins the new church year. This is a new beginning for us; new candles are lit to bring light into the darkest times of the year, new hymns are sung to herald the awakening of hope in the darkness; it is a year that begins in expectation, the longing for Christ’s birth in our midst. It begins with preparations and parties and the excitement of anticipation. And if it’s a new year, it must also begin with resolutions.

The other readings are full of the promises of the new year, the new reign of God, the new life: God will fulfill promises for justice and righteousness; God will bring all of the saints and believers together with the Lord Jesus and increase their love and make their hearts holy and blameless; because God is gracious and upright, and teaches the humble, the lowly, even sinners, in the ways of righteousness.

God teaches the ways of the Lord to sinners, and guides the humble in doing right.

God’s resolutions never fail, and they are for every day, not only New Year’s day, or the first day of Advent.

We often base our New Year’s resolutions on what we would like to change about ourselves, and Advent is good for spiritual stock-taking; what “weight” around our hearts would we like to shed; which healthy habits would we like to encourage: will we resolve to pray at all times? Our stewardship team thought that Advent is a great time to talk about our plans for giving of ourselves, our money, our time and effort in the new year, because it’s all about preparing for what is coming next. But in Advent, as well as personal goals, in the church we also are preparing the world, helping the world to prepare for the continuing and ever-new inbreaking of God’s kingdom.

So what is it that we would like to change in the world around us? What, when we look around, causes us heaviness of heart, and can we lighten those burdens?

We were all horrified this week by the death of a vulnerable young boy, and by the desperate lives of his mother and her family. We know that the church has a role in promoting healthy relationships and sound and safe families; so what are we to do about it? Some of us are called to help through professional or volunteer work. None of us has the magic resolution, the perfect plan that will stop this kind of tragedy from ever happening again, but we all have a part to play in looking out for our neighbours, in our schools, in our children’s group of friends, in our church. And we can all pray, at all times, for those in danger and in fear.

To take another example, yesterday was World AIDS Day, and we know that the church has a role to play in promoting public and personal health – how many sick people did Jesus touch and make whole? So what are we to do about it? What should we resolve? How can we use our influence, our resources, our friendship to help and encourage someone else’s good health: by supporting healthcare initiatives and preventive services, by giving someone a ride to the doctor, by checking in with someone we know is having a hard time. And we can pray, at all times, for the sick, the sorrowful, the hurting.

Pray at all times, says the gospel, pray night and day, says the epistle, to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul, says the psalm, I put my trust in you. Show me your ways, teach me your paths, lead me in your truth, remember your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting.

The reason that our own new year’s resolutions so often fail is that we expect so much out of them, because we forget that they are processes, plans, rather than products. Writing on a piece of paper, I will pray night and day, will not make it automatically happen. Rather, we need to practice over and over to replace habits for which we no longer have a use with ones that we would prefer, which will promote our health and wellbeing and the common good of those around us. Often, we need support: groups abound for assisting with weight loss, education, financial management, emotional support, even struggles with addiction. A church community to help us to pray and to serve.

We know that our world is in dire need of some good news, some hope, and between us we have the good news, and we know the source of the world’s hope, and all through Advent we are going to be getting ready to sing it from the rooftops; but here’s the thing: the hope is already here. The new year has already begun. The good news is not a secret, not a surprise to be kept under wraps until Christmas morning. So what are we to do about it? Pray at all times for those you know could use a good word from God, could use some company to get them through the dark days and long nights, for those who need the hope of the world that is offered not only at Christmas but all of the time, day and night, at all times in the love of Jesus Christ our Lord. Then tell them about that hope.

Tell them about the resolutions that God has made, not just this year but from everlasting, not just for this season but forever: that God has promised justice and righteousness; that God has promised to lead us in the paths of peace, in God’s own footsteps, even if we are sinners, even if we are ever so humble. God has promised redemption, compassion, love, hope in the dark times, joy in the depth of winter.

Tell them about your hopes, your joy in the midst of the darkness. Bring them with you to see the light, the candles lit in the midwinter, the hope proclaimed in times of turmoil that the Prince of Peace is coming, is already here, Emmanuel, God with us. Invite them to raise their voices with ours and say, Amen. Come Lord Jesus; and know, he hears us, and he is here.

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Luke 21:25-36

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Dissipation, drunkenness and the
worries of this life circle their prey;
the room dizzies, spins, sickening;
swirling skirts’ colours and patterns
staining the food, pulling you into the dance;
something is calling, falling …
snapping back into sharp-edged focus,
technicolor bright; something’s not right,
something’s not real;
the plastic grapes toxic instead of intoxicating,
the stunning view is taped inside the window.
The stage is set,
the die is cast,
the trap has been sprung.

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Christ the King Sunday

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

When Israel first asked for a king, they went to the prophet Samuel and said, “give us a king to govern us like all the other nations have,” and Samuel was angry and had words with God, and God said, “don’t be angry on your own account; they haven’t rejected you but me; but do give them fair warning as to what getting themselves a king will mean for them.”

So Samuel told them straight: the king will take your sons to run his cavalry; he will reap from you labourers for his own harvest; he will tax your grain and your vineyards, poach your best servants and your daughters; and you will be under his yoke, and you will regret it and cry out, but God will say, “I told you so.”

But the people said, “No, we want a king so that we can be like everyone else,” and God and Samuel talked again, and God said, so be it. (1 Sam 8)

So Israel came by a king.

First they got Saul, but he didn’t work out, so Samuel replaced him with David, whose name still haunts the city to this day, David the anointed one, the favoured younger son, the shepherd of his father’s flocks and of his people, who stole another man’s lamb. Even David died without building the temple which he longed to give to the Lord, and he left it to his son, Solomon, who would never rise to his ordained high position today, at least around here, because those on the religious right would object to his hundreds of wives and concubines, and those on the religious left would blanch at his showy and opulent displays of his excessive wealth.

And there were reasonable kings and there were lousy kings, and kings who married Jezebel, and kings in captivity, and there were child kings, and there were foreign kings whom God appointed to do God’s will: Cyrus, king of Persia, received word from God that the people must be sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, and he let them go.

But you have to wonder, by the time Jesus stood before Pilate, after generations of occupation and oppression, when Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” how much cachet did the title have left? What power and authority did Herod, the nominal king of the Jews, wield or claim; how much did his Roman overseers allow him? What would it have meant, even, for Jesus to answer with a simple, “Yes”? What would it have changed?

Of course, Jesus almost never answered anything or anyone with a simple, “Yes.”

He asks who gave Pilate the question; he tells Pilate that he understands what he is asking and that if Pilate and his puppet-masters were correct, there would be the kind of political uprising and unrest that Pilate feared; he hints that instead, there is even more going on here before Pilate than Pilate can even ask or imagine.

And Pilate is bewildered: “So … you are a king?”

Jesus answered, “You may say so. I was born to testify to the truth. If you hear the truth, you hear my voice telling it.”

And in the verse that our gospel selection omits, a dizzy and puzzled Pilate walks away wondering, “What is truth?”

We’ve come a long way in two thousand years. Here, we have two hundred years of distance to help us to put the reign of royalty into perspective. We have the histories of the Bible and the ages beyond to help us to discern the truth about our relationship with kings, with royal power and authority, with their allure and their fine facades, and with their clay feet. We have either ditched them for democracy or curtailed their coattails to make them figureheads, emblems of authority instead of true seats of power. Although many of us still enjoy them as spectacle.

Yet even with all of our sophistication and post-monarchical religious democracy we can still come out with nonsense like the vote against women bishops across the pond. Still, some are too powerful and some are powerless. Still, with all of our revolutionary talk of equality and liberty and dignity we know that some are more equal than others, that we incarcerate a greater proportion of our population than any other developed nation, that our liberty is costly and unequally shared, that dignity is too often a commodity, rather than a civil right.

We have given up on the idea of one ideal king as the holder of all wisdom and truth – Solomon is long gone, and even his wisdom was ruthless – but where do we look instead, where do we listen instead for the voice of truth, for the one testifying to the truth before Pilate?

The history books are full of kings and queens, human beings elevated above their station as children of the living God, brothers and sisters of their people, flawed and faithful and petty and prideful, generous and dutiful, despotic and deadly, frail and powerful, the stuff of both comedy and tragedy.

The irony is that Jesus stands before Pilate, a human being divine in his essence, the Son of God humbled below his station as a child of the living God and the forerunner of us all, frail yet powerful, faithful and generous, dutiful and dreadful, the stuff of the greatest story ever told; and Pilate struggles to recognize him. “So … you are a king?”

The one humbled and hobbled and hauled before Pilate is the one who tells the bold truth to demons and to doctors of the law alike, who sees the true worth of a woman with a pound of perfume, who sees through death to the life beyond. The one who tells the truth knows the hunger of the crowds and feeds them, knows the pain of the stranger in the multitude and heals her. He is not served by squadrons of soldiers, like a king, but he serves the people of God; he speaks for God, as the one true king.

Since the days of ancient Israel, we have repeatedly proven that we are not great at doing the king thing. Our religious ancestors really should have left the king thing up to God.

But God did not abandon us to our own devices. God sent us Jesus Christ, to make out of us, as Revelation says, a kingdom of priests to his God and Father, because he loves us, and by his blood has freed us from our sins. And in this kingdom the law is one of love: love for God, love for one another; and the oath of fealty that we make is our baptismal covenant, to love God, to repent of evil, to prayer and proclaim the word of God, to seek and serve Christ in all others, to uphold the dignity of all; not to lord it over one another or trample the poor in the pursuit of power, but to seek justice and mercy; not to earn the accolades of the empire, but to accept the crown of thorns, the humility of the servant leader.

The people asked for a king; and the king that God gave us, whom we celebrate today, and every Sunday – every day – he is not the king we might have expected. He is the ruler of the kings of earth, but he was beaten and bowed before Pilate. His is above all other names on earth, yet his was the most common name in his village. He is wise beyond learning, but his closest cabinet of advisors is full of simple fishermen and women. He is the king of kings and lord of lords, and he chose to live among us as a brother, a teacher, a friend.

That is not the king that the people were asking of Samuel, of God. But he is the king whom God gave us, freely, despite what we deserved, because of God’s great love for us, which is weightier than gold, more solid than thrones, which lasts beyond the dynasties of humanity, the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come. Amen.

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Christ the King, King George, and Elvis

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

This Sunday is Christ the King Sunday. Some people are calling it the Reign of Christ Sunday, because of revolutionary or other associations which render the title of king less than desirable in their imaginations. Imagination is key when it comes to our relationship with God; we cannot (or we can rarely, in the case of the mystics) directly perceive God, so imagination, metaphor, imagery, wordplay, art and music rule when it comes to describing our Creator and Sustainer in the world.

Describe, not define; “King” might be a useful label in offering an attribute to God, and to Jesus Christ God’s Son, our Lord, but it is offered as a detail, not a definition. This might help free the title from some of its constraints in certain social and cultural situations – or not.

Anyway, I wanted to get some help with the way that the name, title or attribute (job?) or king is perceived and how that perception might colour this Sunday’s celebration, so I invite you, if you would, to take the following poll to help me add nuance to the children’s storybook image of the bearded man with the golden crown, or the revolutionary tyrant, or the singer in spandex which dominate the genre:

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Thankful Thursday/Fearful Friday

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I have heard this week from a lot of wise leaders and graciously grateful people about the meaning of Thanksgiving, the meaning of thankfulness, and how it plays out – or should – in the days that follow this one.

Because Thanksgiving is still a relatively new holiday in our house, I am still working it out. I get the historical piece, and its dark underbelly. I love the idea of a day to pause, for no better reason than to eat a family meal with all welcome at the table, thankful simply to be and to eat together. It’s the vocabulary that I find a little slippery.

Is thankfulness a feeling, an attitude, an action, or an outcome?

The preachers that I hear would like it to be an attitude and an action. Those who are grace-based acknowledge its origins as an outcome of God’s gifts to us. But we experience it most often as a feeling. Don’t we?

And so I began to consider the feeling of thankfulness. What makes us cry out, “Thank God!” or “Thank Goodness!” or “Thank you!”

A gift, yes, but as we fall on our faces before our benefactor, it is with a sense of relief, of release. We are thankful for the way that things are, instead of the way that they might be.

Let me offer an example. The clearest memory I have of a loose-limbed, falling down, completely cathartic thankfulness was the day that I lost my daughter in the woods. She ran ahead of us across the field and over the brow of the hill; I was unconcerned. But when I breasted the crest with the younger two in tow, she was nowhere to be seen. We hurried down to the edge of the field, which was ringed with woodland. I started to step into the thicket, but I could see nothing but trees; I could not search for her in there, because I would miss her one hundred times more often than I would see her. I shouted her name, and the leaves absorbed the sound and rustled smugly, and it went no further. I was undone. I could not go in. I could not go away. I knew all of the stories that began this way. I did not know what to do. I bellowed her name. People came out of their houses behind me, across the field, to find out what the noise was. After several minutes, she emerged. She did not know that she was lost; she knew where I was. It was all that I could do to keep my feet when she was found.

Thankfulness comes where fear gives way to the realization that God is good, that life goes on, that there are happy endings; that love endures and is not lost.

Tomorrow is about action rather than feelings. Will we act out of fear, that all may at any time be lost, or thankfulness that hope endures regardless? Will we share the relief and the contentment that some of us enjoyed today, or grasp it in case it is in short supply? Either is a rational response to a cathartic gratitude; but faith is not always about the most rational response. Sometimes, it is about hoping without guarantees, seeing the woods beyond the trees, shouting into the darkness and trusting that the echoes that we hear reach beyond our own ears.

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Year B Proper 28: It’s (not) the end of the world

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

As we move towards Advent, when we await the arrival of God among us, we start looking in our scripture readings at the end of the world. Every year, whether the 2012 famous for Mayan millennium angst or any other year, we talk about the end of the world.

Why?

It might be, it just might be to remind us that what Advent means (and I know, we’re not there yet, but these last couple of Sundays’ readings are clearly preparing us to get there); what Advent means is not the coming of a cute baby, or a pretty story. It is not a romance. It is an apocalypse, the revealing of something that has been hidden, the inbreaking of the rule of God into the realms and kingdoms of this world, the tearing open of heaven and the cataclysmic reorganization of earth.

That is what God coming into our world means. That is what birthing God in the middle of our society, our so-called civilization, our self-structured organization means.

It is scary stuff.

As they came away from the temple – the biggest building these fishermen from Galilee had ever seen or could probably imagine – they were in awe of what their ancestors had created. No doubt the Romans felt the same way about the Coliseum, the Forum, when they got to go back to their own seat of power and authority on leave.

But Jesus reminded them that all such structures are impermanent, that we rely on them at our peril. Today, the Roman ruins still direct the traffic around themselves in the centre of the city, but they are scarred and fallen and tourists clamber over them with laughter rather than fear and awe. The Temple was razed to the ground by the Romans in 70 AD, while some of Jesus’ followers still remembered his prophecy. The only piece that still stands with any integrity is part of the western wall, which continues to hum and throb, alive with the people’s prayers today. But it is just one small section of wall.

Incidentally, that wall was part of the second temple, built when the Hebrew peoples were permitted to return to their homeland from their exile in Babylon, and rebuild their city, their culture, their country. This had all happened before.

It must have felt like the end of the world, seeing that temple fall, twice, seeing empire after empire fail. The end of the world is always localized; it is the end of the world as we know it. It must have felt like the end of the world, living through that southeast Asian tsunami, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods and fires. Jesus recently we heard a lot of talk about the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis; fifty years ago, it looked as though it really might be the end of the world as superpowers aimed super weapons of mass destruction at one another. It must have felt like the end of all worlds twenty years before that, in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Sometimes, when our lives are altered by disease or disability, by death or grief, or by economic insecurity, every day seems like it might be the end of the world.

No wonder Jesus’ disciples wanted to know just when the end would in fact come, and how they would see it coming; it is frightening waiting, it is wearying.

But Jesus does something surprising with his answer. He does not give them a Mayan calendar countdown to destruction. He does not present them with complicated mathematical equations which claim to add up the days of creation offered in the Bible and suggest a date for a rapturous event – the date predicted last year, by the way, by one Harold Camping was the date of my graduation from Seminary. Turns out, it was not the end of the world.

Instead of making predictions and dire prophecies, Jesus suggests that in fact what he is describing to them – the destruction of the Temple, of their way of religious life, of their cultural identity, would not be the end of the world, but rather the means to something new. “These are birth pangs,” he tells them; “something new is being born into being, and there is always labour to be done when that happens.”

Just as I was writing that line, yesterday, I looked out of my window and noticed that a tree which attempted to fall over during the storm a couple of weeks ago, which is still caught leaning among some other embracing branches, caught between states of being: alive and dead, upright and felled; that tree was covered in red-headed woodpeckers, which were feasting on the insects that had come to assist the tree on its final journey into the ground. The storm which felled the tree also created a whole new mini ecosystem in its bark; the woodpeckers had never paid it so much attention before its accident.

The new beginnings that follow an end of the world experience are local, too.
Jesus tells his disciples that yes, wars and rumblings of war, and natural disasters and crises – corporate and individual – will test our faith and try our patience; but they are not the end of the world.

There is a telling difference between the fall of Rome, the ruins of the Coliseum, and the fall of the Jerusalem temple, both the first and the second time around.

After Rome fell and failed, no one ever called Caesar “God” again. After Rome fell and failed, the people were left leaderless and bereft.

But the Jewish people knew that God was with them before Solomon’s temple was ever built. God was with them in their exile. God was with them as they built the second temple. And God would not abandon them when it was destroyed. God was not left homeless by the destruction of AD70; God dwelt with God’s people wherever they went. And so the modern Jewish structure of synagogues began, and grew, and the people who put their trust in God instead of great structures and grand buildings have survived the end of the world more than once since then.

Last week, at convention, Bishop Hollingsworth reminded us of some worrying statistics, about declining church attendance, cultural shifts which affect all of the mainstream denominations of Christianity, including ours. He talked about a future which might not look like the past; which might take some labour, some bringing to birth of new opportunities for evangelism, new problems to solve, new ways to think about a living gospel for the world in which we live, which has not ended but sometimes seems to be moving on without us. Existing structures, as strong and impressive as they appear, might need to give way to new and nimbler ways of being, of meeting, of building. The end of an era, the era of automatic church membership and dutiful religious observance may give way to a new movement of the Spirit, speaking in new tongues.

If we built this church today, what would it look like? Would it have the same structure, the same rooms and dimensions, would it give the same message to the people of the community which it serves that it does now?

To quote Jesus, do not be alarmed. I am not suggesting a cataclysmic or apocalyptic, seismic shift in our parish or its expression. But I am suggesting that we think carefully and prayerfully about what it is that we are being called to labour into being, in this time, in this world, with its cycle of endings and beginnings. What has ended, that we should let go of? What is labouring to birth, crying out for our attention and our energy? With God as our constant companion, where are we called to worship in new ways, in new settings, with new people?

I have a few ideas. I can imagine Bible studies in coffee shops or even bars; meals of bread and wine in restaurants; a public witness of worship, not to replace but to extend the prayer that happens here out into our communities, with our neighbours. I’d love to hear your ideas.

Every year, as we move towards Advent, we talk about the end of the world. As the nights grow long, and the shadows longer, we shiver with anticipation as we await the coming of God among us.

But God is already here, moving and shaking and stirring us up, lightening our darkness, leading us into a new Incarnation, a new expression of an old story.

To whom shall we tell the story this year?

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Hannah’s hope: Eli’s affirmation

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

One last story about Hannah and me before Sunday.

Eli saw Hannah praying in the temple, and assumed that she was drunk, because her lips were moving but she made no sound. He tried to send her away; but she explained her distress and her petition, and he recognized the deep truth of her relationship with God and with her calling and with her future, and he blessed her instead.

“Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made.”

When I came back off the mountain, and back from vacation, and went to my doctor to tell her about the positive pregnancy test, she was happy for me. She did the usual intake stuff, scheduled the follow-up appointments.

She knew my history. She knew me. These days, she is no longer a doctor, but a priest. Somehow, I am not surprised. Because, as I was leaving, she said, very, very softly,

“It will be alright this time.”

As a physician, perhaps she had no right to make such sweeping promises. As a priest in potentia, she offered the hope that she recognized, that she lived by, that was her own.

I remain grateful.

Hannah trusted Eli enough to send him her son when he was old enough to leave his mother. He had given her hope. That counts for a lot. Sometimes, it is everything.

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Hannah’s hope: Anticipation

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I don’t often tell this story, because it makes me seem a little bit mad. But Hannah understands.

Hannah left the temple and she ate and drank and her countenance was no longer sad. She wasn’t pregnant; she had no way of knowing that Samuel would soon be conceived; he wasn’t yet. But she who had been so sad and mad and had refused to eat and drink and who the priest had thought was drunk because she was so dishevelled and distressed and out of sorts – she ate, drank and was merry, all out of hope. She saw what was to come, and she liked what she saw.

My first daughter was the happy outcome of my second pregnancy. After the first one ended, I was distraught. I didn’t know how to hope, how to be happy. My own Job’s comforters didn’t much help: the ones who blamed, the ones who made long faces and low prognoses, the ones who judged, “you should be over it by now.” The first one’s due date came and went, and I continued, like Hannah, to starve myself of joy.

We went on vacation. Halfway up a mountain, I decided that I didn’t want to push myself any further. I decided, in that moment, that I was pregnant, and I needed to go back down to the valley. We scoured the hamlets, villages, and finally the one local town to find a pharmacy that sold home pregnancy test kits. My long-suffering and remarkably patient husband went in to get one. I stayed outside, in the little town square.

In the centre was a wishing well. It wasn’t an old thing, it wasn’t very traditional; it was a structure built to receive donations to a children’s charitable hospital. I was drawn to it. It asked me to make an offering, and I made my donation and I prayed. But not for a happy outcome. I already knew. I prayed in thanksgiving for my daughter, whose presence I had yet to confirm, but who in that moment I knew. I prayed in hope for those other parents’ children. I prayed with joy.

“Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer. They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord. … In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel.”

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