Hannah’s hope

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I could say a lot about Hannah. I feel as though I almost know her, I have almost met her, across a crowd, just out of reach. I recognize her, the tilt of her head, her hair obscuring her face. Is she happy now?

I had read about Hannah before, of course, but I really found her when I went looking for Samuel, her son, and his story of call; recommended reading for those discerning their own priestly vocation. I accidentally started at the beginning of the book, and there she was, with a call that much more closely matched my own than Samuel’s dream did, with a call that was heard and fulfilled and left me hopeful.

Hannah knew her call. She would not be deflected from it by those who did not understand it, like Elkanah, those who had already achieved it, like Peninnah, and forgotten what it was like to live in longing.

She knew that God knew that she knew her calling. She talked to God, bargaining, explaining, cajoling, pleading. She knew that she could not fulfill her call without God’s help, and she did not understand why God would keep her waiting, but she never believed that God had not called her. She offered her call back to God, for God to fulfill.

Eli thought she was crazy, or drunk. At least, he did at first. But when she explained it to him, he recognized that call under which she laboured, because he had a call of his own, and he knew its weight, its gravity, and his heart was touched, and he wanted her to know its joy, too. So he prayed for her.

Hannah left hopeful. She had no reason, really, to believe that anything would be different after this visit than after any other, yet she hoped.

And in time, for Hannah, the call was completed.

Sometimes, the waiting lasts forever, and it is hard, so hard; but Hannah has hope that in God’s own time, all will be fulfilled.

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Year B Proper 27: Loving and giving

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Naomi had lost everything. I mean, everything. It is just too hard to imagine, to think about Naomi’s loss. When she came back to Bethlehem, she wouldn’t even answer to her given name. When her old neighbours recognized her and called out to her on the street, she shrugged them off and said, “Don’t call me that. Call me Mara, which means bitterness, because my life has become one of bitter tears.”

Yet, by the end of the book of Ruth, Naomi has her name back, and she is the toast of her neighbours, and she is the proud grandmother of a brand new baby boy. Where there’s life, there’s hope, they say, and Naomi has found her hope restored in the new life she holds in her arms.

It had all begun some years previously. There was a terrible famine in Judea. Bethlehem, which means in Hebrew the house of bread, was instead empty of food, and in order to feed their sons, Naomi and her husband left their home, their extended families, their culture and their community. We see them today, on the news, on our television screens, Naomi and her family: refugees carrying all that they can muster the energy to bring along out of the war zone, the famine and drought-blighted landscape, the floodwaters and the earthquake debris, the hurricane damage. You have even met some of them. Some of you might even have been there, standing where Naomi stood, walking in her footsteps. They left practically everything, except one another, just so that they might survive.

It’s not easy being a stranger in a strange land. Naomi’s sons were young enough to adapt, though; after their father died they each married a local girl and they seemed happy enough. But then it all started to fall apart. First one died, then the other, and that was that: Naomi was left alone, with the two girls her sons married, widows all.

She indulged in some bitter jokes. “You might as well go home and start over,” she told the two younger women. “It’s not as though I can give you two new sons to marry, at my age, in my condition.” Oh yes, she was bitter. She was angry, and she was spiky with grief and hurt.

The younger women got it. Orpah took her mother-in-law’s advice and went home. We don’t know how that worked out for her; I hope it went well, though.

Ruth refused. Ruth was not afraid of Naomi’s grief, of her anger, of her bitterness. Ruth saw through her brittle jokes and her stony-faced stoicism. Whether it was for the sake of her own lost husband, for the sake of kindness or of duty, or simply out of love for her mother-in-law, Ruth refused to leave her.

“Where you go, I go,” she said. “Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die.”

So they set off together, for Bethlehem, the house of bread, in the land of Judah, beloved of the God of Israel.

If leaving home is hard, coming back has its own problems. Everything was changed from when Naomi left; she was changed. Her position was compromised by the loss of her husband, her home, her status. She came back with a foreigner in tow, and that would turn some heads. She changed her name. Naomi means pleasant, and Naomi wasn’t feeling very pleasant these days. She called herself Mara instead.

Ruth never gave up. She went out to glean food. She cared for her mother-in-law and tended her wounds, her hunger, her grief; she bound up her broken heart and held it tenderly. And she herself was now a stranger in a strange land, and Naomi knew what that was like, and at last her own compassion was awoken, and she looked at this girl who was caring for her and knew that she needed to return the favour. She decided to matchmake for Ruth with her cousin, Boaz.

Here’s one of the interesting aspects of this story which rarely gets told: Naomi, under the laws and mores of the society in which she lived, had a claim on the inheritance of her husband, including his relatives. Boaz was one such relative, but there was another closer than he, and the part that we miss out of today’s story is the horsetrading that goes on at the city gate to make sure not only that Boaz is free and clear to marry Ruth, as Naomi’s adopted daughter, but that her offspring will inherit Naomi’s husbands land, too; that Naomi’s name and fortunes will be restored through this alliance. And, honestly, it’s all a little complicated and I am no lawyer, but it is clear that Naomi and Ruth and Boaz are willing to risk almost everything in order to come out as they do, as a family, with an inheritance, with an heir.

And at the end of the story, Naomi, who has declared that she left Bethlehem full and came back empty, has a bundle in her arms again. Naomi, who had renamed herself Mara, Bitter, is once again Naomi, the Pleasant One. She who had lost everything and everyone has a full heart and a growing family.

What brought her back to life? It was love. It was the love of Ruth, a devoted foreign widow who would not let her give up and go away. It was the love of a covenanted friend, partner, daughter, who promised never to leave her. It was the love of family, expressed in the new life of Obed; a family which included and sustained her. It was the love of the God of Israel, who never let her out of sight, who raised her up instead to be the matriarch in the line of King David, Obed’s descendant.

Many centuries later, not very many miles away, another of Obed’s descendants watched as a widow placed two copper coins, worth about a penny, in the offering box for the temple treasury. He turned to his friends, and said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.”

He has just warned them against the long robes and fancy ways of the rich and those in authority, who devour the homes of widows to bolster their own bank balances, and then give back what they figure they can spare out of their own lifestyle, their own largesse.

They have forgotten what it is to give everything for the sake of love, to take a risk, to stake it all on the love of anyone, let alone God. They believe that their security, their safety and their status is bound up in keeping enough stacked up, accruing enough acclamations, impressing enough impressive people to stay above the storm, to save themselves from trouble.

They think that they can save themselves from trouble.

The widow, meanwhile, is willing to give everything to the worship of God. It is not, I don’t think, because she might as well because she has nothing much left to give anyway. If two copper coins were all I had, one penny, you can bet that I might be very tempted to hold onto them as tightly as possible, much more tightly than the rich folks held onto their gold, if that were all that I had left. But the widow lets them go.

Like Naomi, like Ruth, she must have known what it was to be loved, to be loved so deeply and truly that she was able to give out of her gratitude and trust, instead of bitterly hanging on in fear and misery.

We do not know who loved her so well, where she learned such faith in the healing power of love, in its sustaining promises. Whether it was a husband, or a child, or a parent, or a friend; whether she knew Jesus, and he knew her enough to know, when he saw her, just how much she was giving away.

We do know that she thanked God for that love, because where she went was to the house of God, where she understood God to be seated – if you visit Jerusalem today, and approach the temple mountain, you will see at its base admonitions from the chief rabbis not to go up the hill in case of accidentally entering the Holy of Holies, the earthly dwelling place of the Spirit of God. The widow went to the place where she knew God to be and to see her and hear her most clearly. She gave all that she had to God, because she knew that God had given her all that she had, and all that she was.

She gave, not out of her poverty so much as out of her faith; not out of fear, but out of love; not out of grief, but out of gratitude.

In the end, the story of Naomi, in the book of Ruth, is not that you have to lose everything in order to find out what is valuable. It is that finding out what is valuable – being loved well, and loving well in return – is everything. When we know ourselves to be loved, truly loved, we can give more of ourselves than we ever thought possible. We can give it all.

When we know ourselves to be truly loved by God, then we can truly boast of great faith, and act boldly, and with abandon, and wholeheartedly; and who knows what will come of it.

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Year B Proper 27: All

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Naomi had lost everything. She had nothing left to lose, nowhere left to go but home, no one on whom to lean, on whom she had a claim. So she gave it all up, sent her daughters-in-law away, tore up her name, retraced her steps to the place she had left when it first ran out, a place of emptiness. She had lost everything. She gave up her name because she had lost even herself.
The widow had one meal left, but what she had run out of was hope, a future. She might as well share, since all she had to share was the last few grains of sand in her hourglass.
The other one had not lost quite everything. She had lost almost as much as Naomi, she had barely more between her and the end of time than the other. Yet she did not lose it. She gave it away.
She knew the stories of her sisters, her foremothers. She knew that Naomi was not left alone, without her name, without her family. She was beloved, and out of that love grew a whole new family, one that would, through the generations, come home to roost today.
She knew that the other one was not abandoned to die. The prophet prophesied that life would go on, and it did. God provided.
She had faith that she would not fail for want of two small coins; that God had counted not only the coins but the hairs on her head, the scars in her heart, the tears she had shed. She had such trust in such a God that she would give all that she had to worship that One.

I have never lost everything; and even when all seemed lost, that, for me, was just melodramatics.
I have never given everything, either. I always keep enough back to ensure that all will not be lost.
I do not envy these women. I would not trade places with any of them. But there is a part of my heart that wonders what it would be like to learn that lesson in leaning on a loving God, of living with true trust, firm faith, open hands, genuine generosity, abandoned worship.

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Political shenanigans

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Long ago and far away, the doorbell rang. I hitched the baby onto my hip and we went to see who was there.
The man on the doorstep certainly looked familiar; I knew I had seen him before, and he was looking at me eagerly like a puppy begging for recognition, but I couldn’t quite place him, in that moment, on my doorstep.
He waited a few more awkward moments before introducing himself as my government representative, a figure recently famous on the national stage. That’s where I’d seen him: on tv.
I didn’t apologise for not recognising him first. I thought, actually, it was quite rude to appear on someone’s doorstep in the middle of the afternoon, out of the blue, and wait for acclamation instead of introducing oneself right away. But I did shake his hand.
“May I count on your vote?” he asked.
Well, no. He could count quite definitely on my voting for somebody else.
“May I ask why?”
If I had to summarise, it would be that I kind of fundamentally disagreed with the entire philosophical, political and ethical foundation of his party’s policies. No offence.
It was a strange exchange to have in a front porch with a baby in one hand and the urge to be polite and kind to the man on my front path guiding me through a outright rejection of all that he stood there for.
He took a breath, thought for a moment, then let it go. There are easier battles to fight on the doorsteps of southern suburban England.
“What a pretty baby?” he ventured, slightly forlornly. A politician’s pat phrase, or a touch of genuine humanity from a man satirized in the late night comedy shows as a Vulcan?
The eager puppy left with his tail between his legs. I was surprised that he took it so hard. I mean, yes, it’s always difficult to hear that someone thinks you are out-and-out wrong in your approach to your life of service; but it’s not as though he was about to lose the election because of me.
Still, my vote, apparently, mattered. My voice made a difference. My baby made an impact. (You should see her now!)
That’s my voting story for today. Later, I’ll have another one, which I may or may not tell. In the meantime, I have to get to the polls to vote for my principles, my values, my hopes for my children.
I encourage you to, too.

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Year B: All Saints

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I want to talk today about baptism, and our participation in our baptismal covenant. Baptism is and has always been an important stage in the Christian journey: it was one of the two sacraments commanded and enacted by Jesus himself, Eucharist, of course, being the other. In the case of baptism, we are literally following in Jesus’ footsteps, since he himself submitted to baptism by his cousin John; we understand it as an entry into the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, our entry into it, ordained and blessed by God.
It is a sacrament, that is, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given by God, just as the dove at Jesus’ baptism, and the voice from heaven, were outward, visible and audible signs of God’s call upon him, God’s blessing upon him, God’s love for him. But don’t be fooled into thinking that signs are “only” anything. Signs and symbols convey what they represent, they are the means to understanding what is going on behind them, a way of our holding onto something ineffable and divine; the thing within is real, and worth holding on to.
Baptism, then, is a real, vital and important part of the journey into becoming a Christian, a disciple of Christ, a follower of Jesus. But the journey continues; it is not over and done with at baptism; baptism is not a destination, but a station, a place where we embark upon a new vehicle for travelling on with Christ. It opens new roads, new vistas.
I say all of this because if you have not yet been baptized, what I am about to say applies as much to you as to those of us who have. We are on the same journey together. The fact that you are here worshiping and praying, using the same words, inspired by the same Spirit, loved by the same God, regardless of whether or not you have been baptized, or whether you chose your baptism, or whether you remember it, witnesses to the fact that we are all in this together.
So, the feast of All Saints is one of the four festivals of the Church Year which is designated in the Book of Common Prayer as especially suitable for baptism: those and when the bishop is present. When we don’t have a baptism on those days, we are invited to renew our own baptismal covenant, and that is just what we will do after this sermon.
The other days for baptism, if you are wondering, are the Baptism of Jesus, for obvious reasons, Pentecost, also pretty obvious (baptism by the Holy Spirit), the Great Vigil of Easter, when we await the new life of the Resurrection – clearly appropriate – and when the Bishop is in the house, because he or she represents the unity of the church, the bringing together of the community of the saints of God, our common foundation. And that’s where All Saints comes in, too.
On the feast of All Saints, we celebrate the lives and examples and our relationship with and to all of those who have gone before us in faith, those who make up the “cloud of witnesses,” as it has been called, the communion of saints, the church throughout the ages. We are related to those saints whom we knew – our parents, perhaps, or godparents, or those who raised us up in the faith; I remember a retired schoolteacher who never failed to greet me on a Sunday morning at church, who enlisted me as a reader, who checked up on me throughout those squirrelly teenage years; Doug is among the saints that I remember on All Saints Day, for whom I will light a candle this morning. But we are related, too, to those saints whom we never met; those whose words we read, like C.S. Lewis, or Julian of Norwich, or Saint Augustine; and those whose names we barely remember, but without whose sacrifices, whose faith and tenacious worship of God revealed in Jesus Christ even in the face of martyrdom we would not have a church today, or at least, not this one, since God would surely have made another. Names like Ignatius, Perpetua, and Felicity.
All of these we might count as our godparents, our sponsors in faith, because their influence has helped us to grow and to know God in Christ. We know that when we do baptize, we do it as far as possible in community, with the prayers of the people and with people especially appointed to help the newly baptized grow in the faith that they have chosen, or which has been chosen for them, if they are infants.
The Christian life is one of community. It is not an individual proposition; it never was. Jesus called a group of disciples to follow him, and it was the body of them all that met together and held together to wait for the Holy Spirit after he had left them. We are all in this together.
We had a stark reminder this past week of what it means to be dependent upon one another for life, for our safety and comfort and health. As an unusual storm hit our shores unusually hard in all the wrong, or at least unusual places, we heard stories of young babies carried down flight after flight of stairs in the dark by dedicated nurses determined to keep their young lives going. We saw, remarkably in our very recent history, political leaders from opposite sides of the fence embracing each other and working together to serve their people, all of their people. We worried about loved ones going toe to toe, eye to eye with the hurricane. We heard the stories of loss and tragedy, and we heard the stories of courage and generosity. We saw a Red Cross relief center open up in Lakewood, just down the road, in a middle school, offering warmth and light to the blighted. We saw linemen from Columbus, from across state lines, join with our own workers to bring light back to the dark streets. ODOT drivers monitored the lake shore and the roads and guided us to safety. We learned all over again, in case we had forgotten, how interwoven our lives are, how we depend upon one another, and upon people we do not see and seldom think of, to keep our lives on track.
If this is true in our daily lives, why would it not be in our daily lives with God, as disciples together of Christ? “No man is an island,” was John Donne’s observation, and it is fitting that he said so both as a man of the world and as a priest.
Even the story of Lazarus, that we hear today, is not the story of Lazarus alone but of his sisters and his friends, and of the “crowd standing there.” Lazarus, one of that community of saints that we celebrate, and our first ancestor in baptism, in a strange and waterless way; the one who, even before Jesus’ death and resurrection, participated in the tomb and the calling forth into new life.
Jesus did not take Lazarus’ death lightly. He was greatly disturbed, his spirit was moved, he wept with his sister and his friends. He was touched by their grief and he hurt for Lazarus in his moment of death. Even though he knew what he was going to do, Jesus did not take Lazarus’ death lightly, because it was quite real.
Jesus also did not take the people around him for granted, or neglect them in the midst of his grief for Lazarus or his concern for his sisters. He prayed out loud, not, he said, because he needed to for himself, but so that the people around him would know, would be sure, would have faith that God was working in him, that the life of God was running through him, for the sake of their own lives.
He called Lazarus forward, and Lazarus rose up from the dead like a mummified creature from a Hallowe’en horror movie, and he came out of his tomb, back from the grave, and he was given back to his family, to his friends, who were told to unwrap him from his shroud.
Called forward out of Jesus’ love and grief and faith, he was given new life; and he was given back into the care of his family and friends. When we are baptized, we say that we die to our old life, that when the water washes over our faces and blots out our sight, we are laid in the dark tomb with Jesus, just as Lazarus demonstrated for us; and when we are raised up and called out, out of Jesus’ love and grief and faith, we are born into a new life, a fresh start, a clean page in our journals, and we are given back to our family and friends, into their care and prayers.
We are all in it together.
Listen, as we say the baptismal covenant together in a minute or two, whether we are renewing it or reviewing it to see if it calls to us. Listen to how it calls to us first as individuals, making a choice to turn away from evil and live towards Jesus; but then listen as it leads us through the faith of the church throughout the ages, and reminds us of the communion of saints that stand with us and among us. Listen as it reaches out of our individual lives into the life of the parish, of our fellow disciples, into the breaking of bread and the prayers that we share, into mutual accountability. Listen as it leads us further afield, to proclaim the good news of God to those who have yet to hear it, to serve everyone we encounter as though they were Christ himself, to fill the whole earth with the justice and peace of the kingdom of God.
We are all in this together. We need one another, and we are called, we are covenanted, to be there for one another.
A covenant, like the one that we enter into at our baptism, has give and take. It invites us into a new way of life, with God. It is a sign and a sacrament of a grace which God freely offers us. It asks of us that we live as children of God, loving all that God has made. It weaves us into a family, a communion of saints that strives together for the peace of God that passes understanding, for mercy and justice; it promises that we are never alone in that endeavour.
The feast of All Saints, our celebration of our cloud of godparents, promises that God will never leave us alone in the darkness of Hallowe’en, where the “ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night” live. God lends us companions to help us weather the storm; those we see, and those we do not see. As Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, as God promised to those who went before us, as we celebrate and affirm at our baptisms, God does not, will not leave us alone in the darkness, but will swallow up death, and make all things new. Thanks be to God.

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Downside/upside

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Because it’s Day 6 in the House of Darkness, and some of us require entertainment, here’s a little game I like to call “downside/upside:”

Downside: no hot water = no shower
Upside: no light to see one’s hair in the mirror by, anyway
Downside: tree fell over
Upside: firewood
Downside: inside temperature has equalized with outdoor
Upside: so it’s no real hardship to sit on the front step with the camping stove
Downside: school used up all but one of its calamity days
Upside: bonus visit to college girl
Downside: no tv
Upside: no political ads
Downside: can’t use the vacuum cleaner or iron
Upside: can’t use the vacuum cleaner or iron
Downside: no porch light on Hallowe’en
Upside: the pumpkins really pop in the dark!

Seriously, if you are in danger, sorrow, sickness or any other adversity as a result of the storm, you are in my prayers. And if you are working to restore “normality,” you have my thanks.

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Hallowe’en

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

The day before, the bones scatter on the valley floor,
helped by the clean-up vulture crew,
laid out to dry in the sun.
There is a photograph hanging of the witch of Endor,
grotesque in its details, she is all warts and wounds
and whatever the cauldron cooks up.
Lazarus lurks in the back of a cave, bound in white bandages,
like a child dressed for a Hallowe’en party,
giggly and wriggly, expecting some fun.
It is not always darkest before the dawn.
Sometimes the very night is alight
with anticipation.

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Year B Proper 25: Beyond our ken

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I grew up as the youngest in our family, which meant that I was also the smallest and often the slowest. On car trips and family outings, when my mother and my brother spotted interesting things out of the window, I usually missed them, because I was too small to see out or over things, and too slow to pick up on what I was supposed to be looking for.
So when it came to missing smells that they talked about, I assumed for years that it was just the same problem going on. Until one year we took a family vacation in a little town in Scotland which had a pulp mill for processing pine trees right in the middle of it. It was in the Scottish highlands, in a little valley surrounded by steep hills and mountains, and every time we came through the mountain pass into the valley, the rest of the family would cry out about the pervasive smell of the wood mill in the air. I can only suppose it smelled of Scottish pine. But by the end of the week, I had had enough. I asked them,
“Okay, what is supposed to happen when you smell? How does it work? Why do I keep missing it? What is smell anyway?”
My mother turned around in her seat. “Don’t you have a sense of smell?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What would it feel like if I did?”
I was about eight years old. I had managed to get by for eight years, faking it or ignoring it, pretending and playing along while secretly wondering what it was that I was not getting. I did not have a sense of smell.
To this day, I have next to no idea what it would feel like to smell something. I think that I would know it if it happened; that if my sense of smell was suddenly restored, I would recognize it as such, but I don’t really know, because I have no experience of such a sensation.
To be honest, it’s not too big of a deal. It has occasional safety risks; I was told that I should probably go for electricity rather than gas for home heating and cooking fuel because I would never smell a gas leak; and that was almost an issue once; but for the most part, it’s really not a big deal. In fact, people seem to be divided on whether I am lucky to miss out on all of the bad smells that life wafts by us, or unlucky to miss the good ones. Either way, the truth is that I simply don’t know what I’m missing.
I heard a woman on the radio this past week talking about what it was like to grow up without a sense of sight. She had no idea what it meant to see colours, but she had worked out associations in her mind, so that blue felt like the sea and the sky, and brown tasted like chocolate. She made sense of the way that other people experienced and described the world, but really, she had no real way of knowing what it was to see colour, what colour was, what it was to see.
I can hardly imagine anyone telling her that she might be lucky to miss out on seeing the things that the rest of us would rather close our eyes against, but who knows. Who knows. Someone, perhaps, who has seen too many things that they would rather forget, someone might tell her just that, out of their own fear and pain.
But anyway, this story is about Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, which actually is just what his name means: so good, they named him twice. We don’t know how long Bartimaeus has been blind, but it is long enough that he is defined, at least in the minds of the townspeople, by his blindness: he is Bartimaeus, the blind beggar. So Bartimaeus is asking for that experience that he knows is out there, that he knows about from the people around him, but which he knows, too, is beyond his imagination. He is asking for something beyond his dreams, beyond his scope, his reach. He is asking for something which he doesn’t even know how to expect.
But he is asking. And he knows that Jesus can deliver.
We only have this one little story about Bartimaeus, and yet already we know as much about him as we do about most of the other disciples: we know his name, his parentage, where he lived, his means of making a living, what he wore, and exactly how, when and why he decided to follow Jesus.
How do we know so much about such a small character in such a large story? Because he wouldn’t shut up, when people told him to. Because he was pushy and persistent. Because he was determined that he knew that Jesus could change his life beyond his wildest imaginings, and he was determined that that would happen. Because he had faith.
Bartimaeus had sufficient faith to ask for something even though he could have no concept of what it would mean to receive it. He had sufficient faith to get beyond the fear of what a suddenly unemployed blind beggar might do, might encounter, how he would live if his disability, which had become his livelihood, was taken away. After all, this had defined him for so long: people knew him as Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, the blind beggar. What would the townspeople think of his sudden conversion into a sighted person? Would they accuse him of having conned his way into their sympathy and pocket books all this time? Would they accept him into sighted society, teach him to name the colours that he could now discern, show him the sights?
Bartimaeus was not only asking for sight. He was not only asking for sensory experience beyond his imagination. He was asking to have his entire life turned upside down, transformed and translated into something he could not yet see, something risky and really wonderful.
I think that Bartimaeus was very brave. And if we believe Jesus’ words, which I would like to think we can, it was faith which bred in him that courage to ask for healing, no matter what it might mean, for transformation that he couldn’t anticipate, for a new life that he couldn’t imagine.
I am hardly one to preach about this, I know. Someone asked me last week about my call to an ordained ministry, and I told you all that I had been talking about it since I was fourteen. I knew God’s call on my life; I knew it for thirty years before I finally knelt before a congregation of my family and friends and fellow Christians and townspeople and asked for the Holy Spirit to make that transformation, and when I did, I was still afraid. In many ways, I borrowed the faith of other people, the people around me praying, the people around me who told me, “Take heart, get up, he is calling you.” But if they had told me to be quiet, when they did tell me to be quiet thirty years earlier, I listened to them and let them drown out the call of God.
I wonder what is in each of our hearts today that needs healing, that cries out for transformation. What is it that we hold back from asking Jesus to change in us, because we are afraid of how it might turn out, what it might demand of us, what the neighbours might think? Where in our relationships, our work, our vocations, our families, our neighbourhoods do we know that there is something more than what we can see or even imagine, that God can do with us, through us, if we only had the courage and faith to ask for it? What is it in ourselves that we deny even needs healing, hiding it out of pride, afraid to ask for help, for healing, faking it like I did until I was eight and realized that I didn’t know what it was to smell something. What is it that we can support in one another, encouraging one another, “Take heart, he is calling you”?
Our challenge today is to hear that call and to respond, like Bartimaeus, with faith instead of fear – the most used instruction in the Bible to those who encounter the call of God is, “Do not be afraid.” Our challenge is to be ready to take a risk, to take a chance on God, who is, after all, the safest bet there is. Our challenge is to recognize the calls of those around us, and to encourage them, not to rebuke them. Our challenge is to take a chance, even when we can’t quite see what the outcome will be. Our challenge is to let our imaginations run riot, because they cannot even come close to what God can do, how God can transform our lives, our fear into faith, our blindness into sight.
‘“Take heart, get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, Bartimaeus sprang up, and came to Jesus … Immediately, he regained his sight, and he followed Jesus on the way.’

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Bartimaeus and friends

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon from my rather limited archives, preached at St Peter’s Episcopal Church, Lakewood, OH, in October 2009

This morning’s readings are full of happy endings. Job’s fortunes are restored, and Bartimaeus, once blind, can now see. But these happy endings have consequences beyond Job and Bartimaeus themselves. Job’s entire friends and family are enriched by his restoration. And the people who witness Bartimaeus’ faith and healing are encouraged and inspired.

“Take heart; he is calling to you.”

Bartimaeus has been sitting by the roadside, camping out on the sidewalk like someone waiting for the sales to open, waiting for Jesus to pass by. The crowds around him probably didn’t take too much notice of him, until he began to yell.
He heard the train of disciples begin to pass by on their way out of Jericho. It was probably quite a spectacle; we’re told that Jesus left Jericho with a large crowd. He’d created quite a stir in that city. There was plenty of commotion.
But above all of this Bartimaeus could be heard yelling, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
And did the people around him say, “Take heart, get up, he is calling to you!”?

Well, no.
They said, shhh. Be quiet. You’re embarrassing us. Don’t bother him. Don’t bother us.

The crowd is enjoying a spectacle, a circus, a novelty. But Bartimaeus is a challenge. He is invoking the name of the Messiah, Jesus, Son of David, and he is making it personal, have mercy on me.
Bartimaeus’ faith is not in crowds or commotion, bells and whistles, smoke and mirrors, or campaign rallies. Bartimaeus’ faith is in the person of Jesus, the man who embodies God with us. And person to person he prays, “have mercy on me”.

Bartimaeus knew that small voices can have a big impact. He knew that he as an individual was made in God’s image, was part of God’s plan, and that his life mattered in the story of Jesus. Was that overreaching pride? Or simply a marvelous gift of faith?

A couple of weeks ago, some of us had a conversation upstairs in the lounge with [some people] about the way in which their faith influences and supports their work, and what struck me about each of them was their faithfulness. They know that they can’t solve society’s problems, or even the problems of all of the individuals whom they personally serve. But they also know that by faithful persistence they do make a difference. Sometimes they know when they achieve a breakthrough, and make things better for someone. Sometimes they have to have faith that they have done their best, and leave the rest up to God. They know that their part is to persevere with faith, with faithfulness, knowing that they are part of God’s plan, that their work matters in the bringing of justice, mercy and peace to this world.
Today, we gather in the fruits of the Share the Blessings initiative. How much difference to the city of Cleveland, we might ask, does it make to buy a pair of pants, some shirts, a winter coat? I don’t know about the city, but to some child, one cold day in January, one winter coat, offered in faith, will be making a big personal difference.
And a few weeks ago, we heard about a parish committing themselves to feed 5000 children, following in the way of our Lord to feed God’s people. They know that it’s a drop in the ocean of child poverty! But they also know that the children they feed will sleep better on a full tummy.

And that brings me back to the gospel story. Because already since we heard about that parish in Texas a few weeks ago, we have heard about people who have been inspired by their simple act of faith to offer what help they are able. Like a drop of water running down a window and gathering in the other little drops and growing bigger as it goes, this drop in the ocean of child poverty has gathered other drops, and inspired who knows how many other hidden acts of faithful giving.

What does that have to do with Bartimaeus? Well, as far as I can see, Bartimaeus is not the only person who is healed in this story. Certainly not the only one who is changed. Because look again at the crowd around him. They are shushing him, pushing him down, until Jesus stops and says, “Call him to me.”

Jesus stops, and says, “Call him to me.”

And now, the crowd says, “Take heart! Get up! He is calling to you!”

Their whole demeanor has changed. They are astonished; Bartimaeus was right. Jesus, the Son of David, the anointed of God, the Messiah, cares abut such individuals as these. Cares enough to ask, “What do you want me to do for you?” Cares enough to give the gift of sight to the blind man.

And we’re told that Bartimaeus follows Jesus on the way, as his disciple, just as Jesus heads off toward Jerusalem and Holy Week.

Bartimaeus has had faith all along, since he started camping out at the side of the road, waiting for Jesus and his entourage to pass by. He knew that Jesus would hear him, and he would not be silenced. When Jesus calls out to him he has no hesitation in casting off his coat and running to stand before him. And his reward is that his faith makes possible the recovery of his sight.

But the crowd, they’re something else. They have been touched by this encounter, too. When they see Jesus’ action in this man’s life, they are moved from “Don’t bother the man, don’t yell at him,” to “He is calling to you!”
They are moved from “What difference can it make, anyway,” to “Get up! He’s calling to you!”
They have gone, I think, from “Who are you to call upon Jesus” to “Wow! That could have been me.”

“Take heart, he is calling to you.”

The faithfulness of one man, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, gave Jesus the opportunity to demonstrate God’s mercy, God’s healing, God’s love to a whole crowd of people on that road out of Jericho.
When we are faithful in our actions, when we reflect in our lives what God has done for us, then maybe Jesus can use us to show God’s mercy, God’s glory in ways we may never know or imagine.

Whether it’s showing up to tutor a child, or sharing a meal with a stranger. Whether it’s donating a winter coat or pledging a tithe. Whether it’s a kind word to someone in distress, or prayers for the dying, we don’t know when our own acts of faithfulness, our own drops in the ocean, may become God’s windows to revealing God’s glory to the world.

So as we go out into the world this week, may we remember always to call upon Jesus, the Son of God, to have mercy on us, and trust that we are heard.
As we call upon God, may we be ready to answer God’s call to us.
May we persevere in faith and hope, even when the happy ending is beyond our sight or imagination.
And when we have faith and hope to spare, may we remember to encourage one another: “Take heart. He is calling to you.”

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Story of your life

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

The dog ears, with their corners turned down
we tell over and over – love stories, horror stories,
old jokes and limericks,
edges worn smooth with the turning.

Unlike those sections which someone
tried to tear out, to shred, to burn;
they are crispy and crumpled,
stubborn survivors.

Cloth-bound, elegant or cool leather-jacketed,
all the same, their paper cuts draw blood.
Some go nearly naked,
writing their narrative on paper-white.

A slender volume yields a perfect poem.
An uncut edition holds promise yet to be divined.
Walking the street, you see one whose spine is cracked
and broken, shedding pages as she goes.

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